Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:21
No, I appreciate you going through that. I have a couple of things I want to dig in there because, really, it’s about the relationships. And let’s take LinkedIn, right? A lot of people listening have a lot of B2B relationships. They’re on LinkedIn a lot. So from what you’re saying, one, you could be on LinkedIn, and you have a plug-in like a Nimble plug-in Prospector. Yeah. Like right.
Jon Ferrara: 07:47
Now. Yeah. Okay, so you’re on LinkedIn or in an email, and you click the Prospector and just scroll down. Go ahead and scroll down. There it is. You click Prospector. See where it says build your pipeline anywhere. Yes. It will automatically bring up Prospector and bring up the record if that record exists in there. If it doesn’t exist, you can hit a button, and then we’ll build the record for you. That’s cool. And then even give you their email as well. And then you could basically do the engagement stuff that you need to build that forward relationship so that that person becomes an asset in your life.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:24
Yeah. I find a lot of times with these, you know, CRMs, that those things have to be done manually. Yeah. You can’t just pull it in from LinkedIn. And it also looks like if you’re on LinkedIn and you already have them in there, it’s enriched a little bit. So you can see some more data on the person.
Jon Ferrara: 08:45
That’s right. So if you if you if you basically are in LinkedIn or in an email, like you’re reading Gmail or Microsoft 365, and the person’s not in Nimble, you can hit a button and the person is added to Nimble. And then we go pull data sources from throughout the internet to basically enrich that company with people and company data, including the phone number and email if you want. And so that you’re better prepared. You know, Jeremy, in the old days, I used to teach salespeople. When you go into somebody’s office, look at their walls, look at the books they read, the degree of the school they went to, and the knick-knacks they collect.
All these things will give you the commonalities that you might share, which you can then share with that person to build intimacy and trust. So they open up to you about their life issues, so you can find ways to add value to them. Today, you should be doing that electronically, but we don’t do it because it’s too much work, right? Like I did spend some time looking at your background, and I found some commonalities. I shared those commonalities with you that sort of broke the ice, and it’s going to make our interview better, no doubt.
And so Nimble just helps you do the things you should be doing so that you can do the most human thing you can do, which is shut the f up and listen to that person. Because if you just do that, people will tell you what you need to know to find a way to blow wind in their sails.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:03
We both have a mutual love for being a badger, so I appreciate that. And I want to talk about AI and automation. So everyone’s into AI automations, and you are I would consider you a relationship expert. Really. How do you think of AI and automations within this process and relationships?
Jon Ferrara: 10:24
Well, you remember that scene from Scarface where he has this machine gun, and he says, ” Say hello to my little friend. You know, you know that AI and automation these days. I mean, I, I, I, I don’t even look at my inbox anymore because it’s full of these automated series of emails that people are basically creating. That clarity doesn’t show to me that they’ve taken time to do their homework and know enough about me and my journey to reach out to me in an authentic and relevant way, to break through the clutter and make me pick up the phone and speak to them.
And so for me, the more digital we get, the more human we need to be. And AI and automation have their places, but not without the human aspect. And so with Nimble, we do use AI to help you automatically enrich records. And it will even write emails or sequences for you, etc., but we layer in the human aspect of that. So we have in our sequences, you know, the sequence is you basically say do A, then B, then C, and it could A, B, and C could be sending an email or whatever. By the way, I trademarked automated processes 30 years ago, which was if this and that for people and companies, this was email marketing before the term existed.
Fun fact. So with our AI sequences, not only will it build the sequence, but it’s going to insert human manual tasks for you that essentially say, okay, day one, walk in the digital footprint and find something that you could add value to comment on this or, or, or share this, but don’t just share the title itself, regurgitate the title and show that you actually read the article and, and you basically touch them over a period of weeks in multiple different ways. So Nimble sequences will show you how to do it, tell you what to say in some cases, and have you do those manual tasks so that when you do reach out, in many cases, they’re going to reach out to you because you’ve touched them in a way. Have you ever heard of Gary Vee?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:45
Sure.
