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welcome to founder LED every episode
I talk to operators building real companies
to learn what's actually driving their growth
I'm Rohan founder at Frontier Content Studio
where we help business leaders
become the obvious choice in their market
through LinkedIn now let's get into it
welcome to founder LED
where we sit down with some of the sharpest founders
to learn what's working in their business today
today's guest is Joe Gagnon
co founder and CEO of Raynmaker
the first AI
native autonomous sales platform built for SMBs
Joe is a six time CEO ultra endurance athlete
an author of Living Intentionally
he's run six marathons on six continents in six days
which blows my mind
and has rebuilt his life after burnout in his thirties
Today Joe is building a platform
that doesn't just make sales teams
more effective it sells on their behalf autonomously
consistently and free from the constraints
that have shaped sales for decades
in this conversation we get
into what it means to build a category from scratch
and how intentional living
and company building are ultimately the same practice
Joe welcome to the show
Rohan thanks
oh my gosh always sort of intimidating
listening to those kinds of introductions
thank you I mean
you've lived many like quite a life so far
would love you know
give us kind of the two minute highlight reel
of what the earlier days were like
um you know
being a multiple time CEO
running these endurance races
to then burning out by the age of 30
what was that first you know
multiple chapters of your life
that LED you to writing the book
and what has it been like since then
yeah thanks Ryan
you know okay
as if we could have the perfect plan right
and I don't think any of us do
but I think it's a lot of
sort of the life experience
that if we are intentional and present
there's a lot of signals that we can
sort of pay attention to and so yeah
the the fast story
like I grew up in the Bronx
I went to school there eight years
I didn't start very
with much in my bank account or in my palmaris
got a job in the New York City mayor's office
and sort of ironically became a programmer
I didn't know what I was doing
um which then paid off many
many years later
so the early career was just like normal
average person making a few dollars a year
just struggling
and I found my way to somehow to Arnstein Young
and I spent 10 years there
I became a partner at 35 years old and I was on a tear
you know what I found was the more I worked
the better it worked I got successful
I was traveling 200 days a year
I was selling I was
you know on the fast track
the track everyone thought was great
was making a ton of money
got my BMW the big house
the country club the expense account
and after all that time like
you know
like it was I think I was turning 39 and I was like
wait a minute could this be it
like this is like
you're gonna watch reruns of this for the next 50 years
and I don't know if you work till you're 89
but it was like just felt overwhelmingly uninspiring
I'm like oh my god
and by the way am I any good
I just run teams of people
and so long story short
I decided to leave after 10 years
I walked away from the million dollar salary
and joined a startup five of us
um went fantastically well
we grew to 50 million
and took the company public in two years
and ironically ended up back in a big organization
I ended up at IBM running the global retail business
and so the crazy part was like I
I escaped and then I got right back into it
and so the way the world tells you the story is
this is sort of what the world expects of you
you know
to sort of be the important person making the money
going places but in fact
you yourself are sort of falling apart
you're one dimensional
you're actually really not that complete
I was asked to run a 5K I couldn't run a mile
you know there was a push up challenge
I couldn't do 10 push UPS
and I was like I'm a pathetic
you know example of a human here
I realized that I had lost my sense of humor
it was like everything was narrowing
as the world was sort of saying
oh my gosh this is working
so yeah I left again and went back to the startup world
which is now I've been for the last 20 years
which has a very different sort of energy system to it
um what I realized was that I needed to develop more
of me as a person so I did start doing daily exercise
I some point in the middle of it
I started writing every day
and the daily practices where my escape valve
you know
they were developing a broader sense of who I was
and what I was capable of
cause I thought I had made it
but really I don't know if that's making it
cause I don't think that represents
the full potential of what the human system can do okay
yeah you know
many folks in our audience are
are successful running their businesses
maybe dealing with the stress of company building
and these sort of things and you're kind of
you know you're still company building
but you've been kind of on the other side
and now you wrote the book on living intentionally
so what does living intentionally mean to you
yeah
I think that the foundation so if we just Mark that
you know when I was 39
