April 27, 2025 • 25 mins
In this episode of The D2Z Podcast, Brandon Amoroso interviews Chris Brisson, founder and CEO of Sales Message, discussing his entrepreneurial journey, the importance of bootstrapping versus fundraising, the significance of co-founders, and how businesses can leverage SMS marketing effectively. Chris shares insights on building a team, integrating SMS into customer lifecycles, and best practices for SMS marketing, emphasizing the need for businesses to adapt to changing communication preferences.
Here's What You'll Learn:
❗Chris Brisson started his first business at 19, selling rims and tires on eBay.
❗He has always bootstrapped his companies, preferring to avoid investor cash.
❗Bootstrapping allows for more control and less pressure to grow quickly.
❗Finding the right co-founder is crucial for business success.
❗SMS can be integrated into every stage of the customer lifecycle.
❗Businesses should focus on generating leads through SMS and other channels.
❗Integrations with platforms like HubSpot enhance the value of SMS marketing.
❗Texting can be a powerful tool for two-way conversations with customers.
❗Every business should consider their phone number as an asset for lead generation.
❗Simple strategies like text-to-join can yield significant leads.
Timestamps:
00:00 Entrepreneurial Beginnings and Journey
03:02 Bootstrapping vs. Fundraising: A Personal Perspective
06:12 Building a Team: The Importance of Co-Founders
09:10 Leveraging SMS in Business: A B2B Perspective
12:07 Integrations and Customer Lifecycle Management
14:56 Best Practices and Use Cases for SMS Marketing
Chris Brisson:
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisbrisson/
SalesMsg:
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/salesmsg/
Website - https://www.salesmessage.com/
Brandon Amoroso:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonamoroso/
Web - https://brandonamoroso.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bamoroso11/
X - https://twitter.com/AmorosoBrandon
Scalis.ai - https://scalis.ai/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to D2Z, a podcast
about using the Gen Z mindset togrow your business.
I'm Gen Z entrepreneur BrandonAmoroso, the former founder of
Electric and now the co-founderof Scaleless, and today I'm
talking with Chris Brisson,who's the founder and CEO at
Sales Message, which is a simple, secure and scalable business
texting software.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, thanks for having me, brandon, excited to
be here.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So Thanks for coming on the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Brandon Excited to be here.
So before we dive into things,can you give everybody just a
quick background on yourself andyour entrepreneurial journey?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yep, quick story.
I got started young, so myfirst business I started when I
was 19.
So I sold rims and tires oneBay and built that business up.
It was sort of my firste-commerce business.
If you were to say that this is2002.
So it was a long, long time agoand, yeah, built that business
(00:54):
up, ended up selling that in2005.
Vowed never again to sellphysical stuff and so went into
just learning everything I couldabout copywriting, you know,
creating courses, writing books,writing eBooks, doing product
launch, consulting and thenreally just fell in love with
software.
So built a couple of productsthroughout that time period,
(01:17):
started a company in 2010 calledCall Loop, which still exists
today.
That's in the messaging space.
So calling, outbound textings,marketing, and then spun out
sales message in about 2017,2018 and um, yeah, so sales
message, you know, is yourconversational texting business
texting platform, callingtexting focused on really on the
(01:40):
messaging side.
Um, and yeah, and helpingcompanies use sm SMS as a way to
engage leads, qualify leads,capture them, convert them, you
know, drive revenue through SMS.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
How have you gone about the funding aspect of all
these businesses you've started,have you primarily bootstrapped
, or have you gone thefundraising path at all?
You've started, have youprimarily?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
bootstrapped, or have you gone the fundraising path
at all?
Bootstrapped them all?
Every company I started Ibootstrapped, I think you know I
was talking about it with mywife the other day man, I think
I invested maybe $5,000 in salesmessage.
So you know, today it's a, youknow, multi, multimillion dollar
company and so it's always beenbootstrapped.
I did raise $90,000 for CallLoop.
(02:25):
This is back in 2012.
And I never felt good about that.
I always felt that itdefinitely changed things and so
my relationships I have with mytwo investors, the guilt I had
about not growing fast enough.
So I've always leaned away fromtaking on investor cash just
(02:46):
because I don't know.
It changed everything and youknow I always wanted to perform
and go above and beyond whenthings weren't working out or
where they were working out.
It was a little bit weird butyeah, I always bootstrapped
everything.
Sales message was pretty muchbootstrapped, call loop
bootstrap for the most part, butevery, every company I've
started, I've alwaysbootstrapped.
I did try and raise money andlearn very quickly.
(03:08):
You know this is years andyears ago.
It didn't have that billiondollar exit opportunity and it
was a good exercise for sure.
I went to like San Franciscoand did the whole round, did all
that thing.
I'm like you know what.
I actually don't want to dothis.
So, yeah, I think even today,you know, I've been playing with
lovable and replet and buildingout some just apps that have
(03:29):
been on my mind for a long time,things that solve like little
micro problems for me andinternally, within sales message
, you can bootstrap a companypretty quickly for nothing and
get to profitability veryquickly.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, I think the trend in 2025 is for founders to
go that path, whereas rightduring the COVID heyday, you
know, people are raising moneyleft and right and I think
there's a lot of businesses toyour point who maybe went the
fundraising route.
That would have been betterserved bootstrapping because
they don't have.
It's just not a billion dollaropportunity business.
There isn't anything wrong withthat.
(04:06):
It's just not a billion dollaropportunity business.
There isn't anything wrong withthat.
It's just not set up to go thefunding path.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And in most cases, you know, Ihave some friends like I'm going
to go and raise money.
I'm like, well, one, let's evensee if your business is
investable.
