The Takeover with Tim and Cindy

Insider Chats with The 7-Figure Mentor (Exclusive Interview of Tim and Cindy Dodd)

• Tim and Cindy Dodd • Episode 55

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The tables are turned—tune into this episode where the 7-figure mentor interviews us about love, work, business, and marketing and more!

We get behind the scenes of our company, PEMA.io—sharing our journey, the challenges we've faced, and the wins we've celebrated. Deven's knack for drawing out the essence of a company's story makes this conversation especially engaging. You'll get an up-close look at what drives PEMA.io and how we've carved out our place in the market.

You’ll get insider tips on our processes, our client journeys, our virtual assistant hiring process, and so much more! 

If you’re looking for a team to help you reach more clients or someone who wants to dip their toes in the entrepreneurial industry, we’re sure this episode is a must-listen! 

Recording this episode was a blast, and we hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making it. It's a true reflection of the energy and spirit that make PEMA.io special.

Tune in!

Connect with Deven!
Instagram: @devenrod
Website: https://devenrodriguez.com/ 

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About The Hosts:

  • Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy: Instagram

About PEMA.io:

  • PEMA.io is a Inc 5000 Outbound Marketing Agency specializing in Enterprise Sales & Appointment Setting. With over 7-years and 1,000+ clients served in the industry, PEMA is the leading agency for cold outreach appointments & systems. Learn more about PEMA.io here: www.pema.io/discover

00:00
We know every day when we wake up, we're working towards a common vision. Like our goals are the same goals. Our vision is the same vision. You have this like partner that's ride or die through thick and thin and business has its ups and downs. Like it's people see social media and social media is awesome, but like real life day-to-day business has a lot of challenges and being able to go through the ups and downs with somebody that's like your, your partner, your person.

00:25
it makes it all worth it. And in seasons when it is really difficult to have that person to support, it's like, we're better together. But it was never the goal. It was just like, oh, this ended up working out. But I think most people that are, they try to make it work out, well, I love this person this. If you have two people that are visionaries, they're gonna make a mess because they're gonna have all these ideas but nothing's gonna get executed well. Or it's gonna get executed and then crash, executed and crash.

00:51
If you have two integrators, like Cindy's an integrator, I'm a visionary and she's an integrator. If you have two integrators, it's like you got like a lot of processes and systems with very little growth. And I think we just got, it was very cool that we ended up having that dynamic together and I love it, but I would have never forced it if we didn't have that. You guys are two powerful people, right? And you guys compliment each other so wonderfully. You don't really see that often. So the fact that you guys do, it's incredible.

01:17
Welcome back to the Takeover with Tim and Cindy. In today's episode, we are bringing you in on a podcast episode that we did with the seven figure mentor. We talk all things, what it's like being a couple in business, what our separate roles are, daily routines, and all things outbound marketing and lead generation. So if you have underperforming LinkedIn or outbound campaigns, you're going to want to lock into this episode. This was such a fun.

01:46
an insightful conversation. And trust me, ladies and gents, we went deep. If you wanna see another side to Tim and I, if you want a little bit of a glimpse into our world, lock into this episode and I'll see you on the other side. Tim and Cindy, welcome to the Seven Figure Mentor podcast. Listen, I'm excited. I was telling you beforehand, I've been seeing this beard online for about a year. And now I'm sitting here with him. So guys, thank you so much for being here. This is a real, real treat.

02:15
Can't wait to dive into it. Ah man, I got so many questions. I don't even know where to start, but first off, thank you guys for being here. Yeah, we're excited. Thank you. Definitely. Thanks for having us. You're making me look bad, you with those biceps, so. Stop, stop, stop, man. But listen, I am so excited. You guys have such an incredible background, story. I've been diving into so much of your guys' content to just really get a great understanding. But I know one thing, you guys have a phenomenal company, Pima.io, which is really helping

02:44
Correct me if I'm wrong, service providers. Can I put that on, is that fair to say? Yeah. Coaches, agencies, consultants, really scale their businesses with outbound marketing. And that's so much different than what you hear in today's world, for a variety of reasons, I believe. But let me ask you guys this, you guys have grown to multiple seven figures at this point. What do you think is the biggest misconception that a lot of entrepreneurs have about hitting their first seven figures? I would just say,

03:13
Getting to that first like, you know, 85k a month, that's kind of like just proving out your offer and your product and I think you just have to be willing to grind and do it. Too many people want to get everything perfect and then like, oh, if I have the perfect offer, if I have the perfect webinar, if I have the perfect pieces, then you know, it should grow. Like, you know, if you build it, they will come. And I think it's just like, just go out and do it, man. Like, just go out and sell it. Not gonna, we were doing a podcast with a lady the other day who exited her company for multiple eight figures and she had the idea.

03:41
she just started pounding the phones. And I think people are just too scared to pound the phones. You know, like they're waiting for the perfect stars to align and a lot of what we do is just pure hardcore outreach, LinkedIn, email, like super high scale. And it works and it works incredibly well. And you don't need a lot of money to get started on that. So if I had no connections, no money, business was at zero. I could get back here pretty quick just by straight up.

04:10
who's my customer, what's the problem I can solve for them, let me go sell them because your product will get better just by having customers, because you will never have the perfect product without customers. So I would just say that, getting your first seven figures is just sales. I mean, a company is two things, right? It's sales and it's fulfillment. And so if you're only focused on fulfillment, then you're only half a company. It's like a body with legs and no feet. So I would just say just getting out there and just.

04:39
brutal, like whatever the heck it takes to get customers. So I know for you guys back in 2020, you guys got married, right in January of 2020. Congratulations, four years plus. But I also know some things happened in 2020 in regards to the businesses and so forth. And I was listening, I heard you were on the phone a lot during your honeymoon. All right, so I say all of this to say, you guys are here now, generated multiple seven figures, but that's certainly not where it started with this business.