one of the things I did
was to try and create an accountability
model for myself
so I started writing down what I did every day
because I
knew that the world wasn't gonna hold me accountable
it was only gonna be me
so first was this accountability perspective
and then later on it became purpose
and that's when the book shifted to this idea of like
it's not just about high performance
it's about purpose and when you have a purpose
you know which someone might say what's your why
you know what's your reason to be
the deeper that that goes into who you are
the more it sort of controls the way that you behave
right
and so the book says essentially define your purpose
you know then master the pillars of healthy living
you know understand the power of reflection
embrace discomfort show up better in your community
find meaning through suffering
understand the ripple effect of what you do
and create in your life
and then it's the endless journey that
how do I wanna show up so that the legacy that I live
leave excuse me
ends at being how I wanna live
and so it was many
many years of putting these practices in my life
that I thought I should make explicit
and put it into a book so that
maybe someone didn't have to go through the struggle
like I did over so many years
the thing that's really interesting for me is like
this idea of these two
both can be true is what I found out right
you can still make money be highly successful
but it can't be only right
it has to be that plus that
plus like a partner in a family
that plus you know
uh an athlete
that plus a writer like we can
there's 168 hours in the week
like let's be thoughtful about how we use our time
and when we are like I'm very rigorous in my time
and so then I create a lot more
you know the way that you wake up
what you do first thing in the morning
how you hold yourself accountable
what you commit to do in a day
like stop listening to what the world's telling you
what to do and start thinking about who you want to be
and then it gets more clear
and then the best part about it is
the changes that you make are easy to defend
cause they're connected to your purpose like
so I gave up drinking alcohol 20 years ago and
you know it doesn't matter if someone says to you
oh would you like a drink
like your answer is pretty clear right
is it tied to your purpose
and so it's like yeah
thank you I appreciate that
you never feel any peer pressure
cause you've chosen how to live yeah
you know we
we hear these terms you know
our purpose belief systems that we hold
like reprogramming to more expansive
more empowering stories that we tell ourselves
working in our zone of genius
um what would you say
like if you narrow down your purpose to
like a single statement that you can
you know you have on your wall
or what does your purpose look like
or what would that be
I think it's really important for the audience
to realize that that can evolve over your lifetime
right yeah
when you're 20 your purpose might be different than 40
might be different when you're 60 okay
but it isn't like some fixed idea
mine right now is
I'm building myself so I can help build others
so they can reach their potential
so it's not okay for me just to talk about what I knew
it's what I'm creating and what I'm going to create
I want to be an energy system for the people that I
support so in addition to running the company
I do a lot of coaching and it's not just life coaching
you know this is deep personal reflection
this is like so the question I often get is you know
like but it's hard you know
I'm like
I just think you have to really think about like
who is the person you wanna be
and who's responsible for you being that person
like sit with that question for a little while
and if you get to the right answer
which is only one answer
which is right you we are then how would you behave
like everyone thinks
I'm the most disciplined person in the world
and like I sure but that's not how I think
I am the person who I designed
and so that design needs that execution
so what I do is the same thing every day
I don't find it as boredom
I find it as mastery
if you want to become a master then do it every day
I've been writing 4,850 days in a row
I think I became a pretty good writer as a result
don't make any excuses
if you're gonna write every day you write every day
why wouldn't that be a priority
just like brushing your teeth you know
um I became an endurance athlete this year
I'll have run over up to I ninety nine times
I've run a Marathon or longer
you know but that's cause I run every day
58,000 miles over the past 20 years
you know if I wanted to
any of these things are about the discipline
of the activity because it connects to your purpose
because it's who you want to be
so it's really not that hard then
cause you're like look at yourself
is this who I wanna be and then you're like yeah
so then why would you negotiate with yourself stop
we're not negotiating with the world
by the way we gotta just close that up
look Rohan
if you offer me advice I wanna hear it right
but because you give me advice
doesn't mean that I need to do that
I want to consider that relative to purpose
