Ryan Matonis, the President and CTO at Lead Force 360, discusses the intersection of technology, leadership, and entrepreneurship. Ryan dives deep into his journey from an intern to a tech entrepreneur, revealing the critical turning points that shaped his career. He shares how encountering challenges and failures, particularly an enlightening but harsh critique from UX pioneer Don Norman, significantly impacted his business approach and personal growth.

Ryan emphasizes the importance of embracing a self-sufficient team culture, where team members are empowered to manage themselves, highlighting the role of technology in facilitating effective management and leadership. His approach combines rigorous system adoption with fostering a culture that encourages individual leadership, aiming for a seamless blend of tech and human oversight.

Listeners will gain insights into the practicalities of leading a tech-driven business, the evolution of sales and marketing strategies, and the critical importance of customer interaction in the digital age. Ryan’s story is a compelling narrative of resilience, innovation, and the relentless pursuit of excellence in a rapidly changing technological landscape.

Want to learn more about Ryan's work? Check out their website at https://leadforce360.com.

Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn at https://linkedin.com/in/ryan-matonis.

Key Points with Timestamps

• [00:01:25] Introduction of Ryan Matonis, his background, and journey in tech and leadership.
• [00:02:13] Discussion on Don Norman's influence on UX/UI and its impact on technology.
• [00:03:43] Ryan's early entrepreneurial venture and lessons learned from failures.
• [00:07:04] Insights into Ryan’s evolution in sales and marketing strategies.
• [00:10:24] Formation of Lead Engines and transition to Lead Force 360.
• [00:17:18] Effective management practices and the importance of a self-sustaining team culture.
• [00:20:07] Challenges in system adoption and the importance of user-friendly designs.
• [00:25:16] Ryan discusses strategies for successful cold outreach and adapting to changes in digital communication.
• [00:28:03] Final advice for business owners in 2024: the importance of personal connection with clients.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;24 - 00;01;25;01
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Ryan Matonis. He is the president and CTO at Lead Force 360. He started as way as a data scientist, computer scientist major, and became interested in being an entrepreneur. And, launched out on that, started a larger marketing agency, and has a amazing past. He's met somebody I wish I've met. And we're going to talk about that in just a second.

00;01;25;03 - 00;01;40;28
Craig Andrews
you know what? You don't need to be a techie to appreciate this interview. In talking with Ryan, there's there are some lessons that you can apply regardless of what you do. And so with that, I just want to welcome Ryan. Glad you're here.

00;01;41;01 - 00;01;42;21
Ryan Matonis
Thanks for having me.

00;01;42;24 - 00;02;04;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So we were talking and and, I, you know, I looked at where you went to university and, and and said, did you meet? And I just I couldn't remember the guy's name. I can remember Don. And you said Nielsen, which I was actually his partner, Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group. You met Don Norman.

00;02;04;21 - 00;02;06;16
Ryan Matonis
Met Don Norman.

00;02;06;18 - 00;02;13;24
Craig Andrews
Okay. So you, me and about three other people that are listening know who Don Norman is? Who is he?

00;02;13;26 - 00;02;25;01
Ryan Matonis
You know, he's the father of usability. and I guess he was a huge contributor to, like, UI and UX, and I believe the iPhone. I could be wrong about that, but I think it was the iPhone.

00;02;25;04 - 00;02;55;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah, he's he is listed as a fellow. He's listed as a fellow on, Apple fellow that contributed to usability. And you know, what's really interesting is, you know, years ago, I, I remember reading some things by him, and I started, I was thinking about how do you do navigation on a website? And I came up with you know, what I call kind of the, the two tier, instead of having big drop down menus, having kind of two tiers.

00;02;55;28 - 00;03;16;10
Craig Andrews
And then I looked at the Apple's website and I realized, oh my goodness, this is what they've been doing for years. And then I looked at, I was like, oh, Don Norman has been advising them on usability. And I guess it turns out when you when you drink from the same, well, you know, you, you come to the same conclusions.

