Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Cold email, LinkedIn, and the $2M lead gen playbook

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Cold email, LinkedIn, and the $2M lead gen playbook · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Welcome back to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:02
Today's guest is Roya Nadia, founders of Setters Philippines
0:05
company that scaled to millions in revenue by helping coaches,
0:08
consultants and B to B founders book more calls, publish more
0:11
content, and land more clients. Royan has built a machine that
0:15
can generate $16 million from just 4000 emails, and he's here
0:19
to break down the exact system, strategies and mindset that make
0:22
that possible. If you're a founder who wants to
0:24
crack the code on cold e-mail, LinkedIn outreach and building a
0:27
predictable pipeline without burning yourself out, this
0:30
conversation is for you. We're talking about the playbook
0:33
for scaling 200,000 dollar months, the mistakes that nearly
0:36
broke him, and the habits that keep them sharp.
0:38
Big numbers, bigger lessons, and a ton of actionable take away.
0:42
Let's dive in. But for some business.
0:44
This episode is brought to you by Kick Caster, the easiest way
0:47
for founders to get booked on podcasts.
0:49
Think about it. Your customers, your investors,
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1:23
That's Kick Caster by MO Burst. OK, everyone loves to talk about
1:28
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Shining Stars Computer Life AII Take the flight in the globe
2:30
with me on bright. Roy and how you doing?
2:33
Welcome to the show. Never been better, boss.
2:36
We're both wearing black, so it's good.
2:38
Black T-shirt Yang, that's what's up.
2:41
Excited for this show. I hope everyone's having a great
2:44
day and we're going to have a great show.
2:46
Sure. Yeah.
2:47
I'm looking forward to it. Now, what some folks might not
2:50
know is that I built a $10 million business completely with
2:54
cold outbound. So I, I consider myself an
2:58
outbound kind of expert, a largely just out of dire need,
3:03
you know, and the, the game has changed dramatically.
3:06
And when I have a question about outbound, I come to Ryan.
3:10
So I really appreciate you coming on the show talking to
3:12
us, introduce us a little bit to your business.
3:16
It's such a pleasure to be here. So let me tell you a little bit
3:19
more about business. We are a company that
3:21
specialized in helping businesses book calls with their
3:29
prospects and turn that into content to also help them build
3:36
their personal brand. So we specialize in a podcast
3:40
method. Podcast method.
3:43
Let's talk about that. Yes.
3:45
Well, if you're not familiar with podcast method, POS CAD
3:47
method is basically a strategy where in instead of, you know,
3:53
sending sales pitches to your target customer, you invite them
3:56
into your podcast to build a relationship with them and then
4:00
later on add value to them and move into a sales.
4:03
So it's a great way to get people in front of you,
4:07
especially nowadays that it's becoming very harder and harder
4:11
to, you know, book meetings with your potential clients.
4:16
Yeah. 100% I mean, I've been doing it for longer than 10
4:20
years. You know, some of my best
4:22
friends come from podcast guest. I've had client relationships,
4:25
I've been been able to make referrals.
4:27
I love the podcast method. If if you're promoting that as
4:31
kind of a lead Gen. source, I think that's fantastic.
4:34
You know, like it's a lot more work, you know, than just
4:38
getting a call on the calendar for sure.
4:41
But if you genuinely care, I think it can be like a fantastic
4:46
strategy, particularly if you're in kind of a give first mode.
4:49
Like when I'm at my best, I feel like I'm having a great podcast
4:53
and it's like, Hey, what can I do for you?
4:55
Like what's an introduction? Who's a person?
4:58
Who are you dying to see? I love the the podcast method.
5:01
So basically, instead of like cold outbound saying, hey, look
5:03
at my company, they're like, Hey, I have a podcast with this
5:07
kind of audience. I'd love to have you on and and
5:09
see if there's something here. Yeah, absolutely.
5:12
And that was a great point. You said it.
5:13
You have to be authentic and sincere about it because if
5:16
you're only going to do it just like for the sake of closing a
5:20
sale, the prospect or the person that you're building a
5:23
relationship with is going to notice that and it's not really
5:26
going to work like that. Yeah.
5:29
Yeah, hopefully you got a little bit of, you know, care in there
5:33
about getting better at the craft.
5:34
Now, people start out all the time and most people start out
5:37
it's pretty rough getting going on podcasting.
5:39
But if you keep doing it, you know, you get better.
5:41
And if, if you like it, you're the kind of person that, you
5:44
know, enjoys conversation, then I, I think it's a great, it's a
5:48
great tool, you know, for introductions for sure.
5:51
You know, also because there's something about recording it or
5:54
streaming and it's live that puts little bell butterflies in
5:58
your belly. You know, it, it lends itself to
6:01
improvisation. You know, if I'm on a sales call
6:03
and someone's giving me their demo, I'm going to be like kind
6:06
of half tuned out and be like, dude, just get to the point I
6:09
asked for. I don't want, you know, I don't
6:10
need to hear your grandma's history.
