Meeting Title: Brainforge x Layerlines Lead Gen Discussion Date: 2026-02-12 Meeting participants: johnmeany, Luke Scorziell
WEBVTT
1 00:01:57.240 ⇒ 00:01:58.850 Luke Scorziell: Hey, Jake, how’s it going?
2 00:01:59.130 ⇒ 00:02:00.700 johnmeany: Hey, Luke, how goes it?
3 00:02:01.070 ⇒ 00:02:04.989 Luke Scorziell: Good. I’m back from a…
4 00:02:05.320 ⇒ 00:02:07.640 Luke Scorziell: A little walk. How are you doing?
5 00:02:07.640 ⇒ 00:02:13.470 johnmeany: Nice, good, good. I’ve got some bandwidth issues, so I gotta do cameras off for this one.
6 00:02:13.740 ⇒ 00:02:16.130 Luke Scorziell: Okay, yeah, I can… I can shut mine off, see how it goes.
7 00:02:16.400 ⇒ 00:02:19.760 johnmeany: Yeah, yeah, it’ll stop you from being in robot voice.
8 00:02:20.010 ⇒ 00:02:27.510 Luke Scorziell: That sounds good. Yeah, I’m always… I was having some issues this morning with someone on the camera, and it was like…
9 00:02:28.250 ⇒ 00:02:36.090 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, it’s just a weird aspect of Zoom World where you just look at either someone’s profile photo or their name.
10 00:02:36.090 ⇒ 00:02:38.399 johnmeany: Yeah, you know, the…
11 00:02:38.610 ⇒ 00:02:45.489 johnmeany: boomer joke I have is if you don’t have an error in your video meetings, you don’t have enough video meetings in the day.
12 00:02:45.800 ⇒ 00:02:52.110 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, no, that’s a good one. So… Yeah.
13 00:02:52.330 ⇒ 00:02:55.219 Luke Scorziell: Are you… and where are you now? Are you still in LA? Or…
14 00:02:55.290 ⇒ 00:03:02.900 johnmeany: Still in LA. I’ve been… moved around a little bit, but I’ve been back here for about, 6 years.
15 00:03:03.280 ⇒ 00:03:06.060 Luke Scorziell: Oh, wow, okay. Where… where in LA are you?
16 00:03:06.340 ⇒ 00:03:07.509 johnmeany: West Hollywood?
17 00:03:08.000 ⇒ 00:03:11.179 Luke Scorziell: Oh, nice, okay. I’m out in, Culver City.
18 00:03:11.450 ⇒ 00:03:14.269 johnmeany: Oh, oh, wow, we’re really close to each other.
19 00:03:14.270 ⇒ 00:03:17.349 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, that’s funny, I didn’t even realize that. They were, like, super close.
20 00:03:17.630 ⇒ 00:03:21.950 Luke Scorziell: Although, I feel like West Hollywood is another city for me.
21 00:03:21.950 ⇒ 00:03:30.170 johnmeany: You know, LA is really… it’s like the Italian city-states of the 14th century. It’s just 14 cities that are all bunched together.
22 00:03:31.640 ⇒ 00:03:39.859 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah, it’s insane. I mean, I have friends that live in, like, Pasadena, Alhambra, and it’s like, they might as well live in another state.
23 00:03:40.210 ⇒ 00:03:40.990 johnmeany: Oh, yeah.
24 00:03:40.990 ⇒ 00:03:41.699 Luke Scorziell: Never see them.
25 00:03:42.100 ⇒ 00:03:53.660 johnmeany: once people went to the west side, you had a Viking funeral forum. Now, I mean, if people are in East Hollywood, I just admit I will see them once a year.
26 00:03:54.160 ⇒ 00:04:03.199 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s a crazy city, but it’s… that’s cool. And so, okay, you were at… we chatted, I think?
27 00:04:04.080 ⇒ 00:04:13.779 Luke Scorziell: 2 years ago, maybe 3 years ago? I think it was, like, right as I was graduating from USC. I guess that’s closer to 4 years ago now, which is kind of crazy.
28 00:04:14.140 ⇒ 00:04:25.600 johnmeany: I was doing, I was heading up a division at an agency, and I just got a little tired of the agency world, so I went back in-house, and now I started…
29 00:04:25.720 ⇒ 00:04:32.129 johnmeany: in the crypto AI space, and now I’m fully in just pure AI.
30 00:04:32.540 ⇒ 00:04:36.919 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, how has that been? Because I… you were doing, like, some Web3 stuff before, right, too?
31 00:04:36.920 ⇒ 00:04:44.429 johnmeany: Yeah, I’ve been doing… Web3 stuff for about 5 years. It’s good,
32 00:04:44.750 ⇒ 00:05:02.740 johnmeany: this reminds me very much of the inflection point in 2017 in Web3. We’ve got a lot of hype, not every product is ready to go, but people are still promoting it. But, unlike some of the clients I worked with in projects.
33 00:05:02.740 ⇒ 00:05:10.569 johnmeany: at least there’s something shippable. It’s not hyping up a token to build exit liquidity for founders.
34 00:05:11.160 ⇒ 00:05:12.790 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah.
35 00:05:13.280 ⇒ 00:05:19.440 Luke Scorziell: Well, because you’re doing mostly… it looked like LaraLens is doing mostly, like, evals, right, at this?
36 00:05:19.440 ⇒ 00:05:28.469 johnmeany: Yeah, we’re the evaluation layer for agents, AI workflows, you know, our revenue is B2B.
