How a $5K Idea Made $100M

You're listening to the Vault unlock where the real secrets of success are revealed. Every episode, one found or one confession, one strategy that created income scale and unstoppable growth. Forget the hype, this is unlocking the code, they swore they would never release. The playbook is revealed, the Vault is unlocked. All right, and we're back. Today we have a very special guest, John Farrara. The reason I say he is special, you don't really get to meet people who not only sold their company for $100 million, but has created another potential unicorn company. And it's all because this guy is grass roots. John, welcome to the show. How are we doing today? Kevin, I'm doing amazing and I really appreciate the opportunity to join you for a conversation. I really believe that we're here on this planet to grow and the best way to grow is by helping other people grow. So any opportunity that I can have a conversation with another human being or a group of them to find ways to blow wind ear to their sales is a good day for me. Well, today we're unlocking the Vault. We want to know really not just the one because there's so much here, but that one thing that got you to go from obviously starting as an entrepreneur to selling your, you know, we talked about this selling your company into the multiple $100 million plus. But before we get into, tell us again, who is John? Where does John come from? Where did this all start? Well, there's a lot of ways I could take that, but I think you always have to give props to the people that help get you there. And I think I'm here through a combination of two mentors that helped me grow. My pops, who was the number one Lincoln Mercury and Subaru guy in the country in the 50s and 70s. And I supported myself. I'd never been sales. So I basically said, I'm not going to be like you dad. And I followed in the footsteps of my uncle John who helped him in Redar microwave and MIT in the 40s and helped build the aerospace industry that we know of in the San Fernando Valley. And it was president of IEEE, which is the Electrical Engineering Association. These are my two mentors, right? So old school sales technology. And I put myself through school studying computers and working at a computer store. And basically I found myself in a sales role about four years into my career. And I started to use the tools that they gave you back then in the 80s, daytime or spreadsheets, piece of paper. And I said, this is so stupid because I had a computer science background and worked at a computer store. I knew we started to program the market. There were only a few hundred. And there was no program that integrated email, contact, and calendar and sales from our confirmation. Outlook did not exist. Sales force did not exist. Hub spot. There was nothing. And so I equipped my job and with a buddy of mine from college to law, we founded Goldmine and Goldmine pioneered CIRM as we know it today, which the heart of it, I think people forgot, is the R in CIRM, relationships. CIRM stands for customer relationship management. And they were adopted not by management, but by the sales people that had to go out there and struggle in the trenches to achieve their goals. And that was Goldmine and Act. These were the tool programs that really pioneered contact management with Goldmine leaning harder on the sales force automation, email marketing, and team functionality. Because my dad taught me people who work as a team win games. And so we started that company on $5,000 in the South Island of Valley and L.A. and grew it to hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue over 10 years. I sold that company and retired and spent 10 years raising three babies. And I'll tell you what, Kiva, and I think I learned more about relationships in my soul in those 10 years. Yeah. I can imagine that. You know, 40 of entrepreneurship. We're not going to let you off the hook here. Because I don't think you, maybe you say this too much, but there's so much here that we have to understand. First is if you heard this, $5,000 investment turned into a $100 million plus company. We're going to unpack that. But something I think is even more powerful here. You said CRM before CRM. What do you mean by that? So CRM was founded as an evolution of contact management. Contact management was was created as an evolution of tools and sales reps used for managing contacts. Sorry, but the role are them. Well, I'll argue that I that our team at Goldmine really pioneered CRM as we know it today. I want to know because you weren't going to say it. I'll tell you, this is what happens when you when you become I'm going to say as wise and live in the world of wisdom, you do not boast yourself. We are talking to the originator. We are talking to the person who created CRM, the CRM that we all call customer relation management tool. The thing that Salesforce is built off of the thing that every business today is using. We are talking to really the originator, the founder of the entire name. The entire I mean, you opened up a new world of sales of marketing of customer relationship management of being able to create, which I know is very, very important to you, is the relationship. So we got to make sure we know who we're speaking to here, John. Thank you. Well, I appreciate that. But I think more importantly, is CRM as we know it today happened as a result of the evolution of the foundation that Goldmine built back in the