From 3 Founders to $3M in 12 Months: Frank Sondors on Scaling Salesforge

Frank Sondors grew SalesForge to $3 million ARR in 12 months with three co-founders using founder-led sales and 20-25 daily calls. His AI platform solves email fatigue and low reply rates through automated personalization and buyer data. He hires fast, fires faster, and keeps new hires productive by day two.
Chapters
Ellie's Eden, part of Azure Standard, was created for people who care about being thoughtful with what they buy, what they eat, and where it comes from. Growing even a small garden is a simple way to live that out. With healthy plant starts grown in Oregon from trusted non-GMO seeds, along with quality garden essentials, Ellie's Eden makes it easier to begin. Gardening helps you slow down, choose carefully, and stay connected to real food and the land. Learn more about Ellie's Eden at azurestandard.com.
This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace.
Last year, I went through many different life changes. I needed to take a pause and examine how I was feeling in the inside to better show up for the ones who need me to be my best version of myself.
When you're navigating life's changes, Talkspace can help. Talkspace is the number one rated online therapy, bringing you professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatry providers that you can access anytime, anywhere.
Living a busy life, navigating a long-distance relationship, becoming a first stepfather. Talkspace made all of those journeys possible. I could speak with my therapist in the office. I could speak with my therapist in the comfort of my home. I was never alone.
Talkspace works with most major insurers, and most insured members have a $0 copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off your first month with promo code SPACE80 when you go to talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com. Save $80 with code SPACE80 at talkspace.com.
Space.com.
Welcome to CJ Moneyway Media, a storytelling platform built brick by brick where conversations become lessons and experiences become perspective. This is the mindset of a panther, moving with patience, discipline, and purpose. From podcasts to books to media storytelling, CJ Moneyway brings voices, journeys, and real conversations to the forefront. You're now listening to the CJ Moneyway Show.
What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show with your boy CJ Moneyway, in association with GI, the state's capital, where we bring you stories behind the success. Today's guest is not just building companies, he's breaking records. Frank is the founder of Salesforce, and in under 12 months, he scaled from 3 co-founders to 34 team members and hit over $3 million in revenue. Hey, congratulations on that, by the way, man. He's been the number one sales rep at every company he's worked for and is now distributing the B2B sales space by creating outbound systems that actually convert. Frank is here to share the real blueprint behind early stage sales scale, mindset, and momentum, and you'll want to take notes. Frank, welcome to the show, man.
Thanks for having me, CJ. Uh, it's good to be here.
Yeah, man, I appreciate you coming on, man. Like I said, I apologize for last week. I'm supposed to have Frank on last week, man, but I came across some situations, man, and I'm glad that Frank decided that he would reschedule, man, and here we are today, man. So again, Frank, man, thanks for understanding and thanks for coming back on. So Frank, man, let me ask you, man, from top rep to startup rocket ship, Frank, you've dominated every sales floor you walked on. What led you from high performance rep to co-founder of Salesforce?
So I mean, you know, if you think about it this way, that, you know, when you are an employee at a company, right, you're selling the software for somebody else. And then in my last gig, I had a sales team of 50. So I was the VP sales in my last job. And I thought to myself, you know, the next probably step, let's call it, my career is to actually start a company. And then I had to decide in which space would that be. And then I ended up, you know, saying, hey, it has to be sales technology space because this space is pretty much actually outdated. And the reason for that is that a lot of software is built with more headcount in mind. So meaning more bodies means more revenue. And I thought that's the wrong way to look at things. So I decided to put an end to it and build a software or multiple softwares. We have about 6 softwares altogether. Essentially build these multiple softwares that helps you to scale your pipeline but with the least headcount in mind. So that's very hard to achieve. Unfortunately you can't do that with one software, which is why we have multiple softwares. But yeah, for me, that was just the next step in my career. Probably after that, you know, I'll become an investor or something.
Hey, man. Hey, you fix software, you've been the salesperson, the top sales rep at every job you've been on. I wouldn't put it past you, man. You can do whatever you put your mind to, Frank, man. I believe that. Hey, so let me ask you, Frank, the SalesForge surge, you hit $3 million plus in revenues in less than 12 months. What were the key levers you pulled early on to drive that kind of momentum?
