On this episode of The Hero Show, we dive into the world of cold emailing with our guest, Abdel Shafik. We discuss the ins and outs of this powerful communication tool and how to effectively navigate the challenges that come with it. Whether you're a business owner, entrepreneur, or just looking to improve your outreach strategies, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical tips. 

Tune in to learn how to craft compelling cold emails, build genuine connections, and ultimately boost your success in the digital age. Don't miss out on this enlightening conversation!

in building this

B2B lead Gen company?

Abdel Shafik: People management

or specifically

how to communicate

effectively when you're trying

to get a point across

if my team member

does something that

I didn't tell them to do

or they didn't do it correctly

I really had to learn how do

first of all

how do I get them to improve?

But then at the same time

I don't want to put them down

or make them feel like

the world just ended

I want them to also

Hey you did this well

good job on that

next time let's do this and this

and also just being there

and supportive and this

that translates into business

but then also translates

into relationships friendships

when you are

let's say your friend did something

or your girlfriend did something

it's not just

you don't wanna explode out on them

it's the structure of

what they did well

what they could have done better

and then circling back

on what they did well

and just really make

them feel appreciated

and make them feel like

Hey we did that was good

but next time,

that's something I've really

really started to learn

​

Abdel Shafik: I am here. Hello everyone.

Richard Matthews: So glad to have you here. And this is it's been a while since we've had an international guest, but you are coming in from great Britain, is that right?

Abdel Shafik: Yes, it is good Old England.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Where in England is home for you?

Abdel Shafik: It's an hour and a half away from London. It's a small town called Brighton. If it helps Pewdiepie lives there. Whoever knows who that is.

Richard Matthews: A big YouTuber. That's fun. I'm really looking forward to getting over to Great Britain. So far. The closest I've been to it is I flew over it on my way to Germany and I was like, oh look, there's London. You can see it. So, you know, that's the closest I've been.

Abdel Shafik: You'll know you're in England when you have absolutely terrible weather, freezing cold feet, and tremendous amount of rain. That's England for you.

Then the traditional jobs, you know, a doctor, lawyer, dentist, that kind of stuff, that your culture praises and ever since have found much more fulfillment and enjoyment as an entrepreneur, which I think is really cool. And one of the reasons why we invited you onto the show we actually work with you with PushButton Podcasts which is our company and you help deliver leads and stuff for us.

And what's amazing to me is you're running this company, you're running Zaniver while attending university, is that correct?

Abdel Shafik: Yep. That's absolutely correct. I'm a pharmacy student at university.

Abdel Shafik: What'd you think?

Richard Matthews: Well, someone who has done that as well. I ran a photography business when I was in college, is how I paid my way through college, was with my camera. I enjoyed the photography work way more than the school work.

Abdel Shafik: No, it's the entrepreneurship aspects of things. As I get a lot more fulfillment out of, specifically when I see my clients winning and I'm having an impact on their business, or like, Hey, I've done. We just closed so and so that you brought them. I'm like, yes. You don't get the same feeling when a lecturer is talking about biology or how cells work. You just sit there and think, it's not the same. It's not comparable.

Richard Matthews: You caught the bug, the entrepreneurship bug, right? And I was like, you know, the world should absolutely praise the people who are doing your pharmacy work and the other things, all the things that you have to have college degrees for. We need all of that stuff. But for those crazy people like you and I, for whom you know, that stuff is boring and the risk and everything that's associated and the fun that's associated running a business, it's a different world for sure.

You know how it goes with this kind of entrepreneurship. Building a company you obviously planning and you do this strategically and logically, but then it's always in the back of your mind of. What can we do next? It's it just one foot in front of the other?

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. So you're in college, you've got your B2B lead gen company that you've started. How big is your staff right now? Is it just you or do you have more people in your agency?

Making sure that the campaigns are technically sound because with called email, you really have to make sure, especially now you really have to make sure that the tech infrastructure in place lands you in the inbox at least 95% of the time. So I get my team members to make sure that's the case with every campaign we run. And in the scenario where the tech infrastructure is not good, then we build it again and we restart and make sure the campaigns running are hitting KPIs.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. So, I guess just out of curiosity, are you hiring fellow university students to be on your team or are you hiring more like outside of school?

And if I can sense that there's like this, because we're still a small company, so we're obviously, we're looking to expand and I'm not taking on anyone who's just here for a quick buck. I want people who are really looking to grow this thing with me, looking to stay on a long time and not just limit themselves in the box of the day-to-day role, where in six months they could be my copywriter for example or they could be taken on sales call as well.

