How To Turn Any Challenge Into An Opportunity, With Jack Born

Wes Schaeffer: [00:00:01] Jack Born. The nearly Aussie, all the way from Australia via Florida
or Florida via Australia. Welcome to The Sales Podcast, man. How the heck are you?

Jack Born: [00:00:12] Yeah, I'm doing great. Great to be here.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:00:15] So you made the move, living in Australia.

Jack Born: [00:00:17] Yep.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:00:18] So you go out and you make this company, DeadlineFunnel.com.
You build this Internet business and then you just go move halfway around the world just because you could. I mean, why -- are you trying to rub our faces in it? Why?

Jack Born: [00:00:34] Yeah, it's been -- it's been quite an adventure. So I've got a -- I've got a remote team. I've got some people on the West Coast of the U.S.; I've got some people in Florida. A lot of my coders are in Ukraine, Serbia, various places like that. And so it's been really, really
interesting to go from from the U.S. time zone -- Eastern Time Zone to Australian time zone because there's such a small overlap. And so for example, I don't know if you typically do your podcast calls in the afternoon. I appreciate you doing that. So it's morning here. So it just makes
it a little bit more challenging. But one of the challenges -- one of the beauties of challenges in business is that if you have the right attitude, I tend to flip these things around and try to think
about, okay, how can I turn this into a benefit?

[00:01:22] So just kind of rolling back the clock just a few years, in 2015, that's when we first took our initial trip to Australia for six weeks. That was just a vacation. And at the time I was trying to -- I had a growing team, nowhere near as big as it is now, but I was still holding on to a bunch of tasks and responsibilities that I just felt like even though I've got this team, like, it's just
hard to let go of these things. Just sometimes I'm a perfectionist, and I'm sure some people listening can relate. So what I found is that when I set that deadline of, okay, this is in 2015, I'm going on a six-week trip; I didn't want to be getting up at 3:00 in the morning to be able to handle
these roles and responsibilities.

[00:02:11] So there was a guy on my team named Anthony who's still there to this day. And I said, Anthony, if you want to grow into this bigger role, here's what I need. So let's work together. Let's come up with this sort of a road map for how we get to a place where I'm not getting up at 3:00 a.m. and you're taking on more responsibility and you're getting paid more.
Let's work together on this. And that, honestly, like that looming deadline of going on that six-week trip and wanting to be as hands-off as possible was one of the best things that I ever did for
my business.

[00:02:42] So I really for me, that's always been a lesson of when something because there's always something coming up, something unexpected. And so can you can you mentally just sort of in a stoic way, look at it and say, okay, it wasn't what I expected, maybe not what I initially wanted, but how can I turn this around and turn this into a benefit?

[00:03:04] So, yeah, the moving to Australia has had a lot of benefits, but one of them is not overlap and the ability to do meetings at any time of the day. And so that just makes me a whole lot more efficient with my time, and to grow my team even even greater to take on even more
responsibility. So, yeah, it's been a really positive change. Not always easy, but it's been positive.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:03:29] So you went from -- you made a big pivot, right, from financial adviser like I was in the late '90s to marketing. What drove that?

Jack Born: [00:03:41] Yeah. So I don't know if this was your experience of starting in the financial services world, but at Merrill Lynch where I was in the late '90s, you go through about a two and a half, three-year training program where if you hit certain numbers, you're getting
bonused and then you get out of the training program and now you're flying on your own. But my experience was there was a tremendous cliff, a big drop-off in income that basically, you could hit all of their numbers and come out at the top like I did, but then your revenue, your income gets basically cut in half unless you've got someone's book of business that you're going to sort of work your way into. And so I didn't have that. Some of the people in my class did.

[00:04:25] So I hung on for about another two years and did my best to grow the book of business, but the writing was kind of on the wall. And at the same time, I was consuming a lot of marketing material from folks like Dan Kennedy, Perry Marshall. And one thing that you know is that the financial services industry, especially the the big name ones like like Merrill Lynch,
Morgan Stanley, etc., they don't look too kindly on creative marketing techniques. You got to really color within the lines. And basically what you end up having is a bunch of very boring marketing materials to use.

[00:04:59] So it's really not being in business for yourself; you're much more of an employee of a company. So I'm reading about all these ideas, the Internet is there, and I can't use all this information that I'm learning about. And so I had an opportunity to go work for a Merrill Lynch
client in the health care space. So I left Merrill Lynch; did that. I thought it was going to be everything that I wanted; turned out to be -- I turned in a confining corporate job for an even worse confining corporate job. And after a year of that, me and my boss both realized I'm not cut
to be an employee. So I went out on my own, started -- well, I'll try to fast track the story.

[00:05:43] But basically I didn't build DeadlineFunnel right away. I built another -- basically
another SAAS -- they didn't call it SAAS at the time -- built another SAAS. I did what ended up being a launch. I didn't know it was a launch. This is before Jeff Walker had codified how you do a launch. But I ended up just kind of backing my way into doing it. And yeah, so that worked out really well. Some things went my way, did some things smart; got a little bit lucky. So a combination of those two things really kickstarted my Internet career.

