2026-03-27_brainforge_sales_strategy_and_partnershi

Meeting Title: Brainforge Sales Strategy and Partnerships Date: 2026-03-27 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Amber Lin, Jorrel Sto. Tomas

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1 00:00:22.750 ⇒ 00:00:23.850 Robert Tseng: Hello!

2 00:00:27.430 ⇒ 00:00:28.469 Robert Tseng: Can you hear me?

3 00:00:29.990 ⇒ 00:00:31.929 Amber Lin: I was muted, I can hear you.

4 00:00:31.930 ⇒ 00:00:35.609 Robert Tseng: Okay, great. Yeah, this is actually a call with Jarrell, but I’m…

5 00:00:35.610 ⇒ 00:00:37.132 Amber Lin: Yeah, I saw.

6 00:00:37.760 ⇒ 00:00:40.060 Amber Lin: It’s on the left-hand corner.

7 00:00:40.060 ⇒ 00:00:43.160 Robert Tseng: Okay, great, but I am just gonna…

8 00:00:44.640 ⇒ 00:00:47.680 Robert Tseng: pass off what I can, and then…

9 00:00:48.170 ⇒ 00:00:50.670 Robert Tseng: When he comes on, we can switch over.

10 00:00:51.020 ⇒ 00:00:57.089 Robert Tseng: Okay, so, yeah, I was, like, looking through… I mean, I think… I think the slide is great. I think.

11 00:00:57.090 ⇒ 00:00:57.660 Amber Lin: Yay!

12 00:00:57.660 ⇒ 00:01:02.310 Robert Tseng: Every once a couple… I mean, There’s no…

13 00:01:02.310 ⇒ 00:01:21.289 Amber Lin: opportunity size that I did get, but I can definitely… once you talked about, like, opportunity size, I was like, oh, I totally missed that. I think we can totally do one for, like, what will happen if they re… increase return revenue, or increase retention, and what would that be like?

14 00:01:21.420 ⇒ 00:01:31.950 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, it’s okay, we don’t need to include it for now, I think I’m comfortable presenting it, but yeah, so I think the way that I’m… I haven’t even gone through all your slides yet. I spent a lot of time doing these reviews, so…

15 00:01:32.000 ⇒ 00:01:44.750 Robert Tseng: I think the outline is great. I think it highlights, kind of, some important key findings. Like, I would pretty much just include the slides that are tied to these key findings and throw everything else in the appendix. I think it’s just too much info to consume.

16 00:01:44.750 ⇒ 00:01:45.209 Amber Lin: I agree.

17 00:01:45.210 ⇒ 00:01:55.690 Robert Tseng: let’s just kind of, go through it. So, I think this slide is fine. I think I kind of changed the takeaway a little bit. You can kind of see some of these things. And then…

18 00:01:56.470 ⇒ 00:02:01.649 Robert Tseng: New product launch. Yeah, I also changed the takeaway here, you can tell.

19 00:02:01.650 ⇒ 00:02:02.860 Amber Lin: Mmm…

20 00:02:03.270 ⇒ 00:02:09.019 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think it’s not so much that they are just launching

21 00:02:09.650 ⇒ 00:02:23.150 Robert Tseng: new products without a strategy, or, like, not extending the lifetime. It’s like, these are the same iterations of products, but, like, as they launch new versions of Terzepatide, well, obviously, they’ve just replaces Terzepatide, so it’s like…

22 00:02:23.280 ⇒ 00:02:28.470 Robert Tseng: If you’re just launching two products that are too similar, you’ll just eat into your own demand.

23 00:02:29.970 ⇒ 00:02:42.609 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and it’s like, I understand that they may be trying to, like, jack up the average order value by adding these… by including these additives, but, yeah, I mean, just, like, that’s the risk of just adding

24 00:02:42.730 ⇒ 00:02:53.079 Robert Tseng: SKUs that are too close to what you already have. It just ends up eating into your own demand. So, that’s probably why their growth looks pretty flat, even though there’s all these, like, spikes in the revenue. Yeah.

25 00:02:53.080 ⇒ 00:02:57.750 Amber Lin: And they have a lot of products. They have way more products than Eden. They have, like.

26 00:02:58.350 ⇒ 00:03:03.760 Amber Lin: 800-something variants, so they… they launched a lot of… a lot of different stuff.

27 00:03:03.760 ⇒ 00:03:11.129 Robert Tseng: Yeah. And so, like, you know, I’m gonna take this, I’m gonna explain a little bit of that life cycle to them, but I think what’s interesting is that,

28 00:03:12.780 ⇒ 00:03:26.209 Robert Tseng: Yeah, if they know what their, like, a product lifespan is, I mean, you’re saying 212 days, I don’t know if that’s true, that still seems pretty long. Typically, there’s, like, a launch premium when you launch a new product,

29 00:03:26.860 ⇒ 00:03:45.130 Robert Tseng: like, I guess, you know, this is for existing analysis, I just want you to kind of see, like, what it’s gonna… what it would be, like, later. It’s like, you know, at Ruggable, we launch new products, it’s like, we expect, like, a rug… a new rug design probably has a… we… in our modeling, we would… we would include a launch premium of, like, 4 to 6 weeks, so it’s pretty much…

30 00:03:45.240 ⇒ 00:03:57.680 Robert Tseng: the first… yeah, within… all the… the fastest growth you’re gonna get is within 4 to 6 weeks, and after that, demand kind of will… will drop off, and then it’ll hit some sort of, like, stable… stable curve. That’s typically the life cycle of a product.

31 00:03:57.900 ⇒ 00:04:17.729 Robert Tseng: I mean, obviously, this view doesn’t reflect that, because, I mean, you only kind of took the top 10 products, and also you’re, like, tracking, like, lifetime overall. You’re not really looking at, like, what that launch premium is. But, like, I’m sure they’re, like, launching a bunch of products, because they’re just trying to, like, capture the launch premium every single… as… as often as they can.

32 00:04:17.839 ⇒ 00:04:27.969 Robert Tseng: But, you know, I think what happens is if you launch too many products that are similar, that launch premium also shrinks, because people are less,

33 00:04:28.190 ⇒ 00:04:46.710 Robert Tseng: interested in buying, like, the same thing over and over again, right? It’s like, it loses novelty, and so, you know, that’s a risk that they run. Even though they’re launching many more products than Eden, they’re actually probably hurting themselves, in the long term, because they’re, like, killing their own launch premium.

34 00:04:46.720 ⇒ 00:04:55.399 Robert Tseng: I mean, this is, like, not something I would… you’d be able to tell on the slide, but I’m just letting you know, like, kind of… this is further down the line, how I… how I would continue.

35 00:04:55.400 ⇒ 00:05:06.620 Amber Lin: So that would be, like, just a short time frame, maybe, like, 2 months-ish, and see all the products they launched, and maybe compare 10 months ago what the premium was.

36 00:05:06.620 ⇒ 00:05:19.639 Robert Tseng: Yeah, that’d be interesting, yeah. And, I think you’d be able to tell them, like, hey, launching all of these versions of Terzepatide, like, the first time you did it, you know, launch premium was, like, maybe, like.

37 00:05:20.010 ⇒ 00:05:34.790 Robert Tseng: 8 weeks, 10 weeks, average, you know, 20% growth week over week. And then by, like, the 10th time you relaunch Herzepatide, maybe it’s, like, 6 weeks, and the average growth rate is, like, 10-15% or something. So it’s, like.

38 00:05:34.790 ⇒ 00:05:42.410 Robert Tseng: you know, I think that’s… that’s the story that I would tell, if I… if I were to kind of take… run… run with this longer.

39 00:05:42.470 ⇒ 00:05:57.309 Robert Tseng: And Jarrell, I’m just, like, I was… I’m trying to move on from delivery stuff, so I was just giving her feedback live, so save me a little time, and then I’ll switch over to sales. But also thought it would be helpful for you to kind of see some of the work we do on the data strategy side.

40 00:05:58.200 ⇒ 00:06:08.999 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, sounds good. Yeah, delivery… delivery’s always… There’s an art to it.

41 00:06:09.140 ⇒ 00:06:09.700 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

42 00:06:09.700 ⇒ 00:06:11.410 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So, I get it.

43 00:06:13.250 ⇒ 00:06:32.289 Robert Tseng: Okay, and then, like, general feedback for the rest of the slides. I think when you’re talking about reductions or things, just… I would try to use numbers, try to make it more, like, kind of punchy, like, let them… let them know what those numbers are. Like, I think people can… people can see the shape of the trend, so they, like, will intuitively understand, like, what’s happening, but if you can quantify it, I think that’s probably better.

44 00:06:32.290 ⇒ 00:06:36.879 Robert Tseng: I also changed some of your questions. I think, really, like, the way I view, you know.

45 00:06:37.580 ⇒ 00:06:46.170 Robert Tseng: what this should be, it’s like, if you gave us more time, what would be our next step? Like, that’s really what the answer you’re trying to… the question you’re trying to answer, right? So,

46 00:06:46.420 ⇒ 00:06:53.480 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then, you know, I think this is interesting. It shows, like, how many products they launched, but, yeah…

47 00:06:53.480 ⇒ 00:06:54.569 Amber Lin: the appendix.

48 00:06:55.510 ⇒ 00:07:09.669 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this might end up going to the appendix. Yeah, once again, I would just map it to what you have in your outline. So, yeah, I did… I kind of got… I kind of stopped at 10. I think there’s some general feedback, consistent feedback on just continuing to use… use numbers where you can.

49 00:07:09.790 ⇒ 00:07:11.820 Robert Tseng: And then…

50 00:07:11.880 ⇒ 00:07:27.870 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, each slide is just, like, very dense, so, like, I sit there, and I, like, I read it multiple times to try to see, like, what… what I’ve… like, what is… what is the story we’re trying to tell here? So I… I just don’t… I have to move on for now, but, yeah, if you can at least map it to…

51 00:07:27.870 ⇒ 00:07:39.860 Robert Tseng: just, like, kind of compress it to what you have in this outline. I think these findings are good enough. Like, I would… I would run with just that. And the stuff being appendix, it’s not waste. We can just go… we can go back to it. Like, I just… I just need more time to consume it. I just…

52 00:07:39.860 ⇒ 00:07:40.830 Robert Tseng: No, I’m sorry.

53 00:07:40.940 ⇒ 00:07:41.560 Amber Lin: Yeah, okay.

54 00:07:41.560 ⇒ 00:07:41.880 Robert Tseng: Okay.

55 00:07:42.160 ⇒ 00:07:42.680 Amber Lin: How much.

56 00:07:42.680 ⇒ 00:07:43.000 Robert Tseng: Okay.

57 00:07:43.000 ⇒ 00:07:51.969 Amber Lin: How much time do you expect me to spend on this? Is there, like, a cap on how much time I should spend, or I can just spend this afternoon on this?

58 00:07:52.250 ⇒ 00:08:00.839 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, I mean, I know you’re kind of, like, in a holding pattern elsewhere, so if you have time, like, I would just… I would try to just do it, do it well. I feel like this is a good learning for you, because…

59 00:08:00.840 ⇒ 00:08:01.350 Amber Lin: Okay.

60 00:08:01.350 ⇒ 00:08:12.349 Robert Tseng: you know, we’re gonna go bring in another client, and I want… I want you to get more reps on doing discovery, so, like, I don’t mind you spending more time than you need to here. Like…

61 00:08:12.840 ⇒ 00:08:16.260 Robert Tseng: you know, it’s interesting, because you and Greg are both doing…

62 00:08:16.360 ⇒ 00:08:29.200 Robert Tseng: kind of, like, delivery source opportunities. Like, he’s doing it for Global VetLink right now. His approach is very different than yours, which I think there are some, and I’ll just kind of point out the differences, like.

63 00:08:30.000 ⇒ 00:08:44.539 Robert Tseng: he’s a lot more, like, into the details of, like, specifically… I mean, this is a software pitch, so it’s completely different as well, so not exactly the same, but he’s, like, very bottoms up, and I think this is feedback I’m giving to Utam. It’s like, when we have

64 00:08:44.690 ⇒ 00:08:49.359 Robert Tseng: Like, our staff working on clients that are trying to help with upsells or renewals.

65 00:08:49.380 ⇒ 00:09:07.770 Robert Tseng: like, I think you have the right narrative. Like, I think this… this is the most important slide. Like, I want everybody to produce something like this, because this is… this allows me to go into the conversation, and it allows… and it helps me to kind of, like, frame, these are what our core findings are, and these are what our recommendations are, and I need something that’s a little bit more open-ended, so that I can…

66 00:09:07.770 ⇒ 00:09:12.600 Robert Tseng: Kind of navigate the conversation with the stakeholder, and then kind of

67 00:09:12.840 ⇒ 00:09:24.359 Robert Tseng: push them out, like, there’s… you gave me enough things to, like, kind of go for a big… a big pie, and then on the call, I’m, like, basically trimming it down. Whereas, like, Greg’s approach is, like, super detailed for, like, one particular workstream.

68 00:09:24.590 ⇒ 00:09:40.689 Robert Tseng: And it’s, like, great, like he thought, he clearly thought through it a lot, but, like, what’s, like, the opportunity size there? Like, I don’t… I don’t really think it’s that important. So, I feel like he spent too much time just focusing on one thing and not giving me enough, like, ammunition to, like.

