Jack Spirko

Jack Spirko grew up in the improvised coal region of Pennsylvania where he came to love the outdoors, hunting, fishing and challenging himself with long distance hiking. The opportunities though for an aggressive young man were limited in his home town of Pottsville.

At the age of 17 Jack enlisted in the U.S. Army and served his country from 1990-1993 with the United States Army Airborne, serving during the first Gulf War and then on deployments in Honduras, Panama and Columbia.

During this period of his life Mr. Spirko learned a great deal about people that live in what we would consider abject poverty yet have a joy and a love for life that one must experience to understand. This dynamic changed some of his understandings about what made a person a success or a failure. Coupled with the leadership training and “a mission must be accomplished” attitude developed during his service, Jack reentered the civilian world in late 1993.

Now only 20 years of age and having seen a large portion of the world his hometown seemed even more limiting so he moved to Dallas, Texas after a brief return home. With no college degree the initial prospects were not the greatest, he took his first job, packing boxes in a warehouse at 6 dollars an hour and started to look for opportunities.

During the next decade Jack took to the career world with a drive and desire that led him to many achievements. By 25 he broke the six figure income barrier as a salesman/superintendent for an underground construction company. He soon moved into telecommunications to capitalize on the boom in structured cabling in the 1990s, where he became a multi million dollar producer almost over night. From there he moved into Computer Hardware and proceeded to develop another multi million dollar book of business.

Eventually Jack’s reputation led him to a position with cable test equipment pioneer Microtest as their North Eastern Regional Manager. With in months though Microtest was purchased by Fluke Networks and merged. Jack was offered the region as Fluke’s manager and proceeded to then be Fluke’s top regional manager for three consecutive years, leading a sales team of 34 individuals to over 60 million dollars in annual revenue.

At this point in his career Jack decided to move into the world of Internet Marketing full time. During his sales career he had used the Internet as it emerged to promote seminars, develop leads and had also launched his first online company (ProvideTechnology, LLC). Jack soon took a position with Masterlink as their Director of Internet Marketing and developed a process for taking the conventional sales process into the online world. Jack then served briefly during a transitional period as Sage Telecom’s eMarketing Program Manager.

Then in 2007 Jack Teamed up with legendary and award winning British Entrepreneur Neil Franklin to create Franklin Spirko Media - a Dallas Based Internet Marketing Agency and Web Publishing Business. It was during the creation of Franklin Spirko Media that Jack and Neil authored “Your Inner Salesman - Finding the Natural Salesman Within” chronicling their remarkably similar sales and life philosophies developed from very different circumstances.

Neil Franklin

Neil Franklin is an award-winning British entrepreneur and executive currently based in Dallas, Texas. Mr. Franklin made history by leading his company, Dataworkforce, to win first place for a record two years in a row in the prestigious Sunday Times/Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100 competition in 2000 and 2001, a competition to find the UK’s 100 fastest growing companies.

Mr. Franklin’s entrepreneurial and executive flair has also resulted in him being highlighted by Deloitte & Touche’s Indy judges at The Independent on Sunday, being a finalist in the prestigious Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Awards and being ranked 7th in the Enterprise 100 Entrepreneur list.

Mr. Franklin is also listed in the British ‘Who’s Who’ in Recruitment 2002 and the 2003 edition of ‘Who’s Who’ in British business excellence. Additionally, he has served as a Telecommunications Industry spokesperson for the BBC, Sky Television, and the British and American National Press including Time Magazine, Forbes, The Financial Times, The Sunday Times and The Dallas Morning News.

Neil began his business career in 1983 at the age of 19, by forming a marketing business for the direct sales industry. In 1985, Mr. Franklin entered the staffing services industry and in 1987, began his career in technology with Metro Computer Consultants, a specialist staffing organization serving UK Industry. In 1988, Mr. Franklin moved to IT staffing firm MSB International, where he became Sales Director and also a shareholder.

In 1994, Mr. Franklin founded Dataworkforce Limited, a specialist technology staffing organization serving the telecommunications industry, and built the company out of his living room in South London to a global enterprise with offices in London, Switzerland, Singapore, Mexico City, Malaysia and Dallas, Texas. The Dataworkforce Group of companies is a leading international telecommunications-engineering firm that provides the most reliable and responsible service for communication systems implementation and expansion across the globe.

Since 2005, Mr. Franklin as the Chief Executive Officer based in the Dataworkforce headquarters in Frisco, Texas, has been spearheading the growth of Dataworkforce throughout the Americas, where the focus will be on providing innovative staffing solutions to future generations of converged technologies. Mr. Franklin is also an investor and Board Advisor to Dallas-based Cerion, Inc., a company providing specialist software and services to the telecommunications industry, and also is an investor and advisor to Dallas-based staffing organization, C-People, Inc.

Neil first met Jack in 2005 when he was one of Jack’s clients over the years they developed both a business relationship and a friendship based on their common view of the world. The concept for the book “Your Inner Salesman” was Neil’s brain child and was brought into existence by the two authors in 2007.