Jon Ferrara: 12:46
So Gary was at this bar at South by Southwest, and he and I basically just shared a thought with him. You know, we were at the bar waiting for our drinks, and I just shared a thought with him, and he turned around and touched his arm and said, Chills, Jon. Chills as I moved him. Right. That’s what you want to do when you’re engaging. But if you use the AI and automations that are in typical sales force automation tools like Outreach, Salesloft, or whatever, you’re basically going to look like everybody else, and people are just going to ignore you. But if you do the human aspect and actually cause chills to people, you stop them in their tracks. You’re going to, you’re going to create movements, and Nimble’s AI and automations incorporate the human aspect to show you how to connect with somebody in a, in a more unique way, where you’re not just blasting them with texts and emails, you’re actually walking in the digital footprint and adding value to their conversation.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:53
What are a few of those, those human aspects that either are built into Nimble or people create a task to do it? And if people are just listening to this, we are there’s a video, and we are on the Nimble page. You can kind of see I pulled up here, you know, they have AI, email marketing, and also email sequences, which is what, you know, Jon is really talking about. But you can see there are different sequences you can create with an initial email, and there’s a whole, you know, wait a day and then do this is a condition check, etc. What are some of those human elements that you recommend people build in?
Jon Ferrara: 14:34
So, for example, you could use Nimble to capture leads from your website. With web forms, they’re built into Nimble. Put them on a track, a sequence, then, and it basically puts them on an automated track and does that. If they reply, it would basically stop that automation track and put it into a workflow for you to then engage. Because basically getting a marketing-qualified lead is something marketing does, but they hand it off to a rep to do a human engagement. And typically the rep might put them on a, so that emails, those emails from the email marketing system are coming from the email marketing system, but the rep ones come from their individual email, like Jon and Nimble or whatever. So the human aspect of the rep reaching out would be where the rep actually does human things. I like what I did with you before we connected. I walked in your digital footprint. I found areas and places where we had commonality.
And then when we did connect, I shared these things to earn intimacy and trust. But it’s not just about the relationship aspects. It’s also about learning about somebody’s business and life journey and then interjecting somewhere in that a way that you might add value where the person can see that you’ve taken the time to understand who they are and what they’re about and where they’ve been and where they want to go, and how you might actually be able to help them. People, humans can recognize when another human being has taken the time to do their homework and is basically showing up ready and prepared, and it moves us. But it’s just too hard for most of us to do that. And that’s because we’re too busy doing the hard work. We basically Google people before meetings, and then we go and we, we, we, we grab information. We have to type it into our databases and CRMs. And then we have to think about what strategy we should use. And then we have to go and do it.
And it’s all done on spreadsheets because we’re disorganized, and CRMs aren’t built for all this stuff. And so I just think that we all need help being more human by having a nudge in, you know, Yiddish. So a nudge on your shoulder that facilitates you in achieving your dreams. And I think when we’re talking about dreams, we should talk about our purpose on this planet. So I shared with you before we started the recording that I got a head tumor a year after I sold GoldMine for whatever. And I almost died. And, in the process of healing on the Western aspect, I did some Eastern philosophy exploration. And I came to the conclusion that I’m on this planet for a brief period of time, that I’m here, and my purpose is to simply grow my soul. And, I think the best way to grow your soul is by helping other people grow theirs. Rinse and repeat. And so the purpose behind Nimble for me is to empower millions of people to achieve their dreams by deeply nurturing and building the relationships they need to achieve them.
And I hope that their dreams are not about making as much money as they can, but building as many moments as they can from the memories of people that they’re facilitating and touching. And so I think the philosophy of sales is just wrong. I think service is the new sales. I think that we’re here to help and serve one another. And if you spent less time bagging and tagging customers and more time just learning, looking for ways you might help other people grow, I think you’ll achieve all your dreams in life. And I think Zig Ziglar said that the more people you outgrow, the more you will grow, right? I think all the greats are are I stand on my shoulders. You know, I am who I am because of the people who came before me. I didn’t do anything. And it doesn’t hurt to have an Israeli co-founder either. The tough as nails.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:48
What did you, Jon, do differently or add in after you discovered you had a tumor? I mean, when it’s like not saying your life was flashing before your eyes, but.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:01
What, what did you do differently? Or add in knowing like, wow, it’s really a reality check. Life is short, even though we do know that, but sometimes we don’t get hit with it.
