How a $5K Idea Made $100M

Summary

The Vault Unlocked — How a $5K Idea Made $100M

Host: Kayvon Kay
Guest: John Ferrara (GoldMine & Nimble Founder)
Date: October 22, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Vault Unlocked unpacks the one "dangerous" growth strategy that catapulted John Ferrara's CRM startup, GoldMine, from a $5,000 shoestring operation to a $100 million+ exit. John, often called the "godfather of CRM," shares the methodology, mindset, and partner-first sales approach that not only created an entire software category but rewrote the rules for scaling with almost no capital. The discussion goes way beyond software, diving into the art of unlocking networks, creating win-wins for resellers and partners, and ultimately prioritizing relationships – whether in business or life.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origins: Humble Roots & Parental Influence

• John credits his father (top US auto salesman) and uncle (MIT radar inventor) as dual mentors—blending old-school salesmanship with technological vision.
  • “Old school sales and technology. I put myself to school studying computers and working at a computer store ... I found myself in a sales role about four years into my career.” (02:10)
• Despite vowing never to work in sales, his technical perspective made him see firsthand how broken sales processes were in the 1980s.

2. GoldMine: Birth of CRM Before CRM Existed (04:51–08:12)

• Out of frustration with "Daytimer, spreadsheets, pieces of paper," John built the first workgroup contact manager—integrating email, contacts, calendar, and sales automation before Outlook, Salesforce, or HubSpot existed.
• GoldMine’s unique vision:
  • “It was my belief that it was not just salespeople that touched the customer ... it's for everybody in the company.” (06:24)
  • GoldMine emphasized relationships over command-and-control reporting, which most later CRMs abandoned.

3. The Game-Changer: Reseller Channel Partnerships (11:26–14:21)

• The core unlock: John saw that selling through trusted advisors (Novell resellers) trumped cold outreach.
  • “It’s a lot easier if somebody else recommends you than if you go cold call a prospect ... the trusted advisor is the best person for you to connect to your prospects at scale.” (11:47)
• By giving these IT resellers a sticky, value-adding product, they became evangelists – "[Mark] Cuban was the local Novell reseller. I called on Mark, and I signed him up." (12:36)
• This channel-first motion became the key to their first $100k/month in revenue—pioneering what’s now called influencer and ecosystem marketing.

4. Scaling Beyond Early Adopters (15:03–16:33)

• Once resellers tapped out their customer lists, John pivoted to earned media:
  • Proactively contributed tech adoption stories to business/tech editors, fueling award wins and buzz:
    • “I contacted all those editors and said, how can I help you write more stories? ... This is how we won PC Magazine Editor’s Choice six or seven times in a row.” (15:50)
• Relentless adaptation—partnering with Microsoft to integrate with their Small Business Server, SQL, and Exchange, further multiplying scale.

5. Solving Stakeholder Problems: Always Be a Multiplier (19:50–21:59)

• John’s partner pitch was never “sell my product," but “let my product make YOU more valuable.”
  • "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." (19:59)
• He transformed IT resellers' businesses—up-leveling them from “plumbers selling plumbing” to solution providers.

6. Bootstrapping, Integrity, and the Big Exit (24:57–27:33)

• Never took a dime of VC or bank money.
  • "We never took a dime. Adventure. No bank loans. We just did it all ourselves." (25:17)
• Exit for $100M+—to a Microsoft distributor with ready cash. The same day, John’s son was born.
  • “It was fucking amazing.” (26:46)
  • “My second baby, Colin, was born the day the deal closed. April 19, 1999.” (27:23)

7. Life's Curveball and Redefining Success (27:46–31:53)

• Within a year, John was diagnosed with a brain tumor—forcing deep reflection:
  • “You realize life is more [than] about the business and the spreadsheets ... you go through a spiritual journey.” (30:29)
  • “Life's not about making as much money as you can, but building as many memories ... that's all you leave.” (30:41)
• He spent a decade raising his children as a present father—experiencing “the best way to grow your soul is by helping other people grow theirs.” (28:38)

8. Nimble: The Second Act (32:45–40:50)

• Social media’s rise exposed the need for social CRM—forging integrations with LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook.
• Nimble’s initial explosion was again powered by strategic investor and reseller networks (including another partnership with Mark Cuban).
• Nimble repeated GoldMine’s “reseller unlock”—this time with Microsoft as global reseller, targeting small businesses:
  • “Microsoft is our global reseller... we’re basically kind of replicating what we did with Novell resellers.” (40:35)