00;03;16;12 - 00;03;20;14
Craig Andrews
but how did you meet? I mean, I'd love to meet this guy. How did you meet him?

00;03;20;16 - 00;03;43;19
Ryan Matonis
so I was at, It was one of my first startups. I was part of a team called embrace. We were working on, like, a health care device, fall risk device. And we were at a entrepreneurship convention. Convention? We had a booth, and we were hoping to find, like, investors or, like, partners or just, like, somebody in the world that could help us bring this thing to life because we had bitten off, like, orders of magnitude more than we could chew.

00;03;43;21 - 00;03;57;22
Ryan Matonis
we actually we didn't end up succeeding because of that. But I did get to meet Don Norman. He came up to our booth, and he, he kind of listened to our pitch. He looked at what we were working on, which was kind of half complete. And then he just said, there's no way anybody would ever use this.

00;03;57;22 - 00;04;10;03
Ryan Matonis
And then he turned around and he walked away. And that was that was our entire conversation. And, he ended up being right. We got 1 or 2 customers, and then they just they never actually used it. And that was that.

00;04;10;05 - 00;04;17;09
Craig Andrews
What what did he say that led him to say that.

00;04;17;11 - 00;04;35;05
Ryan Matonis
if I had to guess, probably it was like a negative thing that you would have to think about all the time. And it was just like people didn't want to, like, have negative mindset changes, like they didn't want to feel like now I had to, like, put something on myself to monitor, like, my risk of falling over or something like that.

00;04;35;06 - 00;04;48;01
Ryan Matonis
Like, he probably saw that people weren't going to just like, get excited about doing this every single day and do it consistently and things like that. And then also it was like technology for like old people, which wasn't really gonna there's hurdles there. Like.

00;04;48;04 - 00;05;06;24
Craig Andrews
Well, we can't gloss over something. You know, you said he was, you know, kind of the father of UX. what does that mean? You know, why was Don Norman important beyond just being the founder? What was it that he brought to usability that May makes him a legend?

00;05;06;27 - 00;05;17;23
Ryan Matonis
Simplicity? I really don't know. He didn't. He didn't mention it in our conversation. I would say. Yeah.

00;05;17;26 - 00;05;21;26
Craig Andrews
But, yeah.

00;05;21;29 - 00;05;37;28
Ryan Matonis
Like, it has to be something that you intuitively know how to use. Like it shouldn't be something that you pick up and like, you have to be taught like you should. If you're given a tool, you should you should be able to just solve your problem with that tool without having to go through the manual. You know.

00;05;38;01 - 00;05;56;22
Craig Andrews
And, you know, I think there's a lot of people that don't realize that there was a time where if you got a copy of Microsoft Word, it came with a three inch thick book on how to use it. And so you had your three inch thick book on Microsoft Word sitting on your desk so you could figure out how to use it.

00;05;56;22 - 00;06;04;19
Craig Andrews
And I can't remember the last time I've seen an operating manual for any software product.

00;06;04;21 - 00;06;23;12
Ryan Matonis
I think they're just different now. I think there's probably still three inches of of documents, but you can just search it and it's like I go through, I mean, I don't know, you go through anything. It's Well, that's not true. There's so many things that are just undocumented nightmares. Like, you just buy some product and you sign up and like, nobody tells you how to use it.

00;06;26;25 - 00;06;49;23
Craig Andrews
Well, and I think one lesson that comes out of your run in with Don Norman is there's we know this intuitively, but we sometimes forget. And that is there's value in expertise. You know, people have people have walked words that we haven't and they they can save us time. Things save us money.

00;06;49;25 - 00;06;53;29
Ryan Matonis
you know.

00;06;54;01 - 00;07;04;12
Craig Andrews
I mean, if you could go back to that conversation you had with Don Norman. With what? You know now, what what would you have done? What would you do differently?

00;07;04;14 - 00;07;20;25
Ryan Matonis
With everything I've learned about sales and marketing along the way, I would have done that conversation totally differently. I probably would have engaged him. Probably would have asked him a little bit more about himself instead of just pitching him like I had no idea what I was doing, which is probably why it went the way it did, right?

