The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

How to Get HIGH-Quality Leads with Assessments & AI

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 68

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In this episode of The Social Media Takeaway, I chatted with Domingo Silvas, serial entrepreneur, AI marketing pioneer, and founder of Think Smart Scale, Magpie, and Scale Up. We chatted about lead generation for service-based businesses, uncovering why most entrepreneurs focus on the wrong metrics. He shared how his journey from survival-mode entrepreneurship to scaling 14 companies led him to develop high-converting systems especially using assessments. 

If you're a coach, consultant, or service professional looking to attract better clients and boost conversions, this episode is for you.

You’ll learn:
✅ Why quality leads matter more than quantity
✅ The real reason viral content doesn't guarantee success
✅ How to create and use assessments to qualify leads
✅ Why mentorship and systems are key to scaling
✅ How AI is changing the way we assess and convert leads

SHOW CHAPTERS
00:00 Viral doesn't mean anything...here's WHY.
00:55 Introduction and Guest Welcome
01:15 Domingo Silvas' Entrepreneurial Journey
02:20 The Importance of Lead Generation
02:52 Biggest Mistake on Lead Generation
03:40 The 90-days Test
04:47 The 'Easy Business' Narrative
06:01 The Role of Mentorship and Systems
07:36 How Do You Put Less Money on Your Business?
08:15 People Buy What They WANT and Not What They NEED
09:15 We All WANT Success But What We NEED is Systems
10:59 Power of Assessments in Business
15:22 Creating Effective and High-Performing Assessments
19:21 AI in Business and Assessments
22:29 Conclusion and Final Takeaways

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Louise McDonell:

So today I am delighted to be joined by Domingo Silvas, and he is a serial entrepreneur. And AI marketing Pioneer. He is dedicated to helping businesses scale smarter and faster, and he's the founder of Think Smart Scale, magpie and Scale Up. You're very welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. And I know we had a chat earlier on and you were telling me about your background, so I, would really love if you would share that with everyone. It sounds so interesting. Yeah. I'm just. Another person that woke up one day that had a dream, somebody that had ambition. it was very interesting in my early career that I, initially started in entrepreneurship as a survival mode, right? I had a young family early, got married, 25, we're now celebrating 30 years, but 25 years ago, I needed to provide for the family. Got into my first venture. And what's interesting about that is that over the last 25 years, it has grown. amazingly because I've founded 14 companies since then, I've been able to, figure out the formula that allowed me to scale all the companies to seven figures and including one that I started as a napkin idea, literally sitting in a bar, 2007 in July, in Los Angeles. came up with an idea that eight years I was able to exit, multiple eight figure exit. so it's been, fascinating. It's been fun. but just like everyone else, I started with a thought and idea or a passion that I wanted to get out there. And so it's been, a fun 25 years so far. Wow, that's absolutely amazing. so I know what we're gonna talk about today is a lot to do with lead generation. So for businesses, particularly if you're selling a, service, so anyone a coach, a consultants, or a service based professional, lead generation, is the lifeline of your company. Without leads, you don't have clients. Without clients, you don't have a business. Without new leads, you don't have future business. Can you talk to us about the biggest mistakes that service-based entrepreneurs make when it comes to lead generation? I think the biggest, mistake people make is they don't understand the value of a lead. For some reason, everybody has the thought that I need more leads to make more sales, to make more money. but it doesn't work that way. It's about the quality of the lead. Right now, i'm running six businesses, and I have the same amount of time in a day as everybody else. but it's about the people I speak with. It's about the quality of the individual. So the quality of the lead is very, important. Making sure that you're attracting the right person, engaging them, and enrolling them in the process. the attraction piece is key and there's many ways to generate qualified lead, and so you don't really need. a, mass amount. You know what's interesting, Louise, I did a test a few years ago, not too long ago actually, where for 90 days, I took a thousand people my list and I created a community of a hundred people and I provided them the same information. The same emails. The, only difference is the ones in the community with a hundred people, I delivered it, in person or did it zoom and all that. the one with the list, I did a video, but I sent them the video and it's always one way communication. And in 90 days, the thousand people on the list generated me $16,000 in sales. Fantastic. I consider that a win, right? But the hundred people in the group receiving the same information generated over a hundred grand. So don't think that you need a thousand, 5,000 or 10,000 people in order for you to make money. You just gotta attract the right people and make sure that you engage them and understand where they're coming from, what their pain points are, and enroll them into the solution you can provide them. That is just really interesting what you said because, I work with a lot of businesses as we were chatting earlier on, I have a coaching academy. I, have come across a of businesses that I'm either coaching in a group or one-to-one and I also have an agency and, there is this. Creeping in. Slowly but surely, I don't know if you've come across it. There is this narrative out there that is being put out there by other people and it's this narrative that if you have an online business that it's easy and that you don't need to put the time in. You just need to. Build it and let it go and let it work in the background. And you don't need to put, you can sit on the beach and it is freedom business and all of this now. Yes, of course, that is ultimately the goal and lots of people will get there, I say to people, I'm really sorry to burst your bubble, but if you're starting your business, there is no way that you can build something and not put time and effort into it. So I think this narrative of, set up a business and go to the beach, it's, false for so many people. You need time and effort at the beginning, certainly at the beginning until you, know it so well that you can automate it. What do you think about that? Just because I started so many businesses, people think it's easier for me. It's not, it's a lot of work, right? In the beginning. You're in the creation mode. we start with an idea we don't know where it's gonna go. We don't know how it's going to evolve. We need mentors. We need guidance. just what you're providing is so essential for people to be able to understand that you're shortening the time to success with them because you're guiding them. You've had the experience, you've done this many times with people, and you can get. To the point where you're on the beach and earn that time. But there are systems that have to be put in place. There's processes, there's the proper messaging, acquiring the, proper lead or prospect in front of you. And the truth is, if you're driven by your passion and you're driven about what you do, that's the exciting pieces to create that process, to create that, coaching program to help the people. The result is gonna be you being on the beach. If you turn your focus to just what you are passionate about and what you want to do, the result will always be there. But don't let the result be what you're trying to drive for. Make sure that you're driving for your passion, you're driving for helping people and providing them solutions. Mentorship is key. You shorten the, time to success through proper mentorship and guidance. That is so true. And, putting in time and effort and money. And the less money that you have to put in, the more time you have to put in 'cause you're grafting and you're doing all that, legwork yourself. I do want to add one thing to that though. How do you put less money into your business by hiring the right person. What I love about your program is that you take everybody from A to Z, right? So it's about hiring the right person and not somebody who can take you from A to there's a big difference, right? Oh, I can get you a landing page, but what about the rest? I can get you a coaching program, but what about the rest systems Is everything Louise? And, what you provide, everybody from A to Z saves the money. People think they're spending a lot of money. They're not, they're saving by going with the right person. Yeah, it's so true. so another thing that we were chatting about earlier on is I was saying