9. The Ultimate Unlock — The "Scalable Selflessness" Playbook

• The repeatable formula:
  • Partner-first: Find who already owns trust with your customer.
  • Solve their problems, help them be the hero.
  • Let them sell—and be rewarded for selling—your product, at scale.
• “Find out who could sell your product, already had the network... gave your product for them to sell at scale. And then you rinse and repeat.” (45:51)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the original vision for CRM:
  • “I wanted to run a wire through all the daytimers so that everybody was on one page ... Consistent, delightful customer experience, that's critical to business success.” (09:32)
• On solving others’ problems first:
  • “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.” — Kayvon (22:01)
• On the day he sold GoldMine:
  • “It was fucking amazing.” (26:46)
• On what truly matters:
  • “They're going to say on my grave, beloved husband, father, friend. Right. That's all you got. That's all you leave.” (30:41)
• On youth and paying it forward:
  • “I think that I might teach, because I like to grow people ... They're the future of our country and I think they're struggling... they could use a little bit of inspiration.” (47:14)

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Timestamps of Major Segments

• [01:39–04:16] — Origin story, parents & mentors
• [04:51–08:12] — Building pre-CRM, GoldMine’s core insight
• [11:26–14:21] — Reseller/partner unlock; Mark Cuban anecdote
• [15:03–16:33] — Content marketing and media partnerships for credibility
• [19:50–21:59] — Getting resellers to adopt and evangelize
• [24:57–27:33] — Bootstrapping to the $100M exit; the day of the sale
• [27:46–31:53] — Health scare, family, reorienting values
• [32:45–40:50] — Launching Nimble, partnerships with Microsoft, scaling the “channel first” playbook again
• [45:51–48:27] — Summing up the “one thing” strategy; inspiration for the next generation

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Final Takeaways

• The Playbook: Unlock explosive growth by becoming a multiplier—help others (resellers, editors, end-users) grow, and they'll build your business for you.
• The Mindset: Real, compounding results come from putting others’ needs above your own, obsessing over relationship, and building win-win ecosystems.
• The Legacy: Success isn’t just financial—true legacy is in lives touched, both professionally and personally.

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Want more from John Ferrara? Try Nimble for free at Nimble.com with code JOHN40 for a discount. Reach John directly at [e-mail] — he means it when he says “let me know how I can help you grow.”

Transcript

[A]

You're listening to the Vault Unlock, where the real secrets of success are revealed every episode. One founder, 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 Ferrara. 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 unicore company. And it's all because this guy is grassroots. John, welcome to the show. How are we doing today, Kayvon?

[B]

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 group of them to find ways to blow wind in their sails is a good day for me.

[A]

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, you know, we talked about this, selling your company into the, you know, the multiple hundred, you know, million dollars plus. But before we get into in there, tell us again, who is John? Where does John come from? Where did this all start?

[B]

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. 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 swore to myself I'd never be in sales. So I, I basically said, I'm not going to be like you, dad. And I followed in the footsteps of my Uncle John, who helped invent radar microwave at MIT in the 40s and helped build the aerospace industry that we know of in the San Fernando Valley and was president of ieee, which is the Electrical Engineering Association. These are my two mentors, right? So old school sales and technology. And I put myself to 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. Daytimer, spreadsheets, pieces of paper. And I said this is so stupid because I had a computer science background. I worked in a computer store. I knew every software program in the market. There were only a few hundred and there was no program that integrated email conduct and calendar and sales and market automation. Outlook did not exist. Salesforce did not exist. HubSpot. There was nothing. And so I, I quit my job and with a buddy of mine from college, Elon, we founded Goldmine. And Goldmine pioneered serum as we know it today. Which the heart of it, I think people forgot, is the R in CRM relationships. CRM stand for Customer Relationship Management. And they were adopted not by management, but by the salespeople 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 Salesforce automation, email marketing and team functionality. Because my dad taught me people who work as a team win games and, and so we started that company on $5,000 in, in the San Fernando Valley in LA and grew it to hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue over 10 years. And I sold that company and retired and spent 10 years raising three babies. And I'll tell you what, Kevin, I think I learned more about relationships in my soul in those 10 years.

[A]

Yeah, I can imagine that.

[B]

You know, 40 of entrepreneurship.

[A]

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 hundred million dollar 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?

[B]

So CRM was founded as an evolution of contact management. Contact management was, was created as an evolution of, of tools that sales reps used for managing contacts, starting with the CRM. Well, I'll argue that I. That our team at Goldmine really pioneered CRM as we know it today.

[A]

I want everyone 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 whole 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.

