Roundtable on 5 16 2023 FTF

Hello everybody. Hello.

Hi, good morning.

I'm letting in about 1,000 note takers today.

Oh good.

No, this is, this is, uh, people record because this will be full of good information for everybody. And this is really just a, a thought leadership group for Today we're going to talk about some tips and tricks and things that will make people successful. Um, it's really more about networking, trading tips and tricks, trading some ideas. Um, what's something that you're working on this quarter that we can basically help you fix? Um, we got a lot of experts on here that refer business to you as well. Try to hide these non— these note takers somehow. Let's see. I think there's a way of doing it. You guys remember how to do that?

Try hiding people that don't show their camera.

Yeah, yeah, please turn on your camera and your audio because this is not something where we want you just to listen, not engage, especially if Martin— because Martin loves to talk. He's a good talker.

Hi, John.

Hi, Michael. Hey.

Hi.

I feel like I'm stalking Michael, uh, Martin and Michael. I'm seeing them often, but I'm getting pages of notes, so it's always worth it. You guys know how to hide the, the, um, See, is it here? Hide self, hide non-video participant.

Okay, yeah, that's it.

Okay, did it change for you guys when I did it too? Yeah, it did. Okay. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, actually did. So that— so how many do we really have? 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So we have about 20 real people. Does that look right? Does that look right? I think more than that, 25.

I'm seeing a few note-taker things.

We're going to start probably 2 more minutes, let people kind of—

I'm still seeing 4 note-taker things.

Yeah, about 4.

Yeah, let's see. Make— put in waiter, show non-video. I don't know how to hide just those because that's a different way that mine comes in different than those. Those coming as a video, I don't know. But I don't think we're gonna set up separate rooms if we have 20 people. So, but I'm gonna share some ideas and tips with you guys. It's not a commercial for what I do, but each person on here is going to say, hey, hey, what do you do?

You—

what's something you're working on? How can I help? Other people? What are you looking to solve for this quarter, next quarter? And maybe bounce off the team here. Um, if you're— if you want to put your information, which I suggest you do, I'm going to put mine in here, put it in the chat, and that way everybody's going to get your information. You guys can either network, refer business to each other, have a one-on-one. We don't want to get too specific in these because, um, this is a pretty big group. Um, so we're, we're not, not going to be able to kind of get into like, um, hey, I got this issue and can you help me solve it? But if you can talk about that issue and what you're trying to solve for, and then maybe it's a short fix answer, we— let's talk. But if it's not, then, you know, have someone reach out to you one-on-one and and set up a one-on-one call. Please put your, like, your, your name, your calendar, your LinkedIn into the chat. There's like 3 buttons, um, in the chat room where we can, uh, basically download all that data. Phil, like, if you put your stuff in, or Brian, look at mine. This is, this is what I'm looking for. This is what people are looking for. Links, interview, you know. Email, phone number. And if you look, just for any, any, uh, future roundtables, look at John's, look at Michael's, look at Victor's, uh, look at, look at Larry's. They have my, your name and what you do or what your company is. This is your time to kind of say, okay, so just looking at Bob, right? You know, Bob has at least RGS on there, which I don't know what that stands for, but it's your time for people to see what it is. You could rename it so that while you're not talking, you're getting some, I don't know, PR time, I would call it, I guess. So I am going to start with what I'm looking for for each person, then I'm going to give you some ideas, tips and tricks of how to get more revenue, and then we're going to say— then I want you guys to kind of repeat what I did, and then, um, I think by that time we'll be through the hour. So I'm Michael Filato. I'm basically the CEO and founder of Full Throttle Pilates. I live in Orlando here, moving to Palmetto in about a month by St. Pete. So I'm excited about that and a little stressed, but it's going to be fun. Um, I have a Legion company that does automation. So the whole thing, idea, is to do email outreach, 20,000 to 30,000 emails a month, get 10 to 30 sales qualified meetings a month for my clients. I do LinkedIn automation, which send out 5,000 activities on LinkedIn email— I'm sorry, in-mails, invites, events, scraping, things like that. And then I do these roundtables that are really specific to someone's business. If I was doing this for my good friend Phil, um, I would do it about recruiting. Martin, I, and Michelle from Digital Samurai, we did one I think yesterday around processes and automation, around doing things more efficient, and it went awesome. So I would love to help you guys do that as well. I have two kids, I am a black belt jiu-jitsu, and I'm an Air Force veteran. So that's kind of who I am. So that's what I'm kind of looking for. And then I guess the one thing is like, hey, so one of the things that I'm working on for this quarter or for this year, I want to go to more events. And be able to scrape those events, whether I go to or not, and send them a message saying, hey, I'd love to grab a cup of coffee with you at the event, or a virtual cup of coffee. That's fishing where people fish. That's a tip. But that's also what, what I'm looking for is look for people that are already interested in what you do or what event you would go to and use that as an anchor intent data signal data to grab those people. I'll share one idea here. I'm not going to go through anything like this. I don't want you to go through a sales deck or sales sheet or any type of stuff. So I don't want to sell. And I used to hate when people say, Toby, don't sell. I'm like, that's what I do. But I'm going to try to show you this because I think this is a good cheat sheet for PR, which is one of the things we're talking about. So there's a thing called Daily— can you guys see my screen? Yes. Daily Ad Brief. Look them up. It's free to basically get on that TV show. And this is one of the things I help you do when I work with you, but you could easily call them up, email them, and say, hey, saw you did an interview with Michael, loved it, and I would love to be featured on your show. They're looking for guests. It's free PR. Guess what? I put that on my website as, hey, I'm a featured expert. People want to buy things from people that are featured or, or, or experts in their they're handed off as an expert by another company. So that's one. Um, Rainmakers Group Roundup, Mark Laurio, awesome show. You know, they have their own, um, audience as well. Not that I'm selling for them or that I even charge for doing this, but I want to give something back every time I do this of what to do and things that I learn. Um, There's the Midday Connect. They, they let you, um, put their— they let you talk under a— it's like 20— it's like this, but they let you kind of do a 15-minute pitch, and then they do, they do a networking group. It's a little bit different than what I do. It's a little more of a one networking session with 3 people. It's a little small, and then they let you, uh, and they do a pitch. So that's kind of with that. And then If you could— like this one right here, uh, it's a guy named Romalis, um, that's a speaker. I get out, I do joint partnership roundtables, masterminds with people, use my approach, their audience, my audience, to again drive it. The whole idea, if you look at when you do these things to get meetings, is basically say, why should I care about what you do? And when I do these roundtables I, I use this, and you probably got this email, which is why most of you are even here, or I have some of my clients here. But I'm hosting— I do this, a roundtable every month, right? I just did this one-off because I think I see people here that haven't been on my Wednesdays one because they have something going on on Wednesday. But today I'm gonna kind of do ad hoc ones, but ask people to be part either like a small 8, person's CRO, CIO, CEO roundtable, want them to talk about their practices and what they do, use it as a landing space to kind of learn about, hear about people's pains, and then say, listen, I, I don't know if you know this, but, uh, you know, I'm Martin and I do this. So it's kind of a great way to kind of not sell but hear what's going on. Maybe there's ways for it to help them or, or refer them to someone else. This approach right here gets me 20, 30 meetings every 2 weeks. You know, I send out 30,000, 40,000 emails a week, but, and I send out probably 2,000 to 3,000 in-mails a week. So I have, I use another tip, uh, I use my wife, my wife's friends, my kids as their, I use their profiles. I'm looking at like, okay, I can't send out more than 150 activities a day on LinkedIn. But if I use other people's profiles, even if they don't work for me full-time, or they're just a cute face like my daughter or my wife, um, and they, they have something else going on, I'm building their LinkedIn up and I'm getting meetings. So always think about like, who else in your family, cousin, they— are they a cook that's never going to use their, their LinkedIn? Why not use their face, get it authorized and verify their LinkedIn or using a company like myself to automate it. So I'm going to leave it at that. It's a lot of information, and I help people do this automatically, but you don't need me to do this automatically. You could do it one by one, but it's painstaking. So I want to kind of get about how to help you guys do what you need to do to get more top of funnel. And then we're going to go into introductions of everybody and make it about all you guys. Maybe if you got a quick tip that's not going to take more than a couple minutes to explain, I would love to hear. I actually found out LazyApply.com from one of these things. LazyApply is an automation, um, platform that I actually use if someone's a solopreneur. I guess I'm going to show one more tip here. But I actually do this as part of my approach. Like, if I'm— why not apply for jobs that basically I would do as a fractional demand gen guy and do it and then apply and say, listen, I'm not gonna— I'm not looking to really work for you full time, but I'm a fractional approach. This, uh, this AI tool, whether it's you or your friend or even— I, I just sent out 1,000 resumes for my daughter. It automates the application process. So you're doing Indeed, Zip, LinkedIn, Applyz. So that's the kind of things I learned just from a roundtable like this, and I had no— I never heard of Lazy Applyz. So now I just do it for people. So any questions before I turn it over to, to, um, to everybody to kind of chat? I know Martin has one, right, Martin?

