Small Batch System Members’ Only Workshop

Small Batch System Training Session | August 24, 2026 

In Memoriam Kat, Open Q&A, and Small Batch Philosophy Overview 
Live Webinar with Vanessa Roberts
(Raw transcription; not proofed for grammar or spelling.)
Click here for Google Doc of the transcript.

[0:06] Hey everybody, my mic is not — I don’t know if my mic’s working. Let me know when you can hear me. Hey Craig. All right, says I’m connected. Worse now, was better for — about now I should have switched to my headset. Awesome. Hey Craig, Carolyn. Let’s see who else is here. Everybody a second to pop in. I see Brent and Chris. Let’s see, Walt. Hey Konstantinos, Donald, Diana. All right, great crowd. Welcome everyone. Let me give everybody a second to join.

In Memoriam — Kat, Personal Virtual Assistant and Done For You Team Manager

[1:02] Vanessa: I’ve got some sad news. I’m sorry, I just received this news. One of our virtual assistants, a long-time partner of mine — she was my personal virtual assistant. She’s been with us, with me and Brian, for about 10 years. She was having some health issues. She had Hohem’s disease and needed kidney care and dialysis. And she passed away unexpectedly just this morning. Sorry.

[1:46] So our office is feeling that. I was taking care of that, sharing that news this morning and informing everyone that worked with Kat, and unfortunately the reality of making sure tasks are covered, etc. — that took a lot of the morning. And as such, I don’t have — I know we were going to continue our deep dive on the best niches. I’m sorry, I don’t have a presentation for you today. I usually work on those over the weekend and then Monday morning I get them all ready for our calls. But I did receive this information at about 8:45 this morning and it took me out of it. So I apologize for that.

[2:43] Well, Craig, thank you for your understanding. Her name was Kat, K-A-T. She was — I worked with her very closely every single day. She was my personal assistant as well as a manager on the Done For You team. She was pivotal in our support. She knew everything. We built everything we do together. She helped build the Small Batch System. She was pivotal in all of our training. She helped me with publishing the email campaigns after we made them. She was who would go into your Small Batch System CRMs and load up the workflows for you, along with Rose. She’s just a doll. Just young — she wasn’t yet 30. And I knew she was ill, but I didn’t — I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was so.

[3:42] She was supposed to go have dialysis this morning, and she told her mother that she was having trouble breathing. And they took her straight to the ER, set up dialysis, and they worked to revive her and they weren’t able to. So very sudden. We are shell-shocked. But so the business of business — I do have to, I do have to work on that. So I appreciate your understanding and your grace for not having a curriculum for you today. Thank you, Frank. Thank you, Mason, everyone. Thank you all. You’re being very kind. I appreciate it.

[4:24] She was a doll and a dear, and our entire VA team is very close. We hired Vanessa Dewa, who recruited Rose, and the two of them have built our team. They know our standards, and so they looked to their circle of friends that they could trust and knew that they could work with, that would rise to the standards — you know, Brian and I have pretty exacting standards for remote work. I work remotely, so I know what I’m capable of. I expect it from everyone who’s on the payroll. But that means everybody we hire is a little family over there. They’re very good friends, they’re very close. They go out to dinner. All of the ladies vacation together and Kat was always there with them. So they are very sad too.

[5:31] So thank you. If I’m here, if you have any questions, we can do a Q&A. Again, I don’t have a formal curriculum, but I didn’t want to — Donald, you’re on chat, I see you, thank you, I see you. Yeah, the new GoToWebinar has a question and answer which makes it feel like it’s not chat, but it is. You’re coming to me for a chat. I didn’t want to just not see you today. I wanted to let you know what was going on, and if there are any needs that I can meet for you today, any questions I can answer, I am here for you. I am working, but my day will be dedicated to sharing the news with our VA team, redistributing tasks, making sure — it feels cold to say it — making sure that you aren’t negatively impacted by this change, by this loss. So thank you. Thank you all very, very much.

[6:33] So is there anything I can do for you before I go? We can wrap the call early if there’s nothing that you need, but I will be working with the Small Batch System Done For You team and support team. Mason, thank you. Wednesday — Mason’s talking about our Wednesday call for FinTitan. I’m not gonna beg off that yet, but thank you, that’s very, very kind. Yes, and I will send all of your condolences, thank you. She was very loved. Yeah, we’re gonna — yes, we are going to help with her final expenses. Talk to Brian about that. We’re gonna take care of them. She took care of me for 10 years.