Richard Matthews: Yeah absolutely.

Abdel Shafik: So that's why, I hope I answer your question there.

Richard Matthews: You're definitely, you're looking for other hustlers like yourself to help curl the company, which is cool. And it's be doing that while you're in school. You know, 'cause you still have school is, and whatever you're training for is always a good backup as you're learning and growing your first company.

Or did you start in a job and eventually shift over to becoming entrepreneur? Basically? How did you get here? I know we're early in your journey, but how did you get here from where you started?

So, and then we don't really have a, I guess you can say an entrepreneur, a businessman in the family. And I'm looking, and God's willing, I'm looking to achieve things that my forefathers never have achieved. I won't be able to do that if I'm just a pharmacist. I want more in life. I'm greedy. I'm hungry.

So I got a copy of that book from one of my dad's friends. And I read that book probably like six times back to front to back, like in the first couple of weeks. I was like this is different. This is different than anything I've ever seen because it's, you know, it's talking about, you know, for those of you who are familiar with the "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" stuff, he talks about the cash flow quadrant, right?

You know, (E) Quadrant is entrepreneur. (S) Quadrant is self-employed. (B) Quadrant is business owner. (I) Quadrant is an investor. And it was the first time I'd ever heard that concept. And I remember as a kid thinking. My dad and my mom are in this (E) Quadrant. There's nothing wrong with that. I said, there's plenty of people who have really successful careers and lives in the (E) Quadrant, but I'd never heard of these other three.

And like, I learned about those things and I was like, I like this (B) Quadrant one. I want to be there. And, you know, because he talks a lot about, you know, building systems and then a system that runs itself. And then, you know, just the scale of value, right? Because as an employee, your scale of value has a lot to do with like how many people you can serve, right?

Abdel Shafik: Yeah. And just expand it. Yeah. And just try and it is I read that and then obviously I was started reading "Millionaire Fast Lane" and then got into the "Sales Books" by Jordan Belfort and started reading and then Alex Ramosi, and then all these things. And I thought, well, I'm young. I can, what's the worst thing that can happen?

Richard Matthews: Right, it's definitely different, you know, like for my life and, you know, I got four kids and a wife and a whole lifestyle to like, keep going. So I have to, you know, it's a different game if you're trying to start it later in life. But, you know, starting in college and kinda stuff you're absolutely right. You have just upside potential. So why not? Why not take the risk? Why not see what you're capable of? Why not push the boundaries a little bit and see if you can get a different set of results.

Abdel Shafik: Yeah. No, and I mean, what's the downside? I miss out on the college parties. I don't go out with my friends when they go to the pub or anything like that. I'm not into these things anyway, so it was truly only upside for me, so I thought, screw it, man. Let's do it.

And I was just like, yeah. I'm like, I just don't care. Because my, I just didn't, I didn't cross the finish line and I could have had a bachelor's, but instead I just have an A at, what do they call it? A associate's degree. I have an associate's degree from college, and even though I have almost all of the credits to get a bachelor's degree, I probably should at some point finish it. But I didn't want to. I was like, I have this business that I'm running and I wanna do that. So I did. So anyways, all I'm just saying is I understand been there, done that, have that T-shirt, it's worth, it's a worthwhile game to play. I think, anyways.

Abdel Shafik: Yeah, yeah for sure.

Richard Matthews: So my next question for you then is your superpowers, right? Every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that's a fancy flying suit or, you know, made by their genius intellect or super strength, or their ability to call down thunder from the sky. In the real world, heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that they were born with or they developed over the course of their career that energize all their other skills.

What is that common thread for you? What is that superpower in building this B2B Lead Gen company?

Abdel Shafik: People management or specifically how to communicate effectively when you're trying to get a point across. If my team member does something that I didn't tell them to do or they didn't do it correctly, I really had to learn how do, first of all, how do I get them to improve? But then at the same time, I don't want to put them down or make them feel like, the world just ended. I want them to also, Hey, you did this well, good job on that. Next time, let's do this, and this. And also just being there and supportive and this, that translates into business. But then also translates into relationships, friendships.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, that is a fantastic book. I call that the compliment sandwich. I don't know if that's what he calls in that book, but I actually did some training with our staff on that as well. And I know it's something that's really valuable and it's something I do with my kids, something I do with my wife. It's something I do with all my staff members. And the idea is basically like if you're constantly working towards progress. Then things are going to change that by necessity. They have to be better than they were this time, right? Next time, we have to do it better, which means things have to change, right?

