Andy:         Welcome everyone, Andy Drish here and today I am with Chris Brisson.Chris is the founder of Call Loop, a service that allows businesses to build relationships on autopilot through voice and text messaging automation. Before Call Loop, Chris build a business selling tires and rims on eBay when he was 19 years old; still in college and he did a quarter of a million dollars in revenue in his first year. All from selling a physical product.In this interview, Chris is going to tell you why he’ll never build a product around a physical business again and how he made the leap into software. Chris, what I really appreciate about … we got to hangout in … when did we hangout? In San Francisco …Chris:                  San Fran.Andy:                  San Fran.Chris:                  Yup.Andy:         We’re hanging out at Traffic and Conversion. What I loved about hanging with Chris, it was the first time we got to meet. Chris is very unassuming. Like, when I first met you I wouldn’t have guessed that you’re like this crazy, genius marketer. You’re just kind of calm, kind of quiet and then you start talking. I’m like, whoa! Who is this guy? Chris, thank you for taking the time out and coming on the show.Chris:         Absolutely. I’m looking for toward too. We had some good ideas and some good stuff to share with everyone. So, thanks for having me.Andy:         Yeah. And if you’re watching Chris is currently … did you say you’re in Brazil? Just coming from Buenos Aires?Chris:         I am. I’m in Brazil. Been on here for about 45 days; my wife and I. I went to Rio, I went to Buenos Aires and … my wife’s from Brazil so [inaudible 00:01:31] family. It’s cool. Getting work done. (Crosstalk)Andy:         Just hanging on the stuff. That’s incredible man. Tell me a little about Automize It. We’ll start with just like tell me what

Automize It is, what the business model is, how that works.Chris:         Yes. So, Automize It came out of … really just like the past couple of years of figuring out what I’m good at, what I kind of lean towards. Automize, the company, really stands for automation, systemization and optimization. So a lot of that focuses around … how can you either create software or outsource stuff to create a business that can run without you. Automize is all about how you create marketing automation systems, tools and then how do you optimize that for building a better business or building a more freeing business. To get away from doing a lot of the work.Yeah, so Automize really came from a lot of the frustrations with not having software for building our own businesses. So, what came out of that was Call Loop which is … basically it’s kind of like MailChimp for mobile marketing, for text message marketing, voice broadcasting. We have Autoteleseminar which automates conference calls which is what we use as a conversation tool so we don’t have to show up to conference call, we can just automate it and it generates sales for us. Then we also have Autowebinar which we haven’t released. But essentially all of its all around creating software that helps us market and sell our products and services without us actually being there which are really like.Andy:         What’s really cool is in order to build software for marketers, you have to have a really, really clear understanding of how marketing functions. I think you’ve clear nailed that.Let’s talk about, before Automize It, before Call Loop and Autowebinar and Autoteleseminar, take us back to … did you start any businesses before you were in college?Chris:         Gosh, did I? Well, some illegal stuff. No, I’m kidding. Yeah. Actually, I worked at Hungry Howie’s. I delivered pizzas which was awesome. I made no money. When you’re selling, when you have a $7.13 pizza you’re delivering and the dude gives you eight bucks and ask for a change?Andy:                  Oh man.