05:08
Why teaching people outbound marketing? Right, like what was that that it was like, okay, that's the next move. So if you can very briefly, kind of catch us up on what happened back in 2020 that even made you pivot and then what made you say, okay, I wanna teach outbound marketing. Yeah, I'll let you take it because, so Tim started the company, we call it Pima 1.0.

05:30
What we have now is Pima 2.0, but Tim started the company and he was doing lead generation beforehand and it was the exact same thing that we sell now, a little bit different. The missing piece though was fulfillment. So Tim is great at sales and marketing and that's where he thrives and he grew the company really fast just on sales. But the missing piece was operations and culture and the kind of company that you have to have internally to be able to sustain that success and that growth. So maybe Tim, you walk.

06:00
Devin through like how you grew to 243 monthly retainer clients in 18 months. So you grew really fast. The same thing I was just telling you, like just go out and sell, go out and sell, go out and sell. I mean, I was part of this like startup thing where you get connected with investors and then they invest in your company and I had this, went through this whole program, I forget what it was called, but I had investors lined up to.

06:23
to have this business idea of like basically an info product, but I thought it was like revolutionary. Now everybody has them, right? And so, but like I had these investors lined up and then it all backed out and I was like, you know what? What I'm one thing I don't need to go get a hundred grand or 200 grand from an investor. I know how to do marketing. So let me just go launch a business. And so I kind of just launched a business from scratch, didn't have money to pay my rent. Like I was like broke, like investors pulled out. I had no revenue coming in.

06:49
And that's what I advise people to do, is just go out and hit the phones, go get customers. And I think it got to like 20K in the first month and then just grew, grew, grew. And in 18 months, we had 243 monthly agency retainer clients that we had sold, but it had grown so fast and operationally, I did really bad. So this is the story leading up to all of a sudden, we get married in January, the beautiful wedding, she's planning it all. It's...

07:17
Here's more money, here's more money. It's like her dad is matching me like, hey, I need to get this thing. And I'm like, okay, dad, you want to match me? And we're matching up on this wedding and things are good. Money's rolling in. I feel like I finally made it. And then November comes and we start to realize, oh shoot, man, there's some issues with operations. And I've been kind of blind to them. And next thing you know, refund, dispute. And then December comes, boom, whole business starts to crash.

07:45
and then we get married in January. She has no idea that all this stuff is going on and we're on our honeymoon and essentially everything had crashed and I'm trying to save up some of the bigger agency clients that we had and I'm on the phone and she's like, kind of, what's up? And then after the honeymoon, I'm like, hey babe, by the way, the business crashed. You kind of asked the question, why outbound? This, the whole time this has been outbound and it was just because I had an SEO agency before that.

08:14
And I think just time and time again, I look at the story of that when I had my SEO agency, which I had given to my old partner, built that with outbound. Go to zero, investors pull out zero, can't even pay my rent, outbound, I'm at 20K a month like that. Business crashes again, we lose our employees, our employees are like stealing, poaching all of our clients, telling our clients to refund, hey, they're starting their own agencies. We build it from scratch together again and then outbound. It's like you can just grow and get clients super quick.

08:45
Kind of answers both the story of how we got here and why outbound. I got to ask you some questions selfishly right now because mine very similar situation started my business and I started my business working for free for a guy named Tanner. I started getting him booked on podcast and then people saw what I was doing for him and they were like, I was doing it for free, but nobody knew I was doing it for free. All that they saw was I was traveling around with him, taking pictures, posting it online and people like, oh my God, he must be good at what he's doing. Let me go.

09:13
hire him. So I was like, oh, okay, like 7,500 bucks. Okay. Like 15 K. Okay. And they're like, wow. So in the first month, I went from like zero to 65 K and then the next month, 175. And I'll be honest, it kind of freaked me out because now I had to fulfill all of it. And one thing that I did, I took an unhappy client, like very personally. I was like, damn, and it kind of stagnated my growth for

09:39
for a few months. And I'm kind of still feeling it right now, if I'm being honest with you guys. So I understand the sales piece, like pounding the phones, sending tons of DMs, cold email that you guys teach and all. But how do I make sure that while I'm doing that, the business doesn't crumble? And here's the other piece that I find is like, it affects my mindset. Because if I can't fulfill, I don't feel confident selling. So how do I ensure that as I grow, I can keep myself, well, I guess I could say,

10:07
feeling comfortable and confident in what I'm telling people I could do for them. So what would you say to that? Yeah, I think a big part of growing a successful business for us has been our team culture. It's like, it's great to have the numbers on the board and to have sales coming in, but the second part of that, as we're mentioning, is fulfillment, right? We've noticed that the moment that we had vision, mission, culture in our company, the people that we brought on, there was alignment, meaning we're all headed in the same direction.

10:36
We know what the goal is. We know what our mission is. We're all in alignment with our values. So if something goes wrong, the team is going to come together to move forward. I mean, that's what was lacking in the initial company. It's like the sales and performance, the sales and marketing and everything was there, but the fulfillment aspect wasn't the culture of the team was not. So when I speak to people about in some of our clients, about what does it look like to build the kind of business that is sustainable, that doesn't have the ups and the down revenue months.

11:04
It's like, it's getting really good about what is your team culture. And if somebody is like a solopreneur and they're doing it on their own, I think even more so how important it is to have the vision, what are you working towards, like what's my mission? What are my values when I don't feel like getting up and fulfilling or doing what I need to do, like what is the values that I'm kind of holding back on? Right. Or falling back on because that's what's going to keep you motivated and sustained even in the times when the sales are up and the sales are down as well. So.

11:33
For us, we've been really, really big on team culture. We hire and fire on culture, on values, bringing the right people on the boat so we're not in that same position. And I think when it comes to fulfillment, values also bleeds over into how you fulfill for your clients, right? And this is good stuff. This is some deep stuff. I like this, because this is helping a lot of people. There's so many people that just want to grow the business, but they just think about it in terms of revenue and not fulfillment. Yeah. And I think that that's a big piece.

