Why the ForgeX community will always be free with Davis Potter | People are People | Ep.02

Davis Potter for joining us on the People are People a podcast type thing. >> What's going on, Doug? >> Not much. It's Friday afternoon. Uh, so it's the end of the week and it's the end of a Friday and I'm sure you're ready for the weekend. So, I appreciate you joining us. Uh, and I hope I get you while you're you're fresh. >> Oh, I'm psyched. I' I've been waiting all week for this, especially the questions. I need some gotcha questions in here. We saw the original list, but >> this would be a great one. And uh it's beautiful out down here in Sarasota, Florida. I can only imagine how it is where you are in uh right outside of San Diego. But yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to this. >> I'm up in Santa Barbara. or Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara, >> we're probably experiencing the same weather phenomenon, which is just marine layer this time of year. So, uh, May and

June are typically pretty overcast until the afternoon and then the sun comes and burns it off. But, uh, you know, it's late in the afternoon and the sun is still not out here. But, um, you know, we we'll get through it. But you said you were in Florida. That was going to be a question I asked towards the end. Um, Florida's a new um, base for you. Where are you? How's it going? Where are you? What brought you to Florida? >> So, for those that have been following the journey for the past couple years, you're probably like, I thought he was in Austin or he went to Sarasota and then he went back to Austin. Now he's back in Sarasota. What's the deal, Davis? So, I grew up about an hour outside of Boston in a small town called Windham, New Hampshire. Grew up there, spent, you know, my college years in New Hampshire as well. Ultimately couldn't take the winters anymore. Had a job that actually was asking me to be closer to one of their

large headquarters. And so, they gave me a couple cities that I could move towards. Austin happened to be on the list. I wanted to move to Austin before that. So, it was that tipping point or what really pushed me there. Moved to Austin, spent a couple years. My parents end up ended up moving down to Sarasota, Florida. They're now snowbirds. So, they have a place in New Hampshire. Small place in Sarasota. My sister moved back here. My younger brother moved back here as well. So, I'm just posted up in Austin on an island with no family. and I was going to see them once, maybe twice a year because travel a lot and working all the time. So, I was just like, why would I want to be hanging out in Austin when I can go spend time with my family? We're really close. And then it also doesn't hurt that we have the beaches and boating down here, which are, you know, obviously some some of my favorite things to do. So, it just it worked out really well. And I've been in downtown Sarasota for about three or

four months now. Cool. Well, you love it and now you're you're a family person and that's really nice. Um, so you're close to everyone. You know, you mentioned to me uh casually you said your your father was in the software business. I don't know if your mother was as well, but this is is this where you caught the bug for working in software and specifically B2B? My dad Dan Potter, go look him up on LinkedIn. Go connect with him for those who are listening to this. He is undoubtedly well one, he is the biggest role model and hero in my life and he was one of the, you know, original tech people. He's been in the game for years on years on years. And he was the inspiration for me actually, one to get into tech, but also marketing as well. And I'll tell you some crazy things behind both of our backgrounds that line

up in a really strange way. First off, uh our first first car was both Honda Civic. Uh we were captain of our sports team senior year of high school. We both went to the same college. Freshman year, we were both assigned the same dorm, Hetszel, randomly. Uh, and then also we share a lot of the same hobbies. We are in the same space, tech marketing, and so it's just really weird how all that lined up. But yeah, my dad's incredible. And I'll tell you the the craziest thing about him that I just I I legitimately do not understand. You know, you have this this whole saying where there's a point in your life where you look at your parents and they become more humanized. as in when you're a kid, you know, they they seem like superheroes, but I've never had that moment with him. I don't know how he did it. He's been a tech executive since he was 30. And he

was always present when I was a kid, coached all the games, uh went to every game, was at every school event, and I I legitimately do not know how he pulled that off. So, huge shout out to him. I I couldn't do it. And uh so yeah, he's just an incredible person and kudos to you, Dad. >> Awesome. I love that. I think it's um yeah, it's one like really uh special and commendable to be able to like be so present with your kids, but also thinking of your father and I don't know how old you are. I'm not going to get into that, but like I'm assuming your parents were of an age where remote work wasn't a thing. And I think right now remote work makes that a little easier. So in flu where I work, we're fully remote and we have this saying where it's like adults only, right? Where like you have to be an adult to work here because we assume that you're going to take care of your your your own business on your own time. We don't care when you work as long as you get your stuff done.

