Rain Maker’s RoundUp with Michael Falato

Well, hello everyone and welcome to Rainmakers Roundup. I am your host, Mark Iorio. I've got with me today Michael Filato. Michael is the founder and CEO of Filato Lead Generation. I mean, it's a great company. Michael, welcome to the program. Great to have you. I know you're, you're in sunny Florida. You could be in Chicago, your old hometown, but I'm so happy you're here.

Yep, thank you. It's Full Throttle Philato Leads.

Yeah, Full Throttle Philato Leads. And, and I wanted to get into the full throttle thing because of your, your, uh, your background. I, I want to thank you for your service to this great country of ours, my friend, first of all.

Thank you, sir.

You're welcome. So what's, uh, what is Full Throttle Lead, uh, Philato Leads, Michael? What What do you exactly do for your clients?

Well, if you think about the whole sales cycle, what Salesforce did years ago is they want their sellers selling, they wanna feed them leads. So they built this whole platform of people called SDRs, sales development reps. So what I did is took that SDR role and used automation to fulfill all the different top of funnel leads. So what I do is, lead generation automation using LinkedIn, using emails, and then conducting roundtables to basically build that top of funnel so that they can focus in on MQLs and SQLs, sales qualified leads, marketing qualified leads. And it's more of a discovery call versus just trying to make phone calls all day and no one answers the phone.

When you, when you first see a client, when, when you first do your own discovery, what are some of the issues that they're having other than the fact that they're not getting a lot of leads? Do they have a— do they typically have a system, Michael, or is it kind of mostly all over the place, or does it, you know, is it a one-off issue? You know, every, everyone's unique.

I would say most of them are— have a salesperson, might be the VP of sales too, and they're using ZoomInfo, maybe HubSpot. And the problem is that ZoomInfo It's pretty expensive. It's a good platform for cell phone numbers, but it's $0.50 to $1 per name. And if you add that up, you're sending 5,000 to 6,000, um, 3 to 4 emails a month, which is about what I do, 20,000 to 30,000 emails. You're looking at $4,000 to $6,000 just in data costs. Wow. So that they're using that, and it's not necessarily the best way of doing it or most cost efficient. Then you have an SDR, God bless their soul, they're You know, they're right out of college, they don't know anything yet. They're trying to figure out what they want to do in life. And if they do like sales, they don't want to be at SDR more than 6 to 12 months. So now you have turnover or you have them going into an AE role and now you don't have lead gen. So there's a constant need for lead generation and to use people, kids to do this, it's not the best way of trying to grow them. So that's the problem I see. I see a lot of folks use HubSpot, which is what I do. I use it for more of a CRM and deal flow. If you use HubSpot or Pardot or any of these other, Milkshake, you could use basically to root your domain because you're sending out emails from your Gmail, your Office 365. Those are not built to do mass emails. The terms of services does not say, hey, you can use this to do marketing leads. So there's a lot of issues when I start talking to folks of discrepancies of what they're trying to do. And they're mostly rooting their domain by doing cold outreach with things like HubSpot for the first.

Now, most of, most of what Full Throttle is doing, Michael, is, is, is filling the top of the lead funnel, right? What, what often happens, you know, when you're, when you're talking to a client and you're helping them fill the top of that lead funnel, the rest of that sales process has to be in place so that, you know, they're closing business because a lot of times they'll come back to you and say, you know, I'm not, I'm not closing business, you know, quickly enough. And to you, you know, what do you say to them about that? Because I know it's a big question.

Yeah. They have to have someone to close the business. I just focus on the top of the funnel. What I do is repeatable and scalable, which I grew my company to about $80,000 MRR in the first year. That's because I'm not sitting there trying to be a salesperson for every single person, right? What I'm saying to them, what my deliverables are, the KPIs are, is I will get you leads. I will— they will be MQLs or SQLs because we're going to make sure we hit the right people, the right filters, and the right personas. And then in the Calendly link or the HubSpot calendar invite, you ask questions that kind of go around the budget, authority, needs, and timing. So you kind of make sure that they're the right approach. But if you don't have a sales team, then you got to make sure you have someone that's going to close the deals. And funny enough, I added recruiting to my capabilities as well because that's my background as well, because I heard it too many times like, hey, I need to hire a VP of sales or an AE. I'm like, well, what if I, what if I went out to 50 to 5,000 people that have AE jobs in software and say, hey, are you looking for a position or is a friend looking for a position? I can help find that person. So I charge a retainer to do that as well. So I'm kind of— I have any, any objection, I pretty much have an answer for because I am much better than someone right out of school with no tools, no knowledge of the space, no knowledge of Challenger Sales, and no knowledge of doing emails, LinkedIn without breaking your email platform or getting your LinkedIn profile suspended than someone that just graduated school.

