August 15, 2024 • 36 mins
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hey guys, Frank here with another episode of Modern
Church Leader.
I am joined by Michael, one ofthe co-founders of Clearstream,
Co-founder and CEO right.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We don't have a CEO.
I don't know why.
I'm COO, oh, okay, yeah, youand Trevor are CTO, I'm COO.
So yeah, you guys started agreat business, so I yeah, you
and Travis, I'm the.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
CTO, I'm COO, so yeah , you guys started a great
business, so I'm pumped to dothis interview.
We've known each other for awhile, so thanks for coming on
the show.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Tell folks like where you're joining from and I don't
you know.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So I'm joining from Pensacola, florida.
That's where our company'slocated.
Uh, we have an office heredowntown, and then you know
we're like a hybrid, remoteslash, an office team.
Um, then, doing this for like14 years, which is crazy to say,
uh, it's like a lifetime insoftware.
Um, and what clearstream is is,very simply put we are a
(01:09):
texting and emailing softwarebuilt specifically for churches.
We've been doing that for along time, and so we're not a
church management software.
We don't try to be we don'thave plans to be software.
We don't.
We don't try to be, uh, wedon't have plans to be um, we
just focus on building really,really, really good software
helping churches communicatewith their people through
(01:31):
texting and email.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So that's the short.
Love it.
And you and your longtime buddy, trevor, started it.
You guys have.
You have quite the the historytogether, so get.
I mean, how did you get intobrother-in-law's now?
But there you, there, you gothere.
Yeah, it's like, and it's stillworking.
You're still, you know, friendsand all that that's still
(01:54):
friends.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
That's a good still friends.
So he tricked me into startinga company so he could marry my
sister later.
So I'm smart guy, guy, he did.
He did marry my sister, but itwasn't a trick, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So how did you guys get into give us a little bit of
your, like you know, faithstory?
Like how did you, you know, getconnected with the church and
become a Christian?
And obviously that down theroad led to, you know, building
a company that's serving thechurch.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So, yeah, we love just the backstory, you know,
building a company that'sserving the church.
So, yeah, we love just thebackstory.
Well, man, you're.
You're asking me something thatI would I would talk about for
much longer than talking aboutclear stream, so I'll try to
keep this real concise story.
Um, well, both, both Trevor andI grew up in the church.
He was a missionary kid, uh, hewas born in Thailand.
His parents run a missions, avery large mission sending
(02:45):
agency.
I was a pastor's kid, kind ofgrew up in the church, you know,
and I identity Christian, so tospeak yeah, never really went,
you know, crazy as a teenager oranything, but just kind of was
like the typical, you knowchristian pastor's kid.
(03:05):
Um, and it wasn't until likeI'm 39 now, it wasn't until like
mid-20s that, um, life startedbeating me up a little bit and
then faith became a little bitmore real where, um, it was more
than just like identify as aChristian.
(03:26):
It's like, no, actually likethis is my everything.
This is, yeah, I don't know, itwas just it was.
Later on in life I had one ofthose stories I never had like
any kind of a very boringtestimony personally, you know,
it wasn't like I was lost andthen I was found.
It was more like I was justkind of lukewarm and then life
(03:52):
through some some hard stuff, alittle bit of suffering and that
, um, I fortunately turned tothe gospel instead of other
things, right, um, and it's justbeen in that sense.
Yeah, that's awesome, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, my kids.
You know I have triplet12-year-old boys.
They've grown up in church.
I didn't grow up in church, butthey're growing up in church
and oftentimes one of my boyswill say to me like Dad,
everybody has the same story.
Everything was bad and then itwas good because of Jesus, he's
(04:31):
processing what he hears.
Yeah, that, I guess, gets thepress, but there's lots of
people that it's not like lifewas all bad and they were in
jail and on drugs and crazy, andthen they learned about Jesus
and the gospel and had a bigchange Like sometimes people
have.
Just, they grew up in thechurch or, like me, I didn't
(04:51):
have a crazy, you know crazystory and God found me in
college and I became a Christianand you know, there you go and
uh, yeah, everyone's story isdifferent and God uses all of us
.
So it's cool, it doesn't haveto be crazy.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
My kids, my kids, have goodradars.
They're, they're, they'respotting that in the church at
(05:12):
12 and I'm like, okay, it's good, it's going to be different.
Well, I don't know if it weredoing before Clearstream, but
give us the Clearstream journey.
So you had a heart for thechurch, but you're also a tech
guy somehow, and that led intoClearstream being what it is
today.
But like, what's the journey?
Speaker 1 (05:34):
there.
Well, I should probablydisclose that I'm really not a
tech guy.
I kind of stumbled into this.
You play one on TV.
Yeah, I play one on TV and havedealt with imposter syndrome
for many years and that's gottenbetter and better as as um, as
we've, you know, just continuedrunning the company.
(05:54):
But, um, it was really myco-founder.
It was really Trevor.
He was the tech guy.
You know, we were both runningseparate businesses, um, uh,
just out of college and we wenton this.
I'm not going to go way deep,I'm not going to bore your
(06:15):
audience, but my wife and I wewere married.
This was like 2009.
I got married in 2008.
We went on like a triple datewith, like, my wife and I and
then a couple other couples, andTrevor was one of those people
who went on a date, yeah, um, uh, with my sister, who he later
married, and we just we just hitit off.
(06:35):
Trevor and I, like we justclicked really well, um, and we
and we started hanging out.
He's running his own web devbusiness 'm running like an, uh,
like a like a high-end autodetailing business.
So I'm not a tech guy, um butlike I was into like building my
(06:56):
own website and, like you know,I, I was drawn, even just in my
own business, like the back-endoperations, I, you know
whatever um.
So we decide, I think, sixmonths later, like man, we want
to build something together andso, uh, we started throwing some
ideas around and, um, webasically didn't have it's.
(07:19):
It's actually kind of a boringstory.
It gets cooler the later, youknow, the later it goes.
But the the inception of clear,inception of clearstream is
pretty lame.
It's like, okay, two guysdecide they want to build
something, um, and so webasically just started building
websites, doing, like, uh,google adwords, like you know,
marketing stuff for, like, localbusinesses.
(07:39):
Um, and like, our work ethicreally got us pretty far.
Like we didn't, like we didn't,you know, raise any money or
join any debt.
We just did whatever we couldto make money and we earned a
really good reputation and gotpassed around a lot.
(08:00):
And so, you know, we kind ofgrew our client base and, about
a year in, one of the thingsthat we decided we wanted to do
was to do, um, well, streamingfor churches.
Way too early into the game, theinfrastructure for live
streaming was just not there.
In 2010, you know, 10, we werereselling some I don't remember
(08:24):
who it was um, uh, and thathints the name clear stream.
Actually that's where patientcomes from.
So nothing to do with what wedo today.
Um, and we also startedreselling a texting software, um
, from like one of the largestlike business texting softwares
out there.
So we're were just like a whitelabel.
(08:44):
It was like, you know, weweren't building any of the
software, we were just buildinglike the website and the layer
on top.