00;07;20;27 - 00;07;42;08
Ryan Matonis
I probably would have been a little bit more interested in Don Norman, which it would've helped if I knew who Don Norman was in, like my, you know, my co-founders weren't just like one just. Yeah. I don't know if that came up on the mic. but, I don't know, maybe I would have tried to get his, like, phone number, his email, so I could have followed up with him or, like, had another conversation with him.

00;07;42;11 - 00;07;47;15
Ryan Matonis
I probably wouldn't have let the conversation end right there. You know.

00;07;47;18 - 00;07;47;22
Craig Andrews
It.

00;07;47;24 - 00;08;06;15
Ryan Matonis
It's it's what a crazy opportunity. Like you probably didn't even understand. Like, why? I actually I definitely didn't understand what you back then. Yeah. You don't know. I don't know what I would have done differently now. Probably not. Figure out what was wrong with our UX. It'd be.

00;08;06;17 - 00;08;32;13
Craig Andrews
Yeah, but so interesting. And and so I guess here's one thing that's kind of interesting is you're a CTO. but I hear you talking about sales and marketing. you know, you say that if you could turn back time based on what you know about your solution, that you chose, if you could turn back time back to that conversation was a sales and marketing solution rather than a technical solution.

00;08;32;15 - 00;08;45;25
Craig Andrews
But your CTO that which is interesting. I mean, that's fascinating. How how what do you make of that? That you have a natural sales bent, but you're, you also have that foot in technology?

00;08;45;28 - 00;09;00;10
Ryan Matonis
I mean, I wouldn't say necessarily have a natural sales mind. I had to work for it. I don't think I got to tell you the story of how I got to where I am. because actually, where it began was I started something, I guess, I don't know, should we just. Should we just scroll back to the beginning on this?

00;09;00;11 - 00;09;00;19
Ryan Matonis
I guess.

00;09;00;22 - 00;09;01;12
Craig Andrews
Let's do it.

00;09;01;15 - 00;09;19;07
Ryan Matonis
I was working at a fortune 500 company, and, they were going to go hire all these big, expensive consultants to, like, write a database program. And, like, I was the intern, and I just didn't see why we needed six highly paid consultants to do it. When I thought I could do it myself, based on what I learned in one of my classes and I did, I built it myself.

00;09;19;07 - 00;09;38;23
Ryan Matonis
I saved them $1 million or more on actually value getting this built, and not including what they were going to spend giving me some terrible low ticket offer for full time employment. That's why I said, I'm going to go figure out how to work for myself. Right? And then, like, you know, make more money doing that. didn't figure out the more money part, wasn't really making more money.

00;09;38;25 - 00;10;01;28
Ryan Matonis
It just kind of was out there, like freelancing. And I started a software company called Lead Engines. the way I started lead engines was my friend was actually he was trying to get me to build a software product. He didn't have enough money for me to build it for him. and he basically was like, hey, if you could take data from all these different places, combine them into called email lists for outreach would be great.

00;10;01;28 - 00;10;13;19
Ryan Matonis
Like, I could pay 1500 bucks to build this for me. And I was like, well, it sounds like a lot of other people would need this. You don't have enough money to pay me to actually build this out, like you would be stuck having to fix it if it broke. Like it's never going to get upgraded. You don't know how to upgrade it.

00;10;13;22 - 00;10;24;07
Ryan Matonis
So what if I just build it? I give you a lifetime license, I'm going to own it. I'm going to sell to other people. I'm going to get them to pay me to upgrade it. And then you're going to have a better tool and you're going to pay the same price. It's not going to be your problem. Okay.

00;10;24;10 - 00;10;53;21
Ryan Matonis
So, you know, a couple more years down the road, I end up just selling or is acquiring is probably the right word. And the lead force, using lead engines because they were selling, you know, exactly that service to people sending a bunch of cold outreach and they needed it to go power their, their service. but that entire journey, like, I was solopreneur, I had to learn how to, like, sell and market on my own, which is actually where I learned that I needed to hire other people to sell and market for me because so many people blew me out of the water so many times.