and activity but the rest of it is really up to us
and so it's actually exciting every day
what I get to do
like I'm tell everyone I'm on vacation every day
like this is the greatest life you could ever have
like how could it get better
I don't know I guess
I could solve some world hunger problems
and other things like that too yeah
well it sounds like that again
that belief system
that purpose is just win behind your sales
and giving you this unending source of energy to
you know run these marathons
go to these different continents
but ultimately like build these companies
build these teams build your life in this
very energizing and sustainable way
so that's that's yeah
thanks for dropping that wisdom on us
um I wanna
I wanna like
kind of hear a bit about
what LED you to
the problem that you're solving right now
which is building autonomous sales agents
and ultimately that full sales cycle right through to
you know closing the deal
so talk a bit about that
problem that you identified in the market
and what are you really excited about building
around in that space yeah
I'm gonna lead in with two small comments
I think there are unlocks in our life
the first is your mindset
so once you use mindset to unlock your capability
your potential just starts to blossom
the second unlock is your health
because you need a strong platform
for everything else to sit on top of
and then the third unlock that I found out is AI
and this unlock is almost like none we've ever seen
right
this unlock is an ability for us to amplify who we are
in ways that all systems
to this point have not allowed us to amplify
cause this is about the cognitive
capability that we have amplified
and then the ability to act
which is what autonomy is
and so as I started to think about this
sort of three or four years ago
um I had been working
to bring sort of platforms to small business owners
the problem was they can't afford anything
that's really expensive they're not technical
so it needs to feel sort of very human like
and so the idea of like
the sales process was the one process
that has been basically ignored
people do a lot on marketing
they do a lot on CRM on the back end
but in the middle of that process
of actually converting a lead into a customer
is fraught with many many obstacles
the owner can't answer the phone
the person working there isn't good at what they know
I mean it just gets into this like
we don't want to talk to an 800 number or an IVR
and so we're like gosh
does this white space and now
what if we could bring this
combination of cognitive and autonomy together
to create an autonomous sales platform
so that means take the lead with a voice enabled AI
take that lead overcome any objection
ask for the sales schedule
the appointment take the payment
summarize the data for the CRM
all of it without a human
the human in the loop it's not really necessary
the human action becomes the obstacle
um we're not really that good at selling
and so we took many many years of selling experience
tens of thousands of phone calls
plus our AI experience together in this highly sort of
it's abstracted so you don't see it
but highly complicated agentic architecture
that allows the our favorite new interface
voice to actually get enabled in a way that the human
feels really good about it
cause they feel supported um
encouraged um
you know and ultimately
what we do is we convert better because of all of that
okay now
I know there's some really interesting behavior here
right like
it's great to have an agent help with ticketing
and the conversation and maybe the routing
and then eventually say
the human to handle that transaction
take the credit card information and all that
so what has been your experience both on the
the client side where
now you're handing that control over to an agent
to collect that sensitive information
and then also on the customer side
like are they do they know
and are they comfortable
that they're speaking to an agent
and giving their credit card information to that agent
yeah you know
we're all in early stages of this
but let me say that first
over 100 customers working on the platform
we've closed over $100,000 of sales autonomously
and what we're finding ultimately
the consumer just wants to be better served
that's all
they're not gonna worry about whether it's an agent
that's AI or an agent that's a person
they just want to be served when they want
when they need
we do have people who hang up and call back
we have people ask who if it's an AI
you know
the abandon rate is very low at the end of the day
and once they get into the conversation
usually about a minute or two into it
they sort of forget
cause they're now into their need state
and as long as the agent marks to that
which it does
then they keep asking the questions they want
now we've found some pretty wild stories like
you know 14 minute phone calls
people walk away from their phone
the AI knows how to stay in that conversation
for all that period of time
so at the end of the day
as we become more comfortable with the idea
we're going to see more and more adoption
as we prove that this actually works
ultimately better than the human would
