Dan Corkill has a background in finance and has worked for a marketing company back in Australia. But, his career bored him and he had no plans of working for someone else for the rest of his life. So he decided to build his own business and become an entrepreneur.
When a friend suggested to him that they start a software company — even if he had no tech background — he went for it. Since his friend was a software engineer, they figured he could handle the technical side while Dan does the marketing side. Going into a business that he knew almost nothing about proved to be a struggle for Dan and his team.
Let’s learn from Dan on how he was able to achieve success for their self-funded, profitable company: Follow-Up Boss. We’ll also hear his advice for anyone who wants to go into a business venture regardless if they have background experience on it or not.
Brian Charlesworth
All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the GRIT podcast. Today I am here with Dan corkle is how you pronounce your name Dan.
Daniel Corkill
Corkill right.
Brian Charlesworth
Corkill. Okay. Dan is the CEO of Follow Up Boss. They were founded back in 2011. They are a self funded and profitable company. So I’m really looking forward to digging into that because you don’t see a lot of that in today’s world. So congratulations on that. Dan. Here on the podcast. We like to dig in with entrepreneurs like yourself and Business Builders, and just learn about your grid and I can tell you have a ton of grit in getting to profitability without raising capital. So I’m, again I’m excited to hear about that. I’m the host of the show Brian Charles Werth and I’m the founder of si su and Cebu is a real estate growth automation software. And with that, we’ll go ahead and get started Dan, how’s it going?
Daniel Corkill
Yeah, really good. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. I’m excited.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah. Thank you for joining me. Why don’t you just give us a little bit more of your background? I know you have a marketing background. But I’d love to hear the story on kind of the backside of your career. You’re still super young. But I know you did some marketing. And then I’d love to hear you’re the founder of follow up, boss, correct?
Daniel Corkill
Yeah. I’m one of the founders out of the founders and more technical genius side of it, I guess. Yeah. My job because I do everything else, empty the bins and all that kind of stuff. Right. So
Brian Charlesworth
yes, I want to know your background.
Daniel Corkill
Yeah, sure. So like when we actually started the company, in 2011, was you back about 10 years younger or nine years younger or whatever? I was 25. And, you know, yeah, definitely. What I was doing before that I was working for a company in Sydney, Australia, who basically they did like kind of marketing for for speakers, right. So like, people like to Tony Robbins Tony Robbins specifically but motivational speaker, speakers. Yeah, other people that specialized in marketing, NLP stuff like that. So, you know, through that company, I got a lot of good exposure to online marketing and also to like, I think the fundamentals of marketing like making an offer, you know, doing joint ventures, like, you know, emailing your list stuff like that, because, because that company really ran on those things. So, yeah, I mean, that gave me like, a big exposure to that, you know, that was something where I worked for that company for for not really that much money. Like, it’s, I didn’t know what I was making probably like 50 grand a year Australian, which is, is a lot less than us. So it’s like maybe 3035 grand us. Before that. I worked actually in finance, and I just hated that. Like, I just thought like, I just looked around and like no one here is happy. You know, this is this is a great group of people. Like I loved all the people there. But just like it as a career, like It was so boring, like you’ll go into every day, you would literally be looking at documents, I’m actually applying for a loan now and like, I’m talking to the guy on the other side, and like, you know, literally literally what I used to do, and it’s just just so boring. So I go down back, so I really wanted to do something that was, you know, just more interesting, like marketing, online marketing. And then I think just after working for that company, obviously 2011 you know, it’s kind of after the GFC kind of stuff that will happen. And yeah, just just realized, okay, I don’t really want to necessarily work for someone else forever, like, you know, kind of, kind of my plan all along was like, I want to learn some skills by working for someone else. And I want to take those in, you know, I want to see what I can do by myself, like sell my own business.
Brian Charlesworth
Great. So you go from there to art, from finance to marketing, to follow up, founding the company, how did you guys come up with the idea of a CRM in the real estate space? Okay, so 2011 The market was just really starting to pick back up after the crash. So your timing was perfect. But what made you decide to jump in then?