00;10;53;21 - 00;11;01;09
Ryan Matonis
On the sales and marketing thing so quickly that I just had to, like, get over it, you know?

00;11;01;11 - 00;11;03;13
Ryan Matonis
Sorry if that was just total rants, long form.

00;11;03;13 - 00;11;04;01
Craig Andrews
No, no.

00;11;04;02 - 00;11;09;14
Ryan Matonis
No little background on me on how we got where we are. Yeah.

00;11;09;17 - 00;11;32;05
Craig Andrews
so from a sales, you know, just looking at the lessons that you've learned from sales, what, what what would you say for your to pass on wisdom to somebody? Hey, here's one thing I did that you should do differently. What would that one thing be? just from the whole perspective of sales and marketing.

00;11;32;07 - 00;11;34;22
Ryan Matonis
Did that they shouldn't do or that they should do.

00;11;34;25 - 00;11;40;28
Craig Andrews
One big your biggest lesson that you would pass on?

00;11;45;11 - 00;11;49;17
Ryan Matonis
Probably work things to the end.

00;11;49;20 - 00;12;07;05
Ryan Matonis
Like everybody just kind of that's probably the easiest way to say make sure you follow up and try to close and take, you know, go to a no. Ultimately, all of that sales advice comes to just working things to the end. It's like working something all the way until somebody says yes or never call me again. Because there's things like getting referrals.

00;12;07;05 - 00;12;26;01
Ryan Matonis
There's things like following up years later. There's things like just staying on their radar for, you know, years until they need you for some completely unrelated thing. And you're both in like, different industries or something like that. but it's just like not letting it, like, stay on top of it. Don't don't be the caught with the ball get stuck basically.

00;12;26;01 - 00;12;26;24
Ryan Matonis
Right?

00;12;26;27 - 00;12;49;23
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Okay. So so anyway, so you obviously didn't take the, that's why you serve as a lowball offer that their company, you know, you built the database and they gave you I mean, how, that's surprising because you had demonstrated expertise. You had brought value to their company. And what why do you think they were low balling one hindsight.

00;12;49;23 - 00;13;16;07
Ryan Matonis
No. Now, I totally understand that. Just, you know, like, it's it's really easy to point it like something on, on on like the cash flow table, however you want to give it something on the spreadsheet about money and point out your part and say that this is like what I did. I think part of it is like, just not, you know, every business needs to make an order of magnitude, you know, ten x profit on engineers that they hire.

00;13;16;08 - 00;13;36;06
Ryan Matonis
That's just kind of the mentality that a lot of these companies have because their long term investments, you know, and then there was also just a lot of other costs of employment involved, you know, like they've got to give you benefits, they have to pay to put you in a cubicle. And they have to pay your manager and they have to pay to office in the software.

00;13;36;06 - 00;13;51;23
Ryan Matonis
And it's like, it's not just the money that gets in your pocket right? so I guess one, I was just looking at it. They wouldn't say completely wrong, you know, but I think if I went back and I ran the numbers again, it might not have been as egregious as, like I thought it was at the time.

00;13;51;26 - 00;14;24;21
Ryan Matonis
again, just learning lessons along the way. Right? Like, oh, damn. Okay. sorry. I don't know if that's off limits. And it's. No, that's going. and then I guess, you know, other people probably could have done it right. Like, it really wasn't that hard of a problem. And I think a lot of the times when you solve hard problems by just seeing that they're actually not that hard of problems and solving them in a really easy way, like people don't always see the value in that, you know, it's like, oh, that wasn't I guess that wasn't that hard.

00;14;24;22 - 00;14;29;07
Ryan Matonis
It's like, oh, okay. Like, why did you do it?

00;14;29;10 - 00;14;32;07
Craig Andrews
Well, Steve Jobs always said simple as hard.