Jon Ferrara: 19:11
I really worked on softening my heart more and being practicing gratitude, presence, being present, and practicing gratitude because, you know, when you’re faced with your own mortality, it’s, it’s, it’s an awakening, right? And so I thought I was going to sell GoldMine. Just go back and do another one. And, and, and after that, I stopped working for ten years and raised three babies. And I’ll tell you what, if you want to learn about yourself, have kids and be a present parent because your kids will reflect your shit back at you. And if you’re willing to look at your shit in life, that’s how you grow. And so I worked in the I, I, I got him up, I dressed them, I fed them, I walked him to school, I worked in the classroom, I changed diapers, and it was the best ten years of my life. I, I just think that so many dads miss the opportunity to be a present parent.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:26
I’m just smiling, Jon, because it’s a scary thought that the kids reflect what they see. Because my pre-teen daughter says, Dad, you’re balding. You look like you’re homeless, and you have no friends. So. So that’s what I’m reflecting on. That’s what she’s getting from me. But what did you learn from selling GoldMine?
Jon Ferrara: 20:57
That maybe I shouldn’t have sold it. Do you want to hear something fun? The year I sold GoldMine, Salesforce started, and I thought to myself, cloud-based CRM, they’ll never make it. It’s like you can’t trust the cloud. Like the internet just goes up and down. Are you gonna do that? But honestly. Maybe not in selling GoldMine, but more in building GoldMine. The thing I learned the most is that it’s teams that win games. And that I didn’t really do anything. They did it all. It was the constituency around GoldMine. That is what made it great. And it went beyond the team members that worked there, which I told you, my propensity to hire Midwesterners, earlier in our conversation before the recording. But I would hire hairdressers and put them into customer service.
I would hire liberal arts majors and put them into business and technology roles. You can teach somebody business and technology, but you can’t teach them to read and write. And liberal arts majors can communicate, and life’s about communicating. I learned that the people who sold GoldMine, the resellers, the distributors, the business partners at Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, coming to our conferences and doing his monkey dance on our stage, meeting the editors at PC magazine. We won seven Editor’s Choice awards in PC magazines in a row.
John Taschek, who is head of who’s the head of editing? He’s an editor at PC Computing. He has been the head strategist at Salesforce for 30 years or 25 years, whatever. And so all these people, we all created the term CRM and email marketing and stuff, but it wasn’t about what we created. They don’t ride on your grave, pioneered CRM, and made hundreds of millions of dollars. They don’t write that. They write beloved father, friend, brother, son, whatever.
And so what I learned is that the journey sometimes is more important than the result. And, the journey you carry with you forever if you do it right. And what I love most about gold, mine was the people who were part of it. And they all say the same thing. It was. It’s the best moments of their lives. And I think it’s because when people get together across a common good and they’re doing good for others at scale, it’s just fucking fun, you know? And that’s kind of why I got back in the business with Nimble is that my kids were all in school, and I had time on my hands. I started using this thing called Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And I started reconnecting with a lot of my friends. And I just had sort of lost touch with them because I was busy being a dad. When you’re a dad, as the world turns into mush, you know, because you just, you know, you’re focused there. And as I reconnected with all these people, I wanted to find a way to manage my relationships.
And I looked for a relationship manager who was social, but I couldn’t find one. I looked at Google contacts. I said, This is contact management. This sucks because email, contact, and calendar aren’t linked. And if you bring up a record, you can’t see what happened, who did it, what’s going to happen, who’s going to do it? And then I looked at CRM and saw that they not only didn’t integrate the social, but they weren’t about relationships. They’re about command and control and reporting. There are 225 million global businesses, and less than 1% use any CRM. That’s because they’re not really built for relationships. And that’s why we all use spreadsheets. We use spreadsheets for relationships. And I think that’s a crime. And, I knew that social was going to change the way we work, play, buy, and sell. I flew up to LinkedIn corporate headquarters. I convinced them to give me their public and private APIs. Nobody’s ever gotten those. And I basically built LinkedIn Sales Navigator before it existed, pioneered social selling and social CRM. And, it was really fun until all the API’s got cut off and I had to go reimagine myself. And I think the core of Nimble is contacts.