And then, you know, peoplewould find us and they would
start using, you know, clearstream.
But it's not clear streambehind the scenes.
Um, and we did that for acouple of years while doing the
other things you know, buildingwebsites for local businesses
(09:05):
and stuff like that for churches.
Um, and it was actually like acrash course.
Reselling Another largesoftware was a crash course for
us.
Um, and what we didn't want tobuild, if we were to ever do it
on our, on our own Right, I was,you know, for the first like
six years of clear stream.
(09:26):
It was just Trevor and I.
You know we were just like atwo man shop.
I'm doing like all the customersupport.
Um, you know all the.
You know a lot most of thebusiness stuff he's.
You know behind the scenes onthe uh, engineering side very
little of it back then.
(09:49):
But talking with customers inthose first few years that we
were reselling another textingsoftware, customers were
frustrated all the time becausethe software was so hard to use,
very buggy, very slow, like man.
We could just build somethingreally really, really simple.
It doesn't need all the bellsand whistles that all these
business texting softwares needor have.
(10:11):
Like you know, you need to beable to go and go into somewhere
and easily send out a message,reliably send it out it'd be
sent out really fast and theability to respond to people.
Like, if we can do those fewthings really good.
You know that'd be cool and sowe did.
We figured out how to do itourselves design the products,
(10:34):
wireframe, design the product,built it out, launched it in
2013, um, and so you know that'show Clearstream, as people
might know today, is like atexting software.
It was really like the firstiteration was in 2013.
Yeah, way more simple than itis today.
We miss those days thesimplicity of just very, very
(10:58):
simple software.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah.
But I mean I love it becauseyou saw, you know you were doing
something.
You saw the need, you saw theproblem.
You're like, oh, we can do thisbetter.
You went off and did it andclearly it's worked.
But there's a little point inthere.
Early on you were doing textfor kind of anybody, because you
were building websites forlocal businesses and all that.
So you were.
You were doing text forchurches and all kinds of other
(11:23):
businesses too, and at somepoint you decided like we're
going to go all in on churches,like tell us, you know a little
bit about that moment.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Okay, so we launched the first version in 2013,
around 2015 or 16.
At that time, we had maybe hadI'd have to look back um, I'm
gonna say maybe a few hundredcustomers.
We happen to have some reallylarge companies, like really
(11:55):
large, like very, very large youknow fortune.
I don't know one or 500.
You know a few of those thathad like we had no business
working with companies thatlarge, but somehow we, you got
past their gates.
I don't know how, um, but inthose days, like, we were just a
texting software for anyone andso we had churches using clear
(12:18):
stream and we had otherbusinesses using clear stream.
Um, at least back then Iwouldn't know now because we
haven't been building businesstexting software for many years
but back then texting softwarewould just attract unscrupulous
businesses.
(12:38):
And I'm not going to like Justnightclubs and things like that,
which is fine I'm not sayingthere's something wrong with a
nightclub, but it's just um.
At the end of the day, what itcame down to is we had no
satisfaction with rebuilding.
We did not like supportingbusinesses using our software
(13:04):
and also, alongside of thatfrustration that we had, we also
had churches that were usingClearstream.
Those churches would startusing Clearstream and required
very little hand-holding.
They loved our software verylittle support.
What I didn't realize back thenwe were just too naive to know
(13:26):
is that actually it was a reallygood product-market fit.
We just didn't know.
We didn't know we had builtsomething like actually, this
works for churches.
It might work for businessestoo, but it really works for
churches.
That's the world that we comefrom, um, that's the world that
we're passionate about.
(13:51):
I guess I I could say so kind ofall of those factors converged
around the end of 2015.
And I remember, um, uh, Iremember exactly where we were.
We were, you know, we left theoffice, trevor and I we go get
lunch across the street andwe're sitting in a ditch eating
lunch and, um, and so I'm likeman, dude, like this sounds
(14:16):
crazy, but I think we shouldconsider pivoting to just only
building our software forchurches.
And, uh, he didn't.
He hardly even paused, which isunlike trevor.
Trevor's a very slow speaker,not like just very um,
considered, thoughtful, yes,considered and thoughtful
(14:37):
speaker.
Uh, but he didn't even hesitateand he's like.
I've been actually feeling thesame exact thing lately.
I was like, okay, well, whatare we going to do?
And so that kind of started achain of events that lasted
about a year, uh, all throughout2016, of, um, me going to
hundreds of businesses that youknow that are paying us to use
(15:01):
our software and, again, we'renot funded, we're just like you
know, we're just bootstrapped,yeah, um, and going and telling
them like, hey, you know, thankyou for using us, but, um, you
know, we you for using us, but,um, you know, we're no longer
serving you know, anyone asidefrom churches?
Uh, so go find someone else.
(15:21):
Um, so that was like almostlike financial suicide.
Um, and we also moved to NewYork city.
We moved the business to NewYork city.
Much higher cost of living,yeah, right, yeah, uh.
So, like all of those likefactors in 2016, middle 2016, um
, very, I just I don't know ifI'd have the stomach to go
(15:45):
through that again, um, but wedid all that and we pivoted to
okay, from now on, all we do iswe, we build software for
churches.
Really, the big difference isthinking about like, okay, what
features inside of acommunication software does a
church need, not just any kindof business.
What does a church actuallyneed?
(16:06):
What tools do they use?
What's integrated with thosetools?
Like it changed like ourproduct direction.
It made it like very specific,um, we were only solving this
very specific problem for thisvery specific kind of customer,
which is a church.
So we did that in 2016.
(16:28):
Um, and it was a great.
It was a very, very toughdecision, um, financially
sweating for a while, um, but itwas the best thing we could
have done, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
So yeah, yeah, I mean you kind of bet the farm on
that one um, but you know, itsounds like you followed, like
your real passion and you knowthe thing that kind of made you
want to get up and work on thebusiness and um you know, just,
there's a satisfaction that wefound in work that wasn't there
(17:04):
before, right, yeah, not to saythat people who are, you know,
people who are building softwarefor you know, just for
businesses or whatever you can'tlike, god works in all of it.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
You know, just for businesses or whatever you can't
like, god works in all of it.
You know, we're all called todifferent things, but for us,
for us, uh, we didn't have asatisfaction with you know, if
we were doing and buildingsoftware for churches, like it's
actually deeply satisfying,right, so no, I can see a lot of
the ministry that happensbehind the scenes, uh, so yeah,
(17:35):
yeah, yeah, no yeah, yeah, yeah,no, I mean I totally get it.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Building something, in our case at Tidy the Right,
building something for churches,helping them do ministry.
There's just something you knowvery fulfilling about that work
and interesting, and I get upevery day like excited about
what we're doing.
And that doesn't have to belots of people can build things
that are serving all kinds ofdifferent.
You know industries and do itLike you can find passion in
(18:01):
lots of stuff.
You know for us it's buildingstuff for churches, for you guys
it's building stuff forchurches.
And how did you know, like, whenyou hit product market fit
right and maybe like productmarket fit right, it's like when
you have the product you'vebuilt, the thing that you know
your ideal customer in your caseis churches, like really needs
(18:21):
and is finding value in.