[00:06:19] So from there I ended up working like a few years later I had an opportunity to go work for Perry Marshall, who's a thought leader, book author. To work with him for about six years was a great experience, but then an old entrepreneurial itch kicked in again and I built a
software as a service company called AWProTools, which that took AWeber, which was really one of the first email autoresponder systems to come on the market, maybe the first, but it really fell behind in terms of functionality. And so my software really brought it up to speed with, say, Infusionsoft, or at least brought it closer.

[00:06:59] And so someone who used AWeber who didn't want to leave AWeber but they wanted more automation and more things like that, they could plug my system into AWeber and have a lot more automation. I sold that off to an investor a few years later because I wanted to do
something where I wasn't restricted to just one small group of people who are using one specific platform, and I built Deadline Funnel. I've left out a few chapters along the way, but that's
basically it.

[00:07:27] I built Deadline Funnel -- I'll keep this one short to you, but I built Deadline Funnel because as a student of persuasion and sales, I knew that one of the most reliable ways to get
someone to take action on a special deal or special promotion was the use of a deadline, urgency, scarcity -- different names for similar things. But at the time, there was no real way to do this in
an automated email sequence so that it was automated and you were telling the truth. And I thought, huh, what if there is a way that you could sync up? At the time Perry Marshall was using Infusionsoft, and I know that you also use Infusionsoft -- now, Keap.

[00:08:06] And so I was thinking, okay, well, Perry's a big fan of automated email sequences; I've really bought into this concept. What if there is a way to bring someone through your automated sequence, make them a special deal after you've developed know, like and trust, and
then have a deadline, but it actually was, in fact, real? And so I went out figuring -- I went looking for it because I figured surely someone's created this. No one had. And so I built it. That was Deadline Funnel. So I wanted to be able to give myself -- and what turned into, the world -- the ability to have a deadline to increase sales and do it in an automated fashion without having
to make the choice of, okay, am I going to choose this, but the trade off is I have to be dishonest
with my audience. So now you don't have to make that trade off. So that's Deadline Funnel in a
nutshell.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:09:00] All right. A lot to unpack there. Now I'm going to make an educated
guess, knowing Perry Marshall and that world and Dan Kennedy -- I mean, your eyes are
probably open. You saw a lot under the hood, behind the curtain sort of world around email,
marketing, marketing automation and all, so we sort of get the inspiration to dip your toe in those
waters, making these tools. Because people would be, like, how do you go from being a
stockbroker to making marketing automation software as a service plug-ins, you know?

Jack Born: [00:09:38] Yeah, I mean, so I compressed about -- so I left my last corporate job in
2001. So what is that, 20 -- compressed 20 years into hopefully a pretty short timeframe.

[00:09:50] So there were many years where I you know, even before I started working with
Perry Marshall, where I bought into the concept that at the time, believe it or not, this is going to
blow some people's minds -- but at the time, you could buy traffic for five cents or less. And so
there was a school of thought that, well, why would I want to send people -- waste the time
building an email list and going through all the trouble of having emails? Follow them down;
let's just go directly for the sale.

[00:10:21] Because the economics were such and the rules with Google were such that you could
send traffic directly to an affiliate page and make sales that way and play the arbitrage of what it
cost for you to get people to the page versus what you got paid an affiliate commission. Well,
Perry was one of the first people to come up with the idea and to really popularize that, look, if
you hold off going for the sale and you bring them onto a list where you don't just pound them to
buy, but you develop a bond and you develop know, like, and trust, you use some storytelling --
you know, some people are just not going to resonate with your message; that's marketing. But a
higher percentage of people are -- end up going to buy that and they're going to end up buying
other stuff. And so this is something that wasn't an immediate thing that I just went from
working for Merrill Lynch to, hey, let's build plug-in software that taps into email marketing
systems.

[00:11:17] It was a gradual thing. But by the time I built Deadline Funnel, yeah, the idea of lead
generation was starting to catch on at the time. There wasn't just Infusionsoft and AWeber;
Ontraport was coming on the scene. I don't know if ActiveCampaign was around, but this was
just before things like ConvertKit came on board. So email marketing, I think people -- and also
traffic costs are rising to be able to make their business model work, a lot of people who were
doing business online, regardless of what you sold, we're realizing, hey, it's going to work a lot
better for me if I develop a tribe of people who go from I just heard about you over here to wow,
I really love your stuff; I really get you or you get me.

[00:12:06] And so, I mean, that's the concept behind email marketing done well. And so really
adding on top of that is using Deadline Funnel. So I don't know if I answered your question, but
it was a more gradual process, but it didn't take a whole lot of time for me to become
indoctrinated to the idea that lead generation was going to work a lot better because it had
worked on me. I was a subscriber to Marshall's emails, and some of them -- not every email is a
blockbuster, but I remember some of them I would print out and keep because I thought, man,
this is some of the best stuff I've ever read on marketing, persuasion, sales. So when someone is
printing out your email and filing it away for future reference, that's a good sign that you've done
things well.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:12:56] Mm-hmm. How did you know you were ready to go on your own?
Did you build up a certain revenue or you guys meet --?

Jack Born: [00:13:07] Are you talking about when I when I quit my last corporate job?

Wes Schaeffer: [00:13:10] Right.