Daniel Corkill
Yeah. So, you know, I ended up starting that full up boss with someone who used to work with at that job. His name’s Tom has, you know, one of the great engineers there. And, you know, when I told everyone those kind of quitting that job is like, you know, do you want to start the software business? And I was kind of like, well, I got nothing else going for me right now. And like, you know, he’s a great engineer. So I’m like, yeah, this would be cool to work together. Because I was thinking, like, do I learn to code? You know, do I team up with someone? So we decided we’re going to start a software business. You know, both of us really had no idea what we were doing. Like we didn’t, you know, we didn’t know what industry to target. We didn’t know how to get our first customers. And we ended up basically struggling for a while, you know, just, you know, with what exactly we’re going to do, we did have an idea of like, you know, we could probably build a CRM and Which is a bit more powerful than what was around at the time on a basic level, but not as complicated as other things like Infusionsoft and those things are still around, you know, today, like people call it computer and software, it’s very hard to set up, you know, for small businesses, you know, it’s hard to get going, right. And that’s, that’s what we saw this opportunity, like people need some power, but you know, they don’t need all that confusing stuff. So anyway, skip ahead a little bit. We’re just like, okay, we don’t really have a compelling reason for people to sign up for our software, we definitely realize we needed to get into it, you know, specific industry. So because then we could find out what the problems of that industry are. And just like Taylor, what we’re doing so we did it, we did a course it’s actually called the foundation. And they teach a lot. Basically, that course teaches you how to start a software business. So it takes all the things you need to do like researching and nice talking to customers, finding out what their problems are, right through to like helping you find a developer to build it, and all that kind of stuff. And so anyway, We did that course we started talking to a lot of people in real estate. And this is back in 2011. And I’m sort of like talking to them like what’s your biggest problem right? And just a lot of people were telling me about like the online leads they getting they don’t have a system to automatically follow up with them. They know if they do more follow up they will make more money like everyone kept saying that I’m like, they’re legends. Like they felt guilty about it too. Like I know I should do more follow up I know I should do more follow up. And so that’s where the name follow boss comes from, right? Because I just kept hearing follow up so often. And you know, I did a lot of research at the time Well, why don’t you just use top producer or why don’t you just use you know, this other CRM that you already have? And you know, people would just tell me like they didn’t like it, they never used it. They never logged in like a lot of those things. Were not automatically importing leads like sank we take for granted today. It’s just obvious that should happen. But that didn’t happen like your only option back then. If you really wanted to track it. You were paying someone a few thousand dollars a month. to track them manually into your CRM, which, you know, just made no sense. So, yeah, just just from there, the research and the conversations we had were like, we think we can do something better. And, you know, even if it’s, we just saw what was out there. And we just thought we can definitely do something that could help people more. So, yeah, we got our first few customers, and then they told more people, and, you know, really, we just been growing since then, you know, just keep trying to improve our software to, you know, help our customers with sales essentially.
Brian Charlesworth
Okay, do you mind if I dig a little deeper into that?
Daniel Corkill
Yeah.
Brian Charlesworth
You’re super young. You’re saying, hey, I want to start a business. I don’t know what I want to do. Okay, there’s, maybe we could make CRM simpler. Maybe there’s an industry so how, what other industries did you consider other than real estate?
Daniel Corkill
I think that’s, it’s one of the first ones we went towards. We definitely tried to Just to sell it to anyone. So like maybe like we were thinking like, people that were a bit like us, like I’ve done a little bit of online marketing, consulting and stuff. But again, it was sort of like, there’s just no reason for people to use this. I think we’re looking at some of these companies like, you know, maybe Infusionsoft or like high rise by 37 signals. And they were kind of selling to everyone. So we kind of thought, like, maybe we can just do that. But I think that’s, that’s not how, like a lot of those companies started that they start, you know, generally you start selling to a very narrow niche. So, yeah, I didn’t think there was a ton of other ones we pursued like, as soon as we sort of, I think the great thing about real estate is, it’s also very easy to reach people. Whereas like, some industries, like you can’t really call up and talk to a doctor or like, you know, getting like, I don’t know, like a lot of other people on the phone is hard. And what I think is interesting about the real estate industry is it’s very easy to talk to people, because it’s just the nature of the job. Yeah.