Like where did you?
You made the pivot, so you wereseeing signs of it.
But then, like you kind of likeyou moved to New York and then
you're like, okay, is it working?
Like, was there any?
You know, do you remember anymoments or any things where
you're like, oh, like, it isactually where we went down the
right path and it's workingbetter and better now.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
I think I, we, we again, we were like um, I might
be selling ourselves a littlebit short, but I don't think so.
We were just naive to a lot ofthat stuff back then.
You know, that's seven or eight, that's seven or eight, that's
eight years ago now.
Um, I don't even think the ideaof product market fit was in my
radar.
(19:03):
You know, like I just, you know, and we were a lot younger, you
know, we started the business.
We were both 24, I think, 25.
Um, so I don't know, I think wejust stumbled into it because
we just we had the software andwe like, we like the church, the
(19:26):
churches who use our software,they're really just enjoyable to
work with and they seem to useit really good.
So let's just do that Right.
You know that that was like theextent of, like the business
rationale, you know.
Yeah, and I think we were justfortunate Once you did it, you
know.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that was us Same kind of
story in that, like we weren't,you know, nine years ago, like I
probably didn't know whatproduct market fit really was
then versus now, you know, butyou found it and you saw signs
of stuff working, um.
So do you remember any of those, like after you made the pivot
(20:07):
and you know you got moving andyou started targeting churches,
focusing on their needs?
Do you remember any momentswhere you're like, oh, this
thing's like it's you know this?
is the sign of life that weheaded in the right direction.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yeah, um, our growth has started increasing, um, so
churches started, you know,referring us Um, we built a
couple of integrations early onthat were, you know, that were
great.
You know, churches seem to likethem, um, and we've continued
building out integrations overthe years.
Um, and then fast forward a fewyears into 2020.
(20:46):
Covid happens, yeah, and ofcourse, you know, churches are
freaking out like those first,you know, those first weeks and
couple months like how are wegoing to actually do church?
And we were one of thosebusinesses that did benefit from
that.
You know a lot of churchesstarted using Clearstream and
then they just kept on usingClearstream.
(21:07):
It's like they found it like,oh, this is great.
And then, you know, as theCOVID kind of subsided, or the
intensity of it subsided, and wewent back to kind of like our
normal way of church operations.
I think a lot of churches justyou know like, no, we're going
to still use Clearstream.
(21:27):
We, you know it still hasbenefits.
So there's like a number ofthings that.
But there wasn't any kind oflike inflection point where I
was like, ah yes, this is a,this is the product market fit.
It was just kind of stumbledinto it Little by little doing
things and staying focused on it?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
I mean, like you said , it's been what, how many years
since the church focus?
Eight years, Eight straightyears, of you know so.
And how many churches do youguys serve now?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
I think we have around 62 or 6,300 churches.
Yeah, thousands, which is smallcompared to a lot of.
You know other softwares, butno thousands of customers in any
place.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
I mean that's that's like a lot of churches, you know
, especially because I meanthere's lots of churches but not
necessarily every church is theright customer fit for
everything right.
So like not every church, youknow your kind of average.
You know 100 member churchmight not be using texting
software but yeah, there's stillhundreds of thousands of
churches in america, so um yeahyeah, what?
(22:32):
Um, as you guys have built outthe platform and serve churches,
what are some of the coolthings that you've seen churches
doing with it?
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I think, um, some things immediately come to mind.
Um, one is like we, we havespent a lot of time over the
past few years building out umlike native video texting
(23:05):
capability.
So, um, building that out andlaunching it, I about a year ago
, searches.
I love that.
Um, I think it's because, likeyou know, our, our kind of
social media driven culture isbecoming like video driven right
, video first, um, and that'snot the reason we built it out.
(23:29):
We were just like, hey, thiswould be really cool to like.
Let people like record a videoinside of clearstream, um, you
know, add captions and some ofthis kind of rich stuff and then
actually send it through text.
And in a lot of cases, you know, kind of depending on devices
and stuff, a lot of cases likethat's going to just play in
line inside of a right there.
Yeah, right there.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
It's like when you're sending videos to your friends
or whatever.
It's just like happens all thetime in the like person to
person use case.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, in application to person, which is, you know,
which is what we are a to P.
Application to person texting,it's not as common and it's not
as fluid, for a lot of differentreasons, but that's been
something that's been veryexciting and we're going to
continue like building out andmaking richer and richer the.
You know, the adoption of thatwith our customer base as poorly
(24:21):
as we've marketed that futureis actually pretty, pretty great
.
Yeah, something else that I Idon't know that, just going back
to like finding for us, findinga lot of satisfaction in what
we do, um, you know, we, we sendmany, many, many, many millions
(24:43):
of messages a month.
You know, like our wholeplatform delivers.
You know a lot, a lot of volume, and then people respond Okay,
so the church will use clearstream, they'll send out, you
know, like, just whatever theymight.
There might be a uh, anemergency weather event, you
know, tornado happening.
We need to change uh servicetimes or cancel service times.
(25:04):
Or you know, hey, visit us this.
You know, this Sunday we'restarting a new sermon series.
There's just a lot of differentways that people need to you
know, um, and one way that we'veseen and um, it's it's not the
most popular way.
I really wish it was.
Um, if I could, if I could, ifI could make the call.
(25:25):
But um, churches will send outlike weekly prayer reminders.
So they'll Wednesday, a lot oftimes Wednesday it'll be like
hey, how can we pray for you?
And they'll send it out toother people and um, without
getting like too much into likethe technical, you know, going
(25:45):
down a rabbit hole, um, we seelike a very, very, very small
subset of those incomingmessages and you know there's,
there's many thousands of thosecoming in a day and they just go
into whatever you know thatchurch's clearsham account.
But, um, we kind of have thislayer that flags messages based
on certain things, um, and soour team will manually review
(26:08):
any flagged messages andsometimes we'll just like you'll
see, you know from people thatyou know we don't know, but
you'll see like incomingmessages with you know people
asking for prayer with just likeheartbreaking stuff you know
and it reminds, it reminds youon a regular basis of just like
(26:31):
the, you know the, the hardstuff that people go through.
But then also the ministrythat's actually happening
because of clear stream, and ifit wasn't because of clear
stream, we're not, so we don'thave the hubris to say, like
that wouldn't happen, they wouldgo find another texting
software and do the same thing.
But it's cool that you're usingclearstream and actually
ministry is is happening inchurches with people that are,
(26:54):
that are really hurting, thatactually need a lot of prayer.
Right, that's cool.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, for me super cool super cool and yeah, you're
right, I mean the, uh, the, theprayer card or the prayer box
or the, you know, submit yourprayer or just going to the
pastor, like that's existed forhundreds of years, some version
of that you know, like texting.
It is just the new you know.
But what's cool is like it'shelping churches stay current
(27:21):
and modern and do things in waysthat the world is doing it
today and you guys have built asolution that's, you know,
serving that purpose really well, right, so, um, so I think
that's cool, and it is cool whenyou see messages like that.