12:03
I'm gonna ask you guys a question in terms of environment, because you guys have been in Miami now for a long time. And the reason why I'm asking this question is because I think there's a lot of people listen to this show, watch the show. They've been in the same spot for forever, doing the same things around the same people. So for you guys, we were talking, you live in a very nice, beautiful area. It's kind of like, in order to live in certain areas in the world, it's like you have to qualify people to even live there. So you know the people that you're around are high level people.

12:32
So in your guys' experience, what has been the impact of getting around people that are on the same wavelength, the same frequency of you? How has that both enabled you to grow, not just in your business, but what I'm more interested in is how has it enabled you to grow in terms of your mind and who you are as an individual? So I'll give you one example. The first time we made a big investment to, we call it just getting in the room, paid to get in the room. Like you all, you wanna be in the room of.

12:59
people that are way beyond where you're at. And I'll just give you a quick example. There's plenty, and we were just at an event in Cuba, skiing, or people, they exited their companies, 100 million, 300 million, just like a whole nother level. And that was uncomfortable what we got in the room. But where it really started is we were at a boot camp, and some friends encouraged us, like, hey, buy the VIP tickets, like 5K each. And at that point, we're like, oh my, 5K just to go to a conference, that's crazy.

13:29
And we paid 5K each, so like 10K to get in this conference. And then we realized everybody around us, like, oh my gosh, these are all like super heavy hitters. And in that event, they had this offer of $40,000 to be a part of this bigger program. And it was like, okay, one thing too, if you do it tonight, you get to come to the Guru's penthouse here in Miami and network with everybody. And we're like, shoot, like, let's just do it.

13:55
We get in the room and I'm making friends with people that are doing half a billion dollars in revenue You know I got I got I'm tight talk to these people to this day And I think we were doing like you know 60k a month or something at this point And one guy comes up to me. He's like hey how much revenue you guys doing? I'm like 70 80 you know like inflated a little bit like and then he goes oh 70 80 million cool What do you do and that moment in that one moment when I'm like inflating my 60 to 70 or 80 thousand a month and I say that

14:25
70, 80, and he goes, oh, 70, 80 million? What do you do? And in that moment, our goal was to build a $10 million company and exit. And I was like, oh my gosh, in literally one day, one moment, our belief for what was possible just went through the roof, went through the roof. And I would say just over and over again, we keep paying to be in the rooms. We went to Necker Island this last year, met Richard Branson and a bunch of other cool people like that. And it's been the number one thing that has helped us grow.

14:54
mindset, business, personal, relief. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, no, absolutely the same. It's like, there's a term of the internal thermostat. It's like, if you reach a certain level in your relationships or in your business, it's because you have that setting in your mind for what you believe is possible. And I think getting in the room and seeing what others have accomplished just allows you to believe for bigger for yourself. So how do you guys running this big old company?

15:23
Comparatively, right? 70, 80. I mean, that's an incredible story. Yeah. How do you guys find peace? Right, because the stuff can get stressful. So what are some things that you guys do, whether it be meditation, I don't know, that just keep you guys grounded and enable you to show up for the team and the clients the way that I know you guys really want to? Yeah, our faith is big, big for us. So we have like a daily routine. You mentioned we wake up at 4.45 a.m. every day and we have a routine where

15:52
We write out our goals every morning. So we get up, we have our coffee, we have our pen and pad. We actually have Remarkables, but it's fun. So we write out our goals, we visualize, and then Tim and I will go out on our balcony and we'll just pray and we'll have that quiet time before just to reconnect for our faith. And that prayer time, I think, helps us to just really stay grounded and focused on what is the bigger picture for us, which is we believe this business, it's our mission. It's our calling. We believe it's what...

16:21
God's called us to do. And that constant day-to-day reminder helps us, even in the most challenging times, to keep focused on the mission. It's bigger than us, we believe that. So that really helps the day-to-day. And we notice that on the days that we don't do it, so we like restructured our routine at one point, and we stopped doing that like right in the morning, it's so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and get overwhelmed when that wasn't the first thing we did.

16:50
at the beginning of the day. So that's definitely helped. And then throughout the day, it's like basic things that help your biology operate well, so you're not stressed and overwhelmed, like taking breaks throughout the day. We do like an afternoon workout. We do meditation. We love Wim Hof. We do saunas and things like that. Cause I think also there's one thing for it to be like in the mind and your mind's all racy and busy. It's also another thing to understand your biology. Like your mind only has a certain amount of capacity that it can.

17:19
deal with it's like ram your mic and only deal with a process so much information. And you have to take those breaks, you have to meditate to get your mind back into a place where you can actually process information and not be overwhelmed and not be stressed out. So I'm just having those like disciplines and the daily practices for us has been super helpful. I think when it comes to outbound, it takes a lot of work. If you do it on your own, right? If you're just doing it on your own, you don't hire an agency or anything takes a lot of work. So it's not as sexy sometimes as

17:47
I'm just going to run Facebook ads and let the leads come to me and life's going to be great. So it takes a lot of work. That's how I built my business, too, was sending a whole lot of DMs. What do you think it is about outbound specifically? Let me ask you this. Is it your highest, highest converting form of marketing as well? It is correct. Why do you think that is? Why outbound specifically versus ads? Why does it convert better? So to qualify, when we say outbound for people that are listening, it's like direct outreach. Yeah.

18:15
So it's reaching out to people in their inboxes. We do mainly LinkedIn and outbound emails or cold email. But I think part of why ours works so well is because we've been doing outbound for such a long time. And that process from the time where somebody's contacted to the time that they get on a sales call has been so dialed in, like the ads and other things that we do outside of direct outreach has been like, in addition to like what we're doing in outbound. And we've just done it for so long. That.

18:45
we've been able to kind of dial in the process with data. So one thing about Pima is we collect data about every single touch point, every single lead that comes in. There's so many data points that we're tracking. Our team is obsessed with data. And that's allowed us to like month over month, year over year, like boost those conversions because we track it back to the data. So with LinkedIn, you know, I went and I tried out LinkedIn for a little bit and I was like, yeah, this ain't working. I'm probably doing this thing so wrong. I'm telling you, I must be.