6:12
Like, come on, like, let's get to the point, you know, So, but
6:16
a conversation, you, you, you turn your phone off, you turn
6:18
e-mail off, you know, you're engaged.
6:20
And so you get a chance to connect.
6:21
I love it. Yes, amazing.
6:24
OK, so let's talk about some of your services because I know
6:27
that you use a lot of different tools in the stack.
6:30
Maybe just talk about some of the the the tools that you're
6:33
very custom or are very fluent with.
6:37
Well, we use mainly called e-mail marketing to get people
6:43
to become a guest. And one of so one of the tools
6:46
that I love so much is instantly because it allows us to contact
6:51
you know send 10,020 thousand emails a day.
6:55
And when we get to a point where we contact like 100,000 leads
7:01
and we have like 5010 thousand people are interested to become
7:04
a guest. All we have to do after that is
7:06
like, you know, pre qualify the guest hard so that the guests
7:10
are not just like a guest, they are also potential clients for
7:14
this. Have you have you used it
7:15
recently before? And you help me set it up.
7:19
What are you talking? About Yeah.
7:24
And it's a great tool. It is a great tool.
7:26
And of course we, let's not forget Sales Navigator.
7:31
If anyone of you wants to learn how to scrape or wants to scrape
7:36
hundreds of thousands of emails at a very, very minimal cost,
7:40
you can. I would highly recommend using
7:43
Sales Navigator and Expande. So Expande is a LinkedIn
7:47
automation tool, but a feature of it that is actually not being
7:52
marketed as part of its feature is to export the data out of
7:57
Sales Navigator, which means you can get the emails, the phone
8:02
numbers, the LinkedIn profiles of your target customer from
8:05
Sales Navigator. And you know, you can just, you
8:08
can do a lot of things from there.
8:09
You can call them, e-mail them, contact them via LinkedIn.
8:13
Yeah. Expanding, you have to do kind
8:15
of searches of 2500 at a time, right?
8:17
Isn't that kind of their cut off?
8:19
Yes, yes, you would be able to do about 25 searches per day.
8:25
So one search would be able to get.
8:28
So sales navigator you can extract about like 2500 data and
8:33
about 25 searches. So yeah, it's a lot.
8:35
It's a lot yeah, it is and it's it's a great method, especially
8:39
if people really understand their ICP and they want to dive
8:41
into, you know, cold outbound. Now what I've been seeing is the
8:48
the step I do in in between 2 is I'll pull from sales Navigator,
8:52
go to Expandy and then go to Hunter and really validate and
8:56
verify all the emails just because e-mail deliverability is
9:01
harder than ever. And what I wanted to ask you
9:03
specifically is it seems like my instantly campaigns have really
9:07
tanked, like they're I have a very hard time getting into the
9:11
inboxes now. Have you noticed anything in the
9:14
last couple of months? It is.
9:16
It is just recently, I think that as we move forward, the
9:21
e-mail algorithm will become stricter and stricter.
9:24
So if you have good infrastructure set up and you
9:28
already have a, a good target list, it would be possible.
9:34
One thing if it, if it was doing well and then suddenly it's not,
9:37
it's possible that your domains have already been burned out.
9:40
So my, my so so you can now start looking into like, you
9:46
know, creating a new domains. That's number one.
9:48
Number two, what you can do as well is rotate your emails.
9:53
So if you have like 100 emails in your tech stack, use 50 for
9:58
this month and then the other 50 use it for next month.
10:02
So you, you rotate the emails so that they don't, you know, burn
10:07
out. And then one thing that you said
10:09
about cleaning them. And one tool that I love use to
10:13
use is Million Verifier. It's always, always try to clean
10:17
up your e-mail as it's worth it. It's an extra cost, but it's
10:20
totally worth it, yes. So you're seeing kind of similar
10:24
issues with instantly like recently, like it looks like
10:28
just getting harder and harder to to push them through.
10:32
And, you know, probably for for for good reason.
10:35
I mean, nobody likes spam. However, you know, if you can
10:39
have a very compelling message and a compelling offer and it
10:42
gets dumped into your e-mail. I mean, I respond to like 1/2 of
10:45
those a week. It's just like the perfect
10:47
timing. If it lands, then it really
10:49
works, you know? So if just to back up a little
10:53
bit of people have no idea what we're talking about, we're
10:55
talking about like giant e-mail campaigns where you might buy
11:00
300 domains, put 3 e-mail addresses on each domain, so you
11:04
have 900 e-mail addresses. Sending 10,000 emails a day is
11:10
kind of what the scale we're talking about.
11:12
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. We're talking about millions of
11:16
emails sent per month. And this is where like
11:20
deliverability comes in because if you have good deliverability
11:23
and you can land in the inbox, they talk about a million emails
11:27
that you have 50% deliverability, that means 500
11:31
emails went in the inbox. And what you were saying about
11:35
so Ryan about, you know, the, the, the compelling message.
11:39
So for me, landing in the inbox and making your cold e-mail
11:44
marketing works is simply three things, right?