Brian Charlesworth
So you guys were super resourceful. So what what did you do just get like a list of local and where were you living at the time? Are you in Sydney?
Daniel Corkill
Ah, so actually, when I quit my job there, this is kind of another bit of a part of the story and until the time but like, I quit my job there, I sold everything I had actually only had like two t shirts, two pairs of underwear and kind of like a left Australia. And, you know, sort of traveling around a little bit, you know, just in Europe, backpacking staying in very cheap places. I guess like, I this relates to starting the business is I couldn’t afford to live in Sydney and have no job, right? So there’s a term called baselining, which basically means you take your expenses down to practically nothing. So, you know, it could be like, five 500 1000 1500 a month. And by doing that, you know, because as you realize that when you when you start a business, you need a runway, right? And that’s a big barrier. So that’s, that’s where a lot of people have to Go and raise money because if you’re in Sydney or San Francisco, even just to pay your rent, you need some kind of finances. So I did that actually lived in a few other places, Turkey, Germany, which again, like think about the cost of living in those places, like in Germany was one of the cheapest places that ever lived, you know, you could live on $500 a month easily. And so that just that just gave me some ability to dedicate all my time to it, I didn’t have another job. And then also, the interesting thing, I think, is like, I also didn’t have a lot of social obligations, because like, if I was at home, right, you know, there’s a lot of birthday parties, you’ve got to go to a lot of family things. And not that I recommend that people should skip those things. But honestly, it was like, I just focus for, you know, one or two years purely on like getting the business off the ground versus, you know, just all the other normal life stuff.
Brian Charlesworth
Yes. So you basically put that life aside and said, I’m just 100% In here, I mean you don’t even speak the German language, do you?
Daniel Corkill
I’m terrible at it. I had to do a course that you know, so that was allowed to stay. And I would just yeah, I guess it the words I think I passed my exam daily. I don’t know how, but I’m was. I’m not great at speaking.
Brian Charlesworth
What city did you live in there? I lived in Dusseldorf. Okay, so you’re up in Dusseldorf. And you decided you’re going to start this business. You were actually in Dusseldorf, to start this big business. Is that right?
Daniel Corkill
We started a little bit beforehand, to kind of like, I guess, as I was leaving Sydney, we sort of agreed we wanted to do something like me and my partner. And then, you know, it’s just sort of different, you know, the first few months was probably doing a little bit more traveling and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, it was sort of during that time. We started it like we ended up incorporating in the us because we sort of even though like I’m from Australia, we kind of knew early on like the US is where Most software business is like Australia is just, you know, it’s a quite a small market. So, so we incorporated the company here as like an LLC. And, and yeah, we were just trying to hustle to get customers so like, you know, we will be doing things like we didn’t buy a list or anything like that, but I would be like, I’ll be like participating in like Facebook groups. So like, you know, there’s a lot of big ones now like labcoat agents, and, you know, there’s other great ones real close and stuff like that, um, you know, those were around back then they were a bit smaller. And, you know, I would just be participating, like trying to learn really, but also trying to build up some, like, credibility, you know, or just just get to know people. And, yeah, that was how we, you know, met some of our initial customers. The other places were like, looking at online forums, so there’d be people, you know, just people posting online, like, you know, I’m looking for some kind of solution for lead management. And, you know, just reaching out to those people and say, Hey, do you have Like 10 minutes to talk, like, I’m not trying to sell you something, I just want to know like, What do you need? Right?
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, so I love hearing this. Because I mean, you guys, you guys are definitely recognized as one of the top team platforms out there, like, you’re willing to just go for it. There’s so many people out there want to be entrepreneurs or talk about it, but they’re not willing to just go for it. And you wrote this, like, all in upfront, not even knowing what you were going to do not even knowing what the solution was. And it sounds like you came to it very quickly. So that’s a great story. Thanks for sharing that, I think. I mean, it’s just a great example for anybody listening of if you set your mind to something and go for it, you can do it. Right, you can do anything.