And the core of your contacts is the signals associated with them. Email and calendar are two key signals, and nobody’s ever going to take those those API’s away. And Microsoft then introduced itself as Microsoft 365, they went to the cloud, and I knew that they would eat Google because I built GoldMine on top of Novell, and Microsoft came in at Novell, and in the process, Microsoft, Novell, and I came out with Small Business Server, SQL Server, and Exchange Server. I integrated those products, and if you help a first-party company sell their first-party solution with a third-party add-on, they’ll push the crap out of you. So I did the same thing with Nimble. And now Nimble is the simple CRM for Microsoft 365 and Google, and Microsoft is reselling us globally. And so it’s funny how things kind of come around. But, but I, I think what I love the most about all of this journey is helping other people achieve their dreams. And the core of people’s dreams is achieved by nurturing and utilizing the key relationships that are around you. I mean, you know this. You teach it. I see it all over your walls.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:54
Jon, where does Mark Cuban come into your business journey?
Jon Ferrara: 26:59
So Mark Cuban was a micro age reseller in Dallas, Texas, where I worked for Banyan Vines. And we were selling network operating systems. So a network operating system is basically software that ties together PCs and peripherals. So back in the day, PCs and peripherals were expensive hard drives and printers. So, they needed file servers to share applications and data. So Novell was a workgroup file server. They sold to workgroups and small businesses. And it was Enterprise One. So Novell was kicking our butt because we basically sold at the high level to the corporate IT decision makers. Novell came in via the workgroup, and if enough workgroups get together, they basically become the corporate standard.
And so Bannon told me to go sign up resellers and distributors. So I went after the Novell resellers. And Mark was one of those resellers in Dallas and became a reseller. And later on in life, he was and is my biggest investor.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:06
I didn’t know that. I’d love to talk about some examples. And one is an Irish manufacturer. Yes. How do they use Nimble?
Jon Ferrara: 28:22
Well, they kind of use it in the traditional fashion. They’ve got 85 sales reps around the world, and they’re running on Nimble. And I, you know, our typical customer is like 5 to 25 seats typically. But these are a bit of an outlier. And, I love them because they’re, they’re Irish, and I’m half Irish, and, and, and they’re near Cork, which is where my Driscoll ancestors are from.
But I also love them because they’re, they’re working with one of our resellers, and they’re using Nimble to its fullest. You know, they ripped out. They actually were a gold mine customer. They, they basically switched to Salesforce, and their reps hated it. And they wanted to go back to something that was more relationship-focused. And so they, they ended up using Nimble. And so they use it in a traditional sense, but their business is very relationship-focused. And so they really appreciate it. So I dig those guys.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:30
You know, you say it’s traditional sense, maybe a nontraditional sense, I don’t know, a good example would be a voiceover artist.
Jon Ferrara: 29:37
Yes.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:38
Unless you consider that traditional also.
Jon Ferrara: 29:40
Well, not really. I think traditional CRM utilization is an SDR Who sales development rep is the term that SaaS companies or technology companies call the person that basically goes out and, and, and, and, and, and swipes at the swipes at the bushes to make the birds come out. Right. So they’re basically out there going like this. And when the bird comes out, then the they, they hand it over to a business, a sales rep who closes them. And those people are pounding people till they buy or die at scale. And that’s not us. Yeah, we could, we could do it. You could do that with Nimble. But I think we really shine at people who really understand the value of relationships and what it means to recommendations and referrals. You want to be top of mind with your customers. Mae West said it best. She said out of sight is out of mind.