day. But when we started Goldmine, it was a work group contact management manager with sales and marketing automation features built into it. But it wasn't built for sales people alone. It was built for the whole company because it was my belief that it was not just sales people that touched the customer or the constituency around your business. There's a variety of people that any competent salesperson needs to connect with inside their business to the outside people. For instance, in an enterprise sale that I was in before starting Goldmine, we sold to large corporations. And I need in multiple people in my district office, I had a corporate to interface with those customers across sales, marketing, support, management, engineering, shipping, etc. And so my vision of CRM is in stock just for sales people. It's for everybody in the company. But it has unique features such that the sales and marketing people can do their job. But less than 5% of any company is in sales. Most people are in other roles. And everybody else in the company runs on spreadsheets because CRM's aren't really great for contact management. And what happened was Goldmine was Outlook and Salesforce before Outlook or Salesforce existed. And then Outlook came out and CRM shifted from having a relationship manager for Lull Team to just being a tool for pounding leads till they buy or die. And it lost its heart and soul. And sales people stopped loving to use it because it wasn't built for them. It was built for management, command and control and reporting. And so the reason they called Salesforce, Salesforce, Salesforce people to use it. And I think that's true. And so there's 225 million global businesses today less than 1% use any CRM. And I'm back to fix that. And I love that. We're going to talk about that. We're not jumping there. We're not letting you out of here. So speaking more, I just want more on the business kind of venture side and how this all came together. So from what I'm hearing here is you you got in the one role you promised yourself you weren't going to get into, but that one role ended up turning into a hundred million dollar company. So I'm going to ask and you're okay. You're jumped into that role. But you jump into this role and you start seeing what at that point, I can't even imagine what it was 70s, 80s, trying to be a salesperson. You're right back then there was no sales. There was no such thing as a CRM spreadsheets, anything like that. Back then your sales manager would just throw you out the phone book. If you were even lucky to get the phone book, some of them didn't even give you the phone book. He had to go figure it out yourself and said, go. So here you are. And I could tell you come from the technical side just the way, you know, analytical brain. So here you are, you're watching all these sales guys like me run around with your heads cut off. Just do just relying purely on hustle and hard work and I'm going to call it charisma back then and just trying to create raw authentic relationships. And you're sitting there going, this is dumb. There's got to be a better way. Yeah. How does my vision go on? No, go on. Sorry. Now vision was to run a wire through all the day timers so that everybody was on page one page. So that no matter who picked up the phone, you know, who you're talking to, what happened, who did it, and then what what's going to happen and who's going to do it. And that if you have the context and insights on every single connection that you and your team members are making with everybody outside your company, then you're going to be able to deliver consistent experience. And that is critical to business success is providing a customer journey that is consistent and delightful and that people follow up on what they say they're going to do. And I think that's what we've forgotten as business people. And so the, I basically took that vision of a contact record with a pending what's going to happen, who's going to do it. And a history what happened, who did it, plus the ability to manage pipeline and drip marketing and web lead capture, all the things for sales and market automation. And I drew the screens in something called Dan Brickland's demo, which is a guy who built Visi Cal, which most people don't know what Visi Cal is, but it pioneered spreadsheets. This guy Dan Dan Brickland made this demo program. I laid out the thing in DOS and it was actually 1989. So it was in the 70s or 80s. That's a long time ago. It was the 90s. And so we're sitting in this apartment. Two kids, you know, fresh out of college with no sales and marketing experience per se. And except for I worked at the computer lens store for a couple of years. And how you going to sell it? How do you sell people something they don't even know that they need? This is what we want to know. Now we're getting here. Thank you. That's just gold. So our target was small businesses that needed to share contacts and outreach to them and connecting close and manage their relationships. And back then there was no outlook as I shared before. There was just computers, printers and hard drives that were connected to something called Novel, which was a network file server. And they were sharing standalone applications and spreadsheets to do all these jobs because file record locking wasn't created. So we built the first networkable program that was sellable to consumers, let alone CRM or email marketing or SFA. And so how do you get that to