on the other end of the phone
you would actually prefer to do that
so we're learning a lot about that human interaction
with the AI we modify and adapt as recursive learning
that helps it get better over time
and really at the end of the day
I'll repeat myself and say that
if you get the interaction
you want
the information you need to make a buying decision
then it sort of doesn't matter
as for the
confidentiality of any credit card information today
we actually send a stripe link to the person
so they can using PCI
enter an encrypted number
so that there's no compromise of that information
into the AI so we don't record any of that
that makes sense well yeah
when I think of you know
my own consumer experience
I would actually pay
and have a preference to not have to speak to a
human for many things right
whether it's paying a credit card Bill
or going into the bank or increasingly like
um more and more tasks that need to be done right
if they can just
and so the next natural evolution of that is
can I just have a machine
an intelligent machine
take over as much of that as possible
to take away this like mundane work that we have to do
so yeah that that makes a lot of sense
um
what businesses are best served
maybe 2 parter like
which businesses are you selling into now
that are most receptive to this
and what are the the metrics or the
the key kind of data points that they look at
to measure the success of this
yeah predominantly
so we actually have five buying archetypes
from the simplest of placing an order for something
all the way to what we would call a considered purchase
which is high risk
high information need in that category
that's when most people want to call right
they call
because they can't find the information on the website
or they need to be reassured
um and a lot of that relates
to things that are personal to us
like home related or personal related
so we have a lot of customers who are
you know maybe mowing your lawn
cleaning your windows cleaning your house
giving you some kind of home service
so those usually are very helpful to be able
to round out what the consumer needs
to be able to make a buying decision um
what those companies
are looking for is to lower the cost of acquisition
right so
you know it's cheaper if you use the AI
because we don't have the labor involved
and then to improve the conversion rates
so you get the better conversion rates of lead to sale
by both being able to overcome objections
as well as sort of handle the
sort of the emotional nature of a conversation
so the learning system
and the cognitive nature of the system
allow us to meet the emotion of the consumer
you know they're worried
we can be worried we can understand
we can reinforce we wrote a constitution
called the Remaker Constitution
early on to guide that
we are here to inform and empower
we're not to manipulate or to push
and so everything
that we do in the platform is to
allow that consumer to make a better decision
and we think that the more informed they are
the more they're gonna buy
so it works out for the small business owner yeah
that makes a lot of sense I think of even you know
team members that I work with and sometimes contractors
a you know
a designer or a a video editor
sometimes I feel bad if I come back with you know
multiple edits or something that might be very trivial
but like a very clear preference that I have
especially if it's like
late at night or an inconvenient time
and I actually am having more of a conversation
I feel so much more comfortable working with AI
cause it's endlessly patient
and
is willing to make as many updates as I need to happen
and is and always available
so yeah it makes sense
right from a consumer perspective where some someone
this intelligence is like
highly intuitive and understanding and patient
and also I don't feel like I'm overstepping
or taking too much of another human's time to like
get something done so I love that dynamic where yeah
it's you've got this intelligence
that is endlessly patient and helpful to us
yeah I think that the
the key here right
is that um
it learns and gets better
in addition to all those elements Rohan right
so 24 by 7 nature of it it fits into our lives better
it can perform as the best salesperson ever
um but it also can do service
it's a learning system
so it can actually even on the next call do better
so this is hard to execute in the human system
now
we're not trying to put humans particularly out of work
we think what happens is
the small business owner gets more business
cause they're selling more
so
they need to deploy more people delivering the service
rather than the extra 20 hours
they were working to try and answer the phone
to do the sales so right
we think it's actually a creative to the business
not a replacement of humans right
so now let's talk a bit about the future and like
what are the skills
that are gonna be truly valued over the next
call it 5 plus years right
so yeah in your opinion
what are those skills that people need to learn
cause you know
we've got business owners and people that are growing
companies that are hiring
and kind of doing all these things with their teams
