Chris Brisson 0:00
SMS is that true? Clean channel with a 98% open rate, 85% of those people open that text within 15 minutes today, with cold email, everyone’s getting pitched. I’m getting pitched a million times a day. I probably spend 70% of my time just trying to sort through the stuff with SMS, it really is this clean pipe to your lead. It has become very easy to have an idea, to create that idea and to sell that idea. The difference between those that are going to be successful is on the execution side, you could have the best business idea, but if you don’t know how to grow it,

Brad Weimert 0:40
Congrats on getting beyond a million. What got you here won’t always get you there. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to reach beyond their seven figure business and scale to eight, nine and even 10 figures. I’m Brad Weimer, and as the founder at easy pay direct, I have had the privilege to work with more than 30,000 businesses, allowing me to see the data behind what some of the most successful companies on the planet are doing differently. Doing differently. Join me each week as I dig in with experts in sales, marketing, operations, technology and wealth building, and you’ll learn some of the specific tools, tactics and strategies that are working today in those multi million, eight, nine and 10 figure businesses, life can get exciting beyond a million.

Speaker 2 1:18
Chris Brisson, thank you so much for carving out time. Man, you’re looking good as

Chris Brisson 1:22
ever. Thank you, sir. It’s good to see you. I know we’ve been connecting over the years, and finally, here we are. So appreciate you. Man, I’m looking forward

Brad Weimert 1:31
to it, for sure. So when I met you years ago, you had started a company called call loop. Today you have sales message, which is a two way text platform that you started in 2017 you’ve had awesome growth with it. I want to dive in right away, into the text message side of things, because not everybody’s doing it. Not everybody’s doing it. Well, what is the biggest mistake that you see business owners making with SMS marketing?

Chris Brisson 1:57
Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot, right? I think the biggest thing is people think, Hey, I’ve been in business for 15 years, 20 years, I’ve got my list. I want to start texting them. And so, you know, the big part of messaging is compliance, right? And really the consent side of things. So even though you have these customers, they may have not opted in to receive text messages, and so that’s a big sort of part of messaging, is getting compliance right, getting getting people to opt in to receive those texts. So, you know, I was talking to an agency, and they were in that situation, and they actually talked to me three years ago, and they said the same thing, and three years later, they haven’t done anything. And so the best time to start is like today, like right now. And so we already have web forms. We’re collecting a phone number. We’re already getting orders where we’re collecting a phone number. So we have these assets across our business, and most people, more and more businesses today are really taking advantage of that through SMS, but we already have these assets, and so now you can start to deploy SMS in your business as a strategy to generate leads, convert leads, engage with with customers, and upsell customers and all the like. So there’s a whole sort of process to it all, but that’s the biggest one, is people wait.

Brad Weimert 3:29
So compliance is a boring word, and it finds its way into my life non stop. I think that there’s always this question with smaller businesses around, is it really necessary to worry about compliance? And let me say the flip side of that is we’re all irritated as hell by spammy messages that come in. How important is compliance? Can you fly under the radar if you’re smaller, is there a threshold where you have to start paying attention to

Chris Brisson 3:56
compliance? Yeah, I like to just call it getting approved. And so there are certain things that you need to do in order to get approved, right? I think compliance. You think, oh my gosh, I gotta be compliant. This is for the big companies and all that sort of stuff. Essentially, what it means is, I’ll take you through a real quick history lesson right before Brad, I’m sure you remember is anybody can get a phone number and anybody can start texting. And so the carriers, over the last couple of years, have said, Hey, we want to keep the integrity of the channel, and we can’t just have people texting and spamming and all that stuff. So there’s a, you know, a process called 10 DLC, and that just means 10 digit long code. So the carriers want to know two things. Hey, one, are you a legit business? And so they’re going to ask for an EIN number. Now this is like for a local number, you can get a toll free number, but the process is very similar. So are you a real business? And what’s the type of messages you’re sending? And so through our platform, through sales message. Message, we actually added some really cool AI stuff to ensure that we are sending off the right information to the carriers. And you know, have you ever listened to a radio ad and at the end of the ad they say, oh, you know, all data rates live all over, right? So they sort of read that little message. So that’s the same thing with texting. So if you go to a web form, you’ll see underneath, hey, I agree to receive text messages, message and data rates apply. That would be compliant web form, right? And so the carriers just want to know, hey, are you putting forth the right compliance information at the point of opt in? And so you know whether it’s a web form or a QR code, or you’re speaking on stage, there are just the things you want to include, to quote, unquote, be compliant. But as far as getting approved through the carriers, they want to know your address, your business, what’s your website, your EIN number, and again, that’s for like, local numbers, for toll free. It’s a little bit different. It’s actually a lot easier. They don’t ask for easier. They don’t ask for a EIN number. So, you know, you just go through that process within a day, between one to five days, you know, we send it to the carrier. Carrier approves it or rejects it, and then you just add, you know, the compliance information in order for you to get approved.