And in most cases the businessis either a service business or
a consulting business.
It's just not investable.
So no investor is going to wantto invest in that because it's
built around you and yourknowledge and your skill set.
It's not going to get a bigreturn for them.
(04:32):
So you know, I think mostcompanies that may think they
need to go and raise cashactually are not even investable
to begin with and they maywaste a lot of time, a lot of
cycles coming to find out youshould have just been selling,
you should have just beengenerating revenue the whole
time.
So I'm not a big proponent ofit Because, again, I think you
can build a great companywithout that.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
How do you balance, then, managing your cash flows
and growing and scaling abusiness without being able to
hire prematurely?
You really have to be superdialed in on when you can start
to bring in new team members.
How have you gone aboutmanaging that for Sales Message?
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, fortunately, when I started Sales Message,
you know, I had another businessthat was generating like
personal income and so that keptme afloat.
And so, funny enough, you know,I looked at um, we use just
works for payments andeverything, and come to find out
, um, wow, I didn't pay myselffor like three, three, almost
(05:35):
four years.
And uh, I was like Holy crap.
And I think I went into thatsaying, hey, I want to be able
to build this business, not, um,killing my dogs.
I remember I sold my one of mycompanies years and years ago
and the guy that bought it he'slike you know you want know why
you couldn't ever grow thisbusiness.
It was a a course, it was acredit repair course I created
(05:56):
because I had bad credit back inthe day.
And he's like you know, youwant you know why the business
never really grew is because youate your dogs.
Essentially, you ate all theprofit out of the company and
you couldn't really reinvest inbuilding it.
So with sales message, you know,I took a different approach,
which was I don't want to takeany cash out of the business, I
want to continue to invest andbuild that out.
(06:17):
And so you know, when you'rebuilding a software company, the
biggest expense is people anddevelopment.
And so being able to, you know,work with a co-founder, work
with somebody that is skin inthe game, that either A can take
a discount in exchange forequity or, you know, they're
(06:37):
just, they're part of thejourney in the beginning and
they're able to build, andyou're able to sort of build
Like I'm not a developer, I'mnot a coder, I'm very technical,
but you know, when it comes tobuilding a product, I can't do
that.
So I always had to find aco-founder in order to sort of
build up those businesses.
(06:57):
So, you know, I think therecomes a certain point where,
like early on, I was doing demos, I was doing calls, one for
like product discovery,development, and then, you know,
it got to a certain point where, like man, I can't be in six,
seven, eight demos a day andbuild the business.
So you know, there just comes apoint where you need to hand
that stuff off and moreimportantly is, once you can
(07:20):
hand it off to the right person,that can sell and generate
sales for you, it's the bestthing.
So sales, I would say, is likethat first hire for sure and
being able to generate cashwhich you can reinvest in growth
.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
How did you go about finding your co-founders?
Because I've heard horrorstories of bad co-founder
matches, and then I've alsoheard the successful sexual
stories as well, where you caneven imagine having built that
business without the other.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, I mean with Call Loop.
This was 2011, 2010.
So I had an idea and I justfound some different APIs that
were out there that allowed sortof voice and voice technology.
So I reached out to the company, asked them if they had any
resources to help get this built.
They introduced me to one ofthe developers and that
(08:14):
developer ultimately became mybusiness partner for CallLoop.
So he was the developer, hebuilt the product.
He was still working full timeand ended up buying him out, I
want to say in 2015, somethinglike that.
But then on the sales messageside, you know, I was working
with a friend of mine and he wasbuilding some other apps and
some other sort of things wewere playing with and, um, long
(08:37):
story short, we ended up likesort of partnering up and then
went and built sales message, um, but that didn't work out and
so, yeah, I think he was alittle bit younger in the sense,
and so we just we ended upparting ways and I ended up
finding a new co-founder in 2020.
So that previous co-founder waswith me for you know the
(09:00):
beginning stages, but in orderfor the business to sort of see
that next level, it just itneeded someone a lot more senior
and it was probably the bestdecision.
You know, found a greatco-founder he's still with me
today, sergey, and we built agreat product, a great company,
a great tech development teamand he's been a big part of that
.
I couldn't have done that bymyself and certainly not with
(09:22):
the previous team.
So I got introduced to himthrough a friend of mine who
runs sort of a CTO mastermind,and I reached out to him, let
him know what was going on andhe introduced me to some folks
and had a great conversationwith Sergey.
He helped out with some stuff Ihad to like offboard the team
and we just started workingtogether and through that
(09:44):
working relationship he sort ofbecame that new co-founder slash
CTO and you know it was 2020.
So you know, almost five yearsago.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
So yeah, it really is a leap of faith at first, but
if you can sort of walk beforerun with those partnerships
which it sounds like he steppedin and you got to work with him
a little bit before you made thefull leap.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, I found that to be a good way to test the
waters.
Yeah, and also, too, it's likeum, you know, you want the right
partner where you have a goodsort of venn diagram overlap,
and so, you know, I recently wasgoing to partner up with a
friend of mine and we did like,formed a company and did some
other things to just build thislittle app and realized like,
(10:26):
wow, we're actually more of thesame and so that wouldn't work
out.
I'm glad we sort of realizedthat early on and because we
were both like similar in theskill sets that we could offer,
and so it just got to where Iwas like, hey, you know what,
actually I don't want to do thisand I know you don't want to do
(10:46):
this, and so we just end upparting ways, still remain
friends, but unless there's atrue differentiator and skill
set, then you know it may notwork right, because you're just
sort of now competing againstthe same set of things that
you're both going to do.
