700% Growth: How to Scale B2B Sales, Hire Top Talent & Leverage AI with Developers.net

What does it take to grow a business by 700% in just three years—without outside investment?

In this episode, we dive deep into the strategies that transformed a bootstrapped startup into a high-growth company, Developers.net, led by Emilio Baez and Doug Loyo. From founder-led sales to building a full-scale marketing machine, discover the exact steps to dominate B2B sales, hire top-tier talent, and leverage AI for unstoppable business growth.

If you want to double or triple your business every year—even without investors—you can’t miss this episode.

Key Topics & Chapter Markers:

[00:00] The Journey to 700% Growth
[06:04] From Software Engineers to Building a Staffing Empire
[11:03] Strategic Growth: Conferences, Cold Outreach & Hiring
[16:00] The Recruitment Process: Finding Top Talent in Latin America
[19:37] The Future of AI, Tech Hiring & Business Growth
[28:50] Final Advice for Entrepreneurs on Scaling & Staying Competitive

Resources & Connect with Our Guests:

Developers.net – Get the best nearshore software talent for your company → www.developers.net
Email Doug – Douglas@developers.net
Email Emilio – Emilio@developers.net
Book Recommendation: Traction by Gino Wickman – Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business

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• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points, this Free E-book will give you the tools you need for predictability and scalability in your marketing and sales efforts. Disclaimer: Only download if you want more customers!

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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

Chapters

• 0:00 The Journey to 700% Growth
• 6:04 From Software Engineers to Building a Staffing Empire
• 11:03 Strategic Growth: Conferences, Cold Outreach & Hiring
• 16:00 The Recruitment Process: Finding Top Talent in Latin America
• 19:37 The Future of AI, Tech Hiring & Business Growth
• 28:50 Final Advice for Entrepreneurs on Scaling & Staying Competitive

Transcript

00:00

since September of 2017, we have been doubling and tripling every year. And like you said, it was easy to double when you were two people. At the point that we're right now, we're a fully established company. We're in good pace to double again next year and keep enjoying it. We didn't take any money from anybody. It was us from the beginning. Had a little bit of extra money flowing in and we were like, we don't wanna party with this money. I mean, we do wanna party with this money, but really and truly what we wanna do is throw it to a bigger level, right? I just wanna say, man, you guys are dominating. And so as we say at the takeover,

00:30

Domination is not a destination, it's a way of life. Welcome to The Takeover where we show you how to dominate every area of life and business. Let's get winning.

00:44

Welcome back to The Takeover. Today we have two amazing, amazing hyper growth entrepreneurs that I personally met at the Inc 5000 event. 700% growth over the last three years and they have just such actionable how to grow your business tactics and strategies that I'm really excited to dive into today. Welcome to the show, Emilio and Doug. Thank you, Tim. Well, let's go ahead and jump in because I see you guys hustling. I see you guys working. I see you're at events. So you got a lot going on.

01:13

Let's give some context to what is it that you guys do and what kind of business do you have? In a nutshell, what we do is we find amazing software engineers in Mexico and Latin America. We hire them, we pay them really, really well, and we place them with our clients in the U.S. and Canada. So same time zone, near shore, staff augmentation, basically. I definitely know near shore is getting more popular, but it's going to keep growing in demand. So.

01:39

How were you guys thinking about this when you first started it? Because it's only more recently that this is becoming more popular. So you guys are kind of, we're on the tip of the spear before this started becoming kind of as trendy as it is now. I don't even think it's super popular yet, but I see it.

01:55

I see it's going to be very, very, very popular and keep growing over these next few years. Surely, as soon as we started the company, we decided working with Nearshot was the way to go because we've had not a great experience working with offshore team, especially because of the time zone and the cultural feed. Since the beginning, we decided that we were going to do Mexico and Latin America. We had also had some good experience working with some Mexican developers and we loved it. Same time zone, culturally, we actually identify with them really well.