We don't necessarily get it atthat level, but we'll get uh
responses for, like, why peoplehave, you know, decided to use
(27:41):
Tithely, or we'll get feedbackfrom, like, the customer
experience team who's handling asupport request, and you hear
these stories of churches inneed, and we saw a ton of them
in COVID.
Similarly, tithely was asolution that helped a lot of
churches at that moment andhelped a lot of churches stay
open, Just because they neededto raise money and doing an
(28:05):
in-person offering wasn'tpossible.
So it is cool to see like, hey,you've, you've built something
because you love what you do andyou want to do something to
serve the church.
And then it's like working andyou get to hear stories of it
helping you know, do ministry orhelping churches do ministry
all over the place is prettycool.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah, that was cool.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
What, what, uh, you know, I guess, as we I don't
want to take all day as we wrapup like what's on your mind now
as it relates to you added email, uh, you added video based
messaging.
What's the future hold Likewhat's on your mind, what, what
help?
You know you're in thatcommunications part of the
church, so I don't know ifthere's things that you're
(28:45):
seeing happen in the space orthings you're interested in
helping churches do.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Is the question what does the future hold for church
software or what does the futurehold for Clearstream?
Speaker 2 (28:57):
No, I'm just thinking more communications, because
that's the name that you live in.
So it might be Clearstream, itmight be communications in
general, but if you have someideas around church software, I
think that's cool too.
So answer however you feel.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Okay, clearstream.
So I think some of the coolthings that are happening well
related to you guys.
We built an integration withBreeze recently.
Yeah, I love it.
We're just starting to to like,uh, roll that out and so, um,
if you use breeze, you can synceverything, um, all of your
(29:34):
breeze basically your, your,your database and breeze your
contacts into clear stream thatupdates every single day so as
your data, as your data changesin breeze, it updates inside of
inside of clear share we need tomake sure all the breeze users
know so, uh, noted on my end tomake sure we get the word out.
So we, we worked quite a lot onthat earlier this year and
(29:56):
that's only a few weeks out intothe wild, so it's brand new.
We are pretty, I'd say, product,not we are very product driven,
um, in the way that, like our,our product years, everything
with our company, and so, um,we're always refining it and so,
(30:21):
uh, it wouldn't, this wouldn'tbe exciting for people who
aren't using clear stream, butfor people who are, we've got a
new version of clear streamcoming out.
Um, you guys would know morethan us, but, kind of as, as
your software grows, it's likeyou, you, you, you're always
fighting like entropy, whereit's like things just become
(30:43):
more complex.
Yeah, and that makes it harderfor, like, the small church who
just wants to get up and, youknow, get it, start using, you
know, tithely or clearsharing,and just do what they need to do
.
They don't need all the bellsand whistles that have been
built in over the years and so,um, you know that's that's
something that we are alwaysinternally fighting is like we
(31:05):
want clearsharing to be reallyfluid and really snappy and
quick, whether you're a megachurch that's using clear stream
or you're a small 200 or 100person church, and so we're, you
know we're we're trying to keepthings as simple, you know, as
as possible.
So we've got a lot of updatescoming with with our web app and
(31:29):
our mobile apps.
So that's kind of what's comingon the horizon for clear shame
specific.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yeah, yeah, that's very cool.
Um, what do?
What do you find, uh, in themessaging space?
Uh, cause you guys, you knowyou see it for a certain number
of churches, uh, and this ismore for, like, as people are
listening to this and they'rethinking, oh, text messaging, or
even email, for that matter,maybe we do a little bit of it
(31:55):
or maybe we don't text at all.
What are some of the thingsthat you see churches doing
really well on your platformthat other churches could
imitate?
Right, or kind of take a nodfrom them and go, oh, I should
do whatever that kind of weeklymessage or this kind of thing
where you see a lot of goodtraction with your customers.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Gosh, there's people in our company that would answer
it so much better than I'mgoing to answer, but I'll give a
swing here.
A swing here, um, I think it's.
It's uh, the medium of textingis.
It's almost like what twitterwas in the very beginning, as
(32:38):
opposed like you have, likefacebook and twitter you want to
like relate facebook to email,where it can be a lot more
richer, long form content.
And then again, a decade ago,and then you had twitter, which
was 160 or 140 characters, Idon't remember what it was right
super short form, that's kindof sms and email where you have
like rich, super long form,short, quick form, um, and that
(33:03):
line is really hard to delineatea lot of times and it actually
takes a lot of thought intowriting what you need to write
in an email concisely enough fortexting.
We have features to let youlike append, you know, an email
as a link into your texts andyou know, do all that kind of
stuff.
But just to write short, Ithink our character limit is
(33:25):
like 560 characters or somethinglike that.
It's still a short, you know,it's a very short paragraph.
Yep, um, so churches who canwrite very concisely, um, you
know, without a ton of like, um,exclamation points and all in
just, very concisely, that's,that's um.
(33:47):
I think that's the biggestchallenge with texting, but
that's the one that's going topay off a lot.
It's just really good, concisewriting, respecting the medium
that you're using.
It's not email, it's text.
People want to just get thatnotification on their phone.
That's the beauty of texting.
It's ubiquitous on all mobiledevices, but they want to get
(34:08):
that notification on their phone.
If they're in a meeting rightnow and they look up at their
phone, they read it in twoseconds and they they're done
right.
You're not opening up an emailand reading this long form, and
so um.
Churches that do that well findmore success with texting.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, yeah, like the Sunday morning church reminder.
Just, you know church at 10,see you there, something simple,
um.
But I find those kinds ofmessages from my church like
actually very helpful.
Maybe not Sunday morning,that's a bit built in, but like
other things that are going on,a quick little reminder like
that, uh, is like actually veryuseful, you know, so my church
(34:46):
will do it for, like, men'smidweeks or some of some special
event or simple stuff.
But it's like the text is reallynice because I didn't get
buried in an email somewherethat I didn't quite catch and I
got reminded in a more like kindof time sensitive manner, like
closer to when it mattered to me.
Those kinds of messagespersonally so very good man,
(35:08):
thanks.
Those kinds of messagespersonally Um, so very good man.
Thanks for coming on the showtoday.
Where should folks go to checkout clear stream?
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Um, our website is clear streamio.
Uh, we couldn't getcom becausesome like multinational German
bank, I think owns clearstreamcom.
So you won't find us at clearstreamcom, you'll find us at
clearstreamcom.
You'll find us at clearstreamio.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
So io Don't go to com or just search clearstream.
Search clearstream on Googleand you'll be number two.
I'm behind the bank.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
I don't know, I hope we're number one, but I should
go check that.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
You should check that one.
Oh man, well, great, thanks forcoming on the show.
Guys, go check out clear stream.
If you're you, if you're abreeze user and you're listening
to this, uh, definitely checkout the new integration, um and
uh, it's a great show.
So, guys, thanks for tuning in,michael, thanks for joining,
and we'll catch you guys nextweek on another episode of
modern church leader.