[B]

John, thank you. Well, I, I appreciate that. But I. I think more importantly is CRM as we know it today happened as a result of the evolution of the foundation that Gold Mine built back in the day. But when we started Gold Mine, it was a work group contact management manager with sales and marketing automation features built into it. But it wasn't built for salespeople alone, it was built for the whole company. Because it was my belief that it was not just salespeople 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 needed multiple people in my district office and at corporate to interface with those customers across sales, marketing support, management, engineering, shipping, etc. And so I. My vision of CRM is it's not just for salespeople, 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 CRMs aren't really great for conduct 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 the whole team to just being a tool for pounding leads till they buy or die. And. And it lost its heart and soul and salespeople 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 call it Salesforce, you have to force salespeople 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.

[A]

And I love that we're going to talk about that. We're not jumping there. We are 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 got in the one role you promised yourself you weren't going to get into, but that one role ended up turning into $100 million company. So I'm going to assume without even asking you, you're okay, you 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. You 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 running around with their heads cut off. Just do, just relying purely on hustle and hard work and, 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.

[B]

Yeah. How does my vision go on?

[A]

No, go on. Sorry.

[B]

My vision was to run a wire through all the daytimers so that Everybody was on PA1 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 to they're going to do. And I think that's what we've forgotten as, 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's 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 VisiCalc, which most people don't know what VisiCalc is, but it pioneered spreadsheets. This guy, Dan, Dan Bricklin made this demo program I laid out the thing in DOS, and it was actually 1989, so it wasn't the 70s or 80s. That's a long time ago. Yeah, 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 a computer lens store for a couple years. And how are you going to sell it? How do you sell people something they don't even know that they need?

[A]

This is what we want to know now we're getting here. Thank you. This is gold.

[B]

So our target was small businesses that needed to share contacts and outreach to them and connecting clothes and manage the 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 Novell, 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 Novell network. So the novel reseller. And back then there's this guy named Mark Cuban who was the local Novell reseller. And I called on Mark, and I signed him up as a reseller and slowly built this sort of reseller community. And we basically got almost every single Novell reseller in the country to use Goldmine. 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 hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue. But it wasn't overnight like that. I mean, it was.

[A]

It was 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 a 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.

[B]

So that's number one today. Today we call that influencer marketing, right?

[A]

Yeah, well, 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. 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.

[B]

A few years of blood, sweat and tears. So we started out in an apartment and two bedroom apartment and we worked out of that for the first year and then we moved into a sublease space in Canoga park and we worked out of that for a couple years and we had a po. 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, at Pacific, 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 it purpose on a daily basis, you can achieve anything. I learned that from Napoleon Hill. Think and grow rich.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And many of the guy, 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 cold calling the Nova resellers and I was getting them to, to basically use it and then start selling it. And then I do is I hire another sales rep and I give them a chunk of the country and then I hire another sales rep and give. Eventually I had like six people North, 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 they're asking me for leads. So how do you get leads if you don't know how to advertise? You don't 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 could get better, smarter, 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 us 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 Editor's Choice six or seven times in a row.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And got more awards and more print than all the other products combined because of our Relate, Pay it Forward relationships we built with the editors of these business and technology publications where we helped define what CRM was. So today, John Tashik, who's head of strategy for Salesforce, who's been head of strategy for Salesforce for probably 20 years or so, they started in 1999, the year I sold Goldmine. John Tashic 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 pch, but 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, and we want to run this on an enterprise level across multiple plant sites. And, and we want more secure email transport. And the resellers are saying, we want to make more money in every 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 NT Server, SQL Server and Exchange Server. So we want to eat Novell and Oracle and, 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 their crown jewel, which means they're going to push the crap out of me. I can help my, my end users who are getting to be, you know, 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 and every goldmine dollar. So we integrated to Microsoft Small Business Server. SQL Server became our database instead of dbase, Exchange Server became our email instead of pop, and NT Server became our file server instead of Novell. And that's what got us to that hundred million dollars a year in revenue is by biz, dev, partnership, storytelling and a lot of chutzpah.

[A]

I want to, I want to take a step back here because to me, I want. There's the whole thing here for me is I want to find couple. There's so much gold here. But some of the things that people can start thinking differently because it's not just about the whole tech and building all the tech. That's a whole different avenue in itself. But how. So in this case, I want to take a step 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 waterline to aware and then to the point where they can trust you. How did you get that to happen for the resellers?

[B]

Well, number one, our technology was pioneering. So there wasn't anything else on the market that was a networkable 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 it 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. Yeah, because you can't support it. Right. It's your reputation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But if it's 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 Novell resellers were selling plumbing to plumbers. 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 Harry selling Novell, which is not that big a bar to get over, they needed to start selling business solutions to business decision makers. And that would basically change their life because their relationship would be more sticky with 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 Goldmine 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, we, we basically built the foundation of, of not just the technology and the user demand, but also the channel and the strategy.