11:47
So it's like a triangle. You start with your
11:49
infrastructure, right? Proper DNS, proper emails, all
11:53
that stuff. Second is that lead list, right?
11:57
So depending on the target customer, the deliverability or
12:03
not really so delivery, but the reply rate would also change if
12:07
you look at it from that perspective.
12:08
The third one is the strategy. So just like what you said, the
12:12
compelling offer, so, but it's more of like the the strategy,
12:15
right? So if your strategy is to just
12:19
send a direct pitch like hey, are are you looking for?
12:22
We are the best like this and like that, you would have a
12:24
different result if you are doing a lead magnet, which is
12:29
hey, we've helped this company do this and do that.
12:32
Would you like me to send you a copy or you know, like a
12:35
documented case study of it? And on top of that, you would
12:39
also have a different result if again, you use a podcast method,
12:45
like this is basically an interview method because it
12:46
doesn't always have to be podcast.
12:48
It could be like an interview for like a book that you're
12:50
writing. It could be like an interview
12:52
for a white paper you're writing.
12:55
Or again, it could be an interview for a podcast.
12:58
Those different kinds of approaches and strategies would
13:01
get you different types of results.
13:03
And it would also depend on like what industry you are.
13:07
And it would be a good fit, yeah.
13:09
Love that, you know, And it also just implies that the person
13:12
reaching out does have value to add.
13:13
It's not, it's just not simply a a pitch where you're getting
13:17
hammered with a demo and you know, 17 follow-ups.
13:20
You know, I think that that style just doesn't really work
13:23
anymore, especially with kind of the if we're talking about SAS
13:27
and B2B, most of that that's successful is kind of AI driven
13:31
in the background where you just click a button and it just
13:33
works. There's not a lot to demo these
13:35
days, but of course there is for sure.
13:39
We have to do this outreach it because it largely because it
13:43
works, you know, so the whether it's, you know, Apple Mail or
13:47
it's, you know, Microsoft or it's, you know, Google
13:51
Workspace, they're trying to clamp down more and more brought
13:56
largely because of bad actors. Unfortunately, there's people
13:58
out here selling fake Viagra pills to everyone and it's like,
14:02
dude, you're blowing it, man. For people that really want to
14:06
target, well, you can't just spray and pray with some, some,
14:09
you know, some snake oil type products and, and we just see it
14:13
time and time again. Let's keep talking about tools.
14:17
What are some other good tools? Now?
14:19
One I've been looking at is kind of for like kind of to know when
14:24
you've cooked a domain or cooked an e-mail and how to switch them
14:27
out. Do you have a favorite kind of
14:29
like e-mail hygiene tool? That we use.
14:35
No, not really. Like what we've seen is that the
14:39
best way to actually take care of the emails is do it manually,
14:43
which is kind of like probably not something that people want
14:47
to hear. And if something that want to be
14:48
done, there are companies out there that specialize on this
14:51
kind of stuff already. Like they only, they only do a
14:55
deliverability. You could get emails from them,
14:59
they will focus on doing the deliverability and you can focus
15:03
on sending emails. And it's also kind of like the
15:11
certain level of tools that when you stack it up, like using, you
15:15
know, clay to have enriched data and looking for companies.
15:19
Or at least for example, if you're a company who helps
15:22
companies with degeneration, you can look for companies who's
15:25
currently hiring SDRS. And if you use that data point
15:31
as part of your message, then it of course gives you better
15:35
results, yes. Are you using a tool to for your
15:39
to make your emails clean all the time?
15:41
I'm. Not, you know, I just kind of
15:43
guess I, I just take instantly's word for it, you know, if it
15:45
says like, oh, we've we've turned this one off from warm
15:49
ups for XYZ reasons. And I'm just kind of like, OK, I
15:53
mean, I I but I know there are tools that do exactly that, you
15:57
know, that will watch and it'll show you like which emails so
15:59
you can like build more on top of the domains and and stuff.
16:02
It's, it's a really, it's a, it's a really frustrating kind
16:05
of cat and mouse game. You know, I, I, if there was
16:09
like a, a premium you could pay for outbound.
16:13
I mean, wouldn't that be cool if you could be like look what
16:16
Google, I'll give you 1000 bucks a month just to so you know,
16:19
verified, you know, and you can see the emails I'm sending and
16:22
why, like it's all above board. You know it's.
16:25
That'll be great. I, I don't want to think about
16:27
deliverability anymore, you know, so just, I don't want to
16:31
send, I just want to send emails.
16:32
And like one thing that could help you get the results that
16:37
you want as well as to at the end of the day, it's all about
16:40
making your emails credibility high, right?
16:42
So you can do a little bit of things on how you approach your
16:47
copy. Like of course, using Spintax
16:50
where you, the words needs to be changed every time you send it.
16:53
You cannot never send the same message with same words.
16:58
So it's #1 #2 encourage the prospect to respond even if it's
17:04
a no, because the more reply you get, the more the better.
17:10
So it's like even it's a no. Try to get the no, right?
17:13
Yeah. And sometimes.