so what are the skills that are most
important for the future
some of them are attributes to me as much as anything
I think curiosity is probably the lead with right
like
people in this world today should be really curious
I wonder if blood can do that
I wonder if Raynmaker can do that
like I just think that the more we lean in
the more we're gonna be surprised
I don't think many of us really fully understand
the impact and the possibilities
with it I think the second is
the skill of sort of
reengineering and transformation
has always been about figuring out what work
can come out and what work needs to stay
and so having the skill and understanding really deeply
why do you do something
and is it valuable to your organization
it's not something we tend to do
the third is that I think the creative ideas
that you thought weren't possible
are absolutely possible
so bringing creativity to marketing to engagement
I I think that the
third part of our package is the idea of
an intelligence layer that you never had before
like listen
for the patterns
that you'd never really fully understood
and be able to do some more analytics off of that
so a skill in being able to look at this information
and make good business decisions
we're thinking that we're basically
sort of up leveling all of the
both technical and business infrastructure
leveraging AI that's gonna make it
an easier world for all of us to operate in um
the constraints go away uh
and actually
I think we will enjoy doing what we're doing even more
yeah yeah
that it's a very inspiring picture to paint
in the short term there is a lot of fear right
cause now we have this general purpose technology
intelligence
that can effectively do most of the knowledge
work that most humans are doing right now
and so there's a lot of that uncertainty and unknown
which is okay that future state sounds like great
where we'll have more time and abundance
to be more creative and pursue our own interests
and be in our purpose but in the
in the near term that mean like losing jobs and
you know customers leaving us
and doing things in a more cost effective way
so how do you how do you kind of like
hold that tension between the short term stress
and the unknown with that long term view
yeah you go back to my early career
you know I had this option
whether I could be a victim or a survivor
I had nothing going for me
like nothing I had no brand
I had no diploma of any substance
I didn't have money you know
the only thing that I had was that
I wasn't gonna be a victim
I was gonna be a driver and the way I did that
Rohan was
I was always competing with all of the other staff
people in the firm
like I just volunteered to do the work
I showed up better than everyone else
like it is no different today
like if we sit around thinking we're a victim
that's what will happen if we think we're a survivor
we will find our way to a great future
so it's about embracing it's about learning
it's about sure
I fall on the trail and skin my knee
but I go back out there right
every bit of this is where success happens
I don't think it's a judgment on that
you're smarter than me right
not Rohan anyone generally right
this is why some people succeed
is the choices that they make
the perspective that they bring
and then you have ultimately infinite potential
are you going to do something with it
and that's where I I had no right to start this company
we're being we're a category creator
anyone
goes to our rainmaker dot AI site and you read it
you'll say oh look at that like I wrote that
I didn't write that because
I was the research scientist working at Open AI
I was just another entrepreneur thinking
what could I do
and so I think that opportunity is there for everyone
and I would just like to say like
let's just challenge ourselves
like it starts with you know
15 minutes of focus on yourself a day
you know walk around the block read a page
like just
start a new set of behaviors
that get you more confident in what you're capable of
but I know that we all have infinite potential
and we just need to lean into that
you've got a clear I mean
your mindset is is super strong
I I definitely see that and feel that
is there a a daily practice
you mentioned
you've got your writing practice in the morning
your working out practice throughout the day
that really kind of like sets you up for the
things that you're gonna tackle throughout the day
is there something that's like
a core pillar as part of your morning practice
that you find is really helpful for you
yeah like I think think about like this way
you know in a funny way
it's like I breathe I move
I think like
those are the three things that start the day
every day you know
so it's start with just some
like our nervous system will reset with just four box
breathing steps just breathe deep and let it reset
right make sure you move in the morning
like I don't care you don't have to go running
just move like your body wants to move
and my thinking is writing
I I don't feel good if I wasn't writing
so just do something that makes you sort of
every bit of the human system is made for growth
like this is why our muscles tear apart