37 00:05:28.630 ⇒ 00:05:43.949 johnmeany: But, we do have a user platform, and we’re moving into dev outreach in the future, and possibly have a token for that ecosystem, but, you know, the world does not need another token launch with market conditions.
38 00:05:44.230 ⇒ 00:05:52.270 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, so you’re kind of feeling like the AI thing is reminiscent of 2017,
39 00:05:53.480 ⇒ 00:05:58.869 Luke Scorziell: I guess the Web3 coin, all that, like, crypto, whatever.
40 00:05:59.060 ⇒ 00:06:07.739 johnmeany: From a marketing perspective, like, when I started my crypto journey in 2017, everything I knew about digital marketing
41 00:06:07.740 ⇒ 00:06:30.449 johnmeany: was changed. And our ads worked, and they had never worked… they hadn’t worked for, you know, 6 years. It was all influencer-based. You could do organic growth on platforms. Twitter was the main platform, and Telegram, rather than the emerging platforms of Instagram and Facebook. I’m feeling the same thing is happening now, in which you’re seeing
42 00:06:30.910 ⇒ 00:06:47.229 johnmeany: Some channels are being developed, there’s a lot of influencer influence, and there are clearly top competitors in each space, but the ground’s pretty open, and also, there’s such a rush to get out new marketing.
43 00:06:47.230 ⇒ 00:07:09.490 johnmeany: assets, and people are, in my opinion, overusing AI tools, and so there is just a flood of terrible content, terrible ideas. People are clearly not having human in the loop for what their marketing programs look like, so everyone looks the same. I was just actually at an AI conference in San Francisco.
44 00:07:09.490 ⇒ 00:07:22.649 johnmeany: And all the beginners had obvious AI slop on them, and I just thought, come on, you’re spending $30K for a booth, and you won’t spend 3 hours to get some real copywriting in?
45 00:07:23.020 ⇒ 00:07:23.740 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
46 00:07:24.630 ⇒ 00:07:30.570 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I’m kind of finding the same thing, because we’re, like, pretty AI-native, so it’s easy for us to just
47 00:07:30.930 ⇒ 00:07:32.000 Luke Scorziell: Create…
48 00:07:33.200 ⇒ 00:07:41.919 Luke Scorziell: thought leadership and stuff that is, like, from the founder, like, founder’s conversations and stuff like that, but I think for me, it’s, like, if you just…
49 00:07:42.360 ⇒ 00:07:48.139 Luke Scorziell: Take the extra 5, 10, 15 minutes, you can up a piece of content from being, like.
50 00:07:48.780 ⇒ 00:07:54.579 Luke Scorziell: Okay to, like, actually something thoughtful that resonates with humans, so…
51 00:07:54.820 ⇒ 00:08:01.829 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, and it’s a tough balance, because everyone… everyone’s moving so quickly, it’s like… Volume is…
52 00:08:02.350 ⇒ 00:08:06.600 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, it seems like a quantity game to some degree.
53 00:08:06.760 ⇒ 00:08:09.640 johnmeany: It is a quantity game to some degree, but I…
54 00:08:09.660 ⇒ 00:08:29.599 johnmeany: the people I know and where I found the most value, and I’d be curious your thoughts on it, is… it’s like the movie Limitless. If you are a good writer, then you can use AI as a great distribution tool and know what to identify. If you weren’t a good writer, a good marketer, you’re too susceptible.
55 00:08:29.600 ⇒ 00:08:30.810 johnmeany: to…
56 00:08:31.100 ⇒ 00:08:48.119 johnmeany: the agreement patterns of Frontier LLMs to putting things out to get things out. Like, I know that Brainforge does a lot of lead gen, which leads to, of course, you know, nurture campaigns, direct contact. I don’t know about you, but I get about 50 LinkedIn
57 00:08:48.120 ⇒ 00:09:00.040 johnmeany: messages a day that are just AI slop trying to do sales, and I’d say 10 of them I might actually reach out to, but I’m really turned off by their nurture campaigns.
58 00:09:01.870 ⇒ 00:09:07.199 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, we… so I… I… I guess, context, too. So then I came in…
59 00:09:08.040 ⇒ 00:09:13.000 Luke Scorziell: December, and was doing some consulting for Brainforge,
60 00:09:13.360 ⇒ 00:09:20.099 Luke Scorziell: And I had just kind of been doing, like, small business marketing and running kind of my own business doing that,
61 00:09:20.480 ⇒ 00:09:26.790 Luke Scorziell: And… yeah, they just needed some help with the… their go-to-market, and then…
62 00:09:28.050 ⇒ 00:09:33.699 Luke Scorziell: So, but a lot of it up until that point has, yeah, been, like, direct, like, outreach to,
63 00:09:35.650 ⇒ 00:09:44.220 Luke Scorziell: people within, like, the founders’ networks, and then, like, trying to start campaigns, like, we’re working with a partner company right now on a product that
64 00:09:44.820 ⇒ 00:09:48.920 Luke Scorziell: Or, like, a service that can help, like, insurance agencies.
