Building Scalable Brands in the AI Era with Pablo Hernandez O’Hagan

Speaker A: Built to Scale with Reem Benchar. This is Built to Scale, the podcast for B2B founders who are playing the long game. I'm your host, Reem Benshar, and every week we are exploring the mechanics of sustainable growth with the founders and executives who are defining the industry. No fluff, no graphic hacking gimmicks, just the blueprints for building a solid scalable tech company. Welcome to the show. Today we have a special guest joining us, Pablo Hernandez o', Hagan, founder at Engenia. Pablo, thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker B: Hey, Rem, thank you so much. It's exciting to be here. Here and, uh, talking about scaling businesses and growing is what we all love. I've been thinking a lot about Lego blocks and you'd say, why? Well, I think in business, it's a lot like building a Lego. I recently built with one of my sons, we built the, uh, Lamborghini. Right. If you business every day is like a piece of blocks that you have to put together. You can't make a Lego without the instructions and have it perfectly well done. And if you're not conscious about the blocks and how you're putting them together, you're never going to build what you want. And I think in businesses like that, a lot of people start their year, they just go out, they hustle, they're putting, they want to build a Lamborghini Lego, but they're in their picture. They're just putting blocks together. They're doing actions that have nothing to do with where they want to grow their business. And today more than ever, with all that's happening with AI, all the clutter, all the noise, all the, I think putting the piece, the correct pieces, and having a picture of where you want to go, what you want to build is extremely important. Right.

Speaker A: I love the analogy of the Legos. I can definitely resonate and I'm sure our audience will as well. So thank you for, for, for sharing that. Well, let's talk about your, your company, Engenia. I'd love to understand a little bit more. What is it that you guys do there?

Speaker B: Yeah, we're, we're very passionate about what we do. I started this company when I was 14 years old back in 1996. I went to work with my dad in a summer job. I was born and raised in Mexico to a Mexican father and British mother. And I was fortunate enough that my dad was an entrepreneur. He had a language school. I just was like, I like computers dad. So he put me to work with the guy that was doing the computer systems. And I found out that the Internet existed. And so I, uh, was intrigued by it. And I learned how to build websites. No AI. It was all hand code, HTML. I remember using a program called Hot Dog Editor. And it was. It was tough, it was slow, and the results were horrible compared to what we have today. Um, and I just started selling webpages to everybody in front of me. My dad's lawyer, my dad's architect, my brother's doctor, whoever I could sell a webpage to. And then we just grew. And, uh, we kept growing. Today, I live in Houston. We have over a hundred employees. We work with brands like Coca Cola. We have amazing clients like Toyota, like largest mining companies, enterprise. We focus on helping companies grow by telling their story better. And then we use technology and digital marketing, Marketing to make that happen. So basically, we're growth consultants that build websites, we do Instagrams, we help people understand AI better. Uh, uh, we're kind of like a very unique shop where our promise is we want to go inside, we want to get to know your business really well. And once we understand your business, we can work together to help you grow. That's, that's the mission of our company. When companies grow, they create employment, they create financial benefit for the owners, for the local communities, the economies. And, uh, I was fortunate enough to be mentored by Bob Proctor in the past. Uh, before he died, uh, during the pandemic, I joined one of his mastermind groups. And, uh, we were 50 entrepreneurs from around the world. And he said this. It stayed in my mind. And he said, if you're not growing, you're dying. Right. And I think businesses always have to be figuring out how to grow and survive. Sometimes you have to pause because growth can create chaos. But it's all you always have to stay consistent with, with growing and with finding ways of surviving, of staying alive, staying relevant. Because the times we live today are more challenging than ever. Right. Every time, it seems like the game of humanity just. Just becomes more complex. Right?

Speaker A: Absolutely. I.

Speaker B: Sorry, there's more complexity in our lives today.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think you're the perfect guest for this podcast because we talk about growth, and I love you're looking at it and how you're helping your own clients with your. What you do at Engenia and the fact that you've been doing this since you were 14 years old. Could you tell me, as someone who started building websites at 14 and essentially doing this for, for the past 30 years, what lessons, uh, do you have, uh, about what actually drives growth? That you feel stayed true, um, across eras, especially with all the changes happening on a regular basis until now.