Jack Born: [00:13:11] Yeah, I almost -- I mean, I came -- I was a little bit more hotheaded back
then. I didn't have kids either. And now I've got two beautiful daughters. So there was less risk.
But after about a year of frustration -- it turned out to be a blessing that I hated my bosses so
much that it wasn't a matter of, well, just kind of put up with this. We came to the point where, I
mean, I wanted to do them physical harm. I didn't. But we both realized this is not -- this is not
for you. And I had a great friend, a guy that I've known almost all my life named Scott, who
believed in me and said, hey, man, I need a -- I need a website for my business; I'll pay you a
thousand bucks to build me this website.

[00:13:55] So that was really the first start. And then for about a year, I took on some really odd
jobs; pretty strange jobs, actually. So you were in the military so that one of the -- one of the jobs
that I had was a guy who worked for Court Furniture in Florida. So I was in Jacksonville, Florida.
They had the JFK aircraft carrier and they were revamping the whole inside of that. And so for
about three months, my job was bring an office -- with a crew of people, bringing office furniture
and basically helping supply office furniture, moving out office furniture on this on this aircraft
carrier. I don't know how many tens of millions of dollars is spent revamping this aircraft carrier,
but shortly after they did it, they decommissioned the JFK. So go figure.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:14:46] Heh. The gubmint.

Jack Born: [00:14:48] That's right.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:14:49] Yep, yep, yep, yep. Don't get me distracted, man. Don't get me off
topic here. So you go from that one tool and you made the shift -- and that's why I branched into
others as well. I had too many -- too many eggs in that one basket of Infusionsoft. You know, I
got certified with Ontraport and HubSpot, Nimble; I'm a reseller of ActiveCampaign and I try to
help people find the right tool from the top five, six, seven platforms out there. Do you sell yours
so you can branch out? But you were just going through your LinkedIn timeline. You had
already laid the foundation for Deadline Funnel right before you sold AWProTools?

Jack Born: [00:15:44] So I would say no. So Deadline Funnel started, I would say in the middle
of me creating AWProTools. So AWProTools was something that I started when I was working
with Perry. My deal with Perry Marshall was like, you need to know that you're hiring an
entrepreneur. Originally I was planning on working with Perry for six months; turned into six
years just because I really enjoy the guy and it was an amazing opportunity to network and meet
other people. Can't say enough good things about my time with him.

[00:16:20] But like I said, that entrepreneurial bug really kicked in. I mean, if it's in your genes,
it's in your genes. And so I started building AWProTools on the side and then about two years
into that, I started creating Deadline Funnel. Might be off by a year or two, but that's basically
the chronology of how that happened.

[00:16:43] So picture this. I'm helping AWeber clients make their email marketing more
automated, to be more like Infusionsoft or Ontraport or ActiveCampaign. So by this time it's
clear -- it's very, very clear to me, not just the power of follow-up emails, but the power of
behavior-based segmentation, follow-ups based on tags and what people click, etc. And so the
idea of of what if we could build in a deadline was really, really appealing to me. But I wanted to
do it in a way -- because, look, I didn't invent the countdown, but at the time you could go get a
countdown just like you can today and slap it on your website and you could say the deal ends
tonight, but if someone comes back the next day, they're going to see that didn't end. And so I
didn't want that. I wanted to be completely honest and straightforward. So I wanted to be able to
assign each unique person as they went through that sequence.

[00:17:48] Like someone gets a tag and someone takes your quiz. You've got a quiz on -- see
what CRM is best for you. So as they go through that, you might have a training course -- I'm
just making this up -- ut at the end, like, you might develop no like and trust, give them some
great information and say, look, it looks like Ontraport, for example, is the best CRM for you. I
happen to have built 20-hour training that will take you from novice to expert on Ontraport and
save you thousands of dollars. And if you sign up through my link before 48 hours, I'll give it to
you. Normally, I sell it for $200 on my website, but you can have it now for free if you sign up
for Ontraport's free trial in the next 48 hours.

[00:18:36] And so what my system gives you the ability to do is to make that deadline real, that
if someone waits, they in fact cannot get that deal anymore. So that's really how it works. And
it's all -- it really ties in beautifully with behavior-based segmentation or lead generation, like
you're doing with your CRM quiz.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:18:59] Very cool. So what does the process look like for somebody wanting
to start their own software as a service? You hire a guy on Fiverr? Do you whiteboard it and call
your best friend? Like, where do you even start?

Jack Born: [00:19:19] Yeah, that's a really good question. So I've had a string of successes. And
one of the one of the things that I would say is part of it honestly is luck. But I think a big
component of it is that I built these tools for a need that I had. Sometimes that can lead you
astray but I think it's -- I think it's safer than a lot of methods out there. So a lot of entrepreneurs
build something that solves a problem that they at first have. It's not a guaranteed path to success,
and there's no guarantee that just because you're suffering from a certain problem that thousands
of other people are as well. But it's a good signal.

[00:20:03] I would say if this is not -- if you have an idea that might involve software, that is not
necessarily something that is a pain point that you have or even if it is, I would say before you do
anything, even before you do mockups or certainly before you go hire someone, what you should
do is what's called customer development. And so basically customer development would be if I
went to you, Wes, and I asked you questions about a certain problem that you have. So it was
about CRM, I might -- one of the most effective things that you can do when you're interviewing
someone is you don't want to ask them about -- like, you don't want to present your idea; like,
hey, Wes, here's the thing I'm thinking about building. What do you think?

