How do you use AI agents to scale faster without turning your business into something you don’t recognize?

AI is no longer a future trend. It is actively reshaping how founders, agencies, and SMBs operate right now. Yet most leaders are either overwhelmed by AI hype or stuck chasing tools without a clear strategy.

In this episode, we sit down with Maritza Tobon, Co-Founder and CTO of Maison, to unpack how AI agents actually work and how founders should be thinking about AI going into 2026. This conversation focuses on AI for founders, agentic AI, and how teams can leverage AI in smart and unconventional ways without sacrificing trust, culture, or human connection.

If you are building a service business, agency, or community-led brand and want to stay competitive in the AI era, this is a must-listen.

Timestamps:

• 00:17 Why AI is now a leadership decision for founders
• 02:05 Maritza’s path from enterprise tech to AI-first startup founder
• 06:37 How founders should start using AI without overcomplicating it
• 09:42 Why prompt engineering is overrated for most businesses
• 17:39 What AI agents are and how they differ from automation
• 27:31 Why people plus AI will outperform service-only businesses

Connect with Maritza: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maritzatobon/

RESOURCES BELOW!

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points.

Join The Takeover Community:

• Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
  • Tim’s LinkedIn, Tim’s Instagram
  • Cindy’s LinkedIn, Cindy’s Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover

The rules have changed again.

What worked even a year ago in marketing and sales is already breaking down, and 2026 will punish anyone still running outdated playbooks.

This episode is a focused compilation built around four marketing and sales truths that consistently showed up across our conversations. These are not trends. These are realities we saw play out with companies that kept closing, scaling, and expanding while others stalled.

If you want to dominate your market in 2026, this episode will reset how you think about demand, offers, selling, and growth.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Why 2026 will expose weak marketing and sales systems

04:12 – Truth #1: Buyers buy outcomes, not services

10:41 – Truth #2: No-brainer offers beat perfect sales scripts

18:26 – Truth #3: The sale does not end when the deal closes

26:58 – Truth #4: Expansion is engineered, not accidental

These four truths will determine who wins next.

RESOURCES BELOW!

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points.

Join The Takeover Community:

• Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
  • Tim’s LinkedIn, Tim’s Instagram
  • Cindy’s LinkedIn, Cindy’s Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover

Most leaders talk about culture. Very few know how to build it in a way that actually scales.

In this episode of The Takeover, we sit down with Kate Alavez, President of PromoShop, Inc., to unpack what it takes to grow inside one organization, lead through change, and build a people first culture that lasts for decades.

Kate shares her journey from an entry level role to the president’s seat, the role visibility played in her growth, and why humility and performance must coexist at the highest levels of leadership. We also dive into how PromoShop has stayed adaptable through industry shifts, how sales and operations work as one team, and where promotional merchandise is headed next.

If you are a founder, executive, or emerging leader focused on longevity, trust, and execution, this conversation delivers a real signal.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

[00:44] The key moments that shaped Kate’s leadership journey
[03:37] Why visibility accelerates opportunity inside organizations
[06:29] What a people first culture actually looks like day to day
[11:10] How sales and operations stay aligned as one team
[14:54] The values that have kept PromoShop thriving for over 20 years
[19:34] How merchandise has evolved into a brand experience
[21:25] Using AI responsibly without losing human connection
[27:36] Leadership non negotiables for long term success

Connect with Kate Alavez
Website: www.promoshopinc.com
LinkedIn: Kate Alavez

RESOURCES BELOW!

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points.

Join The Takeover Community:

• Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
  • Tim’s LinkedIn, Tim’s Instagram
  • Cindy’s LinkedIn, Cindy’s Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover

If your LinkedIn outreach feels flat and your inbox is full of replies that go nowhere, this episode gives you a sharper path forward.

We analyzed 150 million LinkedIn DMs across more than a thousand B2B campaigns. Seven patterns kept repeating in the highest converting messages. We walk through them at a high level so you can start spotting what to fix, what to simplify, and what to stop doing entirely.

You will hear why some messages get opened immediately, why others get skipped without a second thought, and what a few subtle shifts can do for your acceptance and reply rates. If you're serious about booking more B2B meetings with direct outreach, this episode gives you the signal without spoiling the strategy.