And so, I didn't realize this, and one of this things that you'll probably realize as you start building your team is it's not just important that you communicate that way. It's also important that you teach your staff how and why you communicate that way so they communicate to each other that way as well. And that was one of the lessons that I learned just this last year as we started growing our company and having more and more people. So it's, you know, future lesson for you as your organization gets bigger, that people management skill is not something that humans are built with. Like, you, it doesn't come naturally. And so you have to learn that skill yourself and then learn how to teach that skill to your staff as you grow. So that's a great lesson.

Richard Matthews: Absolutely. So let's talk about the flip side then. So if your superpower has been learning those people management skills, the flip side of is of course of every superpower is the fatal flaw, right? Just like Superman has his kryptonite, or a wonder woman can't remove her bracelets of victory without going mad you probably have a flaw that's held you back in your business so far. Right?

Some of the things that I struggled with for a long time, things like perfectionism, I wanna get this exactly right, and so I would never ship something. And if you don't ship anything, you don't, not doing anything in marketplace, you don't actually have a business. Or one of the other ones that I struggled with, and maybe you'll relate to this, is I had a lack of self-care.

That meant I let my clients walk all over me. I didn't have good boundaries early on. I let my time get away from me. I'd spend 8, 10, 12 hours a day, 6 as a week working and not realizing that wasn't actually helping my business, it was hurting it. So I think more important than what the flaw is how have you been working to overcome that as you start off your entrepreneurial career?

Okay, because the next four days it could book us seven meetings and turns out that this campaign was actually a winner, but all I had to do was just wait.

Richard Matthews: In that patience.

Abdel Shafik: for it Yeah. Yeah. It's the patience and then it's always, it's the aspect of panicking too much too early and then not waiting for actually letting the correct tests run through. I'm a guy who's just always quick. Next one. Next one. Okay. Next campaign. Okay. This doesn't work, just change it. It's a fault, I need to be more patient. And I've been trying to do that with like, okay why am I actually worried about this? Did I let it, did I let this campaign run enough or did I test out the script enough times to determine it was bad, panicking too much, too early? That's essentially it.

But the small point that I wanna bring up is just this idea that you have to have enough data before you can make a good decision, right? And that set of data is generally smaller than people think it is. Right? People think they have to have, you know, this tremendous amount of data to decide whether it's yes or no. It's a lot less than that generally. That's where the Bayesian part comes in. But you still have to get that data, right? And to your point, the first day of the campaign is probably not enough data to know whether or not it was worthwhile. And so you have to know, you have to start building into your processes, okay?

Like, when do I know we've gotta get enough data, right? And then you have to have like, the patience to just leave it alone. And so my suggestion for you is in a completely different realm. If you haven't done this already, learn to cook. Right? Learn to cook.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. So it's things like, you know, when you learn to cook steak, like learning to sear a steak or learning to do some of those things where you just have to let it caramelize, right?

You have to let the and it's that if you don't, it's brown food tastes good, right? And raw food doesn't taste good. So you're like, let it cook, let it sit there. And like, I still tease my wife all the time about this 'cause she's a futzer right in the kitchen. And she, I'm like, you just put it there and just walk away.

Like, and when it says it needs to sit for six minutes, let it sit for the six minutes. And so it's that same bit of patience. You're like, I know this campaign needs to sit for three days and it needs to run through its stuff or maybe it's five days or seven days, or whatever it is. Whenever you know what that KPI is, don't fuss with it. Just let it do its thing.

Abdel Shafik: Do you wanna hear the funny thing? I'm the exact same with cooking. I'm always like I just stirred the thing 30 minutes, 30 seconds ago and I'll be stirring it again. And I'm thinking it's not fast enough. I need to cook quick, fast, or the exact same mistake. Instructions say six minutes. I'm like after two minutes. Yeah, that's enough. Just flip it.

But you have to let it sit there for three minutes. If you fuss with it the whole time, it won't ever caramelize, right? So you just gotta, and so, and you can, you get that immediate feedback of when it's not caramelized, it's not nearly as good, right? It doesn't taste as sit and let it get the caramelization on there.