69 00:09:40.850 ⇒ 00:09:49.769 Robert Tseng: can he… can we really grow that? Like, it’s… I mean, it’s a small discovery, that… that one, but, like, I don’t think he gave me enough that I can, like, really…

70 00:09:50.110 ⇒ 00:09:54.949 Robert Tseng: talk broadly and try to craft, like, a 15K a month,

71 00:09:54.950 ⇒ 00:10:10.860 Robert Tseng: like, story out of that. Like, what he gave me was… it looks like it’s just, like, just, like, an additional workstream to whatever we were already doing with them. So, it’s… yeah, anyway, I… I think it’s helpful, because, like, then, you know, if they have any specific questions, like, I… he gave me all the ways I can…

72 00:10:10.860 ⇒ 00:10:25.360 Robert Tseng: handled the objections, but it’s just, like, he didn’t, like, think broadly enough about, like… like, I feel like I learned more about the business from one discovery call with them than he did in his month of working there, because he was so focused on just executing

73 00:10:25.360 ⇒ 00:10:31.420 Robert Tseng: kind of the product analytics tracking work, he didn’t really think about, like, the business… the business side of, like.

74 00:10:32.110 ⇒ 00:10:55.449 Robert Tseng: how much of the revenue is actually coming from self-serve analytics? You know, if we were to optimize, kind of, the… you know, he points out there’s, like, a payment drop-off kind of situation here, where people are… the demo product is too good, people are able to get too much value out of it, you need to add a paywall. I think that’s a really great recommendation, but, like, kind of give me the opportunity size there. Like, how many users

75 00:10:55.450 ⇒ 00:10:59.400 Robert Tseng: what share of users are going through it. If we added a paywall, and they actually…

76 00:10:59.400 ⇒ 00:11:05.829 Robert Tseng: paid? Like, what’s, like, the boost to revenue, like, group? He needs to, like, finish the story, which he… which he didn’t.

77 00:11:05.830 ⇒ 00:11:09.729 Robert Tseng: He was just kind of making product recommendations, which is, like, not…

78 00:11:09.830 ⇒ 00:11:15.649 Robert Tseng: enough for the stakeholder who is basically the VP of growth or marketing.

79 00:11:15.650 ⇒ 00:11:31.690 Robert Tseng: who would be signing off on this. Like, that’s helpful for talking to, like, a head of tech or head of product who’s like, okay, that sounds good, I’ll put it on the roadmap, but, like, that doesn’t help me get more budget from the person who’s gonna be, like, trying to understand, like, what the value of that is to the business.

80 00:11:32.930 ⇒ 00:11:49.660 Robert Tseng: But for your stuff, like, yeah, I think these are, like, good high level. If anything, it’s maybe a little too high level, and, like, the recommendation… I mean, also missing the opportunity size in some way, but, like, at least, like, I mean, I know enough about, kind of, this business that I can… I can just riff on, like, what the,

81 00:11:49.870 ⇒ 00:12:04.140 Robert Tseng: like, what the opportunity size is, and, like, I think I can navigate the conversation there. But, you know, as you do more of these, like, I think if you become more opinionated, about, like, what… like, what specific

82 00:12:04.780 ⇒ 00:12:15.079 Robert Tseng: levers you could… you could use. I think there… there were… there was, like, one or two slides here. Yeah, I mean, like, the whole microdosing trend, right? You’re seeing, okay, Eden is doing microdosing. I mean, you don’t really know, like.

83 00:12:15.150 ⇒ 00:12:27.939 Robert Tseng: kind of what Eden’s betting on for microdosing, but, they’re expecting this to be, like, 20% of the revenue. So, I mean, that’s just, like, something you wouldn’t have known, but it’s like, okay, if they’re launching, you know, 10 plus SKUs per month.

84 00:12:27.940 ⇒ 00:12:38.879 Robert Tseng: And most of these… 90% of these SKUs are existing, products, just kind of repackaged, or just bundled with… with additives. You know, you… you’ve already told the story that

85 00:12:38.880 ⇒ 00:12:50.540 Robert Tseng: you know, 90% of their products are GLP-1 products. This is very kind of volatile. You know, demand is just… is just shrinking if they’re… if they stay completely over-indexed in GLP-1s.

86 00:12:50.700 ⇒ 00:13:00.450 Robert Tseng: If… and then, within those product categories, if they’re just launching new versions of the same thing, you know, they’re also gonna be, like, growth is… growth is going to slow, and…

87 00:13:00.480 ⇒ 00:13:14.250 Robert Tseng: In order to diversify, like, hey, in the macro, kind of, market for this type of product, microdosing is important, new market opportunity, and, like, it, you know, I’m like, I’m trying to, like, paint that story

88 00:13:15.150 ⇒ 00:13:32.120 Robert Tseng: So, like, I’m just telling you how I would be using these slides when I talk… when I talk to them next week. It’s like, great, you’re… the… you’re… you’re launching SKUs, like, high velocity of launching SKUs, but, like, you’re just, you know, it’s… it’s not super strategic, because you’re just, like, trying to create new versions of the same stuff that you already have.

89 00:13:32.120 ⇒ 00:13:38.919 Robert Tseng: And, you know, that’s only going to take you so far. So, you need, like, a more diversified product strategy, right? And, like.

90 00:13:38.920 ⇒ 00:13:53.859 Robert Tseng: therefore let Brainforge kind of help you discover what those opportunities are. We need to go and do kind of more of, of, kind of this, this broader kind of market, market intelligence work, or whatever. This one is a little bit less consistent.

91 00:13:53.860 ⇒ 00:13:57.029 Robert Tseng: I think you’re… or, I mean, I know you’re saying, like, new product…

92 00:13:57.300 ⇒ 00:14:02.039 Robert Tseng: Revenue as a… kind of segmented by, like, new versus returning customers.

93 00:14:02.450 ⇒ 00:14:06.889 Amber Lin: Yeah, this I moved out from the second section, so it originally wasn’t here.

94 00:14:06.890 ⇒ 00:14:26.580 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so it probably shouldn’t be in the section, like, I would probably just move it, but but yeah, I understand that you’re, like, then you’re kind of being like, okay, within the existing product mix, you know, without launching new products, like, what about, like, you know, what is the… what does the revenue mix currently look like? What share is it from new customers versus existing customers? And you’re, like, trying to tell a story there, right?

95 00:14:26.580 ⇒ 00:14:51.279 Robert Tseng: ultimately, your point is that returning customers are… it’s, it’s over-indexed on… or, like, there are, returning revenue is too low, like, that’s basically what you’re saying. And so, you know, do we have recommendations for, like, what they should be looking into to increase, returning, the share of returning orders? I think all this other stuff is fine, like, I think it’s… they probably know this about this business already, like, they should know what they

96 00:14:51.280 ⇒ 00:14:58.950 Robert Tseng: AOVs and whatever, like, yeah, just throw that in the appendix. So yeah, you only want the stuff that you’re really telling the story for to be in the main… the main deck.

97 00:14:58.950 ⇒ 00:15:08.990 Robert Tseng: And yeah, like, I would only just pick, like, one or two of these. Like, I don’t think you need to do every version of, like, the… of the cohort analysis. Just pick the one that you feel like helps you tell the story better.

98 00:15:10.810 ⇒ 00:15:11.770 Amber Lin: Okay. Yeah.

99 00:15:12.000 ⇒ 00:15:12.829 Amber Lin: Cool.

100 00:15:12.910 ⇒ 00:15:13.420 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

101 00:15:13.420 ⇒ 00:15:14.180 Amber Lin: Very helpful.

102 00:15:14.180 ⇒ 00:15:29.749 Robert Tseng: I mean, overall, I think, like, you have a lot of good ingredients here. I think it’s really just trying to put… help… putting together the story. I think you did a good job in putting… synthesizing this, so I think just kind of… kind of compressing what you have on the slides, like, you know, it’ll get most… most of the way there.

103 00:15:30.310 ⇒ 00:15:30.960 Amber Lin: Yeah.

104 00:15:30.960 ⇒ 00:15:31.900 Robert Tseng: Cool. Yeah.

105 00:15:31.900 ⇒ 00:15:35.649 Amber Lin: Sounds good, thank you for taking the time, it was very helpful, and… Great.

106 00:15:36.460 ⇒ 00:15:41.159 Amber Lin: And I’ll give you to Jarrell. Jarrell, thanks for giving us some time on this.

107 00:15:41.720 ⇒ 00:15:46.210 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Don’t worry about it, this is all important. It’s all for ops, I get it.

108 00:15:47.850 ⇒ 00:15:49.549 Robert Tseng: Okay, alright. Hi, Amber.

109 00:15:49.550 ⇒ 00:15:50.270 Amber Lin: Bye.

110 00:15:53.630 ⇒ 00:15:54.810 Robert Tseng: Okay…

111 00:15:54.810 ⇒ 00:15:57.570 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Man, you’re just non-stop, Robert. You’re just non-stop.

112 00:15:58.780 ⇒ 00:16:00.319 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’m just, like…

113 00:16:00.710 ⇒ 00:16:12.170 Robert Tseng: reviewing contracts in the morning, and then, like, going… doing some reviews for people, and then now… now I’m gonna think about sales, and I need to follow off on all the conference stuff during yesterday.

114 00:16:12.830 ⇒ 00:16:14.780 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Gosh, yeah.

115 00:16:18.460 ⇒ 00:16:21.329 Robert Tseng: Okay, well, yeah, I guess, like.

116 00:16:21.780 ⇒ 00:16:27.009 Robert Tseng: We have a little bit of time, kind of, shifting gears here, and

117 00:16:28.110 ⇒ 00:16:32.700 Robert Tseng: Where would be a good starting point?

118 00:16:33.800 ⇒ 00:16:35.919 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I wanna just, like, work…

119 00:16:36.040 ⇒ 00:16:40.700 Robert Tseng: some deals. I mean, like, I’m trying to see…

120 00:16:41.950 ⇒ 00:16:46.610 Robert Tseng: like, I’m just gonna go and pull up HubSpot, we’ll just start talking about the existing accounts,

121 00:16:46.610 ⇒ 00:16:47.250 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Let’s do it.

122 00:16:47.620 ⇒ 00:16:48.240 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

123 00:16:51.080 ⇒ 00:16:52.450 Robert Tseng: And…

124 00:16:54.190 ⇒ 00:16:57.129 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah. Side note, while you’re doing that.

125 00:16:57.130 ⇒ 00:16:57.690 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

126 00:16:57.690 ⇒ 00:17:06.939 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So I got… I have Sales Navigator, and so I looked into the leads that Snowflake had passed over… or the Snowflake rep passed over to Utom.

127 00:17:06.940 ⇒ 00:17:07.650 Robert Tseng: stop.

128 00:17:07.650 ⇒ 00:17:16.390 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And… every single one of them were within ICPs that we currently… we currently, like, work in, so…

129 00:17:16.560 ⇒ 00:17:16.880 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

130 00:17:17.660 ⇒ 00:17:33.139 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, so I guess my question, which I think I’ll talk to Utam later about this as well, is do they know what our ICPs are, the ones that we generally work with, and have we provided them, like, case studies and, like, our own, like.

131 00:17:33.330 ⇒ 00:17:38.450 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: you know, I guess sales decks that they use as well when they’re… when they’re passing over leads.

132 00:17:39.620 ⇒ 00:17:44.349 Robert Tseng: Some… some partners we’ve done co-branded decks with,

133 00:17:46.720 ⇒ 00:17:52.229 Robert Tseng: I mean, I don’t think Snowflake is going around pitching us, I think they… yeah, they’re more kind of like…

134 00:17:53.870 ⇒ 00:18:03.310 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think typically the smaller… like, the smaller guys will do co-marketing with us, but Snowflake’s not co-marketing with us yet. Omni will,

135 00:18:03.480 ⇒ 00:18:10.950 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we’ve… but they’ve only… we’ve only done events with them, we haven’t actually, like, done co-branded case studies or anything with them yet.

136 00:18:11.290 ⇒ 00:18:20.250 Robert Tseng: So… I mean, from, like, There’s probably some hierarchy to, like, quality of, like, partner assets,

137 00:18:22.390 ⇒ 00:18:29.250 Robert Tseng: like, how targeted we get in… like, I think at, like, the very basic, it’s just, like.

138 00:18:29.330 ⇒ 00:18:40.469 Robert Tseng: On the lower end, we’re just sharing leads with each other, just to see if, like, it fits in the ICP. And then, once we were like, okay, we’re going after the same ICP, then we put together a co-branded deck.

139 00:18:40.480 ⇒ 00:18:43.629 Robert Tseng: And that gets socialized on both sides.

140 00:18:43.640 ⇒ 00:19:01.000 Robert Tseng: And then, like, I think the next step up is, like, okay, then we’re actually going to host an event going after this particular ICP. So, then we come both sides to the table, we all bring the same lead list, and then, yeah, there’s, like, some promotional sequence to kind of, like, kind of get the people in the room, and we do a joint presentation together.

141 00:19:01.220 ⇒ 00:19:09.720 Robert Tseng: And then, like, I think after that, I think that’s kind of, like, the furthest we’ve really gone with partners, in terms of, like.

142 00:19:09.760 ⇒ 00:19:24.880 Robert Tseng: how much we actually do together. I mean, we could publish on each other’s blogs, like, we have a couple things that are outstanding. Neither of us have the time to pick it up right now, because, yeah, but, like, Moengage, they’re, like, probably 10x bigger than

143 00:19:24.880 ⇒ 00:19:34.389 Robert Tseng: And they own 40% of the share of the CDP market. Like, they’re the largest CDP outside of the U.S. They’ve been trying to make a play into breaking to the U.S. market.

