Vendasta Roundtable 5 15 2024

Hi Brittany! Hi Brittany, how you doing?

I'm doing well, thank you. Nice to meet you.

Hey Brittany, nice to see you again.

Hey, good to see you too.

Yeah, seems like everyone knows everyone.

This is our pit, uh, our prince, a colleague of mine here at Vendasta.

So, oh awesome, well nice to meet you too.

Nice to meet you as well.

We gotta, we gotta use her voice for a voiceover. Innocent voice for a perfect animation voice for, uh, for some Disney movie.

That'd be fun.

Yeah, we'll have, uh, Arpit has, has, uh, he's very famous in India. He has agents.

How, uh, how have you been? It's been, uh, I think a month since we talked. How, uh, how's business going?

It's going good. Um, I haven't gotten any new retreat clients yet, but making a lot of connections. I've kind of been half off-grid. I spent the past couple weeks out on my parents' 10 acres of land, and I still brought my laptop to work, but I definitely spent most of the time just enjoying the land. They have chickens and bunnies, and my dog was out there running wild. So today's my first day back at my house. I'm ready to, to work a little harder. But yeah, it's going good.

Just, just in time for the masterclass or the mastermind group.

Yeah.

Cool. Yeah, we have 31 attendees that registered, so we're going to see, we're going to see what happens here in the next 5 minutes. And go from there. But yeah, excited.

We got some other folks coming in right now. But if you— Maja, if you could turn on your— this is a very interactive mastermind roundtable. If you could turn on your camera and say hi, that'd be awesome. There you go. Where are you calling in from?

Hi, everybody. I'm calling from Barcelona, actually. We have a really sunny day right now. Barcelona.

Barcelona? You speak, uh, Spanish or Portuguese or both?

Spanish.

Spanish. Yeah, that's, uh, be Portugal.

Yeah, right.

That's right next door, right?

It is. Yeah.

Hi, Caroline, how you doing?

Hey, if everybody could put their their cameras on, their mics on. This is a very interactive roundtable. We're going to be kind of talking to each other and learning from each other. Um, put your information in chat. I'll show you kind of what I normally put, um, in here, just so people can either refer business to you, um, book time with you, chat, have a virtual cup of coffee, whatever you want to do. This is really about not selling at all today. This is just more networking. We're going to have the Vendasta Group here, um, kind of give you some tips and tricks and tactics around CRM and business approaches and tactics that is really more about best practices versus anything. We want you also to share what's working for you. What are you guys working on? There's something you want to bounce off the other people in this roundtable mastermind. Because it's really more about trading ideas, tips and tricks, versus, hey, let's sell, let's sell each other things. No, let's help each other. So I'm just letting people in here. If you could put— if you don't have like what Carolyn or I have in the background, put down like Arpit put Dash Fandasta, you know, or Carolyn put our major— put your company name so we not— we, we can kind of like— you can click on your, uh your 3 buttons there and kind of add a little bit to your name there. That would be nice.

Just like a kebab menu.

Yeah, so we're just letting people in here and then we'll basically, um, get going in a couple seconds here. Yeah, if you could put your information in there, um, phone number if you have that. Big UFC fan, good. I'm actually an MMA fighter. Um, not professional, but I know you have a black belt. That was our pit. Okay, sorry, like, who's he? What? That was him. Okay, I've known for a while, so sorry, I am a little bit brain dead today. Well, let's go, we're gonna get started here. Um, looks like we got 3 or 4 or 5 people here. We are recording this just for more, more on a background side of just being able to use it internally. But so let me let this Trust Sympathy, let that person real quick. Trust, are you there? Trust, do you hear us? If you could turn your mic on, your camera on, that'd be great. But we're gonna get started here. Basically, we're gonna go after some tips and tricks about what you can do and to make, you know, business work a little bit better, faster, more efficient. Arpit from Vidasta and Braden from Vidasta are going to review that. We have each person introduce themselves. The whole idea is who you are, what you do, what, what made you join the mastermind roundtable today? What's something that you're working on this quarter that we can maybe bounce off everybody, right? So I'm trying to do this and I can't really figure out how to do this, or I really had this great success and I wanted to share something, a cool tip or tactic I've done with the group. By the way, if you do, if you're looking for referrals for each other, put that information here and also say, you know, if you guys bring me a client, I'm willing to pay you 10% off of gross, whatever it is. So I'll give you a, I'll give you kind of a, uh, well, let's, let's go into the little educational approach and then we'll go into the introduction. So I'm going to start with, with Arpit. Arpit, why don't you kind of introduce yourself since you and Braden, since you guys are going to give the little of the content, and then we'll go into the rest of the folks.