02:25

So we decided just to go full blown near shore. And just for everybody listening, near shore means that it's on our continent. Well, you're talking about it. And we've hired, true, probably 800 people in the Philippines doing our appointment setting stuff. And I get that, that time zone difference, the cultural different Philippines is great. It's close, but it's not the same. We've been hiring in Colombia and some Latin America.

02:51

that time zone being the same, that really makes a big difference when you have somebody on that same time zone. Communication is a lot better. And so I know we've experienced that same thing. So just anybody listening, there is a really big advantage to using near shoring versus using India and Philippines, which those you can get great talent out there. But this is there really is a huge advantage. And let's kind of move over to when you first launch this product, because you both are software engineers, right?

03:20

You did the work, you launched your business. Tell me about how you launched your business and where you first got started. Yeah. And you're spot on. You can see, I always point out behind Emilio's head, that poster that says, keep calm, I'm a DBA, a database administrator, database architect. So we are, we're highly, highly technical, Tim. You know, the first thought actually came because Emilio and I wanted to build a SaaS product, but we wanted to actually create a product to offer to the masses, right? We didn't want to reinvent the wheel, right? So we.

03:49

reached out to some local companies that did already near shoring and they were really bad man. They were resume flippers, right? They found the keywords in the resumes and that would send them to us, right? And Emilio and I within a month probably went through more than 200 resumes and it was like, okay, listen, read this guy, right? And it was just bad, really, really bad, right? So I think our Eureka moment was when Emilio and I, we flew down to Mexico and we were like, Hey,

04:17

I'm half Mexican, half American. Let's find some developers ourselves, right? And we had a great experience, man. Great experience. We like to say they're smart talent all over the world, right? But being so close to the US, it's just really easy. Right now it's four o'clock. I can pick up the phone, call them, and they can fix our issues right now. So yeah, we heard- You guys flew over there. Yeah, yeah, we did. We have pictures, man. We had a great time, actually. Oh. That's, you guys speak Spanish? Both of us speak Spanish, yes.

04:47

Oh my gosh, that's incredible. Oh, now, but I've heard it's not just the time zones and we're experiencing this a little bit, the culture is a lot more aligned. So the way like business and in our experience, we have some talent that's on our team that's from Columbia and the culture and the way that they think about business is much more aligned with the way that we, the culture and the way we do business here in the U S is that, is that true in your experience?

05:10

100%. Like if you look at Mexico, for example, a lot of our developers are from the northern side of Mexico and in that area, developers speak English almost natively. They listen to the music, the same music that we listen here in the US. They know how we live here. Culturally, there's that 100% alignment that we love. We don't have to go above and beyond explaining everything to them. So they really get it. And so let's kind of jump into the story where you fly over there, you start getting talent, you're building your own software.

05:40

and what happened from there? How did this eventually turn into, hey, we should do this for other people? We got frustrated, Tim, not only because of out of the 200 resumes, we couldn't find one. Our biggest frustration was because out of the 200, maybe 100, were not even aligned with the technologies that we were looking for. Like, they were just sloppy. So Doug and I had decided to create this SaaS product.

06:04

together and as soon as we saw the opportunity to create a staffing firm, like a boutique type of staffing firm in the US, as entrepreneurs we immediately identified the opportunity of creating that company. So we dropped that product idea and we started with developers.net. How did you start that and then, you know, 700% growth, that's pretty impressive and I know you guys aren't slowing down. I mean, every time I talk to you, you're working on this new event, you're talking about new marketing strategy.

06:30

Doug, you jumped on a Zoom call with me the other day. I'm like, what are you up to? Like, I'm just figuring out DMARC and how to get more promotion out there. Walk me through that. Our audience loves, what did you guys do when you first started to scale and get to that 700% growth? And what were those initial techniques that you did to start going out and getting clients? I think the easiest first is your close network.

06:54

Right. So both Emilia and I had worked for many years here in the U.S. and we worked at a couple of different companies and we were recognized as pretty good technologists. Right. So when we created our company, the first thing that you go out and you do as a founder is what we call founder based sales. Right. So whatever your closed network is, you're going to attack that first. Right. But we ran out of out of those contacts like pretty, pretty quick. Right. But it gave us that kind of like injection of money.

