CRO/CEO/CMO Founder's Roundtable Mastermind - 10/6/2026

Okay.

If you want to, while we're waiting, put down in the chat, not your full contact information yet, just Because obviously not everybody's going to see it. Just put where you're calling in from today. That'd be nice. And then once we get a full quorum, then you could— I would suggest you add your email, your LinkedIn, why you joined, what you're looking to do is either get help or give help. So this whole thing is obviously about what's working and what's not. A lot of it's about AI. A lot of talk, we talk a lot about AI on this thing. We have roundtables that are directed towards particular subjects like paid media, programmatic media. We're doing ones that are just ancillary ones around HR consulting. You know, I have clients all over the place that That I help basically put together their own roundtable and make sure that they're building a smart approach, basically, like, like an expertise, subject matter expertise panel for themselves. So, but we're gonna get started here at about 11:05 Eastern. But right now we're just letting folks in. But, uh, yeah, put down where you're from and then And then after that, once we get like 20 people or 20, 30 people in here, which we're getting close, put down why you join, who you are, not just your LinkedIn address. Okay, as you can see here, Daniel's here. He's my Client Service Success Director. So anytime you want to talk to him as well, he's, uh, he'll put his information in there as well. He has, um, a background in analytics and cloud co-work and not just, uh, automation around lead generation. So definitely a good person to bounce ideas off of as well. But I'll show you kind of what I put in the chat just so you can see How much information I'm willing to give. We, we would love to have people also— I see some folks here that have helped me build this roundtable, like Rajiv has done in the past, where we took his LinkedIn, we automated it, we put down, hey, Michael and Rajiv are doing a roundtable together. He also has his own roundtable that he does as well. You know, think about like, how can you help grow this thing? Because I'm only growing it based on people that are like, hey, I would love to take my 3,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 connections and help you grow your LinkedIn. I mean, your roundtable, because the more people that we have engaging, interacting with each other, the more people we have to learn, refer business to. You know, even meet up locally in, in their neighborhood and say, hey, let's grab a cup of coffee and see if there's some ways to work together. So here's my information. This has my LinkedIn, my email, my virtual digital twin. Lots of good things. So I'm gonna start off with who I am, and then we're gonna kind of ask people to talk about what they do. For like maybe 30 seconds, because if you've pitched, then we're probably gonna have to say, hey, no pitching allowed. Pitch in chat if you want, um, but just talk about, hey, I'm from— like, I'll just do one right now. I'm Michael Filato. I'm in Orlando. I'm in Deerfield Beach, Boca Raton. And basically I'm here because I produce these roundtables, masterminds, and podcasts to build a whole go-to-market strategy for people. I help them Instead of pitch-slapping people, I help them get in touch with people and learn from each other. Um, these roundtables that I do are once a week at 11 AM Eastern, like the time we have, every Tuesday. And then I have a bunch on my link in this, uh, chat here that are other ones that I do and other ones I do with— for my clients to help them grow their top of funnel. So, um, I want to start off with some people that I have never talked to before, like Was it GGJK?

Yes, Michael, I am GGJK.

Okay, that's, that's very unique.

Yeah, yeah, my last name was 19 letters, so I had to cut it short.

Okay, for the sake of time.

So I'm an industrial catalog whisperer. I go into manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and turn their dead catalogs into revenue machines with one line of code. And if you can't, and if you can't make, create revenue in 30 days, the biggest risk they will take is one line of code.

Okay. And tell me, tell me about a particular tech or AI that you felt was very useful, or something, or something you learned from the last 6 months that was a very painful lesson or a very great lesson on how to do something right. That has non-pitch ramifications on it.

So, uh, growth is my weakest strength, and I flex my muscles. So this weekend I ended up in creating a, a script that will customize. I can generate— I create one video once, and I can turn that into 100 videos. So, you know, I can customize video on the fly. So Hello, Michael. Hello, Daniel, right from one video. So I'm finishing that up.

What platform are you using for that?

So I have multiples, ElevenLabs, Claude, a number of tech that I'm using, combining all of them into one, one stack.

Okay. Natalie, I see you're— I haven't seen you before. Tell me a little bit. Hi. Tell me where you calling in from and what kind of grabbed your attention to be part of the roundtable today. And this is—I don't know if you heard from the beginning—but this is more of like past tips, tactics, and strategies versus pitch your company. But you're allowed to kind of pitch for the first twenty seconds of like who you are and why you're here. But we really want to kind of not turn this into elevator pitches because no one's going to come back. So we want to make sure that it's a life lesson, it's a strategy, it's a tactic, it's an AI, it's. Someone told you something 6 months ago and it really turned out to be great advice or bad advice. So go ahead and kick it off.

Thank you. Hi, everybody. I'm Natalie Alicia Goldberg. I'm based in Denver, Colorado, Cherry Creek North. I'm a licensed attorney though in 6 states, New York, New Jersey, California, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, where I'm a glutton for punishment with all those continuing legal requirements. I'm the CEO of Gold Legal, and that's what we focus on, the wealth transition. And the biggest tip, Michael, is, you know, the one big beautiful bill, whether you love or hate Trump, gave business owners a lot of beautiful things, including the addition of 1202 to $15 million as opposed to $10 million.