And so, yeah, like there has tobe a clear delineation between
(11:10):
like, hey, I'm going to handlethis part of the house and
you're going to handle this partof the house, but if it's two
of the same people and they'reboth doing marketing and both
doing messaging it.
It doesn't tend to work out aswell.
At least that's been myexperience.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I mean you're far.
I find it far more effective tobe able to divide and conquer,
and there's still a little bitof overlap, so you can be in
sync with one another and can atleast have some sort of working
dynamic there.
But at least in the case of ournew business I had 25 years of
experience of being verydifferent than my brother, who's
(11:46):
the co-founder in thisorganization.
So it was very obvious who'swho was gonna own which parts
and who was gonna own the othersyeah and that has that has
worked out pretty well becauseof the difference.
if we didn't, if we were thesame person, then again to your
point.
It would just be you knowcompeting for the same you know
thing, and there would be gapsthat would not be filled by it,
(12:07):
right?
Speaker 2 (12:08):
And then you'd have to hire somebody to fill the gap
.
And so you know early on.
It's like who's going to befilling in all the gaps, because
you only have so much money,time, resources, and if you can
move together then you can closethe gap.
But if you've got one reallystrong area, but then there's
this other part of the businessthat just needs to get full,
well then who's going to do it?
And either you've got to learnit, which may or may not be the
(12:31):
skill set you want to learn, oryou've got to hire for it and
bring in somebody in there.
So, you know you've got to havea pretty solid foundation from
team to get it sort ofbootstrapped up.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
So, hopping over to the product side and what you've
built, and given all theexperience that you have in the
messaging space, how shouldbusiness owners be thinking
about SMS as it relates to you?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
know more B2B interests.
Yeah, I mean, the way that welook at it is it's it's through
a framework called text eyes,and so what that means is, you
know, messaging can play a partin the entire cycle.
So, whether you're a B2Ccompany or B2B company, like
it's all the same, and so texteyes is there's four parts you
have capture, connect, convertand care, and so it's all based
(13:38):
on this sort of philosophy.
But our philosophy is webelieve conversations are good
for business.
The way in which we helpbusinesses create more
conversations is through aframework called Text Eyes your
Business, and then, ultimately,we have the technology and sales
message to like help implementthat.
So the way to look at that aswell.
You can use texting to generateleads, right.
(14:01):
So somebody can go on thewebsite and do a live chat and
you can capture a lead.
You can do, you know, text tojoin.
You can have somebody call youand you can automate you know a
missed call automation and starta conversation.
Somebody can, you know, buy aproduct, and then they can get
SMS reminders.
They could fill out a web form,right.
There's all the different waysin which you can capture leads,
(14:22):
and then SMS is a part of that.
And so capture leads right.
You can connect, have thosetwo-way conversations.
Now, with AI, you can build inthese automated conversations so
you can use your brand voice.
You can engage with them in twoway and, again, capture data,
(14:42):
push that data to like your CRM.
You can use it to drive revenueright.
So typical SMS marketingcampaign, promotional type stuff
.
But you can use it to capturereviews right, generate feedback
and take these people, turnthem into referrals and now they
become a referral source.
So that's sort of the frameworkto look at.
(15:02):
It is hey, I can textize mybusiness.
I can add texting in all thedifferent areas generate leads,
book appointments, remind peopleof the meeting or appointment
or schedule, generate revenue,win back customers, get reviews,
get referrals right.
So that's how we look at it.
Most companies that are reallycoming into it.
You know SMS marketing has beensort of the old traditional way
(15:27):
like, hey, it's one way texting.
But now, as more consumers arenot picking up their phone, not
responding to email, you knowthey're leaning on SMS and so
businesses need to lean into hey, how are we using texting?
You know, when somebody goes toour website and they call us or
they text us, is are weactually getting those texts?
(15:47):
And so sales message sort offills that gap.
So you can use it for two-wayconversational texts, for
calling for SMS marketing, right?
All those different use cases.
So everybody is generatingleads and the question is well,
what are they doing with thoseleads?
You're either calling them,you're emailing them, and now
(16:08):
you're texting them.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
So you mentioned integrations and I think that's
one of the key points.
And I think that's one of thekey points and I actually I
stumbled across your businessway back, I believe, in 21, when
the agency that I was runningwas a HubSpot Platinum partner
at the time.
So I believe we actually useyour solution within HubSpot.
(16:30):
But I think that integrationcomponent is so critical because
you're not asking somebody totransition CRMs.
Because you're not askingsomebody to transition CRMs,
you're just plugging into whatthey already have in place and
it's an additive component towhat the prospect lifecycle or
customer lifecycle could looklike.
How did you go aboutidentifying HubSpot as an area
we should integrate or Pipedrive, as a new platform that we
(16:51):
should move into?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
How did?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
you go about that.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, I mean I came from like the Infusionsoft world
.
So you know we usedInfusionsoft, so we integrated
into Infusionsoft and weintegrated into ActiveCampaign
and then we integrated intoHubSpot and so when I look at,
like, what's the customerprofile?
You know ActiveCampaign isreally heavy on the automation
side, so it's gonna be more SMSmarketing right on the
automation side.
So it's going to be more SMSmarketing right.
(17:15):
Keep same thing, small businessgoing to lean on more
automation because they don'thave a team and people.
And when you look at like, okay, well, what's the actual
business profile for a businessthat's going to use two-way
texting or yeah, likeconversational messaging, and so
HubSpot was a good integration.
So you know, we integrated Iwant to say 2019, 2020,
(17:39):
something like that when theirapp marketplace was sort of
brand new and it just worked.
You know, because, again, thosebusinesses were heavy on
inbound marketing, right,they're heavy on conversations
and so messaging and textingjust played a good part of that.