I always have a great question, but no, I, I'm, I want to say that, um, this is my second, uh, roundtable, uh, with Michael, and we started working with Michael, uh, a while ago, like a month or two ago, uh, and he's doing exactly what he just said. We've got more meetings and, uh, activity than we've had in the last 6 months with the other 2 companies that we hired. So I'm going to continue to say that because it's world of difference. You can spend a lot of money on these people that say they're gonna do stuff. You know, beware of the ones that say they have a guarantee. I'll tell you that because you don't really want a guarantee. What you want is someone that pivots and things change, and then you, you react, right? Like, for instance, one company we work with on LinkedIn, they told us, oh, you can do this. Well, LinkedIn changed the rules. As Michael was just saying, you can only send 150 leads now. So you have to be able to change what you're doing and pivot. And Michael's really good at that.

So thanks, Martin. So if there's no questions, I want Martin to kind of talk to you again. Keep it— let's see, we got 45 minutes and how many, how many people do we have? 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, about 20.

Right. Yeah.

So that probably puts us at about 90 seconds. What'd you say, Martin? 90 seconds per person.

Yeah.

So, Martin, why did you join the roundtable today? What do you guys do? And what's something you're working on that you maybe someone can talk to you one-on-one about? Yeah.

Well, thanks. This is my thing. My name is Martin Ricketts. I'm the founder of Digital Samurai. We build end-to-end marketing and technology systems that bridge the gap between what technology can do and how people actually use it. Right? So they, we call that the last mile problem. There's lots of last mile problems. Entrepreneurs get decision fatigue because there's so many decisions to make. Right? So what platforms do you advertise on?

Do you— the recording has stopped—

and all that kind of stuff. So we have a system. We act as the orchestra leader, and then we manage all of that stuff through a single point of contact for the client. And so we do the production, we do the strategy, we do the talking points, and we bring in people, uh, to work with for the client. So for instance, Michael is who we would work with with some of our clients as well, because we've hired him, we've paid him, we've vetted him, when we know It works. And so you don't have to worry about going out and finding a person to do that. And so that's what we do. We're looking for partners to do that, have clients that could use these kind of services, micro lessons and targeted learning processes that we teach people. Perhaps we'll have time later. I can send you—

what's something that you could maybe bounce off the group here that you're trying to like, I need to figure this out. Maybe someone on this team can reach out to you one-on-one. So maybe come up with a pain, um, that small or large that we can— somebody can reach out to you about.