17:18
So so when, when, when, when I am trying to get my
17:21
deliverability, I there's also this part where if someone said
17:24
no, I would even ask him for a feedback on what I can improve
17:29
in my campaign so that I can get more responses.
17:32
Just keep. Keep the dialogue going.
17:33
Yeah, it's a no, right. So these are little things that
17:37
you can change, of course, especially is part of like, you
17:41
know, not sending any links. Don't just, you know, ask them
17:46
to unsubscribe and click a link. As of then, you'll be losing
17:49
people who would respond no, all that stuff.
17:52
It helps with the deliverability and if you're doing 1,000,000 a
17:55
month emails, it's you know it could go bananas is going to be
17:58
crazy. That's up.
18:00
Yeah. I'm trying to think like
18:01
inviting a million people a month to this podcast.
18:06
I would never leave this chair. We just be doing it.
18:08
Podcast interviews all day long. Kind of sounds awesome,
18:11
honestly. That would be great.
18:13
I do have clients that if part of their process delegated the
18:19
interview so that they can do a ton of.
18:23
So there's this company who's worked we're working with, they
18:25
want 200 interview calls, like podcast calls with their target
18:31
customer. And then there's also another
18:34
layer where those team that would be doing the interview
18:37
would then pass it to the like sales closer that would then of
18:41
course add the values. So it is simply if you look at
18:45
it from from a perspective execution from discovery to demo
18:51
to closing, this one is interview add value closing OK,
18:56
which becomes it becomes so smooth and becomes powerful.
19:00
You either close them, you you don't, you don't lose anything.
19:05
The the person you meet via the interview could be a partner,
19:10
could be like a referral person. It could just be a connection, a
19:13
good one, yeah, and could be a client.
19:16
You don't lose anything because you're not like just you're just
19:20
trying to, you know, help people not not make money out of it all
19:25
the time. Yeah.
19:26
Now I can tell you, this can also go wrong.
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defining together because you know my company Kick Caster.
22:00
We book people on other people's podcasts and we work largely
22:04
with funded startup founders, with entrepreneurs, with exits,
22:07
C-Suite executives, and we'll book them on other people's
22:10
podcast. Now every once in a while,
22:13
unfortunately, we will come across like kind of a, you know,
22:17
a huckster, somebody who's got a podcast just to like close deals
22:21
and like it. It's very apparent and it feels
22:24
really gross. You know, like, and I've been on
22:27
a guest on those shows too where it's just like a lady and they
22:29
ask you 5 questions and it's just totally deadpan.
22:33
Yeah. It's not like yes, it's not like
22:35
a real conversation. It's not like a real
22:37
conversation at all. It's like, it's like, dude, I
22:38
can tell you're doing 200 of these a week, you know, and
22:42
they're just kind of, you know, they got hamster eyes and
22:44
they're not that no one's home, you know?
22:47
So do that. Delegate that my my clients when
22:52
they asked me what what what would I what?
22:54
What should I ask I tell them would actually best.
22:57
If you do, don't prepare any questions so that it really
23:02
becomes a conversation wherein you're interested because if it
23:06
becomes kind of like, you know, a uniform thing, it just, you
23:10
know, it conversation, you, you lose the conversation.
23:14
Yeah, yeah. And what you were doing, it's
23:16
very, very powerful. You know, how would you, how do
23:19
you choose? Curious question.
23:22
So Ryan, how do you choose the podcast for your prospects?
23:26
I mean, and that prospect for your clients, how would you
23:29
choose the podcast that they would become part of?
23:32
It really starts with kind of their ideal outcomes, you know,
23:35
so like what do they want to get out of this podcast interview
23:39
from the audience? You know, probably all of them.
23:42
Customer acquisition is going to be #1 but we work with a lot of
23:46
like venture backed or, or people who are raising rounds.
23:50
So sometimes, you know, it's finding new LP's, finding
23:52
angels. Sometimes it's hiring talent,
23:55
you know, so if they're like, we really need 3 senior engineers,
23:59
it's like, OK, cool. Well, we're going to find that
24:01
audience that are senior engineers looking for a new job,
24:04
new gig. Then we'll find the podcast.
24:07
And then we'll, you'll, you'll be able to have that
24:08
conversation. So we really base everything on
24:11
what they want to get out. You know what, what they want to
24:13
get out of it is what we're going to put into it.
24:16
And then, you know, we've been doing it for 5-6 years.
24:18
So we have a really deep network of of all the business and and
24:22
technology podcasts kind of built in.
24:25
These are pioneers. You're probably, you're probably
24:28
one of the first people have thought about.
24:30
I can get people in a podcast and make money out of it.
24:35
Yeah, yeah. We wanted to, we were one of the
24:39
1st and the whole thing is cold e-mail.
24:41
That's what I'm saying. It's like, so like, you know, of
24:44
course for our clients, we'll use cold e-mail, but we use
24:47
LinkedIn, we use ads, we use everything.
24:49
But for our campaign managers, they're just pitching podcasts
24:52
all day long. It's just all cold e-mail, you
24:54
know? Hey, Ryan, what's up?