Brad Weimert 6:18
Basically, I mean, get set up with a good platform, and you’re fine, is what I heard. You got it like the PLA the platform that you get set up from should just take care of the compliance thing. And it’s a non issue. So small or big, check the basic boxes.

Chris Brisson 6:31
Yep, yep, that’s it. Hey, whenever you have a form, add this. If you’re ever doing this, add this. And so it just keeps you again in compliance.

Brad Weimert 6:40
All right. Love it. So it’s middle of 2025, right now. Would you rather have an email list of 50,000 people or an SMS List of 5000 people? And why?

Chris Brisson 6:52
Yeah, I think we all feel like the email challenge, and you know that’s open rates and click throughs, and so my inbox is flooded. I can’t manage it. In fact, I have to hire someone to manage my inbox to really only show me the right information. I think today, with cold email, everyone’s getting pitched. I’m getting pitched a million times a day. I probably spend 70% of my time just trying to sort through the stuff, right? And so that channel. That’s just not me, that’s everybody. And you know, with SMS, it really is this clean pipe to your customer, to your lead. We’re all getting those spam text messages, but the carriers are very quick to sort of clean that stuff up. So what that means is now you’ve got this very clean, integrity driven channel that only real businesses that have been approved can send those texts versus on email. Anybody can get an email and start sending out, you know, emails, and now everyone’s flooded, right? All this technology is doing that. So SMS is that true? Clean channel with a 98% open rate, 85% of those people open that text within 15 minutes. So it still holds true today. You know, I feel like I’ve been reading those stats for like, a decade, but it still remains true. And most people think, oh, when is SMS gonna die? I mean, at the end of the day, SMS is the channel where, if you want to get in touch with somebody, you’re going to send them a text right? If you want someone to get your message, you’re going to get you’re going to send a text message. There’s no other channel out there that has that immediacy for again, getting your message across or notification. That is, that is the channel.

Brad Weimert 8:35
So I’ve heard these stats for a long time too. So yeah, it seems like a lot of things have remained the same. How has SMS marketing changed since 2010 when you got into the space with call loop?

Chris Brisson 8:47
Yeah, more on the compliance side, right again, everyone can get a phone number. Everyone can can send it out. You know? The funny thing is, SMS, like with call loop, was really an outbound, one way, mass texting tool. And so it was just that. That’s how most of those platforms were built. It’s just one way. They weren’t really two way. But in about 2015 2016 I essentially wanted to reinvent it, and so I went through this, this fun process, but basically I spun out sales message in 2016 did a webinar, and essentially sold that idea to build this two way texting platform, just because I saw the future of even myself. I’m like, Man, I’m texting for my own phone. It works really well, but how am I going to scale this out to my team? I don’t want them texting from their own phone. And it turns out that’s what most businesses want. Is they want a tool that integrates into their CRM, they can add automation, and their team can text from the computer or from the mobile app, and just have something that the company can. Control the same way that you can control your email marketing now sales message can essentially control, you know, all the text messaging, you know, the analytics, you know, the automation, the phone numbers, right? Who gets a number, setting up their IVR, all that stuff. So it really, you know, it’s been more of a platform versus this one way mass texting tool. It’s more of a conversational tool, and now with like AI, it just even opens up, you know, more or use cases to scale. Because the challenge with SMS is, well, someone’s got to manage a response. Well, what if you get 500 responses right? And you’ll write a team of two. And so now that time to response, you know, goes through the roof, and now you don’t have that immediacy that people are expecting.

Brad Weimert 10:47
Well, I want to, I want to talk about the AI side of things in a minute here, but that you opened up a really good point and good question, which is, you know, there are, there are tons of people to around to teach you the fundamental principles of email marketing and in lots of tried and true methods, and there are a few different approaches, but there’s a lot out there. How does email marketing differ from SMS marketing? Fundamentally like, what is the approach? Is there a certain cadence? Do you think about it differently? Do you use it differently? How should business owners approach SMS that’s different than the traditional email marketing approach?