144 00:19:34.400 ⇒ 00:19:41.229 Robert Tseng: I think they’re great, they’re 10x bigger than Mother Ducks, not at the snowflake size, but, you know, seems like a good…

145 00:19:41.410 ⇒ 00:19:51.870 Robert Tseng: they’ve been in the industry for a while, and they have a lot of resources, so they want us to basically write something on their blog. I just haven’t done the interview with them yet, and we were trying to

146 00:19:51.870 ⇒ 00:20:02.179 Robert Tseng: throw some events together. So, like, that one is, like, some… that’s a partnership that’s been in calibration this quarter, but, like, just hasn’t moved, like, hasn’t moved fast enough.

147 00:20:02.180 ⇒ 00:20:10.800 Robert Tseng: But, like, I feel like they’re very open to doing a lot with us, because they don’t have U.S.-based partners yet.

148 00:20:10.800 ⇒ 00:20:22.530 Robert Tseng: To break into this market. Whereas, like, Snowflake, they’re not gonna do anything with us. It’s just, we only rely on the individual relationships with the AEs. We have, like, some, like, platform status with them.

149 00:20:22.570 ⇒ 00:20:31.269 Robert Tseng: like, we’ll have to go to conferences, but, like, yeah, it’s still, like… I mean, we’re still very early in our… in our partnership with Snowflake, so I don’t… I don’t expect them to give us anything.

150 00:20:31.310 ⇒ 00:20:44.000 Robert Tseng: I mean, I just… I just use those anecdotes as, like, it’s a wide range of things. Like, I don’t think we can systematically map it out. We just have to go and chase the momentum of, like… I mean, it’s really only, like, 5 partnerships we’re evaluating at any time.

151 00:20:44.000 ⇒ 00:20:57.029 Robert Tseng: Opendb is the other one that, like, is, that Utam, I’ve been pushing him to meet with. They’re basically, like, an open source BI tool, like, an open source Bloomberg that’s hosted in Snowflake.

152 00:20:57.230 ⇒ 00:21:01.619 Robert Tseng: I think it’s a great product, Snowflake really bet on them, gave them a… gave them…

153 00:21:01.660 ⇒ 00:21:13.670 Robert Tseng: they, funded them to go and build the app in the Snowflake marketplace, and, like, you know, they’re in talks with, kind of, similar, like, fintech, or, like,

154 00:21:13.680 ⇒ 00:21:32.510 Robert Tseng: not fintech, like, banking and, some financial services institutions that we’ve talked to as well. So, there was, like, a little bit of… there was some overlap in, like, leads. We know that they’re really prioritizing, the finance, or the financial services industry, and they are, like, kind of the… like, the…

155 00:21:33.090 ⇒ 00:21:49.499 Robert Tseng: coaster child for Snowflake’s marketplace currently. So, I think I view that as, like, a play to, like, work more closely with Snowflake. If we can sell OpenBB to, like, they’re getting us into a conversation with BlackRock and, like, some other, like, big, bigger financial services firms, like.

156 00:21:49.610 ⇒ 00:22:05.149 Robert Tseng: I… I mean, I… I will… like, yeah, we’re… we’re just… we’re gonna… we’re gonna… that’s where the momentum is, so we’re just chasing that. So, yeah, I mean, I think that’s… that’s generally kind of the dynamic that it’s… that’s been on partnerships, like.

157 00:22:05.150 ⇒ 00:22:13.849 Robert Tseng: there’s that spreadsheet that I shared with you where we’re tracking things, but then, like, day-to-day, it’s like, it can go in so many different directions. I just need to have, like.

158 00:22:13.850 ⇒ 00:22:25.380 Robert Tseng: the creativity and diligence to actually, like, focus… focus them towards… towards things. Like, I… yeah, so I think that’s… that’s my… that’d be my long response to, kind of, your question about partnerships.

159 00:22:25.940 ⇒ 00:22:43.389 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay, no, that’s fair, that’s fair. Yeah, I’m familiar, like, especially with enterprise, AEs kind of own their own pipeline. Yeah. Obviously they will have, like, some level of partnerships, but it’s… yeah, you’re absolutely right, it’s more of, like, they bundle it together with services so they can easily…

160 00:22:43.570 ⇒ 00:22:47.039 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: what’s the word for it?

161 00:22:47.710 ⇒ 00:22:49.870 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So it’s easy for them to co-sell.

162 00:22:50.290 ⇒ 00:22:50.690 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

163 00:22:50.690 ⇒ 00:23:09.990 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, I was just curious, I was just curious if, like, yeah, if we were sending them stuff, because, yeah, I’m… I guess I’m… I understand what we see on our side, I was just curious what they see on their side when, you know, like, oh, okay, Brainforge comes to mind when X, you know, when X, you know, product or service is being discussed.

164 00:23:10.360 ⇒ 00:23:10.880 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

165 00:23:10.880 ⇒ 00:23:18.569 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And so, yeah, I was just curious if, if, yeah, if we had gotten that, yeah, if something like that was, being delivered to them, that’s all.

166 00:23:19.810 ⇒ 00:23:30.829 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, no, I mean, like, if you look at the platform, we have all these partner decks and, like, things, like, these are all… all the assets that we’ve created are there. I mean, I think we have the ability to spin those up very quickly.

167 00:23:30.900 ⇒ 00:23:49.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think anything, like, a request like that, Hannah should turn around within 24 hours. So, like, yeah, I think if you ever need to put something in front of them, you should just… just rip it. Like, either do it yourself and live code it, or just, like, have Hannah… I would probably just ask Hannah to do it. I never… I never build those things myself anymore.

168 00:23:50.670 ⇒ 00:24:04.160 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, well, also, there’s so many templates, too, like, it shouldn’t… it shouldn’t take very long. Yeah, okay. Yeah, like I said, I am… I’m having… I… Lutam wanted to hop on, like, a call or discuss, later today anyway, in terms of, like.

169 00:24:04.160 ⇒ 00:24:08.900 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, I mean, his thing is, like, we have all these contacts, and he wants to know, like, well…

170 00:24:09.350 ⇒ 00:24:17.569 Robert Tseng: if… like, who does he actually put you in front of? Like, he’s gonna keep the ones closer to the chest for, like, the AEs that he feels like they…

171 00:24:17.900 ⇒ 00:24:22.219 Robert Tseng: Like, we gotta… per,

172 00:24:22.970 ⇒ 00:24:38.579 Robert Tseng: I mean, there are some AEs that are just… like, the Moengage team, they don’t really care about the expertise, they just wanna… they’ll go to market motion. But, like, some of the Snowflake AEs, they gotta know that, like, we know our shit, so, like, if the… if Tom doesn’t feel confident that, like, you know how to

173 00:24:38.580 ⇒ 00:24:51.630 Robert Tseng: you know, represent Brain Forge to them, that he’ll probably not share those ones with you, but there are others that… that he will… that he… that he can… that he can give to you. So, I think that’s kind of probably what he’s thinking when he’s, when he wants to talk to you about partners.

174 00:24:52.090 ⇒ 00:24:53.360 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay, yeah, I mean…

175 00:24:53.360 ⇒ 00:24:53.880 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

176 00:24:54.950 ⇒ 00:25:04.849 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I mean, I’ve worked with you before, so I… at a certain level, I guess, yeah, there’s also a lot of rapport I need to build with Utom, so…

177 00:25:04.850 ⇒ 00:25:05.180 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

178 00:25:05.180 ⇒ 00:25:19.239 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: There’s, there’s, yeah, even in our, in our chat, he’s like, oh, yeah, I don’t really know your, your lore, and I’m like, that’s true. You don’t really know what I’ve done, and also, I don’t really explain to people what I do, I just, I just run. Yeah.

179 00:25:19.240 ⇒ 00:25:25.570 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So, okay, but yeah, let’s, let’s, let’s rip it. Let’s, like, let’s, let’s go to HubSpot, and let’s see what we can…

180 00:25:25.880 ⇒ 00:25:28.490 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: what we can… we can do here.

181 00:25:30.410 ⇒ 00:25:39.870 Robert Tseng: Okay. Yeah, I mean, it’s gonna be less, like, telling, it’s gonna be more showing, if you like, from now on. I think all the docs and process I’ve already kind of shared about anything that is kind of like a…

182 00:25:39.960 ⇒ 00:25:59.120 Robert Tseng: like a stray coattail, like, you just kind of have to take it and keep building with it. And… yeah, so HubSpot, this is the only tab I care about. It’s really just in progress, anything that’s in here, I’ll circle this at least once or twice a week, make sure that every… every deal gets hit, because these are all the ones that are active.

183 00:25:59.120 ⇒ 00:26:03.189 Robert Tseng: There are deals at other stages, like, I mean…

184 00:26:03.510 ⇒ 00:26:11.389 Robert Tseng: There’s all this… all these people we’ve talked to at some point, one or another, they may not all be labeled well or whatever, but I… yeah, I… I don’t really…

185 00:26:11.550 ⇒ 00:26:15.159 Robert Tseng: focus on them, I just… when the… when I talk to

186 00:26:15.270 ⇒ 00:26:21.520 Robert Tseng: people, I just add them to this list, and I know that I, at least I’m working… working on them. So,

187 00:26:22.300 ⇒ 00:26:39.579 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I… I’m not… I’m, like, more of the belief that we just keep doing this until, like, we can’t handle it anymore, then actually have to go and beat up HubSpot and make it more systematized, but, like, just to hit, like, the… I mean, just for the sake of getting

188 00:26:40.140 ⇒ 00:26:56.279 Robert Tseng: like, yeah, this is… this is a… this is a one-man sales force right now, it’s just me. So, I think for… for you, like, you know, you can use this, or if you feel like you need to add more structure to it, you can, but, like, I also feel like it’s not that necessary, and I… I probably would

189 00:26:56.280 ⇒ 00:27:02.330 Robert Tseng: if you asked me, I would delay any of those changes, because, like, I feel like our HubSpot is… is good enough in terms of, like.

190 00:27:02.360 ⇒ 00:27:21.749 Robert Tseng: having deal stage clarity, and, like, having all the things that we need to put in, and as long as we’re working this active list, and this active list keeps growing, like, I… I think from… like, I think that’s sufficient for… for where we’re at. We don’t use HubSpot triggers, we don’t need to do any of those automations. I mean, we can set up more automations, but I think it’s…

191 00:27:22.250 ⇒ 00:27:27.140 Robert Tseng: like, once again, the volume is not very high, so I would prefer to just…

192 00:27:27.490 ⇒ 00:27:43.730 Robert Tseng: just go through enough reps of, like, knowing the messaging, knowing how to sell, creating those touchpoints. If you feel like you’re falling behind in, like, getting your own leads, like, you should have your own HubSpot access. If not, then it should be Sales Brainforge in the sales,

193 00:27:43.790 ⇒ 00:28:01.900 Robert Tseng: in the sales folder in OnePass, you know, you would be your own deal owner, and so you kind of just kind of work your own leads, is kind of the way that we see it. But I will share with you kind of where we’re at with each of these leads, and I’m going to just follow through, follow up with some of them now.

194 00:28:02.000 ⇒ 00:28:10.559 Robert Tseng: So, like, LE as an existing client, as an upsell, we stopped working with them 3 months ago. We’ve…

195 00:28:10.900 ⇒ 00:28:20.759 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, we’re just kind of at legal now. We’re… I think this deal’s gonna close, probably not today if we’re… if we have to redline it, probably next week. So,

196 00:28:21.160 ⇒ 00:28:33.490 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, there’s… these… these are all pretty much, like, the leftover leads from… from, Q1 that are… are either, like, that are towards the mid-to-late stage SQL, and…

197 00:28:33.600 ⇒ 00:28:47.109 Robert Tseng: I mean, I’m expecting Ellie and Sunstone to close. I think the others will all kind of, like, delay until… until Q2. And then this EY deal just closed, yes, or is… oh, we’re… we’re moving it. We’re…

198 00:28:47.350 ⇒ 00:28:50.309 Robert Tseng: we’re, we’re reviewing. So anyway, I’m gonna…

199 00:28:51.340 ⇒ 00:28:56.249 Robert Tseng: I’m just gonna click, and just actually move… move things, just so I can…

200 00:28:56.590 ⇒ 00:29:02.680 Robert Tseng: Like, just go through it. So, the CTA deal, this one…

201 00:29:02.920 ⇒ 00:29:09.179 Robert Tseng: So it’s mislabeled, this is, it’s 30K, this is,

202 00:29:09.380 ⇒ 00:29:14.019 Robert Tseng: 18K for a year, I’m just gonna call it 108K.

203 00:29:14.360 ⇒ 00:29:20.010 Robert Tseng: And… This is…

204 00:29:26.230 ⇒ 00:29:30.969 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so we are in verbal.

205 00:29:32.040 ⇒ 00:29:44.420 Robert Tseng: At this point, then with this EY deal, it’s not 100K, it’s probably more like… 30K…

206 00:29:46.230 ⇒ 00:30:00.630 Robert Tseng: This first deal… Okay, you spending 10 to 15 hours a week at 3.50 an hour self-contracting…

207 00:30:00.980 ⇒ 00:30:03.350 Robert Tseng: Under EY. Wow.

208 00:30:03.730 ⇒ 00:30:06.650 Robert Tseng: Parents does for later.

209 00:30:07.270 ⇒ 00:30:09.430 Robert Tseng: Discovery, let’s go.

210 00:30:11.460 ⇒ 00:30:15.890 Robert Tseng: Yesterday…

211 00:30:17.920 ⇒ 00:30:32.599 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, we talked to EY yesterday with, like, a partner in Dallas, where we just received a contract for $3.50 an hour. Utop’s gonna be the one to take it on for 10 to 15 hours a week, probably for the first 2-4 weeks.