And you know we've gone deep onthe HubSpot ecosystem.
(17:59):
So if you use HubSpot, by allmeans, like, check out sales
message, and so they have, youknow, sales hub, marketing, hub,
service hub, operations, hub.
So we integrate super deep inall those different hubs.
So your sales team can use it,your marketing team can use it.
You integrate into workflows,your customer support team can
use it, your marketing team canuse it.
You integrate into workflows,your customer support team can
use it with tickets, so allacross the whole company, you
(18:22):
can essentially integratemessaging right, you can textize
your business.
So HubSpot, you know, just thesignals were there and so that's
why we just continued to doubledown and go deeper and deeper
and deeper on the integration.
Hubspot always exposes newaccess, new APIs like new ways
in which that we can extend ourintegration even more.
And so, yeah, I mean that'sthat's why HubSpot is, because
(18:45):
that's really where the customerwas.
We do integrate into othertools, like we've got a pretty
good Salesforce one.
That's a different beast initself.
That's more enterprise right,sales cycles, totally different.
Um, but HubSpot for us is sortof our main, our main
integration.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
We use the sales service and marketing hub, so
I'm going to have to go check itout after this, uh, after this
podcast, see if we can leverageit.
Um, as it relates to like, uh,you know, leverage it.
Yeah, as it relates to, likeyou know, opt in and managing
that entire process, is thatsomething that that you take on,
or is that beholden on the, onthe customer?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, I mean, we've got a pretty simple system to go
through that process.
But you know the carriers.
Years ago you could send textsto anybody, upload a list and
texts and, you know, get yourmessage through.
You know, behind a short codeor just provision a phone number
, carrie's got pretty smart andthey're like, look, if we're
going to keep this channel clean, we've got to set up some, you
(19:47):
know, some structure so we cankeep it clean.
So they really want to know twothings like who you are and
what you're sending.
Right, so this whole know yourcustomer KYC.
So, hey, I know your business,you're a real business.
And hey, what's the type ofmessages you're sending?
Maybe it's marketing, maybeit's customer care, whatever.
So they can walk through thatprocess.
(20:08):
So if you're going to get alocal number or something called
10 DLC just stands for like 10digit long code but you go
through an approval processthrough sales message we
submitted to the carrier.
We actually got some good AIstuff, because most people are
like, oh, let me just submit itand submit whatever data over to
the carrier, but they don'trealize like it's not us, it's
actually the carriers that aregoing to review it and the
(20:30):
carriers are the ones that willsay, yes, this is compliance and
we approve it, or no, and sopeople can't just assume they
can put in whatever they wantand then it gets approved right,
because if you don't getapproved, you can't send texts.
So we built some pretty cool AItech to review it, take a look
at it and ultimately help ourcustomers make the right
(20:52):
decisions around gettingapproved right, because they got
to update some stuff in theirweb form and whatnot.
But they can walk through it.
It's pretty simple.
It's just a form Tell usinformation about your business
where people filling out youknow form to capture an email
and you know you submit thatstuff.
We send it off to the carriers.
Either it comes back approved,it comes back rejected with some
(21:13):
suggestions and they just gothrough that process process,
but it's fairly quick within acouple days.
You know they can get approvedand then send text.
But everybody has to do it.
It's not like a individualthing, it's every company yeah,
that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
One last question for you, as it relates to your
favorite use cases of salesmessage.
Is there a way that you use itinternally for your own business
that you think you know everyother company should be
leveraging it for that way aswell?
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, like you know, I was helping a friend auditing
his business because there's somany opportunities that people
don't realize.
So I think one of the hiddenones is most people, I would say
most.
You know older businesses,maybe they're using a landline
and so that landlinetraditionally is only calling,
it's not texting.
So what they can do is we cantext enable that number, and so
(22:06):
that number becomes textable andthey realize, oh my gosh,
there's people actually that aretrying to text me.
So that's just like a hiddengem of leads and opportunities
that people are trying tomessage you.
The other, like I think you know, a lot of these strategies are
not revolutionary and so that'swhy, like SMS, you don't see a
(22:27):
lot of courses on it, becauseit's like you're just sending a
text message.
You don't have to learncopywriting.
There is some strategy aroundall of that copywriting, right,
like there is some strategyaround all of that.
But you know one super simpleone like this is obviously most
DTC type stuff, but you know oneof the ones like we've, we have
a lot of speakers and sothey're in front of an audience.
So a buddy of mine, this is avery old strategy but it still
(22:50):
works.
So he was speaking in front of150 people a simple text to join
keyword and I'm generating over100 leads.
So, text to join or scan a QRcode, go into an SMS sort of AI
agent.
That AI agent is capturing yourname, your email, square
footage like whatever customdata, and he generated all those
leads and then put those leadsin HubSpot and started a whole
(23:12):
automation sequence.
So you know, the future isreally well.
How can you turn all thesemechanisms into lead gen,
putting them into, you know, anAI agent to have those
conversations, to capture thatdata or qualify to book a
meeting or drive revenue?
And so, you know, I think thetraditional exit pop, you know,
capture a cell phone and thensend.
(23:32):
You know, marketing promotionis great.
I mean, it works crazyspecifically for, like
e-commerce.
But I think, as you sort of getoutside of that, how do you
really add messaging in a waythat can help you grow more
effectively?
And so that's our goal.
You know we've got a prettyawesome platform integrate super
deep into different tools andsystems.
(23:53):
And yeah, I mean just doing asimple audit on the business.
Hey, do I have a web form?
Am I capturing a phone number?
What am I doing with that asset, because it's an asset, right
the same as if you're capturingan email.
You've got your email asset.
