In this two‑minute trailer for a forthcoming episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur, host Jim James interviews entrepreneur Jeremy Nagle about his company Smooth Messenger. Launched in 2018, Smooth Messenger is an SMS integration for Zoho CRM that helps businesses reach customers via text, cutting through the noise of crowded email inboxes. Jeremy explains that early growth relied on two primary channels: low‑budget YouTube content marketing, which built trust with a small audience that became the first customers, and a strategic partnership with Zoho that redirected users of a discontinued SMS plugin to his marketplace listing. Through these channels he secured roughly 20 initial customers before eventually selling the business in 2022. The trailer ends with a teaser for the full 20‑minute interview.
Hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Today we're traveling all the way across the world to Melbourne to meet an entrepreneur, Jeremy Nagle. Jeremy, you started a company called Smooth Messenger in 2018, and then you sold it in 2022. Jeremy, tell us a little bit first then about Smooth Messenger. What product did you build and what problem did it solve for entrepreneurs?
Sure. So Smooth Messenger is an SMS integration for Zoho CRM. It solves the problem of people who want to send out SMS to their customers. And that I think is quite emblematic that in these days, people get their inboxes flooded with emails and SMS tend to cut through the noise a little bit more. So when I launched it, I was aware that there were already quite a few SMS integrations on the marketplace. So there's a bit of a challenge there of how do you get attention? And what I did in order to cut through the noise was partnerships and YouTube. They were my 2 main channels. I'd read a book about content marketing where they spoke about how YouTube was a great way to get noticed. And I had started making these really poor quality, low production value videos that people nonetheless seemed to get value out of. And essentially when I went live with the SMS integration, they were my first customers, people who had been following me on YouTube and who liked what I was doing and who trusted me because they'd been watching my how-to videos and then willing to give it a go. And then the other aspect to it was the partnerships. So there was the partnership with Zoho in the sense that they had the old SMS plugin that could no longer be served by them. And they essentially funneled leads my way. People who were looking for the old version of the SMS plugin were directed to my marketplace listing instead. And I was able to then get the first probably 20 or so customers through those 2 channels, the YouTube and also the partnership with Zoho. I think there's a sweet spot where I communicate regularly and I tell them what's happening. It's been partnerships and the content marketing.
Now, this was just a 2-minute trailer for a full 20-minute show. The show will be dropping into your feed in the next day or so. So do look out for it and do enjoy it, share it, and review it. Thanks for listening to this trailer of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur.