[00:20:46] Because if you and I have any sort of relationship whatsoever, you're probably going
to want to be optimistic and supportive of me. You don't want to be the Debbie Downer that goes,
that idea is horrible. But what I want is I want accurate feedback because I don't want to waste
my time over the next year or so building this out, only to find out, yeah, I don't know why Wes
told me that he wants this because no one's buying this.

[00:21:13] So if you want accurate feedback, the most important thing is that you want to go
around and ask people what they actually have done. So I would ask you, so if I was thinking
about building a new CRM, I would ask you about, hey, what what CRM are you currently using?
How much do you currently spend on it? What are the biggest frustrations that you currently
have? How are you trying to solve this? Frustrations like, for example, are you hiring VAs to
come in and solve that big problem? Are you buying other softwares? Are you basically duct
taping a solution together with Zapier and all these other things?

[00:21:45] And so I would just get really curious about the things that you're currently doing, and
that process in the software space is called customer development and there's books written on it.
And so I would make sure that I did at least ten, but ideally 20 customer development calls so
that you can get some idea of is this actually a pain point that other people have? And one of the
key things I mentioned this before, but you really want to hold off and prevent yourself from
pitching your idea like, hey, great, sounds like you might be interested in this thing that I'm
building. Like, this is not the time to present that.

[00:22:21] So you really want to make this about their pain, what they're doing, what they're
spending money on, actions that they're taking and not ask them anything that has to do with
what they might do in the future. Would you buy this? Would you be interested in this? Because
they're not going to give you accurate information, even if they try to; whereas people are much
better at giving you accurate information about what they've already done and what they're
currently doing, the pain points that they have, those sorts of things. And so that's where you're
just solely investigating, is there a problem? What are the nuances of the problem? How do they
describe the problem? And so you really want to get super-clear on that before you do anything.
And then from there, before you go hire someone, what I would do is I would use something as
simple as Keynote or PowerPoint and mock up a few of the key screens because you don't need
to be a fancy designer. Basically, if you can cut and paste, you can create mock ups of what it
looks like.

[00:23:16] It doesn't even have to be pretty. But basically you want to you can create slide decks
that are even clickable and you could do a zoom meeting where so you share the link and
someone is clicking on stuff and you can hear them thinking out loud. So there are books and
books and books written on this topic. So what I would say is if someone is interested in building
a software platform, it's very challenging. It can be extremely rewarding. But there are there's
danger ahead. So make sure that you take the time to understand customer development.

[00:23:50] And then I would also recommend becoming very familiar with a concept called Lean
Startup, which is basically building a minimum viable product. So I would I would spend the
next month consuming as much information as you could on customer development, lean startup
and those sorts of concepts before you just run off and hire someone to start building something,
because it's very, very easy to spend a lot of money on software and then have the project just
stretch on and on and on and on and then you either lose passion, you lose money, someone beats
you to the punch. And so this is one of those cases of I think the Navy SEALs talk about this
slow is smooth and smooth is fast. So you really you really want to slow down because slowing
down and doing things in the right sequence the right way actually in the long run ends up being
faster.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:24:47] So who are you doing these calls with? I mean, is it literally cold
calling ideal prospects or people you think?

Jack Born: [00:24:56] Yeah. It really depends on what you're starting with. So, for example, if it
were me having built up a business in the space, like if I'm selling something for the same
audience, I would just reach out to people who are existing clients. I might start with a survey.
And one of the questions in the survey would be, hey, would you be willing to get on the ten
minute call with me to talk about this further? And if they answer yes, then take them to a
Calend.ly form or something like that, some sort of scheduler where they can schedule a call.
And then I would get on a call with them. If you don't have a list, you're just starting completely
cold, yeah, reach out to -- try to figure out who who in that audience where is your audience?

[00:25:40] I mean, that's one of the very first things you need to figure out is, okay, who am I
selling this to? I mean, fundamentally, the software that you end up building -- or whatever it is
that you're building, whether it's a coaching program, an online course or anything -- people are
buying it for that end result. That's just the delivery mechanism for that transformation in their
life or their business or their their family. So think about who am I selling it to and what pain
point do you have that my software is going to solve? So where do these people congregate?
Well, okay, if there's a community -- and usually the answer, there's a couple of different
answers, but you should think through this process. All right, well, if there's a community of
them on Facebook, can I join that community? And after getting in there and sort of seeing what
questions people ask, maybe you could you know, if you're allowed to post a question of, hey,
I've got an idea that I want to run by ten people, could you I'd love to talk with you about the
pain points that you have around XYZ? And here's a link to sign up.

[00:26:43] Now, obviously got to operate within the rules of whoever set up this group. But that
might be one way you could literally advertise on LinkedIn or Facebook and drive prospects to a
-- create ads even though you don't have a product yet. Create ads that would bring someone to a
page where maybe there's a very short video that just gets them to fill out the form that would
give you the added benefit of also having an idea, at least a sense of what is it going to cost for
me to advertise on Facebook or Google to be able to attract this audience. It may not be exact
when you were down the road when you're actually running your advertising, but at least you
have a sense.