19:13
But when it comes to LinkedIn, you guys willing to share some secrets? Is that okay? All right. Let's do that. We'll share everything, man. Please do, please do. It's not the strategy, it's the execution. Man, it was tough. Like LinkedIn was tough. But what I do love about LinkedIn is I can see what people do and it's easier to qualify people, I guess you can say. What were you doing? I'm curious. What was your approach? Oh, well, I don't know a thing about Sales Navigator, so I wasn't using it. So I have a subscription, pay $99 a month, but I never use the thing.

19:43
Okay, so what I would do is I would go on and I would look up like coach, consultant, whatever, and I would look for someone that kind of fit the mold. And then what I would do is I would reach out to them, look for something on their bio that I could connect with and try to be as friendly as possible. Like hey, I saw you went to XYZ University. Man, I loved their college basketball game last year or whatever the case may be. And I had some people respond, but the thing that I didn't like was that when I sent out my invitation, and even if I wrote a personalized note,

20:12
I couldn't see the message anymore. And maybe I'm doing it wrong. I don't know. You did that through sales navigator? No, I wasn't. It was just through DMs. Through DMs, straight up DMs. So I guess like, if you guys had to share like the perfect process, what does that look like? What am I looking for? Then what does the initial outreach look like? Because I have had so many people tell me like, your offer would crush on LinkedIn. I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna stick to Instagram. I would. Tell me. Your offer would crush on me. So what does that look like? I'll say something and I'll let you do the process.

20:42
I'll let you do the process, but it's important to know it's different from Instagram. So on Instagram, for example, we just started doing Instagram DMs. You can send maybe like, how many would do 200 in a week? And we got maybe 20 booked calls. So like that ratio from a volume to conversion was a lot higher on Instagram. Using that approach, checking out their profile, commenting on something that they did and like very conversational type approach on LinkedIn. You have to remember that people are.

21:10
Like it's a professional networking platform. So if you're reaching out to executives, owners, decision makers, they're busy people, they do not want the chit chat back and forth, like, Hey, check out your profile, all that stuff. They want you to go straight to like, how can you help me kind of thing? So the pitch that you go for is very different. So that's one. And then second, you have to do a lot more volume on LinkedIn because I believe what you were doing is you were sending out a connection note. Yes.

21:38
So that is, yeah, it's gonna disappear. And then you have to wait for that person to accept your connection before you can go in with the message. So just realizing you have to do a lot more volume on LinkedIn of connection requests, because only a percentage of people that you connect with are actually gonna get that initial message. So you kind of have to play with the numbers. So was I doing the right thing with the connection request or was there something else that I should have been doing instead? So the connection request was probably okay. The more personalized, hey, check out your profile, like it's not needed. That.

22:06
that's not going to make or break a campaign. It's like, what do you say next after they accept your connection request? That's the biggest thing. So what we do is we go in with a very general, like, hey, look forward to connecting. And we're doing a lot of scale, a lot of volume. And then once they accept our connection request, that tells me, okay, they either want to chat or they're open, then I can go in with the actual pitch message. And the pitch message is not like a buddy buddy. It's like, hey, this is the problem you're dealing with. Here's how we can help. Let's get on a call. Really?

22:34
I have to say the number one thing is like think about this because the two biggest mistakes people make and this Sydney and we have a whole copy team like the the best copywriters in direct outreach and we collect that on everything They've done over a hundred million outreaches. We do about five million like messages a month right now So it's pretty crazy data on all that stuff what we have found

22:57
over and over and over and over again is that the friendly buddy buddy thing does not work. It does not perform and we've tested it many times. The two mistakes people make is they either do the buddy buddy hey I just want to know I kind of want to be spammy like well cool I guess you don't want to grow your business right. Or they do over hey I do web design I do this I do this to this please let me know if you need anything they sell all the services where you need to go. If you have a busy CEO a busy owner is you need to.

23:23
directly speak to them. What is the thing that is keeping them up at night, eyes staring at the ceiling, frustrated, stressed out? Like, have you ever had a sleepless night? Me? You're damn right. Right? And everybody listening to this, you've had those sleepless nights. And if you can speak to that conversation, that frustration happening in their head, say, hey, if you're dealing with this problem, we've helped other people get X, Y, Z. If you're open for a quick chat, like straight, direct.

23:48
You're not telling all the list of services you have. You're speaking to that problem. There's some other sophistication to it, but that's the really big thing. You do that at scale. Now, why does that convert well? Well, okay, think about it. If I'm buddy buddy, and then I get a meeting from that, I'm gonna get a tire kicker. If I'm like, here's a list of my services, and I get a meeting from that, which you're probably not gonna get many meetings from either of those strategies. But even if I do get it, it's a very generic. But if I'm speaking to that problem, that frustration that they're dealing with right now, they're like, dude.

24:16
Yes, please, can we meet? I need help with that. Now guess how that sales call goes. So that's the big key is that direct pitch and it has to, but it has to resonate with an emotional problem that they're dealing with because if you can do that and then you now do like a warmup video before they book a call, you do a warmup video that speaks to that same problem and preps them for the call. And then the actual sales call itself is in alignment with all those things. You're gonna have a very high conversion rate. I think that's why our.

24:45
ad-free outreach converts so well is because we start with that direct pitch. But also just volume-wise, direct pitch performs the best if it's executed well. So on my initial outreach, is it just the direct pitch? Or like when I said in that connection request and I add my little note, is it the direct pitch or am I first saying something a little friendly and then waiting for them to respond and then going into it? Correct, yeah. So first initial contact is like.

25:13
looking forward to connecting or something really simple, would love to connect. So you keep that very simple because you want the most number of people to accept your connection request. If I go in with a pitch and the connection nodes, I'm gonna have very, very low percentage of people that actually accept that. Just think about the initial goal is to get somebody to accept my connection request. And then once they accept, I'm gonna go in with that pitch. And then of course, like with Sales Navigator, you can do an in-mail, which is pretty cool. There's other ways you can do some group messages as well with in-mail.