Daniel Corkill
Yeah, I think there’s something to like kind of cutting off other options in order because like, even with my life today, like you know, I’m still trying to achieve different things like I’d be recently trying to get a bit healthier and fitter and all that kind of stuff. And you kind of got to cut off the options. thing like lazy and, you know, just eating whatever and like, you know, playing video games, stuff like that. Like, it’s I think if you can go all in I don’t know what’s right for everyone though, because, you know, some people have different commitments, families, less some of the things I’m kind of lucky. You know, it’s sometimes easier to do that when you’re young, like, I didn’t have a mortgage, I didn’t have any debts, that kind of stuff. And then the thing that I always knew is like, if this didn’t work out, I could always just go get another job working for someone, right? Like, I mean, it’s not like that option would leave forever or something.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, and that’s true for anybody, right? I don’t care. I don’t care how old you are you there’s always different things you can do is always different things you can create. So how did you end up in the US? I know you started the business here. How did you choose where to end up? Where do you live now? Tell us how you how you ended up where you’re at today?
Daniel Corkill
Yeah, sure. So it’s after we did a bit of traveling. I ended up moving back to Australia for a little bit just because you know, coming probably homesick and that kind of thing. And you know, all through this time like 2011 I think up to I think I moved to the US full time in 2015 and basically, you know, it just eventually had to move because the timezone is so bad between Australia and the US it’s like literally Midnight in Australia when it’s like 9am in New York and it was just, it was just a stressful thing as a business was growing. It’s like, you know, be like going to sleep you’re like, Oh, I hope nothing goes wrong today, which is just like just not really sustainable. Um, yeah, so eventually just you know, got it basically an E to business visa to come move here full time. Initially, I was based in San Francisco so I just figured if I was moving halfway around the world like as well move to where the center of you know tech is and you know, enjoyed that but you know, after a couple years there decided to move down Austin, Texas. So that’s, that’s where I’m located now. And yeah, honestly, I really like it here. Like it’s it’s people are pretty laid back like I think you In Australia, and then also it’s just the San Francisco mogh. Real Estate Market is a bit different. I think a lot of the rest of the country, you know, it’s like, it’s very high price, like just just transactions happen differently. And so I think it’s nice to be here. There’s a bit less of a timezone difference with the East Coast. And then just yeah, there’s a lot more real estate teams around. So it’s just a No, just a bit easier for the business. I think this is the right place for me.
Brian Charlesworth
So you went to San Francisco, the bay area, where were you at there? Which city?
Daniel Corkill
I lived pretty much in mission in Mission Bay, which is right next to the giant stadium. So yeah, kind of like the same area.
Brian Charlesworth
All right, great. And then you move to Austin, which is also known as being somewhat of a tech community, right.
Daniel Corkill
Absolutely
Yeah. So anyway, that’s, that’s great. So as far as agents go, how did you how did you really start about approaching agents just being in these groups, you were able to start getting through the agents. How are you getting feedback? How did you get your first cells? And like, where were you priced that as far as a platform back then when you’re just starting out?
Daniel Corkill
Yeah, um, yeah, yeah. Honestly, like participating in the groups. And then sometimes, like, you know, this relevant threads would come up, right, like so like people would ask, what are you doing for CRM? What are you doing for lead follow up? And again, at the time, there were not a lot of solutions out there, right, like automated solutions. And so I I can’t remember the exact question someone asked, but it was something like, What are you guys doing to follow up there? Zillow leads or something like that? And, you know, I just, I just had been in the group for a while and I’m just like, would you guys be interested in a solution that did X, X and X and it was like, you know, automated email, follow up, automatically send it out to your agents, you know, kind of the things people wanted. And then Honestly, it was one of those threads. I probably have it screenshotted somewhere. We’re like, 50 people right back. Yes, I want this right. And I think the thing to do then is to, you know, engage those people like direct message them, ask them direct message you, and then get on a phone call with them. Because, again, my sort of like thing at this point was not really trying to sell them. I just wanted to understand what is the solution that you guys need, since I make sure that that’s what we’re building, you know, because then if we’re building the thing that you want, then you’re naturally going to want to buy it. In terms of pricing, like, like dramatically different from where we’re priced now. We’ve been through a few different pricing changes and stuff like that, but I you know, I think for a team of like 10 agents, it was like, you know, $300 a month for a solo agent. It might have been like, 49 a month to the side. I can’t really remember but like it is not that different to our price now.