Yeah, well, you know, the, the frustration I kind of have sometimes is I know that everyone can use what we're doing because what we allow people to do is do work they love, monetize it, and have a flexible work style. And who wouldn't want that? So we're looking for partners that have a group that have people that want to have that kind of service. There's a big gap, as I say, this last mile problem. There's lots of tools out there. In fact, that's kind of the problem, and the tools are ubiquitous. And what do you use and how do you do all this stuff? So we see there's this gap where people don't know what to do or they don't have the expertise for the logistics of pulling all these things together. And that's really where we can help. So we're looking for people that have complementary services that, that could use what we're doing.

Thanks, Martin. Any questions from— quick questions for Martin? Or you can also do a one-on-one chat on the chat.

I wanna say one more thing, Michael. We, we start with something that's very different. We solve a problem that we've come to understand most people don't know they have. We call it technology chaos. But I can't find that file. The link didn't work. I didn't get the attachment. We solved that problem. And we solve it by using standardized tools and tactics, best practices and that kind of thing. But once you solve that problem and you take the friction out of interactions, then you can move much faster. It's a lot less expensive, and you're spending more of your time on revenue-generating activity, not solving technology or production problems.

Mark, you should reach out to Larry. He, he, he has a complementary approach that you guys can talk about. I'm gonna move on to, to Miley here. One of my favorite people in my life, my soulmate, my friend's soulmate.

I was gonna say your, your wife might argue with that.

My friend's, my friend's soulmate.

Yes, they— well, thanks, Michael. Vice President of Strategy here at Spokephone. I'm joined by my counterpart, Brendan Parnell. I sit in Arizona and he sits in Vermont, and we drive strategy for SaaS companies in particular. We are fortunate enough to be with Spokephone. Spokephone is basically a contact center in your pocket. And what we do is we empower people like all of us that are on the phone who are out in the field, also in service positions, organizations that require FINRA compliance, like a broker that's out and about connecting positions, and we give them basically a compliant way to capture conversations, whether it be voice, email, SMS, WhatsApp. And I'm happy to be here to not only support Michael but also learn more. I used to work with Michael about 10 years ago in direct sales enterprise, but we too have had the opportunity to partner with Michael, and our strategy is I'm going to say a bit unique because we drive a direct outbound to our ideal customer profile. But we also have leveraged Michael and his team, Victor. They did a great job with us because we drive a channel strategy as well that includes Twilio, AWS, and Salesforce and others. So we're doing a multi-prong approach simultaneously. And it's quite effective. I was not prepared for the outcome in the first week. So it's been a great experience and it's a pleasure to meet you all. I look forward— I captured many of your contact information. Would love to engage with you further. It looks like we have a lot of things in common. So thank you, Michael.

Awesome. Any questions for Miley? Miley puts your information in the chat. Like I said, these are great companies to kind of reach out to and go from there. I'm going to go to people— Phil Greaves, who I know very well as well.

Hey, Michael, thanks for having me. I know I've been to a couple of these and haven't made it in a while. So the time change was certainly valuable and helpful. Briefly, I'm a recruiter.

Simple as that.

I find people for companies. The hiring process is broken, and that is always my frustration, hence my gray hair. We use as much as possible automation when getting jobs and reaching out to candidates. I wanna be specific with things that work well for me. LinkedIn Helper is a great one. I find you just have to make sure that it's personable enough when you're sending messages so it doesn't sound too canned. And salesy.

Don't throw up about everything that you do in 2 seconds after you connect. I use LinkedIn, which is— I think I actually showed it to Phil, but, uh, yeah, biggest thing is date. Don't, don't ask them to marry you, which is throwing up on them, uh, when you do email or LinkedIn. Sorry, Phil.

No, that, that's right. So the first thing I tell people, don't immediately go asking there for something. I try and offer something like You know, if it's just general, my network or some recent study that I saw or something that connects them. And then once they connect, don't immediately pounce on them. I usually wait a week or something and then follow up and just say, hey, I saw X, Y, or Z. The other thing I find is people are in and out of LinkedIn. So capture, once you connect to them, their contact information and email them. That's usually a nice stream from there. Again, just trying to make it you know, as personable as possible seems to have the most effect. I sent in the chat, by the way, a tool that I use called Teleprompter. And thing is amazing. I use it when I record job videos that I make. But it does— like, you could put in words that come across the bottom, audio, you could put on images. So if you're doing any video stuff for social media or what you're doing, or just a personalized message to a client, I find the video thing is key.

Yeah.

And grabbing somebody versus a bunch of words. I don't know about you guys, when I get messages, I see all these words. If I see a video and it's a minute or 30 seconds, I'd watch it anyway.

Yeah, I actually was in video production. Teleprompter was actually a, was actually a tool that showed what you should say while you're doing the, uh, yes, same thing. It's just You know, more you could do all the stuff that we used to do professionally in your phone.

Yeah, I do it off an iPad and it's like easy as all get-up. So anyway, that's my, my process.

Synthesia, which will put an AI person for like $200, $300 a year, you can make unlimited videos, training videos.

That's—

I love it. Um, it's getting more and more real looking to have someone do basically a speech for you. She write it up.

Michael, let me just mention on that, HeyGen is better than Synthesia. It's cheaper and the avatars are better and it's got more— it's better.