What is that? What's 1202? I don't even know what that is.

So in the event that you establish a C corp and hold it for at least 5 years, used to be the law. Now there is a transition period, 3, 4, 5 years and you sell it, the first $10 million is capital gains federally, and most states follow it tax-free. It's now been raised to $15 million. And with certain non-grantor trusts we use, each trust can be an additional $15 million. So I hope I just made everyone on the phone call $50 million tax-free. And, uh, I'll end it at that.

Is it personal or is it corporate? I didn't—

A C corp. So it has to be a C corp, but your personal shares of that C corp, like you, Michael, if you're listed as an owner of a C corp, I'm an LLC.

I'm an LLC as an S corp.

So let's say you shifted and started a new company, something in AI, not services, something that's, that's 1202 sanctified. And you had shares and you built that company to a mammoth. If you sold it in 5 years, the first $15 million to you, Michael, personally is capital gains federally tax-free.

That's awesome, yeah.

Yes, and we can add to each of that with non-grantor trusts that we add on top of. So it's really beautiful.

Kind of like the whole thing we did with, well, not what we did, but the whole, if you could buy and sell a house within 5 years and your first capital, First $500,000 tax-free, something kind of like— they kind of did it for company.

Section 121. Now, the beautiful thing about that is there's other bills in Congress right now that they're looking to adjust that for inflation because it hasn't changed since 1997 and/or double it. So we have to all keep an eye on that because I'm sure a lot of us don't sell the homes because they're so highly appreciated. We don't want to bite that bullet and pay that tax.

And how do you normally get your clients? Is it all referral-based or do you do any outbound marketing or social?

Well, I have a pretty big LinkedIn following, about 70,000 somewhat. For a lawyer, that's pretty good. 70,000 or 70,000? 70,000.

Wow, nice. We'll have to talk about you helping build this up.

For the right percentage for that C-Corp, $15 million tax-free, Michael, we can talk about a lot. Absolutely.

Yeah. Awesome.

Yeah, so it's great. Great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you. Michael Lewis.

Good morning. That's a tough act to follow from Natalie, but I work at a company called DataAxle, which is formerly known as InfoUSA, if that name rings a bell.

Oh yeah.

And we— I've only been there for 8 months or so, but I've been in the data and marketing, martech, adtech industry for about 25 years. And I would just say like the message we'd like to convey is that AI could do a lot of special and important things, but if you use AI in marketing and the data is not accurate or sound going into your marketing effort, You're basically going to create a multiplier effect of negativity if the data is messy or dirty or inaccurate when you go conduct that marketing. So that's what we're here for. We do have some AI in our company and whatnot, but what we really try to support our clients with is accurate data so that when they go into AI-based marketing efforts, the data is sound.

Awesome. Well, hi, Michael Lewis, it's Stacey Hawes.

Hello, Stacy. Good to see you.

Good to see you.

My dear ex-Epsilon colleague.

Yeah.

Yes. Michael, what's a tactic or strategy that you learned in the last 6 months that could have ruined you or could, or made you just go, wow, that was a great idea, either for myself or from someone that you trusted?

Um, could you say that question another way? I, I'm happy to answer it. I just, uh— Lesson learned. Lesson learned. But I think that was my lesson learned, right? Which was, we all obsess over using AI to make the marketing campaign, marketing campaign process more automated. I started in marketing when I, you know, I was at the email marketing button pusher, beginning of my career. And it was very manual to actually send out opt-in emails to, you know, to the Gap or Hewlett-Packard or Target's customer base. And we would literally use Excel sheets and You know, SQL to build these lists and to send out the campaigns. Now things are very automated, which is exciting. But again, if you don't have the data sound and normalized before you do it, you can create kind of a lot of negative experiences very quickly. So that was my aha, was just that the tech has caught up, but now let's make sure we still mind the data before we engage the AI-based tech. I would say that's my takeaway.

Awesome. I want to introduce Mike Nolan, who's actually one of the guys that's, uh, helped me start this, building this roundtable up. We just started yesterday automating his LinkedIn. I think he has like 20-something thousand connections, right, Mike?

Uh, we got to be somewhere in there. Yeah.

So he's one of the guys that possibly will work with me or refer business to me, but the biggest reason why I'm calling him out here. And when he— when you do become a partner, either a client or you help with the LinkedIn approach, you know, I give you a little extra, extra push. And, you know, Mike's also an Air Force veteran like me. And so I just wanted to introduce Mike and say thanks for, you know, being part of the military and also thanks for helping me build up the audience today. So tell me what you do, Mike.