00;14;32;10 - 00;14;46;19
Ryan Matonis
Yeah that's true. Simple. So hard. Back to Don Norman. Elegance. Elegance meaning like is few pieces. It's possible that you kind of intuitively understand. Like you sit down at a machine for the first time, but you know, what the buttons do, you know, kind of makes sense.

00;14;46;21 - 00;15;04;16
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So. So time progresses. and you, you've got a, a marketing agency that helps people get leads, but it's focused on cold leads.

00;15;04;18 - 00;15;16;11
Ryan Matonis
Kind of. Or like, I wouldn't say cold leads. It's like cool. It's outbound marketing. It's reaching out to cold leads and finding out which ones are going to be warm or which ones might be potential customers. You know.

00;15;16;13 - 00;15;17;09
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;15;18;16 - 00;15;34;18
Craig Andrews
So that's I mean, that's an interesting area to me because I, you know, I'm, I'm strictly inbound it and don't do any outbound. And, what what do you find that works? You know, doing that.

00;15;34;20 - 00;15;36;02
Ryan Matonis
What do we find that works?

00;15;36;02 - 00;15;37;01
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;15;37;03 - 00;15;51;26
Ryan Matonis
I mean, the first there's a lot of answers to that. The first is you have to have a system. Like if you want to make hundreds or thousands of phone calls, you can't do that where you're just like, I'm going to call this person. Who do I call next? Let me think about it. Right. But you have to just have a system where it's like, I'm gonna call all these people.

00;15;51;26 - 00;16;18;28
Ryan Matonis
And then depending on these outcomes, I'm going to put them in these lists, and then I'm going to go call this list and this list and this list. And if I do this, I'm just going to call everybody in a minute, work it to completion. Like there's basic systems like that. And depending on your scale, that can be anywhere from like a complete CRM system, like a Salesforce or HubSpot, that can just be an Excel spreadsheets, can just be like this in the back of your mind when you haven't called somebody, just depending on how strong of an issue you have.

00;16;18;28 - 00;16;41;17
Ryan Matonis
I know some people that can work like that. I can't. but then the other part of it is like, you need to have a script. And so often it's like the script is tied to, like, the personality of the person calling or like it's tied to, like the subset of the customers you're calling. And so it's like, if you want to get really, really big, you have to come up with a script that's gonna work for everybody.

00;16;41;17 - 00;17;00;07
Ryan Matonis
Or if you want to like, keep it really narrow, you have to make sure that you're only calling people it can work for. So, I guess, but to get back to your point, tied into what you do, I, I'm not surprised to hear you don't do any of this, because actually, podcast, I think, probably takes the exact same part in the sales cycle as like an initial cold call almost.

00;17;00;07 - 00;17;15;12
Ryan Matonis
It's like you have these highlight reels, like you get people's attention and then they see it, and then maybe they go, listen. And they have like that first conversation and like they learn things and it's kind of like a discovery call, you know, so I don't know, actually, I think, they're kind of analogous, but they're just totally different.

00;17;15;17 - 00;17;18;22
Ryan Matonis
It's outbound compared to like inbound. Right?

00;17;18;24 - 00;17;39;22
Craig Andrews
Yeah. so obviously, you know, years ago you turned down a job working for someone else who felt like they were lowballing. You. but now you're the president and chief technology officer. What have you learned about in managing and leading teams?

00;17;39;24 - 00;17;44;17
Ryan Matonis
Oh, man.

00;17;44;19 - 00;18;05;13
Ryan Matonis
It's good if they can manage and lead themselves as much as possible. And there's ways to, like, enable that. some of it's tech, some of it's not, I guess anything really any business problem can either be tech or it can be not. You know, there's not many thing like like you use tech to solve problems, right.

00;18;05;15 - 00;18;26;06
Ryan Matonis
but it's really important to have like other leaders in your organization, you can't be responsible for leading everybody. Ideally, like some amount of the leadership's going to come like from culture, even just like people all being on the same page about things or thinking that things should be a certain way. so I guess what I'm saying maybe leadership in management, like management, is more direct leadership's indirect.