All right, perfect. So, um, the whole idea here is, you know, um, have like similar conversations with people like you. We all are in one way or the other in the marketing world, and, um, Braden and I work at Vendasta. We work with marketing agencies. We're not here to sell Vendasta, but we're here to tell, you know, talk to talk about Things that we are seeing with marketing agencies, and they are struggling with, you know, having their customers spend on marketing. Local businesses are shying away from spending on marketing, so marketing dollars are reducing. Marketing agencies are losing customers. Sometimes they have to let go of employees, and that absolutely sucks. Uh, we've seen this pattern happening in the last 6 to 8 months. You know, these are the hardships of the times that we're living in, but we've also seen other things that agencies are now doing to ensure that that revenue sticks and the customers spend more money, or at least retain their spend with the agency. So again, we do not want to self-endaster here. We're just gathering ideas and, you know, seeking some feedback on what you guys are seeing in your markets. What you guys are doing and some tips and tricks on, you know, things that you can use in your business on a day-to-day basis to increase your productivity or, you know, have like better efficiencies. That's pretty much the agenda for the meeting here today.

Yeah, I think one of the big things we found— so we work with agencies of all sizes, and Arpit, I mean, he's been here a little bit longer than me, but over the course of last 3, 4, 5 years, what we've done is we've worked with people in this space who essentially are anywhere from a startup to a massive, a massive enterprise business. We're seeing the same kind of situations come up time and time again. And basically it's like people don't know where to turn to for advice. They don't know who to trust. They don't know where to get that information. And really what we've decided and the whole purpose of this meeting is to put together a monthly recurring meeting where we can actually set up meetings like this where people can interact, get to know one another, have conversations. Maybe we'll even set up a group following this because this is the very first one for this specific group. But really what we're looking to do is just see what other problems people are running into and how we can best support each other to come through them. What Arpit said is very powerful. It's like people right now with the economy the way it is, are lowering their spend on things like marketing. Maybe they don't, they can't afford the $2,500 website anymore. They're, they're choosing not to purchase these, these things we all know will help them online. But because of the way things are going, maybe their budgets cut a little tighter. So what we've really decided is we want to get a group together where we can chat about things like this and kind of bounce ideas off one another. I think Arpit did a great job explaining it. But yeah, I don't know. I would love to hear from you guys maybe what you're seeing. I saw James, you just came in. Ken, you just came in.

Nice.

Let's, let's, let's go over the 5 recommendations and then do introductions. Is that cool?

Okay. Okay.

Yeah, that, that works good for me. Do you want to, you want to start?

Or once you start, once you start?

Yeah. Yeah, I would love to start here. Michael, can I ask you for a favor? Can you zoom in on a little bit so that people are comfortable viewing this? Yeah, there we go. Awesome, perfect. We'll share this with everyone so that you can have it. There are things practically free of cost or at a very low value that you can use on a day-to-day basis, uh, in your business, you know, like AI, CRMs, billing systems that really helps you, you know, A, set out your business in a very professional manner and to make use of this technology. My favorite tool and everyone's favorite tool these days is ChatGPT. I hated it when it came out. I was scared that it's going to replace me and it's going to take my job away. But it's like, you know, remember when the internet came out or when the cell phones came out? We, with time, we, you know, adapted to it. ChatGPT again, I use it for first thing, writing, like writing out emails. I do not write emails anymore. I use ChatGPT. I give it the context, I let the ChatGPT write that email for me, and then I just maneuver it and tailor it as per my language. And it's free. And one thing that I love to do is make proposals. I work with a lot of agencies out there and they work with a lot of customers. I work on two sides. A, I send out proposals to these agencies using ChatGPT, and I also sometimes help them make proposals for their customers using ChatGPT. It just takes so much mental hassle and bandwidth away, and it just frees up so much mental real estate with me and my, you know, network of people. ChatGPT is awesome, guys. It's free. Uh, whether we like it or not, we will have to probably adapt with AI. How many folks I've written down things that I do with it.

I'm sorry, I was just gonna ask how many of the folks are using ChatGPT right now? Get a little feedback on that. And what are you using it more for? And what do you find that it's kind of a quick fix for? What are you using it for mostly in your business? Go ahead and chat.

Uh, for me, probably is research. So I just do just initial— when I do an audit of a customer and find out what they're already doing, what the competitive analysis is, just to kind of get up to speed in their industry, who their compliance regulations, so that I can have a really good foundational background as to where they actually are, who their players are that are on the field. And then you'll use that as well for, um, just coming up with some outlines and brainstorming for strategy. Um, it's helpful to find out what's already out there. And you find a lot of times most people that are in business, they only did a deep dive when they first initially get into business. After that, uh, because I started out at advertising agencies, you know as I know, when you get sent out on calls, you could be talking to different industries, and within 24 to 48 hours you needed to be up to speed in the industry that they're in. And typically when you meet with the clients, they're like blown away because they haven't realized all the changes that have taken place in the marketplace. They think they know their competitors are and what they're doing, but they really don't. So ChatGPT is helpful to just outline and provide a basic and for us to do a deep dive research.

Awesome.

Anybody else have any feedback, thoughts? We're gonna go a little bit deeper in this when we talk about things you're working on, but I just wanted to have an interactive 5 things you should think about versus just us talking at you.

Everybody else rewriting the message in the way a certain group of people might, like, let's say engineers versus realtors. It's how they might think. So, because if I'm only one person, I can only kind of write the way I think and how I take in information. So it helps me, um, even if it's in the language of Dr. Seuss, it helps me get it, get it, the message out to the right people that can hear it the way they like to hear it.