25:42
If you're sending a message, it's gonna be the pitch in the email. Yep. Hmm. And that's for volume, you're gonna wanna do connection requests, send message, because you can send messages to group members, so you join groups and you can send messages to them without connecting and then in-mails. So if you have sales navigator, you wanna do all three of those things, you can do about five times the outreach if you do those things all together. What impact does, cause I was checking out your guys LinkedIn and you had some pretty cool featured sections.

26:10
guys, I don't know what the hell I'm doing on LinkedIn, I pretty much just took some badass testimonials and put them on. I was like, Oh, guess these should be featured. Is that important the feature section because it's kind of like the highlight reel, I think, if I'm not mistaken, is that important? Or should I really not pay much too much attention to that? So when it comes to direct outreach, it's less important. Like if you're doing reach out, the most important thing is like your profile picture, your banner, on the headline. Back in the day with LinkedIn, you used to do like the very overly salesy.

26:38
I can help you get 500 meetings and stuff in the headline. You wanna keep it as basic as possible, something like CEO at podcastguests.io, something like that in your headline, really simple. You wanna try to not be salesy in your profile because if somebody sees you're overly salesy in your profile, they're not gonna accept your connection request. But something like a featured section can help to build authority, so it's nice to have, but not a need to have. Got it, okay. And what about recommendations or?

27:07
No, like I got people that left me a review or whatever. Yeah, that's a nice. You can see my naivete when it comes to LinkedIn. Is that important? Because my methodology is like, okay, I wanna make sure my stuff is dialed in. So when I do reach out to somebody, they check me out. And like, damn, that person left him a review. He must be legit. Like, should I even be spending time there? Or is it, okay, just get the picture, the bio, and just start pumping out messages. Like, what would the approach be? What would you say? I just make sure the whole thing's full. Like make sure it's full.

27:36
Make sure the whole thing tells the story, but don't over obsess about it. Number one is copy has to be freaking awesome. Make sure you're not celzy, but when they come to you like, oh, this dude's been here for this many years. He has this background. Oh, I can see how this guy can help me. And they get everybody on your team, everybody you can possibly get on their team to put their LinkedIn accounts into the outreach because it really is. If I have 10 people on my team and I'm like, hey,

28:03
Can we use your grandma's account too? Whatever, just get as many LinkedIn accounts as you can, make them all look pretty good. And then just volume of outreach. It's a volumes game. Volume of outreach, put CellsNav on all of them, do InMail group. If I can do 100,000 reach outs, then I can test the message and within a week or two, know A, B test which one performs and you can dial in your outreach super quick. I'd say one of the biggest mistakes people make is they don't do the volume that's necessary.

28:32
And when you don't do enough volume, you don't have enough data to make data-driven decisions. So you end up being like, making a lot of emotional decisions because, oh, I don't know, this one works, but if you're not doing enough outreach, like you just don't have enough to know what's actually working and what's not. So I would say that. Do all offers work on LinkedIn or no? Hey there, I've got to stop here for one quick second to ask you this question. Have you been enjoying the podcast?

29:01
If so, make sure that you are subscribed and take that one extra step to please leave us a rating and a review wherever you are listening to the show. Not only does it help us continue to grow and impact more people, we'll make sure that we show up wherever you are listening as well. That's a good question. Most, all of our clients that we do it for and that I've seen success at service-based businesses. So you have to be starting some kind of service. If it makes sense for you, we always say like,

29:31
You want to book appointments. You don't want to send people to landing pages or send people to webinars. What works best is if you have an offer that you can sell like over Zoom or over phone call, right, because the ultimate goal is to get people to book appointments. So for most people, LinkedIn works great because they can send them to like some kind of appointment, a Zoom call, and then they can sell like a high ticket offer. So for high ticket offers, it works great. High ticket, SaaS, service based businesses, that kind of thing. So I'm sure there's other companies that do what you guys do, something similar.

30:01
in the same area? What makes you guys unique and different? Like this question. A few things one we've spoken about data a ton. But that's one of our differentiators. We're really, really good at data and knowing what works not based on assumption of what we think is going to work. We get outreach to produce and we get it to work every single time because of data.

30:24
I mean, you can't lie with the numbers. The numbers always make sense. And I think that's our big differentiator is we've just done so many reach outs across so many audiences, and we've been obsessed with the data from day one that we can backtrack messages that worked in 2020, see if they still work in 2024. And we've just been obsessed with the process, but also the data and how that actually produces or translates for a client. So that's our big differentiator. It's not based on assumptions, it's all data-driven.

30:53
We're obsessed with the process, but also obsessed with client experience. I like this stuff. I love the talk about client experience. I really do. Because whenever I watch podcasts, like, Oh, how do I just generate a bazillion dollars? And it's like, what about actually delivering to the client? So thank you for bringing this conversation up. Okay, cool. So you guys do cold email as well. First thing, how do I write the perfect subject line? You know, what are your favorite subject lines? Are there like,

31:21
go to subject lines that you guys know BS are like, yeah, I've had to choose three, it would be this, this, and this. It's a tough one, because we've tested quite a bit on these as well. I think it also depends on, depends on the offer and it depends on the audience that you're reaching out to. So it's interesting, like more recently, we've seen subject lines, like quick question, or you set the person's name and question mark. I think the biggest thing with subject lines is, how can you differentiate your email in a sea of like 10, 20, 30 emails that somebody's gonna get, that's gonna like,

31:50
you know, get them to open it up. So if you can make yours seem different than all the other generic emails, that's key. Quick question always works and it works great. There's kind of like a new format that we're seeing work pretty well as well, where it's the person's company names and say it's like podcastguest.io plus pema.io question mark. So it's like, oh, it's a collaboration. Like, what's that about? So inserting the person's like company name that works really well. That's a free value for you guys, test it out. See if it works for you.

32:19
Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that it doesn't matter how what your subject line is if you don't have deliverability. So I would say the number one thing is you could easily send out a million emails, but it's they're all going to land in spam. So I think that one of the biggest things right now is understanding the technology of scale, how to actually get deliverability, because you're what's going to happen is a lot of times the people are going to send out a bunch of emails back home. I open rates only like 10 percent. It's only 15 percent.