We've used both.

We started with HeyGen, but HeyGen's better.

HeyGen.

H-E-Y-G-E-N.

I'll put it in the chat.

H-E-Y-G-E-N. Yeah, I'll put it in. Gen or HeyGen with a J or G?

G. G-E-N.

Okay. HeyGen. Okay.

I just, Ben, as the local video expert here, is that, you know, use video for the right place at the right time. Just like you guys create different content for different types of business objectives. Should you be doing AI?

Yeah, probably.

But there's other types of videos that you should also be doing. Don't only rely on just that particular video for all purposes.

Yeah.

Yeah, whenever you're doing a message, whether it's video, which is my background too, Robert, I was a videographer in the Air Force, um, and worked at a TV station. But when you're doing a message, doing a video, think about who cares, so what, why you telling me this, how's this help me with my job, what's the fear of missing out, how's it hit here and here. That's good. What's going to resonate? If it's me, me, me, I, I, I, this is what I do, you know, we at Xerox do this, I mean, no one cares. So just think about that. Robert. What? Why don't you go, my friend?

Okay, well, everybody just jumping off what I just said before. Robert Weiss, Multivision Digital and it's video, video, video, video, video, video, video, video and video.

And then we do repetition, repetition, right? Video repetition is the root of all memory.

That's it. And that's the only thing we do. We only do video. But as you're all marketers here, you know, video for SEO is different from video for advertising, video for training, video for recruiting, video for launching a product. It's all video, but it's a very different business objective. And over the last, uh, 13 years since we've been in business, we've done 1,500+ videos spanning the gamut of business objectives achieved, uh, and then skill sets that are included. Um, you know, we're a bespoke company, so pretty much every project is a little bit different for the clients and the deliverables and the objectives, but that's what, that's what we do. Um, happy to chat with anybody if they have challenges or just give them some ideas on how to either get started with video, or, you know, maybe you're, you're along in your journey but you really haven't done video from a deliberate strategic standpoint, but then, you know, going forward you have to. So that's, that's what we do.

So where are you located, Robert?

Uh, New York City area.

Yeah, uh, when you guys introduce, uh, definitely tell your location too, just, uh, give some code. Um, anything that you want to bounce off the table here and say, I'm trying to do this and I need just some opinions at least?

Yeah, I mean, like, lead gen is always an issue, you know, I think for everybody, you know, keeping the pipe.

I know somebody.

Yeah, you know somebody, right? Uh, that's always, that's always an issue, and, you know, there's so many different channels to develop lead gen. So we, we try to do as many as we can, but that's always a challenge. And I would say in a couple months we're launching a new brand. So Multivision Digital is predominantly B2B. We have a, a Multivision creative that we're launching, which is more of B2C focused, you know, advertising, television, consumer-facing stuff, product like high-end luxury. And so that's going to be a challenge to then now, you know, kind of launch that brand and still keep this brand going to fund this other brand until this brand kind of gets, gets going.

So yeah, just put, put your info in there and let's have people kind of reach out to you one-on-one so we can network with you. How about Julio?

All right, well, nice to meet everyone. Um, Julio Viskovich here. I always say Julio by day, and then after 5 PM I do turn into Julio, so, uh, all good there. So I'm the CRO at a company called Set to Close. I'm up here in Vancouver, Canada, and like many of you also work on automation and efficiencies, but specifically with CRM systems. So we'll go in and essentially evaluate how you're using a CRM, point out some gaps, fix it up, and put in any automations that we can. HubSpot partner, so work with HubSpot And if anyone is wanting to get into a CRM, we are doing currently an offer, not that I'm trying to sell, but we are offering a free implementation for everybody for the next 2 months just to help people onboard and give back to the business community a little bit there. So for me, obviously, I think probably I see the same challenges as everyone is lead gen. I'm just gonna give one tip that I've started using lately. It's been a game changer. Everyone probably knows cold email is kind of not as effective as it used to be. That's for sure. Harder to get in people's inboxes. So I discovered a tool recently called Connect the Dots. It's ctd.ai. Amazing tool because essentially it looks at your LinkedIn network and your email contacts, and then you can put in somebody's name, role, whatever it is, and then essentially it will give you the strength in which you can get a referral from your entire network. So it'll bring up about 50 names and say, okay, you have a 94% chance with this person to to be able to get referred into that individual and allows you to reach out and ask those folks to, to make that introduction. So really cool tool and it's been tremendous for me and really takes a lot of the headaches away from some of the cold email outreach I've been doing lately. So a little bit more effective there. And I think like everyone, I guess my problem is just getting enough people into the funnel, right? How do you do it? And with buyers changing, They're not as receptive anymore to getting those meetings right away and buying right away. It's more, hey, they want to do their own research. So the challenge for me is just trying to figure out how that happy medium is supposed to look in terms of still doing cold outreach, but educating them and nurturing them until they're ready to buy.

Yeah, I would, I would say I do this with other folks where I use their LinkedIn, make intros for me. And like someone like yourself that introduces me is much more powerful. Like Larry and I did this. And I got 20 meetings because I automated his LinkedIn and made intros. So that's a great way you can do it manually. Like, hey, can you refer me, Julio, to Steve? Yeah, great. You're not going to do 500 of those. So there's a way to kind of automate that whole approach. And that's what I do. But that's kind of balances up upon what you're saying. Let's go to S. Holden. I don't know if you're first name or not. I think it's your last name, but I suggest that you put your first name, last name, and your company in your name tag just so we know who you are. But go ahead.