Yeah.

And not for the same price.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right. Yeah, we'll talk about your typical cost in a sec, but your ideal client, kind of picture your avatar, your business avatar. Who's your ideal client? What are you looking for? Not just in terms of size of the business, but the fact that the leader of the organization, Michael, has to be, let's face it, open-minded about you helping them with the top of that funnel.

Yeah, I mean, it's mostly the startup companies, SaaS companies, I would say.

Okay.

But I have companies that build, that make t-shirts and logos. So it goes all over the place. I mean, there's some very mature 60-year-old companies that have been selling the same, same space for the whole time, making phone calls and using relationships and doing one-by-one emails on LinkedIn. And they realize that what they've been doing is not necessarily repeatable and scalable. But I usually go after startups, people that just raised money because they are expected to grow their path, the revenue path. If they don't do it, they're not going to get the next Series A or seed round. So that's where I go after. I mean, my personas I go after are VP of Sales, Chief Revenue Officer, COO, CFO, CEO, and then it's, it's, it's It's the ones that don't have a big total addressable market. Their TAM is where I kind of stay away from. They have 50 clients they can go after. And say it's a company selling missile technology to the defense, right? Our defense, you probably don't need me. You probably have relationships. It's not one of those things where you're going to send out, you know, 15,000 to 20,000 emails a month to them. It's really going to be doing RFPs, RFQs, and RFIs. So that's kind of where I fit in. My platform also fits in and has full-time integrations into Salesforce, HubSpot, SalesLoft, Zapier API. So it's important for the data that I produce in the emails and the contacts to actually live and breathe with my clients. So they get also, besides the leads, they get value inside their databases.

Yeah. Take us a little bit, take us through the process when you started Full Throttle, why you started it and why you love what you do. Because obviously you're— I love your passion, man. I really do.

Yeah. Yeah, it's been, it's been going so good that I finally bought myself a nice 2023 Vette. So good for you. I'm having fun with that and enjoying some things in life that I would never buy myself. But it's definitely awesome. Incredible working for yourself and not being questioned every single day. What are you doing? Why are you doing this? You're not going to win. Tell me why you're going to win. It's enough getting beat up by clients or getting beat up by your VP of sales all the time was not something— being former military as well, it's like, you know, I did, I did my stint. I'm also a jiu-jitsu now, and so I'm a professor in jiu-jitsu. And I just— for me, it's like, I know what to do. I know how to do it. Let me do it. I'm always open for constructive criticism. But I'm sorry, I lost track of the question.

No, no, no.

How did I get started? So I was working at TechMate. TechMate's a great company. They basically do IT support, boots on the ground for remote offices. And they wanted to have an SDR team and they didn't wanna do full-time hires. So they asked me, hey, why don't you just start a company and hire some SDRs. I had, you know, I actually had my kid do a couple of hours of the work. So I paid them and they paid me and I paid them and I created Full Throttle Auto Leads LLC. My wife was working. I told her to quit her job. Within the first month we had $12,000 MRR coming in. Like, wait, what am I doing working for someone else the rest of my life? So then I left within a year because I wanted to make sure that Techmate got their Series A and I left on the right terms. But I grew the company while I was, you know, working at Techmade a little bit and grew Techmade from $250K to almost $3 million in the first year. And now they're double the revenue and they're doing great. And I've also increased mine into it too, from like the $12,000 a month to about $80,000 a month. And just keep on— I'm just keeping on growing and I'm not having to build a whole team to support it, 'cause if you know how to do it right and you know how to rinse and repeat, you don't need to have 15 people that you have to manage. And it's, for me, it's like I expect a very high-level person to be helping me and be my right-hand person. So that's probably my next hire. But my wife and I and my kids and a couple contractors and my email engineer is very important to me as well. He works— he actually works at different companies as well, like Coca-Cola, where he's like the email engineer security guy. So he knows how to set up the email platform to make sure your emails don't bounce, you don't get blacklisted, they get delivered. There's a lot of things that go into effect when you start doing mass persona-based emails or LinkedIn and you don't get in trouble for being a spammer or for contacting too many people.