32:47
what's going on here, they're gonna test all these subject lines, and I'm like, oh, I can't get my open rates past 15% the whole time, it's like, because your deliverability is horrible. We go in there, we fix the deliverability to the same subject line, now it's getting 40% open rates. So I would say deliverability, and if I had only one subject line I could use for the rest of my life, it would be a quick question. Lowercase, lowercase. You serious, about the lowercase part? Yes. Yeah, well, dude, think about it like this. So when you go to the mail, there's two...

33:16
piles of mail, the glossy promotional ones, and then there's a handwritten letter from somebody. Which one is going in the trash, and which one are you gonna open up? Yeah, definitely the one that stands out. The quick question would, you know, I use that subject line, but I use a capital Q. I'm gonna go choose that. See, that's the thing, I love doing like lowercase and like very casual, I love casual type emails because you want your email.

33:44
And we have by the way, we have some of the best show rates in the industry like our show rates for ourselves seems like 85% Right now and it's because we want every text every email everything to almost look like and feel like it's your buddy That just sent you something man. I'm so glad you guys said that so I have some some people overseas that work for me In the Philippines, I know you guys Tons of VA's right. I love people. I love people to work for me from the Philippines They're great. But the one thing I noticed is they're very formal. Hmm

34:12
So they'd be like, good day. And I would read this. I'd be like, did you just say good day? The number one rule. Hello, kind sir. Good day, madam. And I'm like, all right. So the number one rule that I came up with is like, we have to write like we're talking to a friend. Yes. And that's like just the number one thing for me. So. That's good advice. You got it. Yeah. You know, I heard that from Marie Forleo.

34:37
I got a course from her, copy cure, like three years ago. And that's what she said, just write like you're talking and it makes so much sense. So cool. So you guys do a lot with virtual assistants and implementing them in the process. Number one, what do you guys have your virtual assistants do? And number two, are they from America or are they? In the Philippines. Okay, so I gotta say, there's probably some people right now that are like, well, there's all of these problems. There's some people that are saying, well, I'll tell you some of my experiences. Their power will go out for like two weeks.

35:05
because they just had this massive typhoon. And I'm like, oh my God, now they're not working. Number two, the language. They speak English, but there's just some formalities like we were talking about earlier. So it's a little bit different. And it's like, well, maybe I should just get someone US based. And I was listening to a podcast, you guys were like, they perform just as well, if not better than the people that we had in the US at a fraction of the cost. So what do you have them do? And then why did you guys choose to help people scale their business with a VA that's from the Philippines?

35:35
Yeah. So on our team, our VA's appointments, they're very a part of our teams. I don't really call them VA's, but we have them do things like show rates. So making sure that people are showing up to the calls. A lot of that process is done by VA's appointment setting for our team. Like the people that are responding to the outreach is a virtual assistant, admin responding to emails and calendar, all that back end stuff, recruiting VA's for our clients is done by a VA.

36:04
She knows the process. So there's so many parts in our business that we have VAs utilize. But when I think about the reason that we wanted to do it for our clients, one, because we saw how well it worked for us, and then two, its cost, right? So if somebody is like, this is their first business, they're just starting out, they need leads, they may not have the money to hire somebody to do appointment setting or become a setter full time. You probably don't have the volume to employ somebody to do that.

36:33
And then third is as the entrepreneur, their time is better spent doing something else like sales, going out, getting clients, then responding to DMS or responding to LinkedIn messages. Um, so I think for those reasons, we thought it's great to hire VAs for clients as well. And then it keeps like the outreach running. If I'm a busy entrepreneur and I'm trying to do the lead generation myself, sometimes it's going to be great. Other times I'm going to be busy. It may not be consistent. If I don't feel like doing the followups.

37:01
I'm not going to do them. Like when you have a VA in place that can follow like a proven system, they're going to show up, they're going to do the work and you're going to get the leads and the booked calls that way. So yeah, those are the reasons that we kind of decided to do virtual assistants. What are some of the practical things like you know more than I do? Like for instance, all of it, most of our VAs, they all have backup wifi's. We have teammates in different parts of the country. So you're not going to have a typhoon hit the whole country all at once and be out.

37:30
What are some of those things that just redundancies to make sure that we have? It's like, you have to vet upfront because that's critical, right? When we hear people say like, oh, I tried a VA and it didn't work or they didn't have good English and all of that stuff. It's like, how did you vet? How did you interview? Did you interview multiple people? Did you have requirements for the things that they needed to have in place before you hired? So it comes down to like process and system. But when we're vetting for VAs,

37:57
We're asking them questions through interviews, right? So I can see both their written and their verbal communication. We have things like backup internet. You have to have that. You have to have backup power as well. And then, of course, we recruit as to mention from different parts of the Philippines. So if one side is out, then we know we have still be as in other areas as well. But you can recruit and train and hire such amazing talent from overseas. It boils down to do you as the entrepreneur know how to hire?

38:26
know how to train and do you know how to have them follow a process that can be consistent? Because oftentimes, I mean, there's really bad employees here in the US. Of course. It boils down to like, I mean, you're going to find bad talent anywhere. How are you as the leader managing, overseeing and ensuring that they're actually following systems? So what does that look like with the hiring? How do you guys handle that hiring process when it comes to an appointment center, VA, etc? Yeah, so for an appointment center specifically, we do group interviews. So...

38:54
What we do is on the application, we have them write out messages. So like, what would it look like to pitch a coach with XYZ service? So we have them write it out. I always qualify, don't use ChatGPT because I can reverse engineer and I know it's going to be a ChatGPT message. So qualify that in the application from the people that pass that initial like written screening and I can see, okay, like they have a good written communication. We then do group interviews. So we'll have maybe five or six.