If you write it like, Tommy, write this in written for a real estate agent in a Star Wars theme. There's so many ways you can ask it to think about it, that it's— and then tell me in a storytelling mode with, um, English language from the UK. You know, there's so many ways. You just got to know how to ask and talk to ChatGPT. And, uh, we also have some chat cheat sheets that I have as well that I, I have, uh, gave to Braden and Arpit. So if you want those, I'll make sure they have it, make sure that you guys get it. But there's some really interesting prompts to make sure you get what you want.

Yeah.

And never take it and put it in your messaging the way it's built.

Yeah.

And don't ever use, I hope this email finds you well. That's a perfect example that you're getting using ChatGPT and Don't, don't like, can I ask you a question? Don't ask me to ask you a question. Don't let me say the kind of hope your day is going well. Get to the point. Whenever you're writing messages, who cares? So what? Why are you telling me this? How does this affect my business? And who else is doing this, right? That's what it should be about. How are you going to help them? Not what you sell, not what you do. So ChatGPT and OpenAI API is very important. You like, like he's saying, processes, business models, proposals, email campaigns. But make sure you use it as much. And you can even say use, uh, fullthrottle.com, um, case study as to get information from. So we'll pull from a case study, right, or pull from your financials, and then it will be really precise to that group of people. So Okay, why don't you go ahead, number 2.

Michael, Michael, before you go ahead, I want to tell everyone I used ChatGPT to write my wedding vows as well. I got married last month and I used ChatGPT. I kid you not, I kid you not, I used ChatGPT to write my— I gave it a good prompt of things that I wanted to write in my own language.

Did you, did you take out, you are one of the most wonderful people Or you are the most wonderful person. You are one of— you are one of—

yeah, you're pretty all right.

Arpit was a player before his time. Now he's all tied up.

Generic language got you there, Arpit.

They have a 6-week wedding over there. There's no like— how does it work, Arpit?

Yeah.

I'll put a screenshot of my wedding vows here so that people can see.

He actually closed the deal while he was, uh, after his prenuptials, right?

I mean, getting married is closing the best deal of your life, man.

So there you go. Uh, I don't know if that's true, but go ahead.

I was gonna say, guys, there's a couple things with AI before we move on to the next topic that you can do as as well. And I'm sure you guys are doing this, but there's so many hyper, hyper-focused AI tools now that you can find one that does exactly essentially what you need it to do. But you can actually program and command ChatGPT to do a lot of this stuff. Like you can put in a format, like if you guys have heard of the Risen format, if not, you should check that out. It is very, very valuable for any kind of AI prompting. It's called, it's R-I-F-E-N. And it'll actually do pretty much, it's a blueprint to an awesome prompt. What I do with ChatGPT, so I've used it for so much. I've used it for like LinkedIn posts. I've used it for content, email marketing. Like I've built so many different outreach programs with ChatGPT. But you absolutely do exactly what Michael said. You have to change the wording. I plug it through Grammarly as well just to make sure that it is streamlined. It actually sounds like a human. It's not robotic. There's some keywords like commendable that show up a million times if you use ChatGPT. Just get rid of those. So just make sure you're doing your due diligence, but it's a very, very powerful tool.

And I would also even suggest Like, we're doing a roundtable mastermind. Come up with your own either podcast mastermind around things that excite you that your clients would want to go to, and make that be the first thing that you invite them to. It's like, hey, we're doing a thought leadership around this. We want you to be one of our featured guests. By the way, this is what I do for a living if you want to talk. So that's, that's one of the things that's kind of a Anchor around why are you bugging me? Make it about them. So I, I want to make sure we get through all these and do introductions. So let's make sure we kind of go faster through 2, 3, 4, and 5, and then I want everybody to kind of introduce themselves. What do you do? Why are you here? What kind of got you interested? And what's your kind of superpower? How you gonna help you, or how you gonna help other people? So 2, go ahead, 2.

I'll do 2, Arpit. But basically, uh, what we have here and what we've been using a lot of is a CRM with the unified chat But what we're seeing a lot is for small businesses, we understand that, you know, people are busy, people are like, they don't have time maybe necessarily to answer all their emails immediately or pick up the phone. We've built out an AI chatbot and we've just, there's millions out there, but you can put it on the website, it controls the conversation automatically, puts it in the CRM and now you can go back and follow up so that you know, if you're a roofing company, let's say just as an example, and I'm busy, you know, doing a roof, somebody calls me, they don't go to the next person right away because the conversation's already started with my company. Nobody on my side got back to them, but they were able to have the conversation through an AI chatbot, which then keeps them on your website a little bit longer, keeps them, you know, going down that funnel for you versus going to a competitor. That's what we've seen. We find that keeping all those records in one place where it's easy to look at, um, is going to be super, super valuable for you and for your clients.

So unified is key. I mean, I've been selling for 25 years, and if, you know, right now if I go to WhatsApp, Slack, email, text, I mean, it's just too much. So I mean, using Vendasta, which is what I use, their CRM, it's— I want one source of truth, one throat to choke. So how about reducing your subscription clutter? Like, what are you seeing there?