See ya thanks, frank.
Hey guys, Frank here with another episode of Modern
Church Leader.
I am joined by Michael, one ofthe co-founders of Clearstream,
Co-founder and CEO right.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We don't have a CEO.
I don't know why.
I'm COO, oh, okay, yeah, youand Trevor are CTO, I'm COO.
So yeah, you guys started agreat business, so I yeah, you
and Travis, I'm the.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
CTO, I'm COO, so yeah , you guys started a great
business, so I'm pumped to dothis interview.
We've known each other for awhile, so thanks for coming on
the show.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Tell folks like where you're joining from and I don't
you know.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So I'm joining from Pensacola, florida.
That's where our company'slocated.
Uh, we have an office heredowntown, and then you know
we're like a hybrid, remoteslash, an office team.
Um, then, doing this for like14 years, which is crazy to say,
uh, it's like a lifetime insoftware.
Um, and what clearstream is is,very simply put we are a
(01:09):
texting and emailing softwarebuilt specifically for churches.
We've been doing that for along time, and so we're not a
church management software.
We don't try to be we don'thave plans to be software.
We don't.
We don't try to be, uh, wedon't have plans to be um, we
just focus on building really,really, really good software
helping churches communicatewith their people through
(01:31):
texting and email.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So that's the short.
Love it.
And you and your longtime buddy, trevor, started it.
You guys have.
You have quite the the historytogether, so get.
I mean, how did you get intobrother-in-law's now?
But there you, there, you gothere.
Yeah, it's like, and it's stillworking.
You're still, you know, friendsand all that that's still
(01:54):
friends.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
That's a good still friends.
So he tricked me into startinga company so he could marry my
sister later.
So I'm smart guy, guy, he did.
He did marry my sister, but itwasn't a trick, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So how did you guys get into give us a little bit of
your, like you know, faithstory?
Like how did you, you know, getconnected with the church and
become a Christian?
And obviously that down theroad led to, you know, building
a company that's serving thechurch.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
So, yeah, we love just the backstory, you know,
building a company that'sserving the church.
So, yeah, we love just thebackstory.
Well, man, you're.
You're asking me something thatI would I would talk about for
much longer than talking aboutclear stream, so I'll try to
keep this real concise story.
Um, well, both, both Trevor andI grew up in the church.
He was a missionary kid, uh, hewas born in Thailand.
His parents run a missions, avery large mission sending
(02:45):
agency.
I was a pastor's kid, kind ofgrew up in the church, you know,
and I identity Christian, so tospeak yeah, never really went,
you know, crazy as a teenager oranything, but just kind of was
like the typical, you knowchristian pastor's kid.
(03:05):
Um, and it wasn't until likeI'm 39 now, it wasn't until like
mid-20s that, um, life startedbeating me up a little bit and
then faith became a little bitmore real where, um, it was more
than just like identify as aChristian.
(03:26):
It's like, no, actually likethis is my everything.
This is, yeah, I don't know, itwas just it was.
Later on in life I had one ofthose stories I never had like
any kind of a very boringtestimony personally, you know,
it wasn't like I was lost andthen I was found.
It was more like I was justkind of lukewarm and then life
(03:52):
through some some hard stuff, alittle bit of suffering and that
, um, I fortunately turned tothe gospel instead of other
things, right, um, and it's justbeen in that sense.
Yeah, that's awesome, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, my kids.
You know I have triplet12-year-old boys.
They've grown up in church.
I didn't grow up in church, butthey're growing up in church
and oftentimes one of my boyswill say to me like Dad,
everybody has the same story.
Everything was bad and then itwas good because of Jesus, he's
(04:31):
processing what he hears.
Yeah, that, I guess, gets thepress, but there's lots of
people that it's not like lifewas all bad and they were in
jail and on drugs and crazy, andthen they learned about Jesus
and the gospel and had a bigchange Like sometimes people
have.
Just, they grew up in thechurch or, like me, I didn't
(04:51):
have a crazy, you know crazystory and God found me in
college and I became a Christianand you know, there you go and
uh, yeah, everyone's story isdifferent and God uses all of us
.
So it's cool, it doesn't haveto be crazy.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
My kids, my kids, have goodradars.
They're, they're, they'respotting that in the church at
(05:12):
12 and I'm like, okay, it's good, it's going to be different.
Well, I don't know if it weredoing before Clearstream, but
give us the Clearstream journey.
So you had a heart for thechurch, but you're also a tech
guy somehow, and that led intoClearstream being what it is
today.
But like, what's the journey?
Speaker 1 (05:34):
there.
Well, I should probablydisclose that I'm really not a
tech guy.
I kind of stumbled into this.
You play one on TV.
Yeah, I play one on TV and havedealt with imposter syndrome
for many years and that's gottenbetter and better as as um, as
we've, you know, just continuedrunning the company.
(05:54):
But, um, it was really myco-founder.
It was really Trevor.
He was the tech guy.
You know, we were both runningseparate businesses, um, uh,
just out of college and we wenton this.
I'm not going to go way deep,I'm not going to bore your
(06:15):
audience, but my wife and I wewere married.
This was like 2009.
I got married in 2008.
We went on like a triple datewith, like, my wife and I and
then a couple other couples, andTrevor was one of those people
who went on a date, yeah, um, uh, with my sister, who he later
married, and we just we just hitit off.
(06:35):
Trevor and I, like we justclicked really well, um, and we
and we started hanging out.
He's running his own web devbusiness 'm running like an, uh,
like a like a high-end autodetailing business.
So I'm not a tech guy, um butlike I was into like building my
(06:56):
own website and, like you know,I, I was drawn, even just in my
own business, like the back-endoperations, I, you know
whatever um.
So we decide, I think, sixmonths later, like man, we want
to build something together andso, uh, we started throwing some
ideas around and, um, webasically didn't have it's.
(07:19):
It's actually kind of a boringstory.
It gets cooler the later, youknow, the later it goes.
But the the inception of clear,inception of clearstream is
pretty lame.
It's like, okay, two guysdecide they want to build
something, um, and so webasically just started building
websites, doing, like, uh,google adwords, like you know,
marketing stuff for, like, localbusinesses.
(07:39):
Um, and like, our work ethicreally got us pretty far.
Like we didn't, like we didn't,you know, raise any money or
join any debt.
We just did whatever we couldto make money and we earned a
really good reputation and gotpassed around a lot.
(08:00):
And so, you know, we kind ofgrew our client base and, about
a year in, one of the thingsthat we decided we wanted to do
was to do, um, well, streamingfor churches.
Way too early into the game, theinfrastructure for live
streaming was just not there.
In 2010, you know, 10, we werereselling some I don't remember
(08:24):
who it was um, uh, and thathints the name clear stream.
Actually that's where patientcomes from.
So nothing to do with what wedo today.
Um, and we also startedreselling a texting software, um
, from like one of the largestlike business texting softwares
out there.
So we're were just like a whitelabel.
(08:44):
It was like, you know, weweren't building any of the
software, we were just buildinglike the website and the layer
on top.
