From Scaling a $10M Business to Building His Own: Don Davis on Growth, AI & Client Acquisition

Don Davis: when most of us were figuring out like what are we going to do I was transitioning a company. And at that point in time I'd grown a company from $10 million to over $350 million And we sold them off. And I came out in into industry, to focus on entrepreneurship and and consulting.

Carmen: Hey everyone, this is Carmen Dovot and I will be hosting today's episode of Behind the Founders. Joining me here today is Dawn Davis. Dawn, welcome. Can you introduce yourself?

Don Davis: Sure thing, Carmen. So I'm Don Davis. I'm the CEO and founder of D3 Digital Media, a digital marketing company focused on helping companies build lead generation systems for themselves.

Carmen: Great. Thank you so much for joining me here today. And I'm really excited for us to discuss and learn a little bit more about what D3 Digital Media Company does as well. But before we get into that, can you share with the listeners out there, what was your life before the going into the journey of founding your own business?

Don Davis: Yeah, so I was in industry for a long time, primarily focused on business operations and helping helping companies scale and grow. It was kind of the the primary sort of mission that I had whenever I worked for corporate America. So I worked for companies that a lot of people would know. So General Electric, Roche, Becton Dickinson to name three. in addition to that, I worked for startups as well. And then came out of out of industry in twenty twenty, like during COVID. So when most of us were sort of, you know, figuring out like what are we going to do to get to work on a daily basis, I was transitioning a company. And at that point in time I'd grown a company from $10 million roughly in annual revenue to over $350 million in closed sales in nine months. And we sold them off. So that that business was acquired by another business at that point in time. And I came out in into industry, out of industry mostly to focus on entrepreneurship and and consulting. So yeah.

Carmen: Okay. Yeah, great. Well, what I would love to know is this, right? You mentioned earlier on that you've really had a lot of exposure to working in across different types of small, mid, startup, large corporate setting companies. And what I'd love to know is what did these experiences teach you about running, growing a business, which then led you to decide to become a founder yourself?

Don Davis: Yeah, it's funny because whenever you whenever you talk to a lot of small company owners, the one thing they look at is the really big company and they say, look, I don't want to become that. I don't want to be

Carmen: That's it.

Don Davis: this company with all our bureaucracy, and I don't want to be the company that has

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: all this structure and other things. But the one thing,

Carmen: Yeah, the politics. Yeah.

Don Davis: the one thing you that you quickly learn with regards to growing a company is that that structure along the way is what affords them the ability to scale. And any company that I've helped scale,

Carmen: Thank you.

Don Davis: we've normally talked to them about, you know, how do you build SOPs? How do you map out the process and find some of the least efficient things that currently happen in your company? there was one particular company last year that I was helping where every, every day they gather a pile of paper on an office chair. And they have a an o a a pile of paper that's about a foot high that collects on the office chair. And then whenever it gets to this size, they wheel it across to somebody else and that person goes sheet by sheet on in that pile of paper. And it just just you would be amazed in the day in the days of AI and that, you know, that companies are still dealing with, you know, monolithic things like paper and moving things around in office in an office chair. So yeah.

Carmen: Yeah, that's definitely quite an interesting analogy as well that you just now mentioned about the piling up of the paperwork and also that even until this day, there's still a lot of aspects when it comes to the business that are still really manual, even though there is AI to be able to automate all the processes and the systems and everything like that. Before we dive into the topic about AI and your thoughts, I'd love for us to just jump back and talk a little bit about D3 Digital Media. So for the listeners out there who maybe they come across and hear D3 Digital Media for the first time, what is it exactly that you do?

Don Davis: Yeah, so maybe I'll go back to 2020 and kind of explain a little bit of the history. So

Carmen: Okay, yeah.

Don Davis: in 2020, I was really focused on consulting and helping companies, but at the same time, I knew while my head was down and I was focused on consulting with companies. I needed somebody to have their eyes up and looking on looking at growing the organization as well. And so we needed that balance of, somebody out there trying to help generate interest and leads while I was focused on the consulting side. And what what I quickly found is that most companies that do SEO or any kind of social media marketing, they typically take your money and you don't see a lot for it, right? There's a they maybe

Carmen: You don't see the results.