So we scaled to about $1 million without a single employee and about $2 million in ARR, so annual recurring revenue, without sales, marketing, and customer support. So, you know, we were very, very lean and mean ourselves. And then after $2 million, we started to hire people because ultimately you can't scale beyond that. It doesn't matter how much, you know, how many AI agents we would run or automations we would use, you still need bodies to build great product, essentially. So one thing that definitely— there's probably like 100 things I could say that led to this exponential growth. It probably lasts an hour just to kind of go over this. But one is definitely what's called founder-led marketing or sales, meaning you're always sort of building in public, you're always visible. Doesn't matter whether I would do a video on YouTube or I would be super visible on LinkedIn or X, et cetera. Making sure, you know, that people follow along the journey, follow along essentially what we do, what are the pains that we are solving for the customers out there. Because naturally, as a former VP sales, it resonates with other VP sales out there in the market, right? Because I'm building the product for my former self, right? To kill kind of the headcount, right? So definitely founder-led sales, right? So that's one thing. Doing things that don't scale, you had to in the early days, you know, when it came to sort of what's called acquiring the first 100 customers, you simply do things that don't scale. That means a lot of manual repetitive work that you have to do, the groundwork that you typically do in sales anyway. You just have to do it really well as a founder. And that's exactly what we did. The automation kind of kicked in, a lot of automation kind of kicked in sort of after 3 months or so. But in the early, early days, acquiring the first 100 customers in the 3 months, a lot of that was just manual work. So that means messaging people manually on LinkedIn, on Slack communities, WhatsApp communities, you know, God knows, gazillions of different places. And typically these sort of activities just don't scale. What else? I mean, there's kind of many different things, but I think one of the other things is essentially not shying away to talk to your potential prospects. So essentially I would always stack my calendar to the brim. That means every day I would have 10 to 20 meetings with my prospects every day, Monday to Friday. And I would actually, you know, I would work 7 days a week, but specifically Monday to Friday. I would go into the office like around 10:00 and I would finish every day at midnight. And so this is how you accumulate, right? If you do about 15 30-minute meetings every day, you can accumulate these 20 meetings or so. So I've set also my record at Salesforce, 25 meetings in the day. That was the most hardcore day.
That was awesome.
Some people do 25 meetings in a week, sometimes in a month.— but in our business, it's in a day. So essentially, if you speak to your customers on a daily basis at such a velocity, it's hard to get it wrong, as in building the wrong product, right? Because if you're talking to your customers on a daily basis on calls, or for example, you're talking to your customers or potential customers over, say, chat— so we have a chat on the site, so anybody can ping us and ask any questions, et cetera. So naturally, we aggregate all that data, all the information, when we talk to our customers to build a better product. This is just a few things, but I could literally talk about this endlessly about this. I think the other thing that helps you to really skyrocket this spaceship is simply the fact that I would call myself a domain expert in the field. If you're building sales technology and I've been doing sales for over 10 years and I've been doing that, I've been selling essentially software, so I have a good understanding of software and how it has to look like. I know a bit of code. I know how great UX looks like, all of that. That naturally helps you to build a good software from the ground up. And you know the pains that you have in sales, and you're looking to eliminate these pains as you're building the product. I also don't necessarily have to speak to my customers because I'm able to validate every single decision super fast, making sure that when we build something, we build it correctly. From the ground up.
Man, now see, y'all see now why Frank was the top salesman at every company he had been in. The man put in work. 25 meetings a day, 30 minutes each. I do on average probably 3 podcasts on my off days, maybe 3, 4 podcasts a day at 30 to 45 minutes. To schedule 25 of those in a day, man. That's the work, man. That's the work, Frank, man. That's the work. So let me ask you, Frank, man, scaling smart, not just fast. Growing from 3 to 34 team members in a year is wild in itself. How did you handle the team culture, onboarding, and systems without losing quality?