Chris Brisson 11:26
Yeah, I think the benefit of SMS is it is simple. Like, there’s not a lot of courses out there on SMS marketing. I don’t even know. I mean, I haven’t really gone through any. And the reality with that is, because it is so simple, so simple. So we’re already pros. We’ve been doing it for 30 plus years. And so the way in which communication, or, you know, conversations happen over SMS, is, it is conversational. And so in order to get an email, you know, built out, you’ve got to get your list, you’ve got to get your headline right or subject line, you got to get your opening body copy, right? There’s a lot of components and pieces that make it a lot more complex. Just to get, hopefully, you know, a better click through rate, right? You got to get the open. You got to get the click. SMS is super simple, and so you can send a text. Everyone’s going to get it that has a valid number, and you don’t have to be a copywriter or professional to really get a response. And so, you know, email in conjunction with SMS in conjunction with all the other channels, it’s a great combination. So we’ve had a lot of companies that, you know, email is like, it’s still there as a channel, but they lead with SMS because, because it has the highest engagement rate. So if you’re generating a lead, yes, send them an email, make a phone call, if you have that process built, but an SMS is going to be the fastest way to get a response and for people to respond back to you. And so that is just a great strategy is someone fills out a web form, automate a text message, ask a question to open up that conversation to you know, again, maybe qualify, maybe you want to book a meeting, and that’s a typical use case. And so that speed to lead is really important, right? You can call them. They may not pick up. They’re not going to reply to the email and SMS. Is that, you know, that fastest path to engage and get right into a real conversation with someone?

Brad Weimert 13:29
Yeah, I think in in a lot of I mean, if you think about a bunch of different marketing mediums, one of the questions is, what’s the CTA? And so, you know, is the intention to have a CTA of go to this landing page, fill out this form, or is the intention to inform somebody, right? Just push out education? Or is the intention to get a response? And it seems like the SMS medium is there really, fundamentally to get a response and open dialog with somebody? Is that? Does that hold true? Or do you have other use cases for SMS where you’re just trying to blast something for exposure or drive them to book a call without the response.

Chris Brisson 14:07
Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of ways to use it. So, you know, one of the things that we’re sort of launching to the market is this idea of textizing your business, okay? And so what that means is, you know, first starts with like a philosophy. So our philosophies is a belief. We believe conversations are good for business. And by driving more conversations, you’ll grow you’ll open up new opportunities. You’ll talk to leads. You’ll essentially grow the company, grow the business through through revenue. And so we do that through a framework called textiles your business, and that is the methodology. So how do we drive more conversations for businesses? Well, we have a framework called textiles your business, so texting and messaging can play a part in the entire lifecycle. So you can use it to generate. Leads right, whether that’s text to join keyword or a web form or on social media, you can swipe up and have people text you. You can have a QR code that goes right to an SMS conversation. And then you have sort of the second stage. So you have capture connect. Connect is you’re engaging with them now, pushing someone into an AI agent that knows your brand, knows how you speak, and could qualify those new leads coming in. So it could ask questions like, Hey, what’s your email address, what’s your square footage, right? Are you interested in residential or commercial? Right? Can have this real natural language conversation that has human delay, and so it feels like somebody on the other end is actually responding right. And so you can push them through that. You have two way texting. You do mass texting, putting into campaigns, and then ultimately you have conversion, so driving someone to either book a meeting, right, fill out a form, buy a product, right? Whatever that goal is. You know, one big use case is, hey, I’ve got all these leads coming in. I need to have conversations with them and qualify. And if it’s qualified, let’s go ahead and book a meeting, and we can book a meeting all over SMS. Hey, what’s up, Brad, are you available at 2pm on Thursday? Yes, no. So we’ll read, you know, your Google Calendar, we have a Calendly integration as well, and so over SMS, the agent could effectively book a meeting. Or we could provide a link over to Calendly and then follow up to make sure that they actually book that that meeting. Or, again, it could be a mass text message promotion. All right, we all get those texts, you know, 20% off, or whatever it is. You can use it in in that fashion as well, or it’s just a notification alert. Hey, new, new information. We just did this. Could drive to a webinar, right? Announcing a webinar, some sort of event, and then you have sort of the care side of it, which is, I want to gather feedback. So let’s say after someone purchases, you can send a text message, Hey, Brad, scale one to five. How was it? And you say five, we can reply back with a text to leave a review. You leave a review, and then we could turn you into a furrow partner to where you can start to drive traffic and leads to to the business, and so that whole framework, right? You can use messaging across the entire system, you know, essentially across the entire business. So people usually think, oh, I can well, they can use it for that. But in reality, you know, there are tons of ways that you can use messaging to increase leads, right, increase show up rates, right, decrease notions. If you have appointments or meetings, drive revenue, get reviews, and in all the different ways and strategies