65 00:09:49.030 ⇒ 00:09:52.010 Luke Scorziell: And,
66 00:09:52.350 ⇒ 00:10:03.700 Luke Scorziell: like, with their intake process, it takes that process from, like, 20 hours to, like, 10, or, to, like, 1. And so, yeah, it’s been interesting, because I think we have…
67 00:10:04.090 ⇒ 00:10:10.739 Luke Scorziell: at times had, like, playbooks that we use for AI out… or maybe not as much AI outreach, I know we have, like, a
68 00:10:10.910 ⇒ 00:10:11.899 Luke Scorziell: We have a couple…
69 00:10:12.170 ⇒ 00:10:19.259 Luke Scorziell: just people that will send messages and stuff, but I’ve definitely found that the more personalized outreach
70 00:10:19.900 ⇒ 00:10:23.139 Luke Scorziell: And asking for, like, mutual interest has been, like, the most effective.
71 00:10:23.700 ⇒ 00:10:28.839 Luke Scorziell: but yeah, it’s… I mean, it’s hard, too, because I feel like LinkedIn has gone from
72 00:10:29.510 ⇒ 00:10:35.459 Luke Scorziell: having a bit higher quality a few years ago, too. It’s maybe still sorting through all the content.
73 00:10:35.620 ⇒ 00:10:37.510 Luke Scorziell: Let’s just getting dumped on it right now.
74 00:10:37.850 ⇒ 00:10:42.229 johnmeany: I see one more message that says, I fired my…
75 00:10:42.410 ⇒ 00:10:49.100 johnmeany: blank team, and use this playbook, comment, you know, deck or build, and you’ll be.
76 00:10:49.100 ⇒ 00:10:49.720 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
77 00:10:49.730 ⇒ 00:10:51.039 johnmeany: And I’m gonna go insane.
78 00:10:51.290 ⇒ 00:10:53.599 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, no, that’s crazy.
79 00:10:53.710 ⇒ 00:11:01.440 Luke Scorziell: So, well, how has Layerlines been? Are you guys… are you focused on, like, a vertical, or what are you building out for them? How is that…
80 00:11:01.440 ⇒ 00:11:12.329 johnmeany: Yeah, so right now, we’re focusing on SIs, and that’s been going really well with high touchpoint sales. We’re now… and part of where I want to chat with you about is
81 00:11:12.330 ⇒ 00:11:25.140 johnmeany: We… I’ve done a lot of lead gen, and I collapsed. It used to be a 14-point, campaign. We’ve brought it down to, 9 points now with, human…
82 00:11:25.210 ⇒ 00:11:28.369 johnmeany: Connection in 3 of those steps.
83 00:11:28.580 ⇒ 00:11:35.500 johnmeany: You know, the sales team is small, but… and it’s really focusing on whale accounts.
84 00:11:35.830 ⇒ 00:11:40.780 johnmeany: But, you know, in terms of lead gen for our self-sign-in, we’ve just…
85 00:11:41.020 ⇒ 00:11:55.030 johnmeany: I’ve gotten hundreds of leads, and nurture campaigns aren’t working, and the sales team needs a system that they don’t have to look at, because they’re working on whale deals, and so I was really interested
86 00:11:55.130 ⇒ 00:12:00.030 johnmeany: Especially a post you had a couple weeks ago that made me want to reach out, where you were talking about
87 00:12:00.220 ⇒ 00:12:19.820 johnmeany: lead scoring, and I think that’s really important, because if I can throw that in, that can help me prioritize a smaller sales team and say, okay, here are the F-tier ones you need to go and reach out to, here are the ones that we can have more automation, you know what I mean.
88 00:12:20.140 ⇒ 00:12:22.440 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah, yeah,
89 00:12:22.850 ⇒ 00:12:30.530 Luke Scorziell: No, I mean, I think… so, Uten just did a presentation, Uten’s one of the founders, and we just went through our entire
90 00:12:32.040 ⇒ 00:12:41.079 Luke Scorziell: like, sales motion, basically, and how we’ve used AI to do that. So I can definitely… I can send that along to you, too. And then, like.
91 00:12:41.250 ⇒ 00:12:42.500 Luke Scorziell: What do you think…
92 00:12:42.650 ⇒ 00:12:47.169 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, what was interesting about that post, or what, like, where do you feel like the main, like.
93 00:12:47.620 ⇒ 00:12:53.609 Luke Scorziell: Like, the pain point is just that, like, you’re, bDRs want to focus on
94 00:12:53.760 ⇒ 00:13:01.340 Luke Scorziell: just the main accounts, but then you still also need to be getting, like, mid-market type accounts, too? Or how does… like, what’s your strategy there?
95 00:13:01.570 ⇒ 00:13:18.400 johnmeany: you know, that reliance on… because most of the essays we’re talking to and in deals with are Fortune 200 companies, long cycles, with multiple stakeholders, and so while they will be fruitful, we need something to help supplement.
96 00:13:18.600 ⇒ 00:13:19.160 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
97 00:13:19.340 ⇒ 00:13:28.840 johnmeany: So, be able to show you a proof of concept of where things are working. The other thing is, just transparently, between you and me, I got old… I got old-school OCLC.
98 00:13:28.840 ⇒ 00:13:29.710 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
99 00:13:29.710 ⇒ 00:13:47.699 johnmeany: much what you’re describing, and I’m just seeing the AI space. Everyone’s using founder networks, and people are being brought in for their networks. Those networks are great for year one, then they tap the well, there’s no one else there, and now they’ve got to find new ones and new leads, but they’re using
100 00:13:47.700 ⇒ 00:14:00.130 johnmeany: old-school systems, like manually looking through LinkedIn to see if this is a good fit after I’ve used, you know, lead magnets, paid ads, Google searches to get primed ones.
101 00:14:00.130 ⇒ 00:14:04.280 johnmeany: And they are… they… because of the time involvement.