So you try and automate as much as you can. So meaning there's an onboarding repository, essentially, where folks just literally have to follow step by step everything that we have to give to the employee, and then they should be done by the end of it, literally on day 2. That's how fast onboarding takes. In 2 days, you should know nearly as much as most of other people. Now, the rest of the things you will learn on the job, essentially, but we don't believe in spending a lot of time on just kind of onboarding, etc. You have to get your hands dirty as soon as possible. But from the other angle as well, we only hire very specific type of individuals. So essentially what's typically called adults, not children, or in my line of business, I call those autonomous humans. So essentially humans that will pick up the onboarding file, will really go through everything. If they don't understand something, they will go and ask questions until they fully, fully grasp the product and the vision and everything in the company, why we're doing what we're doing, essentially. And you would expect the employee to do that instead of somebody babysitting them, essentially, and telling them what to do, when to do it, et cetera. No, we expect people to come to us with a plan of action, what are they looking to deliver, 'Cause essentially the other way to look at it is that person that we hired, you know, we put our trust in them. So they're essentially the CEO of their own turf, right? So they, all I have to do is approve the plan or review the plan, right? But they really should be taking the ownership, you know? And that is difficult because I have, you know, hired and fired over hundreds of people in my lifetime and also, you know, fired a lot of people already here at Salesforce as well. One person was literally on Thursday last week. So you always go through this sort of motion of trying to find really the best people for your business, but you can't be doing gazillions of interviews and trying to de-risk every single individual. And what I always say is you should do everything on an 80/20 basis, meaning if you have 80% conviction that this individual, when you're talking to them, they seem like the right fit for your business, they seem like they could deliver a lot of impact, to your company, you should just go and hire them, right? As quickly as you can. But then on the flip side as well, like when you do hire them, do not like essentially fire them faster if it's necessary, right? So you also have to create a mechanism to fire individuals very fast within a 3-month period. 3-month period for us essentially is a probation period. We wanna make sure that within 3 months we know that this is a value add to the business or not, right?, right? And you can typically figure out— I think the most sophisticated CEOs in the world figure out within 2 weeks. And I have also my own hunch, literally after a week or two, whether this is a goner or not. But of course, I give more time, you know, ultimately for the person to prove themselves, right? So, so because, you know, some people are just slightly slower when it comes to wrap, you know, and that's fine. But like 3 months is the max that you give to the individual. So, so yeah, hire fast, Fire faster, create a mechanism. So in our case, our mechanism is how we do the— let's call it probation period, kind of the first 3 months. So when a person joins The Forge, by default, they're not passing probation periods, essentially, so that 3-month period. What has to happen within 3 months, we have to build the conviction that this person is value-added to the business, like I mentioned to you. So every person in the leadership team has to say yes, that this is a value add to the person. And if one person disagrees, then the person either leaves or we have to extend the period by a month or two. That's really how it works. And by doing it, you know, in such a manner, it makes sure that you don't have what I call any deadwood in your team. You only have really great, great people in your company because think of it from another side, essentially, if you're gonna have a lot of these individuals, where, say, after 6 months you'll say, damn, I regret that this person isn't in the team. I sometimes have worked in companies where you're like, damn, how did this person end up in this company? So I don't want these questions ever to be raised in our company. And we make everything transparent, right? So it's not like you are being let go and it was a shocker. I think it's very, very clear and obvious to everybody when a person leaves. That it was probably a good decision because they were not really delivering, there were other issues, et cetera. So it's sort of obvious that they leave. And I think people, the good people, right, that are still staying here, they know that they are only working with, let's call it tier 1 individuals in this company. And I think you feel good that way, that only good people will— you'll be only surrounded with good people in your team. So yeah, that's why we are doing things in this particular way.
Nah, I like the concept, man. So I just want people to know that if anybody want to come mess with the Forge and work for Frank, he will hire you fast but will fire you faster if you don't have your track shoes on and ready to go with the flow, man. So, so let me ask you, Frank, man, what's broken in Outbound, man? Your product is fixing a problem. What's broken in the outbound sales world and how does Salesforce solve it differently?