Brad Weimert 17:55
you’ve made it this far, which probably means that you’re an entrepreneur, which probably means that you’re accepting credit cards and maybe ACH payments, beyond the fact that we can do a rate review to save you money, beyond the fact that we give you dedicated account reps, world class customer service, world class technology, and can actually optimize the way you accept payments online. Our average client saves year by working with us. If you want to find out how and get a free rate review from us. Check us [email protected] forward slash am, right now, we have a ton of, a ton of clients that we see aggressively selling through DMS, and you’ve got, you know, I mean, fuck 1000 different platforms. It feels like that. You’re managing all these fucking inboxes everywhere from WhatsApp to messenger to obviously your SMS to, you know, every other platform, Discord, etc, etc, etc, and it is exhausting. How do you see SMS evolving in the next five years in the face of all these other inboxes.

Chris Brisson 19:05
I don’t know about you, but if you want to get in touch with me, send me a text, right? You’re either gonna call me, you’re gonna text me if you think I’m gonna look at a Facebook message or WhatsApp message, you know? And we’re friends, right? And so if you send me a Facebook message, I’ll get it, but if you send me a WhatsApp message, good luck, right? Because I’m in groups. Everyone’s in all these groups, and so it’s just hard to manage. And so to me, SMS is the only, the only way. And so I think a lot of other people, they have all these inboxes, but they treat, you know, WhatsApp, like, that’s my groups, my communities on Facebook, it’s my friends. But man, you know, my SMS is, like, those real conversations, and so that’s how business gets done, is it’s, it’s over SMS. So I think, you know, SMS as a channel, is it going to change? I think it’s going to be. More it’s going to get more rich. So you starting to see some of this with, you know, Apple and Android, this thing called RC, RCS, so now you can send more rich texts to Android folks before you could it. But now that’s that is that is opening up. If you get outside of the United States, more people are on WhatsApp, because it’s expensive to send a text inside of Brazil or inside of Peru or inside of Germany. And so, you know, WhatsApp is the way in which, you know, people connect and communicate. And so outside of the US, it’s different, right? But inside the US, it really is an SMS world, right? And so that’s the place in space where people are are at, like, if I sent you a text, most likely you’ll respond very quickly. But if I send you a WhatsApp, I don’t know, right? And you know, that’s the primary channel, so you have email, call, SMS, yeah.

Brad Weimert 20:59
I mean, I think that’s certainly, certainly true in my life and many people I know, I also see, you know, many, many, many of the younger entrepreneurs leaning very heavily in their DMS, whether that’s, you know, Tiktok or Insta or snap or whatever. But I see communication happening in different places, Telegram, WhatsApp, circle, etc. So I’m curious to see how that integration works over time, but I’m with you for sure. I what I want. I gave up on business cards 20 years ago and went straight to give me your cell. I was just like, No, I don’t carry cards. Let me but shoot me a text real quick, because when you’re in somebody’s pocket, you’re in their pocket.

Chris Brisson 21:40
Yeah, I think your point too is, like on Tiktok and Instagram, you can get there, but no one’s asking for that on a web form, right? If you’re a real business, you’re saying first name, last name, email, phone, you’re not saying what’s your Tiktok so I could send you a DM, or, you know, maybe you’ll run some, some, you know, enhancements, or, you know, enrich the contact, and then you can reach them on LinkedIn or something, but it’s not the primary mode of connection, you know, it’s it’s a phone number, it’s an email.

Brad Weimert 22:08
Yeah, the other thing is, you own the platform, right? If you own their if you have their cell phone number and you can text them, you own that, and all the other platforms you don’t have control, right? They can change that mechanism at any point in time.

Unknown Speaker 22:21
Yeah, yeah. 100%

Brad Weimert 22:25
all right. Let me back out for a second. So you in 2015 and you alluded to this earlier, but in 2015 you wrote a three part email series called the death of call loop, where you referred to the first business that you started as a zombie business. Walk us through how you came to the decision to shut down a business that you spent five years building to launch into a greater success with something else.