Chris:         You know you got to change your occupation.No, through college … I did jobs, I got fired as a waiter and all that fun stuff. Before that I actually sold, my brother and I sold flowers that the florist would sell. My dad owned a restaurant so next door the florist would basically just dump all these flowers like a garbage, a dumpster. So my brother and I, we go pick them out and then go sell them on our street corner. That was, I guess it. Did all sorts of stuff.Andy:                  That was like the first thing before.Chris:                  Yeah. I guess that’s kind of like my lemonade story if you will.Andy:         Yeah. It’s cool because a lot of people just don’t have those and you hear these incredible entrepreneurs that were selling candy when they’re seven years old and I couldn’t never really relate to that.Chris:         Yeah, but you know what? It’s not like you have to have that. I think that’s, a lot of … maybe some miscommunications people have is like “Oh my god, I never grew up an entrepreneur.” I never serve a lemonade stand [00::]. I never had any entrepreneur DNA in my blood and therefore I can’t be successful. Trust me, there’s more stories of people not doing that that are successful in the ones that actually have a lemonade story. Don’t let that be a …Andy:                  Totally.Chris:         A deciding factor of whether you’re going to be successful or not if you did a lemonade stand ...Andy:         It’s so true. It’s so true. Those are the stories they get shared because they’re rare, not because they’re common. Tell me about the rim company. Tell me how …Chris:                  Yes.Andy:                  Where the idea came from first of all.Chris:         Being broke actually. I was in college, I was a sophomore going to Florida State University in Tallahassee. I was living in my buddy’s apartment and I couldn’t pay rent and rent as a

college student in Tallahassee at the time was like 300 bucks, 350 bucks. It was a ton of money back then. I had no money but … two years prior I went searching for rims for my car. Had a Mustang and being in The Fast and The Furious days I wanted pimp up my ride. I wanted rims but it turns out rims are really expensive. My gosh!I was making some money, I was … again working at a restaurant. I had some money. I went online, found a wholesaler that sold these rims, those Cobra R rims, whatever, and was like gosh! These things retail to like a thousand dollars, 900 bucks. I was like, “Well, how can I get them for a wholesale? How can I pay for a discount?” I called up the wholesaler and basically just … in a way kind of [whizzled 00:06:30] myself to get a deal. Say, “Hey, this is Chris with [inaudible 00:06:34]. Customer wants these rims,” da-da-da. Basically I faked it and I was like “Oh yeah, it’s 400 and something bucks. Come on down.” “Okay, awesome.” I came on down, it’s like $458 cash, got the wheels and I’m like 18 years. Yeah, seventeen, 18 years old and a little twerp.Anyhow, I got these rims and didn’t really worry about it. Just put them on the car, went to school, [inaudible 00:06:59]. Next day I went to Tallahassee to start freshman year in college. Two years later, broke, had no money. Everybody’s like “Dude, check out eBay.” I’m like, “What? What’s eBay?”Andy:                  What year is this?Chris:                  2002.Andy:                  2002.Chris:                  Eleven years ago.Andy:                  Wow!Chris:                  I know that [inaudible 00:07:17].I check out eBay and like “Oh my gosh!” These guys are selling these things for $900 and I bought them for $458. I kind of in a way lied to the guy. “Geez, I ain’t have a license. I’m not even a real business. What if I had real business? I can buy these things and sell them for 900 bucks.” It hit me. My dad’s always been … owned

businesses I said “Dad, what do I need to do?” “You need a business license.” Boom! Got a business license, went through all that stuff. I was up at school and just slowly started to sell them on eBay and that’s kind of where the idea came from. It was accidental. I didn’t really mean to get started in it, it just … I needed the money. I didn’t sell my rims but I ended up selling a brand new pair of wheels and making good profits where I could survive throughout the year.Andy:                  How did you get a business license when you’re 19 years old?Chris:                  You just do it.Andy:                  You remember what you did?Chris:         Yeah. There was all these formalities that you think you need to do. Looking back you don’t necessarily need to do that but for that type business you need a sales tax license, you need a business. For an internet company you don’t need that stuff because you don’t pay sales tax.In order to get a wholesale account, any company is going to say, “All right, fax over your sales tax license.” Okay. [Inaudible 00:08:38] sales tax license you have to have a business and you have to have a business license. That was just a part of it.I’m pretty sure I just probably went on the internet [inaudible 00:08:48]. Just go online and figure it out. And it wasn’t really expensive. I think it was 75 bucks or something. I had to do those formalities to get a wholesale account. But for an internet company you don’t need to do any of that stuff unless you’re selling physical goods.Andy:                   So you got the business license, had you bought any other rims yet?Chris:         No. Literally that aha moment I was like “Oh my gosh!” The thought was I need to become a real business so I can buy them again.Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         Right? Because I couldn’t keep telling the guy, “Hey