Brian Charlesworth
Okay. This is very interesting to me. It’s just fun to see how you just evolved. How long did it take before that first customer came in? So you started it in 2000 When When did your first customer actually come in?
Daniel Corkill
Yeah, I think it was, it wasn’t super quick. So it’s like, because remember, we didn’t really know what we’re doing for the first six hours. Like, we didn’t know what industry we’re targeting. I think after six months, that’s when we thought like, pretty much yeah, let’s look at real estate. And then it was still another six months really, before we got someone to pay, you know, a little bit before that we had people on the system that were, I think, happy, you know, so it was like, I hadn’t asked him to pay, but I kind of could see that, like, you know, things are going well, and, you know, they probably would want to pay eventually. Um, so it took almost a year from like, start to get that first paying customer, which I think, you know, again, it’s like, that can be a pretty big gap, right? Like, you’ve got no revenue coming in for a year. But I definitely think was software like it’s, you probably do need to give it 12 months. I mean, some other people talk about that. Like, if you think you’re just going to like, solve it all in a month or two, like, I don’t know, like if you’ve done it a few times before, maybe it’s easier, but Yeah, I really do think you have to give it, give it that time. So
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, I would agree with that. Okay, so tell us what’s different now. I mean, there were there weren’t a lot of options, then there are a lot of options now. What’s different about you guys than other people? And it’s your focus primarily on teams. I heard you you say you sold individuals. Do you still sell to individuals?
Daniel Corkill
Yeah, we definitely have a good you know, solo agent user base. With teams, it’s a little bit funny, like, you know, because that trend has really like taken off over the last 10 years right. And that wasn’t wasn’t genius. planning on our part is just more ignorance like coming from Australia. Real Estate looks very different there. And, you know, I just assumed Like any business, this must work in like a team situation, right? Like, there’s this pick specialists and people that, you know, focus on this and focus on that. Which really wasn’t how real estate works. Like, it’s very individual based, like you get the brokerage and you got the individual agents. So yeah, we just sort of, we stumbled upon that. And then I think from the very start, we build our software, for teams in the sense of like, just even basic things like, Oh, you create a template, that means anyone else in your team can access that template, which sounds super boring as a feature, but it’s like other systems didn’t even have that. Which, you know, again, sort of allowed us to, you know, I guess be this premium team solution. And then other things like lead routing, you know, just things like that, like that. That was the kind of things that people literally before were just sitting there, you know, on their phone, watching a movie with their wife lead comes in and they’re like, have to forward it to their patient, you know, and then then they go into me like, I don’t know what happens after that. Like, yeah, this is pretty bad. You know? So like, it’s Yeah, you know, that’s sort of what we were replacing for a lot of people. Yeah. Now there’s a lot of CRMs. I think what we’re different is we decided to focus on the sales solution on the follow up piece. So a lot of great systems out there like Boomtown Commission’s Inc. You know, there’s just I don’t know, there’s 10 other ones that are pretty well known as a lot of other like, lower tail ones or whatever. You know, they’re doing a lot for you, like they’re doing websites, they’re doing your marketing, they give you a CRM. And so like, I guess, like, my philosophy is like, We’re not trying to tie you into one system, because we know that marketing systems will change over time. Like what’s effective now, or last couple of years has been a lot of Facebook ads, like a lot of people have been doing those right. But that’s that’s changing all the time. So before that it was Google pay per click, you know, so we sort of, I guess see ourselves just like The Switzerland of like your lead sources. So like you can connect anywhere to us. And we’re not, you know, we’re not really trying to sell your website and sell you all these marketing services. On top of that, what we’re really trying to help you with is the follow up. And make sure that like, you’re comparing those different marketing sources. So you can see which ones work, and then you know, invest more in those and that kind of thing. So that’s where I think we’re, you know, a bit different. And then also early on, we were one of the first companies to have an API. So, again, it’s like, it’s 2020 We’re like, of course, all software company should have API’s in 2011. No one had one, right. Even in like 2015. You know, some companies were starting to have them like Zillow and stuff like that. So you know, I guess like, that’s how that’s our thing is like, we can’t build everything. We know if we see a lot of the companies that try and like, even if you do it, even if you build this great solution, it’s very hard to as technology moves forward, like upgrades or parts of that You know what I mean? So I think there’s definitely like this specialization. That helps. We’re just trying to be really good with this and team up with the other companies, you know, that are really good at like, you know, DOD tracking reporting like you guys, and like, you know, lead generation, like a lot of other companies out there. So yeah, that’s sort of our approach where it’s a bit different to, I guess the only one type systems.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, definitely. I think that’s really interesting that you guys are like, go go generate leads however you want. We’re all about your follow up. So yeah, it’s it’s a big differentiator. So the industry is changing so much. I mean, we’ve gone from software companies trying to replace agents to agent those companies, hiring agents, and now we have COVID-19 and people doing buyer consults on zoom, just like you and I are right now. I mean, just the world changes. So fast. So as you were just saying, Where do you see real estate being? You know, in two years, four years, five years from now?