Speaker B: You know, being in business is roug. And people who choose the path of starting their own company and becoming entrepreneurs have all my respect because I was recently reading a book from a guy who's sold his business, I think over a billion dollars. And he's, he's got, uh, several books. His name is Ryan Blair. And he was talking that a lot of entrepreneurs are, you know, they create. They're like a rose, right? And sometimes people just see the pretty part of the rose, but they also have horns. So over these years, I would say I've learned so many lessons about being in business. And I think as an agency owner and agencies. There are hundreds of agencies outside. I was just in an RFP for a, uh, local airport and they send out a teams meeting. And I counted 135 agencies were there for that, for that piece of business. Right. Only one of them is going to win them. And so growing a, uh, service business, whatever kind of business it is, or software as a service business, where it's people based, I think comes down to really understanding. A lot of these businesses grow on great marketing, right. And on, um, relying how to attract clients into their faces. But I think the biggest lesson I've learned, and many people grow their agencies and their businesses through relationships and through teams of salespeople that do the outreach. But cold outreach has become today one of the hardest things to do. People get hundreds of emails, hundreds of LinkedIn requests, and, uh, it's like trying to fish in a pond where there's 5,000 people trying to get one fish. And this is how I people who are the buyers on the other side, and they're being attacked by so many pieces of, you know, just bait that wants to get their attention and everybody wants them to buy from them. And everybody has a different story. It's become harder to scale unless you understand how to build acquisition systems. Right. How do you create systems that will consistently produce revenue? And I think that is one of the hardest things to do in business. I'm still figuring out after 30 years. You know, it took me.

Speaker A: I don't blame you.

Speaker B: It took me RIM four years to land Coca Cola as my client. I had to try so hard. I had to knock on. And when I did get the opportunity, you know why I won the contract? Because we hustled. We showed up with four different proposals of how their website could look. We really worked off. And I think hard work pays off. AI is Making a lot of people lazy. A lot of people. And ah, it's just the beginning. I wonder. Like, there's two kinds of people right now. The ones that, that, that are like our age, you know, 35 to 40 to the 50s, that are. We work the hard way. Like we. If you wrote a book, you wrote it with your own hands. You didn't use AI. It could take you hours to write the book, you know, days to write a blog post. Right now in a matter of like, in that one hour you could have a book with AI, right? 300 pages and it's good, right. So I think a lot of people are that discipline of exercising your mind, training your brain to think better because you've done the. There's going to be this breed of people that have that duality that done both things and then we're going to have a new generation of people who are all AI. And I think some of them are going to be amazing and they're going to use it and leverage it really well. And others are just going to be like, lazy. Like, are they really doing the work and are they putting it in? So to really, to answer your question, I think there's no secret recipe to grow a business. I think every business is unique. But I do think it comes down to telling your story correctly. And this is what you and me discussed offline. Like, a lot of people do not. They know what makes them different and their clients know it. Do they know how to communicate it? With so much noise outside, are they clearly stating why they're the best at what they do? Because, uh, a lot of companies are looking in their, you know, they're looking at their feet, right? They're looking at themselves. They're not looking in the mirror, they're not looking at the reaction other people are having of them. And there's a lot of weak marketing. And so I think it's going to be very interesting how companies grow and acquire business in the following years. Some companies have the blessing of hard work earned and a name and a reputation. Like all these big companies like IBM, Amazon, Century, Deloitte, those guys have it easier, right? Uh, they have a large reputation. But I think when we're talking here to other entrepreneurs, where you just thought of a name we spoke about is offline. There's 680,000 domain names ending in AI. Like, how are you going to compete against those 680,000 individuals plus everybody else who has, uh. It's crazy, isn't it?

Speaker A: Yeah. And let's segue into this, because that was going to be one of my questions. With over 600,000 companies essentially positioning themselves around AI with, with AI domain name, how do you feel brands can really become memorable and relevant right now? And I know you mentioned kind of telling their story and being able to share how their differentiation point, but is there anything else you feel needs to be mentioned that can help our audience kind of understand how they can also stand out?

