An Interview with Maritza Lizama and Pam Nieto from Captiva Branding

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CHALA: Welcome to Tuesday Tea Time. I’m here with Pam Nieto and Maritza Lizama from Captiva Branding. These are two of my hardest working clients and I’m so proud to bring them to you very shortly after our work together. They started having such success that I wanted to introduce them to my world. Let’s start with introductions. Maritza, do you want to start?

MARITZA: My name is Maritza Lizama and I’m the co-founder of Captiva Branding right in the nation’s capital in Washington DC. We’ve been in business for a little over five years and this is a year of transformation. We were making bold moves. Our word for the year was bold and going out of our comfort zone. This was definitely one of those moves. We didn’t know it was going to come in this format when we set this intention back in January, but when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

CHALA: Pam, introduce yourself.

PAM: I’m Pam Nieto, also co-founder of Captiva Branding and Chief Brand Officer. I met Chala during a SAGE program that I was doing with WBENC and Capital One. We were so excited to meet and catch up afterwards, and I’ll tell a story in a bit of how we ended up hiring her.

CHALA: So here’s what I want to ask. Pam, you knew me. But Maritza, you didn’t know me from Adam. I was a complete stranger to you. Pam had met me, had an experience of me both speaking and coaching, and she brought this stranger into your life with a big price tag. How did you make that decision?

MARITZA: We were looking for something to help us find our niche and clarify our messaging. We were in the process of redoing our website, so we were investing pretty focused dollars into our brand. We felt like we were outgrowing where we’d been. We’ve had success and we were very proud of that. But it was time to stretch ourselves. As Pam went through the Capital One program, it became evident where some of our gaps were. It was a wake-up call. It’s quite humbling because it’s not that we lack experience in our industry. We just didn’t know what we didn’t know. There are blinders and areas where sales doesn’t come naturally to either one of us. We may be great marketers and great brand strategists, but for ourselves, it’s really hard to look internally. It’s really difficult to not have someone who knows what they’re doing to help us. As far as making the decision, both Pam and I from day one have been on the same page about self-improvement and personal development. We support each other – yes, do the program, yes, go to that conference, yes, read that book. We listen to over a thousand podcasts a year. But we knew we needed something more than that. After seeing what Chala did as part of the program, there’s nothing like that to give you a taste of what you were like as a personal coach. I didn’t see it personally, but I trust my business partner and her judgment. This was something where we’re like, we are not ready for this. This is a big investment for us. And it’s still a good decision. These opposing thoughts can coexist. We’ve been scared the whole time. It’s gotten easier as we see results, but it was a big investment for us. We’re a small and growing company, but we wanted to be authentic to ourselves and say if we’re saying that we want this, what are we doing to get there? Are we still playing it safe? Are we still doing what we’re comfortable with, or are we willing to step out? We’re just walking the talk.

CHALA: I love that. So it’s been very few months since we started working together. Marissa, how have you found it?

MARITZA: We’re surrounded by AI. We’re consumed by it. Everybody thinks AI is going to solve all our problems. But the quality of your questions, the quality of your prompts determines how good AI is. We see this in real life with sales training and marketing. The quality of our questions were not there. Some of this stuff might seem like common sense and even when we hear it, we’re like, how did we not figure this out on our own? But when an expert shows you how, they make it look very easy. It’s very deceiving to think that anybody can do sales or anybody can do marketing. Behind the scenes, there’s a lot of practice, a lot of failure, nerves that you need to overcome. Having a coach walk us through doing the practice runs, listening to our calls and then almost cringing on our end at how bad we are – what an eye-opener. But we were ready for it. We gave permission for you to coach us and guide us because we didn’t pay all this money to stay where we were. We paid it knowing that we needed to get to the other side. This is just the beginning. I know it’s going to take years for us to get to anywhere near as good as you are, but we just haven’t gone through all the reps. It has been a stretch. It’s been a challenge. We’ve questioned ourselves. But we’re already seeing the results. We’re just baby sales positioning right now. But I think that the more we do it, the stronger our business is going to be.

CHALA: Perfect. So you’ve already started seeing successes. Pam, take us through the success you had last week at that enormous trade show and conference.

PAM: This was my first time going to a conference this big as a business owner. We typically had been working just with nonprofits and small to medium-sized businesses, but not pitching to corporations. That’s one of the things we learned at the SAGE program that opened our eyes to other lines of opportunities. I got sponsored to go to this conference. We’d been certified as a women-owned business for the last three years but had really never taken advantage of our certification. I got sponsored to go and thankfully we had already hired you to be able to help us prep. I remember you meeting with me about this right? You told me everything I needed to do like a month ago. But there was a part of me that felt so uncomfortable. This is so out of my comfort zone. I feel overwhelmed. I just don’t even know where to start.

CHALA: So what did I tell you?