[A]

Yeah. So there's a common theme.

[B]

Dharma Shah is an investor in Nimble and he's a founder of HubSpot. Yeah, yeah. And. And he in many times acknowledged and credited what we did at Goldmine, as have my conversations with Mark Benioff from Salesforce. So they, they kind of all acknowledge that we built the foundation and they're kind of happy we left.

[A]

Yeah, I, 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 were going to the resellers, this is very important for people to understand whether it's marketing, sales, relationships, the way you think. You are not going there and thinking about, how can I get my product into their hands? You were going, what do these need? People need? What do they need? What don't they have? How can I solve their problems? And in the interim of solving those problems, how can I get my product to help them solve those problems and, 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, the, the magazines and the, in the publications and asked what was their problem? They probably don't have enough 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?

[B]

Yeah, right. No, no, no. I was actually visualizing the view from my office.

[A]

Well, let me ask you this. This is so important. When you Visualize that view right now. What did you. What came up for you? How did that make you feel?

[B]

It felt amazing and fortunate and also stressful. Yeah, I can. Amazing because I'm looking at dolphins surfing in the. In the waves of the Santa Monica Bay. Fortunate because I was at 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.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, you know, maybe get in the first million or two or three per year, you know, 30. That's great. You know, 100. Oh, my God. You know, and by that time, you know, the, the market was so frothy, just like. Yeah, you created the market. You helped create the market.

[A]

You helped create the market. Let's call it a state.

[B]

We never took a dime. Adventure. No bank loans. We just did it all ourselves.

[A]

Five thousand to a hundred million.

[B]

And, 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. I sold it.

[A]

Who. Can you tell who you sold it to?

[B]

So we were in conversations with a number of people, including Microsoft, and I wanted cash.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And so there was a Microsoft distributor out of Zimbabwe.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Because Microsoft couldn't distribute in South Africa at the time. And so he was the Microsoft distributor for South Africa. And. And he had cash and he knew the business and he knew the opportunity. And so we sold it to him.

[A]

Okay. And we sold it for a hundred million dollars plus people a little more.

[B]

Than that, but yeah, right around there.

[A]

Okay, I have to ask the question, unfiltered. What did it feel like the day you sold that company for 100 million and more plus dollars and when that hit your bank account?

[B]

It was fucking amazing.

[A]

Sorry, what was that?

[B]

It was fucking amazing.

[A]

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? Like, I want to know what that feels like.

[B]

Well, it's. It's sort of unbelievable. You sort of pinch yourself, like, is the money really hit the bank? Do we have the money in the bank? Is it 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 closed. April 19, 1999.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And. And I still have the front page of the. You have the LA Times, you know, articles there that date and child's born.

[A]

You sell the business for a hundred million dollars.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And at that point most people say you're set, you live the perfect life, you live the dream life. But what happened?

[B]

Well, about a year after selling, I got a head tumor and I was facing pretty dire straits and, and I went to a number of different medical experts to get opinions on how to deal 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 a. You melt a leaf or burn a leaf with magnifying glass so they could 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, and that technology is the key technology today that people use it. Back then it was sort of bleeding edge, but I'm a bleeding edge kind of guy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I also did some spiritual work, Kayvon, and, and I, 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, and the most, the best way to grow your soul is by being present with the people you love, like your children, because they will reveal your to you. And if you're willing to look at your in life and work on it, that's real. That's, that's real opportunity of growth there.

[A]

Let's just stop that right now because this is so important. You just said something so powerful. As a father of, of a one and a half year old and almost a five year old now. You just said the kids will reveal your own to you, AKA 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 hundred million dollars 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 you. 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.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you realize life is more about the business and the spreadsheets and making sure that bar keeps going to the right. And you go through a spiritual journey. What happens in that journey?

[B]

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.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

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, so I decided to dedicate the. The. The. My time to being 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, sports. I was his assistant scout master for my boys who are both Eagle Scouts. I did the YMCA Princess program with my daughter. I mean, all those things that most dads never get to do because they're on the hamster wheel of life, and they're just. They don't. They don't. They don't get those moments. Right. And. And so I'm forever grateful for that.

[A]

I. I'm so happy. I'm so grateful that you got to. Not many. You just said not many people get to enjoy that life and get there. And, 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 living that life. How long you. I think we talked maybe 10 years. You go 10, 15 years of this life.