Chris Brisson 22:49
Yeah, so started call loop in 2009 with the idea that I wanted to automate voice broadcasts the same way that you could automate email, right? And an autoresponder and that sort of thing. About two years later, then we added SMS, but by 2015 it just, it wasn’t growing, it wasn’t dying, it was just sort of there, and it broke a lot. The Tech was somewhat old. It really hasn’t been, you know, it wasn’t good, and it also was very crippling. We couldn’t really build new features, we couldn’t innovate, and so it was just stuck. And that sort of, that sucks, right? Like I’m a creator. I want to create stuff. I want to solve problems. And it was like, great, you can’t do any of that. So there it is. And so it’s just very, very very limiting. So I wrote that three part series. Funny enough, I was actually, you know, my CFO is right next to me in the other office here, and I was showing him like, Hey, this is the history of sales message, where it came from. And it was interesting, just like rereading that, that letter. Because what it went into was, you know, I built a business I secretly despised, and it was a good business, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t grow it, right? I couldn’t fix those problems. So I wrote that, and at the end of that, that three part series was, you know, follow my journey as I reinvent colleague from the ground up on what I’m calling the Second Chance startup. And so that was just this recasting of a brand new vision to, you know, talking to a friend, I’m like, I just needed a different horse. You know, I had big goals and aspirations to create stuff, and not that money for me is motivator, but really just creating something that I knew could impact and make a big impact. And so call loop, at the time, was not the vehicle. So I just said, Hey, what would I do if I could start all over and effectively, what would I do to put call loop out of business? Well, two way. Texting was something that, you know was, was top of mind. I’m like, Man, this would be a great product. So I don’t want to have the baggage with call loop. So let me create something brand new with this new vision for, you know, a conversational platform. So it really came from that, you know, the depths of like frustration, to be honest. And today, you know, it’s a very successful company. You’ve got 65 plus employees. You know, we’ve been growing really nicely, 100% bootstrapped. Haven’t raised any venture capital or any debt or anything like that, and it’s been fun. And more importantly is like, we’ve been able to build a great product. So conversational texting, we have SMS marketing. We have a really great calling platform as well. So it’s an all in one, messaging, calling platform for sales, marketing and support teams. And so it’s come a long way, but I had to go through that pain to get to where we’re at today. You know, the funny thing, call loop still exists, and so that platform was rebuilt a couple of years ago. It’s just different, you know, it’s a different vision for that business than it is with sales message, which is fun to grow. We’ve got great people and, yeah, we’re just tackling a bigger, a bigger vision that’s that’s very exciting.

Brad Weimert 26:17
What did you do differently the second time around? That made it more fun and obviously control the product. Being able to do something that you don’t hate is at the core of this, but from a sort of operational and launch perspective, what did you do differently with the second company that allowed it to grow the way that

Chris Brisson 26:33
it did? Yeah, the biggest thing was just building stuff people wanted. And so, you know, the early days, talked to a ton of customers, and we were just continuously building product, building features, improving it, making it better, making it better. And, you know, just this sort of continuous improvement, this Kaizen philosophy of making it great, and not just saying, oh, yeah, we integrate with this platform, and it’s very surface level, but doubling, tripling, quadrupling down, you know, on our HubSpot integration has, you know, been a huge, a huge part of our growth, because we really focused on that audience, which they need messaging, they need to a texting, but they also want it integrated deeply into their tool. And so it’s one thing to say, we integrate. It’s another thing to say, Oh, we integrate here and here and here’s how that works. And so all the nuances of doing that, they’re all different, right? If you’re integrating into Active Campaign, that customer is different. That’s more of a marketing company. If you’re integrating into Salesforce that’s a different customer. And so they all have different needs, wants, desires from a product perspective. And yeah, I mean, I just, I went all in on sales message. And you know, my co founder, Sergey, came in about 2020 so started in 2017 and then 2020, brought Sergey in, and it’s just been awesome. He’s been a great partner, and I’ve been able to build stuff, right? And so that’s my my way of like getting excited is, like actually being able to build stuff, build cool product that you know, for me as a marketer and just as a product builder, like all the different nuances of creating something that can solve a lot, a lot more problems than just, you know, oh, it’s just too late texting, but it integrates pretty deep into, you know, a lot of the ways that a business would want to use it.

Brad Weimert 28:39
So, I mean, I have a couple questions there. One is, you tied yourself to a platform, right? Platform, right? So you did a HubSpot integration, which is really latching on to a fast paced horse, right? And there are good and bad points to tying yourself to a platform, as we sort of mentioned, right? The bad is, they have a lot of control. The good is there are tons of people using the platform that are captive, right, that needed, need a solution. How did you choose HubSpot versus any of the other platforms to focus on?