07:22

to actually quit our jobs and then focus 100% on this. You went and did that before you even went full-time on this. I mean, you guys were hustling, working full-time jobs, building this on the side and to build the revenue up to cover. Yep, both of us had families who were married. We had kids, man. My wife likes expensive shoes. We have to keep on going.

07:42

And supplying that man. It's good motivation, man. Keep that wife happy. For about a year, for about a year and a half though, was it like for about a year and a half, we were, we were full time in our other jobs and then we quit and we started working on this full time. As soon as we had, we, the company started to generate enough money to support us, to be able to afford us. We, we just went full time and, and that's when the growth started to happen. And is, does your wife like expensive shoes as well? More expensive than dogs.

08:11

You see, it's the finer things in life that really help us stay motivated. So what happened from there guys? So you launch, you go full time, you know, a lot of, I think, mistakes that some entrepreneurs make is they're like, if we build it, they will come and no, if you sell it, they will come. Like you've got to go out and sell. So what did that transition look like when you kind of had already tapped your network and you had to start going and building extroverting to get a client base? Yeah.

08:40

was Emilia and I would go to a lot of conferences, still in founder-based cells, right? And we would wear, I have a t-shirt here, similar to the one that Emilia has on, right? And in the back, we would just promote ourselves, right? Oh, that's cool. Walk around with this t-shirt that had like the pricing on it and people would approach. Can you tell everybody that's not watching this on video what that t-shirt said? Cause Doug, you just lifted up a t-shirt that had your promotion on the back. What?

09:06

So you know, you know, like those Walmart shirts, like ask me, I can help you. Right. So kind of like that. It says software developers at $65 an hour, big green thing on the top that says, ask me how, and then in the bottom, there's a QR code, right? So people can come in, scan you, and it would take you to like a landing page where you can see the promotion specials. What do we have? What are the technology stacks that we serve and so on? Yeah. These shirts walking around at first, we felt a little bit weird, like billboards walking around, man. But.

09:35

I said, you only live once, man. So we have one opportunity to hit it big and hit it hard. And we will do anything that we can do within reason to grow our business. Well, within ethical boundaries. Yes. Yes, exactly. That's awesome though. So, and that worked well for you. So you're going to events, you're hitting the pavement, but the shirt specifically, it's like that getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, throwing yourself in the room, wearing like a cheesy self-promotion t-shirt.

10:05

which I love that guys, I'm gonna order some of those. You know, mine can be as easy as like, hey, you need meetings, whatever that is, because everybody needs them. Were people coming up to you guys at events and asking you about it? Yeah, yeah, I mean, it works, especially with those green letters, right? Like you're in a conference with a hundred thousand people walking around and they see that and they approach you. Like sometimes they just come to say hi because they think it's great that you're doing that, right? Like, especially as being the founders, not all founders.

10:34

have the courage to actually put a t-shirt like that and just work around like a, like a billboard, right? For us it's worked beautifully. But the first two years team, we actually focused on people that we knew like Douglas said, but it got to a point where we're exhausted that list. And so we, we did a couple of things, conferences, and then we hire a full-time sales and marketing team. So we have an internal team that executes pretty much in all the strategies, call calling, email, LinkedIn, LinkedIn automation. We're running like full blown, like now

11:03

The conference that Doug and I do bring probably about 30, 40% of the revenue. Oh, wow. It just works. So you guys start off doing the founder sales with your network, then you're starting to do events, you're starting to add more and more strategy. So it's still founder led sales, but then you guys have built it to a point, like you keep stacking new strategy, more team, more execution. And now you're at a place where like 30, 40%, you said, are coming in from you, but then the rest is coming in from the team and the other strategies.

11:32

So what are some of those key points that you guys made as founders to really get that flipped where you had, you know, 70% of your new business coming in from new strategies from your sales team from stuff like that. What did that look like for you guys? Man, we read a lot of books and hiring the right people. I think one of the books that we live or die by traction by Gina Whitman, get a grip on your business.