Daniel Corkill
Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I don’t know, I have really like a massive insight into the future. I’m actually going through a, like, we’re buying a house here in Austin at the moment. And, you know, I don’t see how I could do it without an agent, you know, like, I would have made so many stupid mistakes, like I would have overpaid for the property, I would probably would have bought the wrong property. I wouldn’t have known how to negotiate anything that’s like broken with the house, or like, you know, that could be repaired or whatever. Like, my time commitment, I think to like, you know, what I’ve put into this is probably like, between 10 and 20 hours, like if I was doing it by myself. I don’t know. It would be like 100 hours, 200 hours for it. Yeah, it is a full time job. So it’s like, I just sort of just going through it. I’m like, and I’m also using embedded software. Calm, which is like a tech enabled lender, I guess. And I can see how a lot of things they do are easier to move online. Whereas a one of the, you know, dealing with local vendors and inspectors and, you know, negotiating with other parties and stuff like that, it just seemed like that’s, this is fundamentally harder to move to, you know, to tech. And, you know, by the way, in Australia, real estate works very different, right, like, there’s no buyer’s agents in Australia. So, you know, a lot of the time you’ll just be putting in an offer directly with the selling agent or that the property will actually be selling at auction. So it’s a very different model. Which, you know, yeah, so surprising here, but like here, yeah, it’s just, I don’t know, like icon see a big shift to like, you know, these these transactions moving online or anything like that. Maybe that’s like 15 years down the road. It just seems like there’s so much complexity. too, to work out ahead of that. How about you like what? Is there some? Some thought you have on like the next couple of years?
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing I see is that I just think the way agents are getting paid is changing with a lot of these large companies now hiring employees as agents, they’re paying these agents salaries and trying to drive commissions down. And so, you know, I think Commission’s may be impacted. That’s probably the biggest thing I see possibly changing over the next few years. So that That being said, Dan, what, what is your focus as a business? I mean, where do you see your business being in three to five years? You see guys focused on different things are still continuing to just do what you do and do it better.
Daniel Corkill
Yeah, there’s definitely a big element of just trying to you know, do what we’re doing better. I think on the software side, that’s really what we’re trying to do. You know, on the company side, I think we’re trying to look at how we can best help our customers generate more wealth, so basically be more successful within their businesses. And I think a big part of that, for us is education. You know, so where we’re doing things now, like we brought in like a sales coach to help work with our customers on like, sales skills. He’s doing, like weekly coaching with them at the moment. Because I think there’s, you, we’ve got a lot of great technology, but a lot of the things teams struggle with is not just the technology piece, it’s like training their agents, it’s, you know, things like leadership, marketing, like all these, all these things is going to making a successful business or team. So that’s where I think we’re trying to really pop out education game, you know, bring in experts where we’re not the experts. And yeah, just provide more of that as a resource to our customers.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, I think that’s great. I mean, there are so many team owners now that are really powerful leaders. But they didn’t start there. They started as an agent, in most cases and moved into that position trying to struggle and figure out how do I become a business owner? How do I become a leader? How do I hire and train people? And so I think, I think that’s a great strategy. I, I think everybody in this space us included, we’re, we’re all somewhat forced to take on some of that role. Because it’s just, you know, people, people are constantly learning. That’s one of the things I love about this space. People are constantly learning, wanting to learn and grow. And so if you provide those services, definitely something that people are going to want to take advantage of. So are there any books that have been like a big had a big impact on you growing your business or on your life or in anything like that?