Now you sort of have your phoneasset and that can be through
calling but also be through SMStext messaging.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
I love some of the best use cases and applications
are the most obvious but alsomost overlooked, I feel like.
So yeah, that makes a lot ofsense.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
It's usually the case , yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Well, I appreciate you coming on and sharing all
these insights.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
But before we hop, can you let people know where
they could you know about you?
Or sales message.
And yeah, thanks, brandon, Iappreciate it.
Um, they can go to salesmessagecom.
Take a look at our platform,sign up for a free trial um test
it out.
And again, we integrate reallywell into a lot of different
tools and systems.
Um, but they can try it out,get a phone number, play around
with it and and hack at it.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
But salesmessagecom.
I appreciate you coming on.
We'll edit it.
We'll mute that For everybodylistening.
I appreciate you coming on,chris.
Thanks everyone for listening.
As always, you can find me atbrandonorosocom or Scalistai.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you next time.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Awesome.
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to D2Z, a podcast
about using the Gen Z mindset togrow your business.
I'm Gen Z entrepreneur BrandonAmoroso, the former founder of
Electric and now the co-founderof Scaleless, and today I'm
talking with Chris Brisson,who's the founder and CEO at
Sales Message, which is a simple, secure and scalable business
texting software.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, thanks for having me, brandon, excited to
be here.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So Thanks for coming on the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Brandon Excited to be here.
So before we dive into things,can you give everybody just a
quick background on yourself andyour entrepreneurial journey?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yep, quick story.
I got started young, so myfirst business I started when I
was 19.
So I sold rims and tires oneBay and built that business up.
It was sort of my firste-commerce business.
If you were to say that this is2002.
So it was a long, long time agoand, yeah, built that business
(00:54):
up, ended up selling that in2005.
Vowed never again to sellphysical stuff and so went into
just learning everything I couldabout copywriting, you know,
creating courses, writing books,writing eBooks, doing product
launch, consulting and thenreally just fell in love with
software.
So built a couple of productsthroughout that time period,
(01:17):
started a company in 2010 calledCall Loop, which still exists
today.
That's in the messaging space.
So calling, outbound textings,marketing, and then spun out
sales message in about 2017,2018 and um, yeah, so sales
message, you know, is yourconversational texting business
texting platform, callingtexting focused on really on the
(01:40):
messaging side.
Um, and yeah, and helpingcompanies use sm SMS as a way to
engage leads, qualify leads,capture them, convert them, you
know, drive revenue through SMS.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
How have you gone about the funding aspect of all
these businesses you've started,have you primarily bootstrapped
, or have you gone thefundraising path at all?
You've started, have youprimarily?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
bootstrapped, or have you gone the fundraising path
at all?
Bootstrapped them all?
Every company I started Ibootstrapped, I think you know I
was talking about it with mywife the other day man, I think
I invested maybe $5,000 in salesmessage.
So you know, today it's a, youknow, multi, multimillion dollar
company and so it's always beenbootstrapped.
I did raise $90,000 for CallLoop.
(02:25):
This is back in 2012.
And I never felt good about that.
I always felt that itdefinitely changed things and so
my relationships I have with mytwo investors, the guilt I had
about not growing fast enough.
So I've always leaned away fromtaking on investor cash just
(02:46):
because I don't know.
It changed everything and youknow I always wanted to perform
and go above and beyond whenthings weren't working out or
where they were working out.
It was a little bit weird butyeah, I always bootstrapped
everything.
Sales message was pretty muchbootstrapped, call loop
bootstrap for the most part, butevery, every company I've
started, I've alwaysbootstrapped.
I did try and raise money andlearn very quickly.
(03:08):
You know this is years andyears ago.
It didn't have that billiondollar exit opportunity and it
was a good exercise for sure.
I went to like San Franciscoand did the whole round, did all
that thing.
I'm like you know what.
I actually don't want to dothis.
So, yeah, I think even today,you know, I've been playing with
lovable and replet and buildingout some just apps that have
(03:29):
been on my mind for a long time,things that solve like little
micro problems for me andinternally, within sales message
, you can bootstrap a companypretty quickly for nothing and
get to profitability veryquickly.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, I think the trend in 2025 is for founders to
go that path, whereas rightduring the COVID heyday, you
know, people are raising moneyleft and right and I think
there's a lot of businesses toyour point who maybe went the
fundraising route.
That would have been betterserved bootstrapping because
they don't have.
It's just not a billion dollaropportunity business.
There isn't anything wrong withthat.
(04:06):
It's just not a billion dollaropportunity business.
There isn't anything wrong withthat.
It's just not set up to go thefunding path.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And in most cases, you know, Ihave some friends like I'm going
to go and raise money.
I'm like, well, one, let's evensee if your business is
investable.
And in most cases the businessis either a service business or
a consulting business.
It's just not investable.
So no investor is going to wantto invest in that because it's
built around you and yourknowledge and your skill set.
It's not going to get a bigreturn for them.
(04:32):
So you know, I think mostcompanies that may think they
need to go and raise cashactually are not even investable
to begin with and they maywaste a lot of time, a lot of
cycles coming to find out youshould have just been selling,
you should have just beengenerating revenue the whole
time.
So I'm not a big proponent ofit Because, again, I think you
can build a great companywithout that.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
How do you balance, then, managing your cash flows
and growing and scaling abusiness without being able to
hire prematurely?
You really have to be superdialed in on when you can start
to bring in new team members.
How have you gone aboutmanaging that for Sales Message?
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, fortunately, when I started Sales Message,
you know, I had another businessthat was generating like
personal income and so that keptme afloat.