Yeah, thank you, Michael. Um, hello everyone. So I just started a company called Military Talent Connectors, and we're a full-service military recruitment and ERG, employee resource group, solutions firm. It got put into this position after 11 years at Salesforce. I got caught up in a reduction in force, so I was taken out of my comfort zone and thrown into the what's next. And I just this past— actually, 2 weeks ago at the Military Influencers Conference, announced that I published a book called The Mission Methodology, which is a step-by-step working field manual for military to civilian transition.

And what, what, what was something that you found that was amazingly great, a great idea, or a really bad idea in the last 6 months?

Well, it's, uh, I'm still figuring it out. Um, I've literally had to go from running a program, working internally within corporate America, to now being thrown out to You know, I've got to create my own wealth. Every dollar, dime, penny that comes in, I have to create it. So it's been a learning experience for me. I've read a lot of marketing books. I've taken on the, the Challenger Sales methodology. And, um, I just kind of— I'm driving the car down the road at 90 miles an hour and trying to build it and fine-tune it. So it's, uh, some of the things that, that we've really been working out some of the kinks on is not just contingency placement. It is part of the business. But the real part of the business that I'm growing is creating opportunities or openings within organizations for military-connected talent via fellowships. So if you're transitioning out of the military, you know, they didn't have this when I got out, Michael, and maybe not yourself as well, but they have SkillBridge. So within the last 6 months of your active duty service, the government says, hey, Michael, you can go work at ABC Company. And it's really to kind of help bridge that gap from military to civilian career. And then as well, the DOW just fully funded a program called SpouseWorks, which was originally the Military Spouse Employment Network. But now military spouses, which are the most under- and unemployed in the civilian labor job market, they now have the ability to go for 3 months. They get a stipend from the government and they work at companies to basically get them back into the employment circle and not taking jobs that are, you know, most times beneath them, because over 71% of spouses Have bachelor's degrees with 42 with advanced degrees, and they're just not finding opportunities.

That's it's there's a lot of spouses that are not getting where they need to be sometimes. So that's that's great that you're helping them. Um, see Timu. Is that how you pronounce it?

You got it, Michael. Well done.

Well done. You have that big company that's selling everything.

No, I'm a startup right now in the travel industry, and basically I'm here because Chickie Fitzgerald suggested I join. So I'm just listening in and hearing what people have to share.

So, well, the whole idea is to kind of give us a tidbit of strategy or tip.

Okay, well, here's my strategy. It's kind of different from many of you all because I am privacy-focused. So I will very much defer from using any kind of paid media or any things like that. So I have to build from within organically, mostly referrals, etc. So the go-to-market strategy is slow to grow, but once it gets going, it has a much stickier appeal. So that's basically it. I mean, it's a challenge, but once you crack that nut, um, it has a potential for a much longer LTV, uh, when it comes to the actual customers because they've been referred by somebody they trust. So it's a much— very much a trust-built, uh, based, um, mechanism.

Well, I wanted to welcome, uh, I wanted to welcome my daughter Faith Falato. Uh, she's actually working for the company now and working with one of my clients. Faith, say hi.

Hi.

She's following her dad's footsteps. So, um, anytime you need some help with any type of virtual admin stuff, marketing materials, she's my go-to. I just wanted to welcome her to the team. She just graduated from University of Central Florida.

Thank you, y'all.

And she's kind of grown up in the South a little, so she's starting to say y'all versus you know what we say in Chicago, because she never grew up in Chicago. Thanks, y'all. Okay, um, let's go to Christopher Salem, who's driving. Don't kill yourself.

Hey, Michael, good to see you. It's been a while. And, uh, Chickie, uh, I know each— she invited me, um, on my way to go speak at a company. But yeah, um, it's great to be here, uh, just to know, let everybody know I'm a, I'm a business acceleration strategist. Uh, my specialty in that particular area, working with small to mid-sized companies, which is my focus, is in and around the concepts of EQ and effective communication strategies. One-to-one, one-to-few, one-to-many. So what does that mean? Well, a lot of times we take communication for granted. We think that how we communicate to one person's the same to another, and it's not the case. So what I do for organizations, I, I help to identify where the challenges are, the bottlenecks, and a lot of times it could all be traced back to miscommunication. Why people leave companies, people don't do what they're supposed to do, retention problems, all tie back to miscommunication. So I—

What do you think, like, the tip or tactic, not just Maybe picture what you do, but tip or tactic or strategy of something that you need to, as someone that either communicates with clients or your employees or employees with their bosses, that's gonna be like, wow, thanks, Chris, for— that was a great idea.

Yeah. So you gotta, you gotta, first you gotta understand how you process information and then understand people have different personality, generational, and cultural and ethnic types. So how They process information is not the same as you. But when you can now learn how to do this verbally and in, and then also in writing, that using AI to help reframe things so you can learn from it. So how do you reframe something to a dominant personality, to an analytical type personality, to a systematic or someone who, who cares about who it impacts type personality?

Knowing how to We're losing you. We're losing you. Uh, I'm gonna go to Deidra. Hi, Deidra.

Hey there.

Tell us a little bit within like 20 seconds of what you do and where you're at. 30 seconds. And then something you've learned that was amazing, that— or that wasn't a good idea.