And then, you know, peoplewould find us and they would
start using, you know, clearstream.
But it's not clear streambehind the scenes.
Um, and we did that for acouple of years while doing the
other things you know, buildingwebsites for local businesses
(09:05):
and stuff like that for churches.
Um, and it was actually like acrash course.
Reselling Another largesoftware was a crash course for
us.
Um, and what we didn't want tobuild, if we were to ever do it
on our, on our own Right, I was,you know, for the first like
six years of clear stream.
(09:26):
It was just Trevor and I.
You know we were just like atwo man shop.
I'm doing like all the customersupport.
Um, you know all the.
You know a lot most of thebusiness stuff he's.
You know behind the scenes onthe uh, engineering side very
little of it back then.
(09:49):
But talking with customers inthose first few years that we
were reselling another textingsoftware, customers were
frustrated all the time becausethe software was so hard to use,
very buggy, very slow, like man.
We could just build somethingreally really, really simple.
It doesn't need all the bellsand whistles that all these
business texting softwares needor have.
(10:11):
Like you know, you need to beable to go and go into somewhere
and easily send out a message,reliably send it out it'd be
sent out really fast and theability to respond to people.
Like, if we can do those fewthings really good.
You know that'd be cool and sowe did.
We figured out how to do itourselves design the products,
(10:34):
wireframe, design the product,built it out, launched it in
2013, um, and so you know that'show Clearstream, as people
might know today, is like atexting software.
It was really like the firstiteration was in 2013.
Yeah, way more simple than itis today.
We miss those days thesimplicity of just very, very
(10:58):
simple software.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah.
But I mean I love it becauseyou saw, you know you were doing
something.
You saw the need, you saw theproblem.
You're like, oh, we can do thisbetter.
You went off and did it andclearly it's worked.
But there's a little point inthere.
Early on you were doing textfor kind of anybody, because you
were building websites forlocal businesses and all that.
So you were.
You were doing text forchurches and all kinds of other
(11:23):
businesses too, and at somepoint you decided like we're
going to go all in on churches,like tell us, you know a little
bit about that moment.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Okay, so we launched the first version in 2013,
around 2015 or 16.
At that time, we had maybe hadI'd have to look back um, I'm
gonna say maybe a few hundredcustomers.
We happen to have some reallylarge companies, like really
(11:55):
large, like very, very large youknow fortune.
I don't know one or 500.
You know a few of those thathad like we had no business
working with companies thatlarge, but somehow we, you got
past their gates.
I don't know how, um, but inthose days, like, we were just a
texting software for anyone andso we had churches using clear
(12:18):
stream and we had otherbusinesses using clear stream.
Um, at least back then Iwouldn't know now because we
haven't been building businesstexting software for many years
but back then texting softwarewould just attract unscrupulous
businesses.
(12:38):
And I'm not going to like Justnightclubs and things like that,
which is fine I'm not sayingthere's something wrong with a
nightclub, but it's just um.
At the end of the day, what itcame down to is we had no
satisfaction with rebuilding.
We did not like supportingbusinesses using our software
(13:04):
and also, alongside of thatfrustration that we had, we also
had churches that were usingClearstream.
Those churches would startusing Clearstream and required
very little hand-holding.
They loved our software verylittle support.
What I didn't realize back thenwe were just too naive to know
(13:26):
is that actually it was a reallygood product-market fit.
We just didn't know.
We didn't know we had builtsomething like actually, this
works for churches.
It might work for businessestoo, but it really works for
churches.
That's the world that we comefrom, um, that's the world that
we're passionate about.
(13:51):
I guess I I could say so kind ofall of those factors converged
around the end of 2015.
And I remember, um, uh, Iremember exactly where we were.
We were, you know, we left theoffice, trevor and I we go get
lunch across the street andwe're sitting in a ditch eating
lunch and, um, and so I'm likeman, dude, like this sounds
(14:16):
crazy, but I think we shouldconsider pivoting to just only
building our software forchurches.
And, uh, he didn't.
He hardly even paused, which isunlike trevor.
Trevor's a very slow speaker,not like just very um,
considered, thoughtful, yes,considered and thoughtful
(14:37):
speaker.
Uh, but he didn't even hesitateand he's like.
I've been actually feeling thesame exact thing lately.
I was like, okay, well, whatare we going to do?
And so that kind of started achain of events that lasted
about a year, uh, all throughout2016, of, um, me going to
hundreds of businesses that youknow that are paying us to use
(15:01):
our software and, again, we'renot funded, we're just like you
know, we're just bootstrapped,yeah, um, and going and telling
them like, hey, you know, thankyou for using us, but, um, you
know, we you for using us, but,um, you know, we're no longer
serving you know, anyone asidefrom churches?
Uh, so go find someone else.
(15:21):
Um, so that was like almostlike financial suicide.
Um, and we also moved to NewYork city.
We moved the business to NewYork city.
Much higher cost of living,yeah, right, yeah, uh.
So, like all of those likefactors in 2016, middle 2016, um
, very, I just I don't know ifI'd have the stomach to go
(15:45):
through that again, um, but wedid all that and we pivoted to
okay, from now on, all we do iswe, we build software for
churches.
Really, the big difference isthinking about like, okay, what
features inside of acommunication software does a
church need, not just any kindof business.
What does a church actuallyneed?
(16:06):
What tools do they use?
What's integrated with thosetools?
Like it changed like ourproduct direction.
It made it like very specific,um, we were only solving this
very specific problem for thisvery specific kind of customer,
which is a church.
So we did that in 2016.
(16:28):
Um, and it was a great.
It was a very, very toughdecision, um, financially
sweating for a while, um, but itwas the best thing we could
have done, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
So yeah, yeah, I mean you kind of bet the farm on
that one um, but you know, itsounds like you followed, like
your real passion and you knowthe thing that kind of made you
want to get up and work on thebusiness and um you know, just,
there's a satisfaction that wefound in work that wasn't there
(17:04):
before, right, yeah, not to saythat people who are, you know,
people who are building softwarefor you know, just for
businesses or whatever you can'tlike, god works in all of it.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
You know, just for businesses or whatever you can't
like, god works in all of it.
You know, we're all called todifferent things, but for us,
for us, uh, we didn't have asatisfaction with you know, if
we were doing and buildingsoftware for churches, like it's
actually deeply satisfying,right, so no, I can see a lot of
the ministry that happensbehind the scenes, uh, so yeah,
(17:35):
yeah, yeah, no yeah, yeah, yeah,no, I mean I totally get it.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Building something, in our case at Tidy the Right,
building something for churches,helping them do ministry.
There's just something you knowvery fulfilling about that work
and interesting, and I get upevery day like excited about
what we're doing.
And that doesn't have to belots of people can build things
that are serving all kinds ofdifferent.
You know industries and do itLike you can find passion in
(18:01):
lots of stuff.
You know for us it's buildingstuff for churches, for you guys
it's building stuff forchurches.
And how did you know, like, whenyou hit product market fit
right and maybe like productmarket fit right, it's like when
you have the product you'vebuilt, the thing that you know
your ideal customer in your caseis churches, like really needs
(18:21):
and is finding value in.