the consumer? It's a lot easier if somebody else recommends you than if you go cold call a prospect. And the trusted advisor is the best person for you to connect to your prospects at scale. And my trusted advisor for those customers was the the guy or gal that sold them the Novel network. So the Novel reseller. And back then there's this guy named Mark Cuban who was the local Novel reseller. And I called on Mark and I signed him up as a reseller and and and slowly built this sort of reseller community. And we basically got almost every single Novel reseller in the country of the used gold mine and people sell what they know and they know what they use. And they started recommending it to their customers. And that's how we got to our first $100,000 a month in revenue. But it wasn't overnight like that. I mean it was it was it was it was old. There's a gold here. Let's let's really dissect some gold here. Again, I don't think anybody probably picked up what you just said. The Mark Cuban you sold Mark Cuban resold your product. So I just want to understand everybody here the Mark Cuban. Okay, that's pretty cool. But what I just heard you say is again, instead of working hard, hard, you started working smart. You decided to get resellers. What's the way to say that today? Like instead of you trying to sell your product, go find out other people who are selling your prospect already and get them to sell your product for you. So that's the number one. And then today we call that influencer marketing. Right? Exactly. Influencer marketing. Yeah. So you're the creator of influencer marketing too. Might as well put that there. So and you said some powerful stuff. It didn't happen overnight. We know there's no such thing as overnight success. But we talked about this offline. And I do want to bring this up. You said I think it was 10 years. Like how hard was it? Like how much pain and you know the struggle and the hard nights, all that. Like how long was that before this really took off where where we started seeing. Okay, now I can breathe a little bit and I can see that light. A few years of blood sweat and tears. So we started out in an apartment and two better apartment and we worked out of that for the first year. And then we moved into a subly space in Canoga Park and we worked out of that for a couple years. And we had a postcard of the Santa Monica Bay. And that was our vision was to have an office on the ocean. And and after a few years, we were on on the ocean on on on PCH. And I really believe in that. If you if you have a passion and you build a plan to achieve it and you make a purpose on a daily basis, you can achieve anything. I learned that from Napoleon Hill thinking grow rich and many of the people I know who retired and built businesses attribute him. And so so what I did was I started the process myself so I can learn it. So I was called calling the novel resellers and I was getting them to to basically use it and then start selling it. And then I do as a hire another sales rep and I give them a chunk of the country. And then I hire another sales rep and eventually I had like six people north northwest southwest north central south central northeast southeast. And you know, we eventually grew that base of of resellers. But the thing is is eventually as you're growing these resellers, they sort of tap out on their existing base of customers that they can recommend to. And you they asking me for leads. So how do you get leads if you don't know how to advertise? You know, I have money to advertise. And so I look for the influencer of my prospect in and around their areas of promise of the product and services on how they can get better smart and faster around those services. So technology publications and business publications and entrepreneurial publications where my prospect might read about what they need to do to grow their business. And so I contacted all those editors and I said, how can I help you write more stories? And they said, tell the stories about how people are using technology to grow. So I started telling stories and then they started telling those stories. And this is how we won PC magazine editors choice six or seven times in a row. And got more awards and more print than all the other products combined because of our relay pay-off of the relationships we built with the editors of these business and technology publications where we help define what CRM was. So today, John Tashik, who's head of strategy for sales force, who's been head of strategy for sales force for probably 20 years or so. They started in 1999 the year I sold Goldmine. John Tashik was the editor of PC Week and PC Computing. And so a lot of those editors, we were helping to define this whole category. And because of that, they were telling stories about us. That got us to the next sort of growth level. Right? Like that got us to not being in the basement of that building on PCA's and having all three floors of one of the buildings. Right? And so about this time, our customers started saying, John, we need to scale this to thousands of users and billions of records. And we want to run this on an enterprise level across multiple plant sites. And we want more secure email transport. And the resellers were saying, we want to make more money in a Goldmine dollar. So how can we sell more services and products? And Microsoft came to us and they said, John, we want to eat novell. We're going to build anti-server, SQL