My name is Stephanie Holden. Hi, nice to meet you. Thanks for inviting me. I am working for Roth Automation. We're located right outside of New York City. I didn't realize there were so many automation companies on here, but we, primarily focus on intelligent document processing and robotic process automation for B2B.

Different automation.

Right.

So we've been focusing on the B2B segment. Technology has gotten to a point of where it's not just for enterprise or global or Fortune 500s. Now we're able to automate things simply and efficiently for mid-market small businesses. And it's not cost prohibitive. It's something that we can set up and deploy within, you know, weeks as opposed to like 6 months or something to that effect. And so I was, I mean, I feel like everybody I talked to already has either in-house or outsourcing to some sort of automation company. So I was looking to see how to get our pipeline you know, really just going.

And what's your role at the company, Stephanie?

I'm in marketing and sales development, so a little bit of everything. We're pretty small, so a little bit of a lot of everything.

Well, definitely we should talk because that's what I do, but I'm sure there's other folks here on the Zoom call that could help as well.

Cool.

I was pretty interested to hear about the channel that you were talking about, that they're looking for speakers. I was looking on your web page. What was that, a YouTube channel?

It's called Daily Ad Brief.

Daily Ad Brief. Okay.

Yeah, I'll send you, I'll send you my deck so you can see it. Cool. Daily Ad Brief. Look up Mark Laurio. Part of Rainmakers Group. There's— I just did one, I think about a week ago. Let me look at this one because this one's a good one too. It's called— I would suggest making your own, like, like I'm doing here. That's something you control the content, you know, you could— we control the people showing up and it becomes this sales channel. But these will give you that third-party effect. But yeah, these two are good. Midday Connect, there's Million Cups of Coffee, that's a networking group as well. That's They'll let you pitch.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, that's in every city. That's, that's an in-person one. I forgot to mention that. Um, and then there's things where you can get asked to speak. This is a technology summit that they asked me to speak. So the more you get, the more you get asked to talk about what you do as an expert, the better. Instead of buying advertising, you know, so that's kind of— and there's some other ones that are like this Daily Ad Brief. SiteTel is actually doing a Daily Ad Brief. About a week ago, but it was a businessadbrief.com or something. I gotta look for it, but I kind of help people get on these shows, but you can also just reach out to them as well.

So these are all different YouTube channels broadcasting?

Um, they're not really YouTube channels. I'm sure they have YouTube approach, but this is a company that pushes out broadcast television on their site, sells advertising on it, and you're the content.

Oh, cool.

They don't charge you. But it means they letterbox you. I come from a TV background. So does, so does, uh, um, Robert. I mean, they're— these two shows look like you're on a— they have a studio. They're interviewing you like you're someone that's very important, which we all know we're just sales guys, marketing people just trying to talk about what we do. And it makes you feel like, hey, we're seen as an expert. I love this approach because it's— it makes me get leads without having to sell. Right. Yeah.

Very cool. Thanks.

Answer your question. Yeah. So I'll definitely send that to you. If you reach out to my email information's in the chat and if you want to book a time, let me know.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. Let's go to— how much time we got? Okay, we got to speed it up. Let's go to Victoria.

Thank you so much. Hi everyone, it's my first roundtable. I had a pleasure of meeting Michael, I think, either a week or a couple of weeks ago. I'm based in New York. I'm a strategic CFO and I focus on helping executives understand how their strategy translates to what financial results and how it affects other functions in the business. A lot of the times financial forecasts are not getting realized because they're not produced with an understanding of how a strategic decisions are connected to other functions, or even can those strategic decisions be realized based on the sales strategies or sales cycles or whatever is going on in the industry. So I help bridge that gap, and we build financial models that are essentially brains of the company, and with a little bit of data that is coming from the market, they have very good predictive power. So if anyone has any questions on any finance issues, how to grow their business, not sure what metrics to track, what systems to use, you're in a turnaround mode, growth mode, any situation where The Past Doesn't Resemble the Future. I'm happy to chat. I'm going to put my Calendly in the chat right now. Let me just share my LinkedIn. Um, in terms of what has helped me, uh, generate leads before, I am a mini influencer on LinkedIn. I post a lot of content related to finance, fundraising, financial modeling, valuation. I speak at a lot of events and have a pretty vast referral network, uh, which is of course not something that's, uh, ongoing source of referrals of leads, but that is something that's given me clients over the past decade that I had my business. So I definitely recommend, like many people said, speaking engagements. You go, you get credibility, and then even by speaking about the subject, you establish yourself as a thought leader. So that has been my main strategy of getting clients before. Now I'm also looking forward to expanding it to generate more leads via different tools. And that's why I spoke to Michael. Um, in terms of what I'm working on, um, this quarter, I'd like to get a couple more clients, and I'm also looking to launch a program for female entrepreneurs and business owners to build resilience. We are just going to announce our next cohort next week. Thank you so much.

Thank you. I just found a, the TV show that I just did about a week ago. I just posted that. It's called Daily News Network. So very similar to Daily Ad Brief. That's another one. It's very similar to, to, uh, these shows. If you could get these shows for free and not pay— I know the podcast, the one that Robert talked about, I looked at that. I don't know if there's a bunch of ways to get free ones, but there are a lot of them want to charge you $50, $200, $150, which is not bad. But I'm finding all these ones also for free that are in my production background. I'm like, this— these guys got a pretty good setup. I mean, they got producers and letterboxing and Chiron and all those things that, you know, should look— should— what it should look like. So, um, let's go with Grace Stevens. Hello. Hello. I was just invited here, uh, by a friend, and I don't— I don't even know what I'm doing, so I'm sorry. We're just doing quick intros of who you are, what you do, and what kind of grabbed your attention to join the roundtable. 90 seconds, and put your information in chat of what you— what— who you are. And then if you're— if you want to ask the group, hey, I'm working on this approach and I really need some help, um, or I have this really cool tool that I'm using and, uh, I'd like to share with you guys. Okay, so I am— my name is Grace and I work for BioCybernaut. We do 7-day intensive neurofeedback programs. Me too. Just kidding.