Open Q&A — New Members, Daily List Requests, and Getting Started

[7:35] Vanessa: Okay, so I won’t dilly-dally. So we’ll go through any questions that you have, get you started in your Small Batch efforts. Thank you, Frank. Konstantinos — hey, you just got your contacts today. Do you get another 500 tomorrow? You request again every day. That is a great question, Konstantinos, thank you. I can tell that you’re one of our new friends. I’m sorry that you joined us on a sad day, but we are very glad you’re here. Yes, the Done For You leads — they are unlimited in that we don’t cap the deliverable to you. If the industry or niche that you choose in the geolocation that you choose has 500 or 1,000 leads, you’re gonna get all of them. And yes, you can request a new list every single day. Yes, but because the results aren’t limited, you just need to change some of your criteria every day so that you’re getting a new selection of leads to grow your list. But yes, please submit a list request every single day. We’ll take care of you.

[8:54] Okay, I’ll call you Gus for short. I’m going to go in and I’ll update your account so that I remember. Thank you, Gus. Great to have you. Oh, we were talking in the support desk, weren’t we? Gus, you and I — didn’t I just answer your ticket in the support desk? Very nice to meet you. Thanks for jumping on. Great to have you. And we talked in the chat with Andrew’s presentation. Excellent. Very good to see you.

[9:21] Well, thank you, Donald, that’s very kind. All right. So Gus, you’re here, brand new. What can I do? How can I get you started? You’ve got some of the greatest Small Batch minds here in the call with you. We can do a Q&A. Let them chime in, give you some advice. Gus, are you in the Facebook group yet? That’s a really great place to start. That’s where we all hang out. That’s where I share announcements. Folks ask questions, I give answers, other people help answer each other. It’s very positive — we don’t often get grouchy pants in there. And then when you log into smallbatchsystem.com, I’ve put together a quick start guide and it’s a really quick summary, a list of the training that if you go through those — I believe four or five training — it’ll really set you up for success.

[10:19] Hi Majid! Over in the UK, it’s already afternoon. How’s the future? Will the day go well? Always. Fantastic. So if you’re new, if you need a refresher, if you’re just jumping in — maybe you were here a year ago and you’ve come back to us — welcome. Yes, just smallbatchsystem.com. And the Quick Start Guide will walk you through all of the Done For You and use the system. I always like to say learn how to use the Done For You and let us be working for you while you learn how to do it for yourself, right? Everything we do, you absolutely can do on your own, but it’s a lot more efficient with a team of a lot of folks working for you on the back end, right?

[11:20] “I went through seven of the webinars over the week.” Oh my gosh, that’s amazing. All of these calls — we’re recording these calls. That’s what you watched, okay. But yeah, on that very first page, the Quick Start Guide, we have a training on using the Done For You, using the Small Batch CRM, the technical parts of it. These calls — perfect. “As I came back in, there were issues, and you sent me a couple of support tickets — when you have a chance.” Yes, Donald, absolutely, I will go through with you. As soon as we wrap up here, I’ll jump into the support desk. Like I said, I’ve got to reassign some tickets, so I’ll take yours, okay? I’ll get that taken care of. “As you said, support is amazing.” Thank you so much. I really, I’m really proud of the team we’ve put together and the standards we have required for support. I know for you to trust us on the internet — info products and online marketing, it can be a little rocky, right? There’s folks out there that might not hold to the same standards that we do. But I’ve been very proud that my work with Brian has always been focused on integrity, honesty, transparency. We do — we make sure it works. And then we share it with you. Right. And if we’re doing something new and we’re experimenting, we’re very transparent about that. Not everything’s a winner.

[12:55] “I came through Simon.” Great to see you. I do remember. Yep, I remember talking to you on the chat also. Craig says “daunting.” Oh, no — which part’s daunting? “I’ve applied for the email and the domain and also for the warmup.” Fantastic. Okay. You are well on your way. That is exactly the right place to start. Yes, these calls — you absolutely do not need to go back. We’ve got three years’ worth of these hour-long calls and sessions. And some are just Q&A. Some are very niche-specific — if it doesn’t apply to you. I would definitely start with the most current and work your way backwards just to get yourself caught up. And if you’re looking for something specific, you can always ask me at getsupport.biz — I can help you find that specific training and get you a link.

