As a coach to 50+ tech-founders over 13 years – every founder confided they’d felt lonely, doubt, uncertainty, fear, and a rollercoaster of emotions. Almost daily.
Sound familiar?
As a founder in my first tech company, I felt the same. On the surface – things looked great. I was in three teams that took three companies global. But under the hood, I lived many days worrying where I should focus, who I should talk to, what I should say, and where to spend our scarce capital.
Like me, those I coach looked to advisors, mentors, incubators, accelerators or even online groups to provide guidance.
Like me, they found these people could not help them with the core challenge of feeling confident, calm and in control.
As a result, 80% of tech-startups failed. Even the “successful” ones ended with founders in poor mental-health: burnt out, having made significant sacrifices for their “success”.
13 years ago I had an insight: it doesn’t have to be this way. The reason it was, was one missing link.
Just like in the 18th century one missing link in our knowledge (the importance of sanitization) meant that most patients in hospitals died unnecessarily.
I formed a group of other tech-founders and started teaching them the one missing link.
The result blew my mind. Over the next 2 years, they all
- Raised capital (the industry average is only 10.4%).
- Grew rapidly (over 337% per annum on average)
- Created incredible leaders within their team
- Said for the first time ever they felt calm and in control.
They all said what I’d showed them was what made the difference.
So what was it these entrepreneurs learn that made all that difference?
Superficially, it looked like they learnt four things
- Pitching
- Sales
- Leadership and
- Self-leadership (keeping yourself mentally strong)
But actually, they’d learnt just one breakthrough skill.
That skill is (cue drum roll)
Positively influence the people your destiny depends on
Positive influence applied to
- Investors = pitching
- Customers = sales
- Your team = leadership
- Yourself = self-leadership
Positive influence is the breakthrough technique to realise your vision
But knowing that gold is valuable doesn’t make you rich
Similarly, knowing positive influence is valuable wont give you the influence you need to succeed.
But the Positive Influence program does.
But first, here’s something for you to ponder:
What happens if you don’t increase your positive influence?
We see this all too often don’t we? – The gradual loss of the energy and enthusiasm of the founder. Sometimes with the consolation prize of an exit. Often without.
If you can’t trade in the currency of positively influence, you are left trading in time. In other words, you work long hours.
This strategy may appear to work – for a time. But it then it betrays you.
This betrayal is not sudden. It happens imperceptibly – like a frog boiling alive.
- Your energy drops
- Your patience lowers.
- Your stress levels rise.
- Your team finds you less relatable.
- The creativity and enthusiasm you and your team once felt starts to wane.
It all starts to become a grind. You keep telling yourself “this is just for now.” Yet each new success brings new grind, new stress.
It all feels like you’re collectively banging your heads against a brick wall 80 hours a day until the brick wall falls over or you do.
This reality in self-harm. It’s utterly preventable and totally unnecessary.
Now imagine you see that wall has a door. That door has a key. That key is positive influence. You turn the key and walk through that door. Suddenly you’re hearing more people say “yes”. Everything feels easier. Your vision is coming to pass.
What specific new skills will I pick up in the program?
By implementing the tools in this 10-week program, you will learn
- How to influence the psychology of decision-making when you pitch
- How to positively influence your team as a leader
- How to use story & metaphor to create deep emotional buy-in (no more “we’ll think about it”)
- The 3½ delivery techniques that amplify your authority + confidence
- How to easily take bold moves, have courageous conversation and sustain your own great habits
- How to craft messages that cause over-subscribed cap-raises with value-aligned investors and fair valuations and terms
- How to influence your own customers become your unpaid sales team
Who is it for?
This program is not for you if you enjoy
- Complex programs with background reading & references
- The ego-kick you get from believing “I know it all”
- Working insane hours, because it makes you feel like a heroic martyr
- Surrounding yourself with advisors who tell you different things, spend your energy debating with yourself while taking no action
This program is for you if
- You have a growth mindset and enjoy “simple + insanely effective”
What you don’t get
- Lots of "bonuses" that create the illusion of value, rather than actual value
- Some time-bound discount to encourage you to sign up through FOMO (fear of missing out)
- Super-slick production quality. If you care deeply about amazing editing, beautiful lighting, scenic vista, and re-mastered sound - this is the wrong program for you. You get me in front of a camera, in my backyard. But I’ll be whispering to you life-transforming truths that change everything.
- Some "money-back guarantee" about results. I know they've been proven to get more people to sign up. But I don't care if you buying the program. I care about you implementing the program to change the world. A “guarantee” suggests falsely that the magic is in the program. It's not. And it’s dangerous to your commitment level to believe it is.
The transformational magic is in the sacred union of this program I’ve poured my soul into, and your commitment to do the work on the program.
Results you can expect after the 10-week program
Imagine yourself waking up to this reality:
By positively influence investors you win almost every pitch
By positively influence prospects, you sell and grow rapidly.