102 00:14:04.400 ⇒ 00:14:17.760 johnmeany: I think I’ll just ignore it and say, well, this will lead to, you know, my quota for the quarter, so I’m going to focus on one client rather than doing this because it’s too much manual overview.
103 00:14:18.950 ⇒ 00:14:23.620 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, huh, interesting. I mean, that makes sense. So, is it…
104 00:14:24.580 ⇒ 00:14:29.710 Luke Scorziell: It’s… where is your sales team? Are they… is it local? Are they all in one room, or is it just…
105 00:14:29.920 ⇒ 00:14:47.320 johnmeany: We got one that’s based in India, one on the East Coast, and then we have our head of sales that’s in San Francisco. Yeah, we’re trying to expand upon it. At this point, I’m getting into sales calls and doing a bunch of pitching myself.
106 00:14:47.320 ⇒ 00:14:57.820 johnmeany: just to do it, we’re gonna double and then triple over the next couple of quarters, but before that happens, I want us… because, you know, early-stage startup, we have to…
107 00:14:57.820 ⇒ 00:15:14.439 johnmeany: be very judicious with our spending is how can we be smart about our automation in this, so we can either turn off our lead generation vendor, we can get through these faster, I can have them
108 00:15:14.440 ⇒ 00:15:22.929 johnmeany: Know which ones they have to directly pick up the phone, or directly outreach for, versus just throw that in an automatic nurture campaign.
109 00:15:22.930 ⇒ 00:15:30.330 johnmeany: It’s the classic, I got a lot of leads, and they’re getting zombified, rather than built upon.
110 00:15:30.840 ⇒ 00:15:37.230 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah, exactly, that’s… totally. And what, are you…
111 00:15:37.450 ⇒ 00:15:42.419 Luke Scorziell: like, do you need, like, a… well, a couple questions, I guess. One would be, like, I’m curious.
112 00:15:42.790 ⇒ 00:15:56.559 Luke Scorziell: what kind of lead scoring system would be, like, helpful for you, or just, like, what the criteria would be, that you’re looking at? Like, do you have ICPs that you’re working with? Is it kind of per campaign, or is it based on signals that they’re sending out?
113 00:15:56.810 ⇒ 00:16:04.420 johnmeany: It’s ICPs, you know, some are signal-based. I’ve actually created our scoring rubric for it.
114 00:16:04.420 ⇒ 00:16:07.590 Luke Scorziell: Oh, nice. Kind of debate, going back to debate.
115 00:16:08.070 ⇒ 00:16:15.020 johnmeany: Yeah, and so you gotta have a rubric for it in order to do it, but I want something that’s automated, the classic…
116 00:16:15.250 ⇒ 00:16:27.720 johnmeany: you hurry up and wait at a startup, because those things are done, work is spent, and then I check two weeks later, nothing’s been filled out, nothing’s been done, our CRM is looking…
117 00:16:27.830 ⇒ 00:16:36.130 johnmeany: pretty manual-based, and the team is still using Google Sheets to organize that then have to get imported into our CRM.
118 00:16:36.470 ⇒ 00:16:38.400 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, what are you using for a CRM?
119 00:16:38.660 ⇒ 00:16:39.410 johnmeany: I drive.
120 00:16:40.240 ⇒ 00:16:41.810 Luke Scorziell: Okay.
121 00:16:44.020 ⇒ 00:16:46.160 johnmeany: It’s okay. It’s not HubSpot.
122 00:16:46.920 ⇒ 00:16:53.499 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah. And what… do you know, like, I guess, budget-wise, what… what you guys are typically looking at for?
123 00:16:53.910 ⇒ 00:16:57.150 Luke Scorziell: Later, like, I don’t know, like, what is the value, I guess, here for you?
124 00:16:57.680 ⇒ 00:17:07.949 johnmeany: Yeah, the value is, you know, our deals are structured around averaging $80K for what we’re looking for for midterm, and so…
125 00:17:08.109 ⇒ 00:17:18.619 johnmeany: So, to hit our, revenue targets per quarter, if we got between, 5 to 7,
126 00:17:18.690 ⇒ 00:17:34.019 johnmeany: deals done within a quarter, that would be the necessary part that is missing from the higher-end ticket items. And so, in terms of budget, it would depend upon
127 00:17:34.130 ⇒ 00:17:47.980 johnmeany: what the tool is, how holistic it is, what it incorporates into, and so I got, like, a little bit of a look at Brainforge, but I haven’t deep-dived too much into it. You know, if it’s more… send me the slide deck, but it…
128 00:17:47.990 ⇒ 00:18:01.730 johnmeany: My understanding is it’s just a lead scoring system that automates it through LinkedIn, allowing, you know, BDRs to then be able to know targeting. Is there anything else I’m missing on the feature list?
129 00:18:02.100 ⇒ 00:18:05.520 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I mean, so, I guess…
130 00:18:06.640 ⇒ 00:18:09.389 Luke Scorziell: With… yeah, with us, the,
131 00:18:11.060 ⇒ 00:18:17.469 Luke Scorziell: I would… we’re, like, less of a… you know, it’s probably less of a product, and more of just, like, we can come in and…
132 00:18:18.050 ⇒ 00:18:27.370 Luke Scorziell: do a quick audit, like, a couple weeks, and see what’s, like, what you need. And that’s… and then… and then we can build out
133 00:18:27.580 ⇒ 00:18:35.159 Luke Scorziell: you know, like, some kind of system, whether it’s AI or… and built into Pipedrive, too, that then we can…
134 00:18:35.380 ⇒ 00:18:44.369 Luke Scorziell: help them implement for you. So really, it’s like, like, the thing that we’re finding is just that we can ship, like, so fast with AI.