And so you, you get that what do you call it? The the feedback loop. The positive feedback loop is really short. Compared to like what you're doing in the business where the feedback loop is sometimes a day or weeks even for a campaign's, that same sort of mental process of like, I just have to let it get through this portion to get the positive reward.

And so that's why I was like, you know, cooking is a great way to build that little, if you have that flaw of wanting to futz with things and you know, you have to have the time to do 'em. Learn to cook.

Abdel Shafik: Oh man, you're absolutely right. It's, I know how to cook, but I don't dunno how to wait. So the point of me is not cooking. The point of me is waiting.

Abdel Shafik: I should difinitely.

Richard Matthews: So let's switch gears then. And I wanna talk a little bit about your common enemy, right? So every superhero has an arch nemesis, right? And it's a thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world. And in the world of business, we like to put it in the context of your clients, right?

And so it's a mindset or a flaw that your clients come to you with, that you constantly have to fight to overcome, so you can actually get them the results that they came to you for. So in the world of B2B, lead generation, what is that common enemy that you regularly have to fight against?

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Abdel Shafik: So then we would say that they're a bad lead if they come on board thinking that they're a guest. So then you kind of, you have these words being chucked around, but you don't actually know what specifically the client is referring to.

Richard Matthews: Or they haven't defined yet.

Abdel Shafik: They haven't been defined yet. So you have to set the objective criteria for it. Let's go back to the first enemy that we've been burned before. We're not sure this thing, it works for us. We work on performance basis because we know that this is an a common theme in the market. So when I first have calls with prospects, it's always getting them to believe, look, it's virtually impossible for you to get burned with us, because we only work on performance basis.

And so I always talk about four categories of lead generation. There's buy, borrow, build, blitz, right? So buying audience is like, that's your ads. You know, someone's gonna see you on Facebook, you know, you use Facebook example, they're gonna see all your Facebook ads for months at a time, and then they finally click on one, and then they go through a sales video, maybe a webinar, right?

They're going through a process where they're getting warmed up. And so they're not gonna come to a sales call completely cold, generally from ads. And then your borrow audience. Borrow audience is, you know, when you get in front of, like, you speak on stage or you speak on a podcast, or you have a joint venture relationship with someone, a strategic partnership.

And so all those leads are gonna come over generally as someone who's heard you speak, you've been endorsed by someone that they know, like, and trust, right? They're gonna come over as a referral. And so they're coming across again, warm. And then like the build category is the stuff where you're like, you're building your own audience, right?

They don't know you, like you, trust you at this point. It's a cold call, which generally means that warming up process is going to happen after the sales call. It's gonna happen in the follow up and it's gonna happen in how you handle the sales call and how you handle the follow-ups with that person. And your actual like sales journey with that person is going to be longer from first contact to closed sale than it would be in almost any of the other categories. And so since most businesses are used to those first three categories, they get into this cold outreach category and they realize this is different. And they're like, these are bad leads. And they're like, no, no, no.

Abdel Shafik: Yeah.

Abdel Shafik: No, thanks for clearing up, because that's absolutely correct. Like when clients when we bring them the calls of course, and they say to us, oh, they haven't turned into business. Why is that? I said to them, well, it's the first interaction with you. They don't know anything about your company.

You ask them to spend $6,000 initially on that first call when they don't know anything about your company. This course it's gonna take some time. You're building the relationships here, but hey, that relationship that you are asking them to spend 6,000 with on, let's say you do close them, that could turn into 48,000, just whether it's to lifetime or the referrals they bring you.

So just be patient here. Okay. The sales process is, especially the higher the ticket, the higher the sales process is, of course, and especially if it's a big company that that you're trying to close. So with cold, you have to do the like you perfectly said, the nurturing happens after the sales call and the warming up process.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, so I can give, you know, our audience, I can give them a pretty good idea 'cause you know, we've got leads coming in from all four of these categories. The first three categories are sales journey. Anywhere from one to three weeks. Right? From first interaction, like from sales call to close the shortest one is obviously referrals. A lot of times referrals will be like single call close kind of thing. You get on and talk to 'em like, yep, we're ready to go. And they'll just give you money right then. Right? That's in that borrow category, right? If you're in that borrow category, that's like the shortest sales thing. In the cold outreach, it's three months, right?

Abdel Shafik: Yeah.

Maybe there's some service delivery options in there for you to know, do whatnot. Because I would imagine a lot of people who are getting into the cold outreach space don't even know that it's a different sales cycle when you get into cold.