Like where did you?
You made the pivot, so you wereseeing signs of it.
But then, like you kind of likeyou moved to New York and then
you're like, okay, is it working?
Like, was there any?
You know, do you remember anymoments or any things where
you're like, oh, like, it isactually where we went down the
right path and it's workingbetter and better now.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
I think I, we, we again, we were like um, I might
be selling ourselves a littlebit short, but I don't think so.
We were just naive to a lot ofthat stuff back then.
You know, that's seven or eight, that's seven or eight, that's
eight years ago now.
Um, I don't even think the ideaof product market fit was in my
radar.
(19:03):
You know, like I just, you know, and we were a lot younger, you
know, we started the business.
We were both 24, I think, 25.
Um, so I don't know, I think wejust stumbled into it because
we just we had the software andwe like, we like the church, the
(19:26):
churches who use our software,they're really just enjoyable to
work with and they seem to useit really good.
So let's just do that Right.
You know that that was like theextent of, like the business
rationale, you know.
Yeah, and I think we were justfortunate Once you did it, you
know.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that was us Same kind of
story in that, like we weren't,you know, nine years ago, like I
probably didn't know whatproduct market fit really was
then versus now, you know, butyou found it and you saw signs
of stuff working, um.
So do you remember any of those, like after you made the pivot
(20:07):
and you know you got moving andyou started targeting churches,
focusing on their needs?
Do you remember any momentswhere you're like, oh, this
thing's like it's you know this?
is the sign of life that weheaded in the right direction.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yeah, um, our growth has started increasing, um, so
churches started, you know,referring us Um, we built a
couple of integrations early onthat were, you know, that were
great.
You know, churches seem to likethem, um, and we've continued
building out integrations overthe years.
Um, and then fast forward a fewyears into 2020.
(20:46):
Covid happens, yeah, and ofcourse, you know, churches are
freaking out like those first,you know, those first weeks and
couple months like how are wegoing to actually do church?
And we were one of thosebusinesses that did benefit from
that.
You know a lot of churchesstarted using Clearstream and
then they just kept on usingClearstream.
(21:07):
It's like they found it like,oh, this is great.
And then, you know, as theCOVID kind of subsided, or the
intensity of it subsided, and wewent back to kind of like our
normal way of church operations.
I think a lot of churches justyou know like, no, we're going
to still use Clearstream.
(21:27):
We, you know it still hasbenefits.
So there's like a number ofthings that.
But there wasn't any kind oflike inflection point where I
was like, ah yes, this is a,this is the product market fit.
It was just kind of stumbledinto it Little by little doing
things and staying focused on it?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
I mean, like you said , it's been what, how many years
since the church focus?
Eight years, Eight straightyears, of you know so.
And how many churches do youguys serve now?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
I think we have around 62 or 6,300 churches.
Yeah, thousands, which is smallcompared to a lot of.
You know other softwares, butno thousands of customers in any
place.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
I mean that's that's like a lot of churches, you know
, especially because I meanthere's lots of churches but not
necessarily every church is theright customer fit for
everything right.
So like not every church, youknow your kind of average.
You know 100 member churchmight not be using texting
software but yeah, there's stillhundreds of thousands of
churches in america, so um yeahyeah, what?
(22:32):
Um, as you guys have built outthe platform and serve churches,
what are some of the coolthings that you've seen churches
doing with it?
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I think, um, some things immediately come to mind.
Um, one is like we, we havespent a lot of time over the
past few years building out umlike native video texting
(23:05):
capability.
So, um, building that out andlaunching it, I about a year ago
, searches.
I love that.
Um, I think it's because, likeyou know, our, our kind of
social media driven culture isbecoming like video driven right
, video first, um, and that'snot the reason we built it out.
(23:29):
We were just like, hey, thiswould be really cool to like.
Let people like record a videoinside of clearstream, um, you
know, add captions and some ofthis kind of rich stuff and then
actually send it through text.
And in a lot of cases, you know, kind of depending on devices
and stuff, a lot of cases likethat's going to just play in
line inside of a right there.
Yeah, right there.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
It's like when you're sending videos to your friends
or whatever.
It's just like happens all thetime in the like person to
person use case.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, in application to person, which is, you know,
which is what we are a to P.
Application to person texting,it's not as common and it's not
as fluid, for a lot of differentreasons, but that's been
something that's been veryexciting and we're going to
continue like building out andmaking richer and richer the.
You know, the adoption of thatwith our customer base as poorly
(24:21):
as we've marketed that futureis actually pretty, pretty great
.
Yeah, something else that I Idon't know that, just going back
to like finding for us, findinga lot of satisfaction in what
we do, um, you know, we, we sendmany, many, many, many millions
(24:43):
of messages a month.
You know, like our wholeplatform delivers.
You know a lot, a lot of volume, and then people respond Okay,
so the church will use clearstream, they'll send out, you
know, like, just whatever theymight.
There might be a uh, anemergency weather event, you
know, tornado happening.
We need to change uh servicetimes or cancel service times.
(25:04):
Or you know, hey, visit us this.
You know, this Sunday we'restarting a new sermon series.
There's just a lot of differentways that people need to you
know, um, and one way that we'veseen and um, it's it's not the
most popular way.
I really wish it was.
Um, if I could, if I could, ifI could make the call.
(25:25):
But um, churches will send outlike weekly prayer reminders.
So they'll Wednesday, a lot oftimes Wednesday it'll be like
hey, how can we pray for you?
And they'll send it out toother people and um, without
getting like too much into likethe technical, you know, going
(25:45):
down a rabbit hole, um, we seelike a very, very, very small
subset of those incomingmessages and you know there's,
there's many thousands of thosecoming in a day and they just go
into whatever you know thatchurch's clearsham account.
But, um, we kind of have thislayer that flags messages based
on certain things, um, and soour team will manually review
(26:08):
any flagged messages andsometimes we'll just like you'll
see, you know from people thatyou know we don't know, but
you'll see like incomingmessages with you know people
asking for prayer with just likeheartbreaking stuff you know
and it reminds, it reminds youon a regular basis of just like
(26:31):
the, you know the, the hardstuff that people go through.
But then also the ministrythat's actually happening
because of clear stream, and ifit wasn't because of clear
stream, we're not, so we don'thave the hubris to say, like
that wouldn't happen, they wouldgo find another texting
software and do the same thing.
But it's cool that you're usingclearstream and actually
ministry is is happening inchurches with people that are,
(26:54):
that are really hurting, thatactually need a lot of prayer.
Right, that's cool.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, for me super cool super cool and yeah, you're
right, I mean the, uh, the, theprayer card or the prayer box
or the, you know, submit yourprayer or just going to the
pastor, like that's existed forhundreds of years, some version
of that you know, like texting.
It is just the new you know.
But what's cool is like it'shelping churches stay current
(27:21):
and modern and do things in waysthat the world is doing it
today and you guys have built asolution that's, you know,
serving that purpose really well, right, so, um, so I think
that's cool, and it is cool whenyou see messages like that.