212 00:30:32.610 ⇒ 00:30:46.120 Robert Tseng: Clarence is just gonna keep doing discovery with them, while I kind of… I guess we’re eating the cost of that, while we try to go for the bigger deal, but we needed to size it down to get it over the line, so…

213 00:30:46.210 ⇒ 00:30:53.749 Robert Tseng: I think the next steps here would be just getting the contract signed, just give it till Tuesday.

214 00:30:54.780 ⇒ 00:31:03.099 Robert Tseng: Okay, so this is more like 30K.

215 00:31:04.190 ⇒ 00:31:16.030 Robert Tseng: Cool. And then… Yeah, this element deal… yes, we are good here. I’m going to change this.

216 00:31:16.910 ⇒ 00:31:24.730 Robert Tseng: This is, what, 92K for… oh, I guess.

217 00:31:26.190 ⇒ 00:31:28.550 Robert Tseng: 19 times 6…

218 00:31:29.140 ⇒ 00:31:40.670 Robert Tseng: So, at the conference yesterday, I got this deal over the line, so, we’re, like, verbally committed to, so we are at probably a $552,000 deal.

219 00:31:46.750 ⇒ 00:31:48.400 Robert Tseng: 5… 2…

220 00:31:49.310 ⇒ 00:31:58.299 Robert Tseng: Who else contacted? Okay, so we are, Verbal commits, who, Tom, who flying to New York, and…

221 00:31:58.570 ⇒ 00:32:03.889 Robert Tseng: on Monday, and then, like, contract in…

222 00:32:04.020 ⇒ 00:32:14.520 Robert Tseng: in Phil’s inbox now. So, next step will be… Monday, and… Sink?

223 00:32:17.000 ⇒ 00:32:19.920 Robert Tseng: That is… Good.

224 00:32:20.790 ⇒ 00:32:34.820 Robert Tseng: Okay, and then CTA, next step, we’ll kick that to Monday. So, talking to, Catherine…

225 00:32:35.130 ⇒ 00:32:42.960 Robert Tseng: Renew… Existing 18K contract, month contract.

226 00:32:43.890 ⇒ 00:32:51.090 Robert Tseng: for… oh, actually, no, it’s more like $36K a month contract, and we’re gonna renew it for…

227 00:32:51.610 ⇒ 00:32:53.530 Robert Tseng: Or 12 months.

228 00:32:54.670 ⇒ 00:33:06.800 Robert Tseng: So, there’s six things, so… it’s more like a… 4… 32… 1000… contract…

229 00:33:12.290 ⇒ 00:33:25.649 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it’s like, I could do this in HubSpot MCP, I don’t know, it kind of is clunky. I’d rather just go through these things myself. It takes me, like, 10-15 minutes just to go through these updates once a week, so I’d rather just manually do it for now.

230 00:33:26.490 ⇒ 00:33:29.630 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Great.

231 00:33:30.050 ⇒ 00:33:41.510 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I need to get these three proposals out today, so that’s what I need to do. And, Sunstone, I think I already followed up, so I will…

232 00:33:42.020 ⇒ 00:33:43.790 Robert Tseng: Just need to see…

233 00:33:44.890 ⇒ 00:33:50.939 Robert Tseng: I’ll kick that… kick that to Monday. Ellie already followed up with today, so we can…

234 00:33:51.220 ⇒ 00:34:00.189 Robert Tseng: Take that to Monday… DA’s office, we will move that to next Thursday.

235 00:34:00.690 ⇒ 00:34:04.629 Robert Tseng: And then, yeah, I’m just behind on these.

236 00:34:05.090 ⇒ 00:34:12.800 Robert Tseng: Okay, and then April 15th, L’Oreal is April 2nd, next call, yeah.

237 00:34:12.989 ⇒ 00:34:16.800 Robert Tseng: Okay, so yeah, that’s, that’s all I got for HubSpot right now.

238 00:34:17.260 ⇒ 00:34:21.739 Robert Tseng: There’s a couple new leads, from the conference that I’ll add in later.

239 00:34:25.100 ⇒ 00:34:26.880 Robert Tseng: Yeah, but…

240 00:34:27.350 ⇒ 00:34:37.459 Robert Tseng: I guess I’ll just pause there. Any… any questions so far? I mean, that… hopefully that just gave you a general sense of, like, what are all the leads that we’re actually actively working on currently. Like, this is… this is it.

241 00:34:38.030 ⇒ 00:34:41.329 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So these are the… so, okay, so these 12 are the active ones, and then…

242 00:34:41.330 ⇒ 00:34:42.159 Robert Tseng: Yep.

243 00:34:42.360 ⇒ 00:34:51.859 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: your, where are all the closed… where are all the closed leads and deals, within… is it just within all deals, or my deals, or…

244 00:34:52.699 ⇒ 00:34:59.949 Robert Tseng: I’m not sure. I think you could just go and then add, like, some filter here to…

245 00:35:03.589 ⇒ 00:35:07.879 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, there’s probably some filters you could do by deal stage that’s, like…

246 00:35:09.450 ⇒ 00:35:10.000 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay.

247 00:35:11.000 ⇒ 00:35:17.559 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you just… you can create your own… you can create your own view, and then save it if you… if you want to look at those closed deals. Okay.

248 00:35:18.620 ⇒ 00:35:19.140 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

249 00:35:21.510 ⇒ 00:35:29.350 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And then this, this other, this Google Sheet you have on the right, this is just where you, is this where you store all of your,

250 00:35:30.060 ⇒ 00:35:31.480 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: All of your leads, or…

251 00:35:31.480 ⇒ 00:35:32.360 Robert Tseng: No.

252 00:35:32.540 ⇒ 00:35:44.919 Robert Tseng: I don’t really know who owns this, I just pulled it up because I saw it somewhere, I think. This is a marketing team trying to, like, put together lead lists. I never look at this, I don’t particularly care. I prefer to just use Sales Nav.

253 00:35:45.160 ⇒ 00:35:50.140 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t… I don’t rely on this to do my account mapping or anything.

254 00:35:50.350 ⇒ 00:36:04.759 Robert Tseng: But, like, this is the marketing hub. These are all the active campaigns that there should be running. I don’t think this is being updated right now. I’ve basically shut down the marketing team since Luke left until we figure out who’s gonna run it.

255 00:36:05.180 ⇒ 00:36:12.989 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I, like, I’m not… I’m not really running these rituals. I’m only running the sales… the sales rituals and… and managing HubSpot right now.

256 00:36:12.990 ⇒ 00:36:26.489 Robert Tseng: But yeah, when this is active, then if we’re doing outbound campaigns, they should be the one… they should be logging everything here, which I’m probably gonna ping them about, since I think they should be working on a couple ones that I don’t see reflected here.

257 00:36:26.740 ⇒ 00:36:29.359 Robert Tseng: So I’ll do that now.

258 00:36:49.960 ⇒ 00:36:51.570 Robert Tseng: Okay, and then…

259 00:36:51.940 ⇒ 00:36:59.649 Robert Tseng: this was, like, we had a couple campaigns, we were going after, like, people who were hiring for analytics engineers with dbt experience, I mean…

260 00:37:00.690 ⇒ 00:37:07.270 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, I think the team just ended up manually sending messages to these people. I don’t think we really…

261 00:37:07.950 ⇒ 00:37:15.819 Robert Tseng: Yeah, once again, like, I… I don’t… I don’t recall this… this is what they were using this past quarter. I don’t really recall anything, like.

262 00:37:15.970 ⇒ 00:37:27.060 Robert Tseng: memorable coming out of this. I think some of these are probably good leads, but, I don’t think anybody followed up with them. So I think these are all… you can assume that most of these people are people we’ve… we’ve already

263 00:37:27.210 ⇒ 00:37:32.750 Robert Tseng: messaged, and I mean, if… if there was some…

264 00:37:33.390 ⇒ 00:37:38.440 Robert Tseng: response, it would have been added into HubSpot, probably.

265 00:37:39.620 ⇒ 00:37:42.260 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so it’s… it’s kind of…

266 00:37:43.340 ⇒ 00:37:57.829 Robert Tseng: I just think, like, the problem with marketing is that they don’t own any accounts, like, they just kind of treat it as, like, they need to send out a single message, and then there’s not really much kind of ownership after that.

267 00:37:58.050 ⇒ 00:38:09.519 Robert Tseng: And, like, for me, I only focus on the accounts that, like, I feel like I’m… that I… that I can… that I… that I’m… that I’m actively working on. So whatever they’re doing, like.

268 00:38:09.850 ⇒ 00:38:14.340 Robert Tseng: I try to give them, like, messaging sequences, you know, some things around…

269 00:38:14.340 ⇒ 00:38:32.789 Robert Tseng: send 3 to 5 messages, before, like, leads, like, kind of drop off. Like, we’ve built out workflows and things like that for them, so they can at least get some of these campaigns up. And once there is, like, a high signal response, like, I’ll pull it in, and I’ll actually start working that lead myself. So, that’s kind of…

270 00:38:32.870 ⇒ 00:38:48.340 Robert Tseng: how I filter through the noise of whatever, like, the, like, Hannah, Rico, Ryan, and Luke were working on before. But yeah, I feel like most of it didn’t really translate over, over to, like.

271 00:38:48.430 ⇒ 00:38:52.630 Robert Tseng: kind of the leads that I was working on.

272 00:38:54.990 ⇒ 00:38:55.660 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay.

273 00:38:56.050 ⇒ 00:38:56.650 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

274 00:39:00.950 ⇒ 00:39:06.660 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I will say, from personal experience, the…

275 00:39:06.990 ⇒ 00:39:14.519 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: like, if they have the job opening, the job opening to messaging the hiring manager strategy,

276 00:39:15.760 ⇒ 00:39:27.670 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I’m not gonna say it’s a dead end, but, in the last, at least, like, year or so, it just gets lost… it gets lost in the inbox, because everybody plays that game now. Yeah.

277 00:39:27.670 ⇒ 00:39:29.080 Robert Tseng: I don’t think it really works, yeah.

278 00:39:29.080 ⇒ 00:39:32.360 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Doesn’t really work. Yeah.

279 00:39:33.020 ⇒ 00:39:48.160 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So, we definitely, in my opinion, it’s a dead end right now, these days. It’s more of, like, can you find them? The strategy I’ve found that works on that is, if you know who the hiring manager is, or who’s working it,

280 00:39:48.750 ⇒ 00:39:59.250 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: you can just find them at an event, because they usually post about what events they’re going to on LinkedIn. Yeah. And so that’s kind of how I sleuth my way into talking to folks.

281 00:39:59.530 ⇒ 00:40:15.140 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And then, yeah, even… I’m trying to think about the packaging, because, like, even in services for, like, founders, they don’t actually really like hiring subcontractors, unless it’s, like, a project basis.

282 00:40:15.840 ⇒ 00:40:17.130 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: But,

283 00:40:17.980 ⇒ 00:40:37.740 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, I’m just thinking out loud, Robert. Yeah. Just from what I’ve experienced last year, like, I was… I was, I met this guy at a cybersecurity, actually, dinner. He had, like, no reason to be there, but I told him that I, you know, I can staff software engineers, but he ended up ghosting me because he wanted to hire…

284 00:40:37.740 ⇒ 00:40:45.889 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Like, instead of doing, like, a project to get him to an MVP, he wanted… he just wanted to hire, like, two software engineers, and I was like, that’s…

285 00:40:45.970 ⇒ 00:40:49.250 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah. I mean, I guess that makes sense, but… Like…

286 00:40:49.600 ⇒ 00:40:54.400 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: That’s not… that does not seem to solve the problem you were communicating to me, right?

287 00:40:54.400 ⇒ 00:40:55.000 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

288 00:40:55.000 ⇒ 00:40:58.880 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And so, yeah.

289 00:40:59.830 ⇒ 00:41:00.949 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Just trying to think.

290 00:41:03.990 ⇒ 00:41:14.759 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I’m not sure, I’m not sure. Honestly, like, my instinct is just to do this, to do this manually for… for now. There’s just not enough, like, there’s just not enough, like…

291 00:41:15.060 ⇒ 00:41:32.249 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: especially if you’re not playing the volume game. Like, if we’re not playing the volume game, we gotta just do, like, whatever we have warm intros into, and there’s enough, like, there’s enough people who need AI enablement or data enablement that it’s… it’s just, like, within even my own, like, secondary network, there’s more than enough leads for me to just pull.

292 00:41:34.300 ⇒ 00:41:52.540 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And so, if that’s the case, so if I start building these lead lists on Sales Nav, should I just be throwing them, well, one, I’m gonna try to get meetings, and if meetings are booked, do I just start throwing them as, like, a potential op within HubSpot? What is the easiest way to get you guys visibility, if I’m.

293 00:41:52.540 ⇒ 00:42:02.949 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think so. I think, like, you know, in our different stages, like, I mean, if you want to prematurely add them into HubSpot, because you’d rather track all your leads from HubSpot instead of Sales Nav.

294 00:42:02.970 ⇒ 00:42:13.450 Robert Tseng: that’s fine, you can put them into HubSpot, but I don’t think HubSpot syncs to LinkedIn, and so it’s just, like, weird to track those messages until there’s actually, like, an email exchange.