By positively influence your team, you grow a culture of star-players who think like business owners and recruit people smarter than them
By positively influencing yourself, you develop winning habits so that you stay in peak mental health, and never need sacrifice time on family or hobbies.
This may seem a distant reality. But it’s not. But it’s the reality the tech-founders I’ve coached in positive influence find themselves waking up into.
This reality is available to you too.
Those who learn to positively influence feel in control.
They grow companies that success.
Their shareholders, directors, employees and partners are a joy to work with.
How it works
You’ll get access to the 10-week online program + a special group to support you
- 10x weekly videos with practical actions at the end of each
- Specialist training videos for the tech-entrepreneur including pitching ninja sessions, and reproducible analysis of actual winning pitches I worked on, so you can do their winning moves
- A special online support group of your peers to give you support and inspiration and keep you accountable
- Some other things I’m keeping secret for now
Decision Time
If the strategy of maxing out on time is working for you, if you enjoy long cap-raises, long sales cycles, long hours and long heated discussions – keep going.
But if you want to experience a better way – the choice is simple.
Frequently asked questions
If positive influence really is the answer, why is no one talking about it?
Same reason that Doctors weren’t talking about sterilization in the 18th century. The whole ecosystem has a blindspot. Like Doctors who couldn’t see the impact of failing to sterilize, the tech ecosystem has been unable to see the impact of failing to emotionalize the communication of founders.
But I have a mentor – can’t they teach me this stuff?
No. A mentor or advisor can pour more into your cup. But they cannot increase the size of your cup so you can do more in the same number of hours.
But there’s some good templates and formulas out there for pitching and selling
These formulas are like most martial art forms. They look great. But they don’t actually work in a real-life street fight. They are a sequence of stylized maneuvers.
But I have an advisor who’s run a very successful large company. I’m sure he can help me.
Did s/he run a tech company? If not – then they know how to drive a truck. But they don’t know how to ride a motorcycle. Let alone teach others to ride a motorcycle. As a tech-founder, you are racing a superbike. Would you learn to ride that powerful – yet potentially lethal – machine from a truck-driver?
I have a mentor who took a tech-company global. So I’m fine. They can teach me how to do all these things?
Really? Because they’ve run a tech company, they have automatically also acquired the skill of being able to work out exactly what things they did worked and didn’t? They automatically know where their knowledge may be useful and where it may not be based on your different context? They have spontaneously discovered how to hand on knowledge to another human? The profile of someone who makes a great coach is different to the profile of someone who makes a great player. You’ll confuse the two at your cost.
It’s not possible to learn from an online program. You need an in-person coach.
I used to believe that also. That’s what held me back on writing my book on pitching for years. But after I wrote it, I had so many people who wrote back to me saying “I haven’t lost a pitch since reading your book.” Why? Because I used my knowledge of how to coach and infused it into my book so people would apply it, not simply read it. This Positive Influence program is 20x more powerful than my book.
But if people can win pitches simply through reading your book – why don’t I just buy that?
Yes, the book will help you win your pitches. But it will not prepare you for the other three areas that are critical to your success as a tech-founder: selling, leading and self-leading. And without those other three areas, you’re still very vulnerable. Plus, the program is designed to help you get better at pitching much faster, without you having to try to work out so much by yourself.
About the Creator
In industry where 10.4% of entrepreneurs seeking capital raise it, Daniel’s clients have won an unprecedented 100% of their pitches (last 14 cap raises straight). This result is as far as I know unheard of globally. Three of their last four rounds were oversubscribed. Again – unheard of. They all got value-aligned investors, the terms they wanted, were able to turn down low-ball offers and disadvantageous terms. All without protracted Due Diligence. Why? Because they had developed the superpower of positive influence.
Daniel’s ability to help tech-entrepreneurs doesn’t stop with winning each pitch. He knows how to use the same positive influence principles to have you win at sales, recruitment, leadership and self-leadership so it’s the one skill you need to run your successful tech company. His global thought-leadership on pitching received attention from numerous publications including Nature Magazine. He had senior leadership roles in 3 tech-startups himself. All 3 went global and achieved healthy exits. Right now he’s helping two organisations win pitches with a combined value of $118,000,000. The first one just won. He also runs a VC firm where he helps entrepreneurs pitch better to him! Now, for the first time ever his heralded positive influence tools are available to any tech-entrepreneur.
Testimonials
Recently, I asked the tech-founders who’d had my positive influence training “What results have you got from the program?” They said:
“I’ve just back from a trip to the UK where we secured our first $1M deal”
“We’ve had more than 400% increase in revenue, sales, and even the size of my team.”
“We have our first customer and the product is being delivered in a couple of months.”
“We’ve gone from signing up 5 customers a month to signing up 50 a month. And we’ve been able to do this without increasing stress-levels or workload on our staff which is just something I never would have thought possible”
“We raised $4M in capital”
“We raised $600,000” (oversubscribed)
“We raised $1.5M in capital, and the round was oversubscribed.”
“I was able to use the techniques I picked up on pitching to win $10,000 in a competition the following month”