And even this morning, I was at a hikeathon for my kids school, which is awesome. I spent the whole morning walking around a lake here in town with my kids and I get to come back and you know continue these conversations. So I love hearing that and that's uh great to have a you know an inspiration your dad but I I so going into your career so you've always been a marketer and it looks like you've always been focused on ABM. Do you just love ABM? Are you like the the number one ABM fan? In high school, I was just like, ABM is where I'm going. Woke up as a kid thinking about ABM. You know, the craziest thing that happened was I knew I wanted to get into tech marketing. And so I applied for an internship at this small software company called B2B Software based out of Portsouth, New Hampshire. my boss, shout out to you, Jen, uh the first project she had me working on was account briefs for this

new thing that they were trying to figure out, which was ABM. And so my first internship project was ABM. Then I transitioned to an internship at a larger organization. They were called Kronos at the time. Now they're UKG. Was doing ABM in that internship. landed a job at this company called Pega Systems on the regional marketing team right at the time when they transitioned their demand genen function into entirely focusing on account-based marketing. So how I got into ABM I just happened to get lucky with internship after internship and then initial first job and I thought I originally thought I was going to get into product marketing uh when I was first going into this. I I didn't really fully understand ABM or demand genen but just happened to fall into it and then ultimately started a company that is a analyst firm that specializes in it.

>> Right. And that's forex. you are the chief executive officer of Forjax and I mean tell us a little I mean I think some of the folks who might be listening to this uh have heard of you if they're in the ABM space they've heard of forjax but for those who haven't like give us a quick oneliner what is forjax and then why why did you start it what's the goal >> think forester Gartner serious decisions were a analyst firm plus community that really specializes in ABM, how AI is accelerating the practice and also demand genen integrated campaigns and the reason why and and how we even on >> Oh. Oh, shoot. Can you hear me? >> Yeah. Oh, I saw you point. I thought you

were pointing at the headphones like you couldn't hear me. >> I was I lost you for a second, but I think we're good. >> Oh, damn. Okay. Um, initially, so I'll give you a little bit of background on a few components behind forjax and how we ultimately landed here. First, we started as community plus ABM resources. And uh one of the main reasons why our community is free and it will always be free. When I was a ABM leader, I was hired on at the time at this company called Scale AI to build their first ABM program. And there was a company that had a really large ABM community, but it was pay to join. And I inquired with them. They ended up giving me a discounted I five figure price tag just to get into their community. I didn't want their frameworks, didn't want their

research. I just wanted to be able to go in and bounce ideas with other ABM leaders. And at the time, I couldn't even go to my boss and ask for that type of budget request. He would have laughed laughed in my face. And so, I was like, this this is crazy. We're going to go build our own community. We're just going to do it ourselves. And that's the reason one why we're free. And then two, we're really, really strict about pitching and the experience inside of the community. We don't like self-promotion. What we want it to be forever is just a great resource where if you're an ABM leader, if you're thinking about getting into ABM, it's a space where you can go talk to other leaders, bounce ideas, understand what's working, what's not working. We have a lot of free resources from the forex side such as research and frameworks and you can access all of that and we open source uh a overwhelming majority of it. So that's the community aspect and then the second

piece behind this which is the research and the frameworks and the models and I'll tell you how we happen to get into that as well. So ABM there were a few companies you have serious decisions and too who were both analyst firms and acquired in 2019. So after those acquisitions to the really large mega-ized organizations, there wasn't a lot of innovation happening on the ABM side and the tech vendors were picking up a lot of the slack. But the problem with the tech vendors is obviously, you know, for the most part they are they're not an analyst firm. They're they're goal is to go sell software. They're that's where they get their revenue from. So I started sharing these thoughts and you know what I was seeing and my uh perception of how ABM is modernizing on LinkedIn and then it started really resonating with people. So I created these crystallized more formalized

models and then we started conducting some primary research because we had the audience in the community to do so. And then it just spiraled into really creating an analyst firm and we have a lot of great partners. We have a lot of great leaders in our community, a great body of research, kick-ass analysts that we partner with. And that's how we started this this 4X thing. >> That's awesome. I mean I am in the community uh and yeah and I can attest to the fact that there is no pitching it seems very supportive um which I'm sure is you know your goal and I'm just curious I love the aspect of community building especially in um uh you know the work that a marketer is doing and a salesperson is doing. It's stressful, right? Like every three months you have a new number and then you have other things going on in your life that are, you know, occupying your time and uh either giving you pleasure or more