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think it comes down to our humanity. Right. I think the World cup is coming up in a couple of months and uh, it's the biggest sporting tournament in the world every four years. The tickets are high, you know, it's extremely expensive. If you want to go watch one of those games. I don't think people would pay a lot of money to go watch robots play soccer like they were. They don't relate. We don't connect with, with robots. Like it's, it's impressive to see a human make a hole in one or do a home run or run a marathon close to two hours or these Olympic. It's incredible to watch these human talents or watch an artist paint something. It's impressive to watch AI do it or robots do it. But we're humans and at the center, our human essence. That's what you want to communicate. Right. People want to relate and do businesses and there's all different kinds of businesses that want to market. Especially here, we're talking B2B. People hire people. People hire people because they feel confident they will not get fired because they hired you. And they feel confident that, that you're going to solve the challenges that you are solving for them. So I think one of the key things we have to communicate in marketing is trust. Right? How do you build trust? But you also have to be very blunt on what you do and how you become the best. And I, when I started my business, we sold everything to everybody because nobody was doing webpages. So you could have all kinds of clients, I think over time. And a trend I see is the picking custom niches is where success will lie. Becoming the best. I mean, there's few sport, sports people that can really, you know, like I, I watched the show the other day, Bryson Dechambeau and Carlos Alcaraz trying to break 50. Right? I mean, Carlos Alcaraz is a great golfer, but he's a number one tennis player. Right. I mean that's his juice, right? Could he jump and become the next star in the. Maybe he could if he wanted and he worked really hard. But then could he play like Leo Messi or could he be a quarterback like Tom Brady? You can't be everything to everybody. And I, uh, think that lesson, especially in today's world, where there's, there's information overload and you have to just, I think, simply become the best of the best of the best. Right? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: Love, love the analogy here. It's kind of, uh, and then the reminder that we need to focus on, on. On a niche rather than trying to be generalist and be good at everything, because at the end, we're honestly good at nothing. But. Yeah, I mean, when we had our conversation initially, before we recorded the podcast, it was right after the Super Bowl. And, um, you know, you mentioned something that really kind of stayed with me, which is, you know, you have these companies with massive budgets for super bowl ads. We know how much they cost. They can be, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars for, For a placement. From what I remember, what do you think are the most or the highest leverage ways to build awareness and demand today as a company that doesn't have the super bowl budgets?

Speaker B: Yeah. And the analogy we were talking about was like, today, couple of. I think it's been like six weeks after the Super Bowl. Like, do you remember all of the ads? Like, what ads made an impact on you? And probably if you're really smart, you'll give me 15. But there was, uh, I think there was over a hundred or one hundred fifty ads. Right. And these were the brands that were doing it. So imagine now smaller businesses. You know, I heard another business was high ticket coaching sales, spending $550,000 a month on Facebook. Right. Just to capture and doing it very, very profitably. I think it's. It's really hard now, and you have to be very creative. And I think that's where we spoke a lot about bringing creativity back and understanding the value of a good idea in the messaging, of, of being extremely clear of what you do, what problems you solve, how you solve them, and why you are unique. There's no single human being that's, that's. I mean, we might look alike other people, but we are all unique. And we have that talent and we have to use that ability to take it to the business world, to our websites, to our linkedins, to every single point of touch that we touch as a company. Right. I told you I believe a lot. Business cards, right? I still have business cards. I carry them with me always. And, uh, I want to bring out my business card because I use it to tell a story and to break the ice and to connect. Right. And so this is a way that I, I found has become unique in, I still believe like for scaling a business, you know, online. It's amazing. I live by it, we do it. But our goal is we're targeting our niche down to the state of Texas because it's easy and convenient to go meet in person if there's a good deal. Right. And we're looking for high ticket projects, high ticket accounts where we can add a lot of value. Right. And so the business card is something that was going extinct and you go to Vegas to a large event and uh, everybody gives you QR codes, you're going to forget about these people. It's not going to be, you know, I mean, how did this contact in my phone. But if you get a big business card, it's bigger. You know, it has my name, my role, it has my hobbies down here. This is one of the coolest things that I've done and it has my story in the back. Right. We use, we want to help you grow through technology and marketing and our business is to grow your business. Who doesn't want to grow? Right. You show me a business owner or a uh, manager in a business whose direct compensation isn't aligned to growth. Right.