39:23
VAs jump on a group call and I'm asking them questions like, what's your biggest strength? Like basic questions, what is a weakness? And like just seeing self-awareness, I love this question for appointment setters is, if you send out an outreach message and someone says no, what do you say? If they tell me like, oh, like I'll wish them all the best and keep it moving, probably not a good fit for us because I want somebody that's like persistent and proactive and is gonna convert a no into a yes. So I'm like kind of interviewing for those kinds of qualities. Are they resilient? Do they wanna show up? Are they excited? Do they have enthusiasm?

39:53
Once I vet for that, we usually have two VAs jump on for one role. So we call it the rule of three. If I'm the one that's training, I have two people under me and I will have them run for about two weeks and see who performs the best, because if you have one person, you may think this person's a rock star, they're great and they may fall off. But if you have two, you can kind of compare and contrast and see who has the best communication, who follows the process the best, and you actually can, you know, kind of gauge between the two of them who's the best.

40:21
Both of them are rock stars. You can keep both or let the other one know that you can reach back out when more availability opens up. She literally, by the way, gave you the process that we've been, how long have you been dialing this in for? How many, how many VAs have we hired? Like hundreds, hundreds. You just got like some gold there. Talk about this all day, yeah. Gold, gold, gold. Do you guys use onlinejobs.ph, Upwork? Like what are you, what's your? Upwork.

40:51
Upwork's a good option. Cool. Internally, if somebody's with us for six months, we give them an option to go off Upwork and just hire them directly. Oh, so you'll- Like a teammate, like a teammate, like it's your part of the tribe, like you've passed. Oh, because I've been going straight from Upwork like day one, I'm paying you on PayPal. Because Upwork takes, they get like a big fee, so they're like, I don't want to use Upwork, so you'll stay on Upwork for like six months. Yeah.

41:17
and then you see if they're really like a good fit. That's our process at least. No, I like that's a really good idea because I'm in the season right now where I need to look for some talent. So thank you. Cool. Oh man, there's so much stuff here. Last thing I'll ask when it comes to hiring and in regards to the training process, is it like a mixture of prerecorded videos? Is it, we could talk about appointment setter specifically. Is it prerecorded videos or is it you're shadowing a setter? What does that look like? Yeah, good question. So,

41:47
Up front it is pre-recorded videos and we have a bunch of like SOPs, so standard operating procedures, which is simply like a Google doc with the process written out. So they can both watch the video and they have the SOP to reference. That's about the first week they're just going through the training videos. Week two, they shadow a senior appointment setter, so somebody that's been there for a while that's done really well. They have the title of senior, so they shadow them, what we call the dailies, like the day to day inbox management.

42:15
And then from there we give them a few accounts to manage. And the senior set is kind of overseeing and seeing how do they respond to things, giving them feedback. So that's kind of that three step process. So training videos, then the shadowing, then they're on their own. Nice. Do you see what like operational excellence, man? She's dialed in. Anybody that comes into our company that knows anything about business, they see our processes and systems, they're like, holy cow, you guys are so dialed in.

42:44
just so dialed in. We've never seen a company, and we have some bigger clients where we're doing their marketing and they'll have a consultant come in and just double check all their marketing channels and they're like, we've never seen a company be this organized and this dialed in. Let me ask, she got the same types of processes around the house. She got to put the shoes in a certain area. Come on, I know you got all of these. I mean. No shoes in the house. I would say, our house stays pretty clean, but I would say mostly it's just,

43:13
when it's like there's two sides to Cindy. There's like freaking game on, there's boss. There's like boss Cindy and just like when she's in that mode, you do not mess with her. She's like laser focused, man. She's like a lioness. You ever seen that lioness going for the prey and it's like, don't mess with her. Like, she's fierce, man, she's fierce. But I think outside of that, she needs time to just like let go of it, recharge, like, oh, cause she's a very, very, very intense.

43:43
very intense human being and the best co-founder I could ever ask for, because I'm very ready-fire, aim cool, throw it out, chaos, and she just brings an order to it that is just gonna make this company grow, grow, grow, and never stop growing. You're so sweet. What do you guys enjoy the most about, obviously, co-founders, but you guys are married, what do you guys enjoy the most about doing business with the person that you also love? Love this question.

44:13
It's just being in alignment. We know every day when we wake up, we're working towards a common vision. Like our goals are the same goals. Our vision is the same vision. You have this like partner that's ride or die through thick and thin and business has its ups and downs. Like it's, people see social media and social media is awesome, but like real life day-to-day business has a lot of challenges. And being able to go through the ups and downs with somebody that's like your partner, your person, it makes it all worth it.

44:41
And in seasons when it is like really difficult, you have that person to support. It's like, we're better together. And Tim and I have very, very complimentary skills, right? He's great at marketing and sales and great at operations. So this, that dynamic works really well. And I know that he always has my back. The intentions are good. They're pure. And of course, like, you know, there's a lot of like business partner relationships that maybe don't work out because one person has these goals and vision and another person has this lack of alignment.

45:08
So alignment is really, really big for us. What about you? We actually were talking to some people about this recently, we actually don't suggest couples to go into business together. So we actually got kind of lucky that we align well. Because think about it, most marriages, like half of them fail. The vast majority of business partnerships fail. So you're taking like the two biggest relational failures that there is, business and marriage, and you're going, let's do them both at the same time.

45:35
you have a very, very, very, very like multiplied chance of failure rate. And so this was never like, oh, let's do a business together, sounds fun. This was like, I saw she had an entrepreneurial gift and I was like, I wanna just see you do whatever you do. Like I wanna be, like I feel my mission from God is to make sure you reach your full potential. And same for her, like she supported me. And then it was when that business crashed in December of 2019, and then January, 2020, she's like, what if I helped?

46:05
What if I helped? And then I started thinking about it and I was like, I was in a dark place, man. Like I will not, I'm dark, depressed, and I'm such a happy guy, dark, depressed. It was like, you can't, if you can only hear this, like my vision was just like, I could only see like this little tunnel in front of me. When she said that, it was like this light opened up and I could see because I just knew, being an entrepreneur for as long as I had been and just understanding how dynamic works, I'm like, she would be perfect for all the things that I'm horrible at.