Do you?

No. I'm like, what are you talking about? No, you don't. I'm like, what are you talking about? Molly's like, shut up. Um, and yeah, I'm a business, uh, development representative for them. I was invited to this by Julio, who is my manager, and I don't— is it Julio? Julio at night at 5 PM, you said? It's not Friday yet, so then he turns into the Julio, I think. Yeah, cool. 3 o'clock, we call it. Well, thanks for joining, Grace. Please put your information in there. I'm going to speed this along since I've been too long-winded. Uh, Ar—

Ar—

Mithio, is that right?

Nope, you still can't get it right. I'mma charge you child support every time you get it wrong. Hi everybody, my name is—

wasn't me, wasn't me.

Hi everybody, my name is Armeetha Pilgrim. I am the founder and CEO of Pilgrim Consulting Group, where we make brands and businesses a household name. We focus on mostly 70% of my business is building brands. So Impossible Foods, the Impossible Whopper, you've probably never heard of them. They were my first client, so I am a proud shareholder. So that's just a little example of what I do. This is my first— well, that's not— this is my second time. The first time I was here, I was triple booked, but you know how Michael is. If he reach out, hey, you better stop what you're doing and find out what he got going. So I did just for briefly, but today I made time. So it's a pleasure and privilege to be here in front of you all. And I would say anything that I'm having a challenge on— leads, yes, I think that's everybody's business. But for me, I think a successful tip that I start doing this year is attaching PCG to events that was going on here in Minnesota. So I live in Minnesota, but I'm originally from Chicago.

So I changed your accent.

So she said only when I say Minnesota, that's—

I don't know what it is.

It's that kombucha and hot dish. I don't have too much of the hot dish.

Stay with the Chicago accent. Don't change. Don't be saying Minnesota.

Okay, anybody that been to Minnesota know that when you say that name, it changes. But I'm still Chi all day. But, uh, one thing, like I said, I just been— I, and again, we only have 90 seconds, but try to start tapping into industries and brands and divisions of other businesses that your company I don't have anything to do with. So one example is fashion. I love to buy clothes. Why? I helped sponsor a fashion show here. It was called Black Fashion Week Minnesota. Well, I got 6 leads because the Vikings were— the Minnesota Vikings were there. US Bank was there. Does that make sense what I'm saying to you all? Just going, networking, talking to people in a different realm, not understanding. No, I don't sell clothes. But there are people in that room that you want to get to know. So that's a good tip right there. Have a great day, and I'm looking forward to meeting you all.

Thank you. Please put your information if you haven't. Let's go with Bob Britton. Howdy, y'all. Thank you. Bob Britton out of Dallas here. I am the CEO and founder of Revenue Generation Systems. So like the name implies, I help companies improve their— improve and scale their revenue. I mainly work with, tech companies and manufacturing companies, SMBs and mid-market. And, I do it through 2 ways. One, I help them actually take a look at their operations to see if there's any friction in there they can reduce. And the second thing I do is I help people actually focus on customer centricity, not product centricity. Big difference. And I gotta show you how to do that. Real quick, as far as leads are concerned, I know everybody's having a problem with it. Just look up or call me and I'll talk to you about it. TAM, SAM, and SOM, your total available market, your serviceable available market, and your serviceable obtainable market. And the SAM and SOM fall into the 95/5 group. So call me and I'll be happy to just discuss that with you free of charge. Thanks, Bob. Brendan. Morning, everyone. Brendan Parnell with Spokephone. Work hand in hand with Miley and, you know, just listening in, taking notes on some of these things that I think will be very helpful for us as we really launch our go-to-market strategy in the US with Spoke. And what's something that you can give as a tip or something you want a tip of? My big tip would be use Michael for leads. I did not pay him for that. So, um, great answer. Thank you, Brendan. Um, Adam Levine. Oh, thank you for the invitation. Uh, it's Levin. I have relatives that pronounce it wrong, but Levin's cool. Uh, I, uh, with Information Experts, we are a, uh, full-service award-winning, uh, communications agency that provides outsourced marketing. So we do help companies with their, uh, overall, uh, strategic, uh, marketing, and then we develop all the implement on all the communication tools. So we do a lot of web development, branding, copywriting, and social media management. So I appreciate the, uh, invite. And we target, uh, small and medium-sized businesses and nonprofits, and we have, uh, specific expertise in B2B marketing. What's something that you can give us a tip or something that you want to tip up? I would say, uh, the tip— make— everyone should check their web site and make on their mobile device to make sure that their users are having a good experience. I think that's a good tip. And I am, uh, I'm trying to consolidate some technologies into my CRM right now because we're using like 4 different systems. So I'm trying to consolidate those. So anyone has any ideas on that, reach out to Martin. That's what he does. All right, awesome. Thank you. iPhone 3, I don't know who you are because I don't have a name, but We'll go with iPhone 3 in the, in the blue shirt.

Oh, is it me?

It's you.