On the subscription clutter side, like, there is so much technology out there, separate CRM, you can have a billing system, you can have a reporting system. A project management tool, and the dollars add up, right? So when you're using like 5, 6, 7 different pieces of technology to run your business, it's a heavy cost. There are solutions out there. You can have all these different tools and technology under one hood at probably one-third or half the price that you're paying currently. How many of you are using multiple you know, technology platforms or tech tools to run your business? Like probably, like probably 2 or 3 or 4 is the number. Yeah, there you go. Brittany, what are you using? What different pieces of technology are you using right now?

Well, I have my website and I have ActiveCampaign connected to it. I was using HubSpot, but I ended up just using the CRM in ActiveCampaign, and so that helped. And then of course there's like the social media, like LinkedIn and all that.

Yeah. How do you pronounce it? Maja or Maha?

Neither. Maya.

Maya.

Maya, you raised your hand. What's someone you're using?

Yeah, so actually similar to Brittany, we also use ActiveCampaign. But then furthermore, like, yeah, AI tools definitely have been a big support lately. What else? We've been doing a lot of automations. We've been trying like chatbots as well.

Nice.

Automations as well in terms of email marketing can be super efficient. We've created like a prompt library in order to kind of have the same consistent tone of voice throughout our like media, website, email, socials. So quite a few different things I would say.

Gemini versus ChatGPT. Have you, have you guys looked at that and what do you guys know what the difference is between Gemini and Chat?

I personally didn't use Gemini. But I did use Poe quite a bit. Claude, I found was really good for copywriting. So it depends on what you're kind of using it for.

Gemini is supposed to basically pull from recent websites where ChatGPT is a little bit more of a moment time from years ago. So I think ChatGPT is a little bit better for copywriting and Gemini is a little bit better for more up-to-date information pulling. I'd use both. And there's obviously other tools that you could tie it into it. And I think not to self-indulge there because, you know, we're here to talk about more processes versus selling a product. But I think also you guys have some stuff tied into your platform native, right? Yeah.

Okay.

So any questions on subscription, Clark, before you kind of jump into what you're doing on invoicing? Any questions? Braden, why don't you kind of go into the invoicing?

Yeah, I'd love if you guys, I mean, if you're willing to share, what kind of tech stack do you have in the chat and what are you spending on it? Because that's what we find is probably the most frustrating for a lot of people. But in terms In terms of invoicing, I think everybody understands that having a professional invoicing system is like, it's a must, you know, the days of just sending a Venmo or like an e-transfer as a solopreneur, people don't maybe look at you the same way. So there's always different integrations, things you can set up with your current tech stack. And, you know, we use Stripe and QuickBooks quite a bit, but What it does is it just allows you to kind of pull all that tax data into one place, obviously send invoices to an email, even a text for some scenarios, and people can pay right from that invoice. And that is like, I don't know about you guys, but that is probably one of the biggest things that a lot of our partners maybe were frustrated with for a long time is, you know, they have these clients that aren't willing to pay or they don't pay on time. So then they're, they're kind of fronting the cost or whatever that looks like. So subscription bases and things like that, that allow people to maybe pay or cancel the service if not paid are super, super valuable. And, and that's what we've found, at least here with our program. But, but really, I know everybody has a different invoicing system. So I mean, you guys, Probably— oh, someone's using Midjourney. That's awesome.

That's great.

I, uh, I used to use Midjourney a lot. Probably the best photos. But, uh, but yeah, uh, very cool. Um, that's what I'm seeing with the professional invoicing system. You need to look like a professional business nowadays. There's so much competition out there that you just— you need to do whatever you can to look the part. And, and we're kind of seeing that. But yeah, what are you guys using for invoicing?

Let's, let's get Trust, who hasn't spoke yet.

Okay. Brett James is cool.

Trust, are you using an invoicing platform?

No, no, I've not been I've not been doing jobs that need me to do the invoicing part. I am mostly in charge of the digital marketing process of our business.

So the closing of the sales and the receiving of invoices and the rest is done by another set of people. Well, so awesome. Let's, let's jump into reporting and then let's do a kind of a little deeper dive in who you are, and, and I'll kind of start it out so you can kind of see the, uh, format that we're looking for. And then I also put the, uh, the roundtable monthly, uh, Google form for you to fill out. Um, if you could put that information there, then we'll make sure that we add you every month to that. And if you want to invite friends, family, anybody that's in business B2B, you know, we'd love to grow this group into hundreds of people and just really help, help everybody. So go ahead, Arpit, about number 5.

Yeah, number 5, reporting. That's my personal favorite. I hated the day when my mother used to come to my school to collect my annual report card because it had all the bad grades on it. But essentially, when you're running a business or when you're working with people, you need to have a reporting platform. That shows the proof of performance, right? If you're working for someone, if you're working with someone, you need to ensure that the efforts that your company or your business is undertaking for that particular person or for yourself, you can see data and facts that support those efforts. So having a reporting system, it's very, very important. And all this reporting ties up to your CRM. Essentially, we have a saying, and Michael is a big fan of it, If it's not in your reporting or your CRM system, it didn't happen. So until— unless Michael doesn't show me his black belt in jiu-jitsu, I, I don't believe he has a black belt in jiu-jitsu.