And so, funny enough, you know,I looked at um, we use just
works for payments andeverything, and come to find out
, um, wow, I didn't pay myselffor like three, three, almost
(05:35):
four years.
And uh, I was like Holy crap.
And I think I went into thatsaying, hey, I want to be able
to build this business, not, um,killing my dogs.
I remember I sold my one of mycompanies years and years ago
and the guy that bought it he'slike you know you want know why
you couldn't ever grow thisbusiness.
It was a a course, it was acredit repair course I created
(05:56):
because I had bad credit back inthe day.
And he's like you know, youwant you know why the business
never really grew is because youate your dogs.
Essentially, you ate all theprofit out of the company and
you couldn't really reinvest inbuilding it.
So with sales message, you know,I took a different approach,
which was I don't want to takeany cash out of the business, I
want to continue to invest andbuild that out.
(06:17):
And so you know, when you'rebuilding a software company, the
biggest expense is people anddevelopment.
And so being able to, you know,work with a co-founder, work
with somebody that is skin inthe game, that either A can take
a discount in exchange forequity or, you know, they're
(06:37):
just, they're part of thejourney in the beginning and
they're able to build, andyou're able to sort of build
Like I'm not a developer, I'mnot a coder, I'm very technical,
but you know, when it comes tobuilding a product, I can't do
that.
So I always had to find aco-founder in order to sort of
build up those businesses.
(06:57):
So, you know, I think therecomes a certain point where,
like early on, I was doing demos, I was doing calls, one for
like product discovery,development, and then, you know,
it got to a certain point where, like man, I can't be in six,
seven, eight demos a day andbuild the business.
So you know, there just comes apoint where you need to hand
that stuff off and moreimportantly is, once you can
(07:20):
hand it off to the right person,that can sell and generate
sales for you, it's the bestthing.
So sales, I would say, is likethat first hire for sure and
being able to generate cashwhich you can reinvest in growth
.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
How did you go about finding your co-founders?
Because I've heard horrorstories of bad co-founder
matches, and then I've alsoheard the successful sexual
stories as well, where you caneven imagine having built that
business without the other.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, I mean with Call Loop.
This was 2011, 2010.
So I had an idea and I justfound some different APIs that
were out there that allowed sortof voice and voice technology.
So I reached out to the company, asked them if they had any
resources to help get this built.
They introduced me to one ofthe developers and that
(08:14):
developer ultimately became mybusiness partner for CallLoop.
So he was the developer, hebuilt the product.
He was still working full timeand ended up buying him out, I
want to say in 2015, somethinglike that.
But then on the sales messageside, you know, I was working
with a friend of mine and he wasbuilding some other apps and
some other sort of things wewere playing with and, um, long
(08:37):
story short, we ended up likesort of partnering up and then
went and built sales message, um, but that didn't work out and
so, yeah, I think he was alittle bit younger in the sense,
and so we just we ended upparting ways and I ended up
finding a new co-founder in 2020.
So that previous co-founder waswith me for you know the
(09:00):
beginning stages, but in orderfor the business to sort of see
that next level, it just itneeded someone a lot more senior
and it was probably the bestdecision.
You know, found a greatco-founder he's still with me
today, sergey, and we built agreat product, a great company,
a great tech development teamand he's been a big part of that
.
I couldn't have done that bymyself and certainly not with
(09:22):
the previous team.
So I got introduced to himthrough a friend of mine who
runs sort of a CTO mastermind,and I reached out to him, let
him know what was going on andhe introduced me to some folks
and had a great conversationwith Sergey.
He helped out with some stuff Ihad to like offboard the team
and we just started workingtogether and through that
(09:44):
working relationship he sort ofbecame that new co-founder slash
CTO and you know it was 2020.
So you know, almost five yearsago.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
So yeah, it really is a leap of faith at first, but
if you can sort of walk beforerun with those partnerships
which it sounds like he steppedin and you got to work with him
a little bit before you made thefull leap.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, I found that to be a good way to test the
waters.
Yeah, and also, too, it's likeum, you know, you want the right
partner where you have a goodsort of venn diagram overlap,
and so, you know, I recently wasgoing to partner up with a
friend of mine and we did like,formed a company and did some
other things to just build thislittle app and realized like,
(10:26):
wow, we're actually more of thesame and so that wouldn't work
out.
I'm glad we sort of realizedthat early on and because we
were both like similar in theskill sets that we could offer,
and so it just got to where Iwas like, hey, you know what,
actually I don't want to do thisand I know you don't want to do
(10:46):
this, and so we just end upparting ways, still remain
friends, but unless there's atrue differentiator and skill
set, then you know it may notwork right, because you're just
sort of now competing againstthe same set of things that
you're both going to do.
And so, yeah, like there has tobe a clear delineation between
(11:10):
like, hey, I'm going to handlethis part of the house and
you're going to handle this partof the house, but if it's two
of the same people and they'reboth doing marketing and both
doing messaging it.
It doesn't tend to work out aswell.
At least that's been myexperience.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I mean you're far.
I find it far more effective tobe able to divide and conquer,
and there's still a little bitof overlap, so you can be in
sync with one another and can atleast have some sort of working
dynamic there.
But at least in the case of ournew business I had 25 years of
experience of being verydifferent than my brother, who's
(11:46):
the co-founder in thisorganization.
So it was very obvious who'swho was gonna own which parts
and who was gonna own the othersyeah and that has that has
worked out pretty well becauseof the difference.
if we didn't, if we were thesame person, then again to your
point.
It would just be you knowcompeting for the same you know
thing, and there would be gapsthat would not be filled by it,
(12:07):
right?
Speaker 2 (12:08):
And then you'd have to hire somebody to fill the gap
.