Chris Brisson 29:06
Yeah, look, I had experience with call loop because we integrated into a lot of tools, right? And I was like, let’s integrate into everything, because we integrated everything, then, well, I mean, we’ll get them all. And so in many respects, that was a good experiment, because that actually is not true. And there were a lot of platforms that we built and integrated into that sent zero customers, zero leads. And so it’s one thing to just have an integration. It’s another thing to market the integration, to win customers through that. And so what we saw was, you know, we integrated into Infusionsoft and Active Campaign and Pipedrive and all the different platforms out there, but our best customer was a HubSpot customer, because they had a team, they had people, they they had people to manage those. Responses. They were focused on creating conversations. You know, HubSpot has the whole idea of inbound marketing, and so their whole premise was to drive conversations. And so we just saw it really exceed through, through HubSpot, because also too is, you know, having more people on a platform within a team or a company, obviously increases messages sent, right or calls made. And so if you’re a small company on Infusionsoft, and you’re leaning on, you know, more automation, and you have a team of two or three, the expandability on that account is quite small now they might be heavy marketing right use case, but from a conversational place, small team is not going to give a large amount of volumes given just the constraint on people to manage those responses. So and also, the HubSpot created a great platform to allow companies like sales message to go deep to solve a lot of those micro use cases that you couldn’t really do on other tools because they just never extended their platform to allow apps like us to solve it.

Brad Weimert 31:15
So basically, you had a much better fit for your ideal client, right? Your ideal client profile is more likely to be using HubSpot than Infusionsoft or Active Campaign, meaning that it’s a bigger business. It’s a more expensive platform, which means it’s going to lean towards slightly larger businesses using it. And then also, when you look at, and I think about this stuff all the time, because easy, pay direct, is integrated to, you know, hundreds of different platforms. But the API, the access, you know, the application programming interface, to connect to these platforms, can be limited, or it can be super robust. And to most people, what that, what that means to everybody that’s not a tech dork, is, is that you can actually leverage all of the different tools within the platform, right? So you can fire a text off from 100 different places in the platform, as opposed to just one, which is how a lot of APIs end up working with these platforms. Yep. Is that a adequate summary?

Chris Brisson 32:13
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, API docs are opportunities, and so a lot of platforms don’t have enough ways to really build on and so well, that’s a lack of opportunity, while other ones have. Hey, here’s all the APIs you can come up with a lot of unique ways to create opportunity and create a feature set that maybe a certain type of customer would would want. And that’s happened a lot. You know, we have some customers that come in and they look at our competitors, and they go, Oh my gosh, you guys do the one thing that really tipped it for us. And it’s like, you know, it’s these small sort of feature sets that really open up opportunity into a certain vertical maybe it’s franchises right? Franchises have certain needs on scalability for their franchisees, and so there are certain features that we had to build in order to sort of win some of that business. But if it wasn’t for some of the API ability on HubSpot and these other tools we wouldn’t be able to do and we have to create something custom, and that sort of thing.

Brad Weimert 33:27
There’s a, you know, the famous Henry Ford quote, which is, if I asked people what they wanted, they would have set a faster horse. How do you as a product designer decide when to create a feature? Because you think it’s the right feature versus listening to your customers or audience,