Good question. So what is broken outbound? So maybe it's not that it is broken, it's just that let's call it, you know, the landscape has changed massively. So let's say if you look at 10 years ago versus now, today there are a lot more companies, there's a lot more software, a lot more automations. Essentially what happens is then the buyers that we are all reaching out to, they get flooded with a lot more emails on average than they used to like 10 years ago, right? Essentially what the buyers are experiencing is what's called the fatigue, fatigue with all these emails, et cetera, and they get gazillions of emails and it becomes difficult to break through the noise, right? Because if I would deliver an email, so will another company deliver the email. And typically the emails that prospects get these days, still like 99% of them, because I'm checking my inbox and I'm checking my spam folder, And so you can see that nothing is changing really, even though it should be, but nothing is still changing. So what is happening? So essentially people just send a template, a template which you can see that it looks like it has been sent to like thousands of individuals out there, right? It's called the spray and pray approach, and you're hoping for the best, right? That somebody responds back to you, and somebody may respond back, you know, if you're solving a really big problem and you have a great offer, you know, it gets that, right? So, but otherwise you need to do Essentially outbound is as difficult as running, you know, a Google Ads campaign. So setting up keywords, writing copy, et cetera, personalizing to the max, et cetera. That's exactly what you need to do on outbound these days. Whether you are sending a message to somebody on LinkedIn or you're sending an email to somebody over to another prospect, you always need to make sure these days that the email is relevant and personalized to that individual. And to do that, typically you would require humans literally spending 10 to 15 minutes on average to craft that email and then to deliver that. Now, the problem is, sure, you can spend 10 to 15 minutes to craft a great email, but the dilemma is that still less than 10% of prospects would respond to you. Even though you would custom craft every single email and you would send it off, people will still not respond to you. Less than 10%, for sure. Doesn't matter how much effort you put in, it'll be always less than 10% reply rate. And the problem with that is just generally is that If you look at some other data set, then when you look at how many potential buyers are there in the market to essentially buy what is it that you're selling right now, it typically is like 3% or less. So if at any given moment there's 3% or fewer individuals in the market that could potentially buy your product, then you have to be reaching out to a lot of people, right? The problem is it's like a needle in a haystack trying to find these 2-3% of individuals that potentially could buy your product. And the other dilemma is that because of the fatigue that people experiencing on email and LinkedIn, to book even one meeting with a prospect these days, you probably need to send about, so you need to contact 200 to 1,000 individuals to book one meeting. This is just average stats out there. And so the reason why it's up to 1,000 to book one meeting is because due to saturation levels, typically the more saturated the category is, the more unlikely you are to book a meeting. So this is why sometimes you literally, to book one meeting, you need to reach out 1,000. That's how bad it gets. But 200 is still okay. Now it can go lower if you do gazillions of kind of things, but typically this is just average stats. And here I'm talking just about email only. So if you're adding, say, LinkedIn as a second channel,, then it definitely reduces significantly, as in the number, because LinkedIn can easily double your reply rate. So, and that means essentially that you need twice as less essentially contacts to be processed. Now, the way that we do things differently, probably on a couple areas I'm just gonna mention, because I don't wanna mention everything. One is making sure that emails actually land in your primary inbox because essentially because of people are sending a lot, a lot of emails. Companies are facing a ton of email durability issues these days, and that's exactly what we solve. We have a multitude of features and products, et cetera, just focused on that one problem. And then the other thing that we solve is the personalization problem and relevance problem that I have mentioned to you. So we naturally use AI to craft emails uniquely to every single prospect. And the way that we make it unique is essentially we look at what do you sell. So essentially it's a value prop that you have to enter within the software. And then we combine that value prop, what we call the seller data, together with what we call the buyer data. So what do we know about every single individual when we reach out to them? So we do web crawling. So we go on the web and try and find out all the information that we know about this individual working at this company. So we're gonna go on, for example, fetch all the information on LinkedIn in real time. Then we're gonna go and check out the website and gazillions of other sources. And then we stitch these two datasets together, and then we use AI on top of that, which is how it gives us essentially a unique email. Now, if somebody's curious how it looks like, you can just go to agentfrank.ai and you can literally enter your details and it'll just give you the—
This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace.
Last year I went through many different life changes. I needed to take a pause and examine how I was feeling in the inside to better show up for the ones who need me to be my best version of myself.
When you're navigating life's changes, Talkspace can help. Talkspace is the number one rated online therapy, bringing you professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatry providers that you can access anytime, anywhere.
Living a busy life, navigating a long-distance relationship, becoming a first stepfather, Talkspace made all of those journeys possible. I could speak with my therapist in the office, I could speak with my therapist in the comfort of my home. I was never alone.
Talkspace works with most major insurers, and most insured members have a $0 copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off your first month with promo code SPACE80 when you go to Talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com.
Unique email, so you can see it for yourself. Yeah, so the relevance, the copy part, and the deliverability part, these are the two main areas. So by solving these two main areas, you should be able to see significantly better results.
Repeat what you say we can find the example at again? Agentfrank.ai. Agentfrank.ai. Okay, that sounds pretty cool.
This episode is brought to you by CJ Moneyway Media, where podcast ideas become platforms. Through the Moneyway Lab Masterclass, CJ shares real lessons from the lab for creators building their voices brick brick by brick. From powerful guest conversations, storytelling that inspires growth, CJ Moneyway Media is about one thing: building legacy through stories. Learn more at CJMoneyway.com.