So I'm from New York City. I'm in between roles right now, but I'm usually a VP of marketing. I was a former CMO of a fintech. I've launched a new side project called GTMlab.net, and that's based on what I've seen happen with a lot of companies is that when growth stalls, they usually resort to the same tactics or the same playbooks of hiring and firing, adding more tactics, adding more channels. As opposed to doing some deep self-reflection into the company of, do we have ourselves set up to succeed? And what that usually results in is that, do you— are you giving the right authority to people who are accountable for decision-making? Do you have a method of prioritization, or are you trying to boil the ocean? Is the team aligned on what you're trying to achieve? So I try to diagnose and help find those structural deficiencies that are stalling growth.

What type of tool or strategy was like amazing to learn about in the last 6 months?

Um, a tool that was amazing to learn about was Replit. I've been doing a lot of work with Replit, uh, creating my site and being able to optimize it and create the diagnostics and assessments that are on it. So Replit has been awesome. Um, and then just something that, uh, outside of a tool that I think was awesome to learn was that Not every person that has a C-suite title really understands the nature of their job. So just don't be impressed by titles. And it took me a long time to learn that.

Especially if you're the CEO founder of GTN Full Throttle, which is a 3-man company. Michelle Charlesberger.

Hello, everyone. I'm Michelle Strasburger. I am the CEO of AI Rebooted. We have a governance, an AI governance platform. So what we see is organizations are rolling out AI a bit like the Wild Wild West, or like Oprah gives out gifts on her show where you get, you get a gift and you get a gift and you get a gift. You get a tool and you get a tool, and we're not seeing adoption. in organizations or any, any transparency into how AI is being used. So our platform is governance first, and we help organizations build their governance framework and then apply that where the work is being done in chats, agents, vibes, and workflows. We also have a browser extension for Shadow AI, so you can identify where unsanctioned AI is showing up in your organization right at the browser level.

And so what's something that you've learned pitch-wise, not pitch-wise, but strategy-wise, tactic-wise, that has something that will change the way we think about, that's not mentioning your company too?

I think something I've learned over the years, I don't know if something, if this will be something people learn from each other, but I've been in human resources for over 25 years before taking this step. And what I've learned, especially in the small business, is that you feel like you have to do it all yourself, but you don't really. And so linking arms with others, um, in groups like this is really helpful so that you don't have to do it all by yourself.

Yeah, I realized, like, you know, that's why Faith and Daniel and other people help me, because if I do everything myself, the client success myself, the, the one-to-one stuff, I'm never going to get anything done. I gotta work Work in my business sometimes, not just out of my business. So, let's go with Cortland.

Sure. I'm probably the oddball here. I'm in the pharmaceutical—

That's Rajiv. That's— we already have that place.

Okay. I'm in the pharmaceutical industry. We are a service provider. We're based in Dallas, been around for about 25 years. We're also DEA, so marketing is null and void. AI is also null and void. So I'm always looking to hear how people are using AI in a lot of ways because of the fact that it's against the law for us to use AI at this point until Congress—

What do you do again so I can understand why it's against the law?

I'm a pharmaceutical service provider.

Okay, well, I use AI to— like right now using AI in this meeting. I use AI all day long for all my meetings. Obviously, I don't know if you can record your meetings with other people, but I say, hey, let me know what I talked to Steve about, tell him what I owe him, what he owes me. So I have it write a nice follow-up email for me, and I would never be able to do it. I also hook my, um, Claude Cowork into all my calendar my Gmail, all that stuff, every document, every Fireflies transcript, and it basically builds a dashboard for me that would've took thousands of hours to build. So there's things you can do that for your eyes only. And one of the biggest things I love about the note-taking thing is that I don't have to spend 35 minutes trying to recap a call when they ask me, can you send me something? Like, That's what it used to be like. So now it's like, sure, I'll do it, take me 2 seconds.

Yeah, the issue that we have with that is the fact that it's on an OpenAI system and therefore it's available to anyone. And especially—

No, no, I'm talking about Fireflies is a closed network of your, your notes. It doesn't go out to the hemisphere. Okay, put on Claude Cowork and all these ones, there's ways to just siphon off your content for not going into the Hemisphere. Um, that'd probably be something that you talk to one of the guys on here about because I'm not a— actually, probably my guy Daniel would be a great guy to talk to about that. But, um, cool. Um, Tony, how you doing? That's Tony. That's Tony the Little Tony, Big Tony. How you doing, Tony? Which Tony you're asking about? Forget about it. Let's go. How you doing? Hey.

Good. Tony DeSanza, CEO and founder of Huberdine Tech. We do several different things, but I focus on a lot of fractional work, fractional chief growth officer, chief revenue officer. I joined because Michael's a great guy and I also live in Orlando.

And what's a tip or tactic or strategy that blew your mind in the last 6 months, 6 weeks?