Don Davis: there's a There's a bit that they do, but they, there really isn't a lot of output from that. And so

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: in 2022, I had spent over six figures trying to again outsource to really good agencies. They had really good names. But then at the end I looked at the receipts and essentially there was it didn't really do much for me, right? So

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: so I went out, I mean, typical GE fashion, we would always say, look, if you if you can't, you know, hire it out. Then you gotta hire the number one or number two in the marketplace and go figure it out yourself and go build it yourself. And so that was kind of my goal. And I hired somebody out of out of industry at that point in time to come and run the digital media marketing agency while I was consulting. But we put

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: that person with some people that were known as industry leaders in SEO and social media marketing so that they could learn from those individuals and then help to grow this business.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: And so what we quickly learned though is that not only could we generate a lot of traffic for our own clients, the clients still were saying a lot of the same things. Look, you can t you could tell us that you're generating a lot of leads, but the reality is if they're not turning into something else for my business, I don't know what to do. But

Carmen: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: to me, this kind of comes back to building a client acquisition system and building your like a conversion mechanism and things like that for your business. And so that's more or less in 2020, between 2024, whenever we first started using AI, and now,

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: we actually made that trade-off ourselves. And so we said, look, we're gonna open the business up a little bit more. We're gonna help people build client acquisition systems. We're gonna help them a little bit more with their conversion mechanisms so that they actually can turn some of this traffic into real leads. And that's where we are today.

Carmen: Yeah, amazing. This is actually something that's the conversation about turning converting a lot of leads, it's quite a challenge that I've also heard, you know, speaking with other business founders as well, that oftentimes the challenge is not so much about not getting enough leads, but to be able to convert them as well. So what I'd love to know from your experience, also because you are, you were also in the consulting space, why do you think, what do you think the biggest challenges were when it comes to other businesses trying to... convert the leads into inquiries or into different potential leads.

Don Davis: I I it's funny because I'm currently working on writing a book as well. So I'm

Carmen: Good.

Don Davis: I'm currently working on on sort of exploring the early research for this book. And as a part of it, what I want to be able to offer to people is a client acquisition system that you can build and run on three hours a week. And every single week you can sort of, you know, continue on building your client acquisition system. Because I I believe it sort of centers around the this following acronym. And it's on my website as well. So Waves is on my web my website. So

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Don Davis: W stands for like your web presence. What is it that you have that people can see from the outside? Because if you don't have a web presence today, you're not on social media or you don't have a good website or you don't have a good LinkedIn page or you know, wherever

Carmen: Thanks.

Don Davis: mean to attract people from, if you don't have that spot, nobody's gonna find you, right? And one of the things

Carmen: Now.

Don Davis: that we've We've also termed is this idea of being the best kept secret. So if you're the best kept secret in your industry, one good way to do it is not to have a a web presence. After that, I'm gonna c I'm gonna gather two letters together and sort of talk about the next two together. So the next one is authority. So

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: like look, if you don't come across as an authority with passion around the topic that you are are talking about, again, like why would I come to you if you're real

Carmen: Thank you.

Don Davis: introverted and you can't tell me about the the examples that you have and the great client success that you've had, then why would I come to you? Your voice, though, is all about what are the things that are uniquely you? And we constantly talk to, and especially in the in the age of AI, how do you create a voice that is only yours, that even if you're using AI to help you write, that that voice sort of carries through on the AI side as well. Because we do believe in

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely.

Don Davis: very strongly and you and using AI and some of the tools to try and have them help you. But at the same time, you have to be smart about this and say, hey, look, how do I how do I have a voice that's only Carmen's? And that voice would c would comprise of three things. It would be what is it that you're gonna offer? What is it that that you're against? What are the things that that you you know don't really like in your industry, that you are sort of uniquely

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: for or against, I would say, in your industry. And then lastly, what are the things that only you could say? Right. So if those things are you your unique experience and the way that you're going to help people helps people sort of see like why would I come to you in the end? The E in WAVES stands for that that whole level of engagement because to me, like again, I have all these people that sort of come to us on the digital marketing side and they focus they want somebody to to just have this Just add water process where all of a sudden out come the

Carmen: So, yeah.