Abdel Shafik: Yeah, it's a different sales cycle. On that first call, you have to absolutely make sure that they trust you because you'll never see that person again. If you two don't get on well on that first sales from called outbound with the referrals, you two might flirt back and forwards about the partnership to put it in relationship terms.

But you know, eventually this client will close. Okay? If it's from a warm source, but from cold. If you don't make a good impression on the first call, you can say goodbye to that one and just take the loss and move on.

So they get a positive interaction on the sales call. And then on the back end we have several different other follow-up calls that we already have just built into our follow-up structure. So like we have something we call a content planning session, which is another forty-five minute session that we'll get on with someone whether or not their client to help them like book out, you know, all their content for a podcast.

And it's another 45 minutes we can spend with them, right? And provide value to them. And then we have we invite them on in this's, one of the things that I know you were impressed with is we'll invite them onto our podcast, this one, The Hero Show and we'll talk about their business and build those kind of things.

Abdel Shafik: Yeah. It's and even before the sales call, you have to make sure that you're delivering as much value as possible, whether it is sending over a two-minute lead magnet video on how you helped, so on.

Richard Matthews: We have that. So we've got the pre which by the way, I know between us I, every call I get on if they've watched that video, they're like, that video is amazing. Right? And so it's like that first part is like they get call, they get value before the call, they get value on the call. And then we have our couple of value points after the call. So it's at least for, I call 'em deposits into the bank of Goodwill. Right?

Abdel Shafik: Yeah, absolutely.

Richard Matthews: So that's how.

Abdel Shafik: Even in the first touchpoint, in the first email that you sent to us, or first message or whatever, and one of the strategies we use just make, we use is delivering value. So, Hey Richard, I filmed a two minute video on how you can book 23 sales opportunities in just five weeks just using cold email. Can I send that over?

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, and so like one of the things we're working on now is we started our own podcast for Push Button Podcasts, and each one of the episodes is. It's like a how-to, it's like a whole strategy session on a specific aspect of podcasting, and we're gonna build a whole automated follow up structure that every week or so they're going to get another, like, Hey, here's a whole breakdown of another strategy that'd be useful.

So we just have more excuses to follow up with 'em and provide value because we know we've got, like that three month sales cycle, we might as well cram that three month sales cycle full of value so that like, when they're actually like, okay, we wanna close, these guys have been nothing but providing value for us. Imagine what it's like to actually work with them kind of thing.

Abdel Shafik: Absolutely. Absolutely.

So it doesn't mean they're a bad lead. You still have to put that time in, right? You still have to put that time in with someone they know, like and trust.

Abdel Shafik: The piece of the puzzle was just shifted from here. Being before the call to it was called outbound being after the call. So it still has to be done. It's just with cold. You have to do it afterwards.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. And the benefit of that is that with cold is one of the few that you can just scale up to whatever you want, right? It's a lever that you can dial up. So anyways, I, which is crazy 'cause if you had talked to me six months ago, I would've told you that cold is stupid, just like I would've been in my comment.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Abdel Shafik: You can, if you wanna be that guy, you can just blast out as much volume as much as you want, and you know that you will have a filled up calendar.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Abdel Shafik: Next week because of that.

Abdel Shafik: Yeah it's really good. Also, if you're starting out the first, my situation, you're starting out with your first company. You are looking for a customer way to acquire clients or customers, whatever you name it, in your industry. And now it just becomes of, okay, so I already know what's one. It becomes a really good method for acquiring your first couple of clients to build good will, to build out the case study that you'll have.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Abdel Shafik: All over your front end when you're on hands or whatever it is. So it's really good, not just when you're scaling, but also when you're just starting out.

So you can practice your pitch over and over again. You can adjust it, you can get feedback from people dynamically as you're having the calls with them, oh, that didn't land. Let's try it different on the next call. So you can refine your pitch really quickly. And that's one of the things that happened for us from October to December, our pitch got refined really fast because our volume of sales calls went from two or three a week to five a day.

Right? And when you go from two or three a week with warm people where the sales call is like, yep, I like your offer. Let's just buy, right? Like, I'm not really working on a pitch. It was just like, Hey, here's what we do. They already know, like, and trust me, it's closed. Right? And so I didn't have to, what's the word? Like refine the offer by fire.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. So that was a long answer to the short question of what's your common enemy, but I wanna talk about the side, the flip side of your common enemy, which is your common is what you fight against, that you're driving force is what you fight for, right? So just like, you know, Spiderman fights to save New York, or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights, to index and categorize all the world's information.