[00:27:27] Like so if you're expecting it's going to cost $0.50 To get someone to your page and
you find out, wow, it costs $15, that might be really important information that might impact the
pricing that you go out with on on your software. Because if you price it too low at $15 a click,
you're not going to last very long. So does that give you some some insights into how you might
do it?

Wes Schaeffer: [00:27:54] Yeah. You know, the simplest answer is usually the best answer.
Pick up the phone; yeah, if you have customers, great. Survey them but -- pick up the phone. But
then my question is always then how do you price it and how do you -- how do you know. So I
run ads; add to the expense, okay. But I mean, what how do you know what the market will
really bear? Because I usually see people they underprice when they start.

Jack Born: [00:28:29] Yeah. I mean, one of the things that you can do is you can sort of get a
sense of what other things are being sold out in that market. So, for example, in some markets,
like in the fitness market, if you were to sell information in the fitness market that was anything
above $100, it's going to be -- it's going to be a bit of a challenge. That's just kind of the range
that people are willing to pay for in the fitness and health space. There's obviously exceptions.
But in general, things are less than $200, whereas in other markets, $200 might be low. And so
you want to get a sense for this comes down to market research.

[00:29:07] So you want to get a sense of what are people accustomed to spending for other tools,
other services and get an idea based on that. That's a good starting point. But I would totally
agree with you that whether it's a coaching program or group coaching one on one, coaching a
training course or software, people tend to make the mistake of underpricing. There's a lot of
marketing mistakes and sales mistakes that you can overcome with higher pricing. So, for
example, in the example that we're talking about before with Facebook costs. If you're -- you can
get away with some Facebook advertising mistakes if you're selling a $10,000 group pitching
program versus a $10 e-book. With a $10 e-book, you've got to get everything perfectly dialed in
and it still may not be possible to make a profit on that; whereas with a $10,000 coaching
program, there's no guarantees just based on the pricing but you have a lot more leeway to play
with. So you can be a very average Facebook marketer and still get away with at least failing
forward into a business that that works.

[00:30:26] I just lost your audio.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:30:29] Put it on mute. My daughter ran a blender. That's the wonderful joys
of working from home with seven kids. My son's home business, I have all seven right now.

[00:30:41] So you opened up talking about the the deadline to go to Australia for six weeks and
start giving things away. Walk me through that, because I know most people hang on -- they're
hanging on to too many things. I'm hanging on to too many things. I'm constantly trying to figure
out. You know, I've got three different teams and I'm giving stuff away. It's rare that they'll come
to me and say, hey, here's a better way; let me take this off your plate. So that's how I know -- it's
I know I have good people, not great people, because they'll execute what I give them. So I'm
still kissing some frogs. Looking for that one that's looking over the horizon for me, but at least
they are good at what I give them.

[00:30:41] But how do you take that full leap, right? Because you leaving for six weeks, I got to
imagine you were trying to give away 90 percent of what you do, right? So you could have a life.

Jack Born: [00:31:44] Yeah, at least in terms of the day-to-day stuff. Things like being the voice
of the company, the PR; things like our conversation here, that was still very much in my court.
But for six weeks I could hand things over.

[00:31:59] So let me ask a quick question. Is most of your team members U.S. or overseas?

Wes Schaeffer: [00:32:09] Most are overseas, yes. A couple are U.S.

Jack Born: [00:32:13] Yeah. So my -- and all I can do is share with you my experience. So I've
got team members who, like some of my best coders, are not from the U.S., Canada, Australia,
etc. They're from Serbia, they're from Russia, Ukraine, etc. And that's a good -- I've found
personally that's a good part of the world, if you're going to do software, to get coders from. It's
not the only one, but I've tried India, I've tried the Philippines, I've tried different areas. For me
personally, the best area is the area that I was talking about.

[00:32:49] So in terms of to get back to your question, which is how do you go from basically
having people who are just waiting for you to delegate those tasks. I'm saying it slightly
differently, but I think a lot of people have that problem. They read "The 4-Hour Work Week,"
or they consume some information about, hey, if you want to scale your business, you've got to
get virtual assistants. Well, there's a level of building people around you where you're still
delegating tasks. You're still the gatekeeper handing out these tasks, and so you're never out of
the loop. And so you want to be one step more removed from that. So you kind of have to hire to
two levels, which means that you do have people where there is a task assigned to them and they
perform the task, it's reviewed and etc. And so that's one level.

[00:33:33] But then you need to have that other level where you've brought someone in who you
are going to pay more, sometimes substantially more. But what you get when you make that
proper hire is that you get someone who can see your vision and understand where you're going,
and now you're communicating the vision to them and they're giving you feedback. They're
almost having almost equal seat at the table, and they're the ones who are actually managing the
people who are just receiving the tasks. And so that was really important.

[00:34:06] So in my case, when I was speaking with Anthony, I saw that he had the potential to
grow into that role. I was really impressed with him and he was on an hourly basis and he had
other clients at the time. And he told me, look, I really want to I want to get paid more money. I
really see the potential what you're building. And that's what I want. And at the at the same time,
I had a need, which is, okay, well, in six months, I don't want to be up at 3:00 a.m. and I've been
holding on to too many things, still delegating to him and everyone else on the team me being
the one handing out these tasks and assignments that then have to come back to me. Like, the
feedback loop still involves me. So we set up a plan where he was going to be managing the
other people on the team.