I'm just going to show you. I'm just going to show you.

He'll probably strangle me in a move next time. So what reporting systems are you guys using, if you guys are using any reporting systems currently in your marketing business or other business that you're running? Put it in the chat. Or just have a conversation.

Actually, just put it in the chat, but also say hello.

Anybody using reporting on their work?

Hey guys.

Hey, yeah.

I'm Bart Maga. I'm an SEO. And In terms of reporting, it varies from client to client. I use, I build my custom reportings and it's mainly based off of 3 tools, which is ahrefs.com to show the traffic and maybe some rankings, Google Analytics and Google Search Console. So that's my custom way of showing the results and stuff.

Yes, I'm seeing a couple GA4 references and SERP rank or SE ranking. Are you, are you pulling it into one report? Are you giving multiple dashboards to send out? Gotcha.

I make a Google Doc essentially, and based on the current month or the specific needs of the client, I just make a Google Doc starting with, for example, Ahrefs and then going deep into Google Search Console. Going into some trends and metrics and Google Analytics, and then maybe links to certain spreadsheets. But everything is like centralized in a Google Docs— in a Google Doc. I don't do any fancy presentations. I just try to stick to the essentials to not waste time.

I'm kind of curious, just to add on to that or ask a question there. You're doing it manually, you're pulling it all into one spot. Does that Does that take you a lot of time or do you have it pretty streamlined?

I have a process, but it's pretty much manual at this point. Yes.

I mean, awesome that you're showing the value, man. I think nowadays everybody, their biggest worry is authenticity. If you're doing marketing for me, I want to see the dollars, like show me how it's working. Because if I'm spending $500, $1,500, $2,500 on you a month, you better show me Show me where the money is, right?

The whole idea is, is use automation, use tools that take time back, give you time back in your schedule. If you're a CEO or a leader, you should be doing strategic work, not tactical work. And that's what a good CRM will do. That's what good automation will do. And I personally do automation, so I don't want to basically have a bunch of people making phone calls for me. I want people to just meet with me. So I kind of do stuff like that. So we're going to go into who you are, what you do, why'd you come, this and that. I'm going to give you kind of an idea what I'm looking for as far as a format. This is not a commercial, but this is— hey, this is how I want to work with people. So my name is Michael Filato. Uh, I am the CEO, founder of Full Throttle Full Auto Leads. I work with Vendasta on their marketing and sales automation approach. Um, they're one of the best CRM companies in the world, but we'll talk about them in, in a little bit. But I basically do I do top of funnel, email, LinkedIn. I do these roundtables. I help people get 20 to 30 meetings a month. I live in Orlando, 2 kids, and I'm an Air Force veteran and a black belt in jiu-jitsu. So that's who I am.

What I—

why I came here today is just I want to network and learn from other people what tools are working. And this is, this is one of the best roundtables I've done, and I do a lot of them, you know. And, you know, our Pitt and Braden come up with some really good 5 things to kind of get the discussion going, which a lot of people don't do well. So, um, that's what I'd love to kind of hear. Keep it to 60 seconds to, uh, 2 minutes. And the last thing would be, is any questions for me before I pass it on to, uh, Bart and kind of let him continue on with his, his name, his, uh, information? Any questions? All right, Bart. If you can kind of give a little bit background in what you do and you kind of talked, touched on it now, but you know, what, what, what, what drove you to even come to the roundtable today?

Yeah, so I'm primarily an SEO consultant. I've been in the SEO space almost 10 years and for the last 2 and a half years I've been consulting this AI business called autoblogging.ai. So I was there from the start. Uh, my background is also writing, so that's why the founder reached out to me to provide feedback for the tool as he was building it. And, uh, I helped scale the tool to, uh, $1 million valuation. The tool also received $100,000 funding from James Dooley and a bunch of SEOs in the UK. Uh, I'm primarily based in Thailand. I'm traveling right now. I do consulting and link building also. My largest link building client is actually Binance. So I do link building for the Asian chapter for Binance. So it's a lot of gray hat and black hat stuff. What's your—

what's your ask of the group? What is something that you're working on that you can bounce off the group here? Maybe even schedule one-on-one with whoever wants to help you. What's, what's an ask of the group?

So basically streamlining some of the processes, like some of the manual work, the things that can be automated more. So I work in AI, but automation and streamlining processes, this is the next best thing. And I see People are trying to figure out ways of doing it.

So yeah, that would probably be Braden and Arpit. They can help you with that because knowing what you're asking, you should try to schedule some time. Any questions for Bart before we turn on to Maya? All right, Maya.

Yeah, hi. So I'm originally from Slovenia, but I live in Barcelona. I've been here for 7, 8 years now.

Where is Slovenia?

Slovenia is a tiny little country that's shaped like a chicken and is right between Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Croatia.

What's— what language is that? Spanish there too?

Slovenian.

So you have your own language?

Okay, we do.