Music style.
Music store. I don't even want to ask you. You say it take like 1,000 emails just to get one response or one meeting. You said you was getting 25 meetings a day, 7 days a week. I don't even want to ask you, man, how many emails you was sending out there to load up your calendar like that, man. We gonna leave that one up to you. Which leads me to this next question, man. Personal discipline, because you got to have a lot of discipline to send out that many emails. And personal discipline equals professional wins. As someone who's always been top of the leaderboard, on top of the leaderboard, what personal routines or discipline has helped you stay locked in and level up?
So, I mean, I would say one kind of obvious thing is that you need to go to bed by 1:00 AM and you need to wake up at 8:00 AM like clockwork, essentially, because my body needs at least 6 hours of sleep to function really well. That's all I need, like 6 hours of sleep. If I get 6 hours of sleep, I can do this all day long, essentially. So sleep is very important. And then the question becomes how much sleep? So for me, it's 6 hours. For other people, sometimes it's 8 hours. That will have a negative impact on your performance because when I wake up, the first thing I do is I check my Slack, I check my WhatsApp, I check LinkedIn, I check all the channels when my prospects, you know, where I'm talking to ultimately to my prospects and making sure I respond as soon as, right? So now besides that, I think the discipline comes from making sure that you have a, ultimately what I would describe fat pipeline, right? When you have a fat sales pipeline, so if you just worry about, you know, generating consistently pipeline, you'll be always fully booked. That means in practical terms is how many emails or how many LinkedIn messages do I need to send on a daily basis to hit my goal, right? So back in the days, it was just me, no sales team, just me. So how many did I need to send myself? And then later on, actually, as I onboarded 3 people in sales right now, I have to make sure that they have enough meat to work with, right? So this is how I think about it. But I would say the main discipline is if it comes to making sure that you are always, always fully ramped is simply about just loading more contacts and just reaching out to more individuals. Because I mean, there's no excuse essentially not to reach out to people, right? There's no excuse. Like, sure, I can send 10 emails or I can send 1,000 emails or I can send 10,000 emails in a day. It's not a problem for me. I just need to make sure that the calendars of my reps are fully loaded, right? That's all it needs to happen. So, but definitely the dilemma is it's not a dilemma necessarily, but we want to make sure we are reaching out to the right people as well, right? So that's another thing that we will be focusing on. Next month we're launching another product called Leadsforge. And Leadsforge is like ChatGPT interface connecting to all databases in the world. And so the way it works, let's say I'm searching for my leads and then we're going to query all databases in the world and we'll give you those leads. That's really what the product does. Now, like consistently finding the right leads is probably the biggest challenge that I have because my TAM, so my total addressable market, is definitely very, very big, but I'm processing the TAM also at a very high velocity and finding good leads at any given moment is definitely a challenge. The worst thing that you want to do, doesn't matter whether you're in my category or some other category, is reaching out to the wrong people, right? We definitely don't want to be sending emails, LinkedIn messages to people that shouldn't be contacted in the first place, right? So yeah, so the discipline is really the way I think about it because I'm in sales, it's about activity levels. How many people am I reaching out on a daily basis? So for some people it's like doing 400 dials in a day. For my sales rep, for example, my SDR, my SDRs do about 400 dials in a day. Then they will reach out, I don't know, to about 1,000 individuals by email and then they'll reach out to about 20, 30, maybe people on LinkedIn on the daily, every day they do the same thing, you know.
So, so yeah, yeah, that's a system for you. Call it ecosystem. That's a system, man. And I'm with you. Sometimes I think on the average, man, if I can get 5 to 6 hours, because, you know, I work full-time and I'm doing this, if I can get 5 to 6 hours a day of sleep, I could be all right, you know. I don't need the 8 or whatever. Sometimes As you already know, sometimes you get forced into that 6 hours because you got so much on your plate to do, you know what I'm saying? I just can't sleep and lay around all day, even on my off days, because you got to work, man. You got to go get them leads, man. And 400,000, 100,000, 20 LinkedIn a day. No wonder you hire fast and fire faster, man. That's a lot. That's, that's a lot in itself, Frank, man. That's a lot. So let me ask you, Frank, I only got a couple more questions for you, man. Then I got a quick fire round that I've been playing on the CJ Moneyway Show. Since the beginning of the year, I'm gonna ask you 5 questions and you just answer with the first thing that comes to mind, man. A lot of people get stuck on it. A lot of people have a lot of fun out here. Hey, but don't get nervous, man. But let me ask you, man, building in public, you're highly visible on LinkedIn and in community spaces as you was talking about. How do you think about personal branding and being authentic as part of your growth engine?