stress and it's like where can I go for some like real help, right? And talk to people. So, I'm interested though in the community building aspect like how, you know, I I think it you're almost at about a thousand uh members and, you know, really solid people to learn from, but how do you I mean, who was the first member? I mean, I know I know it was you, but how do you get to a thousand? Like, what does good community building look like? Um, growing it from zero to where it is now and then also maintaining a community. So the big thing that we always had at least in the back of our minds was audience. So how do you build up an audience so that that can convert into community members and it was LinkedIn for us that was our distribution channel. We've never paid for ads. The entirety of Forjax's life has been all organic growth. And the pieces behind this were one, how do we share an

immense amount of really valuable and unique thought leadership on LinkedIn which then draws followers to my account. We took a very founderled approach on this intentionally and so that then people see oh okay you know this forjax thing who is this person he's sharing all of this forward thinking ABM thought leadership interesting oh he has a community let me go join that community and so that is almost that flywheel and then we have an incredible executive council as well we do a lot of interviews with people who are brilliant in the space. A lot of events such as community roundts and webinars sharing our research, all of that acts as a flywheel to add value to people in their day in and day out as they're building ABM or advancing their programs and they want to go back into

the community to one get the resources, hear what the latest and greatest is, but then also chat amongst their peers. So there's there's just a lot of value that we're giving and that is what makes people come back and also the fact that what we're sharing is unique as in if you just go out and try to start a community uh around XYZ topic you know you'll you'll only be able to get so far at least in my opinion the way that we've seen growth is really just having you know an immense amount of research and all original and unique points of view and thoughts uh and and that's how we've really built this thing. >> That's cool. And there is an application process. You can't I mean you are sort of uh controlling a little bit to make sure that whoever is joining is going to add value and and maybe not be pitching. >> We look at every person individually. We

look at their LinkedIn one to make sure that they're not a salesperson and then two to make sure that they're going to add value to the community members. And we do take pitching really seriously. Uh if there are if you've been in the community long enough, you do know that there are uh organizations and people who have we have removed and we have a zero strike policy on it too. We're we're pretty strict as in you pitch one time, you're gone, you're done. Uh no questions about it. And that's what stops that's what keeps the the conversations in the community so well. >> And who who is monitoring? I love you don't have to give me any names for companies, but I love the idea that someone is just monitoring and then you get to give them the boot. I mean, is it just a simple like it's pretty boring like everyone's every once in a while says, "Hey, hey, check this out." you'll you'll love it. It'll be great for your product. And just you you knock them out there or who's who's doing this monitoring? Like what's the dayto-day

stuff? Is it you? Do you have the team that's looking at it or is the community itself the one that's sort of, you know, keeping keeping the rhythm going? So, we can control the conversations inside of the community, but what we don't have visibility into is when you go into the community, you have access to the emails of all of the members or you can see all of the members and the new people that join. And so for us where the community gives us the insights around who might be a a bad actor is when let's say you know an SDR slip through the cracks. They're part of the forjax community and they're just going in and spam blasting all of the people and using our name in the outreach. That is an immediate you're done, you're gone. and they'll share that information with us and then we will just tell the community, hey,

listen, we heard about this happening. Uh they're now removed. We don't allow this. And you know, we've we've done it several times, but we try to make sure that we vet everyone so it doesn't happen, but every now and then, you never know. >> Yeah. Well, I think I've been part of the Forex community for uh maybe 10 12 months and that's I've never received an email I should have. So, it's it's working, but obviously those stories happen. Uh hey, tell me more about the life of Davis Potter uh as a CEO, like what does a great day look like as as the head of this um organization? great day. Wake up naturally around like a 7:30, 7:35. I'll go and I go to the same coffee shop every morning, Project Coffee in downtown Sarasota. That is where I'll

either do some LinkedIn comments or I'll write my LinkedIn post for the day. Maybe there's some a really important meeting that I need to use that time for. Uh but that's usually LinkedIn allocation time. Then I have a designated hour every single day which I call the focus hour. And this is actually for 4jack team members. If there's something they want me to review or if there's, you know, a project that they need me to help unblock, that hour is all theirs. And so I'll spend that hour, you know, just knocking out whatever I need to. And then usually, you know, depending on the day, it's just back-to-back meetings either with clients or sales calls or doing things like podcasts like this or hosting some of our events. Uh also do a lot of traveling as well for, you know, for example, we had the user group for