server, exchange server. So we want to eat novell and Oracle and the and the internet service providers doing email. We want all that. And we're going to build small business server. We want you to integrate with that. And so I basically put together in my head, I can have Microsoft sell the crown jewel, which means they're going to push the crap out of me. I can help my end users who are getting to be 50 to 100 of Fortune 500 companies scale even bigger. Like we had JP Morgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, all those guys. And my resellers, I can help them make $10 in a Goldmine dollar. So we integrated to Microsoft Small Business Server, SQL server became our database and set a database. Exchange server became our email and set a pop. And I anti-server became our file server instead of a novell. And that's what got us to that $100 million a year in revenue is by BISDAB, partnership, storytelling, and a lot of Hutzpah. I want to take a step back here. Because to me, the whole thing here for me is I want to find couple here. There's so much gold here, but some of the things that people can start thinking differently. This is not just about the whole tech and building all the tech. That's a whole different avenue itself. But how? So in this case, I want to take a step in and go, how did you get the resellers to sell this in the first place when this was something they've never heard? They've never seen. It wasn't trusted. Nobody even knew what it was. Because you weren't, you were going to an unaware market completely unaware and you had to get them above the water line toolware and then do the point where they can trust you. How did you get that to happen for the resellers? Well, number one, our technology was pioneering. So there wasn't anything else on the market that was a network of all relationship manager with sales and market automation built into it. Act was the closest thing and they were a plug into symphony in its early days for individual sales reps. And even when they became a a DOS program, DOS became was before Windows, by the way, they they they didn't have our depth. And so we were unique in the marketplace and there was a small marketplace. But the biggest thing that I would say is people sell what they know and they know what they use. And if you get people to use it and they love it, it's easy to sell. Nobody likes to sell something they don't know because you can't support it, right? It's your reputation. But it is something that you use and it changes your life and helps turn your contacts into gold. Well, you're going to sell the crap out of it. And you have to remember that no-vail resellers were selling plumbing diplomas. They were selling IT infrastructure to IT decision makers. They weren't selling business solutions on top. And for them to differentiate themselves from every other tom dick and hairy selling novell, which is not that big a bar to get over, they needed to start selling business solutions to business decision makers. That would basically change their life because their relationship would be more stickier to the customer because they're solving more problems and they're making a lot more money. And so we transformed those novell resellers into solution sellers and basically built the CRM reseller industry. In fact, when we sold gold mine in 1999, Microsoft launched Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce, launched Salesforce. And they both went after all of our resellers. In fact, Microsoft hired my whole, my VP of sales and the whole outside sales team after I left. And so we basically built the foundation of not just the technology and the user demand, but also the channel and the strategy. Yeah. So there's a comic. Garmin Sharr is an investor in Nimble. And he's a founder of HubSpot. And he in many times acknowledged and credited what we did at gold mine. As have my conversations Mark Benioff from Salesforce. So they kind of all acknowledge that we built the foundation and they're kind of happy we left. Yeah, I hear that. I hear that. So there's a common theme here. I really want people to understand because it goes through one of my cardinal rules is this is when you when you put yourself first, you'll end up at the bottom. When you put your prospect first, you'll always end up on top. What does that mean here? When you are going to the resellers, this is very important for people to understand whether it's marketing sales, relationships, the way you think you were not going there and thinking about how can I get my product into their hands? You were going, what do these need people? What do they need? What don't they have? How can I solve their problems? And in the interim of selling those problems, how can I get my product to help them solve those problems and become more valuable? Because when I can make them more valuable, then they'll make me more valuable. Really is what happened. Then you did it again. You started growing this thing and then all of a sudden, they tapped out. So then you went to the next level and asked the same question. This was the mega's. And the publications and asked, what was their problem? They probably don't have enough content at that time. There wasn't a lot of content. There wasn't a lot of content around technology. Nobody was using technology. They didn't have the stories. So you said, let me solve your problem. Became a problem solver. So then all of a sudden, you're now on the boulevard and what you