Yeah.

Is it bigger than, um, Luxembourg?

It is bigger than Luxembourg, but we have 2 million people altogether, so a lot of major cities would, would beat us to it.

All right. Awesome. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

So yeah, I've been working in marketing for over a decade. I'm currently a freelancer. I don't have my own marketing agency, but I got this invitation and I found it super fascinating. I have been co-founding a couple of companies in the recent years. So basically, I've been helping out as a CMO and a co-founder for an AI startup that's working on mental health and personal growth. So it's kind of like an AI chatbot specifically designed for this. So we kind of have our own proprietary— sorry, this word is hard to say.

Proprietary.

We have our— yeah, proprietary. Thank you. LLM that we've built. And then simultaneously, I'm working on an educational platform that would teach women how to leverage AI in their small business. And so I'm really working on kind of like launching that. So we're currently building our MVP, which is quite exciting.

What's your, what's your ask of the group? Like, what's something we can help you with?

So I'm here mostly for inspiration. I think I like to stay on top of the game. So, I'm sure that there's gonna be plenty of really interesting tools and discussions that are gonna go around. So that's why I'm here.

Awesome. Any questions for Maja? Let's go with James.

Hi there. Sorry, I have the voice off, trying not to annoy anyone. Yeah, my name is James Pybus. I've been in digital marketing now for about 26, 27 years. Basically, I've been working as a consultant. I don't really sit in the agency field, but I do provide services 2 agencies. So I've kind of come in at a different angle. Basically, I came up with, in the consultancy world, go into a business, first question, you know, have you got a digital strategy? Everyone says yes, nobody can tell you what it is. Then you end up in this situation where, you know, you, you have to deliver a strategy and tell them what the strategy is. So I came up with what I call the Logic Digital Marketing Methodology. I specialize in the foundations of everything you do online. So it's keyword research, paid advertising, uh, the SEO and the content. Um, everything you do online relies on that work being done correctly. And so along with the tool that works in combination with the methodology, uh, my wife, who's got a double doctorate and 5 masters. She's also written a book. It comes out in the next couple of months on the methodology. She actually did a degree in criminal law so she could understand the intent of— that's how far she went with it. Bit far, but there you go.

Where are you based?

I'm just outside London in the UK. So yeah, I'm, I'm here really just to learn off people, try and understand their issues and problems. You know, I mean, where we, where we started, really, we're kind of like an outsourcing service. So a customer would go to an agency. It may be £3,000 or £4,000 per month. The agency would outsource the setup to us. We would do the setup over a 2-month period, send it back, and the customer would never know about us. But in reality, you know, people have hit on hard times, finding more and more people coming direct. The only problem we've got is that we're at the other end where we do a 2-month package, and at the end of it, I say, that's the package done. You have to move on now. And so some of them say, hold on a minute, you can't leave now because we can just be starting to go. But that's the area that we specialize in. So what we're trying to do is give it back to the agencies now. And so trying to find an agency that is prepared to take the work on is, is bizarrely, it's, it's, it's proven quite difficult.

Awesome.

Anyway, I won't waffle on anymore.

Okay. Well, any questions for James?

So much.

I am intrigued. I'm intrigued with what you do. So essentially, essentially other agencies are white labeling what you do and giving it to their customers and the customer never knows that you've done that. Is that the whole idea?

Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's like I say, I specialize in just the foundations. So, you know, I'll do all the keyword research. I'll set up the paid advertising. You might be surprised to hear that when I'm setting up the AdWords, for example, I only set it up at like £1 a day for the first couple of months because what people don't realize is that they're obviously spending a lot of money and wasting a lot of it. So the idea is you bring the data in so you can make then data decisions. You can narrow down your list of keywords and then focus and then increase the budgets. So, you know, one of the— well, one of the biggest issues I found personally with digital agencies and their staff is they work in silos and so they don't quite understand fully how the integration of the channels. So they kind of like, you get an SEO team, you get a, you know, an e-com team, an AdWords team. And for example, they might do keyword research, but they'll start doing it all individually rather than, I find it very odd how they work in these like silos. You know, and the strategies are quite often quite poor. And I say that because I spent the last probably 25 years going in and training digital agency staff as well.

So I'm gonna cut you off there just because we want to make sure everybody gets—

Yeah, yeah, sorry.

No worries. I mean, we asked the question, but I just want to make sure everybody gets a chance.

Yeah, absolutely.

I want to cut it. Just let Arpit kind of introduce Fandasta because he's— Arpit and Braden, um, are the hosts, the ones that put this together. So I want to give— make sure we get one of them time, and hopefully if we get Braden in at the end of the thing too. But I just want to be a little more concise on the, uh, intros so we can make sure we get everybody in because we got 15 minutes. So, Arpit, why don't you go through like a 60-second why you, uh, wanted to build this roundtable today?

Perfect.