135 00:18:44.600 ⇒ 00:18:49.580 Luke Scorziell: And we have… we’re kind of, like, the data…
136 00:18:50.070 ⇒ 00:19:04.779 Luke Scorziell: like, foundationally a data company with a lot of data engineers who know just how things need to be structured and organized and whatnot, but then on top of that, then we have the AI, team that’s able to build some of these custom stuff. So all the things that we have internally,
137 00:19:05.660 ⇒ 00:19:16.949 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, we’ve, like, we just kind of build custom for what… what you need. So, with the lead… yeah, like, I don’t know if it’d be helpful, maybe, to… I could send you the demo video that we have,
138 00:19:17.310 ⇒ 00:19:20.850 johnmeany: Or if you’d want to hop on, like, another call, too, with one of our…
139 00:19:20.930 ⇒ 00:19:25.509 Luke Scorziell: Like, sales engineers, or I can get one of our founders on.
140 00:19:26.980 ⇒ 00:19:35.100 johnmeany: Let’s do this in steps for it. Let me, share it with the leadership team, because we want to off-board
141 00:19:35.100 ⇒ 00:19:50.269 johnmeany: our lead gen agency anyways, and so… but we need to have a fit, so if you send me the demo, the deck with, case studies, or any case studies that you can reference, that slide deck you mentioned earlier that the founders did, that gives…
142 00:19:50.270 ⇒ 00:19:54.360 johnmeany: A first step to then gain… do a temperature check.
143 00:19:54.690 ⇒ 00:20:09.850 johnmeany: questions, and then determine if this is something that can be answered through some async, through email, or we can hop on, do a little bit of a walkthrough. We can give you some of our pain points to make sure it’s structured based around what we’re looking for.
144 00:20:10.230 ⇒ 00:20:13.270 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, okay, and…
145 00:20:13.610 ⇒ 00:20:23.179 Luke Scorziell: What… so, I mean, we’re posting a lot, but with the… was… was… do you remember the specifics of the post that you had seen? Was it from my…
146 00:20:23.180 ⇒ 00:20:30.429 johnmeany: along the lines of, I was able to go through and qualify leads on LinkedIn in less than an hour.
147 00:20:31.210 ⇒ 00:20:33.130 Luke Scorziell: okay.
148 00:20:35.040 ⇒ 00:20:44.979 johnmeany: I mean, I can give you, because you’re really talking about a data service desk consultancy business focusing on sales cycles, I can just list to you what the pain points are right now.
149 00:20:45.800 ⇒ 00:20:46.930 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, that’d be…
150 00:20:47.170 ⇒ 00:20:51.730 johnmeany: Yeah, one, ability to… Automate.
151 00:20:54.850 ⇒ 00:21:08.290 johnmeany: Ranking for leads that we generate. Second, ability to generate leads that we can move to an… from an external vendor to an internal tool.
152 00:21:08.910 ⇒ 00:21:16.550 johnmeany: Third, something that integrates, both automatic nurture campaigns and,
153 00:21:16.890 ⇒ 00:21:27.309 johnmeany: human in the loop and automatic, campaigns to follow up with them. You know, something that I heard in a pitch recently was an AI
154 00:21:27.370 ⇒ 00:21:37.590 johnmeany: sales agent that does all those interactions, wasn’t really happy with how the output looked, but something that supports the sales team and really has them focus on
155 00:21:37.670 ⇒ 00:21:47.969 johnmeany: When people are qualified, they’re ready to start talking about a demo, and also the ones that need, automation, and also something that
156 00:21:48.140 ⇒ 00:22:05.329 johnmeany: solves for our sales team and turns our CRM, which is basically just a contact list, into a full sales cycle, like you would see at any other, you know, SaaS organization with deal cycles, where…
157 00:22:05.440 ⇒ 00:22:21.379 johnmeany: they’re at, ranking scores, reasons why they’re lost, it’s just too much manual work for our team to do now, and I am about two steps from just Claude coding it, but it’s something that is not really in my bandwidth right now.
158 00:22:21.630 ⇒ 00:22:26.400 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, no, this is… I mean, this is a… Well, we’re seeing…
159 00:22:26.540 ⇒ 00:22:33.910 Luke Scorziell: Internally, too, so we just built out a whole GitHub repository, knowledge base, within…
160 00:22:34.720 ⇒ 00:22:45.820 Luke Scorziell: our… so then we layer a cursor on top of… so I’m learning how to use it all, like, I’m like, I don’t even know what it… didn’t even know what a repository was until fairly recently.
161 00:22:45.900 ⇒ 00:22:58.079 Luke Scorziell: And but how we’re using that is, like, we have all of our ICP profiles in it, we have agents that can automatically, like… Oh, that was probably the post, too, that I used. I went through and,
162 00:22:58.720 ⇒ 00:23:02.050 Luke Scorziell: I, I had the, the,
163 00:23:02.210 ⇒ 00:23:06.140 Luke Scorziell: the knowledge base that we have with our ICPs go through and rank each
164 00:23:06.290 ⇒ 00:23:10.249 Luke Scorziell: Each person on a list of people that had viewed our profiles,
165 00:23:10.480 ⇒ 00:23:25.370 Luke Scorziell: on… on LinkedIn, and then it evaluated, like, which ones were good fits based on, like, that specific campaign ICP, and which ones were not. And the whole thing was… yeah, it was all agentic, so… But then, the nice thing is, too, like.