And so you know early on.
It's like who's going to befilling in all the gaps, because
you only have so much money,time, resources, and if you can
move together then you can closethe gap.
But if you've got one reallystrong area, but then there's
this other part of the businessthat just needs to get full,
well then who's going to do it?
And either you've got to learnit, which may or may not be the
(12:31):
skill set you want to learn, oryou've got to hire for it and
bring in somebody in there.
So, you know you've got to havea pretty solid foundation from
team to get it sort ofbootstrapped up.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
So, hopping over to the product side and what you've
built, and given all theexperience that you have in the
messaging space, how shouldbusiness owners be thinking
about SMS as it relates to you?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
know more B2B interests.
Yeah, I mean, the way that welook at it is it's it's through
a framework called text eyes,and so what that means is, you
know, messaging can play a partin the entire cycle.
So, whether you're a B2Ccompany or B2B company, like
it's all the same, and so texteyes is there's four parts you
have capture, connect, convertand care, and so it's all based
(13:38):
on this sort of philosophy.
But our philosophy is webelieve conversations are good
for business.
The way in which we helpbusinesses create more
conversations is through aframework called Text Eyes your
Business, and then, ultimately,we have the technology and sales
message to like help implementthat.
So the way to look at that aswell.
You can use texting to generateleads, right.
(14:01):
So somebody can go on thewebsite and do a live chat and
you can capture a lead.
You can do, you know, text tojoin.
You can have somebody call youand you can automate you know a
missed call automation and starta conversation.
Somebody can, you know, buy aproduct, and then they can get
SMS reminders.
They could fill out a web form,right.
There's all the different waysin which you can capture leads,
(14:22):
and then SMS is a part of that.
And so capture leads right.
You can connect, have thosetwo-way conversations.
Now, with AI, you can build inthese automated conversations so
you can use your brand voice.
You can engage with them in twoway and, again, capture data,
(14:42):
push that data to like your CRM.
You can use it to drive revenueright.
So typical SMS marketingcampaign, promotional type stuff
.
But you can use it to capturereviews right, generate feedback
and take these people, turnthem into referrals and now they
become a referral source.
So that's sort of the frameworkto look at.
(15:02):
It is hey, I can textize mybusiness.
I can add texting in all thedifferent areas generate leads,
book appointments, remind peopleof the meeting or appointment
or schedule, generate revenue,win back customers, get reviews,
get referrals right.
So that's how we look at it.
Most companies that are reallycoming into it.
You know SMS marketing has beensort of the old traditional way
(15:27):
like, hey, it's one way texting.
But now, as more consumers arenot picking up their phone, not
responding to email, you knowthey're leaning on SMS and so
businesses need to lean into hey, how are we using texting?
You know, when somebody goes toour website and they call us or
they text us, is are weactually getting those texts?
(15:47):
And so sales message sort offills that gap.
So you can use it for two-wayconversational texts, for
calling for SMS marketing, right?
All those different use cases.
So everybody is generatingleads and the question is well,
what are they doing with thoseleads?
You're either calling them,you're emailing them, and now
(16:08):
you're texting them.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
So you mentioned integrations and I think that's
one of the key points.
And I think that's one of thekey points and I actually I
stumbled across your businessway back, I believe, in 21, when
the agency that I was runningwas a HubSpot Platinum partner
at the time.
So I believe we actually useyour solution within HubSpot.
(16:30):
But I think that integrationcomponent is so critical because
you're not asking somebody totransition CRMs.
Because you're not askingsomebody to transition CRMs,
you're just plugging into whatthey already have in place and
it's an additive component towhat the prospect lifecycle or
customer lifecycle could looklike.
How did you go aboutidentifying HubSpot as an area
we should integrate or Pipedrive, as a new platform that we
(16:51):
should move into?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
How did?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
you go about that.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, I mean I came from like the Infusionsoft world
.
So you know we usedInfusionsoft, so we integrated
into Infusionsoft and weintegrated into ActiveCampaign
and then we integrated intoHubSpot and so when I look at,
like, what's the customerprofile?
You know ActiveCampaign isreally heavy on the automation
side, so it's gonna be more SMSmarketing right on the
automation side.
So it's going to be more SMSmarketing right.
(17:15):
Keep same thing, small businessgoing to lean on more
automation because they don'thave a team and people.
And when you look at like, okay, well, what's the actual
business profile for a businessthat's going to use two-way
texting or yeah, likeconversational messaging, and so
HubSpot was a good integration.
So you know, we integrated Iwant to say 2019, 2020,
(17:39):
something like that when theirapp marketplace was sort of
brand new and it just worked.
You know, because, again, thosebusinesses were heavy on
inbound marketing, right,they're heavy on conversations
and so messaging and textingjust played a good part of that.
And you know we've gone deep onthe HubSpot ecosystem.
(17:59):
So if you use HubSpot, by allmeans, like, check out sales
message, and so they have, youknow, sales hub, marketing, hub,
service hub, operations, hub.
So we integrate super deep inall those different hubs.
So your sales team can use it,your marketing team can use it.
You integrate into workflows,your customer support team can
use it, your marketing team canuse it.
You integrate into workflows,your customer support team can
use it with tickets, so allacross the whole company, you
(18:22):
can essentially integratemessaging right, you can textize
your business.
So HubSpot, you know, just thesignals were there and so that's
why we just continued to doubledown and go deeper and deeper
and deeper on the integration.
Hubspot always exposes newaccess, new APIs like new ways
in which that we can extend ourintegration even more.
And so, yeah, I mean that'sthat's why HubSpot is, because
(18:45):
that's really where the customerwas.
We do integrate into othertools, like we've got a pretty
good Salesforce one.