24:57
I got Ryan. He wants to be a guest on your
24:58
podcast. You know, we've sent millions
25:01
and millions of emails. You know, yes, we broke some
25:05
like cardinal laws too. I mean, we're doing it so early
25:08
you could kind of get away with it.
25:09
But we're we use our primary domain to send millions of
25:12
emails. Wow.
25:14
Was it like personalized back then that you were doing it like
25:17
manually? Yeah.
25:19
And it still is largely we, we, we do very little sequencing as
25:22
far as like booking podcast. So it's like 1 off.
25:25
It's one off. Absolutely, absolutely.
25:28
And you kind of like have like a a partner list of partners
25:31
already that OK, this is. It's 100% totally if we know
25:37
like the top ten in every single category and it's just a matter
25:41
of, you know, luck and timing, you know, depending on and
25:44
fortunately our clients are very, very accomplished.
25:46
So you know, their success is like, you know, makes our job a
25:50
little bit easier. Now, last week I interviewed G
25:54
from Jeeva dot AI and I wanted to ask you about this because
25:58
they have a very interesting tool that basically brings that
26:02
whole stack into 1. So it's a note taker, it's a
26:05
meeting a meeting taker. It's outbound lead
26:09
qualification, lead cleaning, lead enrichment, generative
26:14
emails with scheduling and LinkedIn.
26:19
Have you seen Jiva? No, no, I haven't seen that.
26:23
But there is a lot of, you know, amazing AI tools nowadays.
26:27
But yeah, tell me more about it. So the the one thing that I
26:30
thought was interesting is he was saying that basically like
26:32
anything that shows any kind of sequencing is just getting, you
26:35
know, clamped down that as we've seen, we've seen that kind of
26:38
happen a little bit. So what his tool does is it
26:40
tease everything up into drafts. So, you know, once it gets
26:44
everything going, it just tease it up to drafts in like Google
26:46
Workspace. And then you go into your drafts
26:49
folder and just sit there mind numbingly hitting send, send,
26:52
send. But you're like customizing a
26:54
little bit send, send, send, send, send.
26:57
So, and I'm going to give it a shot.
26:59
I've been working with it a little bit just to test like how
27:02
you know the, the deliverability, like what are
27:04
the, the limitations on it? Because it, it obviously it
27:09
can't do the, the volume. It can't do 10,000 a day.
27:12
Yeah, I think it could do 5000. But I mean I I think I'd blow my
27:16
brains out if I had to hit send 5000 times in a row.
27:19
You know, yeah, so. So if it's, but if it's fifty,
27:23
if it's fifty, you know, then it's, I think worth the time.
27:26
It's a really cool tool. Yeah, yeah.
27:29
And you know, anything that that would, I think you know, the,
27:34
the reason why you're a successful entrepreneur is
27:36
because you're, you're always testing, you're always studying
27:38
things that's available in front of you and you know, that's just
27:42
what made you successful. That's pretty interesting tool.
27:46
Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah.
27:48
I'll send you an e-mail or I'll send you a link.
27:50
How about you? You tried any cool?
27:52
Tools lately, we're always testing tools.
27:59
We're always testing tools. I think what is the most
28:03
interesting tool that I tried? Well, it's not like a tool.
28:08
It's basically kind of like a tech stack of an, of an AI where
28:13
it takes care of everything in terms of like, you know, finding
28:18
the lead, you know, doing the sequence and finding people who
28:24
would raise their hands. So like cold emailing in general
28:27
is not, it's main tool is not like for you to be able to sell
28:32
so that people could buy. It's, it's for you to find
28:35
people that would raise their hands and then move it to the
28:39
next step, right? It could be kind of like you're
28:41
blast, you're, you're sending thousands and hundreds of 1000
28:44
emails to identify who's going to raise their hands.
28:47
Then whoever would raise their hands would be added into an
28:49
e-mail list, right? And then that e-mail list is
28:52
going to nurture them even more. So in this case, we're looking
28:55
into like this AI where it would do everything that an SDR would
28:59
do, so that the SDR would just need to take care of warm leads
29:05
and AI will take care of all of the, you know, free outreach and
29:12
research and all that stuff. Yeah.
29:14
Yeah, yeah, I, I love it. I think the right now we're in
29:19
this weird transition phase, but it truly will be able to, you
29:22
know, we're, we'll get, we'll be connecting with the best
29:25
possible people in the best possible way.
29:28
You know, this other kind of hard thing about like you get
29:30
onto sales demos and it's like the energy's off and it's like
29:33
low energy. You know, when people come onto
29:36
my calendar, man, I show up with energy like this, yes, what are
29:40
you doing? You know, what am I doing?
29:44
Because ultimately it's like, dude, I we're going to have a
29:47
sales conversation for sure, But like, if I can help you, man,
29:50
like let's do it. It's it's it's one of the, I
29:53
think probably the only benefits of getting older.
29:55
It's certainly not how your body feels.