[00:34:57] And it was a gradual process. And, yeah, it's been fantastic. So now we have multiple
people on the team that -- so, for example, in our on our engineering side, the software
developers, I've got a really talented guy named Alex and he is the one that manages the software
team. He reports to Anthony. And then we've got a client success team and we've got someone
that they report to and they report to Anthony. And then everyone, we have our weekly meetings.
And so, yeah, once -- it takes a long time to get to that point.

[00:35:35] But when you build it right the first time and you're willing to invest the money and
the right people, it completely changes the dynamics of your company and what you're able to do
and the quality of your life. So it gave me the -- if I had not built a team of eight players. If I had
gone out and said, okay, I want a software company, but I don't want to pay top rate, I want to go
to some of the least expensive places to be able to have code written, then I would still be stuck. I
wouldn't be able to to do the things that I'm doing. And so it's really by hiring the best people
that you have access to and understanding, it's going to cost quite a bit more money. But what
you get in return is just it's almost priceless.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:36:26] So did this guy have a sales role? Was it all operations?

Jack Born: [00:36:31] No. There's no -- there's no sales. So all of our sales, we don't have a
sales person, per se. I mean, we've got -- a lot of a lot of what I do is outbound, I should say, but
like PR getting out podcasts, doing webinars with influencers in our space, creating videos that
get advertised on YouTube and Facebook; writing the email sequences. So everything that has to
do with messaging is really generated by me. Even when we hire outside copywriters, I'm still
the one kind of setting the tone for, okay, here's what we're going for it. They write the copy, it
comes back, I review it. Now, other people on the team have their say. But the messaging side of
things is something that currently I own. Even if I'm not writing every single word of the copy,
it's on me. And so a lot of the sales and marketing and messaging comes down to stuff that I put
out there.

[00:37:29] There's no process where someone is saying, okay, I'm not sure about this Deadline
Funnel thing; can you let me get on the phone with someone and sell me on the benefits of doing
Deadline Funnel? People sign up for a free trial. And they probably heard about me on a podcast
from a thought influencer, from an influencer or business leader, thought leader or I was on a
webinar or they've probably heard it. You know, it's probably after several years of doing this,
they probably actually heard about us in a bunch of different locations.

[00:38:02] And one of the things that's been really, really instrumental for us is this flywheel
concept; are you familiar with that from -- I think his name was Collins. But this was something
that Jeff Bezos said, I think back in the early 2000s that was really instrumental in helping
Amazon grow, was understanding your flywheel concept. So for us, part of that flywheel is --
and by the way, anyone who's interested in this, there's a very, very short book on it that you can
get on Amazon. I think it's Turning the Flywheel or something like that. But anyways, it's by the
same guy who wrote Good to Great. So it's a very short book. You can go through it very, very
quickly, but then you got to sit down and actually create your own flywheel because it's
something that once you understand the concept, okay, now you have to go somewhere quiet and
think about, okay, what is my flywheel? What do I think that it is?

[00:38:53] So for us, a big component of our flywheel is the culture. And it may sound a little bit
woo-woo or soft and squishy, but the culture that I built on the team is such that I make sure that
everyone on my team understands no one woke up this morning hoping and praying that's yet
another software company has a monthly or annual subscription thing that they can sign up for.
No one wants that. But we have thousands and thousands of clients who love what we do. So
why is that? Well, it's because we help people bridge the gap from the business they have with
business they want to do -- business they want to have.

[00:39:30] Our job, therefore, is not to just teach them, here's how to use our platform. Our job is
to do everything that we can to help them cross that chasm. So that means that might show up in
ways like someone has a question that has to do with a weird nuance of SAMCard or Ontraport
or Kajabi, because all three of those that have named I could list out some funky things that if
you're not aware of them, they might trip you up. Your typical software company, as soon as you
mentioned some other platform that you're trying to integrate with, the instantly the response is,
look, you're going to have to contact their support team because we're just here to talk about our
software.

[00:40:08] Our attitude is, look, let's let's help you get across that chasm. If that means we need
to go sign up as a free trial on someone else's platform to figure it out, we'll go do that. And so
part of that flywheel is by creating happy clients, they spread the word, which brings in extra
revenue, which gives me the ability to hire A players; A players treat my clients even better and
build an even better platform, and the flywheel spins and spins and spins. And that's been a key
element of our growth.

[00:40:38] So I'm not sure; I'm trying to figure out where -- follow the thread back to the original
question. But I think it had -- I think it had to do with like how did I go from -- like, how do I go
from having people that I delegated to to having a system where I'm more of the CEO in the
business?

Wes Schaeffer: [00:41:03] Yeah. How do you outsource; how do you assign; right? Because for
those listening that don't have an inbound model and if it's relying on some component of sales,
how would they make that transition? How do you delegate? Because you have operations. You
have development. You have fulfillments. But then if you get the sales component, that can be
tough. You're juggling additional things. So I was asking how do you juggle that.

Jack Born: [00:41:38] Yeah. I just remembered one of the key things that when I read this, I
realized I was already doing it. But I want to share with you because for someone who -- so
Michael Hyatt, he's written several books. I forget which book this one came from. But I believe
in one of the one of the books that I read recently from Michael Hyatt. He talked about the
difference between giving someone tasks versus giving someone a responsibility. So in other
words, there's a huge difference. Let's take content creation.