and build more muscles
this is why we create more neurons
we create more red blood cells
we are growth systems
turn it on in the morning by doing those practices
then put good food in yourself right
like really think about that
is only two things you put in yourself
other than your thoughts every day
are that what we eat right
and the oxygen that we breathe
and that creates this energy system
so think about that right
and then I always feel like in the day
you know with a practice that's appropriate to you
so then I write at the end of the day
and I do a lot of push UPS at the end of the day
and it closes me out and I'm like
I go to bed in peace I never miss it
I'm like I fall asleep in one minute
like I just realize that every day
this is what's important to a high running
machine just like an F1 car right
don't leave it in the garage
it ain't gonna be very good
you are an F1 car
put yourself into that kind of routine
and before you realize you'd be like
oh my God I am just unfathomably powerful
so that's my suggestion here
yeah
yeah definitely um
we hear these sort of things all the time
but it's something else to hear from someone who has
done so much and also like you mentioned
you're you're in your 60s
and so you're right so much is up to us right
like there's so many invisible scripts
that are running in society around
you need to do this by a certain time
or by a certain age maybe like slow down
and so
when we kind of take radical ownership of our lives
what we're capable of creating
we truly are limitless
there's really no limit right on on us right
and so yeah I um
I love that I love that message
thank you for sharing that as we start to
to wrap it up here Joe um
what is a
what is a message that you would give to a founder
who's working 60 hour weeks
they have a peril to manage
they you know
they see their competitors are louder on say LinkedIn
they're capturing more of that brand message
and they're just a an idea of like
how do I even keep up with all the crazy change
that's happening like
what is a key message that you'd like to deliver
to our audience in a funny way Ron
I'm like it's such a privilege to be an entrepreneur
like there's nothing that could be more exciting
in one's life
so if you made that choice and just congratulations
like you should just love every day
um yeah
use resources that can help you
you don't have to figure everything out yourself
like you know
Claude or Chat GPT can help
Rohan can help
there's so many ways that you can accelerate
you don't have to make everything happen yourself
the third is like you know yeah
it's like the thing doesn't move unless you move
but that is what we're here to do to create motion
to create growth so if you set yourself up like that
sure the day to day matters
of course we have to be responsible
and I used to work in a public accounting firm and I
I know all of that
but that isn't the stuff that drives us right
that's the responsibility code that we all have
the rest of it is
the more inspired we lean into what we do
the more we'll get others
excited about what we're doing
and I think that you know uh
sometimes you know
everyone always thinks like my life is so hard
I actually think my life is really easy
because I already decided
and so I'm not negotiating
I use no energy up on that
I don't question it all fits right
and everyone in my life understands that
so I have this complete alignment
and so when we're not losing any energy
you know that 168 hours in the week
or the hundred percent that we start the day with
is very optimized and you as an entrepreneur
will do better as a result of that
and so that doesn't guarantee outcomes
but it does ensure
that you're living an intentional life
that has a big reward which is that
you are a role model for how we should live
and how the world should think
and that's a responsibility we all have
and so I'm gonna keep doing this
you know I like to tell people that you know
I still have the curiosity of a six year old
the energy of a 20 year old
and the wisdom of a 75 year old
and that's sort of the goal that we should live into
right because those are sort of
the energy systems that keep us going
you know like I can't wait for tomorrow
I'm just so excited to even do the same thing again
so yeah um
I think for everyone uh
once you find your unlocks working um
your mindset your health and leveraging AI
you're gonna realize you got to game level 7
and everyone else was at game level 2
and boy it's a fun place to be
I love that what's amazing about it is
it's all in our control and so we are
we are in the driver's seat
Joe thank you so much for sharing your wisdom
your insights your energy today
we'll make sure to link your LinkedIn
as well as the Raynmaker website in our show notes
is there anywhere else you'd like to direct folks
if they want to learn more
oh you can always buy my book on living intentionally
sold on Amazon um
and then I write a substack every day
my blog is posted every day on at Joe
curious if you're on substack
okay great
we'll include that in the notes
OK thanks again
and uh
looking forward to having a part 2 at some point
thank you for joining thanks Rohan appreciate it