Chapter Markers:

• [01:11] Message length and inbox visibility
• [03:36] Personalization that hurts more than it helps
• [05:28] Connection requests and prospect psychology
• [09:21] Free value offers and faster momentum
• [13:38] Specific outcomes and numbers that stop the scroll

RESOURCES BELOW!

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points.

Join The Takeover Community:

• Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
  • Tim’s LinkedIn, Tim’s Instagram
  • Cindy’s LinkedIn, Cindy’s Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover

What would your business look like if you could scale to 25M a year without paid ads, funnels, or complicated tech stacks? In this episode, we sit down with Tyler Wagner, founder of Authors Unite and the force behind thousands of bestselling authors.

Tyler breaks down the unconventional growth model he used to build a multi-eight-figure business. He explains why he ignored traditional marketing, how he created a referral engine that compounds, and why consistency and volume will outrun everything else when it comes to scaling.

If you want to understand how the top players think about partnerships, outbound, and high-ticket sales, lock into this conversation. This is a rare behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to win at a very high level.

We discuss:
- Creating the first bestselling authors
- The moment his first business took off
- Building momentum through referral partners
- Scaling to multi-eight figures
- What winning looks like at this stage

Connect With Tyler Wagner:
 Authors Unite: https://authorsunite.com
 Partner Profits: https://partnerprofits.io

RESOURCES BELOW!

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points.

Join The Takeover Community:

• Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
  • Tim’s LinkedIn, Tim’s Instagram
  • Cindy’s LinkedIn, Cindy’s Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover

The agency world is in a shakeup. AI is changing how work gets done, how in-house teams are structured, and which agencies even make the shortlist. On top of that, buyers are more risk averse, sales cycles are tighter, and the old pitch decks are falling flat.

In this episode, we pull back the curtain on what we are actually seeing across hundreds of agencies behind the scenes. There is a clear pattern between the agencies that are quietly breaking records and the ones that feel like they are pushing a boulder uphill. It comes down to three specific shifts.

We talk about the kind of offer that gets a yes without six months of internal approvals, why traditional “awareness first” marketing is losing ground to outcome based campaigns, and how founder visibility is turning into one of the strongest growth channels for agencies in 2026.

If you run a marketing, digital, creative, or PR agency and you want to stay off the chopping block, this episode will show you how to adjust before the market forces you to.

Key topics + chapter markers

• Why the agency landscape is shifting in 2026
• Risk removal and “land and expand” offers
• The end of traditional marketing playbooks
• Founder visibility as a growth engine
• The three questions every agency should ask before 2026
  
  

Schedule a call with our team to see how we can help your agency scale lead flow and sales meetings with direct outreach and LinkedIn authority content.

RESOURCES BELOW!

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points.

Join The Takeover Community:

• Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
  • Tim’s LinkedIn, Tim’s Instagram
  • Cindy’s LinkedIn, Cindy’s Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover

There is a pattern that appears every year. From November through the end of December, most companies ease up. Sales slows, content slows, follow up fades. Yet this is the stretch where decision makers consume more content than usual. It is the moment when effort compounds faster and where the smallest moves today create outsized returns in January.

In this episode, we walk through how to turn these weeks into your advantage. You will hear how we have used this season to drive strong revenue and how that momentum transforms the first quarter that follows. You will also learn the three steps you can use right away to build pipeline, increase visibility, and strengthen relationships while others disappear.

If you want January to feel different, this is where the shift starts.

Key Topics + Chapters

• What the rebound effect is and why it matters
• How early effort becomes amplified in January
• How to create the reason for the season for your prospects
• Why content consumption rises while content creation drops
• How to keep pipeline warm while competitors shut down

Let’s Get Winning!

RESOURCES BELOW!

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points.

Join The Takeover Community:

• Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
  • Tim’s LinkedIn, Tim’s Instagram
  • Cindy’s LinkedIn, Cindy’s Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover

What if the secret to scaling to 100K months wasn’t more hustle—but rewiring your brain?