295 00:42:13.530 ⇒ 00:42:17.850 Robert Tseng: Or something that, like, HubSpot can actually, like, take in, so…

296 00:42:17.850 ⇒ 00:42:22.080 Robert Tseng: that’s usually when I actually put them into HubSpot, if there’s, like, a

297 00:42:22.080 ⇒ 00:42:38.010 Robert Tseng: if I can move them off LinkedIn into email, or I get them into a text message, like, something… or, obviously, if they book a call from LinkedIn, like, any of those kind of triggers, like, I end up… they move into in progress. But, like, I don’t really add anything to to-do research, like, it just…

298 00:42:38.200 ⇒ 00:42:52.340 Robert Tseng: like, that makes sense if we’re doing all our lead list building in HubSpot, but we don’t do that, so I just… I don’t really add anything into HubSpot until it’s already, like, we’re going for a qualification call.

299 00:42:52.430 ⇒ 00:43:04.509 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, and then, obviously, if a deal falls through, like, or if it’s not the right time, it’ll go back into circleback, or it’ll fall into one of these, like, lost buckets, which…

300 00:43:04.510 ⇒ 00:43:18.320 Robert Tseng: you know, we have to set up some cadence that, you know, once in a… once in a while, we go back and you can pull from these. So, I think easy wins for you would be, yeah, you can rely on your secondary network. I think warm intros are definitely the most valuable.

301 00:43:18.320 ⇒ 00:43:36.399 Robert Tseng: And then you can go and you can… you can filter through deal stages and any of these lost categories and, like, try to understand who they are, could try to re-qualify them, you know, based on what you understand about our business now. And yeah, you just kind of build… build your own list and start… start messaging those people.

302 00:43:36.480 ⇒ 00:43:52.639 Robert Tseng: Hannah has all the messaging sequences, I’ve also loaded them into Cursor, so if you need, like, we have a mutual intro playbook. If it’s, like, your second-degree connection from somebody, and you need to ask somebody from a warm intro, there’s a playbook for that.

303 00:43:53.370 ⇒ 00:44:06.020 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I built it all in spreadsheets, or Google Sheets, but then I had the team basically move it out into our repo, so, you know, the sequence is very much just, like, some initial ask.

304 00:44:06.030 ⇒ 00:44:10.489 Robert Tseng: Some options for the follow-up, and then, like, kind of different scenarios.

305 00:44:10.490 ⇒ 00:44:26.240 Robert Tseng: Same thing with the circle back, like, I had a few different things that I drafted there. Intro blurbs, like, you know, all this stuff is in accessible via cursor at this point. So, like, I had different, you know, these are all, like, kind of my intro messages that I’ve kind of outlined out already.

306 00:44:26.260 ⇒ 00:44:30.260 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think.

307 00:44:32.500 ⇒ 00:44:33.180 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay.

308 00:44:33.320 ⇒ 00:44:34.180 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

309 00:44:34.280 ⇒ 00:44:35.070 Robert Tseng: So…

310 00:44:35.810 ⇒ 00:44:42.790 Robert Tseng: I’m gonna add some of this stuff into the sales playbook thing that I was talking about. You know, I think that that’s…

311 00:44:42.980 ⇒ 00:44:47.560 Robert Tseng: that’s probably something I won’t get to today. I think I’m…

312 00:44:48.030 ⇒ 00:44:59.350 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I cared more about moving these… getting these deals moving, adding in the leads that I got from the events that I went to the past two days, and then,

313 00:45:00.330 ⇒ 00:45:10.399 Robert Tseng: yeah, I think there’s some final touches to, like, sales planning and forecasting that I need… that I need to finish, so I think that’s… that’s what I’m up to for the rest of the day on the sales side.

314 00:45:17.050 ⇒ 00:45:25.769 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, the reason I was asking about, like, closed, or, like, lost deals or whatnot is, yeah, in terms of requalifying.

315 00:45:25.910 ⇒ 00:45:36.370 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: What I can do is see if I already know people at those places, and then try to resurface, yeah, potential openings.

316 00:45:36.960 ⇒ 00:45:37.800 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

317 00:45:38.460 ⇒ 00:45:44.670 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: It’s… I think that would be… I think that… would be pretty helpful

318 00:45:46.020 ⇒ 00:45:47.959 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Trying to get to the page you’re at right now.

319 00:45:51.200 ⇒ 00:45:52.230 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Fields.

320 00:45:57.950 ⇒ 00:46:12.990 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, as long as you start having accounts and you talk to me about the accounts, I can give you my perspective on any account, like, who the person should be… we should be talking to, and then… I mean, we have some, like, light ICP qualification happening already.

321 00:46:13.150 ⇒ 00:46:16.959 Robert Tseng: But, yeah, I think, like.

322 00:46:17.240 ⇒ 00:46:22.740 Robert Tseng: Finding the right person, getting connected to, like.

323 00:46:22.980 ⇒ 00:46:30.350 Robert Tseng: You know, multi-threading the opportunity, like, having multiple people you’re talking to on the account.

324 00:46:30.380 ⇒ 00:46:49.589 Robert Tseng: Everything is just trying to get the call booked, and then finding if there’s, like, a real timing of, like, hey, there’s an urgent decision or something they actually want to work with us on now. I don’t feel like we run into conversations now. By the time we get someone on a call where they’re not interested, it’s just really a timing thing. If the timing is, like.

325 00:46:49.640 ⇒ 00:47:08.819 Robert Tseng: all right, then I think we can flexibly kind of create something for them. I think our entry offers are pretty reasonable, like, you know, we do sub-5K, like, discoveries for, like, if they need to, and then, like, that gives us, like, a couple weeks to get into their organization and figure out what the real opportunity is.

326 00:47:08.820 ⇒ 00:47:16.010 Robert Tseng: I feel like on… from an outbound perspective, it all requires that in order for us to learn more about their organization.

327 00:47:16.060 ⇒ 00:47:29.509 Robert Tseng: only when, like, it’s through Upwork, or Catalan, or partner source deal, where there’s, like, already a very particularly scoped problem that they’re bringing… that they’re coming to us for.

328 00:47:29.510 ⇒ 00:47:43.860 Robert Tseng: Like, would we really be able to go straight to a full implementation, kind of, like, pitch without discovery? So, I think most of these, leads are going for discovery.

329 00:47:45.340 ⇒ 00:47:57.420 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, I mean, yeah, unless they have a data, like, a mature data organization, and surprisingly, a lot of these mid-market companies don’t, or unsurprisingly.

330 00:47:57.780 ⇒ 00:48:16.759 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, it is… it is a… it is a discussion. It usually does require, at least in… from what I’ve been seeing, some… some initial exploration or auditing. I mean, I think we even discussed that when we were, when we were doing Pongo, a few years back. It is the easiest entry point.

331 00:48:17.550 ⇒ 00:48:18.950 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, okay.

332 00:48:19.420 ⇒ 00:48:29.010 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: But I think… I think to start, I think the easiest way for me is probably, like, since it’s not… I’m not gonna be, like, I’m not gonna all of a sudden have a hundred, you know, freaking meetings booked.

333 00:48:29.010 ⇒ 00:48:29.440 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I know.

334 00:48:29.440 ⇒ 00:48:30.130 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I have…

335 00:48:30.130 ⇒ 00:48:31.979 Robert Tseng: I think we’re pretty… yeah.

336 00:48:31.980 ⇒ 00:48:36.289 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I think I can… I think for right now, as, like, I… I get a… as…

337 00:48:36.570 ⇒ 00:48:52.940 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: as we, you know, as I start bringing in, like, leads, as I start bringing in, like, phone calls and meetings booked and whatnot, I think we can just figure out the process. I think I have a better understanding anyway of, like, what we can sell and, like, the ICPs I’m comfortable selling into, so…

338 00:48:52.940 ⇒ 00:48:53.280 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

339 00:48:53.280 ⇒ 00:48:59.190 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I think I’ll just… like I said, let’s just rip it. I’ll… I’m doing outreach already, and I’ll.

340 00:48:59.190 ⇒ 00:48:59.560 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

341 00:48:59.560 ⇒ 00:49:10.440 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: and just… I’m framing it as catch-up calls, so doing a lot of catch-up with a lot of folks over these next two weeks. And it’s essentially, like.

342 00:49:10.710 ⇒ 00:49:11.490 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: You know.

343 00:49:11.740 ⇒ 00:49:25.860 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: hey, do you need data? It’s kind of the conversations, but, they’re all warm, so it’s like… and a lot of these folks have moved to new companies, but that’s also why I was asking, like, if you want me to be putting those in somewhere, say I have.

344 00:49:25.860 ⇒ 00:49:26.180 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

345 00:49:26.180 ⇒ 00:49:27.120 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: into, like, the.

346 00:49:27.120 ⇒ 00:49:34.570 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you can. I think you should. You should just add them to to-do or something. I’m just telling you that I don’t really follow this process that much, because, like.

347 00:49:34.740 ⇒ 00:49:38.820 Robert Tseng: I think it’s less for me, it’s more for, like, other people’s accountability, like.

348 00:49:39.070 ⇒ 00:49:49.969 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, like, there’s not really… the accountability is not… is kind of not really worth the load for me. Like, I do… I do most of the selling here, so, like, I… yeah, I don’t really need to, like… I mean, I think it’s…

349 00:49:49.970 ⇒ 00:50:05.380 Robert Tseng: Yeah, if the sales team grows, like, I may change my process, but I’m just, like, being real, like, I’m not… I’m not adding all these, all these, all these… like, if… who am I… like, who am I trying to show? Like, I don’t really… I don’t really know, it’s really… really just me that looks at this, so…

350 00:50:05.380 ⇒ 00:50:11.379 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I mean, I think the thing that has worked at least with, like, you know, my company, FusionNode, right?

351 00:50:11.380 ⇒ 00:50:25.660 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: is, oftentimes, it’s not like we’re showing it off, right? It’s really, hey, does anybody know somebody at this company, right? Because I think that the power, the power is that as your company, or, you know, as an org structure grows, right, is like…

352 00:50:25.660 ⇒ 00:50:44.460 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: your… your web of connections, like, start to shrink, or not shrink, sorry, it starts to increase, and that degrees of separation shrink. And so we’ve closed, like, deals very interestingly, from just, like, oh yeah, one of our new… new trainees or new hires, you know, happens to be, like, the son of, like, you know, an exec at this.

353 00:50:44.460 ⇒ 00:50:46.060 Robert Tseng: You know, this school.

354 00:50:46.060 ⇒ 00:50:57.560 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And that’s… that’s kind of the reason I was asking, is because I… one of the most powerful things we can do as you’re scaling your, you know, as we have this headcount growing here, is, hey.

355 00:50:58.010 ⇒ 00:51:01.429 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Let’s get a visibility into everyone’s network, right?

356 00:51:01.430 ⇒ 00:51:01.750 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

357 00:51:01.750 ⇒ 00:51:17.799 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: then, obviously in Sales Nav, it’ll be, like, it’ll show second degree, right? And if you do the basic due diligence, you’ll find out that, like, yeah, Kayla knows blah blah blah from blah, right? Yeah. But in a way, it just also encourages everyone to be more proactive.

358 00:51:17.800 ⇒ 00:51:18.950 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

359 00:51:19.210 ⇒ 00:51:28.250 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Because, yeah, in more mature organizations, like, everyone can get a small commission, you know, if they’re the ones, like, helping, you know, bring the deals, or they can.

360 00:51:28.250 ⇒ 00:51:28.570 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

361 00:51:28.570 ⇒ 00:51:35.799 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: isometric information on, like, hey, why is this deal, like, stalled here? And it’s like, oh yeah, I had lunch with, you know, oh, my friend who’s

362 00:51:35.800 ⇒ 00:51:50.649 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: you know, the data analyst at this company, oh yeah, it’s stalling because this one exec is, you know, being an asshole or something like that, right? Yeah. And that’s often happened with us at FusionNode, like, we would find out there’s, like, some sort of internal politics.

363 00:51:50.650 ⇒ 00:51:56.190 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And we know not to push because, you know, they’re doing, like, a huge, you know, transformation internally, right?

364 00:51:56.190 ⇒ 00:51:56.760 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

365 00:51:56.760 ⇒ 00:52:06.140 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And then, yeah, 3 months later, it’s like, we didn’t… because we didn’t expend that energy on trying to close them, 3 months later, they came back, and then the deal got closed, right? Which was, like, great, right?

366 00:52:06.140 ⇒ 00:52:17.289 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And so that’s mainly the reason. It’s just, like, an information play. It’s like, who knows who, and leveraging our relationships, because everybody has relationships. Everybody can sell. That’s my philosophy.

367 00:52:17.960 ⇒ 00:52:29.009 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And so, but like I said, we’ll work on that slowly. Let’s not, you know, let’s not get ahead and try to give everyone visibility immediately, but at least between you and me, what I’ll do is, like.

368 00:52:29.010 ⇒ 00:52:45.659 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: try to see if there, you know, if there’s already companies that, that, you know, we’ve engaged with, or has, you know, didn’t have a deal closed, that maybe I already have a warm, you know, a warm entry point into. Maybe I’ll do half of those, you know, try to triage those, and the other half, I’ll bring in new ones.

369 00:52:46.360 ⇒ 00:53:04.279 Robert Tseng: Okay. Yeah, no, I think I appreciate that, that’s good. I mean, I’ll start adding it into the to-dos then, too. Like, I think, I need to go and get my HubSpot MCP thing fixed, too, because I’m not going to sit here and click on adding deals to HubSpot that are not really, like, live deals. So I still feel like that’s a resistance to me, like, I…

370 00:53:04.370 ⇒ 00:53:24.229 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I may have, like, a list of 150 people from the past 2 days, but I don’t really want to sit here and add them… add them to HubSpot, so I need a way to be able to upload them and get it in faster. So, if that’s… if we can solve that for that bottleneck, then I’m happy to adopt that. Otherwise, I’m… you know, if I’m going to do any manual entry, it’s really just the ones that I’m working on.