00;18;26;08 - 00;18;46;19
Ryan Matonis
so maybe like a good culture, you have less management because you have leadership, you know. and I guess is like a CTO particularly like my role in this, let's say we're doing a bunch of calling. I need to be able to track how many phone calls everybody's made. I need to have a spreadsheet that shows me how many people they've connected with, how many warm leads they generated, what their percentages are.

00;18;46;21 - 00;19;04;14
Ryan Matonis
I need to know that they're making their calls. I need to know that calling the right people. But I can also just put that in like, a report that the whole sales team can see. And it's like everybody's performance is tracked and it's red green, you know, Excel spreadsheet or like conditional like the formatting. Right. And so it's like red bad green good.

00;19;04;16 - 00;19;15;29
Ryan Matonis
And then it's kind of self-managing because people know they're going to get a get on a call with their manager. And the manager is going to like look at the spreadsheet and the spreadsheets are going to be red, or it's going to be green and they're going to get mad, or they're going to be happy based on what color it is.

00;19;16;05 - 00;19;38;10
Ryan Matonis
And they know what makes the thing change colors. They make more calls. It turns green, right? so there's a certain amount of like leadership and management that you don't have to do by like creating systems that enable people to, like, manage and lead themselves in these ways, you know, and I think that's actually like a really big thing if you want to be bigger than just, a couple people that need constant like leadership or management.

00;19;38;12 - 00;20;00;07
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. I had never thought of, of tech being part of the whole leadership element. But the way you explained that's that's clever. I get it. what what are some of the challenges that you've run into? So. And one, how big of a team do you lead?

00;20;00;10 - 00;20;02;00
Ryan Matonis
We have about 30 people.

00;20;02;03 - 00;20;07;18
Craig Andrews
Okay. And what are some of the challenges that you've run into?

00;20;07;21 - 00;20;28;29
Ryan Matonis
I would say just in my role, like adoption of systems, sometimes. it's interesting how it's like it's almost never the people. It's either the system is adopted or it's not. And like, you can have 15 people adopt one system and then you have another one that, like, just nobody else ends up using. And I think it goes back to this UX thing.

00;20;28;29 - 00;20;44;19
Ryan Matonis
I think we're gonna end up talking about Dan Norman the whole time, which is more that I talked about Dan Norman in years, frankly. But, part of it is like if you have systems that make it easier for people to do their jobs, they will use those systems. And like, if you're like, oh, well, I need to track this.

00;20;44;19 - 00;20;58;27
Ryan Matonis
I need reporting on this. And you just like pilot on top of somebody is like extra steps. And it's not like cohesively integrated or like, oh, I know I need to go put that note over here, but I'm talking to this customer right now over here, or I took their call in my car. Like, that's kind of where the systems breakdown.

00;20;58;29 - 00;21;19;10
Ryan Matonis
Yeah. And it's actually not it's not the people's fault. Typically like we've we've put enough systems out there on our team. And it was always pretty much 8020 where it was 80% of people used it, 20% didn't. Sometimes 100% people use it because there's just it's unavoidable. or it's the exact opposite. And like only 20% of people are actually doing what they should be doing with it.

00;21;19;13 - 00;21;31;01
Ryan Matonis
So the system's fault as a system's fault. I mean, me as the person implementing the system, it's my fault or me as a person that picked the system. Right?

00;21;31;03 - 00;21;47;24
Ryan Matonis
It's a lot of just trial and error. It's just like, is this going to make your life easier? And you just you just launch it and you just hope everybody's, you know, see if the spaghetti sticks to the wall. And if it doesn't, you just throw more spaghetti and there's no shortage. You know, there's so many tools and like SAS widgets, like you're never going to run out of noodles to throw at the wall.

00;21;47;24 - 00;21;52;07
Ryan Matonis
I guarantee it. Come back next week, there'll be more, you know.