11:59

It's a great book that tells you how to manage your company, how to hire the right person for the right job, for the right seat also. And that book taught us so much, right? And we were really lucky at finding the right people to help us on the marketing and sales side, right? And I mean, it is difficult anyway, right? I can tell you right now that one of our probably our biggest things right now is still scaling that part, scaling the sales out, right? But we execute strategies like cold calling.

12:28

cold emailing, cold linking outreaches. We do advertising, we do blog posts, we do some blog, like video blogs that that Emilio and I do together too. Podcasts like this. We do a lot of marketing and sales strategies and tactics out there. We spend about probably 35% of our revenue on that. Like you have to invest in sales. Like we realized that the hard way at the beginning we're just chiding away from spending money on sales and we're trying to do it ourselves.

12:57

We have to hire the right people for the right seat. And so about 30, yeah, 30, 35% of the revenue gets reinvested in sales and marketing. I love that you said that because I think sometimes when people look at a business model, they miss what a client is worth. Like, and they miss that how, if I can get to a point in my business.

13:19

If I can spend $6,000 and get a client and that client's worth say $150,000, I'm gonna spend $6,000 as many times as I can every single day to get $150,000 clients. Subscribing is the easiest way to support the podcast. Plus, you'll never miss an episode. Hit that subscribe button on iTunes, Spotify, Google, or wherever you're listening so that you don't miss a beat.

13:47

Where was your mindset at? Because I think it's just obviously you guys are growing fast. And when I talk to any smart and successful entrepreneur, they understand, you know, if I have X amount of client acquisition costs and it gives me this much margin, then you just get good at balancing your margins. And like that's how any successful company grows. Where did you get that mindset for success? Understanding because 30% to some people.

14:12

was like that, well, that's crazy. How could you do that? Whereas I think a lot of other people's like, well, yeah, Duff, you're trying to grow a fast growing company. I mean, you look at like the companies like the Ubers and the Amazons who actually don't have margin to how they're just so hyper-focused on scaling. Where did kind of like that mindset come from and what is your overall thinking on being aggressive about growth, being willing to reinvest that much of your revenue?

14:36

I think again, it starts from like we were bootstrapped from the beginning, right? We don't have investment. We didn't take any money from anybody, right? Not even family, cousins, nobody, right? So it was us from the beginning. And I guess as software engineers, you look at the problem from a perspective of, okay, we're here. We can sell so much a year. How do we clone another Emilio? How do we clone another Douglas? How do we make this bigger and faster? Right. And

15:02

The reality, I think it came from there. We had a little bit of extra money coming in, flowing in, and we were like, we don't want to party with this money, right, I mean, we do want to party with this money, but really and truly what we want to do is like, grow it to a bigger level, bigger level, bigger level, right? And so I think, I think it was like great discussions, having an amazing business partner like Emilio too, and like brainstorming, how do we get to the next level? Right, like we're here, we have extra money, how do we get to the next level? It's been a balancing act between investment on both sides of our business, right?

15:32

recruitment and sales. It's always been like that. So recruitment, is that ever a bottleneck for you guys? Is it's like, well, we're growing too fast, the fulfillment's a problem or not as much? Not anymore. I'll let Emilio talk a little bit about that. No, I mean, we used to deal with that. It also depends on the technologies, right? Like if you ask me for something like a regular, like industry standard one, like that net or Angular, SQL Server, things like that, we normally can find it really quick.

16:00

For a long time, we ran with a team of recruiters in Mexico, but then our marketing team, when we hired the marketing team, they came up with amazing strategies where now we put a position out there and we got a hundred applicants in a week. So we scaled that up and it has never been an issue. Like finding developers and talent in Latin America is not a problem for us. For you guys, is that just because of your rep? Cause I, I've talked to you guys in the backside and you treat your team super good. Like you really, you really take care of the people that work with your clients.