In this powerful episode of The Takeover, we sit down with award-winning strategist, bestselling author, and top 1% business growth coach Dawn McGruer, who’s helped over 30,000 entrepreneurs generate more than €45 million in revenue. Dawn shares how she went from burnout to building multiple seven-figure companies, and the neuroscience behind sustaining that level of performance.

We dive into:

• How to regulate your nervous system to make better business decisions
• Why most founders sabotage scalability before they ever start
• The 1.8 percent problem…and what’s truly holding women back from seven figures
• The five critical factors behind every scalable business model
• How to infuse humanity back into marketing in a world obsessed with funnels
• This episode reveals how mindset, biology, and business intersect, and how rewiring your subconscious could be the competitive edge you’ve been missing.

Chapters
00:00 – Welcome & Dawn’s journey from agency founder to global coach
07:10 – The “billionaire brain” and how your nervous system affects growth
16:25 – Building a business model around your life (not the other way around)
27:40 – Humanizing sales: why connection beats automation
38:05 – Avoiding burnout and staying in peak performance
45:50 – Millionaire Mindset & Scaling Systems and what’s next for Dawn

Connect with Dawn:

• Visit www.dawnmcgruer.com
• Follow Dawn on LinkedIn and Instagram: @dawnmcgruer

RESOURCES BELOW!

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points.

Join The Takeover Community:

• Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
  • Tim’s LinkedIn, Tim’s Instagram
  • Cindy’s LinkedIn, Cindy’s Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover

If you are invisible on LinkedIn, you do not exist. In this masterclass, we break down how the most successful leaders turn LinkedIn into a reputation engine that pulls in speaking invites, media features, partner DMs, and high-intent leads. 

We’ll show you how to create a clear profile, a simple content engine, and consistent authority signals that make your name the answer when buyers search. 

We share the exact profile elements to fix first, the content pillars to pick, and the posting cadence that compounds trust so sales cycles shrink and talent comes to you. Ready to go from silent to sought-after? Lock in.

What we cover

• The 5 profile elements that shape perception fast
• Headline formula that turns your role into a magnet for searches
• The About section structure that sells your value in seconds
• The three content pillars rule and how to choose yours
• Formats that fit your style so you actually stay consistent
• Thought leadership, educational posts, and personal stories that move buyers

Commit to the 90-day LinkedIn Authority challenge, then tag us on your first post so we can amplify it & support your journey! 

Apply to the LinkedIn Authority Inbound Engine BETA Cohort. 

RESOURCES BELOW!

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points.

Join The Takeover Community:

• Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
  • Tim’s LinkedIn, Tim’s Instagram
  • Cindy’s LinkedIn, Cindy’s Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover

What if scaling your business didn’t mean overcomplicating it?

In this episode of we sit down with Makena Finger Zannini, founder of The Boutique COO, who scaled her operations agency to seven figures in under a year by focusing on simplicity, profitability, and people.

We dive deep into the operations blueprint every founder needs to master, from understanding ROI on every hire, to building incentive-based compensation plans, and creating systems that run without you. 

Makena shares her real-world insights on balancing visionary leadership with operational structure, hiring smarter (not faster), and creating a culture that scales sustainably.

Whether you’re a founder, entrepreneur, or sales leader trying to bridge the gap between vision and execution, this episode is packed with tangible takeaways you can implement right away.

In this episode we’ll cover:

[02:23] The biggest mistake founders make in operations
 [04:45] How to scale sustainably without over-hiring
 [06:10] Incentive-based compensation and ROI-driven roles
 [08:32] Building momentum through strategic systems
 [13:42] Knowing when to hire and when to wait
 [19:44] Why every founder needs SOPs
 [24:28] How to measure operational success
 [26:16] The role of culture in scaling profitably
 [31:59] Lessons in hiring, firing, and leadership

Connect with Makena Finger Zannini:

•  TheBoutiqueCOO.com
• Instagram: @theboutiquecoo
• LinkedIn: Makena Finger Zannini

RESOURCES BELOW!

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points.

Join The Takeover Community:

• Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
  • Tim’s LinkedIn, Tim’s Instagram
  • Cindy’s LinkedIn, Cindy’s Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover