Jon Ferrara

People buy from people they like, know, and trust.

And social is just a simple way to do that.

uh you know we didn't turn the paywall until uh 2013 and i i think we might have done like 30 grand or so you know we're just getting started yep uh how'd you get your first customers

Well, it's the same way that we got our first customers with Goldmine.

Imagine in 1989, you built the first networkable sales and marketing tool when people were figuring out just what to even use a network for.

There wasn't any networkable business software, let alone sales and marketing software.

So back then, what I did is I identified the trusted advisor of my prospect, and that was the guy that sold them the network, the technology reseller.

and that was back then novella reseller and i cold called every novella reseller in the country and i got them to use it because people sell what they know and they know what they use then they started to recommend it and that gave me my first fifty thousand dollars a month in revenue for gold mine interesting after that i grew it by identifying writers who wrote about technology and business and i helped them write more stories about that and gold mine got more awards and more press and all the other products combined fast forward to 2009 10 11

There wasn't really any resellers anymore because everything was cloud.

So I can't go after the resellers.

So what I did is I identified the trusted influencer of my prospect around the areas of promise of my product, which is influencers and thought leaders in sales and marketing.

Uh, so I put in my own money to start the company up.

How much?

After I got it, 3 million.

Okay.

Of your own.

And then what?

And then after I got it all started up, uh, friends and family, uh, wanted to give me money.

So I took money from Mark Cuban, uh, Dharma Shah, Jason Calacanis and other people, Google and other people like that.

Yeah.