…” why not be legit? After that, I think about like a set of wheels, list it on eBay and sold. I was like “This is awesome.” That sophomore year, it was like March, school got out like May, went back down to South Florida and then really ramped it up and took it from there.Andy:         I want to know the story of the first set of wheels you sold on eBay. Did you go buy the wheels and take them home with you and ship them? Or …Chris:         Yeah. Now so luckily Miami is like a hub for wheel manufacturers and wheeled distribution outlets. The wholesaler I got them from was in Miami which is 45 minutes from where I live. So, I drove down, picked them up, bought them and just list them on eBay. What I actually end up doing was “Oh my gosh!” I figured, well, if I can sell the rims for 900, well, why don’t I put tires on it and I could sell it for a lot more. What I did was I bought used tires that were like good condition, good thread and probably had another 20,000 miles on or 15,000 miles on them. Put them on the car. I think I bought the used tires for maybe like 200 bucks, 50 bucks a tire or something. Put them on the rims and so now I sold them for … so now I had $458 in the rims, I had, let’s say, $600 in the wheels and now I went up and sold the package for 1200 or 1300 dollars. I remember the kid that bought them and … I was just like “Damn!” It was awesome. This is great.But yeah. I bought used tires and put them on the rims and sold them to a guy locally which was really cool. Then I was just, all right, this is great. Let me take this to the next level.Andy:         Did you feel nervous about spending a grand? Like, a grand is a lot in college especially when you …Chris:         Oh no, I didn’t spend a grand. I spent $458 for the rims and then bought $200 in the used tires. Together I have that and then …Andy:                  So like 600 or 700 bucks.Chris:         Yes. And then I sold them for 1200 or 1300, something

like that. New, they would have went for like two grand. Right? But the guy is like, “Oh, its brand new tires” or brand new rims. A little bit used tires, so you still got a heck of a good deal. He bought them for 12 or 1300 bucks. I made the profit on that. I was like this is great. I can do this all day long. If I can make a thousand bucks or $2,000 a month, I’m rich!Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:                  Being in college. Yeah.Andy:         Every time that you bought something on … did you have to go, put all of the money back into buying rims, buying tires, listing them on eBay and then selling them? Or how did you go about that?Chris:         Yeah. What was great about wholesalers is … that’s a cash flow business, right? You buy the inventory, you got to sell it, buy the inventory, you got to sell it. So they would give you what’s call a Net 30. In fact, after a while I was making huge purchases, I don’t like to say huge but $15,000 inventory, $20,000 inventory and buy whatever they could give in because I know I could sell the rims. So, they would do a net 30. Basically they give you 30 days to pay back what you bought the previous month. It wasn’t like [inaudible 00:12:41] 20 grand now and then pay them 20,000, get the inventory. I could sell the rims, have the inventory, sell it and then pay them 30 days later.Andy:                  Yup.Chris:         It even got to a 60-day net which was awesome because then I could just sell, sell, sell, sell, sell and then pay them as I went, right?Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         But it took a while to get there. It wasn’t like I signed it up with them and then [inaudible 00:13:06] give me a net 30. You kind of got to build up that goodwill with them.Andy:         Yeah, totally. So you sold the first set to a guy locally. What did you do after that? After you made 1200 bucks, pocketed

like 600?Chris:         Yeah, and then just reinvested and then bought another set of wheels. Because again it’s like big chunks of cash like by two sets and three sets. It really snowballing. The main thing for me was I sold a certain rim for Mustangs and it was like most popular wheel for Mustangs. I tried to sell like Honda rims and this and that but the margins were like really small because everyone was selling Honda and Integra rims, all that stuff. Yeah, it just quickly catapulted. Plus, when I got the Net 30 [inaudible 00:13:57] kind of go and scale. The cool thing with eBay is the marketplace.Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         I didn’t have to worry about traffic, I didn’t have to worry about all that other stuff that goes along with the traditional internet business.Andy:         Yup.Chris:         I could list wheels that I didn’t necessarily have but I knew the wholesaler had them. I could sell them then just go to my wholesaler and like “Hey, I need a set of these.” “Cool.” “Okay.” And then I get them in and then fulfill the order. I didn’t necessarily need to stock inventory but I did and that was a downfall of product business.Andy:                  You said you focused on one rim just for Mustangs.Chris:                  Yeah.Andy:         And that was profitable enough to scale the business, just focusing on one rim?Chris:         Pretty much. Yeah. That was the main wheel. Because I tried a lot of different things, right? They have a bunch of different rims, you could sell all the different rims but it came down to is like probably what’s selling. Because on eBay, oh, I can just list stuff and then sell it. I started listing all these things but those fees start to add up. These aren’t selling, no one wants this. These aren’t selling, these aren’t selling. Well, the Mustang ones are just selling like

crazy.I became like … in South Florida they’re like top seller of this particular wheel. It was all through eBay. Any inventory that got in I would just quickly turnover and sell. But yeah, it was literally just off one set of … I want to say one but a handful of wheels. I didn’t try and sell everything, I just tried to sell very focused.Andy:         With eBay being a marketplace, pros being you don’t need to worry about traffic, like a normal internet business would. But in my mind I feel like cons would be, that there would be no margins because you have to compete with everybody in the world who are selling these rims for Mustangs. How did you continue? Why did people buy your rims versus anyone else’s or how did you make margins on them?Chris:         Yeah. I mean, there are huge margins and there are big margins. Today, I don’t know the industry per se but I’m sure the margins aren’t as great as what they want to work because everyone came in. Again, this is 2003, 2004 and so … there wasn’t a lot of websites that really sold wheels or particularly these types of rims. As the years went on a lot of people started getting in the game. Again, with eBay it’s kind of everyone’s looking for a deal. I was able because I had such large margins I could … I kind of found a price point that worked that made money from me but also is like a huge incentive for them to buy. What’s interesting is I never … this is kind of like my discovery of positioning pricing and product. The problem with dealing with rims and tires is they’re heavy and shit. And you got to ship them. When you sell a set of rims in the guys in California and they’re like, “Oh, $130 to ship them? Shoot!” I’m not going to do it, right?Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         They could go locally but they’ll spend more money.To kind of combat that what I did was … because that was always the biggest thing. Like, man, I got to ship these things. I had a warehouse, had a three bay warehouse and wheel balancers, tire

machines to mount and balance the rims and all that stuff and what we would do is we would charge them. Once they paid we would say free shipping. Right? Free shipping. Oh, this is great. Rims and tires, da-da-da. What I would do is wheel balancing, right? Which is basically putting the tire on the rim and balancing it to make sure it’s not wobbly.Andy:                  Yup.Chris:         We would charge them 50 bucks and then we would charge them another $50 for lug nuts and locks. Man, that was required. I’m not going to …Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         Anyhow, it was required.It was a $100. We got that hundred bucks and then the shipping was a hundred … basically about a $100 cost for us to ship it to their door, and so that would mitigate that cost. But it would drive more sales because people would love the free shipping. Right? If I would sell them at the same price or even discount a little bit more and then they’d pay for the shipping, it decrease sale. That was kind of the one thing that I discovered along the way but I … again, I didn’t know anything about marketing or selling, it was just kind of like what I figured out what would work.Andy:                  How did you go from selling one pair to a guy locally to having a warehouse?Chris:         It grew pretty quickly. Again, it’s like I can list stuff and sell it.The funny thing is … in the summer time I was in South Florida, Delray Beach and when school start I would go back to Tallahassee which is six hours away, which is basically at the top of the state. So I didn’t have the warehousing and all that. I mean, I did, I still had it and … this is going into junior year after I discover, “Oh my god, I’m going to create this business.”So, I had a warehouse but when I was away it’s, ooh, I couldn’t really balance, balance this and that. What I’m doing is tire

brokering. I had a company in Missouri that had tons of tires and basically the same kind of thing. Here’s all the inventory, go and sell it. I would list tires on eBay and they would drop ship them direct to the customer for me. Whether it was two tires, one tire or four or ten or whatever.Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         I was like, great. I would just get the order in, I’d ship it to them, I create a shipping label, they would pack it on. Because they had UPS and FedEx coming through four times a day so they would pack it on, ship it direct to the customer. It was great. All I’ll do is sell it, they would ship it and viola! We’re good. And there’s no returns because it was, here’s the tire. There’s nothing really wrong with it.Andy:                  Yup.Chris:         One of the cool things, this is a cool story. Junior year, this is when I was like, all right, I got to do this. Like, hit it hard really. I listed these tires, it was race tires, and this company I was dealing with had blemished tires. They would basically buy a bunch of these blemish tires. Basically a blemish was just like a little smudge in the side wall of the word. There’s nothing wrong with the tire, it was just a little mush of whatever.Andy:                  Yup.Chris:         Anyhow, they had these tires, it was 28 bucks a tire and retail they were going for about $150 a tire. But because it had a blemish they massively discounted them. In a tire she got this discontinued.Anyhow, put on eBay, I get an email from a guy in Puerto Rico that says “Hey, I want some of these tires. How many of these tires do you have?” I said “How many do you want?” He’s like, “Well, I want …” I think it was 150 or something like that. Anyhow, bought them for 28, sold them for 75 bucks to this guy in Puerto Rico and I remember I had a Wachovia Bank account and the dude wired me 20 grand; it’s my bank account and I’m like 20 years old. I’m like

this is great. I’m making 6500 bucks off of a deal that I basically just, again, had the tires, list them in eBay, sold it and they directly shipped to Puerto Rico. They did all the shipping, logistics, everything. I just did the deal and I was sitting there with my girlfriend at the time and I didn’t tell her. I remember lying in bed I’m like “Babe, I just made $6500.”I dropped out of Florida State. That was spring semester …Andy:                  Of your junior year.Chris:         I drop … junior year, dropped out. It was the beginning, it was like January, I dropped out and said “Screw this. I’m going to do this full time.” Basically left Tallahassee at the end of that semester and then really ramped it up. That was 2003, 2004. Yeah.Andy:                  Holy cow!Chris:                  A long time ago. Yeah.Andy:         You’re 20 years old, you can’t even buy a beer legally. And making 6500 bucks in one transaction? What did you do? Did you go celebrate or like …Chris:         Oh man. If you’ve never been to Tallahassee there’s one thing everyone does and they party. Yeah, man I just … it was really cool but I think … yeah man, I spent some money. I don’t know. It went. I think just some rent and all sorts of stuff. I forget but it was there. But actually I think I just reinvested it and buying inventory and doing that type of stuff. Yeah, there’s definitely some good times from that. Yeah, that was a big moment.Andy:         So you dropped out in 2003, end of junior year, you started this sophomore year. Is that right?Chris:                  Yeah. Yeah.Andy:         And during that year, I think you said you did about a quarter of a million dollars in revenue.Chris:                  Yeah.Andy:                  How are margins on a quarter million dollars of selling rims and tires?Chris:         It wasn’t that great, as much as the sales were awesome.