You know, actually it was today. I, I, it's, I don't know if it's a tactic or a strategy, but you know how you get so many LinkedIn connection requests and you can either sell or not sell on the next connection. But the gentleman that connected with me and he reached out to me just wrote a very thoughtful engaging message without a sell. And I was really impressed with it, and I told them that, and I said, okay, let's have a, you know, let's have a meeting. So yeah.

That's why I do the whole— why I do that whole give first, you know. Either you take the time and write a really good message, but you do that if it's one of your top 30 accounts, top 50 accounts. If you did that all day long for anybody, that's not a good use of your time. I mean, it has to be someone that you're— that's going to make an ROI for you. So if you think about doing that, which is called ABM, account-based marketing, your top 50 accounts, great. But you want to also think about what can I give, which is a podcast roundtable. You go, what do you think? Asking their opinion. What do you think of this conference coming up? Just want to see if you're going. That's gonna get the door open, and that's when you start business dating, Tony. So great idea. Just be concerned that just because someone did that doesn't mean they didn't use AI, which is, which is what they did. And they regurgitated some things and thoughtful things, and they— to be honest with you, I bet you a million dollars they used AI to write that too. So just, just be considerate.

I'll let you know.

Yeah. Um, let's go to Nancy K— Nancy May, sorry. You're on mute.

Sorry, it just took me a second to get there. Um, so I'm Nancy May, a transplant from the New York area down to the Tampa, Florida, Central Florida area. I'm probably, probably, I doubt, 2 hours from you, Michael, over in the Brooksville area.

Well, I'm in Orlando and I'm also in, um, in, uh, Deerfield Beach. Oh, okay.

No.

So I've been here 5 years and I have had over 35 years in dealing with corporate governance, my own business, working with some of the biggest names out there in this space and also coaching individuals to get on their first compensated board. I've got a 95% track record on that one, getting them where they need to be. And I am having a blast starting a new business from scratch in an entirely different area, which is the food industry. And I have a podcast. It's Building a Media Platform. Have a podcast, right, the first one right now. We've got 5 others on the map to build, but the first one already has 2 awards, which is great. And I'm here to learn from everybody else.

Well, thanks for joining.

Thank you.

Ian, or Ian.

Uh, Ian. Ian, that's how you pronounce it.

Sorry.

Hey everybody, um, my name is Ian Belay. I'm with, uh, well, I'm actually with a couple companies, but the 2 main ones are Verified First and AccredTech. Um, Verified First is a background screening, drug screening company, and AccredTech provides, um, driver management and driver qualification file support to our customers. My focus is on, um, on mostly on building like partner-focused operations, uh, which we've done at both the CredTech and, and, uh, at, uh, Verified First. And what that means is, um, like a belief that partnerships can drive, uh, and be a core, uh, driver of, of growth, um, but you've got to have all the other departments aligned to make that happen. So, you know, we've done that at VF and we drive about 600 SQLs a month to our sales teams. And we're now shifting to really look at nearbound partnership strategies. Go ahead, sorry.

No, so that's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah, partner, these partner programs, I'm definitely getting involved in a lot too, because if you think about like what I did with Chiqui, And others on this call, it's it's not maybe of money today, but some money long term for both of us. Where do you take someone else's like? So if you're doing this type of automation or anything like that, you say, "Hey, these fifteen twenty people have twenty thousand connections." Either A, you could sell them a sponsorship on some sort of thing like this that you can build, or a podcast, and basically tap into their trust factor. And this is how I got half of you people on this call. It's because someone else, I automated their LinkedIn and used it because maybe they're a solopreneur and didn't need me to build leads for them. But I built leads like Mike, perfect example. I'm gonna build leads for the both of us as a one-off and then see how that works out. There's always something to do with someone if, if at least they have value in their LinkedIn connections, you know. If there's not money to be made that day. So just think about that as a partner approach. I want to introduce Chickie because she just also signed on. Her and Mike Nolan signed on to be partners with me to do this Let's Grow This Roundtable Mastermind together. Um, and I really want to just throw, throw a little hello to her.

Great. Well, thanks. I'm sorry I'm late, Michael. I, I had my team call today, but I cut it short so I could At least pop in and say hi.

No worries. So as you can see, we started pushing out examples to people that join up. Um, we don't really do commercials on this thing, we educate. So just tell them a little bit, like a tip or tactic or strategy that you learned, but start off with 20 seconds of who you are and what you do. Just—

Absolutely. Chickie Fitzgerald, Tampa, Florida. So Nancy, I just sent you a note. I have had tech companies, and this is my 13th early-stage company. So I focus on delivering tools to people. But the thing I've learned is that companies spend so much time and energy trying to get new clients, and they miss what they can be doing internally. And, and growing their existing line of business. So we've developed something called the Triple Win. And again, it's not a product. It's, it's a methodology that we can share with anyone about how to grow your existing clients through adjacent products and also growing engagement, which I think is so much more important because when you lose someone to go do something that you don't help them do, they may never come back and you don't even know. So that's my biggest learning. And that's really what I would like to be sharing is we consider ourselves a growth multiplier. And so everybody wants to grow. And so we think that that's a universal problem. And that's why Michael and I just keep coming back together because he's all about growth and not just go to market, but, you know, once you're in the market, How do you multiply that?

Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing, guys, I, I'm not pitching me, is give first, sell later. If you don't understand what the problem is, if you don't understand what the solution is, if you don't understand, like a doctor, uh, or, or a lawyer who we got on here, Natalie, with the, the blazing hair, best hair ever, um, it's— if you can't help somebody if you don't know what's going on. And if you're gonna pitch them on LinkedIn, you're gonna get banned. If you pitch them on email, if it even gets to someone's email box, it's— you're one of a bunch of junk mails. Whether you do the awesomest HR tech, which I come from in the past, I did. I worked in the NFL. I worked— I'm sorry, with the NFL and AT&T and Sprint and Red Bull and UFC. Great people to see. All they hear is that you're bragging. I did this. I, I, I, we, we, we. You know what they say about that? Don't pee on yourself, right? We, we, we, I, I, I. So that's the biggest thing is we can't do that type of networking. Business dating is just like dating in real life. It's you gotta get to know someone before you just throw up on them. If you took any message you get on LinkedIn and went out to anybody walking the street, they would be like, what's your problem? You know. It's just too much information. Um, Carlin Kiefer.

Hi there. Um, I'm Carlin Kiefer, and thank you for saying it correctly. Carlin like George. Uh, I am based in—

Are you gonna say the 7 words that you can't say on TV?

Uh, I will not do that in this particular conversation, no, but I'm glad that you know them. Yep. Um, so I am in the DC metro area in Northern Virginia. I am a solopreneur in sales enablement and effectiveness, leveraging improv to make up for the people skills that AI is slowly eroding away. Sorry to all of you AI devotees. So I help them marry the two, right? Do all the front work with the AI and then remember to bring yourself to the meeting so you can still win the room. And insight, actually, I will say that, Michael, one of the— In terms of what I've learned, I've learned quite a few things recently, but I will say you listed off and rattled off a bunch of ways you're using Claude Cowork that I am not doing. So I've made a list of all of those that I am going to start doing, 'cause as a solopreneur, you need all of it, all the hands you can get to minimize your workload.

Well, Maisie asked me this morning, do I wanna make a, A dashboard. I didn't even ask it.

Nice.

So I said, do you want a dashboard? And then, and then basically you have to allow all these things all the time. But you got to get Cloud Cowork, which is like bigger than the free version of the $20. It's $50 a month for a team version. So you could— so you, like, for me and Daniel that does this. So again, if I didn't have Daniel, I wouldn't know how to do that. Dan and then Pete Sanitas, who I, uh, I work with as well, who is my former CRO. He— like, a lot of people are building a whole business on Claude.

Yeah.

And they're putting a wrapper in front of it and bundling it up and selling it and trying to raise money. It's— the thing that worries me is everything's gonna look like Claude websites and Claude this and Claude that. It's just gonna be using tokens. So you got to be careful, like, the human part, the AI part. And for me, I try to go and say, listen, I have 30 years in sales, so you're buying me, not just automation on email and link. There's ideas and strategies that, you know, that I know. Natalie just threw out this thing that I didn't even know about, the big bill, beautiful bill, which I didn't even know was in there. I mean, that's very interesting if I was at that, that range of revenue.

Let's go, Michael. Let's get this roundtable there. Let's do it.

Well, we gotta, we gotta talk about a podcast after this because I want to get your— I want to get your expertise on that.

Sure.

Um, but yeah, I mean, it's like— but I think like if you go back to what she was saying, like the whole Inc., there's all— there's— there has to be certain times that you go from LLC to a corporation, I would think too. I don't know if you want to give that slice of advice real quick, Natalie, before I go on to someone else, but that's the reason why I haven't gone to, uh, incorporation. If that's how you say it.

You know, there's like standard advice. All these people on the podcast are like, when you're making over a few hundred thousand, you should sell. If you're going to sell the business for a multiplier and you're a major tech company that can get $50, $100 million—

Service. I'm a service company. I don't think I can go 10x with just me servicing people like at AMC. That's why I haven't done it. But go ahead.

I think we need— Michael, you certainly can do it. You can do it.

All right.

We're gonna shift you a little bit and then we're gonna get you there.

Awesome. Let's see. Oh, Scott McNabb. Scott, correct me, right? You were in the Air Force like me, right?

Yes, sir. Air Force weapons systems officer.

Tell them what you did in the Air Force. It's freaking cool.