[13:44] Yeah. I wish it was better — we build our sites on WordPress, our membership sites are built on WordPress, and they don’t have a good search function. So it’s like a keyword thing. So like if you search “pineapples,” right, you’re going to get everything that ever mentions pineapples. Not that we talk about pineapples a lot, but it’s not topical. It’s not smart like an AI Google search return. It’s just if it sees the word, it tells you — and that doesn’t really narrow it down. “Just trying to understand the framework and language.” Yes, I get what you’re saying. The way we talk about things — I try not to talk in letters, but sometimes I do fall back on it.

Small Batch Philosophy — What the System Really Is

[20:06] Vanessa: So, and we do that through email. The most cost-effective, longest-running successful way to market. It’s not the only way to market, but it does have so many restrictions and rules and caveats and catches and gotchas that a lot of people can’t find success with it now. And we developed the Small Batch System as a way to set you apart and ahead of all those folks that are still throwing ideas out to the wind and hoping the right person maybe catches it and sees it — with those huge wide nets, the spray and pray and the blast and ask. We found that the small batch methodology, which is what we still use, is — if you can’t afford, if you don’t have the infrastructure to send a million emails a day on your own server with no risk of getting blacklisted — like there are ways to send that many emails, but it’s out of scope for 99.999% of us. We don’t even do that. Brian and I don’t even do that. We’ve developed — through the Small Batch System — we have built a warm and hot list that we can send millions of emails on. But it starts with the small batches. That’s what works for us, and because it works for us, that’s what we’ve brought to you.

[21:47] So the core — clean your emails, have fresh emails that are currently out in the world. You don’t buy old dusty lists. The way we curate the list that we give you every single day is that we are combing the internet for where people have said “this is my email. If you want to reach me about business, this is the email I use.” Those are the emails we deliver to you. We do scrub them because some people have spam, catch-all, or even bad emails out there. So we give you the list. When you’re ready to send your message, we help you clean the list — and that means we verify spam traps, dead emails, overfilled emails, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So if you could take a list of 100 emails and have 50 good ones, that’s who we’re gonna talk to.

[22:28] We talk to you about crafting your messaging in your emails to not, A, trigger the robotic spam filters, the AI spam filters that say “oh, there’s too many dollar signs in this email, oh, they have too many capital letters in their subject line” — put it to junk, put it to promotions, dah, dah, dah, dah. So we teach you about crafting your messaging to avoid those. But also — how do you write your messages so that once it gets past a robot filter, a human actually wants to interact with it? Because while technically you can get through a promotions filter in Gmail, it does no good if the person opens it and goes “oh, this is the same rehashed recycled message I’ve gotten from 57 different marketers in the past three days,” right? So we talk about how to craft your message to make it feel personal.

[23:35] There’s a lot of weight that is put on just when an email opens — what does it look like before you’ve even read a single word? Is it a wall of text? Is it poor grammar? Not the right punctuation, too familiar, too casual. You know, does it look like it came from someone who — and I’ll use this phrase two ways — doesn’t speak the language of the recipient. Now, that can mean if you’re writing to an English-speaking person, you need to make sure your English grammar, punctuation, etc., is correct. But also, if you’re speaking to a plumber, are you speaking plumber language? If you’re talking to a roofer, are you speaking roofer language? If you’re speaking to a restaurant owner, are you speaking restaurant language? It’s not just English, French, Russian, Spanish — keying in to your recipient that you took the time to understand the problem you’re offering to solve in the industry that you’re reaching out to.

[24:40] So all of that is part of the Small Batch System. It’s not just “send 50 emails from an account every day.” That’s the Cliff’s Notes, the elevator pitch, right? But what we do in this course is so much more, and really it becomes a universal marketing course. And that’s my goal. Everything that you need to communicate well with a potential client — no matter who that potential client may be — my goal is to help you become confident and empowered so that you can get out there and you can send that email, you can make that phone call, you can make that conversation happen when you’re pitching, when you’re presenting. If you run into somebody at a bar and you’re having margaritas and they say “oh, what do you do?” Oh, you’re talking to a plumber and I’m a marketer? Hey, I know how to talk to you. Everything — it’s all connected. Because what do we all really want? At the end of the day, an opportunity to capitalize and find success. All right, that’s my pitch. That’s my Small Batch.