29:57
My God. But you know, with kick caster,
29:59
you know, we worked with 800 founders, you know, so it's
30:03
like, dude, what do you need? Because I can make introductions
30:07
across the board and that's one of my favorite things to do, you
30:10
know? So maybe we're moving towards
30:11
the future where like we're like our AI is pre screening the
30:15
other AIS and they're interviewing each other to see
30:17
if the the box would be right. So that you can actually meet in
30:20
real life and have a conversation that I mean, maybe
30:23
that's the future of outbound. I think it's soon.
30:25
I think it's happening soon. We're like we will have each of
30:28
us have our own AI and and our AI would talk to each other, you
30:33
know, find a meeting for us that would work.
30:35
It would be pretty interesting. That would be great, be great,
30:39
you know, and I was like. They're totally.
30:44
It would be it would be amazing. It would be amazing how how?
30:48
Here's question, Sir, for Someone Like You who's been a
30:51
very successful, how do you still?
30:56
Where do you still get the energy and curiosity to connect
31:02
with with people and network with people?
31:05
So you like, you have 800 clients, you're doing 10
31:09
million. So you know, you, you could just
31:14
not do things like this. So what?
31:16
What motivates you to do it? Well, that 10 million was
31:19
cumulatively over five years. But still, that's 7 million, you
31:24
know? Yeah, it's true.
31:25
It's true. Well, I, I'll put it this way,
31:27
man. My daughter's going to college.
31:30
My son's 16. He'll be in College in two
31:32
years. You know, I got to put bread on
31:34
the table. Like, what are we doing, man?
31:37
You know, you got to strike while the iron is hot.
31:40
You know, personally, I, I like what I do.
31:43
I I like work. But also I'm, I'm very motivated
31:47
by money. I love money, you know, so, you
31:50
know, make hay while the sun is shining.
31:52
You know what I'm saying? It's like I, if I, if I could be
31:54
done in 10 years, great. But like, right now I I, I don't
31:58
really have anything else that I enjoy doing as much.
32:01
You probably get bored if you stop working.
32:03
Actually, you probably get depressed.
32:05
I tried that after my wedding. I didn't work for one month and
32:08
I found myself like so sad. I was like, I want to work and
32:15
you're such a good conversationalist, so I think
32:18
you naturally you like to have a conversation.
32:21
People say you don't mind connecting and talking to
32:23
people, so it's amazing. Well, I tell you what I do.
32:27
The reason I started Kick Caster is because I knew there'd be a
32:31
home for it. Because I like talking about
32:33
business. I like talking about my creative
32:35
projects and stuff. So I talk to my wife about all
32:38
the time. And after about 5 seconds, her
32:40
eyes just glaze over and she's like, Oh my God, please stop.
32:44
You know, nobody wants to hear about it.
32:45
But if you go on a podcast, it's like, dude, I want to hear all
32:48
about your business, Royan. Yeah.
32:50
You know, you go, you go to your partner and they're just like,
32:52
stop talking about it. I want to talk about.
32:54
Yeah. Well, it depends on their mood.
32:57
If they're in a good mood, which is not a lot of time, they would
33:01
listen. But like, I can totally, really
33:05
have a wife so beautiful and so amazing.
33:07
But yeah, there are times where I'm so passionate, what I need
33:11
to talk and to talk about business.
33:13
And she's like, I'm just, and you can see in her face, she's
33:17
just trying so hard to like, try to not make it obvious that she
33:21
doesn't want to listen. But, you know, So yeah, you're
33:24
totally right. You're totally right.
33:25
And it's totally normal. You know, I'm like, you know,
33:28
woke up this morning doing yoga. I'm like, how sweet.
33:30
I'm talking about e-mail deliverability today.
33:33
I love talking about that. Possibly the most boring
33:37
conversation of all time. Unless.
33:38
It is, it is the same. It is the same thing.
33:40
It's the same thing when our wives talks about the stuff that
33:43
they they like so much and, and this could be shopping, you
33:48
know, and we're like, I need to listen to this one even if I
33:51
don't want to. So it goes both ways for sure.
33:57
I love my wife to death, but she talked about her work and I'm
33:59
just like, oh God, please no, the game is on.
34:02
What are we doing right now? So, so yeah, you know, and I, I
34:07
like the game more than anything else.
34:09
You know, business is great and it's, it's a way to figure out
34:13
what people like. And it's it, it's like very
34:16
delightful to make people happy, you know, and you get to do that
34:20
with business and you also get to fail a lot and be like, I
34:23
think this will make you happy. And they're like, no, that makes
34:26
me mad. You're like, Dang, I thought it
34:28
was going to work, but it did. So OK, boy, you've got some,
34:32
some real jewels here. We've got, you know, make sure
34:35
to to reply to a no, just get to keep the conversation going.
34:39
You know, you, you, we. What are some other good tips?
34:44
Just kind of standard stuff that has been successful for you with
34:47
outbound cold e-mail? It would be.
34:53
So again, focus on the strategy and and the approach.