All right. I'll try to go fast. So my job was weapons systems instructor on the F-15E Strike Eagle platform, and my job was to train the backseaters. So, if you think of a 2-seat airplane, the guy in the front rows the boat, the guy in the back shoots the ducks. I trained basically, if you saw the Top Gun movie, my job was the same as Charlie. So, I was a classroom instructor training pilots and their weapons systems officers in the backseat on the safe and accurate delivery of nuclear and conventional weapons. So that was my gig, and I'm thrilled to death to be a part of those that are also former service members. And I've known Michael now for— and thank you, sir, for your service. I've known Michael now for, I don't know, going on half a year. We bumped into each other. Michael Lewis, I used to compete against you at Data Axel when I was with Verisk, which was formerly 2 different companies in that data world, competing against Experian and Epsilon and that sort of thing. I am a CRO by trade, in between gigs right now. Got a PE firm that was hot and heavy to sell my firm and woke up one morning. The interesting story is that I had spent almost 8 months to prepare the company for resale. Using Claude, Claude Cowork, and various different other tools to prepare the organization for its resale in the legal tech world. And then about halfway through the journey, Claude decides— Anthropic decides that they're going to sell legal software. And so directly against the legal tech companies, so Anthropic is building out a whole framework for making lawyers able to use AI and making it very difficult for— and our specialty was the personal injury law firm area. But 20 years in the SaaS world, I spent almost a year using Claude to reinvent my company. And interestingly enough, the board popped up and said, oh, that's great. Thank you very much. Our EBITDA is out of whack. Our CAC is out of whack. And guess what? You're one of the most expensive guys in the company, so have a nice day. And they paid me generously. So I'm in between roles right now, but 20 years—

How long ago was that, Scott? How long ago was that?

That was July, and here it is October. And so out looking for my next gig in the world, but long, long history in the SaaS world. Took a company called Eloqua from from $4 million to $95 million in the span of about 48 months, took it public for 90 days and sold it to Oracle for $900 million. So a couple of good exits in my career, and I'm just thrilled to death to be on this journey with Michael. I think the world of, you know, the whole Full Throttle concept, and welcome to your daughter to the family. Glad to be here, y'all. Thank you very much.

Thanks, buddy. Will.

Hi, everyone.

My name is—

Nice last name, Will.

Schmal.

Schmal.

Yeah, it looks harder than it sounds, but yeah, it's German. So I'm the founder of Housemother, and actually, Chiqui invited me to this event. I'm glad to be here. I'm working in travel tech, bringing the first AI agent that actually is proactively learning intent of users. Without any bias of trying to sell you things from my own inventory or my customers' inventory. So our goal is to help people along their way as they travel and stay. I'm looking to learn and network to find accommodation partners, but I'm more than happy to help anyone on the technical side or marketing with creatives and stuff because I'm pretty good at that. So Yeah, thank you.

And what's, what's a tactic or tip? That's really what I want to get out of you guys. Yeah, like, we all learn from our mistakes, you know. I'm a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. What does that mean? I had— I got tapped a lot. I got punched in the head a lot. I don't move this way, I move this way now. So I'm so goofy, but, uh, You know, we learn from things that work, we learn from things that don't work. So always come— anybody that talks, always come with lesson learned from a positive or negative standpoint, because everything is positive if you learn from it.

Yeah, I'll say this just to add to that, is that, uh, what I've learned is that like my superpower is looking at other industries I haven't worked in just as a, you know, a hindsight of questioning things.

I'm talking about specific— I'm talking about like specific, hey, I used Claude, it does this, or I figured this thing out, not just a general statement. Oh, okay, gotcha. Do you have one of those?

I gotta think about it. Yeah.

Okay, I'll go to you next time. Sandra Connor.

It's still Sandra, Michael.

Sandra, I— you know what, I don't remember what I did yesterday. I had 15 Zoom calls. I am sorry, I forgot my daughter's coming to morning. So I'm just kidding.

Anyway, I'm happy to remind you at any opportunity. All right, so the quick 20 seconds. My company's called Video Grows. Yes, we do produce videos. We don't sell videos. Why is that? Because we are strategy-based and we work with clients on making sure that we do what works for them, not selling them something just to fill a preconceived What I have learned over the past 12 months is how fast AI apps are actually learning, teaching themselves, and evolving. But what I learned just yesterday, or should say relearned, is that yes, you do have to keep an eye on them. I have a Claude instance that I was using which had just been upgraded. That contradicted itself and information it gave me last week for a newsletter I was researching for, and then used the graphic that I gave it to carry forward with the process and then said, oh no, that doesn't do that. I said, well, you're the one that told me that it did that.

How about the graphic that we produced earlier? And they said, we don't produce videos or something like You just did a video for me yesterday, and now you say you can't produce? You could produce a storyboard, but you can't produce a video? I like— you start wanting to get in fights with AI, like you're, you're hallucinating.

Yes, that is part of the hallucination process that we must be aware of and watch for.

I'm gonna give you guys a tip here too. If you look at Sandra's, um, name, my name, you see it says founder GTN Full Throttle. Whenever you come on these roundtables, if you just put your name, you're sitting in front of us for 60 minutes. Put your title, your company tagline, phone number, email address, not there too, but also always put in chat. In chat, there's 3 buttons on the top right. You can save the chat and get everybody's thing. But think about, you know, you don't have to put a tagline, but just put like, how do, how do I get a hold of you as well, or your company? Because then I'll remember, oh, Nancy works for this company, or Michael works for this company. Um, who else has— like Spencer Cohn.