What is it that you guys are fighting for at Zaniver Media?

So it's essentially, it's building out the system for them where they never have to worry where the next call will come from, and therefore the next client will come from because now they have a machine feeding them that, and we're handing that machine for them and the best part is our compensation is dependent on our performance. So we really have to perform if we wanna make some money.

Richard Matthews: So here's my sort of follow up question for that, because we don't often get a chance to talk to a lot of young entrepreneurs who are at the beginning of their business. So how did you arrive at this wanting to drive sales opportunities for businesses as being a driving force, something that you want to actually do and a problem that you wanna solve for people?

Richard Matthews: I actually got into marketing for the same reason. And so the, this show is called The Hero Show. And you know, so we talk about businesses as if they're comic book superheroes. So I have my own superhero what would you call it? My superhero identity, right? And so my superhero identity is called the Alchemist.

And the Alchemist specifically because of the way I always looked at marketing was modern day marketing is like the alchemy of old, if you learn to master it, you can turn your words into gold, right? And that psychology always really fascinated me, right? That if you string the right words together and you put them in front of someone in the right order, in the right time, that you can literally turn your words into gold.

Like as long as we don't have like Armageddon and the, like the race is wiped out tomorrow. Like people, this skill set, it doesn't matter what happens with technology, it doesn't matter if we become multi-planetary and we start traveling and doing all this stuff, people are gonna need to know how to turn people from cold into clothes. Like, it's just, it's a thing that's gonna have to happen no matter what. So you'll never go hungry.

Abdel Shafik: So I'm not hungry. My belly will always be full. It's fine.

But today it's not that super valuable because how many people ride horses to work? Very few, right? And you know, we might see the same thing happening nowadays with, you know, working on what do you call it? Gas-engine cars, where like, you know, at the end of their life, their effective lifespan over the next 10 to 15 years, you know, or learning if to work on electric cars probably has a lot for their like lifespan to happen. But anyways, I dunno, that's just a thought for people on like how, you know, why you get into something universal.

Instead of saying, Hey, you're looking to start and host your own podcast. We would change that into an attention generating one where the person doesn't really care about the service, they just care about how you're gonna get it from A to B.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. They care about that.

Abdel Shafik: Most importantly, B. So then we would change that podcast offering into ever considered podcasts for our clients. Okay. Going back here with the skillsets of even if the person is not looking specifically for someone, tell them with a client acquisition, it's always good to have it regardless because it's a need, it's not a want.

Abdel Shafik: Absolutely love it.

Richard Matthews: And will talk about cold outreach 'cause you know, we talk a lot of times, you know, podcasting is in for the businesses. It's in that world of lead generation. So we want to bring experts on in the different categories and talk about how they fit together and how we're using podcasts as part of our cold lead gen outreach.

Right? And so like, you know, and it's one of the things that I know you and I have been sort of geeking out about is that our podcast, this one The Hero Show is part of our cold outreach and we're how that, it's how we're using it to drive leads specifically. And so it's a really fascinating sort of, way that you can tie things together. So I'm sure we'll be discussing that more as we.

Abdel Shafik: Oh yeah. We definitely will be. I'll hold you accountable to that.

Richard Matthews: So I wanna flip over to a more practical portion of our show. I call this the hero's tool belt. And just like every superhero has a tool belt with awesome gadgets like batarangs and web slingers and maybe magical hammers that you can spin and fly with, or laser eyes, I'm gonna talk about the top one or two tools that you couldn't live without in your business.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Abdel Shafik: One of the tools.

Richard Matthews: I love Google Drive. Google Drive is one of those ones that we use every day too. So like we use their shared drive functionality and every single one of our clients has their own shared drive that they can, you know, for file permission stuff. And it just makes it, man, like everything we do, all of the assets that we create, all of the content that we created, it all goes back into Google Drive, all the backups, everything are in there.

Abdel Shafik: Yeah. It is crazy. And it is the fact where I don't need to have my laptop with me. I just need to know the email and password for my Google Workspace, and I'm, and I can get to work.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. And so like, you know, I know my audience knows that I travel full time most of the time I've got my laptop with me. But I have had on occasion where like a client's, like I've got an emergency or something, we need to get something taken care of. I can pick up anyone's computer anywhere in the world and log into my Google Workspace thing and fix something for someone.