Yeah, well, Michael, I mean, that's great trajectory too in terms of, you know, when you started Full Throttle a couple years back and where you are today. I mean, there's a lot to be said for someone who's got that level of stick-to-itiveness. And the cool part about it too is you have your wife and your family, you're your kids with you.

Family business. Yep.

Yeah, I mean, that's the funny thing about the Full Throttle nickname.

It was given to me by a Marine, and I'm an Air Force guy.

Is that right?

So they give you good nicknames. Then to top it off, he's a black belt. I was like a purple belt in jiu-jitsu, and we were rolling, sparring. He's a cop at the Orlando Police Department. He's like, dude, you are like full throttle all the time. He's like, spar? I spar like a wrestler that's still in high school. That's how I know how to do.

Right.

And I'm like full throttle, full throttle, full throttle. So I started naming my, putting my, just that in my Facebook. And I'm like, so when I started this company, I'm like, that'd be the perfect nickname for me, for this company, because everybody that I know knows that I get more leads than most people. And I was a software sales guy, not a lead generator. So I thought that was a perfect fit for my company name. And people that know me actually love it. It might be a long name, but people don't forget the name and that it's me and that you're getting me. It's not me handing you off to a bunch of kids in, you know, third world countries saying, hey, here you go. Hopefully they'll understand exactly what you need. And they just graduated high school or college. Yeah, this takes thought about A/B testing. What works? What's not? The messages need to be, who cares? So what? What are you going to do for me? Fear of missing out. How have you helped other customers? Not here's my gadgets, here's my services, here's my tactics. It needs to be all about what you do for that particular industry and that particular persona. That's what gets you the meeting. The meeting is where you'll be prescriptive about what is the problem and how can you help them fix it?

Yeah, exactly.

Too many marketing emails go out to get basically meetings. That doesn't work.

Yeah, you got to tell that damn story. I'm telling you, that full throttle story is a great story. So we're in that network group next week or the week week after. I want to hear that story coming out of your mouth, man. That is a great story. Listen, we're gonna have to take a quick commercial break, Michael. We'll be right back with more from Michael Filotto from Full Throttle after this message from our sponsors.

Folks, don't go away. Please tell me.

Good?

Didn't garnish. On the Chow Down Network. We can't wait to go— Why are your mittens still on?

She says.

Please, God. That's weird.

Okay.

Try her food. It's much better than her ability to actually do a take on television. We got you covered. Help me. Trust me, I can cook way better than I can act.

Roll sound.

Sound production, take 2.

Hi, I'm Kelly Lyons, the host of The Gourmet Mama. Rosemary chicken made in 25 minutes, and we have this and many other recipes to feed your family wholesome, clean, delicious food that you can get done in 30 minutes or less. So whether you're making dinner at night or planning for a big dinner party at your house on the weekends, we got you covered. We have recipes on RVN Television, and we will be featured on the Chowdown Network at RVNTelevision.tv.

Welcome back to Rainmakers Roundup. I am your host, Mark Iorio. I've got with me Michael Filato. Michael is the CEO of Full Throttle Filato Leads, a lead generation company out of Orlando, Florida, growing his business very, very nicely over the last several, several years. Michael, thanks. First of all, thanks for joining us. When you think about a proud moment or, you know, a case study for a client that maybe came to you with some lead gen problems and, you know, they were, they were struggling getting it done and they turned to Full Throttle and you were able to help them, what was that like? And tell us a little bit about the chronology of how that kind of opened up?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of them don't have an SDR too, so that's, that's one of the issues is that they're hunter— they're hunting and also farming and also closing, and their pipe is like this because they're closing but they're not hunting, they're hunting, they're not closing. So yeah, there's a couple where I brought in Home Depot, Walmart, Guess, Michelob, you know, big brands, because they go after big brands with their small software company or streaming company or technology company, SaaS company. And they were basically buying lists. The list gets old within, you know, 2 months, 20% of it, it's bad. So you have to keep on verifying the email. So I basically got them about 30 meetings within 6 months. They closed, they just closed a huge company in San Diego, um, electronics for $180,000. Wow. If I'm normally charging $5,000 a month for my retainer, you need one client to basically pay for me, right? Let alone all the data that I pumped into their HubSpot or their Salesforce, um, to basically have them own the data as well. Um, so you got to make sure when you buy the data that you can use it even after the contract. There's companies that I mentioned earlier in this, in this video that once you stop the contract with them, they'll check and throw nuggets of a database in there of fake profiles. And if they catch you using it afterwards, they'll try to sue you. So I don't work with companies like that. So that's— there's all these little hidden tricks or hidden things that I've learned by failing, just like when you do in martial arts, like you lose, you learn. Just like in sales.