Influ, which was amazing, and shout out to your team for that. But that's the that's the usual midday and then I'll go to the gym after work and then uh go pick up some type of food whether it's Whole Foods or you know eating out at at some place. I live 7 minutes from the beach. So, I'll go to the gym, get food, usually go eat it on the beach, come back, do a little bit of catch up on anything that I need to for the rest of the day, and then fall asleep maybe around 11 to 12 and do it all over again. That's a usual day. >> I love it. There's um so the last guest we had on here, the first episode that we published was uh with uh Laura Piano, who was a friend of mine. She's the chief growth officer of a company called TestFit. She also talked about going to the beach. So, I've got a theme here now where people are going to the beach a lot. I need I need some guests that are mountain people or landlocked or in the

city somewhere. Uh, but that's great. Talk to me about motivation. What motivates you? I don't think you don't look like a strict I need to make money, motivate me by money person, especially since you're building this community. I'd imagine you get a lot from the uh the benefits that your community members are maybe getting. But don't let me put words in your mouth. I'd love to know more about what motivates you. >> So even before launching for Jack, there are two things that I believe that I need. I think I need uh resources and resources most likely being in the form of money and then influence as in how can I help uh organize a a group of highly you know influential people to accomplish a specific objective. And all of that leads back to what I my main

goal in life is to modernize the mental health institutions in the United States of America. That's what drives me. It's not, you know, chasing Lamborghinis or chasing, you know, some multi-acre house out in Montana with a private jet. I could care less about those things. And if you look at the way that I live, I'll share a little bit more on that later, but uh I think there is such a and the data backs this as well. There is such a massive issue with mental health in the US and specifically uh historically when you look at the mental health institutions, there were a lot of issues and then they transformed into more of community- based mental health, but it's totally fallen apart. the prisons are where you know a lot of people with mental health challenges are going. And so for me I think the big rock challenge or the big rock opportunity here is how can you modernize using AI using other tools. Now the and bring back stronger

mental health institutions. I have, you know, seen it firsthand with family members uh who have struggled with mental health. And so it's a it's a passion of mine, but this has always been something, especially the unhoused issue out in Austin. When I first moved there, it was really bad. And I've just always had this this motivation inside where it's how do I use forjaxs to acquire resources and influence? And I think for one being, you know, we're we're not doing bad. So there's a there's the the resource component there, but then also influence as in I'm meeting with a lot of executives that are in these great tech companies. So when it's time to really flip the switch, I don't have the capability now because I still have to be 100% in on building forjax, but when the time comes, it's how do I use the resources that I've acquired and the influence that I have to go partner with people to actually achieve the modernization of

the mental health institutions in the US. I have some thesises on this. I'm still working on how to get there, but I also believe all of the skill sets that I've built with forjax is it's all setting me up for ultimately achieving that goal. And that's a long answer, but and you're probably that's probably out of left field for you, Doug. You're like, where where is this coming from? But that is the motivation that's been there even before launching forjax. That's the ultimate goal. >> Well, it's I mean, it's awesome. Yeah, I wasn't expecting that, but this is what honestly I was hoping to get from these conversations. And I think now that like I mean, you know, that's the north star. I mean, I've always been a fan of Ford Jackson and yourself and your team, by the way, the they're awesome people to work with, but like feel like now that you kind of know the north star of what you're trying to do, you're like, "All right, let's let's continue to support and let's let's see if we can get them there." And so, uh, Davis, I think we got it. I don't want to keep you much

longer. It's Friday. I appreciate what you're doing. Um, but quickly for people who may not be familiar with the 4X community. Um, what's the best way to get involved? Reach out, submit their application. Unless you're an SDR, then don't submit it. >> Yeah, don't don't think about it, sales people. But come follow me on LinkedIn. There's a link in my bio as well uh to our actual community application. So come join the conversation. We'd love to have you. And Doug, this was awesome. Thank you so much. I great questions as well. >> Oh, I appreciate it. Well, Davis, I appreciate it. Thanks for the time and uh we'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much. >> Thank you. See you everybody.