Um, yeah, I'm Arpit. I work at Vindasta. Um, Vindasta— think of Vindasta as a superpower that other agencies can access. Uh, we are a software company primarily built for agencies and consultants. You can resell services under your branding, access all technology and reporting. The idea of this roundtable is Braden and I work with agencies every day. We constantly hear about patterns and problems that you guys face. We just want to have more conversations like this, understanding what's out there happening at the agency level or consultant level, and to essentially help people out, right? Like, hey, this is what we are seeing, this is what you could do. If you want to have more, like, you know, detailed conversation, we'll just put our Calendar links here. We help agencies reduce their headache. That's our motto. That's what we love to do. And we do that every day.

Thanks, Arpit. So if you have any questions for Arpit, we're gonna let Braden talk after a couple other people go. But Arpit, put your calendar and your contact information. I think you already did, but set up a time with him. Their company is wonderful. They're at their It's just so I can't say it great, but it's a great name. But yeah, let's, let's go to Felicia and then Brittany and Caroline and Ken. So let's go, Felicia. Let's just keep it, make sure within 2 minutes, and then we'll make sure you have your information in the chat because that's how we're going to connect with each other.

Hi everybody, I'm Felicia Ward, principal strategist of Felicia Ward Marketing. We do executive communications and thought leadership marketing for executive leaders. My background is advertising, PR. I worked in crisis communications for 35 years and I'm just intrigued by James's project because I found the exact same thing. Typically what I do, I am a consultant primarily and then I'm an agency when I need to be for government contracts and large trainings for corporations. My kind of ideal client and who I work with the most are C-suite executives who have decided that they want to have an out strategy to get out of corporate America. So they are typically looking to transition, and I help them with their thought leadership, their personal branding, a North Star strategy, and starting to strategic visibility of using the platform that they have while they're in the space and starting to transition and work out of the space.

What you're asking the other team?

So I joined pretty much so that I could just share shared tools, shared information, and, you know, more interested in, like you said, in terms of streamlining processes and finding visual data for executives because they don't like a lot of reports. They like, you know, streamlined executive communication reports and visualization and recaps.

Awesome.

Cool. If you have any questions for Felicia, please reach out to her using her contact information in the chat. Caroline.

Hardest part is learning how to unmute. I'm coming to you from Tybee Island, Georgia. Outside Savannah, Georgia. And the most basic marketing tool that people buy when they first go into business are these things. And we've been in the graphic arts field for 40 years. My husband created a digital business card for me to use when I was promoting our artistic images. Well, that started getting more attention, and after several hundred people asked us for digital business cards, we made it its own company about 8 years ago. And so all of these digital business cards look just like the front and back of their business card. It can have all the content that they'd like have on it, and we purposely keep the price less than a box of business cards. So it's only $69.99 a year. And the biggest struggle right now, and I'm kind of just— hi, I exist in the world because I'm basically the voice for it, is all our business comes through referrals at this point, is letting larger organizations and corporations know it reduces their carbon footprint. They get to brag about helping a small business. It's more efficient, effective, and it can save them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I just grabbed your card. So just scan the QR code and there you go.

And I can never hide from you. And you'll notice there's no email address on there because it's not my favorite thing. Treat me like I'm from the 1900s because I am, and you can totally call me.

So let's go with Ken.

Hi guys, my name is Ken. I'm the CEO and the founder of Blockchain Network Philippines and Connect Web3. I built my company last April 2020 when I was 26 years old. I built it from scratch from one-man-army to an empire. I handled my company with license here in the Philippines. So in that age, I built 450 employees. But when I realized that there are lots of fraud and scammer in Web3, and most of them, they white-labeled my company and outsourced my Web3 agency as well. So I stopped and, and focused, uh, reset my company, and now I have 77 employees. I'm also the advisor of CT Mobile Philippine National Police to cut malicious projects with, uh, who trying to damage and using blockchain cryptocurrency as their own personal agenda. We sell time in exchange of quality work, experience, failures, and success.

Awesome, thanks, Ken. Very concise, I love it.

Um, Very, uh, man, good for you. That sounds like you're very accomplished, I will say.

Me?

No, I'm just, I'm just the vessel of God, you know. I'm just trying to help. I build thousands of jobs already here in the Philippines in that kind of age. So just know your proportion or your grit, you know. So that's it.

Yeah, awesome. Definitely, definitely, uh, connect with the team here. Make sure you put your, uh, information in there because I think a lot of folks don't even understand what blockchain is and what it does and what's the good and what's the bad. So Brittany.

Hey, I'm Brittany. I have been a website designer for about 7 years now. Recently I decided that I want to kind of get out from behind the computer and get out in the real world a little more. So I started doing retreat planning, but I'm still for people that want to host retreats. I'm still building websites and landing pages and the whole registration process and all that. And I'll still build like full websites for anybody that needs it. Most of my clients have been local here in Texas, service-based businesses. And so I'm always looking for other businesses, other ways to expand my services like SEO and ads and social media stuff like that, because that's things that clients ask for, but I don't necessarily want to do. I like to be the big picture kind of person. I like to see how, like, the customer journey and map that out and then have a team actually implement all the strategies. So that's what I'm looking for.

Where are you based in Texas?

Uh, right now I'm in New Braunfels, right between San Antonio and Austin.

I used to live in Austin.

Yeah, awesome.