AI Tools Chat — Manus Acquisition and Temporary Shutdown

[25:55] Vanessa: “I got an ad yesterday that allows access to 37 AIs, the popular ones, all on one platform, no monthly fees, but for a one-time $12 fee.” I’m sure there’s — yeah, that definitely feels like the top of a funnel that’s gonna have some upsells. That sounds too good to be a viable product. Yeah, that feels like 37 AIs in one trench coat, right? Like, I don’t know. But for $12, it might be worth the risk of going in and seeing what they have to say. “It tells which is the best AI to use for the task at hand.” Okay, right there — I’d pay $12 if it was able to evaluate and give me recommendations. I like that.

[26:38] I actually am absolutely married to Manus. I’ll tell you a funny story and then I’ll let you go on with your day. Because there’s absolutely no educational value in this part. Manus — huge AI that Brian introduced me to about a year ago, and I instantly fell in love. I had been using Google Gemini Pro. You know, we do that with our emails, right? We use the free version for our emails. But I started using Manus, and oh my gosh, it’s so smart. Does deep research, which I love. It gives objective comparisons, and I’ve trained it to give me the worst. “Give me the worst case, poke the holes, tell me why I shouldn’t do this.” I don’t want confirmation bias, and it’s great. And I use it for everything, every day.

[27:32] Turns out — because Manus, so great — Meta, the Facebook world, wanted to buy them, which didn’t bother me. It didn’t affect me one way or the other. Facebook knows everything about me. I’ve been posting on Facebook since I was 26, 27. So there’s no part of my life Facebook doesn’t already know. So this didn’t affect me. But turns out — and I don’t know all the details, so I might get it wrong — some of the people who use Manus, the Chinese government said “oh, this is a national security risk.” So folks using Manus, this is stuff Facebook or Meta is not allowed to know. So the Chinese government actually shut down the acquisition, Manus had to give back billions of dollars back to Meta, and Facebook had to roll back their acquisition. And part of that was that during the acquisition — that lasted, I don’t know, three or four months — all of the data that Meta, Facebook, had access to, they had to — Meta had to delete the servers. And they took Manus completely offline on Saturday morning and have deleted absolutely everything. Everything I’ve done for the past year.

[29:04] “URL please, is that for Manus?” I think it’s ManusAI. You can’t go there today because right now when you log in, it says Manus is down for maintenance. So I’ve been downloading — it allows us to download our chat history tasks. Man, I had programmed 27 different project brains. But luckily it let us download everything. And tomorrow at 8 a.m., I should be able to re-upload everything and hopefully get Manus back. I told Brian — I texted him at 8 o’clock this morning. The number of times I’ve picked up my phone to do something in Manus and I had to like — he’s not there, he’s not there. It’s like when you get sad about not being able to text your ex-boyfriend. But he’ll be back — he’ll be back to me tomorrow. So that’s my struggle.

[30:07] Let’s see — Majid, “please may I confirm what time it is in the USA?” It is 11:31 a.m. I live in the Eastern time zone and we are 31 minutes into the webinar. So it’s 11:31 a.m. right now. It was 11:29 a.m. when you asked me. That’s time zones — yeah, they still mess me up. I will Google — I’ll Manus — “5 p.m. UK time, what time in Georgia.” All right, bye Kat, thanks for popping in.

Closing Remarks

[30:42] Vanessa: All right, everybody’s saying goodbye. Thank you all so much. You got the same notice, Brent, from Manus. Yes, yeah. It’s scary. I literally downloaded twice a day every day since I got the notice, just ’cause I’m terrified of losing it all. It would be like amnesia. It would be like getting amnesia and having to relearn so much. All right. Thank you, everybody. I hope you have a really great day. Thank you for all of your kindness during this difficult time. But we’ll make sure that we keep taking care of you, and I’m going to make sure that we keep taking care of Kat’s family. So thank you all so much. I will be here on Wednesday. So we will see you then, and in the meantime, if you want to talk about anything, I’m always in the Facebook group and I’m always in the support desk, so send any questions and I’m here. All right. Thank you so much. We’ll talk soon. Bye.