Yep.

So, you know, I know what to do and not to do a lot of different things because I've already done the wrong thing. But that particular client is, is soaring, um, and let alone the company I just worked for, TechMake, you know, they're doing great and, uh, still friends with them. But, you know, if they didn't have the ideas of what I've done as far as from before in life and brought it into this whole that rinse and repeat approach with automation, a lot of different companies would not be where they're at today. I'm definitely a part of that solution. I'm not the end-all be-all because I'm not closing for them. But the top of funnel is huge and important.

And it's got to make you feel good. I mean, it really does. I mean, yes, I get the money flow. You know, you're generating revenue for Full Throttle your family and everything and your contractors who work for you. But frankly, it's got to make you feel pretty damn good about the fact that you're helping these companies that were having problems before now have a real systematic process where there is a lead gen program that you've developed for them and they're able to grow as a result of that. That's got to make you feel pretty darn good.

It's pretty damn good. It's pretty— especially my bank account, when I see that they're getting, they're getting something of value and I'm getting something of value. Um, I'm definitely— any like objection of like, why is it $5,000 a month? Like, what does it cost for a kid in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, wherever, Middletown? It's anywhere from $4,000 to $6,000 a month, just a salary. Then you gotta buy ZoomInfo and HubSpot, and then you gotta understand how to do this. So You're in 6,000 to 7,000 a month, then you have to have an SDR manager.

Yep.

Because you're not sending out enough messages to get anywhere, and then they're going to turn over in 6 months. So if people say, you know, I'm going to do it internally, have fun. Yeah, I know people that are still doing it and sending emails, cold emails through HubSpot through their main domain. And HubSpot's awesome, but not to do mass outreach with unverified emails with your Gmail or Office 365 main account and main domain. It's not— you will find massive issues with your deliverability at one point.

You know, I think, I think the last time I priced ZoomInfo, Michael, I think it was $24,000 a year just for the subscription. I think, you know, I think it's $25,000 when I protect—

when I was doing tech mail. You get 5 users, you get 30,000 credits. That's 30,000 names.

Yeah.

And I'm doing that. That means I would charge someone $30,000 every couple of months for the volume I'm doing. Yeah, I have about 3.8 million credits a year for my clients. Wow. And I get it way cheaper than you can get it. Well, my client could get it because I'm buying— I'm basically Kind of a reseller partners agency approach.

Yeah.

So, um, yes, that's cool. I also found out how to take, scrape LinkedIn and get email addresses from it as well. I also found a way to send free in-mails on LinkedIn if they're part of a group. So I have this automation tool, basically looks like you are operating your LinkedIn profile and from that city that you're in and automating. I'm doing 150 to 200 invites or emails a day. On LinkedIn, you can only do 100 a week. So yeah, there's— if you do enough, it's still a numbers game. If you get enough numbers out there, you're getting closer to getting a base hit.

Uh, pretty amazing stuff. It really is. I, and I, and I love the, uh, you know, again, that, uh, the name Full Throttle is— it fits you guys perfectly. But think back to your, your business and the development of Full Throttle when you first started it, Michael, a few years ago. Would you do anything differently if you had to do it all over again?

Yeah. I mean, I think I would have done it sooner. I think I stayed at TechMate because I was loyal to them.

Yeah.

And I wasn't for sure, like, how much can I turn this into a real business because I was I was basically doing it because of Techni at first. Yeah, they said, once you start your own company so you can feed us leads and then we can just pay you and you can pay them. So it was a benefit for me and a benefit for them on taxes and everything like that. Um, I wish I would have done this sooner because if you think about how hard I've worked my whole life, I've always been full throttle. When I was at Monster.com, I was Monster Mike. I was always that guy that What is this guy doing? How is he getting leads? And why is he closing so much business? It's because my passion, it's something I do. It's just you either have it or you don't for sales. Yeah, I don't raise a foreign salesperson. Um, so I wish you would have done this. I wish you would have started a company earlier in life because why give it— why only get 10% and then told the next year that you're not closing enough business because the software has changed or because your territory changed? I mean, I control everything that's in my life now.