thought was great to be on the bottom, you own all three buildings. Am I with you? Have I lost you? Yeah. I was actually visualizing the view from my office. Well, then I ask you this. This is so important. When you visualized that view right now, what came up for you? What were you thinking? How did that make you feel? It felt amazing, unfortunate and also stressful. I think I'm amazing because I'm looking at dolphins surfing in the waves of the Santa Monica Bay. I'm fortunate because I always did the right place at the right time and with the right skill sets. And that doesn't happen in the universe that often, right? And stressed because even when we got bigger, it was still stressful because you had to keep that bar chart going up into the right. As you maybe get in the first million or two or three per year, 30, that's great. A hundred, oh my god. And by that time, the market was so frothy. Just like the ninth grade of the market. You helped create the market. You helped create the market. Let's call this a great. We never took a dime a venture. No bank loans. We just did it all ourselves. 5,000 to 100 million. And everybody else was taking a lot of money and they were basically having these crazy stock valuations. And I just said to myself, you know what? These numbers just don't add up to me. This doesn't really feel right. And so I sold it. Can you tell who you sold it to? So we were in conversations with a number of people, including Microsoft. And I wanted cash. Okay. And so there was a Microsoft distributor out of Zimbabwe. Okay. Because Microsoft couldn't distribute in South Africa at the time. And so he was the Microsoft distributor for South Africa. And he had cash. And he knew the business. And he knew the opportunity. And so we sold it to him. Okay. And we sold it for a hundred million dollars plus people. A little more than that. But yeah, right around there. Okay. I have to ask the question unfiltered. What did it feel like the day you sold that company for a hundred million and more plus dollars? And when that hit your bank account, it's fucking amazing. Sorry. What was that? It's fucking amazing. Yeah. And it should be. I mean, what was that? Fucking amazing. I would say so. What came over you? Like what? Like what was the flashback? Like I want to know what that feels like? Well, it's sort of unbelievable. You sort of pinch yourself. Like it's the money. You really hit the bank. We have the money in the bank. It's really really in the bank. But I didn't have a whole lot of time to think about that because my baby was born the day. My second baby, Colin was born the day the deal close April 19 1999. Wow. And I still have the front page of the you have the LA Times. Yeah. The articles there that day. You're child born. You sell the business for a hundred million dollars. Yeah. And at that point, most people say you're set. You live the perfect life. You live the dream life. But what happened? Well, about a year after selling, I got a head tumor and I was facing pretty dire straits. And I went to a number of different medical experts to get opinions on how to do with my head tumor. And I found a doctor at UCLA that had a brand new methodology where they can melt the tumor inside your head using radiation. Kind of like you melt a leaf or burn a leaf with a fine glass. So you can focus the beam at the center of your head and using an MRI map bypass melting your taste buds, salivary glands and nerves because you need all that to eat and stuff. And that technology is the key technology today that people use with back then. It was sort of bleeding edge. But I'm a bleeding edge kind of guy. But I also did some spiritual work, Kavan. And I came to the conclusion that I'm on this planet to grow my soul in the brief period of time that I'm here. And that the best way for me to grow my soul is by helping other people grow theirs. And the best way to grow your soul is by being present with the people you love like your children, because they will reveal your shit to you. And if you're willing to look at your shit and life and work on it, that's real, that's real opportunity of growth there. Let's just pop that right now because this is so important. You just said something so powerful. As a father of a one and a half year old and almost a five year old now, you just said the kids will reveal your own shit to you. A.K.A. kids will be a direct reflection of what's going on on the inside. Can we talk about this? Because I know how important this was. I want to hear this guys. This is you. Here is the man who I can't imagine. I can't imagine the stress, the days driving home when you wanted to quit, when you didn't know what was going on, when you had all of the pressures from all these companies before this is before the $100 million comes through. Then you get the $100 million and you think life is great. And not even a year later, let me tell you, I'm sure that year flew by. I'm sure it flew by. And again, I'm very happy you're here with us today. You find out you have a tumor. And I'm sure in that moment, without even having to say, you would have gave up all that $100 million to just ensure that tumor would be fixed. Yeah. And you realize life is more about the business and the spreadsheets and making sure that bar is keeps going to the right. And you go through a spiritual journey. What happens in that journey? Well, I think you come to the realization that life's not about making as much money as