Hi, how are you doing, Michael?

Good, how you doing?

I'm doing great. Where are you calling from? I'm calling from upstate New York, Albany.

Okay, can you put the camera over here so we can see your face? There you go.

Put right in front.

Yeah, there you go. Look at us. There you go.

Yes indeed. I'm also prior service. I served in New York Army National Guard.

Yeah, I was in Illinois Air National Guard and California Air National Guard.

National Guard, okay.

Did Army National Guard?

Yes.

All right, thanks for your service.

Thank you, thank you. So my background was SATCOM, you know, I operate ground signal, uh, equipment, you know, the The cooler equipment that talked to the satellite in the sky, you know, we had it on Humvees and things of that sort. But so when it comes to the business, we are in a cybersecurity space. So I'm founder of a deep tech cybersecurity company. We specialize in essentially securing infrastructure at the cryptographic level. So I filed a patent for protocol that allows you to manage control, see, improve what AI agents are doing in your environment. And we give you proof that's signed with post-quantum cryptography. And we work with like a few companies in the Department of War area. And it's been, it's been going pretty great.

So you have your, you have your LinkedIn and your contact information in chat?

Not yet. I'm about to add it. I added my LinkedIn, my website earlier.

I was trying to find Spencer Cone in LinkedIn, and then just brought up a project manager guy.

My name is Suhindu Cone.

Let me yeah, put it in there. We're almost running out of time here, so I think we got Muhammad's only one that hasn't gone. So just give us thirty seconds of who you are, what you do, and then. Keep it short on any type of pitchy and the lesson learned, what you learn from somebody or from some tech idea or strategy, and then I'm gonna have to get ready for my next call.

Okay, Muhammad.

Yeah, is it my turn?

Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Muhammad.

Okay, I'm Muhammad. I'm founder and managing director of GreenShare Global. Global venture ecosystem pursuing financial sovereignty for 10 billion people by 2035. I led our 4 venture ecosystems: Green Scholar, Green Invest, Green Share, and Green Impact, connecting entrepreneurship, investment, and financial markets and their impacts.

So what's the thing? What's the lesson learned?

So it's like I have learned like all the way through different ecosystems where investors are, where universities are, where the research are. And I found a huge gap between all across them and connecting them in the series of 4 ventures where entrepreneurship gets connected to private capital and private capital gets connected to the public capital. And then the donation system, blockchain-based donation system, which is in the last, which connects the whole complete cycle here.

Great. Well, thanks for your time, everybody. Every Tuesday, you know, I'm going to— I'm going to— I think I have it already up, but if I don't, I'm going to post it again. Again, if you have good contacts for this type of roundtable, CROs, CEOs, I wanna invite more, more companies too, not just like people like us who are maybe 2 or 3 or 4 people big. The bigger the companies we have, the more we have to benefit, you know? And then if you think about maybe they won't come to a roundtable, maybe ask them if they'll be part of my podcast, 'cause I also do podcasts as well. But my whole thing is just trying to help each other. I'm doing this because I'm hoping that you guys will say, Michael, I remember you. You go do go-to-market strategies. Can I pass something on to you? You know, that's kind of why I do it. And that's the reason why you should think about doing this stuff with or without me and say, hey, you know, I'm in talent recruitment. You know, Mike, you should be doing your own roundtable every month around recruiting. and veterans, you know, it could be 6 people big and you, you're gonna get a lot of, a lot of gas out of that. And the first thing you can go on your, your thing, Mike, is like, hey, I'm doing this, I want to think you might be a good fit, Tom, but I need to talk to you first, you know what I'm saying? It's like CEO, military, someone that you might want to sell to, instead of pitching them to your recruiter or talent acquisition guy, Give, then ask. So anybody on this thing is—it's crucial that I'm getting third. I'm getting ten to fifteen means a day by giving first, and I want you to think about doing that for yourself. And you could—you could do it slowly. You can use automation if you want to do it, or you could use a service like me. You can help each other out, give each other referrals. You know, I definitely suggest that you—you do some sort of referral. Bonus, I always do 10% of my first year of revenue. So give each other, you know, a reason to want to work with each other. Okay. All right. Thanks, guys.

Quick question, Michael. How do you save the chat again?

Um, top right of the chat, it says save chat. See that?

I, I do not.

The 3 dots.

3 dots, hover over it, then click save chat.

You got to be, you got to be very careful with Army guys. It takes a little bit longer. The Air Force guys are a lot more on top of things.

It does. Yeah, very much so. We, we're just stronger and faster.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Stronger, faster, better looking.

And, uh, I don't know, I might be an anomaly.

I might be— we have our officers fighting for us. We don't even have to get on the ground.

Yeah, I'm in the top 10% of Army score, so I don't know.

Well, take care. Love you guys. God bless.

Bye.

Bye.