Don Davis: leads because I've, added added water, almost like a a cup of instant ramen or, you know, something like that. And it doesn't really work like that.

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: So you have to have an engagement system and a way to sort of reach back to people. And then S is all around systems. So how do I build a system that supports this so that I can come back to it on a routine basis and not spend years worth of time, but it's spent instead spend a few hours every single week to run it for my business.

Carmen: Yeah, absolutely for sure. And I think that's probably what a lot of businesses struggle as well, is that they probably spend a lot of money, a lot of time. on different campaigns, different agencies, and unfortunately they're not able to see the results they achieve as well. And a lot of those businesses, probably, they have some really good value to offer. They have a really good product or service that they want to deliver, but the challenge of course that's keeping them back is of course the visibility aspect, right? Whether it's through the SEO search engines or also getting the right clients or the right customers as well. And now that we're talking a little bit more about AI, I can imagine that, AI is changing the business visibility and with people increasingly using tools like ChatGBT or Gemini or, or Claude to research companies, products, experts. In your opinion, how do you think AI is changing the way businesses get discovered? And what do you think founders should start to do today to make sure that They're more visible and trusted in this new environment.

Don Davis: Yeah, so I'm going to talk about it from two aspects again. So the first aspect is from my perspective, SEO or this idea of having search engine search engine optimization or being found on Google really isn't any different from being found on AI.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: And this is from somebody who has had hundreds of hundreds of clients now show up on on AI, for our clients, you know, continually. Whenever we search for things that they want to be found for, they're typically in the in the answer, either in the top answer, somewhere in the bullets down below. And you know, they're somewhere in that same answer. And the reason why I believe is because we tell them: look, whenever you're writing articles or you're You're creating a piece of content for yourself. That content needs to serve a purpose. And that purpose typically is answering human questions. So you can't start this idea or this conversation about AI and getting found on AI without saying, look, how am I going

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: to provide the broadest level of experience, but also provide an answer that is uniquely mine? And we typically talk to our clients about, you know, putting their making their frameworks and things like that, make them public, like make them seen by other people because those things all of a sudden will stand out as things that AI and other things can pick up. And then once it's locked in, it's going to be really hard to unseat, I think, from AI, right? I mean, get once it's in its head that,

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Of course.

Don Davis: you know, hey, look, this is the way that things should run, it's going to be really hard to to sort of get that idea across that it should replace one idea with another. So that's kind of the first part is like provide broad level answers. And this to me in an article starts with the title, a good description of what the article's about, what are the key

Carmen: Okay. Okay.

Don Davis: themes that are going to run throughout the article, and then whatever the body of the article is, having it fully support the answers that people are looking for. And the last part being.

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: the FAQ on the backside, right? So how do you

Carmen: yes.

Don Davis: have a frequently asked questions that supports exactly what people normally ask relate related to you know that particular topic. Then you know also I think in terms of in terms of the ways ways that

Carmen: Mm-hmm. you

Don Davis: AI is changing things is I it's funny because I had somebody reach out to me from From Africa recently, who'd been out of work for a little while. She's a VA and wanted to know, you know, hey, did I need that I need any help on the team? And I had asked her, I said, you know, do you spend much time with like any of these bot technologies now? Because like whether it's Grok bot or it's you know, even ChatGBT has dots now.

Carmen: Okay. Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: Claude has had skills that run or scheduled items that run every single day inside of Claude Co-work. And this whole idea of using that to support my business has been something that we've been on for a while. And and I really think that there are several transformations that are happening, and a part of it is going to affect different aspects of my business, but it also will affect, you know, people that do.

Carmen: Okay.

Don Davis: the lower level things, they'll need to be able to scale up and sort of come along in that journey. And that's what we've done,

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: from 2000 2024 is whenever we started using AI for writing content. And in that transition, we moved away from people writing content to essentially it was like they were given a structure for how to do it, how to write the content. But then what we started doing was hiring people that were doing copywriting. So that's where.

Carmen: Okay. Yes.