Out of mind is out of money, honey. And what you want is for people to need your products and services; they not only pick up the phone and call you, but they drag their friends with them. Voice-over artists get that. And that’s why they as a whole, a whole community. And there’s a lot of them, by the way. There’s a lot of voiceover going on out there. They use Nimble, and they love it because of its power, simplicity, and focus on relationships, and the fact that we work with IMDb. So I don’t know if I told you about Nimble Prospector, but it plugs into Chrome, and you can basically bring up Nimble, and it’s smart on the page. So if you’re on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn or Gmail or Microsoft 365 or IMDb, it’s smart on the page. And so I kind of dig that. It’s also smart in Muckrack, too, which is a PR database. So for various sorts of verticals, people really love us because we work where they, where they engage.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:47
That makes sense. You know, you mentioned before, Jon, that, you know, we all kind of stand on the shoulders of giants. And so I’m curious, who are some of your mentors that you’ve learned from? And it could be mentors that, you know, personally, it could also be distant mentors. like if there are books or resources, as you mentioned, Zig Ziglar, and so maybe some personal mentors who have given you some good business advice through your journey, and also maybe some of your favorite books.
Jon Ferrara: 32:16
Sure. So. I’m going to mention my dad. My dad was the number one Lincoln-Mercury guy in the country in the 50s and the first Subaru dealership in California in the 70s or 80s. And I grew up on his car lots. And I swore to myself I would never be in sales. So. So I wanted to be more like my Uncle John, who helped invent radar and microwave at M.I.T. in the 40s. And he was an aerospace entrepreneur. He was president of IEEE, which is the International Engineering Electrical Engineering Association. And he was a mucky muck. He was a big guy with big hands. And when he when when he held you, you knew you were being held. He was a mucky muck. He was important. He was on the board of the hospitals, and you know, everything, water and power.
But he always had time for me. He ended up becoming one of the deans in my engineering department at my local university in Los Angeles. And he’d always have time for me. And he was my advisor. He’s my godfather. And he was like the godfather, by the way. He has the bananas in his family tree, by the way. I’m sure you Google the bananas. So Uncle John and my father were on the technical entrepreneur side. My dad was on the sales side, and I ended up being a blend of them both. And then books, you know, the one that really comes to mind is Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. I think that most of the entrepreneurs I know who have built and sold companies credit that book, and it’s not very big and it’s not very complex. I think it comes down to what I call the three P’s: passion, plan, and purpose. Figure out what your passion is.
Build a plan to achieve it. Make it your purpose on a daily basis. Put that purpose, that list, that plan on your mirror. And every day you get up, look at it and say, What am I doing to get there? And you may not get there, but going to get someplace and it’s going to be fun. And of course, you know, Dale Carnegie, Zig Ziglar, but Siddhartha, you know, Siddhartha, a story about somebody who had everything and they, they, they threw it all away, and they walked around and looked for wisdom. Walden by Henry David Thoreau marched to a different drummer. You know, you you you’re in jail, and your friend comes to you and goes, What are you doing in jail? Jeremy? Jeremy says, Well, what are you doing out there? In other words, yeah, you gotta be an active activist, right? So those are some of the books that, that, that I dug. There was another one. Oh God. It was the it was a Steinbeck book, The Grapes of Wrath.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:29
Mice and Men.
Jon Ferrara: 35:30
Not that one.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:31
I mean, I was a biochemistry major, so asking me about literature books is not a good idea, but I. But I can echo like Dale Carnegie. I wanted my daughters to really read How to Win Friends and Influence People. I really think it’s a Bible on how to treat relationships. And it’s kind of like Nimble seems like just right on the back of how to win friends and influence people. Really, the thoughts and stories are there. And, you know, Napoleon Hill, same thing. I think I have a little something that someone gave it to me, which is a little quote, which is, I think, it’s from Napoleon Hill. Anyway. It’s like what the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve. And it’s like sitting behind my computer. So I, I look at it. Right? Yeah. So I, I thank you for reinforcing all those things. Jon. Thanks for just sharing the Nimble journey, your journey. This has been great. I want to encourage people to check out Nimble.com to learn more and more episodes of the podcast. And we’ll see you next time. And Jon, you know, thanks so much.
Jon Ferrara: 36:35
Thank you. Appreciate it.