Speaker A: Um, I love the business card and I feel in a way we're going back to the basics with what you're saying. You know, it's not necessarily groundbreaking if we're looking at, you know, your, your, your tools and your lessons and your advice. But in a day and age where everything is essentially digital, it's actually is a way to fully stand out. So these are just great reminders especially for founders in the tech space where you know, kind of we kind of live and breathe just tech and online and digital. It's a good uh, kind of uh, uh, way to go back to what's really foundational. So thank you for sharing this and love the business cards. Very, very smart with the hobbies and

Speaker B: the story and you know rim, that's, that's if you're doing like high ticket sales, right. But if you're going like for the masses and you're selling a uh, B2B product and licensing, that's. Well your website has to be rebuilt for AI for, for, you know, you have to build it for. But then you also have to be careful you're not overly built for AI and not for humans because humans are also going to come, they're finally going to be the ones. AI still doesn't have its own credit card and it's not going to give you its money. Right. The human is the one with a credit card that's going to give you the money. So it comes down to taking this essence of being a human and sharing it online and connecting with other people through videos, through, um, authenticity, you know, and just through like being serviceful. Right. And being useful. Being useful to the niche that you're going to be serving.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So where do you see founders maybe misusing AI when it comes to marketing, in your opinion? And what does real execution look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, I, I've had a lot of like, what I think is, it's, it's become annoying sometimes to get emails that we all know technically that if you warm up inboxes and you set up, you know, a good, good, uh, a good system and you have several email accounts and different domains, people do this and they manage to avoid spam filters. And they land in your homepage, right. And they land in your inbox. Like they don't go to any other folder. People who do that are technically geniuses and they're doing like the correct thing to get there. And then you see an email talking about, you know, something that is completely irrelevant or even mistaken. Right. And that's because the data was incorrect or the, or they relied too much on AI to do, to, to do the job. And then suddenly you have like, uh, a. You receive all these emails, right? And, oh, we, we got a 2% conversion. And I, I've been going around back to sometimes the thesis of using AI to like, start, but you have to be very careful that. Because I've made this mistake too in outbound campaigns, right, where you target somebody who you think and they. Their answer is, hey, I stopped working there seven years ago, okay? Yeah. But I used an AI tool and I used to plug in and a command and it. So I think there's still a lot of refinement to make, but I think there's a lot of mistakes being made out there. So I think founders have to use email how they would like to be engaged. Like, I always, when I get a good email, I keep it, I engage, I reply, and I try to learn what triggered me. And I think that's going down to really investing more time into testing small campaigns and trying to get it getting going better. Right?

Speaker A: Absolutely. And yeah, and I, I love what you're saying. Right. It's kind of reverse engineering what, you know, we would feel is relevant before actually launching, you know, an outbound campaign or, or whatever, paid advertising campaign to make sure that it's actually going to lend correctly with our consumers and target audience. So, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Well, I think this was a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming, Pablo, on the podcast. I love your attitude, your personality, the energy you're bringing to the conversation. So, again, thank you for making the time to be on the podcast. If anybody wants to learn more about your company or connect with you, what would be the best way to do that?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, they can shoot me an email@pablongenia.com or go on our website and just fill out the contact form and we'll be happy to reach out and take this conversation deeper. Awesome.

Speaker A: Um, well, uh, thanks again for coming and for everybody else who listened to the podcast. Um, if you'll enjoy this episode, make sure you're giving us a follow up. Share a review or share this episode with someone else who may benefit from hearing it. Thanks again, Pablo. Thanks everybody else for listening and see you next time.

Speaker B: Yeah, and thank you, rim, for doing this podcast. It's great. It's a great space for founders to think about all different kinds of topics. So keep going.

Speaker A: I appreciate that. Thanks.