We don't necessarily get it atthat level, but we'll get uh
responses for, like, why peoplehave, you know, decided to use
(27:41):
Tithely, or we'll get feedbackfrom, like, the customer
experience team who's handling asupport request, and you hear
these stories of churches inneed, and we saw a ton of them
in COVID.
Similarly, tithely was asolution that helped a lot of
churches at that moment andhelped a lot of churches stay
open, Just because they neededto raise money and doing an
(28:05):
in-person offering wasn'tpossible.
So it is cool to see like, hey,you've, you've built something
because you love what you do andyou want to do something to
serve the church.
And then it's like working andyou get to hear stories of it
helping you know, do ministry orhelping churches do ministry
all over the place is prettycool.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah, that was cool.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
What, what, uh, you know, I guess, as we I don't
want to take all day as we wrapup like what's on your mind now
as it relates to you added email, uh, you added video based
messaging.
What's the future hold Likewhat's on your mind, what, what
help?
You know you're in thatcommunications part of the
church, so I don't know ifthere's things that you're
(28:45):
seeing happen in the space orthings you're interested in
helping churches do.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Is the question what does the future hold for church
software or what does the futurehold for Clearstream?
Speaker 2 (28:57):
No, I'm just thinking more communications, because
that's the name that you live in.
So it might be Clearstream, itmight be communications in
general, but if you have someideas around church software, I
think that's cool too.
So answer however you feel.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Okay, clearstream.
So I think some of the coolthings that are happening well
related to you guys.
We built an integration withBreeze recently.
Yeah, I love it.
We're just starting to to like,uh, roll that out and so, um,
if you use breeze, you can synceverything, um, all of your
(29:34):
breeze basically your, your,your database and breeze your
contacts into clear stream thatupdates every single day so as
your data, as your data changesin breeze, it updates inside of
inside of clear share we need tomake sure all the breeze users
know so, uh, noted on my end tomake sure we get the word out.
So we, we worked quite a lot onthat earlier this year and
(29:56):
that's only a few weeks out intothe wild, so it's brand new.
We are pretty, I'd say, product,not we are very product driven,
um, in the way that, like our,our product years, everything
with our company, and so, um,we're always refining it and so,
(30:21):
uh, it wouldn't, this wouldn'tbe exciting for people who
aren't using clear stream, butfor people who are, we've got a
new version of clear streamcoming out.
Um, you guys would know morethan us, but, kind of as, as
your software grows, it's likeyou, you, you, you're always
fighting like entropy, whereit's like things just become
(30:43):
more complex.
Yeah, and that makes it harderfor, like, the small church who
just wants to get up and, youknow, get it, start using, you
know, tithely or clearsharing,and just do what they need to do
.
They don't need all the bellsand whistles that have been
built in over the years and so,um, you know that's that's
something that we are alwaysinternally fighting is like we
(31:05):
want clearsharing to be reallyfluid and really snappy and
quick, whether you're a megachurch that's using clear stream
or you're a small 200 or 100person church, and so we're, you
know we're we're trying to keepthings as simple, you know, as
as possible.
So we've got a lot of updatescoming with with our web app and
(31:29):
our mobile apps.
So that's kind of what's comingon the horizon for clear shame
specific.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yeah, yeah, that's very cool.
Um, what do?
What do you find, uh, in themessaging space?
Uh, cause you guys, you knowyou see it for a certain number
of churches, uh, and this ismore for, like, as people are
listening to this and they'rethinking, oh, text messaging, or
even email, for that matter,maybe we do a little bit of it
(31:55):
or maybe we don't text at all.
What are some of the thingsthat you see churches doing
really well on your platformthat other churches could
imitate?
Right, or kind of take a nodfrom them and go, oh, I should
do whatever that kind of weeklymessage or this kind of thing
where you see a lot of goodtraction with your customers.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Gosh, there's people in our company that would answer
it so much better than I'mgoing to answer, but I'll give a
swing here.
A swing here, um, I think it's.
It's uh, the medium of textingis.
It's almost like what twitterwas in the very beginning, as
(32:38):
opposed like you have, likefacebook and twitter you want to
like relate facebook to email,where it can be a lot more
richer, long form content.
And then again, a decade ago,and then you had twitter, which
was 160 or 140 characters, Idon't remember what it was right
super short form, that's kindof sms and email where you have
like rich, super long form,short, quick form, um, and that
(33:03):
line is really hard to delineatea lot of times and it actually
takes a lot of thought intowriting what you need to write
in an email concisely enough fortexting.
We have features to let youlike append, you know, an email
as a link into your texts andyou know, do all that kind of
stuff.
But just to write short, Ithink our character limit is
(33:25):
like 560 characters or somethinglike that.
It's still a short, you know,it's a very short paragraph.
Yep, um, so churches who canwrite very concisely, um, you
know, without a ton of like, um,exclamation points and all in
just, very concisely, that's,that's um.
(33:47):
I think that's the biggestchallenge with texting, but
that's the one that's going topay off a lot.
It's just really good, concisewriting, respecting the medium
that you're using.
It's not email, it's text.
People want to just get thatnotification on their phone.
That's the beauty of texting.
It's ubiquitous on all mobiledevices, but they want to get
(34:08):
that notification on their phone.
If they're in a meeting rightnow and they look up at their
phone, they read it in twoseconds and they they're done
right.
You're not opening up an emailand reading this long form, and
so um.
Churches that do that well findmore success with texting.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, yeah, like the Sunday morning church reminder.
Just, you know church at 10,see you there, something simple,
um.
But I find those kinds ofmessages from my church like
actually very helpful.
Maybe not Sunday morning,that's a bit built in, but like
other things that are going on,a quick little reminder like
that, uh, is like actually veryuseful, you know, so my church
(34:46):
will do it for, like, men'smidweeks or some of some special
event or simple stuff.
But it's like the text is reallynice because I didn't get
buried in an email somewherethat I didn't quite catch and I
got reminded in a more like kindof time sensitive manner, like
closer to when it mattered to me.
Those kinds of messagespersonally so very good man,
(35:08):
thanks.
Those kinds of messagespersonally Um, so very good man.
Thanks for coming on the showtoday.
Where should folks go to checkout clear stream?
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Um, our website is clear streamio.
Uh, we couldn't getcom becausesome like multinational German
bank, I think owns clearstreamcom.
So you won't find us at clearstreamcom, you'll find us at
clearstreamcom.
You'll find us at clearstreamio.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
So io Don't go to com or just search clearstream.
Search clearstream on Googleand you'll be number two.
I'm behind the bank.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
I don't know, I hope we're number one, but I should
go check that.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
You should check that one.
Oh man, well, great, thanks forcoming on the show.
Guys, go check out clear stream.
If you're you, if you're abreeze user and you're listening
to this, uh, definitely checkout the new integration, um and
uh, it's a great show.
So, guys, thanks for tuning in,michael, thanks for joining,
and we'll catch you guys nextweek on another episode of
modern church leader.
See ya thanks, frank.
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