Don Davis: We made that transition from let's say people that were marketing specialists that were writing content over to just copywriters that were reviewing content that was coming from the AI. And then we we built a system around that was fully

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: automated around that as well. And that's that was really the big transition for us. But it's it's continued to evolve because you know, more and more technology comes out and we need to continue to evolve as well.

Carmen: Yeah, actually you just answered the next question that I actually wanted to follow up and ask, which is of course, you know, you've given so many interesting examples about what the business founder should pay attention to in order to increase visibility, especially during the age of AI as well. And I wanted to, of course, understand how you as a business founder have integrated different aspects of AI right into 3D digital media as well. Are there any other aspects where you automate different processes that you found to be very efficient as well, which saves up a lot of your time?

Don Davis: Yeah. So for for me, pretty much everything is on the table.

Carmen: Hmm

Don Davis: I mean, have I have a portion of the business that I run that's a consulting portion of my business, and then I have the the digital marketing portion, right? So I have to be efficient with my time and very sort of regimented in terms of what things am I doing at different times throughout the day so that I stay client focused, you know, where I need to be, but also.

Carmen: Okay.

Don Davis: know ensuring that we're building things as well. But we, we built tools that, you know, help clients, really focus in on, how do you target the right leads? you know, out of the different systems that are out there.

Carmen: you

Don Davis: we've helped our clients, you know, again with with tools that do content generation. If you look at at any of my content on a tip on a on a regular basis, typically people are either Either people are on my team or myself are using my accounts to test different things. So it's a great way to see not only what's currently working, but what's coming. And we normally are are looking at, you know, how do we how do we use other, you know, other

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: tools. This started out for us on like Zap year and make and then N8N and then sort of transitioned fully into, you know, AI and and vibe coded tools later on. So yeah.

Carmen: Yeah, definitely. It's really all about trial and error and testing what works out better and what is really optimal and of course, really efficient as well. So obviously, I can imagine that, know, at D3 Digital Media, the evolution of how much your business has grown is definitely not without support of second or third or fourth sets pairs of hands as well. So I'd love to know if you could share with the listeners out there about your operational setup. You know, how many of are you in the team? Where are they all based? Who does what and the unique role setup and so on.

Don Davis: Yeah, I'll tell a little bit of the history with us. So so when When I first took on D3, the the, you know, after this other person had transitioned out, I I really started questioning some of the some of the things that we did at that point in time. And it sort of gave me an opportunity to say, hey, look, we're gonna restructure portions of the team. We're gonna leave the organization for the most part where it is. There's a good delineation that I I think that we made at that point in time, which is

Carmen: you

Don Davis: I was watching what we were doing with websites and the for people that create websites, I think there's I I give you all the credit in the world, but at the same time, I'm strong enough to know that it that that's just not a world I want our

Carmen: you

Don Davis: team to be focused on. And so I I would attend these calls where people would talk about moving a font points up to points and they would talk about shifting a color, you know, a couple of different, you know, hex codes over, and they would talk about moving a

Carmen: Of course.

Don Davis: a little diagram or whatever. And I was like, this is maddening for for somebody like me. This is not really, not really for me. And and so I just said, look, do we really need that portion of the business?

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: So we we made the the the the determination at that point in time that we wouldn't we're not really a a an agency that creates websites, I would say, but at the same time All of these people that are coming in now, I think it the what I think is funny now is that people will come in now and say, Hey, I built a website. Could you help me get it out into the world and help me sort of showcase it? And that's exactly what we do. So to me, it's like that whole transition has been really helpful. But we went from, the largest that this company has been is 13 people. And most

Carmen: Get it out to the world with visibility. Okay.

Don Davis: of it was most of it was either you know, offshore or we'd not we had a couple of people that were here in the United States, but

Carmen: Okay.

Don Davis: there were a good amount of people that were offshore. Since then, I mean, right now we have three people. So we have three three people that are on the team, that sort of focus on anything from like the CRM and automation, that side of things. we also have somebody that still focuses on helping people with social media and websites, kind of, you know, helping them through either technical challenges or

Carmen: I

Don Davis: also in getting content created. And then lastly, we have somebody that's helping us build tools. So that's the three roles. It's like, you know, look, how do we best

Carmen: mean structure.