00;21;52;10 - 00;22;15;17
Craig Andrews
Yeah. It's it's really it's mind boggling the number of, SAS tools that they're out in the marketing. I mean, just for recording. I'm just for recording meetings. You know, you jump on zoom meeting and I was on one earlier today, and it's like everybody brought their bot, you know? And so, there were three different bots. There were three people on the call and three bots in the call.

00;22;15;20 - 00;22;25;05
Craig Andrews
And, and, you know, the bots are just sitting there harvesting, but there's a lot of tech, there's a lot of solutions out there.

00;22;25;08 - 00;22;28;00
Ryan Matonis
you know.

00;22;28;03 - 00;22;32;02
Craig Andrews
Well, call AI and, you know, many. Yeah.

00;22;32;04 - 00;22;54;02
Ryan Matonis
I don't know, like they're kind of all feature creeping too, especially with like, ChatGPT. So it's like so much easier to, like, make them do more things. And so it's like they're kind of stepping on each other's toes now, like you're so and so data tool has added a CRM and your CRM tool has added, you know, data sources in like your email tool that used to be connected to your CRM.

00;22;54;02 - 00;23;09;06
Ryan Matonis
Like now they're both like their own standalone systems and like which you can have 100 tools and all do the exact same thing, have the same set of features, just it's just fine. I guess we'll probably get a good price, but, yeah.

00;23;09;08 - 00;23;17;15
Craig Andrews
Well, unless circle back around to the, the cold outreach. So is it just calls or. It is, is it also email?

00;23;17;17 - 00;23;35;20
Ryan Matonis
We've done it all. We've done called outreach or through email? Phone. We've done it through LinkedIn. it actually kind of depends on who we're doing it for. there's just things that are better through certain channels than others. There's some things that people don't use. Good luck. Cold calling a doctor, you know. Yeah. Good luck. Cold email.

00;23;35;20 - 00;23;40;28
Ryan Matonis
It got good luck getting in contact with the doctor. Other than showing up, I guess. But.

00;23;41;00 - 00;23;54;02
Craig Andrews
Well, one of the things that's happened is this year, both Gmail and Yahoo changed the, the rules for getting the emails delivered. And it's, how has that impacted you?

00;23;54;04 - 00;24;07;00
Ryan Matonis
So somebody that's on the data side of it, it's it's not the end of the world because, yes, we're not able to send as much, but I kind of like to think of it as like.

00;24;07;03 - 00;24;21;28
Ryan Matonis
If you just sorted your list by like, who the best people to email were, and then you have like, the best at the top and the worst at the bottom, and you just took like the top 100. I don't know how many people you would have in your list, but like, you're going to have 80% of the value in like that top 20%, right?

00;24;22;01 - 00;24;41;16
Ryan Matonis
So there was just kind of more of a burden put on outbound marketers to send better email to more accurate lists of people, get less spam complaints, do things like say, hey, I saw that you're running this job ad, right? So like, now if I have clients that are in recruiting, I'm not just going to email blast.

00;24;41;16 - 00;24;55;21
Ryan Matonis
Hey, are you hiring? It's going to be like, hey, I saw that you're hiring for this role. We have somebody, you know, I've got their resume on my desk. It looks like they might be a great fit and maybe that's true. Maybe, like, we use ChatGPT to read the job opening, which is like something that we've done. Right?

00;24;55;23 - 00;25;16;06
Ryan Matonis
And maybe we really do have a match, right? Like, maybe that's actually something that we can say like more honestly now. Right. but then we just send that to less people, we stay more targeted. Everybody else is hitting the spam. If we're the only ones in the inbox, that's okay. A lot of the times you win because you're the only one in the inbox.

00;25;16;08 - 00;25;30;28
Ryan Matonis
Like, I can't tell you how many clients I got for cold outreach. That said, you know what? I get this email 100 times a day, but it goes to my spam folder and here's what's my inbox. So I guess I'll talk to you and I'll hire you because I don't need to tell anybody anything that's that complicated. I just needed to hit the frickin inbox.

00;25;31;04 - 00;25;33;14
Ryan Matonis
Okay? Like so I'm here.