Chris Brisson 33:44
yeah, you know, I am a customer, right? And so I have a good pulse on like, what I want. And, you know, I’ve been in this for a long time. I also run a business, and so what do I need in order to support that? So there’s, there’s a greater vision one. So that’s sort of the future of where we want to go, you know, as a platform, as a company, and, you know, at the core, there’s just some basic core values. So is it measurable? Is it trackable? And you could just go down a whole list of like, okay, with two way texting. How are we tracking that? How do we prove that it’s actually working? You know, when you’re sending out a mass text message, how are we proving that it’s working beyond just message sent. So we have click tracking, we have conversion tracking, we have, you know, revenue tracking. And so, okay, that’s those are some things that a marketer would need in order to say, hey, this platform is working. And so, you know, we talk to a lot of customers. We also have, you know, if you go to feedback.salesmessage.com, you know, we use a tool. Where customers can upvote, and that becomes a big part of what do we choose to actually build. And so there may be one small thing that one person wants, but if no one else wants that, you know, takes my time, money, resource to build something. And so we have to decide and prioritize what’s actually going to get built. So that’s a great lens into what our customers want, and if it lines up with our vision for where we want to go, you know, we’ll, we’ll build that stuff. So we have a good sort of backlog of things that we need to move forward on. You know, AI has helped compress and even kill some of the things we said two years ago we were going to build, and now it’s like, oh no, we’re going to do it this way. And so AI has really just allowed a new way to look at the future of messaging. There’s a whole thing called Product Market Fit collapse, and you have companies that have built their entire business on solving this one use case. And so all the products and features and everything they built were for that, and then AI comes in and says, Hey, we can do that without all of that setup. You just click a button and instantly get the outcome. So I think we’re moving towards a more outcome based, like world of business, to where business owners really just want the outcome. They don’t want the setup, like if they could get rid of the setup, and they know that, hey, AI can do a better job of helping you get the perfect setup, and they can click a button and then just get the outcome. That’s the future. And so I think for business owners to think about, hey, how do I just help them get faster? And then, more importantly, how can I change the game, and going away from maybe paying me for that to just paying me for the outcome. And so there’s gonna be a lot of disruption that’s gonna happen where business models get disrupted because a new person comes in and they go right for the outcome, versus, you know, along along the path, there’s been some interesting companies that have come out that are focused on that. And yeah, so

Brad Weimert 37:07
AI is moving incredibly fast right now, and it’s unclear, I think, how it’s going to break a bunch of different industries and systems. What are you doing with AI and SMS now, and what do you think will be different in a year?

Chris Brisson 37:26
Yeah, I mean, we got started on AI a couple of years ago, and look, we’re a texting platform, so the first sort of use case for us was, let’s help customers rewrite their text. So we have, hey, rephrase it, rewrite it, make it friendly. Blah, blah, blah, right? Pretty simple stuff. This next phase we have is really an AI agents world, and so we’re building AI agents that solve for getting an outcome. So one of the agents we have is a booking agent, so you drive a lead through AI, it’ll have that conversation to engage, capture data, you know, push to your CRM if you want qualify, and then book a meeting all through SMS. So you just drive a lead, it will do all that and give you the outcome, right? And so where else in this world of messaging is AI going to play a part. So with Agent, you could build a knowledge base agent, so maybe that’s a customer support agent. People can text in and then get responses back, right? You know you have, again, if you put it on this text size framework, you can have agents all across that so getting reviews, turning people into referrals, even an agent that could read your, let’s say, historical sales data from HubSpot or stripe, and it can make recommendations and push people into buying a new product. You know, good example is like, if you get a haircut, which, apparently I got one. But like, you know, if you know you’re going to get a haircut, you could start to see that, hey, the last haircut was a month ago, and, oh, man, it’s 45 days later. What if you could just have an agent that, based on that recency or frequency, could just automate a text and win people back, and so now AI can play a part in all of that. So from the lead engagement to the meeting book to driving the revenue and then to win back that customer on this repeat cycle. Like, that’s a great example for, like, a salon, you know, for Barber, it’s just, how do I just let the system run and win back my customers and reach out back to them and essentially put that marketing on autopilot. So

Brad Weimert 39:46
love that. All right. Couple quick questions for you. We’ve both been in the game for a while. At this point, we’ve both made lots of mistakes. I am sure, at least I have, yeah. Yeah, I also was once a younger, arrogant, stupid entrepreneur. What advice do you have for a new entrepreneur starting out today?