PAM: You were like, it’s okay, let’s just start with targeting a specific audience. So we discussed who could be that audience. We specialize at Captiva in reaching Latino audiences. So we discussed how Latinos are still keeping their savings under the mattress and we started doing more research on that. We decided that financial corporations were the ones I was going to target at this conference. We wanted to send them something before the conference that was out of the box that they could remember us by. The whole time I’m still feeling uncomfortable about it, but I’m still running with it. I trust Chala. She’s got my back. I know this is a proven strategy, so I’m going to try it anyway. We ended up deciding that toy beds were the way to go. I literally bought like 20 toy beds on Amazon and started writing different notes. I researched who the CMOs of these corporations were going to be, sent them notes with a toy bed ahead of the conference. Then I practiced my pitch with you and figured out what the pain point was and how much it was worth. I practiced and practiced my pitch. At the first meetup where I sat with different banks, everybody on the table was impressed with my pitch. They just never saw it coming. Then I bring out this toy bed and everybody just cracked up. They were like, that is genius. How did you think of that? It definitely impressed a lot of these buyers. I was able to get meetings with at least four buyers in three days.

CHALA: That’s what we need.

PAM: And the best story was pitching to this bank at a roundtable that you held. The head of the supplier development department was like, this has been the best pitch I’ve ever received. Ever. We were all like, I was shocked that he even said that.

CHALA: What did he nickname you?

PAM: I named myself the bed lady. I just kept telling everybody that I was the bed lady. So I sent an email to some of these buyers saying, “Hey, I’m the toy bed lady. Just remember me.”

CHALA: Tell me how it worked with the CMOs you sent the bed to. Tell me about the sandwich approach you used.

PAM: So sending this note with the toy bed to some of the CMOs – when I went to the expo and talked to this bank, the head of the supplier development department was like, “Oh, actually my CMO told me I needed to talk to you because she got your toy bed.” I was like, who knew she was going to receive the toy bed? But she thought it was a great idea. So she asked the lady to definitely come find me at the conference and we just mutually found ourselves.

CHALA: So the whole idea is when you’re going to an event, you already did the work before you got there. You already had talked to the actual buyer that wasn’t going to be there. You told the actual buyer, I’m going to be meeting your company representative here. You name-dropped to the people at the conference and you name-dropped to the people you were reaching out to as cold outreach. So it wasn’t cold. It was completely customized, personalized, and very relevant. That senior executive in the roundtable – he’s been in the banking industry for decades – said he never even knew that one in 10 Latinos kept their money under their mattress. That was a metaphor for being underbanked, right?

PAM: Exactly. It was a metaphor. At the meetups when I told them, “Hey, I sent a bed to your CMO and I name-dropped who the CMO was,” they were like, “Oh, okay, you know this woman.” I was like, “Well, personally not, but I know who she is.” Making that connection was very important.

CHALA: That name-dropping is so important. Actually, I met somebody at that same event who I met on the first day and she hired me right away. She didn’t have time to get any toys or send anything to anyone. But what she did that night was look up all of her direct buyers. Then when she went to the trade show floor, she name-dropped them and they actually gave her appointments. She told me, “Chala, this buyer on the trade show floor walked with me through the entire show to find the person I was supposed to speak to.” Name-dropping works because you’re actually talking to your actual target before you get there.

CHALA: What I’m most proud of is that you were overwhelmed. You were completely in new territory. You had never done any of this. It was very foreign to you. And nine out of ten people would have rejected it. They just would not have done it. I’ve seen it with many clients. They just don’t do it. But you did it and look at the results.

MARITZA: The thing is, we underestimate the power of knowing what not to do or the niche that you’re not for. This has given us guideposts to be able to read the room better, to be able to identify who are we a good fit for and who are we not a good fit for. That’s exciting about our future. The pipeline is endless. It’s not a matter of luck – it’s a matter of how creative you can be and obviously being clear about who you are and who you’re for. There’s a method to this madness. It is not random. That’s very empowering. We can generate interest. We can uncover new lines of revenue.

PAM: I’m really excited about really nailing down our super niche. I think that’s really going to make a difference for our company. I’ve really enjoyed the market research that we started doing. It really comes from a place of just curiosity and wanting to learn more about the industry and the company. It’s not like that salesy, right? You’re just learning and seeing if you could be a good fit for that industry. With what we’ve learned so far, I feel like we have at least a roadmap to where we want to go.

CHALA: Any advice for people watching us today?

MARITZA: You will never have all the answers and you will never have enough money. But if it’s the right thing to do, just go for it. Just pull the trigger. Don’t hem and haw about it. If it’s going to grow your business, it’s worth the investment.

CHALA: Pam, what’s your last word of advice?

PAM: I echo what Marissa says. For us, money was a barrier to hiring you. But I’m so glad that we were both connected on this decision. If you’re ready for it – and you’re never going to be ready for it, I’ll just say that – make an investment of whatever size that is. Listen to your gut and just go for it. When the timing is right, you just have to pull the trigger.

CHALA: Don’t second-guess the coach.

PAM: Just do it. No matter how crazy it is, just do it. You paid for it. You might as well listen. You might as well do it.

CHALA: There’s a reason why you did, right?

PAM: Absolutely.

CHALA: You guys, I am beyond proud of you. There are only bigger things in store. Thank you so much for being guests today.

MARITZA & PAM: Thank you. Thank you for inviting us.

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