Here's How Christian Blake From Chiropraise Helps Chiropractors Triple Their New Patients

just to get like conversation and stuff. So basically what I'm doing is, I mean, we're basically interviewing people who do, who like have either marketing agencies or they're in-house marketers and stuff like that, mainly agencies. And we're talking about like, all right, how do you grow your business? So I'm in a ton of these like groups and stuff, and so many people are like, how do you price? Like, is it percentage of ad spend? Is it flat monthly fee? What kind of tools are you using for like reporting? Like how do you get clients? And like, look, you don't have to give like all the secret sauce. Um, it seems like you're specializing in Kairos, which is kind of cool.

Yeah, we actually, we actually also have, uh, we're getting ready to announce Cannapraise where we're focusing specifically on, uh, Cannapraise, C-A-N-N-A, praise. So we actually have some CBD and some, um, medical cultivation facilities. So we're focusing on the cannabis industry as well, which is awesome. Sick. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I'll definitely ask you, I'll definitely like ask you about that and like, you know, why you're going after them, how you acquire them. Yeah, I think we should just jump into it though. I think it's gonna be fine.

Cool.

But I'm basically gonna kick it off. So Chris— here, I'll kick it off in a second. So Christian Blake, company is Cairo Trades, right?

That's correct.

All right, cool. All right, I'm gonna kick it off and then I'll probably cut and then I'll like slice it and I'll start it right here like Alright guys, welcome to another episode of Growing Your Agency with Ryan Shank. I'm here today with Christian Blake from Cairo Praise. Christian, thank you so much for joining us. How's it going?

Absolutely, it's going well, man. We're, uh, I'm in the Midwest where we're experiencing a heat wave, but I think as a now Midwesterner, we just call it a regular Friday, you know, 105.

It's just a day.

Yeah, just a normal day. I feel it.

It's just a normal day out here. Yeah, no, it's also really, really hot on the East Coast as well. I'm in Maryland now. We're based out of New York and it's insane there as well. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy, man. Seems like you're outside though, so at least like you're getting some wind.

I am.

Some wind traffic. All right, cool. So I just want to dive in. So these are just quick action-packed episodes, you know, where we talk to top marketers in different industries and how they did it. So tell us a little bit about your background. Why did you get into you know, marketing, tell us a little bit about the business, and then we'll dive into some more tactical questions.

Yeah, absolutely. So my background, so it's pretty diverse. I've done everything from working in the private equity, venture capital space, founded businesses, failed miserably at creating businesses, which is— I like to call it a learning experience. I've taken my cuts and bruises like everyone else, made the wrong choices at the wrong time, and then made the wrong choice at the right time. But ultimately, I think at the core of everything for me, it always stems from people. So, you know, whether it's marketing or early-stage technology, CPG-based industries, or whatever the focus is, it's always about getting in front of the right people with the right message and then utilizing the right vehicles to make sure that it's quantitative, that you can keep track of what you're doing right and areas you need to improve. So, uh, Cairo Praise is a purple squirrel. So you know, chiropractic care is probably the most underutilized but yet just insanely ridiculously fat industry. Like they are exploding. I think we have like 83,000 chiros in the US right now. 83,000? 83,000, man. I mean, isn't that insane? Wow. There was a day when chiropractors were just thought of as like the medicine people, right? Like the alternative to— western medicine, but now it's on the forefront.

I went to a chiro the other day actually, and I swear I left and I was able to like breathe better, and I didn't even have breathing problems, but I was like, it like did something. I don't know, I don't know what happened, but I was like, oh my God, I'm getting like better air. It was insane.

My brother, you experienced what the chiropractors call being ignited, man.

You were ignited.

They like, they opened you up, stretched your body out, and you walked away feeling a little taller probably than when you walked in. Yeah, it's crazy, man. Like, the chiropractic industry is— the majority of consumers or potential patients look— car accident, or I hurt myself playing basketball, or something of that nature. But chiropractic care is so proactive in the care side. Like, I personally see chiro once a week, and it does wonders for me. I feel a lot sexier, I feel a lot healthier.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, I mean, it's just, it's a good way to look at the more holistic side of of taking care of your body, but ChiroPraise, man, it was— the founder, he was— yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so kind of diving into that. So totally get it, chiropractors is the industry you're focused on. Tell us about like, you know, so what are you— you're helping them get more patients? Like what's the value prop of ChiroPraise to the actual practitioner?

Yeah, so that's a great question. So at the core of everything is just building a healthier marketing for clinics. I think, you know, so many chiropractors go to school to be chiropractors, they don't touch business school, they don't touch business classes, and they have no idea on how to consistently build a healthy marketing platform and pipeline for their practice. So our job is to— So you're everything? Yep.

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. So you're everything, your website, your logo design, got it, got it, got it. Listing, local listing, are you using like Yext or Moz?

You're hitting the nail on the head, man. Yext is one of the primary resources we use on the SEO front. What's crazy about Chiroprase though is we're the only tried and true full service, in my opinion, marketing and advertising agency, but we're one of the larger ones. I think we've got hundreds of clients all over the world, right? We've got chiropractic colleges in London, we've got chiropractors in Canada, but primarily everybody here stateside. And I think for us, what our job is right away is to educate the chiro on what they need to do, what they're not doing, and how to stay consistent with it. The unsexy is probably the sexiest for us so far, right? Like building out a badass responsive website that is working for them, not against them, that's highly converting. You know, I mean, dude, like you look at other industries where like chat is like not revolutionary. On the Cairo side, integrating chat into their practices, they're like blown away. They're like, holy, how did What?

And it's like, dude, so let's talk specific. So like, what— so, so what kind of tools are you like— are you using Intercom, live chat? Like, what kind of tools are you using, uh, specifically with these guys?

We use— so we have a proprietary CRM that we built internally just on the— it's a full marketing automation dashboard. It's got responsive reporting, you know. But, you know, a lot of the tools that we're using— all of our websites are custom built off of WordPress. We don't use templated themes, we custom build all of the themes that we do use specific to the Cairo. But yeah, I mean, yeah, so we're using Yext, we use SEMrush on the reporting side to do a little bit on Moz. But like chat is Drift. You know, we found Drift is like taking over the world, right? I mean, it's got the native application, so it makes it a hell of a lot easier for our Cairos because it is—

I love them as a business too.

Oh yeah.

Whether they do content and everything like— She's really excited.

I just literally got an email from them, from a video from one of the founders, where she's basically talking about how she still engages with people who are coming to their site on chat. It almost reminds me of, I don't know if you remember the story of Steve Jobs, he had the red phone on his desk, right? So sometimes you would call in customer support to complain about whatever, and you didn't even know it, but it was Steve Jobs picking up the phone to field the call. Like just to feel how things are moving within his organization. Drift is like so, I think of them as like the Slack of chat and modern communication. Like they're taking it to a whole nother level. So yeah, we use Drift. But I mean honestly, you know, on this being so service-focused like we are at Chiroprase, a lot of what we're focusing in on is leveraging copy and content. You know, I always say, and unfortunately marketers don't, maybe we're sending the wrong message. This concept of like, oh, we're a multi-campaign-based agency. It's like, there's a difference between a funnel and a campaign, right? The funnel is the vehicle to deliver the campaign, which is the message to the audience. And I think that—

Are you building out funnels for them?

We do a lot of funnels, yeah. We build out primarily, what we do is we start with the website, badass website. All of our clients on the organic side, they kill it. We do heavy on the AdWords, heavy on the advanced search engine optimization. We focus on keywords like to umph degree. I swear I wake up and I'm like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind with keywords, dude. Like I'm envisioning the keywords specific to the area.

And then we double down on the funnels.

Yeah.

And then just again, going specific for landing pages, are you just doing custom WordPress pages that you're driving paid traffic to? Are you using like Unbounce or anything like that?

So actually we built off of this resource called Active Demand. Which is this like, yep, badass Canadian company. I don't know if you've played around with their stuff. It's perfect for small agencies and sort of mid-sized agencies. We— they actually have custom, uh, custom landing pages and dynamic landing page. I mean, like, all built into the CRM. So then we take it, we custom build off of it. They sort of have the WordPress model where it's like a ton of assets and you just kind of, you know, pick and choose what, what services your clients best. But what's really cool is, yeah, you You can literally build dynamic PURLs, so personal URLs. So for example, when, you know, so like if Ryan comes back to Christian Chiropractic, it's gonna recognize it's you, so it's gonna customize the actual landing page. So it may have like a picture of, you know, yeah, it could literally do like have a picture of like Yankee Stadium in the background, 'cause it knows your area and say, hey Ryan, long time since we've seen you, like welcome back. Do you wanna pick up where we left off? I mean, that is like—

and that helps conversions just like blow out through the roof.

Conversions are insane. But I think the bigger side of it is just chatter, man. Like, I get in this argument all the time with my friends who work at other agencies, their own other agencies, where they're like, yeah, you know, what do your conversion numbers look like? And I'm like, dude, screw that. Are you actually able to engage with people? Like, are you having conversations? Where it starts, right? Like, or whatever the call to action is, is even better. Like from there, then you're creating that high-level funnel, you know, from the conversion side, you're plugging them into all of that. But like our communication with patients for our clients, it's always over 70%. Meaning like we may drive 200 unique visitors to the website and we may be running multiple funnels for different campaigns on social. We're doing a lot of programmatic pre-roll buy right now for our clients, which I'm freaking in love with. You know, we use leverage—

I've heard really good things. Oh, you're doing that on like YouTube? On YouTube?

And not just YouTube, man. There is a platform. So there's a company called TubeMogul, T-U-B-E-M-O-G-U-L. They got bought— they went public and then got bought by Adobe after they were public, so brought back down to be private. And so they are literally the self-serve, like, you know, programmatic pre-roll sort of platform that you can use. It's insane. T-U-B-E-M-O-G-U-L. Check it out, it's insane.

Now, this is why I love these conversations because it's like things like that, it's like you'll learn that it's like you might not have like come across, rather than have social proof, boom, you're using it.

Yeah, you know, and I think the other thing too is like when you think about programmatic, you know, buying in particular on the videos side, marketers are trying to ball on a budget, right? And so when you do the video, it's like it's gonna be a little bit more on the cost side for your clients, but the return I mean, dude, YouTube, you mentioned YouTube. Who owns YouTube?

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah, Google, of course.

I mean, Google is plugged into everything. So if you have a badass website, you're focusing on advanced SEO, you're running AdWords, you're doing them congruently and consistently, and you've got pre-roll running on YouTube, it's all being housed around the same entity, right? It's the same campus in Mountain View, California that's managing that. So it's like—

I've actually heard that they reward people. I've heard that YouTube rewards people who upload consistent content with other things. Like better, like more suggestions, better SEO results, stuff like that, because it's like they're the content creators, like on the platform.

You're, you're spot on. Like, we work with our rep over at Google who is literally— I mean, it's like Google to me, they— we are frenemies, right? Like, we love the fact that we get to work with one entity that does so much. We hate the fact that they change stuff like minute by minute, but at the same time, like, you're right. GDN, Google Display Network, Nobody messes with it, dude. Like, agencies run away from Google Display Network like the plague. But when you go through and you train some of your staff internally to understand the complexity and the simplicity of Google's Display Network, how to manage your campaigns appropriately, and again, how to plug it into this, like, Google AdWords, SEO, YouTube— dude, you can live off of everything Google's building for you. It's insane.

Yeah, most people that I talk to are just doing, like, retargeting through the Display Network.

Um, yeah, I mean, you know, no matter what, retargeting, low-hanging fruit. Not sexy, but everybody should be doing it. But I mean, there's so much more you can be doing, dude. I mean, data drive should always be driving decisions, right? Nothing is going to compute, analyze, and distribute you out the right relevant data like Google. I mean, Facebook, right? Like, we had the election issues a couple years ago, so they're changing around a lot of their parameters. And like, Facebook is a necessary evil, but like, Google is the winner. Like, there's no doubt about it. Like, everything that you're gonna do for your clients it has to be centered around what Google offers.

Yep. So, so diving in, um, because I want to, I want to ask you a few, few additional like tactical questions and then we can, then we can wrap it up. So what is your deliverable to your client? Like, are you delivering them like leads? Are you delivering them, uh, like, like what do you report on, I guess?

Yeah, that's a great question. So yeah, I mean, we are a lead gen focused agency, right? Like, so we're, we're graded in large part based off the quantity of new— we call them NPOs, new patient opportunities. We hate calling them leads because these are people, so, like, who need care. So we call them NPOs. So we are graded on that, but on the reporting side, we're showing them how we're moving the needle by way of giving them larger support. Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it varies. We've got some clients, dude, who are in like London, Ohio, which, like, I think the cattle outweighs the population of people. Like, it is insanely, like, small demographic to plan. But then we also obviously have the big ones. We've got New York City docs, we've got Chicago, San Francisco, London, and the reporting is always the same, which is how much are you spending for the right person? It's not just a matter of pushing leads left and right. Like if I tell a doc, look, I can bring you 200 leads, super low traffic cost, but is it gonna be the right audience, dude? Like maybe not. Like we focus on developing out the right cohorts, the right demographics, we track and target like to nobody's degree. And we ultimately are just focused on driving the right patients in the door for them. We're showing them the CPL, and of course we're showing them on the service side, which is our model. We don't take anything from the buy itself. We're just strictly—

That's what I was gonna ask, how you price it.

So it's okay. Yeah, so exactly, they're paying us a service fee monthly. I will say this, we are probably about 180% more expensive than our competition. But at the same time, our clients' ROI stems a hell of a lot more from just how much money did we make you. It's also like how much exposure.

Does the retainer vary based on ad spend at all, or is it flat?

Like, what's—

is there a minimum to get started with you guys?

Yeah, so yeah, so it's— I'll be honest, it's $1,500 essentially.

$1,500 minimum retainer regardless of what the ad spend is?

So it's the advanced SEO, so it's with the ads integrations, it's with all the keyword analysis and research, development of custom copy content. We actually pay for a professional photographer to go out to every doc's practice. So we normally spend about $1,200 just to get like professional photo and video so that we can build badass like, you know, display ads. And of course we want the website. Dude, you— any doc that's building cookie cutter, any client, anybody Who's building cookie cutter websites?

I hate when they have the same like stock doctor. Oh my God. It's like, no. Yeah.

I'm going to call out one of our competitors. There is a company that plays in our space, Action. They are cleaning up the market on websites. All of their websites are identical. The only thing that changes is the location, the hours of operation, and the about us. That's why all of their docs are— Oh dude, we just talked to one of their docs. He's averaging 18 unique visitors a month. Dude, he is in Dallas, Texas. Like, what the hell? Like, that is a big market.

Yeah.

Oh man. So yeah, I mean, we, we focus on our baseline no matter what. We don't touch social channels, we don't touch, you know, the full service side until we're about a quarter into the website being live, AdWords being developed and distributed, and then the advanced SEO working. Like, because We need to start where it all— the largest asset that you have as a business. Sexy, but it's a necessity.

Yeah. Um, okay, so getting started with you guys, so what's your process look like? Are you kind of like demoing? Like, what does your pitch look like? You send them a proposal? Like Everyone's always asking about that. Do you use custom proposal tool or you just have like a template in like Google Docs?

Yeah, so that's a great question. So we actually are built, because we're so chiropractor-specific, we literally steal exactly what they do for patients. So a chiropractor, when you come in to see a chiropractor, it's called a D1, a day one. And then the chiropractor puts together a report of findings, which is a complete audit of your health. And basically an action plan. And then you go to your day 2, which is where they present to you, the potential patient, their action plan. Hey, this is your report of findings. This is where you're weak. This is where you need to get strong. This is exactly how we do it. And here's the cost. So what we do for each client, dude, we are so unique in this. No cost to all of the people who are coming to our, to ChiroPrez. We do a complete deep dive. We call it an audit, right? So we will do a complete audit on everything. We'll do advanced keyword search. We'll put together an SEO domain report. We'll pull all that data. We'll look at our social traffic, and we basically create this 20-slide presentation that literally tells them exactly where they are, where they suck, where they need to improve, and how to do it. And we give it to them. So like, if you think about it, we're basically like, hey, here's exactly what we would do. Here's your blueprint. Whether you decide to do it with us or not, yeah, you can— we literally get it.

Here's your diagnosis. Here's your diagnosis. Like, I don't need to fix it personally. You need to get it fixed though.

—and it's not cookie cutter. And so what's crazy about that, if you think about that, we're basically giving away exactly what we do. So we're giving them exactly how we do what we do, what we'll do specific to their practice. And so some chiros are like, man, I'm not quite ready to pull the trigger, understandably. So they'll go to like their buddy locally, right? And they'll hand them exactly what we gave them, and their buddy will be like, cool, this is the blueprint, this is exactly what I'm gonna do. So we're like giving them the cheat sheet for free. But we're doing that because they need it, dude. Education on the marketing and advertising side is where everybody is lacking. So we're like, fuck it, we're gonna figure it out.

I also agree. It's like, if you give people, if you give stuff out, like, only good things are gonna happen. I think like people who are like, I'm not gonna tell you my secret sauce and stuff. Like, I even say to people, I was like, dude, I'll tell our competitors what we're doing. I'll publish our roadmap. It doesn't matter. Like, we're gonna do it. We're gonna like build relationships better. We're gonna like be out there and we're gonna be— people are gonna want to do business with us. Like, it's humans.

—don't you hate the fact that like every marketing agency seems to be like, oh, we have this proprietary methodology or this resource. It's like, dude, marketing is not revolutionary. It's the way that you piece things together that is substantive. Like, you're not doing anything— like the marketing agency down the street, they're not doing anything that's like, oh shit, we should have thought of that. They're just piecing things together in a format for their respective market that works. So it's like, Stop trying to be revolutionary. You don't need to be this entrepreneurial, revolutionary, first-to-market-based resources. Like, dude, just do your stuff the right way. Do it transparently. Build equity with clients. Show them that you're willing to work your ass off and that you're in partnership with them, and they will stay with you for a lifetime, dude.

Yeah. I think the video— I guess the audio is still up, but the video cut out. Can you hear me still?

Yeah, I can hear you.

All right, I think it's— I think it's all good. It's just joining back. Um, yeah, no, totally, totally get it. Um, cool. I'm gonna wrap up, uh, two, two additional things. So one, if you're like getting started, how do you acquire clients, by the way? First, before we answer the last question.

So we, we— this is insane— we spend— and this again, sharing our secret sauce— we spend $800 total a month on lead gen, and we generate on the inbound side. So we run social ads and we also run some pretty aggressive email campaigns. And we do that just by offering free giveaways. We list build like nobody's business. Like we do Dinner with Doc events, which are really sexy and hot right now in chiropractic space. We give away our guide. We're literally like, hey dude, come give us your email information and we will literally give you exactly step by step on what we do for free. And so we generate anywhere between 60 to 100 new inbound leads a month, dude. And we spend $800 max. Every month. It's insane. We don't even— we have a salesperson, but he works probably 5 hours a week for us. That's it. I mean, so we're not hurting at all. We're at capacity with clients every other month. Where we struggle is honestly to turn away business and say, hey guys, we don't want to overextend ourselves, which is a good problem to have for a short period of time, right? Like, I don't want to be arrogant and saying, yeah, we have all of our shit together, we figured it all out, but like We want to help Kairos because we know that by expanding Kairos networks, they're ultimately helping people who genuinely benefit from their care. So we get into this circle of Kairos. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, that's awesome. Um, all right, cool. So I was just gonna say that question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So final question, just wrapping up. If you're, if you're like, you know, someone that wants to start an agency, like, what do you do first? How do you get that first client? Like, how do you establish credibility so that you can get your first paying client?

Yeah, so I focus on 5 Ps of any business, right? So people, problem, product, plan, and pricing, right? So it always starts with people. Any agency, you have to have domain expertise or experience. You can't be somebody who's preaching about AdWords and SEO when you yourself have no concept of how to build it out, how to manage it, how to maintain it. On the problem side, what's the problem that you're solving? It could be industry-specific. It could legitimately just be, I know where people struggle, small to medium-sized businesses, on websites and badass converting websites. You need to make sure that you have that expressly communicated. On the product side, that's your service, man. Like end to end, can somebody come to your website or jump on the phone with you and quickly disseminate what you do, who you are, and how much it's gonna cost for them? And then on the process side, always be transparent about what you do, how you do it, and then ultimately how you get them from point A to point B. And then pricing, don't underprice yourself, don't overprice yourself. Listen to the market. Do the research and it always, to answer your question, it starts with networking, dude. Like the same thing that we push from, you know, our board members to our investors, to our partners and our affiliates. Like you have got to be networking with people who are relevant to your space. So go to, go, go to AFI, you know, go to EO, go to local meetups, you know, look at the startup community, look at early to mid-sized businesses. That would be a great starting point for you. Find that beta client that you can test your theory out on, low to no cost, and literally beat your process up to such a degree that you at times feel discouraged about the fucking business that you built. I love that. Do it for free at first.

Is that what you're saying? Yeah, give it to them for free at first.

I love it. There's a difference. Listen, everybody—

I have a crazy story about working for free. Yeah, I'm not going to tell it right now, but it worked for me.

Here's what I'm going to tell you. Everybody, everybody right now, because the rise of entrepreneurship in this start— this concept startup communities Everybody is living a Bruce Wayne and a Batman life. Your Bruce Wayne is what you do from 9 to 5. You're Batman at nighttime, man. So be the Caped Crusader, do the work, get to know the people in your community, and fucking pound it until you can be the Caped Crusader flying around mountaintops and buildings all day.

Love it. Awesome, man. Cool, we're gonna wrap up. We're hitting the 30-minute threshold. Thank you so much, by the way, for joining. I'm gonna have this out. And, uh, yeah. So where can everyone find you?

So chiropraise.com, C-H-I-R-O praise, P-R-A-I-S-E dot com. So we are very responsive. Yeah. We're, we're chiro-focused, right? I mean, I will say this, we're getting ready. We've got some exciting things coming out. We're getting ready to launch a Cannapraise, C-A-N-N-A praise, where we actually already have some CBD and some cannabis cultivation companies that we're working with. Another really booming industry, man, with a lot of upside. And they don't know how to market, they don't know how to advertise.

Awesome, awesome, Christian. Thank you so much, Christian with Kyra Praise. That is, uh, 8th episode of Growing Your Agency. Thank you so much for being with us.

Awesome, thanks, Ryan.

Take care. Yep, see ya. Boom. All right, cool. And then I'll just cut it off from right there, but I think that was good.

So tell me the story, man. I want to know this really quick, dude. Like, so what, you worked for free? Tell me about that.

So, um, all right, so basically I, uh, so I started off, I actually used to work at Yext back in like 2010 selling clothes and everything. And then, and then I was dating this girl, moved down to Virginia, and I was like working at this like large corporation. What part of Virginia?

Because I used to live right outside of Dulles in Herndon.

Dude, that's literally where I was. I was in Herndon. I was working at a clock store. Were you really? That's so weird, dude.

I lived on Bond Street. In Herndon, Virginia. I was 1612 Bond Street.

I fucking loved living in Virginia. Yeah, no, I was out— so the whole story, I was out there for like 5 years eventually, but I moved down there, I was dating this girl, we ended up breaking up. I'm working at this like large corporation called Asurion now, which is like the self-run insurance company.

Yeah, of course.

I was like hating my life, and I was like, man, I want to go like do a startup, like I don't know what to do, all this stuff. So I met this guy who like had this like product, and it was like just him. Doing it. He was a software engineer at Lockheed Martin, but he had this product that he was doing, and he was doing it on the side with a bunch of other stuff. And I was like, dude, I totally understand what you're doing. I totally get the market. I want to quit my job and come on board with you. And I asked him at first, I was like, can I get a salary? And he's like, no, you can't get a salary. And I was like, alright, bet. So I was like, I'm not gonna— I actually wrote a blog post about it. So what I did was I actually rented out my bedroom and I lived in my living room. So I tried to get my burn really, really low, right? I lived off credit cards and stuff, and I was like, alright, But we made an agreement that what I brought in, I would close and I also got equity in the company. So I eventually, so I did that and my burn was super low. And I eventually was bringing in sales, bringing in sales, and I eventually got it to where I was making like $2K a month and I was able to live off of it. But so then fast forward, we end up growing the company to over 80 employees. We raised a little bit of outside funding once we got to like a million in ARR, and then we got acquired by IAC and HomeAdvisor. And HomeAdvisor like 3 years later and like everyone made multi-millions, like all the early guys. Like it was the craziest thing ever. And it's like— You saw some liquidity too though, right? Say it again?