166 00:23:25.520 ⇒ 00:23:33.260 Luke Scorziell: And I’m sure this is kind of what we already talked about at the beginning of the conversation, is like, no one likes getting the AI slop, like.
167 00:23:33.750 ⇒ 00:23:37.949 Luke Scorziell: response or, like, outreach, like, it’s very clear when that’s the case.
168 00:23:37.950 ⇒ 00:23:43.749 johnmeany: But more what this is doing is it’s empowering, like, our sales team with the information that they need to know, like.
169 00:23:43.830 ⇒ 00:23:46.020 Luke Scorziell: Oh, this is a good,
170 00:23:46.880 ⇒ 00:23:52.630 Luke Scorziell: This is a good person to reach out to, and we should prioritize them, or… Oh, this action…
171 00:23:55.600 ⇒ 00:23:56.759 Luke Scorziell: Figure out if we’re…
172 00:23:58.310 ⇒ 00:23:58.790 johnmeany: Nope.
173 00:23:58.790 ⇒ 00:24:00.459 Luke Scorziell: Vertical, or…
174 00:24:02.990 ⇒ 00:24:03.710 johnmeany: Hello?
175 00:24:06.970 ⇒ 00:24:07.570 johnmeany: Just…
176 00:24:07.570 ⇒ 00:24:12.769 Luke Scorziell: kind of stay broad, you know, like, we’re doing, like, marketing departments and talking with people about.
177 00:25:05.530 ⇒ 00:25:06.460 johnmeany: Hello?
178 00:25:06.970 ⇒ 00:25:08.480 johnmeany: Oh, Alasia!
179 00:25:21.000 ⇒ 00:25:22.200 Luke Scorziell: Hey, Jake, can you hear me?
180 00:25:22.410 ⇒ 00:25:23.470 johnmeany: Yeah, I can hear you now.
181 00:25:23.470 ⇒ 00:25:27.150 Luke Scorziell: Okay, sorry, I don’t know my… Computer just dropped the…
182 00:25:28.010 ⇒ 00:25:32.109 Luke Scorziell: Call. Did you… how much of that did you hear, or was I just talking.
183 00:25:32.110 ⇒ 00:25:39.830 johnmeany: I lost the last about 2 minutes. The thing that I last heard was, this is something we’ve heard from a lot of teams.
184 00:25:40.340 ⇒ 00:25:44.580 Luke Scorziell: Oh, okay. So, pretty much the whole spiel, I think. Basically.
185 00:25:45.020 ⇒ 00:25:50.400 Luke Scorziell: What… what we built out is, a knowledge base within
186 00:25:50.810 ⇒ 00:26:05.950 Luke Scorziell: our company that has, like, our ICPs, our different campaigns that we’re running, and… and then has a specific agent that is, like, has a whole, like, instruction sheet, I guess, on how to
187 00:26:06.140 ⇒ 00:26:09.549 Luke Scorziell: Evaluate, and so what we can do then is,
188 00:26:09.880 ⇒ 00:26:28.029 Luke Scorziell: like, since we’re working with a lot of different ICPs and a lot of different verticals at companies, so, like, we’ve done work with, like, we’re doing, like, performance marketing, and… but then we’re also working with, like, data analytics teams on their, like, DBT, and… and data infrastructure, and so it’s just, like, a lot, I think, for our team to…
189 00:26:28.220 ⇒ 00:26:40.900 Luke Scorziell: To grasp, and so it’s been helping us learn quicker, like, how to, like, qualify leads versus, like, is this someone that we need to spend a lot of time on, or can we just skip?
190 00:26:41.140 ⇒ 00:26:45.829 Luke Scorziell: And then if it is someone that we want to spend a lot of time on, then we can kind of flag it to…
191 00:26:46.030 ⇒ 00:26:49.130 Luke Scorziell: Are, like, one of the founders, or,
192 00:26:49.800 ⇒ 00:26:54.410 Luke Scorziell: And then do, like, a more personalized outreach campaign, because we’re looking to do, like.
193 00:26:54.710 ⇒ 00:27:00.199 Luke Scorziell: Fewer in quantity, and more high-quality leads, and so…
194 00:27:00.600 ⇒ 00:27:06.370 Luke Scorziell: But again, it’s like, you gotta work with what you have. So having this knowledge base, and then using cursor on top of it.
195 00:27:06.550 ⇒ 00:27:07.939 Luke Scorziell: I think has made it, like…
196 00:27:08.280 ⇒ 00:27:13.609 Luke Scorziell: yeah, I was able to qualify that list of people, I think, within… it was, like, 30 or 40 people, and…
197 00:27:13.850 ⇒ 00:27:18.920 Luke Scorziell: I just put it through that, and it qualified it, and like, A few minutes.
198 00:27:19.070 ⇒ 00:27:36.109 johnmeany: So, let me ask you this. It sounds like these are bespoken solutions, depending on the clients you’re talking to, and that the pricing model, without getting the specific pricing, is generally consultation, setup of system, subscription fee after that.
199 00:27:38.110 ⇒ 00:27:43.310 Luke Scorziell: Like… I don’t think we typically…
200 00:27:43.750 ⇒ 00:27:57.110 Luke Scorziell: I mean, if… if whatever platform you… we implement for you has a subscription fee, then I guess you would pay that, but, yeah, we would come in and do kind of an audit, or di… and diagnose, like, your pain points.