that. In my experience, people buy what they want, not necessarily what they need. So you can have someone out there who, let's say when it comes to social media, people are more motivated about maybe. Paying, going on a course or going on a workshop or on a learning experience in some shape or form for maybe how to go viral on Instagram. And I'm like, I can look at them and go, that's not gonna bring you any, leads in. So sometimes I need to talk to people about social media and how you don't waste your time on social media because I know that's gonna get their attention. but really what they, actually need is a lead generation system so when they do go viral, at least people have somewhere to go. What do you think about that kind of thinking? And is there something you can say to the people tuning in here to help them maybe think more about how to, change their messaging so that it gets people's attention and then we direct them someplace. I truly believe what you're saying is so critical. In order to scale, in order to get where you want to go, you need systems. It's, almost opening a door and having one rack of clothes and then opening it up and having a hundred people come in. You're not ready for the crowds that are coming in. You're not ready for people to see, and you get overwhelmed without the proper system. You're like, what do I do? There's a hundred people here. But I only have one rack of clothes. Instead of 20 racks to be able to provide people and allow them to go through and pick what they want and have them go to the cash register, It's so important for you to, focus on social media, social media can be a good and a bad thing. The bad thing is that it paints a picture of freedom and how, easy it is. You can go viral. Viral doesn't mean anything. I know people that have a billion views and they still have a business that's doing less than six figures. A billion views doesn't mean anything. I'd rather have qualified leads attract the right people in order to, create a successful business. What, you need and want are very, two different things. What we all want is success, but what we need is systems. We need processes, we need clarity of our messaging, clarity of our offer, clarity on how we're gonna deliver it, so that when you do have the masses come in, you do go viral. It doesn't matter how many people come in, you're gonna handle all of 'em, and you're gonna grow. And they're all gonna create success with them. And that's, important. Brilliant. and I know one of your, businesses that we were chatting about earlier, mag Pie. is all about, assessments. and actually I was telling you the story earlier on about, one of my friends, actually, I'll call him out, Johnny, was saying to me one day after one of my launches, and he said to me, Louise. When you're doing a launch or when you're speaking to someone, they have to be asking themselves. They have to come to a self realization. They have to be asking themselves a question of, oh, do I need this? Is this what I need? Is this what's gonna help me get to the next stage in my business? And so from that conversation, I ended up using assessments in my last launch and I ended up having a conversion rate of 33%, from my, Kohl's leads to, people signing up for my coaching services, my one-to-one or my group. And I know this is what Magpie actually specializes in. So I'm really excited to speak to you about this today. So tell me why assessments have become the go-to tool, for service-based professionals for growing their email list with qualified leads. So I truly believe an assessment is an incredible, powerful tool. And I, came to this by accident, right? It really was because it initially started with the client that I was working with that wanted to grow, right? And then I came upon magpie and I saw power behind it. The biggest confusion right now is assessments versus surveys. A survey automatically draws a person to give you an opinion based on whatever question you may ask them. In our subconscious mind is always what's your thought on this? But the difference between an assessment is the power that it's self-assessment. So the questions are turned more internally and allows them to really think and reflect back to what you're asking, and for them to evaluate where they're at, how that translates into helping businesses and service-based businesses is that when they fill out an assessment, before you even have a call or conversation or a webinar with them that's the power behind it because they get a report at the end talking about where they're ranked. How they're doing. And that right there immediately lets them know that assessment, where, you know, I need help in these areas. If you do this prior to a call, They know you have the answer, you have the solution to help them. And when you know what their issues are, what their problems are, where their roadblocks are, and you speak to that. They're more buy your solution. And that's the power of having an assessment. And even, for me to turn that back as well. I actually think what's even more powerful is that once they know their weaknesses, sometimes people think, oh, I know I'm fine on that. I don't need help on that. Or they don't know how to break down the problem. They have into the component parts of how they can fix it and once they understand, oh actually I'm not doing so well in all of these areas, I need help, then you're having a conversation with somebody who they understand where they need help and you understand where they're stuck. And you can present your solution. To help them get to where they want. So they're fantastic. Okay, so for somebody sitting here who's thinking, wow, I want to try an assessment. I know we have an amazing, free gift at the end of this, where, we're gonna be giving people a 30 day free trial to try out magpie. There's no, barriers at all. This is risk free. So for somebody who's sitting. Wherever, walking, sitting in their cars, going for a walk, jogging, whatever you're doing. When you're listening to this podcast and somebody wants to plan an assessment, what's the process you would, talk them through in order to create a really high performing assessment? the first thing is you have to know exactly what your solution is, right? So you have to know exactly what your programs are. So working with you, for example, they learn that right? Where are you pointing them? Where are you bringing them? So for anyone who's looking to put an assessment together, what's the best practice? Yeah, that's perfect. Thank you. so the first thing for someone to actually create the right assessment is they have to know exactly what their solution is. Have to know exactly what they're offering. So working with you, they get to actually build the system. They get to actually understand how they're going to enroll them and what they're gonna offer. that's central. The next part is then when you go into an assessment, start breaking down what are the needs, what are the pain points that people have? What are things that you want people to evaluate that you know you provide the solution to? So you can break it down in three to four sections. One can be personal, one can be about the business. you can