Don Davis: optimize the roles that we have and and use them for our clients' benefit?

Carmen: Yeah, of course. Well, tell us a little bit more about your experience and your decision to actually hire Offshore.

Don Davis: Yeah, so it it was interesting because whenever I was consulting, the very first hire that I ever made was somebody that was a VA. and and it was a

Carmen: Okay.

Don Davis: Philippines hire. And so, and it was I mean, for me, it was one of the greatest, one of the greatest things that I had decided. Cause I I had somebody that was a business coach that just said, look, if you took all this little love little stuff that you have on your plate and you could hand that off, wouldn't it be great? as I said a little bit earlier, I think, unfortunately, some of that work, for a lot of people as they mature in AI and things like that, some of that work I have a feeling is going to continue to evolve and be, given to AI. But I also think that there has to be a human in the loop at some point. There has to be a human being that looks at things and says, Yes, I think this is fine, or no.

Carmen: Yeah. Of course.

Don Davis: Let's not do that at this point in time. And even with the VA, I was, I had to do I had to do a fair amount of guiding as well. But but at the same time, we had good SOPs built and did a really good job at like documenting the things that we had and and my experience has always been positive. It's been one of those ones where,

Carmen: That's good.

Don Davis: you know, if I don't if I don't wind up with the right person or right fit or whatever, we make a quick transition. But at the same time, the people that have been with me now have been with me for a long time. So

Carmen: That's great. And how long have they been with you? It's been three years?

Don Davis: Well, so let's see. My my the one guy I didn't mention was my video editor. So my video editor has

Carmen: Yes, okay.

Don Davis: been with me since twenty twenty, I think. So I d yeah. So yeah. Yeah. So he's probably the longest, but but

Carmen: Hey, so it's been soft six years.

Don Davis: all the others more or less came somewhere in that twenty twenty four time period whenever we were making some of the adjustments before with the team.

Carmen: Okay, yeah. And how did you go about reaching out or finding them? Did you have a formalized process? Did you rely on some external service provider support to hire the VAs?

Don Davis: Yeah, it was all i for me it was online jobs pH primarily. yeah, yeah. So

Carmen: Okay, okay, I've heard that.

Don Davis: that was probably the the biggest place. But but again, now I feel like there's there's a lot of place places like Cherry Assistant where you can have somebody at least guide you through the process. Cause I remember trying to figure in twenty twenty I was trying to of course I had a lot of time a lot more time than I have right now, but

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: was trying to figure out how do I post my first job spec up and then

Carmen: Of course.

Don Davis: and then whenever you get the people coming, it's like, Well, I sh probably should have clarified this in there and done this differently and I learned along the way. So yeah.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, being a recruiter myself, I know how time consuming this entire hiring process could be from posting the job, from spending a lot of hours selecting, interviewing the right candidates, also ensuring that everything is compliant from a technical background check as well, and also from a cultural fit as well. mean, it's definitely... Knowing that we've worked with different clients, it's definitely been useful to have the guidance as well, even going beyond hiring from the onboarding as well to the SOPs. But I'd love to know from your experience, perhaps there might be some listeners out there who are possibly having reservations when it comes to considering to hire offshore VAs. What do you think the reservations might be?

Don Davis: Yeah, I I think that I think the initial well I g I guess I if I if I look at it through my own lens, I look at the at this as a where is your time maximized, right? That's that was what kept coming back to me is I have a lot of people that reach out in a week. if I could have somebody else in my inbox, if I could have somebody else that sort of helps with tasks that I, that I'm not really the value add in. you know, I'll just

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: take you know, for example, I mean, we use a lot of automation and AI for this now as well. But like for podcast guests, for my I have two podcasts and for

Carmen: Okay.

Don Davis: those podcasts, I sort of I don't do any real booking myself. I mean, it's all more or less like, you know, request comes in and either there's a quick determination that's made that, you know, yes This person could be a guest, or no, you they're not. If not, yeah, if not, they're

Carmen: Right. Okay. So there's a qualifying process.