16:30

Is the part of that the ease at which you can get? Because you guys aren't just hiring anybody. You guys know the industry, you know technology, and so you guys are hiring really, really talented people. Is your reputation, is that allowed you to attract better and better talent and make it more easy for you guys? I wouldn't say yes. I really don't know our reputation on the recruitment side of things. Maybe that's something that we should measure a little bit better. But the reality, Tim, as Emilio mentioned,

16:59

I mean, we're our boutique shop. We only hire the best. So maybe that word has gotten out in Latin America of how, how good we are and how stringent we are when we interview our staff or our talent. But man, I tell you, our marketing team has knocked it out of the park on scaling, how to find people, how to find this amazing talent in Latin America. Where are you guys at now? Like what's your big focus? Because as we both know, hitting the INC 5000 list becomes

17:26

harder and harder to hit that revenue growth, right? To get from one to 10 million is a lot of growth, but to get from 10 million to 100 million, that's the same percentage of growth, but it's a lot more work. And it's the percentage wise to keep up because Inc 5000 is all about the percentage of growth, you know, so it does get harder and harder and harder. Where are you guys at right now? And what strategies are you thinking about to like really keep that level of growth up?

17:52

Or are you finding that it's harder for you guys to keep that percentage of growth up at this point? We have been since September of 2017, we have been doubling and tripling every year. I think that the worst year was the year that we doubled. And like you said, it was easy to double when you were two people, right? Four people. At the point that we're right now, we're a fully established company right now. I don't think we can call ourselves startups anymore. We've been in business for seven years. I think we're in good pace to double again next year.

18:19

So that the goal is to actually double and triple in the next three or four, five years and keep enjoying it, keep having fun and keep treating the people that we have as family. We have, you mentioned it before, we have a big family. We call it the developers and that family. We have members of the team that have gotten offers for way more money and they haven't even entertained them because they like to be in the environment that we have created. Nobody sees me and Douglas as owners of anything. They see us as friends, as coworkers.

18:47

And that's the culture that we created from May 1. That's awesome, man. I mean, there's no amount of money that kind of can replace having a place that you come to work and you like it and you feel treated well and you feel treated good. I mean, that's most of what you're going to be doing with your time is work. Like a big part of life is work. And so...

19:08

Creating an environment and a culture where you're, you know, you're a challenge, you're getting to learn new things, but you feel valued, it makes a big difference. So that's awesome. What I'd like to kind of hear from you guys is what's next, man? I mean, you kind of told me you want to keep doubling and tripling growth. How do you see, I mean, there's a lot changing in the industry. I think what you guys offered at the nearest shoring, I think that's just going to keep growing very, very rapidly. What are you thinking with, you know, maybe AI technology changes or marketing shifts?

19:37

How do you guys see this next two to three years being different than the last two to three years were for you and in your industry specifically? I think we're not that scared about AI, honestly. We use it. It's a tool that as a developer, we've had co-pilot. We've had amazing tools in the past that you use to help you code faster, right? And we use AI every day, even in our recruitment side. We're doing some pilots internally.

20:03

of like, hey, given a job description and people who applied to that job, can you go and look at the resumes there and tell me which are the top 10 resumes that I should pay attention to that match the job description? Right. We validated that ourselves, humanly looking at it. Pretty scary, accurate on that side. Right. So it makes our job faster, honestly, faster and better. There's so many other applications that you can use AI for, but that one.

20:32

It's crazy good and fun, right? Tim, we think we can still double and triple, honestly. We still haven't hit a ceiling there. We maybe hear ignorance is bliss, right? Because we're not 100% business people. We're our software engineers. And we will try to engineer that problem and solve it whenever we hit that, right? So right now we're like, what can stop us? Really, really nothing. The market, yeah, sometimes there's some layoffs by.

21:00

by the top companies like Fang, right? Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google, right? But that has actually helped us during periods. So we're thinking we're keeping on the doubling, man. That's still our objective, keeping on the doubling. I love that. It's just so funny, because like, so my dad, he's actually in town. Him and my mom are visiting us. He's a software developer. My brothers are like developers. Like I know all this world, and I like, I have an engineer's mind, but I really fell in love with sales and marketing.