46:32
and I'm great at all the things that's like not her big strong suit. And so I think we kind of got like, I don't know, lucky, blessed, I don't really want to say it, like that it ended up being that we're super aligned, but it was never the goal. It was just like, oh, this ended up working out. But I think most people that are, they try to make it work out, well, I love this person, this. If you have two people that are like visionaries, they're gonna make a mess because they're gonna have all these ideas but nothing's gonna get executed well, or it's gonna get executed and then crash, executed and crash.

47:01
If you have two integrators, like Cindy's an integrator, I'm a visionary and she's an integrator. If you have two integrators, it's like you got like a lot of processes and systems with very little growth. And I think we just got, it was very cool that we ended up having that dynamic together. And I love it, but I would have never forced it if we didn't have that. Because at the end of the day, your marriage is more important. And I've seen a lot of situations where it didn't turn out well. So definitely make sure you have.

47:28
total alignment in those areas before you do anything. You guys want kids? We do, yeah. Oh, that's awesome. You guys are great, I love this. You guys, it's so cool though, like you guys are two powerful people, right? And you guys compliment each other so wonderfully. You don't really see that often. So the fact that you guys do, it's incredible. Last question I really have for you guys, where do you guys feel like you gotta grow the most in order to make that happen? And let's take it like personally. Like where do you guys personally feel like you have to grow the most in order to get to?

47:58
nine figures and beyond. I like this question. I'm really big on self-reflection. So that's something I've reflected about, like the person that I want to become. She is, she's very emotionally resilient. So I'm resilient. I've been through the works in life. Um, and I think entrepreneurship, when you go through it, you after you after you, and you don't give up, you become resilient. Um, but I think that next level is that emotional resilience for me. And that's something that I look up to for Timmy. So.

48:26
That word that I love is equanimity. So it's like no matter if you don't go too high, you don't go too low, you're just this calm, confident, regardless of what happens. You mentioned like you can get emotional sometimes, right? If like a client gets upset or whatever that is, and I'm like that too. So I identify that in myself. If like one of my teammates is not happy, I can take it really personal as well. So I have that like very caring, loving side of me. So I think that emotional resilience on a personal side will allow me to be that next level Cindy that I wanna become.

48:56
We recently did this event where it was super, these are ultra, ultra high net worth people in the room and it was actually kind of uncomfortable. We're very good with people and like, why are we feeling so uncomfortable? And I was like, it's good. So I would just say, getting in the room, just keep getting in the room where it makes you really uncomfortable because I think just biologically speaking, the way that we're, whatever the words are, like.

49:22
When we're, I'll just say it's simple terms because that's what I know is like people are like, all of history have been like in tribes and little groups and like you become like those people biologically proven like that you're around. And I would just say just probably just being around more of those people and making friends with more of those people, making sure that we're doing dinners with them and we're hanging out with them or we're doing birthdays with them because I think that's the biggest thing is you become like those around you for sure. You know, hanging out with like doing podcasts like this, meeting cool people like you. I just think.

49:51
just normalizing, and you realize that you, so many people, you have, everybody listening to this, you have so much more capability and potential than you ever could possibly believe. And a lot of your limiting beliefs, what you believe is possible, was given to you through parents and growing up in the environment you choose to be around. And the only way to break that is to really get in the rooms. Get in the room. So I would just say, just keep getting uncomfortable, because I don't know what that dude looks like that needs.

50:18
what he looks like, how he is. I have some ideas, but I don't know what he looks like, but I know I'm gonna find him, so. Guys, this is incredible. I've really enjoyed this conversation. We cover a lot of stuff. This has been a lot of stuff. They usually have a clock up there, but they don't. So I was like, screw it. We got two hours, let's do this thing. I have no clue how much time has passed. I will find out. So I was like, oh well. But if people are listening to this and they're like, man, I really wanna work with Hema, what is the next step?

50:47
Good question. Just go to Pima.io, P-E-M-A dot I-O. And we will hook you up. And we run a podcast, so go to Pima, Pima.io, and meet with our team, best team in the biz. There's, I mean, when we take a client on and we do turn clients away, that's not like a marketing, oh, we turned some clients away. No, like legit, if we can't help you, we'll tell you that. Because every client we take on, it works.

51:14
If you're like, dude, I'm super broke right now, like I don't have credit, I don't have anything, check out our podcast, the Takeover with Tim and Cindy. We literally give out so much free information, check out our YouTube channels, because like, dude, if you're like super broke but you got that hustle grind mentality, like we got enough free resources, we have people reaching out to us, like I use your strategy, and I'm getting meetings with clients, thank you. And then hey, after you got enough revenue coming in, then come hire us. So that's the two places I would go for sure.

51:43
And what's your socials? I know you're, what's Cindy Makita? At Cindy Makita, that's M-A-K-I-T-A. Mine is Tim Is Social, at Tim Is Social. Well guys, thank you so much for being here. I've had a lot of fun, so thank you guys. You're such a good interviewer. Yeah man, this has been incredible. Such a good, yeah, it's a gift. Oh, well thank you, I appreciate it. We're gonna have to do a round two if you guys are up for it. Let's do it.

52:09
Well, thank you guys for being here. There you have it. We hope that you enjoyed listening as much as we enjoyed recording this episode. Ladies and gents, if you need sales meetings, make sure that you click the link right below this video so that we can learn more about your business, build you out a custom strategy, and finally start getting you on calls with vetted decision makers. We're launching hundreds of campaigns every single day that are seeing incredible success.

52:37
on LinkedIn and our bound email. We wanna meet you. We wanna learn more about your business. So click the link in the show notes. And if you've been following The Takeover, if you are a loyal follower, subscriber, listener, we wanna say thank you. Make sure that you connect with us on all social media platforms. We wanna meet you. We wanna learn more about you. And we're so thankful that you continue to support the show. We put on the show for people like you. So on behalf of Tim and I, again, thank you.

53:07
We'll see you in the next episode. Bye for now.