Don Davis: they're given a pretty quick, thank you, but no. But otherwise, you know, they're given the form to fill out and give me

Carmen: Okay.

Don Davis: your bio. I mean, just like a lot of other podcasts, give me your bio,

Carmen: you

Don Davis: give me your picture, you know, give me everything else. And then behind that, it's all automated. So it's all, you know, all

Carmen: Yeah. That's true.

Don Davis: of the initial research is done. And then I

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: sort of look at it as, I have to dig into every guest. So I look at it as I'm handed this just like w I was before with a VA. I was handed this

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: body of initial knowledge.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: but now where my my VAs really help is like, okay, so this podcast is done. I need the post to go up, I need the the

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: I need the person to be notified, I need them to get their clips, I I want a thank you message that's personalized. All that stuff is handled by

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: People other than me and and it's the only way I can really do it and stay busy on the other side. So yeah.

Carmen: Yeah, I can totally relate to what you mentioned as well, the whole video editing it does. It is quite time consuming. I actually have to do that also myself. The extracting the different sound bites, creating the different specific captions that will go across all the different social media pages. And I think it's definitely helpful that you're able to find the right people to sort of take off that load, take take the load so that you're able to really focus on other priorities as well. So actually, I would love to know what you mentioned you had two podcasts, what are they about?

Don Davis: Yeah. So the first one I started right whenever I right whenever I started my consulting business in 2020. And the whole idea was how do I stay in touch with industry? That was that was the question I was trying to answer.

Carmen: Okay.

Don Davis: And the way best way for me was create a podcast that put that shines a spotlight on people who I think are industry thought leaders and allow them to tell their story so that I can, you know, feel like I stay more in touch with with people in life sciences. So life sciences. For anybody that doesn't know, it'd be pharmaceutical companies or medical device

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: companies. So not necessarily hospitals or doctors, but people that are creating medical devices and things like that.

Carmen: Okay.

Don Davis: and then the one that came a little later was another podcast called Growth Revealed, where people come on and tell their marketing and sales story, right? So they come on and and share their marketing and sales story. And again, it was a question of how do I share you know, stories around. ways that people are growing their companies. so

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: that again, like you think about these lead acquisition systems and things like that that we're trying to create. This is people telling their stories about those systems. So that I mean, for me it's it's again, it's very synonymous with with what the digital marketing agency is trying to do.

Carmen: Of course, of course. And how often do you record the podcast episodes for both of these podcasts?

Don Davis: I used to so let me sort of let me sort of preface that I don't I don't think that this is necessarily what everybody should do, but I used to do multiple episodes a week of life science success.

Carmen: Okay.

Don Davis: and then I I've become I've become much more selective because of having a second podcast as well. And then and then you know, so between Growth Revealed and Life Science Success, I'm normally recording

Carmen: makes sense.

Don Davis: about one episode a week. So it's not It's not really intensive, but occasionally I'll have one back to back where it's life science success followed by a growth revealed and that's fine. That's fine too. So

Carmen: Yeah. Okay. And where can we, you know, the audience, the listeners, where can we be able to find your podcasts? Is it available on Spotify, on YouTube, different streaming platforms?

Don Davis: Yeah, they're on all of the popular platforms. So yeah, and then of course there's a website for each. So you go to life science success dot com or growthreveal.vip.

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Okay, okay, great. We'll definitely be sure to include the links to your podcast as well as your book as well in the podcast description, just so that for the listeners out there that want to learn a little bit more also about the world of life sciences, also digital marketing space, then they'll definitely be able to know where exactly they want to go as well. Okay, so let's just come back to the question about the whole your experience with growing your team and operations and so on. Currently at the moment, If you were to say, okay, I still feel like I'm spending a lot of time investing on this or spending a lot of time on, where some parts feel really manual and I want to hand it off to someone, what would that be?

Don Davis: Yeah, it's a good question. I there's there there's one tool that I've been working on for quite a while with my developer, and the whole idea around it is how do you take the broader list of connections that you have, whether that's in your CRM? or inside of

Carmen: Yes.