371 00:53:24.710 ⇒ 00:53:33.350 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay. I mean, when you were collecting leads, the 150 you got, are you just getting business cards, or, like, were you doing, like, digital capture, or…

372 00:53:33.350 ⇒ 00:53:52.660 Robert Tseng: Well, I sent… I sent Hannah, like, a bunch of screenshots, so they have, like, in-apps, I can’t get their emails, but, like, I have names, and I just want the team to go and find who those people are, and so… yeah, like, that was from… that was what I got from ASG. I’m gonna ask Omni to give me some of the, like… I mean, I wrote down some names already, so… I need to go track them down.

373 00:53:52.750 ⇒ 00:53:58.960 Robert Tseng: So the ones that I actually, like, noted, like, down, I’m gonna go and follow up with myself.

374 00:53:59.620 ⇒ 00:54:06.959 Robert Tseng: the ones that are just other attendees at the conference, like, I’m gonna just try to ask our… ask Omni to give… give me those.

375 00:54:07.070 ⇒ 00:54:08.350 Robert Tseng: those people.

376 00:54:08.640 ⇒ 00:54:09.190 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay.

377 00:54:10.420 ⇒ 00:54:16.729 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Sounds good. Yeah, I, yeah, my fair share of attending events was just, like, like, inputting

378 00:54:17.240 ⇒ 00:54:20.109 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: 250, like, leads into a sheet, like, I…

379 00:54:20.110 ⇒ 00:54:20.730 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

380 00:54:20.730 ⇒ 00:54:22.820 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, that’s… that’s not fun.

381 00:54:22.820 ⇒ 00:54:23.500 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

382 00:54:23.660 ⇒ 00:54:32.719 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I don’t have a… also, like, I don’t have a way to, like, actually make that more efficient, and I don’t want to promote my last company, or the company I did some work for a few years.

383 00:54:32.720 ⇒ 00:54:33.800 Robert Tseng: Haha, yeah.

384 00:54:33.800 ⇒ 00:54:40.459 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Because they do, like, event lead capture, I’m not… I’m not about that. I don’t want to bring the business.

385 00:54:41.240 ⇒ 00:54:43.769 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So I’m talking about Popple, by the way.

386 00:54:43.770 ⇒ 00:54:44.230 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.

387 00:54:44.230 ⇒ 00:54:46.570 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: purple business.

388 00:54:46.710 ⇒ 00:54:48.410 Robert Tseng: I remember. Yeah.

389 00:54:48.410 ⇒ 00:55:03.800 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: But, but yeah, but let’s, yeah, we’ll do that. Just let me know, but, yeah, I’m gonna start working on those. I already, I’m already starting to put together lead lists in my sales nav. I’m just going through and, you know, seeing who, who I know works at certain data companies.

390 00:55:04.040 ⇒ 00:55:04.370 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

391 00:55:04.550 ⇒ 00:55:10.659 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Or, sorry, who work as data analysts, or are in the data engineering orgs within these companies.

392 00:55:10.770 ⇒ 00:55:15.509 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And I’m just gonna frame some, some catch-up calls, basically, and start to…

393 00:55:15.510 ⇒ 00:55:16.080 Robert Tseng: Okay.

394 00:55:16.080 ⇒ 00:55:17.360 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Get a landscape here.

395 00:55:17.500 ⇒ 00:55:28.620 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: But, yeah, and then in the meantime as well, I’ll start to look through the, like I said, the HubSpot leads, that have, you know, or just any contacts you have in there that I potentially have.

396 00:55:28.620 ⇒ 00:55:29.180 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

397 00:55:29.180 ⇒ 00:55:30.390 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: You know, an entry point into.

398 00:55:30.500 ⇒ 00:55:36.020 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And let’s just do that. Let’s make it… let’s keep it simple. Like, I wanna… I wanna… I wanna be able to just, like.

399 00:55:36.260 ⇒ 00:55:54.710 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: get meetings booked first, instead of us trying to, you know, streamline any type of operations yet. I want to work in your workflow first. But I’m pretty confident, like, at least from the stuff I’ve been, you know, the documentation from this week, the onboarding, testing out Cursor and using… I’m very, very impressed with the stuff you guys have.

400 00:55:54.760 ⇒ 00:56:12.279 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: It’s very, very… you were right, it’s very different than, you know, a year ago. Very different landscape, that we’re working in. And actually, I had a… I had a catch-up call, or not a catch-up call, I had a catch-up dinner with Lucas, who is actually moving out of LA, he’s moving back to Portland.

401 00:56:12.430 ⇒ 00:56:13.240 Robert Tseng: Oh, is he?

402 00:56:13.240 ⇒ 00:56:27.840 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Oh, well, just for a bit, because, you know, be closer to family for a bit. Obviously, he still thinks very highly of you. He’s like, oh, how’s Robert doing? But, yeah, even for them, they’re fully moving away from, you know, his agency was fully focused.

403 00:56:27.840 ⇒ 00:56:28.870 Robert Tseng: bubble, yeah.

404 00:56:28.870 ⇒ 00:56:35.490 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: they’re fully moving away from Bubble. It’s because, like, most of their, you know, because they do MVP development, and.

405 00:56:35.490 ⇒ 00:56:35.930 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

406 00:56:35.930 ⇒ 00:56:37.819 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: especially developing AI applications.

407 00:56:37.820 ⇒ 00:56:40.910 Robert Tseng: So they got brushed by the vibe coders.

408 00:56:40.910 ⇒ 00:56:59.659 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, well, they’re really proficient at building using, using the AI tech stack, so, like, he’s operationalized his own stuff, which is, like… I was like, well, I was like, you should, you should see what Robert would talk about, because, like, you would get a lot of ideas on how you can use Agentic, like, things to change your workflows.

409 00:56:59.880 ⇒ 00:57:00.640 Robert Tseng: Huh.

410 00:57:00.640 ⇒ 00:57:02.819 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: But, yeah, it’s just like…

411 00:57:03.040 ⇒ 00:57:13.910 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: he’s even seeing the changes in the landscape, too. Like, a lot of folks, yeah, like, they don’t really know how to use AI, and it’s just an open field right now. So…

412 00:57:14.530 ⇒ 00:57:24.419 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff moving, and I think, really, it’s capitalized within these two to three months, because folks are just discovering Cloud code for the first time.

413 00:57:24.880 ⇒ 00:57:25.510 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

414 00:57:26.640 ⇒ 00:57:43.750 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think, like, I mean, it’s… I’m… I’m doing, like, we’re talking to a couple, like, kind of sub-million dollar agency that we might try to acquire, like, people to grow as well, so there’s, like, a guy I’m talking to here in New York who’s flying in, we’re… we’re, like.

415 00:57:44.410 ⇒ 00:58:00.790 Robert Tseng: you know, like, I… I’m trying… yeah, like, I’m trying to… I’m trying to just grab as many… as many accounts as I can before, like, in the next… in the next three to six months. So, I’m… yeah, I think outbound is definitely, you know, historically, outbound is only 20% of our… of our… of our sales. So, like, I think it’s, like.

416 00:58:01.270 ⇒ 00:58:05.669 Robert Tseng: It’s, we’ll do what we can to just kind of keep these lists

417 00:58:05.810 ⇒ 00:58:20.659 Robert Tseng: going. I wouldn’t, you know, kind of grind too hard on it. I think kind of thinking creatively more about kind of getting partners equipped and helping us sell with them is going to be the way. But yeah, I mean, I think outbound, having a way to just have, like.

418 00:58:21.710 ⇒ 00:58:31.300 Robert Tseng: 5 to 10 active leads, like, that you’re kind of working on from an outbound… like, an outbound would… is… is helpful. Like, I… I feel like I manage, like.

419 00:58:31.430 ⇒ 00:58:39.529 Robert Tseng: you know, 10… 10 to 15 leads on my own with very little time. So, I… I think, like, you know, I… that’s…

420 00:58:39.570 ⇒ 00:58:53.989 Robert Tseng: maybe that’s only 20% outbound because that’s how much time we put into it, but I also think that’s… I mean, that’s not the way I feel like our business is gonna grow. I don’t think we’re gonna be able to do… like, it has to be through, warm intros, partnerships, and stuff like that. So.

421 00:58:53.990 ⇒ 00:58:54.360 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah.

422 00:58:54.360 ⇒ 00:58:55.140 Robert Tseng: I mean, that’s all the hype.

423 00:58:55.140 ⇒ 00:58:58.410 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: ticket stuff is. I mean, they’re not going to, like.

424 00:58:58.850 ⇒ 00:59:08.959 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: obviously, you would have to build a longer relationship to… if you want to secure, like, a multi-hundred-thousand dollar or a million dollar contract. I mean, that’s just the reality of it, right?

425 00:59:09.130 ⇒ 00:59:25.020 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and we’re there. You know, we just, you know, a couple verbal commits to, like, $500, 000 t o$ 700,000 deals, so, like, I think we’re… we’re not in a rush to, like, kind of get outbound, like, fixed or whatever. Like, I don’t really care that much. I think the partnerships definitely has…

426 00:59:25.020 ⇒ 00:59:35.609 Robert Tseng: of, like, more… more value. Like, if it takes us 3 months to close a $500, 000 d e a l, I^{'} d r a t h er d o t ha tt han \dots t han g r in d o n, l ik e, I d o n^{'} t k n o w,$ 50,000, $10,000 deals, you know? So…

427 00:59:36.150 ⇒ 00:59:40.170 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, I mean, and once again, and if that is, you know,

428 00:59:40.640 ⇒ 00:59:49.580 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: if that is where you feel like I can be deployed to help you guys do, like, just let me know. Like, I’m… I’m… I’m flexible. I’ll sell wherever.

429 00:59:49.580 ⇒ 00:59:49.900 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

430 00:59:49.900 ⇒ 00:59:50.390 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: That’s an.

431 00:59:50.390 ⇒ 01:00:07.690 Robert Tseng: I view the outbound stuff as, like, your chance to ramp up, get conversations with talking to people about the business, like, you know, you’re gonna get more meetings booked that way, just through that. And then, like, yeah, I think we want to pull you into partnerships,

432 01:00:07.960 ⇒ 01:00:16.830 Robert Tseng: yeah, I think Omni, Snowflake, really trying to get us, like, kind of in a better position to sell with them. And then, like, I told you about, kind of, the partner framework, and

433 01:00:16.870 ⇒ 01:00:26.790 Robert Tseng: Especially the ones that we’re calibrating. Like, I… I… I wanna have, like, within a quarter, know, like, is this guy gonna be a gold, silver, or bronze? And…

434 01:00:26.790 ⇒ 01:00:44.699 Robert Tseng: For bronze, like, I don’t care. You don’t touch it, I don’t touch it, it’s just… it’s just Hannah and Rico maybe touching it. Silver, like, we just do something with them once a month, but then the gold partners, which there should only ever be, like, less than 3, like, we’re… we’re, like, we should be talking to them every week, you know, multiple times during the week, and just, like.

435 01:00:44.850 ⇒ 01:00:55.999 Robert Tseng: gassing them up and, like, just trying to get whatever leads we can from them, because… and I think, for now, that’s… that’s Snowflake and Omni. So, I don’t think we’re starting from scratch here. We already have these partnerships, we have

436 01:00:56.000 ⇒ 01:01:08.489 Robert Tseng: better partnerships than most people, most agencies are our size, and so, like, I know that’s one of our advantages for why we’ve been able to grow the way we have been, and I think that’s what we want to lean into more.

437 01:01:08.850 ⇒ 01:01:09.580 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay.

438 01:01:09.580 ⇒ 01:01:10.170 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

439 01:01:10.360 ⇒ 01:01:18.020 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I… yeah, let’s… I mean, that’s also where I thrive into, is, if you need me to schmooze and glaze, that’s…

440 01:01:18.190 ⇒ 01:01:22.319 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Something I… Fortunately, have a talent for, so just…

441 01:01:23.230 ⇒ 01:01:27.090 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Also, if you need someone to play golf, that’s also something I get deployed to do.

442 01:01:27.730 ⇒ 01:01:31.359 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: It’s probably 10… 10 days out of the month, I’m…

443 01:01:31.530 ⇒ 01:01:34.049 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: That’s… that’s what I have to do these days, so…

444 01:01:35.020 ⇒ 01:01:40.690 Robert Tseng: Good, yeah, I mean, we will do that, like, yeah, so…

445 01:01:41.160 ⇒ 01:01:45.969 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I would say probably next week. You know, obviously, as leads come through and you’re…

446 01:01:46.130 ⇒ 01:02:03.959 Robert Tseng: you want to talk about specific accounts that you’re working on, like, I’m happy to do that. I think I’ll probably move on from outbound at this point, and so if I’m, like, kind of… I’ll book some more time with us next week. I think things will have to change. I don’t think I can meet with you for an hour every day, but, we’ll do… we’ll be more focused on partnerships.

447 01:02:03.960 ⇒ 01:02:08.129 Robert Tseng: specific campaigns you want to run, or accounts. Like, I don’t really…

448 01:02:08.130 ⇒ 01:02:11.610 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t really have anything else to say about process for now.

449 01:02:11.880 ⇒ 01:02:21.620 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, yeah, also, I… I’ve realized there’s… there’s not really one, so, like, like I said, and I, you know, messaged you earlier, like, let’s just run it, let’s, let’s…

450 01:02:21.710 ⇒ 01:02:41.599 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: let’s, you know, I’ll get in front of… I’ll get in front of these leads, get in front of these customers, like, I’ll get used to talking about it and talking about, like, you know, what Brainforge is, you know, selling into. And then, you know, we’ll… we’ll start to build it from there. I have a very simple outcome. My simple outcome is sell. If I can find an opening, I’m just gonna sell something.