Daniel Corkill
Ah, I’ve got a bunch more behind me, I’m trying to think, really good ones. I mean, I guess I’ve just always, like I would say, a company, maybe that’s a lot of impact on us is Basecamp, which they provide a like project management software. They’re also self funded. So they, you know, that they’re sort of the cheerleaders a little bit against VC funding. Um, and so I, you know, I think I just read a lot influenced by some of their books, like they have a book on remote working, which our team is fully remote, that you know, they have a book on, like, writing that software and another one, I think, on just just how work can work a little bit better. That one’s called re work. So, a really like just influenced by some of the thinking, I think they’re very clear, like long term thinkers. But I mean, other than that, I mean, like, there’s lots of great sales books. Lots of great marketing books. I guess I just, you know, when I was kind of confused when I was younger, I was like, Why does everyone starting a business get into personal development like I was just Like, I was confused because like, but there is so much need to grow obviously as like, you know, a leader and those kind of things. So, I also like a lot of podcasts and you know, I liked it like, you know, this one, like you just interview people. And what I found is effective is like, let’s say I want to learn about marketing. Just go download, like the top three marketing things, listen to those for a long time. But then, you know, generally move on to learn to sign girls, right, like so it’s like, okay, now I know enough about that. Let me move on to the other thing I need to learn.
Brian Charlesworth
Podcasts are great, which is why I decided to start this. We I actually listen to a podcast every morning while I work out. So every morning, it’s like, Okay, what do I want to learn? who want to learn from
Daniel Corkill
which ones which ones do you listen to?
Brian Charlesworth
I’ve listened to so many. You know, from things in the industry to things outside of the industry to technology podcasts to SAS podcasts, After, you know, all of those, there’s there’s so much out there. And with the businesses changing so quickly, the world of business, especially SAS business, there’s so much to learn. I mean, if I if I have a problem, and I’m like, Okay, how are we going to overcome this scaling problem, right? Or, you know, the blitzscaling podcast, there’s just so much out there. So I just love that everything is readily available for us. And this podcast is really geared around most of our listeners are in the real estate space, but not all because it’s it’s uh, we’re really focused on the grit and what it takes to grow and build a business. I don’t care if you’re in real estate, or some other business. You’ve got to have that right.
Daniel Corkill
Oh, yeah. I love that. That’s the name of the podcast because like, honestly, like a lot of people ask me, well, how did you guys do it? And, you know, a lot of other people don’t write like, they don’t make it. And it’s like, it is perseverance. Like it’s grit. It’s like, it’s, there’s no real difference. Like, I don’t think I’m smarter than a lot of the other people that started businesses around the same time or anything like that. It’s, but I just said, like, No, I’m not gonna stop doing this until I get some results. And you know, I think it just applies to so many things and you’ve got to be mentally tough. You’ve got to, you’ve just got a no quit, basically.
Brian Charlesworth
Did you guys ever consider raising money?