201 00:27:57.280 ⇒ 00:27:59.190 Luke Scorziell: And then,
202 00:27:59.410 ⇒ 00:28:02.739 Luke Scorziell: like, a lot of the stuff, I was just talking to one of our engineers, we can build
203 00:28:03.420 ⇒ 00:28:08.480 Luke Scorziell: In, like, two to three weeks, to get… to get you just, like, a first, like, here’s…
204 00:28:08.610 ⇒ 00:28:16.830 Luke Scorziell: here’s something that’s working, that’s solving some of your problems, and then obviously we can keep building off of that. And so, it’s mostly just,
205 00:28:17.040 ⇒ 00:28:19.920 Luke Scorziell: We typically do, like, monthly retainer,
206 00:28:20.100 ⇒ 00:28:24.610 Luke Scorziell: And within that, there’s, like, a set amount of hours that you get with the engineers, and that…
207 00:28:24.850 ⇒ 00:28:33.590 Luke Scorziell: And then… but it’s pretty… Yeah, so.
208 00:28:36.060 ⇒ 00:28:54.229 johnmeany: That makes sense. Let me ask you this. We focus a lot about what Brainforge does. What is it clear on the bright line of what Brainforge doesn’t do? Or is in the process of, we don’t do this now, but you said always tinkering, this is on the horizon?
209 00:28:55.700 ⇒ 00:29:00.519 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I mean, I think we don’t… like, for us, a lot of it really just comes down to…
210 00:29:01.380 ⇒ 00:29:07.230 Luke Scorziell: That’s a great question. Like, the data layer,
211 00:29:09.180 ⇒ 00:29:10.840 Luke Scorziell: That’s not even getting at it.
212 00:29:11.030 ⇒ 00:29:18.470 Luke Scorziell: just let my, founder, too, know about what you were thinking, so I could get some perspective on him. But then, yeah, I think…
213 00:29:18.720 ⇒ 00:29:38.239 johnmeany: You know, we’ll just… this is the start of a conversation, by the way, it’s good to see that you’re crushing it, and we’ll continue talking just generally, because I’d love to pick your brain about AI, and I can share my AI stuff. But yeah, if you don’t have an answer or just want to take some time to do that, you know, it’s really when we’re thinking about budget, the context for it is.
214 00:29:38.630 ⇒ 00:29:44.049 johnmeany: okay, if this does X, Y, and Z, but doesn’t do, you know.
215 00:29:44.050 ⇒ 00:30:01.780 johnmeany: gamma, where do we then fit into our stack that gamma fit? And if what it’s saying is it’s bespoken, it really depends on things, then, you know, probably the next step would be having a conversation in which I bring in the head of sales, we describe what’s going on, maybe our go-to-market
216 00:30:01.860 ⇒ 00:30:15.320 johnmeany: Strategy lead, as well, and sort of lay it out, and then we can figure out where help can happen, and where these might be, yeah, this isn’t really what we do, and a fit for it, but it could potentially work.
217 00:30:15.730 ⇒ 00:30:26.129 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I mean, I think what we’re best at, and this is, like, not to be, like, the, oh, we can do it, but it’s just, like, if you guys bring whatever problems you’re having, we have a really smart team.
218 00:30:26.240 ⇒ 00:30:33.099 Luke Scorziell: That, like, is very solution-oriented, and so that’s kind of where we come in, and it’s making sure that we’re doing things
219 00:30:33.220 ⇒ 00:30:38.230 Luke Scorziell: like, right from the ground up, and that’s, I think, where it’s helpful to have Like, we have…
220 00:30:38.480 ⇒ 00:30:49.039 Luke Scorziell: developers and data engineers and people that really understand how the technology works. Like, I… I build my own AI tools and solutions at times and whatever, and it’s just, like.
221 00:30:49.080 ⇒ 00:31:03.159 Luke Scorziell: helpful for my workflows, probably maybe similar to if you were to, like, hop on with Cloud Code, like, I love Levable, I’ve used it to create, like, lead magnets and stuff, but, like, I don’t… I don’t trust myself personally to do, like, the… the deep…
222 00:31:03.330 ⇒ 00:31:18.460 Luke Scorziell: like, layered stuff that our team is doing, so that’s, I think, kind of the big, like, value proposition that we’re seeing, is that we have, like, really smart engineers who are able to ask questions and understand, like, your needs and problems, and then
223 00:31:18.640 ⇒ 00:31:22.880 Luke Scorziell: Build solutions based on that, so… Yeah, I can,
224 00:31:23.940 ⇒ 00:31:29.009 Luke Scorziell: I can go through and I’ll kind of use our call and see,
225 00:31:30.700 ⇒ 00:31:34.420 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, what I could send over your way that would be helpful.
226 00:31:34.620 ⇒ 00:31:44.490 johnmeany: And that can be the start of the email chain. I’ll add in, you know, people from our side on it, and then it definitely sounds like because of…
227 00:31:44.670 ⇒ 00:31:45.770 johnmeany: the…
228 00:31:47.000 ⇒ 00:32:05.499 johnmeany: fungibility of it that we should probably have a follow-up call. I’m gonna have to check, there’s a lot of conferences coming up, maybe end of next week, for us to organize, see where things are at, be able to describe it to you, get some more info there, and then, see next steps.