21:29

And it really is, man. It really is. It becomes down to there's a certain algorithm. There's a certain path. It's very mathematical equation of building a business. There's going to be new challenges that you have at new points. But I think what you said there, man, is really awesome because the product that you have has so much massive potential revenue wise. I mean, the level of company and the size of company that you have the potential to build is literally just going to be limited to your own.

21:57

mindsets and skill sets as you get to new levels and new layers of executive leadership and getting to those next pieces, man. So I love where that mindset's at. I kind of want to see, Emilio, how are you thinking about these next few years, man? Like, what are some strategies that are on your mind of like, and you don't have to share any secret stuff that you guys are working on, but how are you thinking about these next few years? We have a couple of aces under the sleeve that we can't share here, but I'm going to spoil it a little bit. So one of them is-

22:25

completely related to AI. We're developing some incredible AI products internally. We realize that we're worth more if we have products. So the company is shifting a little bit more to creating products as well, aside from staffing. And we're software engineers, we enjoy that. So we have the developers, we have an internal project that we call the ERP. And as part of that, we train developers that we think have potential. So we have a lot of initiative on that side that will help us grow with actual software that we build.

22:53

So, software is definitely the way to go. And then we have a couple of other strategies on the marketing side that the marketing team is working on right now that we're going to start to see results pretty, pretty soon. Obviously, we're going to continue to hit the road. That's never going to stop hitting the conferences, networking, meeting new people. That's something that we want to continue to do in the next few years. And it's an unfair advantage for you guys because you have so much dang software talent. And in the valuations of companies.

23:21

that have that software component is it's so you can get so much more money and valuation out of a company. And I don't know if you guys are ever planning to exit, but I mean, I just I love that. What an amazing unfair advantage you guys have for what you're doing, because you literally have the best of the best talent. So if you want to develop any software, man, I'm excited to see what you guys are doing. We fiddle around with local models on our machines and stuff like that. Amelia and I, we just can't get away from.

23:49

coding a little bit, man, but we have a team of people, these crazy Python, like data scientists that are, as that movie Swordfish says, right? They live in a world beyond our world, man. These guys, the way they think about problems and stuff like that is pretty crazy. We can't talk about some of the things that we're developing internally there, but we've done some pretty, pretty interesting stuff. There's people that think on a whole nother level. So you guys got a couple of those in your circle, huh? Yes, sir. Yeah, we got quite a few of those.

24:17

And we try to retain those for as long as we can. Those are the developers that we count on every time we want to do something hard, something really outside of the box. Well, I want to make a switch because I want people to get in contact with you guys, because anybody listening here, whatever kind of company you have, if you add software to your mix, like at Pima, we've been working on our own software that doesn't sound like a SaaS product. It's our own internal product.

24:43

that has made what we do super efficient. It's allowed us to bring our cost per result down a lot, but hey, guess what? And if we decide to exit in two or three years and we have most of our stuff is built off the amount of data we have in our software, our exit is gonna be exponentially bigger than if we're just selling as a service company. So anybody listening to these guys, if you need software developers, if you need some kind of software platform, or if you know your kind of company can benefit from having its own software.

25:11

You got to get in touch with these guys. Not only do they have some of the best talent, but just talking to Doug and Emilio on the backside, you guys are just genuine guys. And I would, I'm more than happy to refer any of our audience to you. So what's the best way for anybody to reach out to you? And what kind of people would you want to reach out to you? Like what kind of companies or clients would you want to work with? Great question, Tim. When we started, you know how it is when you bootstrap and you start from the beginning, you take any kind of client, right? But we've kind of like reduced that.

25:40

into what is a really, really good fit with us. Any company of any size, really and truly, we work with small companies, we work with really, really big companies. We just wanna work with people who have experience developing software that follows some kind of industry standard development process, right? Like agile software development and that they have somebody in their team that would be like the tech lead, the project manager or product manager where our developers can report to on a daily basis, right?

26:09

We've seen that those three characteristics on a client works really, really well with our kind of business, right? And to reach out, personally, you guys can reach out to me, Douglas at, our domain is really easy, developers.net. So Douglas at developers.net. Or Emilio at developers.net. I also want to mention that if anyone who's listening doesn't have a company, it's just an entrepreneur with an idea and wants to like actually make it happen.