You got some liquidity from that too, that IAC acquisition? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Me and 2 other guys, like we all did really well. And we only had 1 early investor, so it was like, But the thing is, it wouldn't have happened if I didn't work for free because it's like, you have to take that risk and it's like, I wouldn't have gotten the salary.

Oh, for sure. Yeah, it's kind of crazy, right? That's brilliant though, dude. That's like, you're living in your, that's like, that's the dream. That's the startup world, man. I always tell people all the time, I have fucked up so royally when I founded companies, tried to buy into the hype of how big your persona is and this and that. And then what was crazy is like, the businesses that were successful were always founded around people who were like, fuck it, I don't care what I need to do to make this work. I believe in the product. I believe in the service. I believe in the shit we're doing. Like, all balls, like caution to the wind, fuck it. I'm all in. And it works out sometimes. And when it does and you see that success, you're fucking looking for the next high, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude, 100%.

I mean, that's what— so like, then I— so I stayed there until 2016, then I moved to New York, and then I just— and then I started coming phone wagon. It's like, that's what I'm doing It's like call— so it's call tracking software, call analytics. You probably have heard or used like CallRail or like Directly.

We just switched over from— we just switched over from CallRail to Active Demand. But I mean, listen, dude, I'll check your guys' site out. Oh yeah, we're always looking for— I, you know, the other thing too is like, you know, I've invested in— right now my portfolio is a little over a dozen. And like, yeah, I'm always on pro— I fuck the, the black hole that is product time. I'm always there. I'm always looking at new resources. Call tracking and having like a full-on robust analytics and reporting component is incredibly valuable.

So I'll take a look at what you're doing. Yeah. We also just launched— so like, so we've been in call tracking, like, we're working with like almost 800 agencies. We've been in it for like a couple years, a million ARR, but we just launched this like two-way texting app also. Cause like all of our customers, like if you've used CallRail ActiveVance, like you have to forward the numbers to their existing phone, right? So like, you know, they're always like, can we— so basically now we're kind of moving into like, we want to be the phone, we want to be the like RingCentral or whatever. So that's kind of the direction we're like taking it.

Yeah, we were using the conversation tool. We were using a tool which we loved for a while called SalesPipe. I don't know if you're familiar with them. They're smaller company. They're basically just two guys. Yes, SalesPipe, S-A-L-E-S-P-Y-P-E. But they are killing it right now, dude. It's just like two or three guys. Who are just fucking insanely blowing up. The one thing that we struggle with on the two-way, 'cause we do a lot in the way of SMS automations for our clients. And the one thing we struggle with was that— Demand? Yeah, so, well, now we switched from SalesPipe 'cause their pricing was fucking way too insane. So we ended up switching over to Active Demand. Active Demand is, I mean, their SMS side of what they do, and even the call tracking, it's not the sexiest. It's the idea that everything is centralized. So I mean, you know, we're kind of giving a little on the reporting and on the mechanisms. Like, they just, at the behest of us, like, beating down their door, they're like just now allowing for when somebody calls one of our clients on the call tracking numbers, being able to select, you know, 1 for a new patient, 2 for an existing.

Oh yeah, IVR.

You know, yeah, IVR, shit like that. So, and then they're doing, they're starting to jump into like allowing for like some shortcode, um, you know, uh, you know, SMS texting numbers and shit like that. But yeah, I mean, check them out and I'll definitely pay attention to you guys, man, because as we are, we're always quarterly, we're looking at new resources.

Yeah, for sure. Awesome. All right, thanks, brother.

I appreciate it. Cool, man.

I'll send you— yeah, yeah, this was awesome. I'll send you the link once everything's up. It'll probably be like— I'm actually gonna— I'm starting to get a bunch. I'm probably gonna post it on like maybe Monday or Tuesday, but I'll send you the link and it'll— and you'll see everything. Awesome. Sweet. This was awesome. All right, have a good week. Yeah, thanks, man. See ya. All right, later. You too. Bye.