34:57
It doesn't matter what copy would it be it, it will work and
35:02
focus on finding the people that would raise their hands and then
35:09
move it to because there's so many ways you can do with cold
35:12
e-mail. You can kind of like, you know,
35:14
do cold e-mail and when they showed an interest, connect with
35:16
them on LinkedIn. So my point is that don't just
35:19
stop on the cold e-mail side. Try to look at things where like
35:24
you've already captured all the people is racing, raising their
35:27
hands, run ads to them so that in the, in the next like 7 days,
35:32
all they can see is your face and your offer because they've
35:35
already raised their hands. So, so don't just stop on the
35:41
cold e-mail side in terms of like, you know, you send them,
35:45
you send them a cold e-mail and they were interested and you
35:49
never even followed up. So because followed up the, the
35:53
money's in the follow up. And if you can automate that
35:54
process, you're going to make millions.
35:57
You're going to make millions for sure.
35:58
Yeah, you know, my, my, it's just my brain is tingling
36:01
thinking about the, the podcast offer you're doing now.
36:04
I, I want to fix it. I almost make a rule like I'm
36:07
not selling on cold outbound ever.
36:09
The idea of like, I want to interview you for a paper is
36:13
also amazing because that's also legit.
36:17
Like if you have some questions and you know, I'm doing all this
36:19
stuff in AI and whatever, you know, and I know from from doing
36:24
what we did 70 episodes of this thing since January and talking
36:28
to a lot of different founders. I know that all of them, even
36:31
people that are, you know, using novel training and everything
36:33
else don't feel like they're using AI enough.
36:37
You know, so there's like the the pinpoint and the anxiety
36:40
around AI in particular is great.
36:42
So it's like, OK, you know, maybe now I'm not sending 10,000
36:45
emails saying like, hey, you want to, are you interested in
36:47
like podcasts or whatever. It's just like I need a little
36:51
bit of feedback from you because I'm doing research on pain
36:55
points with a or something like that.
36:56
There's just so, so many different ways you can get
36:59
someone to raise their hand. I love that.
37:02
Yes, Sir, Yes, Sir. One of the most effective
37:05
outbound campaigns that I ran, I was still running it until now
37:09
is inviting very, very successful CE OS.
37:14
And that the more The thing is that the more successful your
37:18
target customer is, it's harder to get them in front of you
37:21
because they're they're busy, right?
37:23
But this album campaign we focus on can we interview you for a
37:28
book that we are writing? We are looking for 100 CE OS
37:32
that we can interview for a book.
37:34
And it's so amazing because after those 100, you know,
37:38
interviews, you can turn that into like a book.
37:41
And now you have a book. Yeah, now you have like one year
37:44
podcast episodes and now you have like one of your short
37:47
clips. You can post it just it just
37:49
goes bananas because you focus on creating content while having
37:53
a conversation with your with a potential clients.
37:57
So. It's a really cool idea, you
37:59
know, like if you, if there was like 1 central question that you
38:03
could ask 100 different people and get their take and turn that
38:06
into a book, that'd be really fun.
38:08
If it was like, it would have to be like a, it'd have to be the
38:10
perfect question or something. But I.
38:12
Love it would be. It would be.
38:15
Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
38:17
No, no, yeah, I would. No, I I definitely agree with
38:19
you. Even like like ask him like, you
38:21
know, how would you, you know, recover from failure?
38:27
It would be crazy to get those kind of how would you, how
38:30
would, what would you do in the 1st 30 days if you lose
38:33
everything and everyone would have different frameworks.
38:35
It's going to be, it's going to be very, very interesting.
38:38
So yeah, it just, the point is that it doesn't have to be
38:41
podcast. It's just, it's just an approach
38:45
to talk to people. And if you like asking questions
38:50
and having a conversation with people is definitely gonna work
38:52
for you. Yeah.
38:53
I love that. Yeah, You're not.
38:55
We're not emailers, like we're people that want to have
38:59
conversations. Ultimately, it's just a way to
39:01
get someone to raise their hand. That's a gem, man.
39:04
I really appreciate that. And it sounds like a good time
39:07
to transition to the Founder Challenge question.
39:10
Are you ready? I didn't know about this
39:14
challenge, but let's do it. Let's do it.
39:16
OK, you got four different categories to choose from, and
39:20
you know you could turn the founder challenge into a book.
39:23
I probably asked him maybe 15. This is so fun.
39:25
This is the first podcast. I, no, I saw the, this podcast
39:29
at the IRS CEO and there were like the, each of the, there
39:33
were like 3 guests, Alex, and there's just two, but I forgot.
39:37
They're also amazing. We're given money and OK, what
39:40
would you do with that? And they're like this thing that
39:42
you're doing now, It's amazing. Like you're super smart, you're
39:46
super smart and creative. Go for it.
39:47
Go for what? It was nice.
39:48
For Founder Challenge question you, you have to pick from one
39:51
of the categories. It's either tough, risky,
39:55
explosive, or philosophical. I go for a risky.
40:01
Risky. I like it.
40:02
OK, here we go. Nice.