Oh, sorry. Hi everyone. My name is Corinne Meyer. I'm actually working in-house at a company that's called Moray. We're an alternative legal service provider. We do everything for corporate legal and law firms except for give legal advice. That means that we specialize in helping them adopt technology. We work on productivity. What my role there is in B2B marketing, and I'm working on building their LinkedIn and lead generation. So why am I here? I used to have a marketing agency, and that was really fun in Chicago. And again, really— well, what part didn't I live in? 8 years, uh, city, city, city, like West Loop, River North, whatever, bunch of different neighborhoods. But now I'm actually living in Nice, France. So I, I decided to move to Europe, and this company is based in London. Global, global, US, Australia, Africa. And, um, I'm, I'm just here, I think, to— if you want to know about LinkedIn lead generation, thought leadership, positioning, how you can use it for sales, that's something I'm happy to talk about, but I'm here just to pick good, good ideas. Any, any day there could be something that I haven't put my eyes over yet. So would love to meet and hear new ideas. I don't have a tip today, but I will next time.

All right, cool.

Thank you.

Jeff Weiner, HKM Associates, and the CEO. We do MRIs and CAT scans. But on insurance policies. We show people what they don't know they don't know. We work in benefits companies, everything from 2 to 2 to a couple hundred, 40 states in business, 43 years, customized benefits around doctors, run employee meetings for all our groups, and every employee gets my cell phone number. Also run my own networking group called the Roundtable Networking Group. It's free. We get together 12 to 15 people, business owners and decision makers exclusive by industry for the meeting. No fees, $35 for lunch. But since we're not meeting, we're asking people in person, we're asking people that don't, if they can and want to donate the $35 to the charity of the week. You get to talk 3, 4 minutes about who you are, what you do. It's different from other groups because it's a rotating networking group. I have over 350 companies in the group, 28 states, 3 countries. Group's done over $14 million of business. And more importantly, raised over a million. How do you sign up for this, Jeff? Shoot me an email. I'll send you the details of the group. And, you know, and the group is continuing to grow across the country and do a lot in the chat here about 40 minutes ago if you guys want to find them. Yeah. Or maybe repost if you want to. Thanks, Jeff. No problem. Hey guys, we got about 10 minutes left. I think we got Louis, John, Brian. Who else hasn't gone? Is that it? 3 more. And Mark. So 4. So yeah, 90 seconds. And Larry. And 5. Yeah, so let's go, uh, let's go. Minute. Sorry guys, 60 seconds.

You want me to go?

Yep. All right. Hey everybody, my name is Brian Ralston. I am in Cleveland, Ohio, and I work in the consumer show space. So currently working on a consumer show called Cleveland Fishing Show. Previously worked in boating and other, other areas as well. Excuse me. And then I also do consulting for sports business. So if you want a baseball team, a minor league team, pro teams, anything ticket sales, marketing, corporate partnerships related. That's kind of where the bulk of my experience is. And nice to meet everybody. Thanks, Brian. John. Hi everybody, I'm John Jaworski with Nimble Digital Media in Chicago. I am a producer-director of mostly B2B, but also B2C on occasion, video production. I have an Emmy Award for a documentary I produced. I always have several documentaries in the works. I taught digital cinema at DePaul. I do documentary production style productions, internal, external communications, product demos, not unlike what Robert does. I've been doing it for about 30 years. And yeah, and I also do things, online courses for higher ed for companies or schools like Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and Northwestern. So if any of that makes sense or is of interest, reach out. John Jaworski, Nimble Digital Media. So I'm going to do a challenge between you two. Whoever can make the best video of this roundtable and why you should join will get a free 5-minute intro instead of 90 seconds. I'm sure it's not worth it anyways. Um, Louis, I'm Louis Van Landingham. I'm with Blue River. We're a mergers and acquisitions firm. So we work with mid-market business owners, helping them find the right investor to carry on their legacy, or in some cases to acquire their company, or in some cases they're looking for an investor to be a partner to help them take the company to the next level. We currently have retainer agreements with, with private equity firms mostly for about 35 different engagements, specific types of businesses that we're looking for. So we have ready buyers, but we also represent sellers to help them prepare the marketing and go to market to find, you know, and search out the very best acquirers for their business. And any quick tip within 10 seconds you can give us? You know, sometimes people focus too much on, um, opportunities that are never going to go anywhere. So we, we all heard about, you know, lead gen being a need, but maybe we're spending too much energy on leads that are never going to go anywhere.

So go for no.

Yeah, work smarter, not harder, and, um, more strategic. But also, in my space, volume. You could still do volume, not be and still be strategic is what I say. Larry, and then Mark.

Hi everybody, I'm Larry Nippon and I'm a partner with Scooby Mitchell. Our client, it's actually a client that gave me this, a way to describe this. The client said that we're his profit keepers. Basically, we go into a company and we look at a lot of the overheads that they don't pay attention to in their business. The overheads I'm talking about are their critical business services, telephony, technology, merchant services, waste, all those types of things. Uh, information is in my chat, so I'm not going to go into it too deeply, but, um, we will save a company on average about 28% of what they're paying for their services because they're overpaying from 30% to 70%. Um, if you're interested in learning more about that, great. In terms of tips, the problem with going so far down in this rotation is you get 27 ideas about what to talk to. So Martin, when I heard you talk about chaos and friction, ironically, my consulting company is called Zero Friction. So yeah, we definitely have quite a bit to talk about. Mailee, I'm a Salesforce guy from way back, and one of the tips, and I'd love to talk to you, and one of the tips I would give everybody is if you are using technology and if you have used technology for a while, just like people that are paying for their services, not realize they're overpaying. If you've been using technology for a while, look into their upgrade updates and what they've been doing. I've recently explored my Salesforce implementation and I gotta tell you, it has saved me about $10,000 a year cuz I just shitcanned 3 other services that I was using. AI is a big part of that. Julio, you're probably finding that working with HubSpot as well.