26:37

Doug and I had amazing mentors when we were starting, not just with developers and not even with previous companies that we had. And we were very thankful to those mentors. So if there's anyone out there who's thinking about doing it, but is afraid, you can also reach out to us. We'll be willing to actually mentor some of you guys. You're gonna hit some bumps, but you have to keep going. You have to keep pressing that pedal and keep paddling. You have battery packs and you just plug in at night to recharge or is it mostly caffeine?

27:06

A little bit of both. We hit the gym really hard every day. That helps you clear your mind, puts you in a different move than everything. Like you start off the day sweating and benching 225 and like getting out there and, and you come back and then it's like, we're ready to hit the day for sure. No, I agree, man. Energy management is the everybody talks time management, but energy management, it's critical.

27:28

Well, Doug and Emilio, man, great having you guys on here. Again, I'm excited to see you a year from now and see you guys have doubled or tripled and just to keep growing, man. And it's just awesome to have just other comrades, man, other friends in this entrepreneurial world. I think that one of the coolest things is about going to that Inc. event was, for me is it can feel, you guys are at events all the time. So you're probably like, yeah, Doug, Tim, like you gotta get out there more. But for me, like Sydney and I, we're just constantly head down.

27:55

work, work, work. And you can kind of feel a little bit like an alien. I think anybody is an entrepreneur. You kind of feel different than most of the other people you grew up around. And when you get to be around just other awesome entrepreneurs like you guys, you're kind of like, these are other cool aliens too. And like I get to hang out with them and talk with them. So it's been great having you guys on the show. I'm excited to see where you go. And yeah, man, that's it. Any last words of wisdom or advice for that entrepreneur, whether they're already doing a few million or they're doing 20 million.

28:23

What do they do to get to that next level? Like what are the things that you found when you kind of hit, well, we've maxed out this marketing channel, we've maxed out this marketing channel. How do you guys think about constantly engineering the solution to that next problem? I mean, you have to be aware of like everything that's going on out there, right? Like the new channels that open that are like shorter videos and this and that, right? Keep your ear tuned to what's going on out there and.

28:50

Ride the trends, right? Definitely ride the trends that are out there. Have you ever done dancing on TikTok? No, man, we have to do that. We have to do that. I don't know, maybe the trends already passed, but that was the one thing that I, an entrepreneur, I just can't do the dancing on TikTok. But I mean, looking at what's out there, right? And keeping that tune of like, yeah, cold email is also terrible and cold calling is terrible, but they still work, right? So it's still, be consistent, send them, send them. Don't give up.

29:19

I think the number one thing is never give up and have fun. Like when you're doing whatever you're doing, have fun, man. That, very important. Put in the work, that's number one. All right, don't think that you're gonna get to this level by just working two hours a day. The biggest mistake you can make if you have something going is to like stay away from your company and let somebody else just run the whole thing. You have to be there, it's your baby, you have to nurture it and keep working on it.

29:44

And don't be afraid to invest on new things, right? Even when you're afraid, just try it out because you don't know, you don't know. We spent a lot of money A-B testing, trying new things every year. And every once in a while, one of those things just works. Actually, the year that we tripled, it was because of a couple of initiatives that we invested in that we weren't sure that we're gonna work on. That reminds me of like Jeff Bezos. He invested like two billion in some pet company and it failed or something. And they're like, well, you know, you have this big failure.

30:14

That's part of my calculated risk is that there's going to be failures on that. But that $2 billion failure, the other risks I took made me like hundreds of millions of dollars. And so I think people are so scared to take those risks that they end up missing out on those big opportunities. And sounds like you guys are are awesome at capitalizing on that man. And it's just refreshing to hear that brother.

30:39

We always in the show with dominations on a destination. It's a way of life. Stay winning. And I just want to say, man, you guys are dominating. And so as we say at the takeover, domination is not a destination. It's a way of life. Stay winning, guys. Excellent. Thank you, Tim.