you can, but building as many memories out of the moments that you can get from the, with the people that you dig. Yeah. And that's all you're going to take with you. Nobody's going to say Godfather, CRM, you know, made all this money, built all this stuff, pioneered this or that. They're going to say, on my grave head beloved husband, father, friend, right? That's all you got. That's all you leave. And so, um, so I decided to dedicate the, my time to being a present father, husband, and member of my community for as much time as I could. And, you know, I was blessed to be able to do that. And I was able to change diapers, get kids up, walk them to school, work in the classroom, coach, sports. I was an assistant scout master for my boys who were both Eagle Scouts. I did the YMCA, uh, Princess program with my daughter. I mean, all those things that most dads never get to do because they're on the hamster will of life. And they're just, they don't, they don't get those moments, right? And, um, and so I'm forever grateful for that. I, I'm so happy. I'm so grateful that you got to not make you just said, and not many people get to enjoy that life, uh, and get there. And I, you know, I don't want to get too much about down this road, but also not many people are willing to do what you did to be able to enjoy that life. So I'm interested now because here we are, you're, you're living that life. How long do you think you're, we talked maybe 10 years, you're, you go 10, 15 years of this life. 10 years. Yeah, sold at 99 and, uh, and I started nimble, you know, close to, um, 2011. So 2011 comes around, you're looking around, we're just going to jump ahead here. Kids are off the university and you're, well, they're not university. Yeah, right. They're in, they're in grammar school, middle school, high school. Okay. But they're, we're out of the house. I've time, you have time. They're out of the house. You have time and you say, well, what do I know? What, what can I start again? So here comes the new venture nimble. What does nimble do? What was the passion behind nimble? How is nimble working right now? Uh, we talked about it becoming potentially another unicorn company. I mean, my god, not many people, can even build a unicorn company and you're on your second unicorn company. So I think only moms can fully appreciate the mush your brain goes into by being a parent. Because it's constant chaos and you lose yourself in, in many cases, even your identity. And so by being a present dad, I kind of, was just focused on that in this small little circle of my kids and their friends and their parents of those friends. And so when they're all in school and I had time, I remodeled our old Spanish home from the 20s in Santa Monica. And in the three years or so of doing that remodel, that sort of polished my product brain backup, right? Because you got to get back into shape. And about that time, social media was beginning to hit Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. And I started to reconnect with the people that I had already been connected to 10 years or so earlier. And it was really great to get reconnect with these people. But as I was doing that, I saw the need to manage those contacts in a more effective way than on those separate platforms. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, CrunchBase, AngelList, whatever. And I wanted to consolidate them into my own contact manager, maybe a social contact manager, social CRM. And that didn't exist. So I started looking at contact managers to see if any of them integrated it. And contact managers basically outlook, which at the time was on-prem with Exchange or Google contact, which was in the cloud. And neither of them integrated with social. And they weren't good contact managers. Because to be a good contact manager, you need to have a team of people sharing contacts and history and pending with the tracking of what happened and who did it. And outlook and Google had type of contact databases for every single team member. So there was no system of, there's no record of system of record of truth or contacts in a company. And then I started looking at CRM. So I was about relationships, about command and control and reporting. And none of them were integrated with social. So I started to explore it. And I went up to LinkedIn and I built a relationship with their head of BISDAV and product and stuff. And I got them to give me their public and private APIs would say they had never and never did give to anybody else but me. And then basically, I built a team and we basically pioneered social CRM and social selling by not only integrating email, contact encounter from the only cloud-based solution for that, which was Google at the time. But also integrating into Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Angelus, CrunchBase, etc. And not just integrating to them, but fully integrating. So Nimble can synchronize in all your LinkedIn contacts and the messages and send messages and invites and enrich records and not just work inside Nimble, where Nimble automatically builds your CRM for you and enriches them with the people in company data as you know, to Google and you may not know them, but I built a plug into your browser. So Nimble lived inside your inbox and inside the Google. So if I open up an email, I can see who the person is if they exist and they don't exist. I can build it. If I go into LinkedIn, I have a thing that plugs in. I can basically build records there. But I didn't have to because if I had a friend or did a message that contact automatically went into Nimble because we were sales navigate before it existed. And then I got some friends to invest. Mark Cuban, one of the founders of Goldman Sachs, Darma Shar from HubSpot, Google Ventures. I'm sure I'm thinking in a lot of great people. But before I did that, I invest my own money. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And then I brought in investors and we just sort of blew up. Like we basically, like we were it. And we're riding that wave of social serum and social selling. And how many users do you have right now, Nimble? We've had over a hundred thousand people sign up for the platform. And one of the key things that we did was when LinkedIn sales navigator decided to build it as opposed to buying Nimble, which we had that discussion, they took our API away for LinkedIn. And then eventually all the social APIs kind of started to disappear because Facebook wants you to get a Facebook so they could sell your eyeballs in your data. And we had to begin to sort of pivot away from social. And because when technologies knew, like when the internet first became always on, it was e-toy's and i-contact. And now it's just toys and contact. And when social came out, it was social marketing, social sales, not just sales and marketing. And so I knew that that would happen. And so Microsoft was coming out with Microsoft 365 because Microsoft doesn't innovate, they iterate. They were sometimes to build the market. And they come in with big enough and they use their muscle, billions of users and hundreds of thousands of bars to dominate. And they build something good enough. And they do that. So I knew when Microsoft decided to build Microsoft 365, the day would eat Google email contact and calendar email productivity suite. And so I went up to Microsoft and I rebuilt the relationships with the people. It got me access to the programs. And now Microsoft is our global reseller throughout the world. And they're paying their distributors and resellers to sell Nimble. Why? Well Microsoft has a serum, Microsoft Dynamics. But Microsoft gives that serum to every one of the resellers and none of them sell it. Not, I mean, none, some, right? The old gold mine resellers that they recruited, some of them are still selling it. But the reality is that Microsoft Dynamics isn't built for the common Microsoft user, which is a small business. It's a much more enterprise, complex, expensive, requires a lot of rollout. And most of the business out there, it doesn't suit them. So today, Microsoft resellers are in the same boat that the Nobel resellers were in before in that they're selling plumbing to plumbers. They're selling IT and for some good IT decision makers. Microsoft resellers sell Microsoft 365 backup security and migration. They don't sell any front office or back office business solutions. Front office is sales or marketing back office is accounting. So for Microsoft to hit its numbers, they need to sell more than Microsoft 365 because they don't make that much money on Microsoft 365. They make their money on Power BI, Power Apps on Azure and Dynamics and the Microsoft AI. So how can they turn their resellers from selling plumbing to plumbers to business solutions to business decision makers? Well, Nimble is a natural add on to Microsoft 365 because Microsoft Outlook is in really a good team contact manager at Let Alone Sales and Market Automation. And so they could easily sell with every single Microsoft seat, a Goldmine, a Nimble seat, and then begin to learn how to sell business solutions to business decision makers. And because Nimble is now based in Azure, fully integrated with the stack and all their tools when the Microsoft resellers sell Nimble with Microsoft 365. It automatically unifies the email kind of calendar. We live inside Outlook, but we can they still live and type LinkedIn and do prospect and all that. And so we're basically kind of replicating what we did with no Vell new sellers with the Microsoft. I was just going to say the one thing, the whole thing this is all about is like what's that one thing and it's very, very clear and it comes down to we can go 30,000 foot view and you you are always looking for ways to solve other people's problems and then give in your product part of that solution. If we go deeper, you found out who could sell your product already had the network or the people to sell it to solve that problem for them and then gave your product for them to sell at scale. And then you re you rinse and repeat and there's no reason why and or no doubt that you now also have a second, which we can call maybe potentially a unicorn company. So we're at the end here. I mean, we can go on forever and I I'm so grateful and I love all of this. I want to ask you one last question. If everything went away tomorrow and you had to start all over again, what is the one thing you would do? You know, I think that I might teach because I like to grow people and and I believe in America and in our youth and I want to help shape them and help them achieve their dreams. That was I saw that was very emotional when you thought about our youth that hit something for me. Well, I think it's pretty scary to be a young person today. Yeah. And I don't want to get into all that job. But they're the future of of our country and and I think that they're struggling and and they could use a