Chris Brisson 40:15
I mean, the advice I would give is it, is it has become very easy to have an idea, to create that idea, and to sell that idea. So now, with all these AI tools, you can build it on lovable or replit, and a couple of days, not even a couple of hours, you can actually have a working prototype. So a couple of weeks ago, I did that. I’m like, man, let me go and create these apps that have been on my mind for a long time. And I built two apps just through replit, through lovable, because I just want to learn the process. And so once you have that, now you can start to go up and sell it and so, but that also creates a level playing field, because everybody can do it well, then everyone can create these apps. The difference between those that are going to be successful is on the execution side, anybody can create an app. Anybody can create an idea. How are you actually going to grow it? You know, a friend of mine was given a supplement company a couple of years ago, like, literally, here’s a supplement company. It’s generating revenue, but he just didn’t know what to do. He had no idea, because he wasn’t in that world. And so you could have the best business idea, something that’s actually working and functioning, but if you don’t know how to grow it, then you’re you’re dead. And so, you know, the distribution and really growing a business and trying a bunch of stuff, that’s where, like, that’s everything so on X, I mean, there’s so many amazing just threads and stories on how these young entrepreneurs are creating ideas and scaling them through social media and through Tiktok and, you know, all these social strategies. So, yeah, I think the big thing is finding an idea that’s worthy to go down that journey. And it may take a lot of different ideas, but you can test them really quick. You can build them very quickly. I got an email the other day, and it was a interview AI agent, and I was like, hey, we’ll, we’ll talk to your customers, your churned customers, and give you the feedback and whatever it is like, man, I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time. I gotta find somebody in my company. I gotta do that, you know, and they don’t know how to run the interview. And I’ve always wanted to do that. And so here comes along an email that promises that, and this website that looks like the guy did it in a weekend. I’m like, he probably is using loveable to create this little AI agent thing. And I tried it. I’m like, This is awesome. And he’s like, hey, we’ll give you your three churned interviews for free, and then it’s just $15 per interview. I’m like, All right, let’s do it. And it was like that idea was super simple, but it solves a core pain for me Look, as a business owner, B to B is, is the greatest market to go after. If you go B to C, you know, people don’t want they don’t want to pay anything. They want it for super cheap and their expectations are super high, but for business owner, right? If you tell me, hey, I’ll interview your customers at $15 each, fine like that feedback and the time savings, it’s worth it for me, and I could be paying hundreds of dollars a month that this new AI agent is gathering that feedback so a business owner has the cash because they see the difference in time and in revenue that something could could add to the business versus a consumer. It’s all an expense. Yeah,

Brad Weimert 43:55
B to B market was a choice I made a very long time ago. And yeah, 100% behind you on that? Yeah, what’s a what’s a belief that you held early in your career that has changed as you’ve grown into the entrepreneur you are now

Chris Brisson 44:13
that I have to do it all myself, and so I did do it all myself. I had to do it all myself because I had no choice. And even hiring, you know, the first couple of six figure employees was a very difficult decision. And the realization, you know, when you find the right people, they’re worth their weight in gold. And so, you know, sales message has gotten to a point where, you know, we need great people, and great people are not cheap. They might even be doing their own business. And so it does make sense to figure all out. In the beginning, I had to learn how to do HTML and design and do SEO and write art. Coals. And, you know, all the jobs had to be done. I had to do them all, and I learned a ton. So anywhere within the business, outside of development, right? I’m not a coder, but I’m very technical. And so I can have a very high level conversation, but I can get into the weeds of SEO and, you know, different nuances of all that stuff. So I just have a very wide depth of the things it takes to build a business. So, but at some point you have to let that go. And so at that point, you know, when it got to a certain point, I had to let that go. There are parts of business that I won’t let go, because that’s my strength, but there are other parts where, you know, great, someone’s doing an amazing job at that. So that’s what I would say, is the belief that, man, it has to be me and only me. And that’s not true, but it’s true in the beginning, because you have no other option.

Brad Weimert 45:58
I love it, man, I love it. Well, I appreciate you covering on time, dude, let’s, let’s make a point of getting face time next time, like literal in person, IRL kind of shit.

Chris Brisson 46:09
I’ll be there in October, man, I’ll be in, oh, I love it. I’ll be in Austin. Yep,

Brad Weimert 46:13
yeah. Oh, perfect, yeah. Well, let’s, let’s carve out time in the meantime. Where do you want to point people if they want to find out more about you or the business,

Chris Brisson 46:21
yeah. Sales message.com, or they can find me on LinkedIn. Chris person, I’m pretty active for the most part, on on LinkedIn. But sales message, they can go check out site, sign up for trial if they want to investing to the business. But Yemen,

Brad Weimert 46:41
did I have I been mispronouncing your name for 15

Unknown Speaker 46:44
years? Probably most people do.

Brad Weimert 46:48
Damn it, man, damn it. I hate that. I’m so careful about it, but when it seems like it’s straightforward, I don’t bother checking Yeah. Well, well, I mean, it’s all right. Ask people how to say their names. People. Chris on Yes, great to see you until next time. Man, all right, brother, all right, that’s a wrap for this episode. I’m supposed to tell you that you should subscribe to the show and you should leave a review. I really want you to leave a review, though, because it makes like a radical difference in the algorithm and getting other people to be able to see the show. So can you please go keep a review. It’ll take you, like 30 seconds. Also, if you want more episodes that are amazing, you can check out the full length video versions at beyond a million.com, or youtube.com. Forward slash at beyond a million. You won’t regret it.