[00:42:11] So if you wanted to outsource content creation, you might go to -- I wouldn't
recommend Fiverr, but you could go to Fiverr or Upwork or you may know someone through a
contact who can create a piece of content and you're going to have a conversation about, okay,
here's what I want the content to say. Here's what I want it to be. Want to have these key words,
etc. And then they go and write the content and they come back. That's a task, okay? And you
can judge them on that task and maybe they do another task. But eventually you want someone
who becomes your content manager, someone whose job it is, whose role it is to manage the
content, to reviewing the existing content and past content, does it need to be updated, does it
need to be promoted differently; do the images need to be updated, etc., but also for any new
content.

[00:43:02] So it's no longer your job. You are involved in the conversation about content and you
can certainly veto certain content, but you're not the one whose responsibility it is to manage the
content creation. And then you would set certain goals for, okay, what would be in this? And you
would have the content person have a conversation with you about let's talk about what are some
milestones and goals that we can set for this role as the content creation person.

[00:43:36] So in the same way, so I've done that with content creation. I've done that certainly
with design. I've done that with software. We have stuff now where things get created, where I'm
part of the conversation but then -- I may be involved in the conversation for ten minutes and
then a few months later, there's this beautiful new feature that shows up that's been through
design, it's been tested -- like, everything's happened where I really haven't touched it except for
having that initial conversation.

[00:44:07] So I don't really -- so I haven't built what I just described for a sales team. So I might
be talking out of school, but I don't see why that you couldn't do that with a sales team. So it'd be
one thing to hire a salesperson and say, okay, you're hired to close these sales. I'm going to put
you through my training, you're going to listen to my phone calls, and you're going to -- I'm
going to guide you on how to do this. If they show promise, why couldn't they be in charge? And
as you hire additional people, he said, look, you're now in charge. You're my best salesperson. I
think that you have leadership qualities. You're now in charge of either outbound or inbound
phone sales and here are the metrics that we're going to judge you by.

[00:44:46] And you have that conversation, you get agreement, you give them ownership -- big
believer in the book, by the other Navy SEAL, blanking on the name --

Wes Schaeffer: [00:44:58] Jocko [Willink]?

Jack Born: [00:44:58] Jocko. Yeah, "Extreme Ownership." So making sure that they're very
clear, everyone's very clear on what the metrics are and giving them ownership. You own this,
right? And you're going to be judged based on how well you perform, but you own it. Like, I'm
going to let you run with it -- like, once you understand what the strategy is, the exact tactics, I
want to be kept in the loop, but don't wait for me to tell you what to do. You're responsible for
this. Does that help?

Wes Schaeffer: [00:45:32] Yeah. Have you had -- has this burned you? You know, have you
had somebody -- because you see all the time employees, like, the press wouldn't run without me.
You know, I'm the one -- I took that last product from beginning to end, and they step out on you?

Jack Born: [00:45:50] We have very low turnover. It's not zero but we have very low turnover.
We -- you know, one of the things that, again, I don't think people give luck enough credit, so
there's an element of luck here. but I think there are some things that I've done well, and one of
the things I think that I've done really well is that when a testimonial comes in -- and it comes in
pretty often from clients -- one of the things that I do is that I will share it in our Slack chain. I'll
make sure that everyone sees it. I'll take a screenshot or I'll share the video. And I don't say look
at how amazing I am. It's, I give all the credit away. Kudos, Anthony; kudos, Ernesto; kudos,
Salmiya. And I specifically say what they did to make that happen and then not point out your --
I want to make sure that you guys know, even though I've told you before, you are changing
lives. These people are folks who have businesses that now they're able to do things that they
were never able to do before. And this is just one of many people -- like, for every one person
says you guys are incredible and here's why, there's hundreds of other people that felt that way
but didn't take the time to send that in.

[00:47:06] So I think a good leader gives credit away as much as possible. And I can only share
what I found. What I found is that people, when you give credit away, they feel good about what
they're doing. People fundamentally want to do cool things with cool people and make cool
money, you know? And so if you're paying them well, if you're giving them -- if you're making
sure that that there is a sense of accomplishment, that we're having an impact and things are not
boring and the same every single day and they get to try new things and to stretch their wings
and to come up with ideas, then -- my experience is that people are happy.

[00:47:57] I wouldn't ever say loyal because when you get right down to it, people are going to
do what's best for them. But when what's best for them is to stay in this great working
environment, then they don't want to leave. It's not out of a sense of loyalty or duty. It's really
more out of a sense of this is a great working environment; I like the culture here. And just like
anything, just like a product that you sell, it's not always going to gel with everyone. But having
a few key employees or team members that are really, really A players, I just can't express how
much of a difference it can have on your business and therefore your life. It's just absolutely
amazing.

[00:48:34] And one last thing that I'll mention is this kind of comes back to what I was saying
before about one of the gifts that I had in my last corporate job is that my bosses were such a-
holes. So the other thing is that it's basically created -- I consider it the George Costanza
blueprint for how to build a great company to work for, which is I just think about all the bullshit
that I had to deal with. And I think, okay, I'm going to do the opposite. Because while I was
going through that hell, I thought if I ever start a business, I am going to do the opposite of what
these turds are doing. And so that's really been my north star, is just the opposite of the crap that
I had to deal with.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:49:17] Can you build a culture with a virtual team?