little bit of inspiration. I agree. I agree. John Nimble, where can people get where can people sign up for Nimble and learn more about you? Well, they can go to nimble.com. Sign up for free. It's a two week trial. And if after using nimble for two weeks for free, if they feel like they want to become a subscriber, use the code John 40. It'll get you 40% off your first three months and reach out to me. Let me know how I might blow some wind in your sales. My email is joan at nimble.com. Let me know how I can help you grow. So John, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule for being with us. You heard it. You have it again. Congratulations on all of your success. Kevin, thank you so much for this conversation. You make it really easy. I love your energy. I'm happy to be here with you and your audience. Thank you so much. Thank you. And now Microsoft is our global reseller. Throughout the world and their pain, their distributors and resellers to sell nimble. Why? Well, Microsoft has a serum. Microsoft Dynamics. But Microsoft gives that serum to everyone of the resellers and none of them sell it. Not, I mean, none. Some, right? The old goldmine resellers that they recruited, some of them are still selling it. But the reality is that Microsoft Dynamics isn't built for the common Microsoft user, which is a small business. It's a much more enterprise, complex, expensive, requires a lot of rollout. And most of the business out there, it doesn't suit them. So today, Microsoft resellers are in the same boat that the Nobel resellers were in before in that they're selling plumbing to plumbers. They're selling IT and for self-good IT decision makers. Microsoft resellers sell Microsoft 365 backup security migration. They don't sell any front office or back office business solutions. Front office is sales and marketing back office is accounting. So for Microsoft to hit its numbers, they need to sell more than Microsoft 365 because they don't make that much money on Microsoft 365. They make their money on Power BI, Power Apps, on Azure and Dynamics and their Microsoft AI. So how can they turn their resellers from selling plumbing to plumbers to business solutions to business decision makers? Well, Nimble is a natural add on to Microsoft 365 because Microsoft Outlook is in really a good team contact manager at Let Alone Sales and Market Automation. And so they could easily sell with every single Microsoft seat, a goldmine, a Nimble seat, and then begin to learn how to sell business solutions to business decision makers. And because Nimble is now based in Azure, fully integrated with the stack and all their tools when the Microsoft reseller sell Nimble with Microsoft 365, it automatically unifies the email account account or we live inside Outlook, but we can they still live and type LinkedIn and do prospect and all that. And so we're basically kind of replicating what we did with no VEL new sellers with the Microsoft. I was just going to say the one thing, the whole thing this is all about is like what's that one thing and it's very, very clear and it comes down to we can go 30,000 foot view and you you are always looking for ways to solve other people's problems and then give in your product part of that solution. If we go deeper, you found out who could sell your product already had the network or the people to sell it to solve that problem for them and then gave your product for them to sell at scale. And then you re you rinse and repeat and there's no reason why and or no doubt that you now also have a second which we can call maybe potentially a unicorn company. So we're at the end here. I mean we can go on forever and I I'm so grateful and I love all of this. I want to ask you one last question if everything went away tomorrow and you had to start all over again. What is the one thing you would do? You know I think that I might teach because I like to grow people and I believe in America and in our youth and I want to help shape them and help them achieve their dreams. That was I saw that was very emotional when you thought about our youth that hit something for them. I think it's pretty scary to be a young person today. Yeah. And I don't want to get into all all. That's a very good word. But they're the future of our country and I think that they're struggling and they could use a little bit of inspiration. I agree. John Nimble, where can people where can people sign up for Nimble and learn more about you? Well they can go to nimble.com. Sign up for free. It's a two week trial and if after using nimble for two weeks for free if they feel like they want to become a subscriber use the code John 40. It'll get you 40% off your first three months and reach out to me. Let me know how I might blow some wind in your sales. My email is joenn at nimble.com. Let me know how I can help you grow. John I'm going to leave it there. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule for being with us. You heard it. You have it again. Congratulations on all of your success. Kavan, thank you so much for this conversation. You make it really easy. I love your energy. I'm happy to be here with you and your audience. Thank you so much. Thank you. And that was another episode with the Vault Unlocked where proven builders, real strategies and unstoppable growth happens. Subscribe now because the next unlock could be the one that rewires your business forever. This is where the playbook is revealed and the Vault is unlocked.