Good question. So if you compare, say, the CEO of Google versus, say, on LinkedIn, any CEO on the company, you will always see more people following the CEO than the company. And that's always the case, I think, with every company on LinkedIn. So what that means is people like to follow people rather than companies. And that individual typically is the CEO of the company. Whatever he's gonna say, you wanna make sure you're always following that individual rather than the company, because the company doesn't have a face. The face arguably is the CEO. You want to follow the CEO, not the company, because the company sometimes gives you some random updates, et cetera. So that's why somebody has to be at the brand, the human essentially on top of Salesforce typically is the CEO of the company. So the CEO has to be super, super visible. And the reason why this is super important in our case is because our ideal customer is actually very, very frequently on LinkedIn because, you know, we target a lot of sales reps out there, right? And they're doing their prospecting on LinkedIn. And naturally what we do, or what I do on a pretty much daily basis, I connect with my ideal customers on LinkedIn all the time. And then what I do is I feed them with content, with, you know, very good content. I try to do that literally 7 times a week. So every single day I would publish something on LinkedIn. That I believe shares my journey as a founder, talking about the problems that we're solving as a business, and then also sharing particular problems that I had, let's say, as a former VP sales, for example, or in sales just generally, you know, like which problems did I have and maybe I'm solving them. So these are kind of different kind of things that I talk about on LinkedIn and kind of building the brand so that people, yeah, ultimately follow me, follow my journey, and ultimately it leads to more and more leads, right? So people will come from LinkedIn and will buy more of your product. And then the other thing why this is super, super powerful is because if I would then reach out or any of my colleagues would then reach out to one of these individuals who is in my network, then this is not anymore cold outreach because I've been already connected with that individual for quite some time. I've warmed them up with my content. So this is what's called, there's a term for this, inbound-led outbound, essentially. So you're leading with an idea of kind of feeding them with content every single day. You're trying to share highly valuable content to everybody in your audience, and then eventually you warm them up to such an extent where once you reach out to them, say after a few months or so, they're more likely to actually jump on a call with you..
So yeah, so, so it takes a lot of time, a lot of planning, and a lot of strategizing to get these sales, man. No wonder this dude was number one salesperson at every company he worked at. So let me ask you, Frank, man, one last question. Advice to the next sales leader, for the rep or founder listening who wants to scale their business or become number one in their company, what's the number one mindset shift you would tell them to start with?
So it's exactly what we've been discussing, and I think most of the CEOs and founders don't do it really well at all, meaning hiring fast and firing faster. This is the number one advice, and the reason why it's the number one advice is because if you speak to the CEOs of, say, fast-growing— it doesn't matter which company is fast-growing or not— and you ask them what do they do on a daily basis, then predominantly say that they are hiring people. All the time, right? They're always searching for good people for the company, but the strategy that they implement around hiring isn't always the best, essentially. So I don't see people essentially always sort of moving fast when it comes to hiring, getting the right people on board as fast as possible, having good strategy around essentially firing. Most of the founders and CEOs that I talk to, they don't have any strategy. And then what they end up doing is they end up having not the best team, essentially. And this is why also a lot of companies fail. So the reason why they fail is because just the team wasn't that strong, really. Right. So this is why it's so, so important to only have strong people in the team. So yeah, that's really the main advice. And simply for the reason that the CEOs and founders, all they do every single week is just hire people. So I'm currently hiring as well. You're right. So I'm also looking for new people and trying to find them wherever I can. Sure, I can advertise on LinkedIn or whatever, but you don't typically find, you know, good people that way. My current strategy is just to go to a bunch of events all around the world and try and bump into the individuals that I'm looking for. So yeah.
Yeah, I like that. I like that. And there you go again. Number one, he said number one rule: hire fast, fire faster. Which leads us into the quickfire round. Hey Frank, man, you ready for this?
I'm ready for this. Let's go.
All right, man. Question number 1, best close you ever made.