Just a username and password that's in my head. So next to the internet, I have a workstation which is nuts to me.

Abdel Shafik: Yeah. No. It's absolutely, it's one of the benefits. Amazing.

It is it's crazy the kind of stuff that we can do. And it's like, you know, Google Drive, for instance, like the drive functionality is just one part of it. It also gives you Google Docs and Google Sheets and Google slide for presentations. And we have Google groups and Google sites that we put our process documentation stuff in.

It's like this whole suite of tools. And I know like our favorite one right now is a little Add-on for Google Docs, which if you haven't played with yet, it's super fun. It's called Google Docs for work and you add the little add-on to Google Docs, and then you put in your open AI, API key. And then you use ChatGPT directly in Google Docs.

Abdel Shafik: I do the exact same, but for sheets.

Abdel Shafik: Yeah. I would this time, you know, that I'm progressing entrepreneur when I'm getting geeked out about AI stuff that relates back to my work.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, to Google Sheets, right. You know, that's AI. So the nerdiest thing I do right now, and I still like it kind of blows me away that this is my life, that this is part of my life. Is that like, one of the things I'm working on is our spreadsheet for the back end of our agency that goes over like the actual like hours that are going to every single like asset that we produce.

And I was like, I needed to get some very specific numbers calculated and I was like, I don't know how to calculate these numbers. Like, I don't know, I don't even know the formulas or like what I'm capable of doing. So I just brought my Google Sheet over to Google, you know, to open AI and I was like, here's the data I have and here's the data I want to get out of it.

Abdel Shafik: It literally is, it literally is. I integrate ChatGPT so much in our own operations, whether even from the first step that the client comes on board, so we use it in our onboarding processes. We use it in our service delivery of less than writing up copy. And I'm trying to say something, but I really wanna make sure that the clarity is 10/10. So when the prospect reads it, they know exactly what I'm trying to mean here. ChatGPT is perfect for that.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those things I, my son is 14, so he is probably like 10 years your junior. And I as soon as Chat GPT came out. For school I bought him a professional account for Chat GPT. And so like we pay the monthly fee for him. And I was like, listen, this is not optional. Right? If you return back into me a piece of written work that has spelling and grammar errors in it, I'm going to give it back to you.

So it's gotta be part of his curriculum growing up now is like learning how to use these things and use these tools because man the landscape of tools is shifting rapidly right now. And you know, those companies like yours and mine who are actively looking how we integrate them and use them I think it's an important piece.

Abdel Shafik: Yeah. Yeah. And now it becomes a puzzle of how much can I integrate this to then, whether it's to cut down costs or make sure that to reduce how long, reduce a certain process from two weeks, which is two days. Now it's becomes a question of how much can I integrate this too? And in every aspect of whether it's on the f from the first touch point of the campaigns that we send out for our own client acquisition to then for when service delivery's being done.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, so there's two things I wanna point out for that for people 'cause you know, we've been doing a lot and I've been thinking about how we can communicate this to other companies. And so the two things I think are really important are one is, what I call breaking the iron triangle, right? So the goal of AI right now, if you're trying to integrate into your company is how do you break the Iron Triangle?

So what is the iron triangle? Iron Triangle is better, cheaper, faster. Pick two, right? Everyone's heard that, right? You can have better or cheaper, but you're, it's gonna be slower or you can have, you know, better and faster, but it's not gonna be, it's gonna be expensive, right? So you can't have better, cheaper, faster. You can't have those two things. AI allows you to break the Iron Triangle. It's like I can offer better services at a higher quality. So higher quality services, faster to my clients for cheaper than I could before, right? And then generally on that cheaper side, I can split that cheaper into both margin for the company and cost reductions for the customer, right?

And I think that's the wrong question to ask, and the right question, which I think fits nicely into our hero show thing here, is how do you make your team superhuman with access to these tools?

Abdel Shafik: Absolutely.

Richard Matthews: So instead of trying to replace human beings, make your human beings superhuman, right? And because they're never going to be replaceable, because the robots are never going to be able to understand context, they're never gonna be able to understand culture and society the way that your human beings are going to be able to.

Abdel Shafik: Absolutely is bang on the money right there of instead of thinking how can I use AI to replace my staff and cut down on costs is how can I use AI to make sure that my staff a super staff.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Like how would you like a company that's replaced all their staff with robots versus a staff of super humans Who's gonna win that grace? Right? It's the super humans every time.