Daniel Corkill
Not really, honestly. Because we, again, we were sort of heavily influenced by this base camp, like maybe they brainwashed us, like VCs are evil or whatever. Um, and then I think also at the time, like, we didn’t really no, like if we’d raised a million dollars, I didn’t I didn’t think I was really experienced enough to say like, Oh, great. I’m going to go build a sales team. And I’m going to go do this and that, so I just, I never thought this money is like the barrier. I feel, you know, now, like, the bit more experienced in business, I could probably invest that money wisely. But back then, like, I sort of thought the battery was more like, how do we build a great product, how do we, you know, how do we just look after our customers and you know, get more customers, and I just didn’t see like, money being the barrier to those things. I was kind of lucky that I had a technical co founder, because once we got development done for free, if you don’t have that, then you kind of need money, right? Like, it’s, you kind of need to either give up equity or have money. So yeah, you know, I think that’s, that’s also like, you know, in partnerships, I think you want people that are complimentary, like, if we were both business guys, it probably would not have worked out really, because we weren’t about to build the product. And we were both technical. You know, we would have had to work out sales and marketing and stuff. So yeah, I think, I don’t know. I think just look for a partner. Sometimes it makes it easier. Obviously, there’s some trade offs there because like, you know, it kind of has to work out a little punished thing. But um, you know, worked out well for us.
Brian Charlesworth
Yeah, I think it’s great. What about a favorite place? You’ve been all over the world. So what’s your favorite place where you’re Where do you want to go on vacation? Where do you want to end up living?
Daniel Corkill
Yeah, I get that question all the time. I mean, honestly, going back to Australia, that’s a really nice place. I think there’s a lot of great places in Europe. And I think in the US, I would love to just just visit more national parks, like, you know, there’s a lot of amazing national parks here that haven’t really had a chance to check out. Switzerland is a place that stands out in in Europe is kind of like pretty, pretty amazing. But there’s so many amazing places there.
Brian Charlesworth
Okay, awesome. And what about your personal time? What do you do in your personal time? What’s your favorite thing to do?
Daniel Corkill
Work nice. I’m just kidding.
Brian Charlesworth
No, you’re somewhat serious, though. Right? I mean, yeah, I think it’s funny because we say work but then people think you’re crazy. Because if someone’s working nine to five, job where they’re getting paid a salary to go in and work or getting paid hourly to go into work, you really look at work as a choice. But you just said that it came out right away, like, work is your hobby, that’s what you enjoy doing, which is why you’re able to be so successful and resourceful and find ways to get it done. And I just want to point that out. I think it’s great. So I know you’d like to do things in addition to work. So I’ll let you finish that statement.
Daniel Corkill
Yeah, I think, um, I think honestly, starting the business, a lot of it was just was work. And then I think sort of as we’ve evolved, like, kind of my job has changed a little bit from like, founder to CEO. You know, I do spend a lot of time when I’m not working, thinking about work, like thinking about, you know, challenges or opportunities and stuff. So it’s like, I think, yeah, I’ve sort of tried to train myself to switch off a bit. I don’t think I’m necessarily that that good at it. But yeah, I try and do things outside of that. I would like to go snowboarding a lot more like I’ve been one time this year. You know, that’s the kind of stuff I love. Travel. But again, it’s sort of I found it a bit harder to do with the business and sort of, you know, sort of just having more responsibility. So I think it’s I think that the sort of where we’ve gotten into as a business though now like we have a pretty good management team, we’re just sort of allowing that to like to step back a bit it’s like oh, crap, like I had to deal with that problem. Now we’ve got someone awesome that can deal with that problem. And they’re better than me at dealing with it as well. So yeah, just think snowboarding travel like that’s a lot of the stuff I like to do. You know, I play probably too many video games like that’s sometimes a way to, to think not think about anything else. But yeah, I think those are probably some of the main things.
Brian Charlesworth
Well, if you want to get out and snowboard next winter want to come to the national parks in Utah. We’ve got a lot of great ones here. As well as Yellowstone is not not too far away from here either. So just let me know if you want to get out and see some of the world I’d love to get out with you. All right. So anyway, thanks so much for your time today, Dan. It’s it’s really enjoyed spending time with you. We’re look, we have a lot of common customers with you guys. We love working with you and I look forward to doing even more of that in the coming years. And for for those of you who are listeners and want to get a hold of Dan, Dan, what’s the best way to get ahold of you?
Daniel Corkill
Um, my emails is Dan@followupboss.com. You could also just go to our website and message or call us there, but um, yeah, just Dan@followupboss.com
Brian Charlesworth
Okay. Simple enough. Thanks for listening, everyone, and we’ll catch you next week. All right. Thanks again, Dan.
Daniel Corkill
Thanks, Brian.