Best close I ever made? Well, it was my biggest deal, which may not be that big for somebody out there, but it was $250K in ACV, so annual contract value. So that was my biggest deal, and which typically a sales rep would say this is the best deal, right? The biggest deal that they closed. I was selling back then machine learning., as a software product. So yeah, that was my best deal.
Hmm.
$250K. I like that. Sales book every founder should read.
I would say Never Split the Difference. It's quite a popular one.
Okay. Never Split the Difference. Your most used sales tool.
Most used sales tool. Well, it will have to be our own one, Salesforce. But apart from that, I would say a tool called Salesfinity. It's a parallel dialer. So we essentially dialing at scale.
Hmm. Now I'm gonna ask you this question. I think by talking to you, I already got the answer. Cold email or cold call?
Cold email. It just scales so much better.
Yeah, I do it, man. Somebody that's getting out 1,000 emails in 25 minutes a day, it had to be cold email. All right, man. One more. One word to describe your founder journey.
Intense.
Mm, intense. Hey Frank, before I go, man, I gotta ask you, what can we find you on social media, man? What can we find you on your website besides Agent Frank?
You can find me on LinkedIn, Frank Saunders, the guy with the bacon emoji. He comes from bringing home the bacon, you know, we always bring home the bacon every single day. And then also, and actually on X, if you just search for Frank Saunders, I'm also on there. But yeah, typically my spot is on LinkedIn. I've been on LinkedIn for like 15 years, which is why I built up all my audience on there and all my connections and everything. So yeah.
Okay. And don't forget you all, you can find him, Agent Frank AI, and go learn to see how my man become the top salesman in every company he worked at, man. You gotta use his model. Frank, man, thanks for giving us the playbook, man, and the proof from outbound to outcome. Your story is One every founder, rep, or builder needs to hear. To our listeners, if you're tired of spray and paint outreach and want to build scalable, high-converting systems, connect with Frank, follow Salesforce, and go take notes. You can find Frank on LinkedIn, as he said, linkedin.com and Frank Saunders, or I know I pronounced that wrong. How you say that?
Frank Saunders, yeah.
Okay, I got it right. Well, check out SalesForge at @SalesForgeAI. And don't forget, G Outta State's Capital Animated Series built on real-world leadership and reinvention is coming soon. Follow @CJMoneyway for all updates. Until next time, keep building, keep believing, and always bet on yourself. This is your boy CJ Moneyway. With my man Frank, who will hire you fast but fire you faster. Hey, we out of here.
Peace.
You've been listening to the CJ Moneyway Show with real stories, real lessons, yeah, and real perspective come together.
Remember, move with patience, move with purpose.
That is the mindset of a Panther. Until next time. MUSIC style.
You don't buy on hope, you study the label. At Azurewell, we support that. Our commitment is simple: tell the truth. Every ingredient listed, every amount disclosed. No proprietary blends, no guesswork. We go beyond organic and basic testing with comprehensive third-party verification. Take a look at what's in your cabinet, then visit azurelivingwell.com to shop and learn more. That's A-Z-U-R-E livingwell.com. These products have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
If you like the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.
What separates dreamers from industry leaders? Your Brand Amplified uncovers the answer. I'm your host, Annika Jackson, and I have authentic, in-depth conversations with proven entrepreneurs and business experts, some sharing the exact strategies that grew their brands, others revealing the personal stories behind their success. From digital marketing tactics to mindset shifts that change everything, they're real conversations that bridge aspiration and achievement. Find Your Brand Amplified on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
More from Corwin

Pressure-Proof Leadership: Claire Hayek on Neuroscience, Resilience & Leading Under Pressure

Healing With Fire: Zulma Williams on Trauma, Cancer, Depression & Finding Your Voice

The Economy of the Heart: How Love and Leadership Build Profitable Cultures | Hanna Bauer

The Doorman Nobody Valued: Wes on Storytelling, Corporate Blind Spots, and Building Brotherhood o...

Art for Your Sanity: How Creativity Helps You Survive Chaos — with Susan Hensley

Becoming Better: Ryan Gottfredson on Why Success Requires More Than Doing More

Mission Control OS™ Demo | Governance-First AI Executive Operating System | OpenAI Build Week

From Frustration to Confidence: The Dyslexia Professor’s Blueprint for Struggling Readers

Built in the Pit: Chris Duffin on Resilience, Accountability, and the Discipline to Rise

Cyber Thrillers, AI & the Future of Technology with Charles V. Breakfield & Rox Burkey