451 01:02:41.680 ⇒ 01:02:46.840 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah. That’s it. I… That’s all I do, Robert. I…

452 01:02:49.360 ⇒ 01:02:55.650 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just, if I find an opening, and I find a way to get someone on our side, like, that is…

453 01:02:55.900 ⇒ 01:02:57.729 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: all I can say I do, so…

454 01:02:57.730 ⇒ 01:03:07.439 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, that’s… that’s what we do. So, I mean, I’m not… yeah, I don’t really want to build out too much process. There’s a sale… there’s a, like, a head of sales, like, fractional sales coach guy who…

455 01:03:07.620 ⇒ 01:03:12.360 Robert Tseng: kind of wants to help with our business more, so I might kind of bring him in.

456 01:03:12.520 ⇒ 01:03:17.200 Robert Tseng: And he might meet with us here and there. I might do, like, a bi-weekly cadence, just like…

457 01:03:17.240 ⇒ 01:03:26.609 Robert Tseng: he’s very opinionated about how we should structure. I think he probably brings… he probably will ask too much process. He’s used to kind of running, like, bigger sales teams.

458 01:03:26.640 ⇒ 01:03:37.759 Robert Tseng: But, I mean, I’m open to all things, because this hasn’t really worked sustainably yet, so I’m… I’m just… that’s heads up that he’s… he’s gonna be working on that, so…

459 01:03:37.760 ⇒ 01:03:41.570 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Well, the one last thing that I have to ask is, like,

460 01:03:41.910 ⇒ 01:03:47.259 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: In terms… because one incentive, right, like, for most salespeople is, like.

461 01:03:47.270 ⇒ 01:04:04.559 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: you know, is quota, right? And it’s a scare tactic. It’s, like, less of, like, a, oh my gosh, you’re gonna make a lot of money. It’s like, hey, you’re gonna get fired if you don’t, you know, reach a quota. And so I’m not saying, like, hey, like, what is the quota? But, like, what is… what is your guys’ sales targets? Because that will also inform me how much

462 01:04:04.560 ⇒ 01:04:09.189 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Like, I can get very aggressive, I can go really, really hard, but it’s, you know.

463 01:04:09.190 ⇒ 01:04:09.710 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

464 01:04:09.710 ⇒ 01:04:16.129 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: how much do you feasibly think you guys can deliver in terms of, like, you know, our service delivery? But second,

465 01:04:16.350 ⇒ 01:04:25.889 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, it’s like, what is… what would be the most ideal state end of quarter? Like, what is your… what would be the sales goals? And how far are we in terms of trending into… into those sales goals?

466 01:04:26.460 ⇒ 01:04:31.400 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, I mean… I guess I will share, like,

467 01:04:32.880 ⇒ 01:04:38.880 Robert Tseng: this is going back to the WBR. I think, like, this will kind of outline everything, how I think about it.

468 01:04:40.690 ⇒ 01:04:41.860 Robert Tseng: We have…

469 01:04:42.130 ⇒ 01:05:00.989 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you know, average deal size, like, I want this to continue to go up. I bet. I think we’re kind of, like, at a cap. I mean, 30K a month average is fine, so I think you should be pitching stuff that’s… I mean, I’ll help you with all the pricing, whatever, you just need to get the first meeting booked, and we’ll take it over the line, but generally, like, I’m not trying to…

470 01:05:02.370 ⇒ 01:05:18.080 Robert Tseng: yeah, like, this… this is our average deal size. 30K a month for 3 months, 3.5 months, like, that’s… that’s kind of, you know, a sense of, like, the type of deal size that we want to go for. We can go… we can go smaller, and we can go bigger, and whatever, but, and then from, like, a…

471 01:05:19.940 ⇒ 01:05:33.589 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this was what I set up, like, at the start of the quarter. I’m gonna update this for Q2. We aimed at, like, growing to $240K MRR. I think we’re hitting, like, 220, this quarter.

472 01:05:33.820 ⇒ 01:05:38.429 Robert Tseng: So… yeah, I mean, I’m… I mean, we were…

473 01:05:38.850 ⇒ 01:05:49.690 Robert Tseng: you know, we were at maybe, like, 160 at the start of the quarter, so the business grew a decent amount. Yeah, so I’m just gonna refresh this. Gonna have 3 scenarios,

474 01:05:50.060 ⇒ 01:06:07.679 Robert Tseng: Yeah, because… and anyway, anyway, and yeah, I think that’s… yeah, so, I mean, I will… I will have this… I will have this updated. You’ll be able to see it, see it all here, like, it’s a very simple, simple forecast, a lot more detailed, like, week by week over here, so it’ll… like, I just go off of meetings, book, full set, like.

475 01:06:07.680 ⇒ 01:06:13.210 Robert Tseng: Stuff like that. But yeah, we will have a monthly revenue target. I mean, my guess right now is…

476 01:06:13.450 ⇒ 01:06:19.549 Robert Tseng: like, I want… I wanna… I wanna… I think I wanna double it. Like, I wanna go… go to, like, 400, 400,

477 01:06:19.710 ⇒ 01:06:24.259 Robert Tseng: 400, 400K a month, or something like that, because,

478 01:06:24.650 ⇒ 01:06:39.499 Robert Tseng: what I’m gonna set for the end of Q2. So… I… I mean, I guess… I’m gonna let the math play out, like, we’ll see what it ends up being, but I think it’ll be probably close to 400 as the goal. So…

479 01:06:39.700 ⇒ 01:06:50.349 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think we have a real shot at getting there. I think if even one out of these two M&A deals close, I mean, one of them is at maybe $600,

480 01:06:50.640 ⇒ 01:06:54.529 Robert Tseng: 600K a year, so that’s, like, another,

481 01:06:55.280 ⇒ 01:07:01.910 Robert Tseng: like, 50… 50K, so that might add… that might add us… I mean, that’ll bring us up to… yeah, anyway, so I… I…

482 01:07:02.040 ⇒ 01:07:15.839 Robert Tseng: And if the EY deal, like, kind of comes through, like, we go past phase one, we go to Phase 2, and they actually sign the, you know, the $1.52 million contract, then, yeah, I mean, I think we’re, like, two… we’re just, like, two or three.

483 01:07:15.840 ⇒ 01:07:25.739 Robert Tseng: deals away from hitting… from hitting that, from doubling our business again. Like, I… I… and so I would rather, you know, us spend our time nurturing the partner relationships.

484 01:07:25.740 ⇒ 01:07:30.379 Robert Tseng: Trying to, like, help get them to pass us

485 01:07:30.390 ⇒ 01:07:47.649 Robert Tseng: bring us into mid… upper mid-market or enterprise kind of deal conversations. Like, I… we’re not… we don’t really need to go after, like, small, small deals. I think if… if they do come through, like, I’m… you know, we can… we have a way of kind of going through, like, the sub-10K a month deals.

486 01:07:47.650 ⇒ 01:07:59.749 Robert Tseng: you know, we can get them in and out within a month, like, it’s no problem, like, the margins are still high, like, I’m fine with that, so it’s kind of like, pick… pick and choose where we want. I mean, I’m going… I’m going for the big…

487 01:07:59.770 ⇒ 01:08:01.860 Robert Tseng: I’m going for the big cuts, like.

488 01:08:01.930 ⇒ 01:08:10.819 Robert Tseng: I think for you, like, obviously, if you’re trying to kind of just make off of commission, you should just go… you should just sell our average, which is, like, 30K a month.

489 01:08:10.990 ⇒ 01:08:29.199 Robert Tseng: And then Clarence, who’s also purely commissioned, I mean, he’s… if he just does, like, one or two deals with us a year, like, I mean, he’ll… he’ll get what he wants out of it. So, and he’s only going after, like, Fortune… Fortune 500. So, like, I… I think, like, we have people that are, like, selling at every… at every level.

490 01:08:29.200 ⇒ 01:08:35.969 Robert Tseng: Utam just kind of doesn’t… I mean, he’s… he kind of gets brought into sales conversations, like, on… as needed.

491 01:08:35.970 ⇒ 01:08:51.630 Robert Tseng: But… but yeah, I feel like that’s… that’s kind of how we… we’re thinking about it. We’re not all focusing in one segment. I’m not saying no to smaller deals, necessarily. Like, I think we should let some of those in more. We’ll be able to… we’ll be able to handle them, but it’s kind of case by case. Like, I think the goal is really

492 01:08:51.649 ⇒ 01:08:57.570 Robert Tseng: like, from a revenue perspective, to hit 400, like, around $400K a month by the end of Q2.

493 01:08:58.380 ⇒ 01:09:00.660 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay, perfect. Yeah, that’s,

494 01:09:01.130 ⇒ 01:09:08.449 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, just, you know, for me, I just like to do the math backwards. It’s like, okay, what do we need to do to get to those goals? I’m… yeah.

495 01:09:08.729 ⇒ 01:09:15.360 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah. I mean, obviously, commission is great, but, I’m also, like,

496 01:09:15.590 ⇒ 01:09:34.099 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: like, I’m very goal-oriented, so, like, I like to see a number go up. And so, even just in my head, I’m like, okay, how do we get to 400? Okay, this is how many deals, like, these are the types of contacts I want to reach out to. That’s the reason I ask, is it just helps me, because obviously, if we were to go for

497 01:09:34.100 ⇒ 01:09:41.349 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: you know, companies that are, you know, Series D or higher, they have incredibly long, like, cycles.

498 01:09:41.350 ⇒ 01:09:54.670 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah. So, so yeah, so in order for, like, you know, if you’re aiming for a certain target within one quarter, it’s like you have, like, two or three months, right? And so if you have two or three months, what’s realistically, like, you know, how many leads should I reach out to, how many, you know.

499 01:09:54.700 ⇒ 01:10:01.630 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: folks, am I confident in closing within that period in order to hit those goals, right? That’s just how I’m doing the calculus, at least.

500 01:10:01.630 ⇒ 01:10:02.270 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

501 01:10:02.850 ⇒ 01:10:03.850 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah.

502 01:10:03.850 ⇒ 01:10:18.840 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, it’s probably too aggressive, like, I mean, we grew, like, 45% in the corner, I think the quarter is basically what it was. I feel like that growth is still achievable, and, like, you know, we’re… even as badly as the marketing and sales team performed, you can see we still grew 45%. So, like, I feel like we’re…

503 01:10:18.840 ⇒ 01:10:26.370 Robert Tseng: Like, we do all this stuff to, like, structure it and try to figure out, like, how to make it work. Yeah, outbound didn’t work, content didn’t work, but, like.

504 01:10:26.370 ⇒ 01:10:33.429 Robert Tseng: You know, some other things that are still working, and, you know, we’re small enough that, like, any one thing will really just be very meaningful for the business.

505 01:10:33.430 ⇒ 01:10:55.420 Robert Tseng: So, I think, like, I think a 40% growth target in a quarter is still very reasonable, and, like, we can go after upper-mid market kind of clients that could close within a quarter. And there’s still, like, stuff that’s kind of carrying over from Q1, so it’s, like, it’s not all on, you know, us to, like, build new pipeline and go after new deals, like, from today. Like, these are still just, like, we still have stuff that we’re working through from

506 01:10:55.420 ⇒ 01:10:58.479 Robert Tseng: From, this past quarter, last year even.

507 01:10:58.950 ⇒ 01:11:18.539 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay, yeah, sounds, sounds good. I’m just trying to, I’m just trying to get a feel of, like, how aggressive you guys want to be, that’s all. Like, I… Utam, like, our first, first call with Utam, like, when I, when I hopped on with you guys last Friday, was like, he’s like, I’m trying to, you know, so I was like, okay, yeah, I’m down, like, I’m down to try, you know, to get that aggressive.

508 01:11:18.540 ⇒ 01:11:26.649 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, like, that’s, that’s, yeah, that’s kind of where we’re at. We just wanna, we wanna swing big right now, and, yeah, we’ll see, see how it goes.

509 01:11:26.650 ⇒ 01:11:30.140 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, I mean, I’m telling you transparently, Robert, like.

510 01:11:30.970 ⇒ 01:11:35.299 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Just based on a lot of my catch-up conversations these last, like, this last week and a half.

511 01:11:36.300 ⇒ 01:11:48.409 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I do not think that it’s going to be very hard to sell this stuff right now. Like, I know you posted about the open claw guy, like, oh, he, you know, you make the… like, obviously that’s, like, you know, inflated BS, but, like…

512 01:11:48.410 ⇒ 01:11:49.130 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.

513 01:11:50.960 ⇒ 01:11:55.150 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: There are some enterprises, like, that I currently work with. I’m, like, that…

514 01:11:55.520 ⇒ 01:12:07.080 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: they are still using… they are still just using ChatGPT, or they’re using Microsoft Copilot. That is, like, all their entire, you know, AI capabilities right now.

515 01:12:07.240 ⇒ 01:12:29.829 Robert Tseng: I mean, that’s the thing, I want you to sell AI, don’t sell data. Like, I don’t need you to sell data. We can… I mean, you can book those meetings and just throw them to me, like, I’ll close them. Like, I know how to… both Utama can sell data. But it’s more interesting for me for you to kind of learn our business and sell in the AI world. I think that’s what is the higher value. Like, that’s what… that’s what… that’s what EY wants. Like, we’re pitching them 1.5 million to, like.