00;25;33;17 - 00;25;37;18
Craig Andrews
So why do you think yours hits the inbox while others don't.

00;25;37;20 - 00;26;07;19
Ryan Matonis
Believe is a newer email or something? I hadn't sent as many or we scrubbed it harder or our message was more targeted. we had we kind of figured out, like after sending a ton of emails like, here's this list of things that you can do to get spam listed, basically. And if you just don't do any of these things, if you don't screw up any one of these one things, people will read your email or they'll get your email, and then 40 or 50% will reach your email.

00;26;07;21 - 00;26;24;26
Ryan Matonis
it is just like getting a certain reply rate, like making sure that a certain percentage of your replies are people saying yes instead of like, never email me again. and then like, we kind of just manage campaigns to check those boxes and we were able to still hit the inbox. Part of it is it's kind of like SEO where it's just like Google just, oh, we're making a change.

00;26;24;26 - 00;26;40;21
Ryan Matonis
And then everybody just screams and like, they don't know what's going to change. And like, content marketing is dead cold. Email is dead. Sales is dead. Like just, you know, because Google made an algorithm update, you just got to kind of roll with it. You got to figure out what it means for you.

00;26;40;24 - 00;27;04;21
Craig Andrews
Yeah, well that's cool. It's been an interesting journey for you. And, the, yeah, kind of going back to that, that early job that, you know, you felt like they were lowballing are you glad you went the route you did or would you be were back in that, that point? Would you make a different decision?

00;27;04;23 - 00;27;27;11
Ryan Matonis
I don't know if I would, you know, go run the gantlet again if I didn't have to, but, it was it was, it was. I have more fun. Now, I don't know that I always did along the way. it actually really is really hard just starting from just. I don't know how, you know, just I had no knowledge of marketing or sales, and I was just going to go put myself out there.

00;27;27;13 - 00;27;45;09
Ryan Matonis
you don't regret doing it? but it was hard. It was hard. I don't know if I could go do another four years of just starting from scratch and, like, change my name, and, you know, just. I don't think I would have to because you learn so much along the way. You connect so many dots, you mostly learn what not to do.

00;27;45;12 - 00;27;48;13
Ryan Matonis
Yeah.

00;27;48;15 - 00;28;03;03
Craig Andrews
So as we wrap up, if you had, if you have one piece of advice for business owners in 2024, what would that piece of advice be?

00;28;03;06 - 00;28;28;19
Ryan Matonis
All your leads call your customers. Go have a human conversation. like, just you. Like, there's so many tools that are, Just like obvious AI or just getting spams or whatever. Like if you're a B2B service provider and your customers are valuable to them, just call them, talk to them. Just be connected. Don't fall into the.

00;28;28;21 - 00;28;40;08
Ryan Matonis
You know, use all the spam stuff for like cold conversations and finding new people. But make sure you treat the we treat the real ones with you know, the respect they deserve, which is that.

00;28;40;11 - 00;28;47;07
Craig Andrews
That's good advice. Well, Ryan, thanks for thanks for coming on Layers and Legacies. How can people reach you?

00;28;47;09 - 00;29;01;19
Ryan Matonis
reach out to me on LinkedIn, mention that you saw me in the podcast because get, you know, 30 LinkedIn spam messages a day. So, yeah, be something to stand out. Do you want to reply?

00;29;01;21 - 00;29;04;28
Craig Andrews
Excellent. Well, Ryan, thanks for coming on. Leaders and Legacies.

00;29;05;04 - 00;29;06;22
Ryan Matonis
Yeah. Craig. Awesome. Thanks for having me.

00;29;06;25 - 00;29;07;27
Craig Andrews
All right. Bye bye.

00;29;07;29 - 00;29;09;17
Ryan Matonis
Okay.

00;29;09;17 - 00;29;38;13
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this episode on social media.

00;29;38;15 - 00;30;01;25
Craig Andrews
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00;30;01;27 - 00;32;12;11
Craig Andrews
Please go ahead and subscribe your thumbs up! Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Alize for me.com. or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.