Don Davis: LinkedIn and target that list down to the what are the critical few? And that's what I'm trying that's the one answer that I'm still trying to get to as to whether or not if, you know, can software do it, or is it something that I have to hire out at that point in time, right? Is that something where I have to have

Carmen: Mm-hmm. you

Don Davis: somebody maybe making the cold calls and getting hung up on a lot and and things like that to try and get through that initial part of

Carmen: Okay.

Don Davis: who are the most valuable people? And then the the last question I have in the back of my mind as well is that, there are all of these, appointment setter, peoples, right people, right? So you could kind envision a a setter spending their time going through this broader list, helping me try and figure out who are those people. The broader question to me is, is as a founder, can you turn that over?

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: Now I know that whenever your business gets bigger, right? So eventually you're gonna have to do it. I mean, you have to make that transition. I've seen that before with other companies. But my my fundamental question is is just that. It's, you know, how do you how do you have either a setter or software that essentially is doing some of the same thing? Maybe it's not exactly making the call, but it's it's at least telling you, call these 10 people today. They they've connected with you on LinkedIn.

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Don Davis: They're messaging you either in email or on LinkedIn. They are definitely involved, and you need to sort of strike while the iron's hot and keep them involved. All the while, the other thing I was talking to somebody last week about, this is again around those book in book interviews that I've been doing, is that they have seven new introductions every single week. And I was like,

Carmen: Okay.

Don Davis: live with somebody, right? So imagine holding seven podcasts every week. And to me, it's fine to

Carmen: Yeah.

Don Davis: do that, but eventually you've got to come to a list where you say, look, this is the critical people, these are the critical people that I'm gonna continue to work through my funnel. And that's not what I've heard, right? What I heard was there was the that initial part of where the person could be top of funnel or middle funnel. They're just not ready to buy yet. Who knows?

Carmen: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: Maybe that's a six month process.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: And if you're not working them through the six month process, what happens to them? My guess is they go dormant and they lose them. But, you again, it's it's it's a w something I I think is a bigger business problem for all entrepreneurs is, know, how do I how do I maximize my time? And that's that's

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Don Davis: what I'm trying to do most.

Carmen: Yeah, absolutely for sure. Also, trying to find the balance of delegating tasks, automating it, while also trying to maintain the human element part of it as well. That's definitely, yeah, that's definitely quite a challenge, and I would say quite a common question that... a lot of business founders across different industries are trying to address as well.

Don Davis: Yeah, for sure.

Carmen: Yeah, okay. Well, Dawn, just one final question that I like to ask to every single one of the guests coming onto our podcast. If you could pass on a specific insight or an advice to aspiring founders, what would it be?

Don Davis: I would say it would be know what people are looking for when they're looking for your solution. I feel like there are a lot of people that don't really spend time trying to figure out what are people what do people search for? What are people, you know, what are the main things that they say. And and it it's funny because I mean, even writing a book now, right? So I've mentioned this a couple of times in this interview.

Carmen: Mm.

Don Davis: I mentioned to a couple of people that I was writing a book, and here was the premise, and here was what I was going after. And it fell flat, right? That there wasn't a lot of excitement around it. My main thor thinking though is that all of us have you probably have favorite music and I have favorite music. And if you asked me the lyrics to the songs that I like, I could tell you pretty, pretty clearly exactly what those lyrics are. And I envision It's the same way whenever people are searching for us or searching for us to fix their problem for them. They use certain words in that description. You need to know what those words are because then you kind of then you can sing their tune. You can you could sort of repeat it back in words that they use and all of a sudden it becomes something that they want to do. So yeah.

Carmen: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, connect to it as well. Mm-hmm. Yeah, 100 % as well. Also finding ways to connect and stay also personally relevant as well.

Don Davis: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Carmen: Yeah, 100%. Well, Dawn, it was very lovely to have you onto the podcast. It's been a pleasure to really just learn and dive more into your journey as well of how you've built and how D3 and digital media evolved as well. It's definitely very insightful to learn and also, of course, take a few takeaways as well for any of the listeners out there considering to pursue this path as well. So thank you so much for coming on again. This is Behind the Founders. Be sure to stay tuned for the next episode. Thanks again.

Don Davis: Thanks, Carmen.