Julio, Julio. That's not really— that's right. It's not Friday yet.

Um, one, one of the most important tips I would give everybody that's on this networking, uh, meeting today is that there are many of these available and I've researched a lot of them and I landed with Michael because it is one of the highest quality groups that he puts together. And there's only two that I now invest any time in. One of them is Michael Filato's and the other is Jeff Weiner's. Jeff, Jeff's networking group, his meeting is one of the highest quality group of people of any networking group I've seen. And I've gotten more from that and I've just kicked all the other ones to the curb because the other tip I would give people is pay attention to how much time you're spending networking versus actually speaking to people that are aligned with a business that can be your client. We can all drown in networking meetings, you know, meeting somebody that introduces somebody that introduces somebody that introduces somebody and you look at what you did at the end of the week. You didn't, you didn't sign any deals. So it takes discipline to, um, look for those people that are part of companies. And the biggest advice I would give you in this piece, in, uh, fees rate and what Michael does, um, I work with my partners in a very interesting way where I work with them on their LinkedIn networks and I have a way of delivering to them their entire LinkedIn network, uh, downloaded outside of LinkedIn. 'Cause LinkedIn is an awful platform to really look and do a deep dive in your network. And when I've done this for people, they have found people they forgot about that has actually resulted in them getting business simply because they picked up the phone and made a call or sent an email. So I'd be happy to talk to any of you about that. It's one of the ways I work with my partners. And thanks, Larry. That's about it.

Yeah, we're going forward.

We're going to—

we call Phil— came up with some ideas to kind of make this a little bit better. Phil, why don't you take credit for this versus me? I think I'd like to kind of do it this way going forward on all my roundtables. Go ahead.

Sorry, I was just hitting unmute. So listening to everybody, I think— I don't know about you guys— everybody does a different thing. And I can't— maybe I haven't had enough coffee, but I'm slow on capturing what everybody does and doesn't do and strategic this and that and the other thing. So I was telling Michael, maybe the best thing to do is when we start this, start out with a question or a problem that you have. Say like, this is my issue, can anybody recommend something? And then one thing that maybe you like, an app or a tip or something that you found that week or this month that worked or you like. And that way everyone will kind of have a question that could be answered and maybe one tip or product that somebody could use that And then go into your name and a little bit.

Yeah, be more specific. I think it's, it's better because I think I— everybody can kind of go on, including myself, you know. So good idea. Um, let's see who hasn't— Mark, Mark, who else hasn't gone yet? And Victor. Uh, is that it? Mark and Victor. Okay, Mark.

So you said you saved the best till last.

Cheers, mate.

So, hi everyone. My name is Mark. I'm not a super connector. I'm a super super connector. I operate more than 800 WhatsApp groups full of some of the world's leading thought leaders and entrepreneurs in an always open 24/7 virtual networking environment, which saves a ton of time, money, and carbon. I've just got back from Dubai. Where I've connected this plaque from a guy called Nasir Yasin. He runs something called nas.io. You might have seen his one-minute video clips. He's got 60 million followers on social. A very powerful information tool, but it's a shit communications tool, whereas WhatsApp is the opposite. And there are 3 billion reasons why you should use networks WhatsApp to network virtually, but lots of you are Americans, so you don't use WhatsApp, which is quite ironic. But anyway, love to have you in my network, virtualpowernetworking.com. God bless America.

I'm with you on that, Mark. WhatsApp is a great communication tool because of its integration.

Yeah, I love WhatsApp for international. Victor, who is my trusted Right-hand man, one of my best friends, Victor, go ahead. Victor Miranda with Full Throttle, a lot of leads, uh, new clients, uh, coming in. We basically onboard them, we get you guys launched out, and I make sure that everything kind of stays delivered as, you know, basically put together your, your program altogether. So, uh, campaigns and anything. So please reach out to me. I have my contact info there. Uh, and if you have questions, reach out.

Wow.

Right on the dot of noon. Um, so just to close this out, I'm gonna— I have one every Wednesday, first Wednesday of each month. It's very similar to this. This one was kind of ad hoc because I'm like, not everybody can make my Wednesdays, and, uh, when I try different days, so I'm probably gonna do probably one ad hoc and one, hey, this is what's going to be every month. Please reach out to me if you need any type of help with automation, LinkedIn, and email. If you want to do a roundtable yourself, uh, if you just want to talk, um, I definitely want to talk to help each other versus just network, um, because I, I have 10 to 12 of these Zoom calls every day for business. So I definitely want to use my time for valuable and help you. Um, please feel free to refer business to each other. I pay 10% on anybody that gives me referral. You know, Molly sent me a referral like 3 months ago, boom, that same day I got paid. I gave her She didn't even ask for it, you know. She's like, no worries. But I help people that help me, and I love that. And, um, let's just, you know, be good to each other, pay it forward, and, um, have a great week. And I'll send you guys the invite probably for one more before my next one. And if you have any ideas of ones that you want to do, or topics or format like Phil just came up with me— and obviously I was kind of doing what Phil was saying, but I think we should start with that, you know, because I think we, we can think a little bit more strategically how to help people versus just do a little commercial, which I think some of us do because that's what we're trained to do. So God bless you guys. Love you guys. And I'll talk to you soon.

Michael, before you leave, just remind people if you want to save the chat up at the top right, three-dot menu, save chat.

And that's, uh, yeah, it's right next to your name. I think it's a save chat.

Yep.

And then that puts our base— that's really important because you want to be able to reach out to the people, because once this closes down, it's gone. So, all right everybody, thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Michael.

Have a great day.