Jack Born: [00:49:23] I want to believe that you can. Yeah. Everything takes work, and again, I
think that inside of every challenge is an opportunity, and that's not just Pollyanna-ish. I think as
an entrepreneur, it's our job to try to adapt and overcome. And so we are -- whether we want to
be or not, we're right now in a remote working environment. For me, it's been this way for years.
So even though I didn't know it, I was sort of in training for this situation for a long time. But,
yeah, you can create a culture in a remote working environment. I think a lot of it comes down to
continually telling your story and what's important and communicating it to to your team
members so that they understand how important it is and how you're changing people's lives. So,
yeah, I believe that you can create a culture. Absolutely.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:50:28] So who's a good fit for your software? Is it B2B? Is it B2b? B2C?

Jack Born: [00:50:38] Yeah, I would say small "b." So a lot of our clients are course creators --
not all of them, but some of them are coaches, consultants. Some of them sell physical products
on Shopify. So there's not necessarily just one target audience. But I would say if you created a
pie chart, the biggest slice of the pie would be course creators. And so we work with people who
are either solo entrepreneurs or they've got their own small team.

[00:51:10] And I've heard you say on several of your podcasts, which I'm a big believer in,
which is "small hinges swing big doors." And so when you increase your conversion rate and
you increase other aspects of things like cart value or lifetime value of your clients, it gives you
the ability to afford traffic for the advertising that previously you weren't able to afford. It also
gives you the ability to have a longer time horizon to take your time hiring those A-players and
to be able to afford bringing people into your team that are going to really move the needle for
your business.

[00:51:53] So it's -- as simple as that as it seems, the secret is consistently doing the right things
day after day. It's sort of like if I came to you and said, hey, you're a you're a purple belt
Brazilian jiu jitsu guy, what's -- how do I do that as quickly as possible? The answer is like it's
what you do every single day or every single week. You know, it's showing up, it's doing the
right things, and it's being consistent about it. So the way you get to a multimillion dollar
business, regardless of what niche it's in, I believe it fundamentally comes down to doing the
right things consistently. It's what you do every day, every week. It's not what you do this one
time or one secret. It's -- surprisingly it's the boring stuff. It's the stuff that may not get you on the
cover of Forbes Magazine, but you're just showing up and doing the right things on a consistent
basis.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:52:48] Right. So no easy button, man?

Jack Born: [00:52:53] Well, signing up for our platform certainly adds jet fuel to -- if you've got
a promotion that's already working, it will add jet fuel to it. But it doesn't -- it's not going to solve
all your problems.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:53:09] [chuckles] All right, man. So what is it -- it's almost 5:00 here. So
what is it for you, like 9:00 --

Jack Born: [00:53:16] 10:00 a.m.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:53:20] Very cool. So how does tomorrow look? Because it's today for me; is
tomorrow a pretty good day?

Jack Born: [00:53:26] Yeah. It's a beautiful day. In fact, I'm probably going to head up and and
go foil surfing in a little bit.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:53:33] Foil surfing. Been seeing that. Haven't done it yet. Looks pretty cool.
Is it hard?

Jack Born: [00:53:40] It's a different beast. I describe it as riding one skateboard on top of
another. That's the type of balance that you need.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:53:50] [laughs] Oh my gosh. I'm always so sore any way from jujitsu. I
don't know if I need to be sore from anything else.

Jack Born: [00:53:57] Yeah, I hear you. Is there any kite surfing out where you are?

Wes Schaeffer: [00:54:02] Oh, yeah.

Jack Born: [00:54:04] That's my --

Wes Schaeffer: [00:54:05] A friend of mine actually I do jujitsu with, but he only does two or
three days a week maybe and I go five and six days, so -- but he was a -- he did something on the
water, I don't know if he was Coast Guard or if he was like some kind of police ranger, but
assigned to the water, so he's been in the water his whole life, and he retired from that. So he has
a little more time on his hands to go goof off, and he has a twin brother locally that has a boat. So
they -- you know, I need to become better friends with him the more I talk about it. So thanks for
reminding me.

Jack Born: [00:54:43] Better then having a boat is a friend with a boat.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:54:45] Right? As they say, if it flies or floats, right, we're in it. Very cool,
man. So DeadlineFunnel.com is your business. Jack Born -- don't trust him on his LinkedIn. He's
not from Florida anymore. He's Down Under.

Jack Born: [00:55:03] I was locked out of LinkedIn for about a year and a half because my U.S.
phone -- it was attached to my U.S. phone. I had two-factor authentication turned on. So I took a
while to get back in. And so now that I'm back in, I need to update my profile.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:55:19] All right. Sounds good. All right. So DeadlineFunnel.com, Jack Born,
thanks for sharing your wisdom, man. It's been great.

Jack Born: [00:55:26] It's been good chatting with you, Wes.

Wes Schaeffer: [00:55:29] All right, man. Have a great day.


The Sales Podcast: Jack Born, DeadlineFunnel.com Page 17 of 17