That's a different beast initself.
That's more enterprise right,sales cycles, totally different.
Um, but HubSpot for us is sortof our main, our main
integration.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
We use the sales service and marketing hub, so
I'm going to have to go check itout after this, uh, after this
podcast, see if we can leverageit.
Um, as it relates to like, uh,you know, leverage it.
Yeah, as it relates to, likeyou know, opt in and managing
that entire process, is thatsomething that that you take on,
or is that beholden on the, onthe customer?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, I mean, we've got a pretty simple system to go
through that process.
But you know the carriers.
Years ago you could send textsto anybody, upload a list and
texts and, you know, get yourmessage through.
You know, behind a short codeor just provision a phone number
, carrie's got pretty smart andthey're like, look, if we're
going to keep this channel clean, we've got to set up some, you
(19:47):
know, some structure so we cankeep it clean.
So they really want to know twothings like who you are and
what you're sending.
Right, so this whole know yourcustomer KYC.
So, hey, I know your business,you're a real business.
And hey, what's the type ofmessages you're sending?
Maybe it's marketing, maybeit's customer care, whatever.
So they can walk through thatprocess.
(20:08):
So if you're going to get alocal number or something called
10 DLC just stands for like 10digit long code but you go
through an approval processthrough sales message we
submitted to the carrier.
We actually got some good AIstuff, because most people are
like, oh, let me just submit itand submit whatever data over to
the carrier, but they don'trealize like it's not us, it's
actually the carriers that aregoing to review it and the
(20:30):
carriers are the ones that willsay, yes, this is compliance and
we approve it, or no, and sopeople can't just assume they
can put in whatever they wantand then it gets approved right,
because if you don't getapproved, you can't send texts.
So we built some pretty cool AItech to review it, take a look
at it and ultimately help ourcustomers make the right
(20:52):
decisions around gettingapproved right, because they got
to update some stuff in theirweb form and whatnot.
But they can walk through it.
It's pretty simple.
It's just a form Tell usinformation about your business
where people filling out youknow form to capture an email
and you know you submit thatstuff.
We send it off to the carriers.
Either it comes back approved,it comes back rejected with some
(21:13):
suggestions and they just gothrough that process process,
but it's fairly quick within acouple days.
You know they can get approvedand then send text.
But everybody has to do it.
It's not like a individualthing, it's every company yeah,
that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
One last question for you, as it relates to your
favorite use cases of salesmessage.
Is there a way that you use itinternally for your own business
that you think you know everyother company should be
leveraging it for that way aswell?
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, like you know, I was helping a friend auditing
his business because there's somany opportunities that people
don't realize.
So I think one of the hiddenones is most people, I would say
most.
You know older businesses,maybe they're using a landline
and so that landlinetraditionally is only calling,
it's not texting.
So what they can do is we cantext enable that number, and so
(22:06):
that number becomes textable andthey realize, oh my gosh,
there's people actually that aretrying to text me.
So that's just like a hiddengem of leads and opportunities
that people are trying tomessage you.
The other, like I think you know, a lot of these strategies are
not revolutionary and so that'swhy, like SMS, you don't see a
(22:27):
lot of courses on it, becauseit's like you're just sending a
text message.
You don't have to learncopywriting.
There is some strategy aroundall of that copywriting, right,
like there is some strategyaround all of that.
But you know one super simpleone like this is obviously most
DTC type stuff, but you know oneof the ones like we've, we have
a lot of speakers and sothey're in front of an audience.
So a buddy of mine, this is avery old strategy but it still
(22:50):
works.
So he was speaking in front of150 people a simple text to join
keyword and I'm generating over100 leads.
So, text to join or scan a QRcode, go into an SMS sort of AI
agent.
That AI agent is capturing yourname, your email, square
footage like whatever customdata, and he generated all those
leads and then put those leadsin HubSpot and started a whole
(23:12):
automation sequence.
So you know, the future isreally well.
How can you turn all thesemechanisms into lead gen,
putting them into, you know, anAI agent to have those
conversations, to capture thatdata or qualify to book a
meeting or drive revenue?
And so, you know, I think thetraditional exit pop, you know,
capture a cell phone and thensend.
(23:32):
You know, marketing promotionis great.
I mean, it works crazyspecifically for, like
e-commerce.
But I think, as you sort of getoutside of that, how do you
really add messaging in a waythat can help you grow more
effectively?
And so that's our goal.
You know we've got a prettyawesome platform integrate super
deep into different tools andsystems.
(23:53):
And yeah, I mean just doing asimple audit on the business.
Hey, do I have a web form?
Am I capturing a phone number?
What am I doing with that asset, because it's an asset, right
the same as if you're capturingan email.
You've got your email asset.
Now you sort of have your phoneasset and that can be through
calling but also be through SMStext messaging.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
I love some of the best use cases and applications
are the most obvious but alsomost overlooked, I feel like.
So yeah, that makes a lot ofsense.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
It's usually the case , yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Well, I appreciate you coming on and sharing all
these insights.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
But before we hop, can you let people know where
they could you know about you?
Or sales message.
And yeah, thanks, brandon, Iappreciate it.
Um, they can go to salesmessagecom.
Take a look at our platform,sign up for a free trial um test
it out.
And again, we integrate reallywell into a lot of different
tools and systems.
Um, but they can try it out,get a phone number, play around
with it and and hack at it.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
But salesmessagecom.
I appreciate you coming on.
We'll edit it.
We'll mute that For everybodylistening.
I appreciate you coming on,chris.
Thanks everyone for listening.
As always, you can find me atbrandonorosocom or Scalistai.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you next time.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Awesome.
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