516 01:12:29.830 ⇒ 01:12:33.319 Robert Tseng: To… to get… get us to build them, like, basically an oak…

517 01:12:33.320 ⇒ 01:12:53.119 Robert Tseng: an open… open work for EY. So, like… and I… I just met, like, the head of data and AI for… for… for Deloitte here in the… in, like, in this Northeast region two days ago. I would picture the same thing. So, like, I… I… we’re gonna… yeah, that’s… that’s what we’re interested in selling. Like, I… I don’t really want more CPG data clients. Like, I don’t really care.

518 01:12:53.120 ⇒ 01:13:09.439 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Oh, yeah, I mean, I’m purely, like, I… even the way I was telling you guys yesterday, when I was talking to Lucas, was like, you guys are AI enablement. It’s, like, 100%, like, everything you guys do is, like, can we build… can we build you tools that leverage AI, like, in the right way, right?

519 01:13:09.440 ⇒ 01:13:09.920 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

520 01:13:09.920 ⇒ 01:13:27.469 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: That’s it. Like, that’s how… that’s how everything I’ve read, that’s how I simplified you guys. Great. And, like, that’s… that seems to be, like, really compelling messaging. Yeah. And so, I’m glad we’re on the same page, but that… that’s… that’s the… those are the… the current enterprises that I am…

521 01:13:27.700 ⇒ 01:13:30.570 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: that I am thinking of right now, that I’m not allowed to disclose.

522 01:13:30.900 ⇒ 01:13:33.909 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I feel like there’s a play to throw you guys in there at some point.

523 01:13:34.190 ⇒ 01:13:43.950 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Great. As I’m developing these relationships. But the… in the medium term, like, I’m very, very confident. I’m very, very confident in, like…

524 01:13:44.200 ⇒ 01:13:59.429 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Like, because I already sold, like, I already forced-converted people from, like, ChatGPT into Claude Code. I converted, like, 50 people in the last, like, month. I was like, stop using this, like, show me your workflow, stop using this. And half of them were founders.

525 01:13:59.810 ⇒ 01:14:00.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

526 01:14:00.430 ⇒ 01:14:03.149 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And so that’s why, like, I’m already on the evangelist.

527 01:14:03.150 ⇒ 01:14:05.499 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you’re on, you’re on, you’re on this, yeah.

528 01:14:05.500 ⇒ 01:14:13.029 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I’m already evangelizing so hard that, like, when you reached out to me, I was like, this is great. I have an excuse now to, like, do this even more. Yeah.

529 01:14:13.390 ⇒ 01:14:25.859 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And like I said, I told Lucas that yesterday. Like, I was just like, I’m so excited, because, like, I can… I’m already… I’m already spreading the good word of, like, you can 100X your productivity with these things.

530 01:14:25.860 ⇒ 01:14:40.880 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And so, but anyways, I’m telling you, that’s why I’m, like, trying to gauge, like, your… how aggressive you want to be, because, you know, once again, right, is, like, service delivery-wise, I want to make sure if I am bringing stuff in, like, we have the capabilities, you know, the capacity to take it on.

531 01:14:40.880 ⇒ 01:15:00.510 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Because there’s a lot of stuff, especially at Fusion Node, we’ve had to say no to, because, like, our team was not big enough to handle a lot of the accounts that were coming in, and so that was kind of what I was gauging this last week, is like, okay, if I’m gonna go out and… and organic… because this is all organic, I’m not, like, I’m not doing any more meeting, I’m not doing any more outreach or outbound.

532 01:15:00.510 ⇒ 01:15:06.920 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: then I already am just organically being myself. Like, I just meet hundreds of people every week, just because I go, you know…

533 01:15:06.950 ⇒ 01:15:14.130 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I do my thing, right? I… that’s how much has changed since I was with you at Pungo to now, is like, I would just organically have

534 01:15:14.410 ⇒ 01:15:24.750 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I just have organic distribution now. And so that, to me, it’s more like, okay, if I’m gonna bring these in, you know, I’m gonna be selling AI enablement. That is how I’m putting it, right?

535 01:15:24.750 ⇒ 01:15:25.280 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

536 01:15:25.280 ⇒ 01:15:34.090 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And, like, do we have the service capabilities to take it on? And then from there, it’s, like, how aggressive do you want our sales targets to be, right?

537 01:15:34.090 ⇒ 01:15:35.040 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

538 01:15:35.110 ⇒ 01:15:45.570 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And this is not over-promising, this is, like, I’m… this is, like, I have a very good scope as to, like, how much I can bring in. But that is… that’s… that’s just, like, what I wanted to get a gauge on.

539 01:15:45.830 ⇒ 01:16:00.549 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think we have the delivery infrastructure now to go and get somebody. I think Kayla’s been ramping up very well, like, she knows who we need to hire. We have a bunch of people in the pipeline, so if we need… if we know a deal’s coming in a month from now, yeah, we could staff up for it. Like, I think it’s,

540 01:16:00.790 ⇒ 01:16:25.319 Robert Tseng: I think there were… I mean, I think we’ve learned a lot about, like, kind of how to staff people on projects. So, I mean, that’s why I feel comfortable doing this M&A thing. Like, I’m going after these guys who are, like, less than five-person agencies doing less than a million a year in revenue, and I’m telling them, like, look, you know, you don’t have an exit right now. Your business is getting… you’re just gonna shrink in two years, because you’re a mixed panel North American, like.

541 01:16:25.320 ⇒ 01:16:28.699 Robert Tseng: enterprise partner, but Mixpanel is just getting slammed.

542 01:16:28.700 ⇒ 01:16:41.700 Robert Tseng: I know your revenue is dipping, like, the past year or two years, and you want to get out of the game. And that’s basically the pitch to this guy. He’s like, yeah, he wants to get out. So I’m like, okay, bring your book of business, you have 10 clients, bring them over to Brainforge.

543 01:16:41.700 ⇒ 01:16:54.920 Robert Tseng: you have to, like, stay on, in order to, like, do the handoff. There’s some, like, retention thing, and, yeah, I think we’re basically gonna try to pitch, like, a cashless offer to him, where he has to come and stay here for

544 01:16:54.920 ⇒ 01:17:05.179 Robert Tseng: a 6 months to a year or whatever, and he can kind of absorb the… we could pay him out using the revenue from his… from his book of business, and assuming he can retain, like, 80% or whatever, I need to put together the terms.

545 01:17:05.180 ⇒ 01:17:16.160 Robert Tseng: yeah, that’s great. Like, that’s another 10 accounts that we… that we get to… that we get to run. So, yeah, and like, I… I wanna… like, I’m… I’m thinking about it that way. Like, I wanna go and…

546 01:17:16.270 ⇒ 01:17:22.380 Robert Tseng: I wanna go after… I mean, I don’t think we’re gonna become a hold co. or anything, but, like, I… I mean, I just…

547 01:17:22.610 ⇒ 01:17:33.669 Robert Tseng: I’m just doing whatever I can to go and bring in more accounts into the business right now, and then we’ll… I think we’ll figure out how to staff them, staff them later, I guess.

548 01:17:33.810 ⇒ 01:17:34.280 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

549 01:17:34.280 ⇒ 01:17:38.499 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Great. Well, like, that, I mean, that’s all I needed to hear. I mean, at the end of the day, like.

550 01:17:38.640 ⇒ 01:17:41.640 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: you know, that’s… that’s it, like, I…

551 01:17:42.040 ⇒ 01:17:46.450 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I’m that confident. I mean, it’s not… it’s…

552 01:17:46.770 ⇒ 01:18:02.929 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, it’s just ridiculous. Like, just to give you an example, Robert, like, this happened last night, like, so… because obviously, like, I have my own team here, working on our other startup, and, my designer was just, like, casually talking to an art school that he used to be a part of.

553 01:18:03.660 ⇒ 01:18:20.230 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: and just, like, you know, just floated the idea of, like, an AI, you know, just like an AI CRM for them to, like, help manage, like, communications with the students and the teachers. There was a contract, like, there was already, like, within that conversation, like.

554 01:18:20.620 ⇒ 01:18:26.239 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: there was, like, already an offer to, like, okay, like, okay, let’s put together a contract, like, now.

555 01:18:26.240 ⇒ 01:18:26.770 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

556 01:18:26.770 ⇒ 01:18:42.579 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And this was, like, a very casual conversation with my designer. Like, that’s how I know how bad the demand is, is because, like, he wasn’t even… but the thing is, of his exposure to, like, me and my CTOs, like, you know, all the things that we’re working on, and all the software we’re building, and the AI stuff we’re working on, like.

557 01:18:43.080 ⇒ 01:19:02.060 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: that’s… that… he was able to just, like, very casually sell AI stuff, and, like, immediately, like I said, contracts were… contract was on the table in 2 hours, right? Like, and that’s, like, an example of pretty much 90% of my conversations in the last, like, 2 weeks, is like, oh yeah, do you know anyone who, like, does AI stuff? Oh, like.

558 01:19:02.060 ⇒ 01:19:07.909 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: hey, you know, we’re looking to build this out, and I was like, well, you guys don’t have your data infra, like, set before you can do that.

559 01:19:07.970 ⇒ 01:19:09.010 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And so…

560 01:19:09.380 ⇒ 01:19:18.319 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: like I said, very serendipitous. I didn’t even, like… I don’t ask for a lot of these things, but you called me in a weird time where, like, a lot of these people are asking me for this stuff.

561 01:19:18.320 ⇒ 01:19:33.570 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And I just, like, I… I run a… I run a different startup. I don’t… I don’t do these things. Yeah. So, that’s what I’m saying, like, I’m… I’m fairly… like, even today, I’m, like, I’m going down the street, and, like, three of my friends, they… they’re… they’re part of,

562 01:19:33.570 ⇒ 01:19:41.909 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: they, they manage, like, esports, players and, streamers, and, like, they were talking about, like, data, like, data and AI enablement, like, 2 weeks ago.

563 01:19:41.940 ⇒ 01:19:51.950 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And so they were like, oh yeah, we’re trying to, like, figure out how to, like, manage all these… this email stuff, and I was like, oh, that sucks. Maybe try… maybe try Claude. Like, that’s… that was my conversation with them.

564 01:19:51.950 ⇒ 01:19:52.310 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

565 01:19:52.310 ⇒ 01:19:53.429 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: them and say, hey.

566 01:19:53.540 ⇒ 01:20:03.950 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: can I talk to one of your, you know, can I talk to your manager? Like, we can… we can enable these services. Because they manage, one, my friend, she’s a talent manager for, like, the top

567 01:20:03.990 ⇒ 01:20:18.470 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: like, 10 streamers on the planet right now, and all the ones based here in LA. And yeah, like, I look at her dashboards, and, like, she’s, like, managing comms from Discord, like, her emails, Slack, and, like, I was like, this is ridiculous, because she’s handling

568 01:20:18.470 ⇒ 01:20:24.939 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: 15 different accounts, and they’re all streamers with over, you know, a million… a million followers each, right?

569 01:20:25.180 ⇒ 01:20:25.790 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

570 01:20:25.790 ⇒ 01:20:36.279 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: they have a huge data issue, right? But I was like, good luck, like, every conversation I’ve had was like, great, good luck, instead of… but now, like I said, the difference is, I have something to offer.

571 01:20:36.650 ⇒ 01:20:37.180 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

572 01:20:37.180 ⇒ 01:20:55.089 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: that’s just an outlook as to, like, what I’m exposed to with my current, like, day-to-day life. Like, I just meet so many random people at Bonsai, because I do stuff for them, and then I just go to random events. I know LinkedIn influencers now. Like, my reach is very bizarre. And those are all people I’m going to be selling your stuff to, basically.

573 01:20:55.090 ⇒ 01:20:59.460 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I just didn’t have… I had nothing to sell to these people before.

574 01:20:59.830 ⇒ 01:21:00.480 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

575 01:21:00.680 ⇒ 01:21:01.360 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So…

576 01:21:01.780 ⇒ 01:21:15.909 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, so, I’ll tell you, Robert, is, like, if you have a lot of, like… I’m gonna be booking meetings starting next, like, starting these next 3 weeks, and so it’s just, like, get ready, that’s all I’m trying to tell you, is, like… Yeah. I meet with these people all the time.

577 01:21:16.220 ⇒ 01:21:29.770 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: But yeah, I’m ready. Like, I’m… let’s just… like I said, let’s run it. I’m excited. Like, it’ll be fun. I think it’ll be fun. It’ll be interesting to be able to see what we can do for these folks.

578 01:21:30.030 ⇒ 01:21:30.670 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

579 01:21:31.450 ⇒ 01:21:37.790 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. Alright, well, if you have anything else, just let me know. Otherwise, I think, I’m just gonna…

580 01:21:38.010 ⇒ 01:21:40.350 Robert Tseng: do… do what I said I was gonna do.

581 01:21:40.610 ⇒ 01:21:47.659 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, and likewise, I’ll keep you posted, but for now, I’m just gonna… I’ll be messaging you as these… as these, like, things get…

582 01:21:48.100 ⇒ 01:21:57.930 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: you know, as these things progress, because I’ll be doing… those are the three channels I’ll work through. The partner channel, my LinkedIn nav, and then my in-person conversations with people here, so…

583 01:21:57.930 ⇒ 01:21:59.769 Robert Tseng: Perfect, yeah, I think that works.

584 01:21:59.980 ⇒ 01:22:06.999 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, and then, I don’t know, I think I’m supposed to talk to Utom at some point, but anyways, that’s it for me, let’s, let’s, yeah, let’s start getting this down.

585 01:22:07.210 ⇒ 01:22:08.899 Robert Tseng: Alright, sounds good. See ya.

586 01:22:08.900 ⇒ 01:22:10.099 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Alright, talk to you later, Robert.

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