create the assessment in any direction. That's the power behind the, assessment tool that we have at Magpie, is that you can break it down to five sections, five different questions that build upon the solution that you provide. Exactly, and at the end. Sorry, if I can just jump in there. So if you are selling, let's say a coaching program or a training program, and there's five modules, six modules, seven modules, you could even link the, questions to each one of those modules so people can see where their strengths and their weaknesses are within. Each of those modules, which is eventually going to lead them towards, your program. No, but that's exactly right. And that's what I love about the assessment is because, they at that point get a chance to self evaluate where they're at. and then to the point where they're literally based on that scoring, based on that self-assessment. they're aching for a solution. A, self-assessment is a realization of where you truly are and you can't avoid it. Some answers may, you may feel strong that you're gonna answer a seven out of 10, but there's those ones that are three that are fours or lower scores that are part of a whole solution. So it's a great thing to put it in front of people to help them understand a little bit more about their pain points. And, if you have them fill out the assessment prior to your conversation with them. You'll spend five minutes getting to know where they're at and where they're located in Ireland, for example, and one in Alabama. But then we can spend the next 20 minutes talking about your results from the assessment and how I as a provider. Can provide you a solution to fix that. And the enrollment conversation is a lot more friendlier. It takes away the anticipation, the, unknown of not knowing what your next 30 minutes are gonna be about. It provides so much more clarity, not only for you as a service-based provider, but for the person who took the assessment to know that they're on the right call to make, to solve the problems that they're having. I know in my experience, the show for calls following an assessment are 100% rather than, somebody books a call with you and they may not show up. And I think that's because people have a vested interest. they want the call.'cause they want your insight into how you read their assessment and what they need to do next. Won't allow someone to book an appointment without taking an assessment. Yeah. And many of them will actually testify that out of 10 people that book an appointment, they close eight to nine people. Yeah. So it's the power and we all have the same amount of time. We all have the 40 hour week or 60 hour week, and we all have families. We all have the weekends, so your time is precious. So time, does matter in this case. Yeah. So like I'm a huge, fan, of the assessments for the qualified leads. and I know you were talking about your AI as part of what you do as well. So how is AI changing what you do? I want people to understand that AI is a tool, right? It's not the end solution. It's to help you, it's to guide you. But I always teach people that AI is like a child, right? it will give you any answer that you ask, and it's unfiltered and you don't really know if it's directed for you or if it's the right answer for you. It's a very educated child, but, it may not be exactly what you need. So AI is a tool and it's best if it's trained to provide you the right answer. So you have to train it. You have to provide it education, you have to tell it more about you. And what's incredible is that we've now educated an AI tool that we're embedding into Magpie that is trained and educated to provide you even a better experience by creating an assessment, but also how to evaluate it. So we train the AI to be able to evaluate the answer. So if you have an upcoming event, or upcoming webinar or some sort of online or offline event, you can actually gather all the assessments together and the AI will actually provide you what. Everyone's looking for out of that assessment group, which is an incredibly powerful tool to have. So you know how to present your presentation and how to create your offer. Can I share a story, how I used the assessment recently at an event? Absolutely. And this is so exciting because we all are going out there, we're meeting people, we're doing summits, we're speaking on stages, we're doing everything that we'd love to do, but we don't know who's in the room. Because it could be anything, right? It could be anyone we don't know. So I went to an event in April where I put an assessment and I allowed the person to have everybody fill out an assessment for me. And about 50 to 60% of the room filled out the assessment the night before I was supposed to speak on day three after lunch, after many other speakers have spoken. And all the people that you see did an amazing, presentation. I the night before took the assessment. Altered my presentation based on what was being answered. And so here I am out of 300 people in the room, about 125 buy-in units. So these are people that can purchase something and in the room, I give my presentation for 50 minutes and I had over 90 people run to my table and buy my solution. Including the other sponsors.'cause they wanted to know what in the world did I just do. What in the world just turned everybody in the room on the third day after lunch to come to my table and process payments for two hours. And that's the power behind the assessment?'cause I knew who was in the room. There was no guessing. I knew exactly what they were in business. I knew exactly what they needed, what their pain points were, so I made sure that my message was right for them, so, that's the power of an assessment. Know who's in the room. That is so clever. Yeah, and I was saying how I use the assessments was I use my assessment during a workshop, so as I'm guiding somebody through the best practice in things like positioning and messaging and understanding your client, but really at the level that you need to understand them. I use the assessment so that when people were actually going through the workshop, they answered the questions. as I, was delivering the, actual training, and it had such an impact, it's so, impactful. So if anyone here is wondering or still on the fence about assessments, go check them out. Definitely go check out Magpie. We're gonna have links in all of the show notes and in the social media posts where you can go and check it out for free. So there's, it's risk free. I highly recommend it. I want to thank you so much, Domingo, for coming on the show. I have thoroughly enjoyed our chat. and how do people get in contact with you if they want to find more about you? definitely the link in the show notes is gonna provide all the information and it also, give you a chance to have an experience with an assessment. So if you click on the link, you'll, be able to get a scorecard, take that assessment, get to experience it, and then open up an account, and, 30 days for free. No risk to you to be able to come and, see the power behind it. So I look forward to having people, experience it. Brilliant. thanks so much again. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.