[B]

10 years. Yeah, I sold it in 99 and. And I started Nimble, you know, close to 2011.

[A]

So 2011 comes around, you're looking around. We're just going to jump ahead here. Kids are off to university, and you're.

[B]

Well, they're not in university yet. Right. They're in. They're in grammar School, middle school and high school, okay, but they're out of the house.

[A]

I have 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? We talked about it becoming potentially another unicorn company. I mean, my God, not many people can even build a unicorn company. You're on your second unicorn company.

[B]

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 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 back up, 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 under my own contact manager, but 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 had integrated it. And contact management is 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. 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 separate 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 it 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 biz, dev and product and stuff. And, and I got them to give me their public and private APIs which they had never and never did give to anybody else but me. Then basically I built a team and we basically pioneered social serum and social selling by not only integrating email, contact and calendar from the only cloud based solution for that, which was Google at the time, but also integrated into Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, AngelList, Crunchbase, et cetera. 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 and company data so you don't have to Google. You mean Nimble them. But I built a plugin to your browser, so Nimble lived inside your inbox, inside of Google. So if I open up an email, I can see who the person is. If they exist and they don't exist, I could build it. If I go into LinkedIn, I have a thing that plugs in. I could basically build records there, but I didn't have to because if I had a friend who did a message that contact automatically went into Nimble because we were sales navigator before it existed. And, and then I got some friends to invest. Mark Cuban, one of the founders of Goldman Sachs, Dharmashar from HubSpot, Google Ventures. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of great people. People. But before I did that I, I, I invested my own money.

[A]

Millions, absolutely.

[B]

And then I brought in investors and we just sort of blew up like we basically like we were it and, and we're riding that wave of social serum and social selling.

[A]

And how many users do you have right now? Nimble?

[B]

We've had over 100,000 people sign up for the platform and, 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, they took our API away for LinkedIn and then eventually all the social APIs kind of started to disappear because Facebook wants you to go to Facebook so they could sell your eyeballs and your data. And we had to begin to sort of pivot away from social and because when technology's new, like when the Internet first became always on, it was etoys and eye contact and now it's just toys in 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 Microsoft365 because Microsoft doesn't innovate, they iterate. They wait for someone else to build the market, then they come in when it's big enough and they use their muscle, billions of users and hundreds of thousands of hours to dominate and they build something good enough. And they do that. So I knew when Microsoft decided to build Microsoft 365 that they 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 the common Microsoft user, which is a small business. It's, it's a much more enterprise complex experience, 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 Novell resellers were in before. In that they're selling plumbing to plumbers, they're selling IT infrastructure to 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 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 isn't really a good team contact manager, let alone sales and market automation. And so they could easily sell with every single Microsoft seat a gold mine, 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 contact calendar. We live inside Outlook, but we still live inside LinkedIn and do prospecting, all that. And so we're basically kind of replicating what we did with Novell resellers with the Microsoft.

[A]

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 giving 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, 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 am so grateful and I loved 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?

[B]

You know, I, 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.

[A]

That was, I saw, that was very emotional. When you thought about our youth, that hit something.

[B]

Well, I think it's pretty scary to be a young person today.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I don't want to get into all. That's another episode but, 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.

[A]

I agree. I agree. John. Nimble. Where can people get, where can people sign up for Nimble and learn more about you?

[B]

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 JOHN40. 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 jonimble.com let me know how I can help you grow.

[A]

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.

[B]

Kevon, 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.

[A]

Thank you so much.

[B]

Thank you. 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 businesses out there, it doesn't suit them. So today Microsoft resellers are in the same boat that the Novell resellers were in before in that they're selling plumbing to plumbers, they're selling IT infrastructure to 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, PowerApps, 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 isn't really a good team contact manager, let alone sales and market automation. And so they could easily sell with every single Microsoft seat a gold, 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 contact calendar. We live inside Outlook, but we can, they can still live inside LinkedIn and do prospecting, all that. And so we're basically kind of replicating what we did with novel resellers with the Microsoft.

[A]

I was just gonna 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 giving 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, 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 am so grateful and I loved 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?

[B]

You know, I, 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.

[A]

That was, I saw. That was very emotional. When you thought about our youth, that hit something.

[B]

Well, I think it's pretty scary to be a young person today.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I don't want to get into all the.

[A]

All that's another episode.

[B]

But, 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.

[A]

I agree. I agree. John Nimble. Where can people get. Where can people sign up for Nimble and learn more about you?

[B]

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 JOHN40. 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 jonimble.com let me know how I can help you grow.

[A]

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.

[B]

Kevon, 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.

[A]

Thank you so much.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

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.