Abdel Shafik: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: So yeah, obviously it's not even a question when you frame it that way. People are like, oh, that makes sense. But yeah, that's the thing that people that I see people struggling with is they're like, oh, I can replace this person and my staff or person replace this role.

And I'm like, listen, you know what would be better is if you made that role superhuman with these tools, right? Because that's how you get back to that breaking the Iron Triangle 'cause if you try to replace staff, then you're gonna go back to that better, cheaper, faster. Pick two, right? But if you make your task staff superhuman, that's when you can break the Iron Triangle.

So those two things tie together that way.

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Richard Matthews: So, I got one more question for you here as we come up on the end of this hour. I wanna talk to you about your guiding principles, right? One of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies. He only ever brings them to Arkham Asylum.

So as we wrap up the interview, I wanna talk about the top one, maybe two principles that you live your life by you run your business by. What is your guiding principle?

So even in the first call, when I get on with them, if I get a whiff that this partnership wouldn't be successful when I don't see us having an impact on the company, I just tell them up front, Hey, I don't think it would make sense for us to partner Rock. I mean, it's been great talking to you, but I just I'm looking to people who I can truly help and I don't think you need my help or I don't think I would be able to help you.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, so it's a form of integrity really. It's like hey, this is the value we give to the world, and I don't know that your company can get value from that. So if there's not an alignment, we, I don't want your money.

Richard Matthews: That's one of the.

Abdel Shafik: This company.

Richard Matthews: Dangers of learning to get good at marketing and sales is that you could sell ice to Eskimos, but then Eskimos need ice. Right? Like you can get good at the process of selling anyone to anything because human beings are all the same, right? We have the same, the psychology of selling doesn't change even culture to culture. It really doesn't. And or over generation to generation. And so like you can master those skills of being a good salesman.

Abdel Shafik: Especially in the marketplace where your I do prospect has been burnt and there's always like triger words if they say Legion they think earth scam or anything like that. So that reputation aspect is super important, where your ideal client profile, where the market's more sophisticated.

Richard Matthews: The market is more sophisticated, so you have to show up and sell with integrity, which I think is a great place to to wrap our interview. But I do finish every interview with something I call The Heroes Challenge, and I do this help get access to other stories that we might not otherwise find on our own.

So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network who you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine. And why do you think they should come share their story with us here on The Hero Show? First person that comes to mind for you.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. That's really cool. Well, we don't always get a yes when we ask for those, but sometimes when we do it gets really cool stories. So we'll see if we can get an introduction to him and may get him on the show. But in comic books there's always the crowd of people at the end who are cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism.

So our analogous to that on this show is where can people find you if they want your help in the future? Where can they light up the bat signal and say, Hey, Abdel, I like to get cold outreach going in my business. Can you help me with that? And I think more important than where is who are the right types of people to raise their hand and actually ask for your help.

You have a clear, ideal client profile. You know the industry that you are looking to go after, and third of all, you're willing to make uncomfortable decisions to make sure for cold acquisition. What I mean by that is if you've never ran a performance aspect of your offer, or you've never ran a performance incentive, then it's one of those things where we want you to feel comfortable doing that because it's all goes back to trust when it go at the beginning of our conversation, trust is absolute key called outbound and adding something that performance incentive helps with that.

I'll post on there every single week about strategies changes, and you can find me on there.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I don't always get to do this 'cause I don't always interview vendors of mine, but Abdel and Zaniver is one of our vendors at Push Button Podcasts and we've been working with you guys since what is like November, December of last year. And we've already got I told you it was, we had the longer the longer sales close cycle.

So I can't recommend cold outreach enough. And then on in that world, Abdel has been fantastic to work with him and his organization. So definitely take a chance on them and reach out to them for that. And again, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your story Abdel. I love getting a chance hear entrepreneurs. So do you have any final words of wisdom for our audience before I hit this stop record button?

Abdel Shafik: That risky decision you're thinking of right now? Just do it. Just do it.

Richard Matthews: You know what I love about that? I go out and do regularly, and that is the exact same advice I give people. When people ask me that question, I'm like, what's the one piece of advice you give? I'm like, whatever it is you're vacillating about, you know, wringing your hands, thinking about. Just do it because that's where all the fun happens is when those risks.

Abdel Shafik: What's the worst that happen? Just do it.

Richard Matthews: Just do it. Thanks for coming on the show today Abdel.

Abdel Shafik: Thank you.

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