40:04
What's the sketchiest growth hack you've ever used?
40:11
What is the sketchiest growth AC I've ever used?
40:19
On top of my mind, it's saying that it would.
40:26
It's actually. It's not sketchy at all, but I
40:31
think the most effective one is the interview method actually.
40:34
Yeah, that's not sketchy though. That's great, sketchy, but it's
40:38
it's so it's so well, but if it's like a bad thing, sketchy.
40:45
What was that thing? If there's this thing that I
40:49
like, it would basically it would it's basically saying that
40:57
no set up fees or upfront payment.
41:01
But then once you're once you're and this is very good too.
41:04
It's sketchy but very good too, like because people like
41:08
response when you say there's no, no set up fee and up for
41:11
payment because it's now it's zero risk.
41:13
But then once you're having a conversation with them, if you
41:16
can, if you can do it the right way, they would forget that
41:20
you've actually offered that in the first place.
41:23
And then charge them anyway. Yes, because when when they see
41:26
that, Oh my God, this is so valuable, they're going to ask a
41:29
question how much and then you go for it.
41:32
And then they would forget that the and that the various first
41:35
touch point is that you said no set up fees or upfront payment.
41:38
It works. Yeah, that is sketchy.
41:41
It works. Yeah, that it's like, hey, I
41:44
thought there was no set up fee. Like what's no set up fee?
41:46
What are you talking about? It's right here.
41:48
Now that's the crazy part about this.
41:51
Even the prospects forget about it because they just want the
41:54
offer that you are. It's only work if you have a
41:56
very, very good offer. And also you wanna you wanna pre
42:01
qualify the people you're gonna talk to.
42:02
But yeah, I think that's that's it, like this.
42:08
And thanks for the honesty. I appreciate that.
42:09
You know, we're all here trying to trying to make a living.
42:12
It's all good. You send these millions and
42:15
millions of emails. What is like the worst response?
42:18
Because I've gotten some bad ones.
42:19
Obviously, I couldn't even say it on the podcast of people that
42:22
do not like cold outbound. And they make it well known is
42:27
does any things stick out of the top of your mind?
42:31
Is it something that I can see here?
42:33
I don't know. Is it?
42:34
I mean, I've got death. The right side I mean.
42:37
It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't my campaign, it was my
42:41
client's campaign. And the prospect said something
42:44
like eat your ass or something like eat your pussy or something
42:48
like that. And this client was a lady.
42:51
But you know what's so crazy? That client of mine was able to
42:53
turn it around. Really.
42:56
Yes, she responded to the person and like in a in a, in a, in a
43:02
most professional way. And the person actually kind of
43:06
I think the person felt bad. Yeah.
43:09
Good. Because, you know, because she's
43:10
a lady, she's a woman. So like, people are also more
43:14
kinder to women. Oh, this is another sketchy
43:17
thing. I mean, I'm not sure if I'm
43:20
supposed to share this in this podcast, but I think everyone's
43:23
a founder here, so everyone's going to be amazing.
43:24
Yeah, we're all. Friends, it's OK.
43:26
So in my e-mail campaigns, I use my wife's name, my sister in
43:32
laws name and my cousin in laws name.
43:35
They're all ladies because we've seen that people responds well,
43:41
better if the outbound is coming from a lady and there's some
43:45
some like names that they they like, like Sarah there and it
43:51
works. So that's kind of like a thing
43:53
that we do. We get.
43:54
So if it's like Ryan or Ryan, we get we get less results, Sir,
44:00
we. Get less results, yeah.
44:01
Sad so. But if it's like a Rebecca and,
44:04
you know, a Diane or Amika Ella, you get better.
44:09
Yeah. That's crazy.
44:11
That's crazy. That's great.
44:14
Cool man. This has been wonderful.
44:17
Where do people find out about you and your company and connect
44:21
with you online? You can you can search me up on
44:25
LinkedIn Roy and Yideya. I'm happy to say when I checked
44:29
my name on ChatGPT, something showed up.
44:32
So maybe you can also check me how to ChatGPT Google my name
44:36
Ryan. It is going to show up something
44:37
if we want to make it easier setters dot pH, you'll get a lot
44:41
of learn more about us and yeah, we're here to serve.
44:45
Always remember, we're not here to build a business.
44:47
We're here to leave a legacy. Yeah, I appreciate that, Royan.
44:51
And just for the listeners, you know, I've worked with you and
44:53
your team and just absolute pros and like I said, just a wealth
44:57
of knowledge and expertise in this very specific field, which
45:01
is really hard to navigate. If anybody's been out there and
45:03
had to deal with e-mail deliverability, it can feel
45:06
desperate at times. So I I appreciate your insights
45:09
and thanks for coming on the show and talking.
45:10
To us, it's such a pleasure, Sir, you're such an amazing
45:14
person to talk to all the time. I love talking to you.
45:18
Here, me too man. Hey founders, let me ask you
45:22
this, are you building with AI or getting left behind by it?
45:27
If you're serious about scaling smarter, faster and bolder, you
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