Yeah, what's your ask of the group?

Um, really just connections on, on different ways I can, um, you know, offer more services to my clients, kind of white label the, uh, the services. Um, and then like Maya said, just inspiration, keeping up with what's going on in the digital world and staying on top of things.

Um, we're making sure we get you guys access. Is this something we can chat— we could put in the chat too? Uh, okay, let's see. So it'll fit.

Everyone should have access now. I've just enabled access for everyone.

Yeah, do you want to put in the chat too, or you just want them? Yeah, I'll put it there too. Um, all right, so I think we got almost everybody except for Brayden.

Yeah, guys, I think this was great, truthfully. Um, thank you so much for spending the time with us. I mean, out of everyone that came to the call, I think this is exactly what we wanted, uh, where you got to share your ideas, share what you do. We'll try and create a group where you guys can bounce more ideas off of each other, have more conversations. And ideally what this looks like is month after month we have another group, probably on the 15th every month, depending calendar holidays and whatnot. But, but really what it's going to be is it's a group like this and we might have to, you know, split off into separate groups at one time based on business model and what you guys do and kind of that form of, that form of thing. But really, I've been asked, like I, like Arpit said, we take care of 3 things and it's kind of that we have a marketplace that you can plug into and resell white label digital solutions. We're a white label digital agency in a box. That's kind of our whole marketing spiel. I'm not here to sell you on it. What I wanted to do is I wanted to hear what some people were struggling with. Now, this one was kind of set up as more of a, more of a, um, just a mastermind. Come in, kind of like talk about what you guys are going through and your business and stuff like that. The following ones, I think we're going to get a little more streamlined and have like one topic that everyone can bounce ideas off of. And we'll even take those topics maybe as a, what do you guys want to do? Here's the 3, pick your favorite one. And the most, the most talked about is the one we'll choose. But really appreciate your time. I think that there's a lot of just from a couple of things that people said, like, you know, Brittany looking for white label services, James, you're kind of looking to scale, but you don't know how to right now because the people you're scaling with maybe can't take on the work the way you want them to. And Bart, it sounds like you're just trying to unify your processes and get rid of that manual tassel. And then everybody else kind of has their own thing here. I think there's a lot of people in groups like this that can help each other out, not necessarily. Okay. But also looking to scale, but very much so. Very much so. Like we as business owners understand how hard it is to be a business owner. That, you know, if you, I mean, for Carolyn, word of mouth is the absolute best kind of client you can get. But now scaling past the word of mouth and kind of focusing on how do I actually, you know, do I build an affiliate program? What do I do there? Like how do I get my name out across multiple people? There's people here that have done stuff like that and I think everybody can kind of put in their own kind of, this is what's worked for me, this isn't, and these are kind of the pitfalls I ran into, avoid them. That's the kind of group we want where it's kind of like everybody's helping everybody.

And, um, and also invite your friends, coworkers, past coworkers, all that stuff. The more we grow this, the more we're gonna exchange ideas. As you saw here, there's a little bit of, hey, we wanna talk to you about Vendasta.

Like 5%.

Most of this is let's just talk and help each other, right? And networking groups are good, but if they're, they're just talking, let's just introduce each other and then go to the next person.

It's boring.

Let's help each other. Let's engage in conversation, thought processes, tactics. And by the way, this is who I am. But if it's just purely networking, it's, it's kind of garbage. So education, you know, look at even the Challenger Sales approach. You got a $5 million problem, we'll solve for $50,000. Be the solution, not the, not the future salesperson, you know, or business owner. Um, so I'll leave it at that. We got 12:57 here in the East Coast. Um, I, I put a link for the roundtable going forward. We're going to use that approach to gather the information. We're going to send out from Braden's or our calendar invite from there versus post it on LinkedIn every time. We'll probably post on LinkedIn, but this, this would be an easier way to kind of control since we can't roll it over every month on LinkedIn. Unless one of you guys know how to do that so we don't have a different LinkedIn URL for every event. I can't figure out how to do it. I should because I do this for a living. But we would love to work with you. We'd love to partner with you. Please refer business to each other. I always love referrals as well. But my whole thing is like, whenever you communicate, email, LinkedIn, CRM, all that stuff, make sure when you read it, who cares? So what? Why are you telling this? Who does this help? How does this help me keep my job? And who have you done this for? Versus we do— you never hear a desk say we do email campaigns, text campaigns, CRM. That's the product. How do we help companies? That's the same thing. It's a good tip. Another one good tip that I can give you before I leave. I've been doing sales for 25 years. What brought you to the table today to book a meeting with me? That's the first question I ask. Just like, what, what do you— what's your ask of the group? Same type of question. It's not very direct, but it is asking you to be— tell me, like, like a therapist, right? So that's a great way to kind of learn what the problem is without trying to sell. And I'll leave it at there. Thank you so much. This was actually one of the best roundtables I've had. Modesta has been a great client and I would love to have you guys work with them. So God bless, have a great month and we'll hopefully sign up for the next one.

Thank you, guys.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Thanks.

Thank you, guys.

Bye, all. Thank you.

Thanks very much.

Thanks.