Yeah.

And I can always not work with a client if I don't like to work with them, if they're uptight or rude to me. It's like this. Yeah, it's not a good fit. Same thing they could do with me. So it's just a little more freedom. And I wake up every day excited about the day. It's important for me to feel that way and not be— I was like, I was getting anxiety, especially during COVID where Everybody was just getting— I got laid off because of COVID I had $3 million worth of pipe go down the drain at a software company, an HR tech company. And they brought me on stage 4 months before that to talk about how good I was doing. And then 4 months later, when COVID hit, I was gone. I'm like, no loyalty. So hell of a— who's loyal to myself now is me. Good for you. I'm loyal to my clients and your family. I basically I treat people like I would want to be treated, and I take the Air Force military training that I've done and the jiu-jitsu training I've done and go, listen, do what you're supposed to do, do it right, and be fair to people. Find a win-win.

Yep. You know, it's, it's, it's, that's a great story. I love the story. I love, I love what— let's listen. You know, I don't love what happened to you. I don't love the fact that you got laid off, but it certainly taught you a lesson. And, you know, you were able to take, you know, the real true Michael Filotto and turn it into Full Throttle. So, you know, Michael, honestly, my friend, pretty inspirational to people like me who's, you know, I've been an entrepreneur for 35 years, 37 years or whatever the hell it is. Where do you— where does the inspiration for you come from? Where does that— is it, is it family? Where does that all come from?

You know, my mom and dad got divorced when I was 2 and a half. My dad was always there. He was a teacher. He was a hard worker. My mom was in, uh, business development. So, but both of them had sales backgrounds. So I think I got the sales bug from them.

Yeah.

Um, you know, I was in video production, which we were talking about earlier, and I'd like doing video, but I wanted to do something where it's not just lighting sets or shooting video all day. Which I thought I loved. I just doing in the Air Force and shooting like air-to-air fueling as well. So it's pretty cool. Yeah, but I like to control my out— my outlay of money. And if in sales you can basically convince someone that this is a way of doing things, it's faster, better, cheaper, and make more money doing it. So that's where it's just the love of being able to win and learn from your mistakes and then make money based on your effort, not just based on how many hours that you're going to sit inside of a cubicle or a set. So that's kind of where I've learned that whole approach. I learned I was really good at it pretty fast. And then I got to my really first job was working at ADP, working for Auto Connect, which was selling websites to dealerships back in 1994. So they didn't know anything about websites back then. And then I happened to stumble on Monster.com. It was called the Monster Board. And that's where Monster Mike got born in 1996. And, you know, I was closing $750,000, $800,000 in a quarter in 1996. And then I moved from Chicago to L.A. and still did it. So I was a repeatable, scalable person at different companies. And Monster really gave me that, that, that step, like, I got to stay in software. This is the, this is the place to be.

Yeah, well, man, listen, I've enjoyed this a lot. I really have gotten to get to getting to know you, getting to hear a little bit of insight on, on you and the trajectory for Full Throttle and continued success, my friend. I really appreciate what you've been able to do in a very, very short period of time. So thanks, Michael. Tell us how to get you. You bet, my friend. Tell us how to get in touch with you.

Please.

Sure.

My, uh, my direct cell, 512-639-3375. Um, fullthrottlefulautoleads.com is, is definitely easiest way to find me. I have a Full Throttle Full Auto Leads on LinkedIn, and you can look at— there's about 25 references up there, and there's also my personal profile on LinkedIn as well, which I have about 140 references. So Definitely reach out to me. It's, it's michael@fullthrottlefilatoleads.com is my email. Perfect.

All right, Michael, great, great to see you, my friend. Thanks very much.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Have a blessed day.

Thank you. You too. All right, folks, that's a wrap for Rainmaker's Roundup. Check out Michael Filato, Full Throttle Leads. Check him out on LinkedIn. He's all over the place and they do a fantastic job. So we'll see you soon, folks. Have a great week. We'll see you next time.