229 00:32:05.810 ⇒ 00:32:09.829 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, that sounds good. And what… out of curiosity, too, at the,
230 00:32:10.410 ⇒ 00:32:15.050 Luke Scorziell: lead gen agency that you have right now, what is… what does the deal with them look like?
231 00:32:15.900 ⇒ 00:32:23.159 johnmeany: The deal with them is 4K retainer, and then we put in ad spend, and…
232 00:32:23.270 ⇒ 00:32:31.630 johnmeany: Now, because we’re geofenced to the US right now, because that’s where our best, our engineering team can develop, we are getting…
233 00:32:31.850 ⇒ 00:32:35.880 johnmeany: It’s around $1.20 a lead at this point.
234 00:32:36.160 ⇒ 00:32:36.940 Luke Scorziell: Huh.
235 00:32:38.250 ⇒ 00:32:38.920 Luke Scorziell: Cool.
236 00:32:39.160 ⇒ 00:32:42.040 Luke Scorziell: And alright, what kind of ads are you doing?
237 00:32:42.620 ⇒ 00:32:57.779 johnmeany: We’re doing Google, Search Pro Max, LinkedIn ads, and then we’re about to add in some modifications to it. Those are the only things that we’re running right now. Oh, and we just did… started a pilot program with Meta.
238 00:32:58.260 ⇒ 00:33:04.220 Luke Scorziell: Okay, cool. And yet, what’s the, ads fun look like.
239 00:33:05.020 ⇒ 00:33:06.620 johnmeany: It’s 10K.
240 00:33:07.110 ⇒ 00:33:07.720 Luke Scorziell: Okay.
241 00:33:08.040 ⇒ 00:33:11.250 Luke Scorziell: But,
242 00:33:13.010 ⇒ 00:33:20.749 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, well, let me chat with, Roberts, the one that kind of works more on our sales side of things, and then…
243 00:33:21.330 ⇒ 00:33:28.069 Luke Scorziell: yeah, I can set up, see if we can do a conversation, and then see. I think,
244 00:33:29.550 ⇒ 00:33:34.749 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, it would probably have been… Looking around, like.
245 00:33:34.860 ⇒ 00:33:38.559 Luke Scorziell: normally it ends up being, like, a 10-ishk retainer,
246 00:33:38.900 ⇒ 00:33:42.290 Luke Scorziell: But the… yeah, I think just,
247 00:33:43.510 ⇒ 00:33:51.250 Luke Scorziell: We can, like, we’re happy to see, so I think, yeah, I think continuing the conversation would be… would be good, and then just see kind of where it heads up… ends up.
248 00:33:51.250 ⇒ 00:34:05.850 johnmeany: Because this is only one element of what we do, so if there’s a holistic solution, obviously a larger retainer makes sense, and it, we are spending, you know, 14K for an incomplete solution. So…
249 00:34:05.900 ⇒ 00:34:25.139 johnmeany: that’s really what I’m looking for is, is there something that can provide it holistically, deal with all our pain points throughout the sales cycle from, you know, prospecting all the way down to closing deals in a way that organizes the team, and so we don’t have to, put bodies
250 00:34:25.480 ⇒ 00:34:36.419 johnmeany: In as much as efficiently organize the bodies we have now, and then we can lower our cost by having less salespeople join in a unified system.
251 00:34:37.120 ⇒ 00:34:41.169 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, for sure. I mean, are you guys getting, like, pretty…
252 00:34:42.170 ⇒ 00:34:48.150 Luke Scorziell: Is it more on the experience side with the salespeople, or are you hiring U.S.-based salespeople, I guess? I would assume it’s like…
253 00:34:48.620 ⇒ 00:35:11.089 johnmeany: You know, I’m so sure on where they are in the interview process. I know that they’re looking for people, some are going to be based in the US, some are going to be based, because a lot of our team has connections to India and India, and that’s another market that we are heading into. So, I can tell you that, you know, I know that
254 00:35:11.730 ⇒ 00:35:22.290 johnmeany: Based around where it would be for salaries, you know, if we could decrease our numbers by 50%, this thing pays for itself.
255 00:35:23.030 ⇒ 00:35:24.360 Luke Scorziell: Yeah. Cool.
256 00:35:24.490 ⇒ 00:35:25.420 Luke Scorziell: Hmm.
257 00:35:26.310 ⇒ 00:35:28.940 Luke Scorziell: Well, let me… yeah, I got it.
258 00:35:29.880 ⇒ 00:35:40.099 Luke Scorziell: hop off, hop, but let’s… yeah, I’ll shoot you an email, I’ll put together some stuff, and then we can try to meet again next week, and maybe I’ll see if Robert, can… can join in, too.
259 00:35:40.420 ⇒ 00:35:43.390 johnmeany: Awesome. Yeah, sounds good, I gotta jump too, so,
260 00:35:43.760 ⇒ 00:35:48.260 johnmeany: Best of luck with everything, send me over the info, and let’s keep this conversation going.
261 00:35:48.260 ⇒ 00:35:51.940 Luke Scorziell: Sweet! Yeah, looking forward to it. Thanks for reaching out. It’s fun to catch up, too.
262 00:35:51.940 ⇒ 00:35:54.099 johnmeany: Yeah, time to catch up. Alright, you have a good one.
263 00:35:54.100 ⇒ 00:35:55.850 Luke Scorziell: You too. Alright, talk to you later.
264 00:35:56.070 ⇒ 00:35:56.670 johnmeany: Bye.