There’s a lot of cons to the business. I think that year I made like $30,000 or something. Through that I was like, oh my gosh! Because you’re selling a thousand dollar, $1500 transaction so it doesn’t take a lot of transactions to do a quarter million dollars in sales, right?Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         It’s not like I’m selling $30 e-books. But … yeah. The margins on that … What happened was the margins were like huge. Again, I would get the rims and tires at cost for 600 bucks. Brand new rims, brand new tires and then resell them for 1200, 13, 1400 dollars. There’s big money into it. And again, I was in college. I didn’t really want to work too hard. Right again, making 500 bucks or making $8,000 was huge.Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         That just meant, “Oh cool. I don’t have to work the rest of the month.” Yeah. Yeah.Andy:         But at the point where you made 60, 500 dollars a month transaction it clicked, were you like, okay. Like, I’m going to do this full time.Chris:                  Yeah.Andy:                  Dropping out of school is a massive decision.Chris:         Yeah. That was, like, oh wow! That really took me back and said, “Oh.” I mean there’s nothing more to it than what I can do or where I can take it here in Tallahassee. I couldn’t grow the business because I couldn’t mount and balance. I mean that was brokering, right?Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         So I couldn’t mount and balance and build out the business per se. Yeah. I mean, that was definitely the turning point to go home and that summer built out, just started selling more and really took it serious, building it out. I had the warehouse. Went from like a one-bay warehouse to two-bay to then a three-bay warehouse. It was a pretty big operation but it’s inventory, I got

broken into. When moving from the two-bay to the three-bay warehouse, it wasn’t in the greatest part and so some dude saw me move all these rims and tires during the day, that night it got broken into and they stole a bunch of rims and …Andy:                  Oh no.Chris:                  That type of stuff. Yeah, yeah. That was fun.Andy:                  How big does this company eventually get? How long did you work on it for?Chris:         Yeah. From 2002, I sold the company in 2005. Basically the beginning, February of 2005 is when I sold the business. First year, I did … yeah. First year about 250,000, second year was like three or 350. And then at that time, like, everybody came in and margins kept getting smaller and smaller and everybody just kept competing with each other. Every week the price would drop. I was like, “Oh my god! These guys are …” they killed the industry. Yeah. At the time when I sold the company I think we’re about 300, 350,000 in sales. I just wanted out. By that time I was like, I don’t care. I just want to move on to something else.Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         [Inaudible 00:26:20] work in warehouse and … it was not what I aspired to do to build the company.Andy:         Yeah. How did you find a buyer for it? How did you find a buyer for a company like that?Chris:         Traditional business broker. It was funny I was reading ... this is at the time of The Apprentice and Bill Rancic had a book. When he won The Apprentice he had a book …Andy:                  Was he the real estate developer dude?Chris:         No, he actually have a cigar company. A mail order cigar company out of Chicago then he works for The Apprentice, he works with Donald Trump as, I guess, a real estate guy. I was reading his book and at the time I was like, “What am I going to do with this business? I don’t really want to grow it.” I was kind of like just burnt out.

Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         I remember reading his book and one of the things he said … I’m sitting in Barnes and Noble, just kind of flipping through pages and reading [inaudible 00:27:10]. “You know, one of the biggest mistakes I made was not …” he had a yacht cleaning company in college and he goes, “One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was not selling my yacht cleaning company.” He never sold it because he just thought, “Well, I’m not here anymore and so there is no business.”Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         And so I was like, that’s it. Because I was either going to like shut down the company and move on to something else and that clicked. I’m like, “Oh, I could sell this thing. It’s awesome.” I end up just going through a business broker, a local one and just … he was an older guy, he’s probably ‘70s, late ‘70s and he’s been doing it for a long time. He just went … went through him and it took a while to sell the company. Originally it was listed high and then like each month we would kind of drop the price, drop the price. Yeah, and just went through a business broker. Today, with the internet, I think a lot of these guys were … I wouldn’t say obsolete, they just may not know ways to promote it outside of them promoting it within their business brokerage.Andy:                  Their network?Chris:                  Network. Right.Andy:                  Totally.Chris:         There’s a million ways to promote it, they’re stuck in this kind of one way to sell a company way.Andy:         So you do that. With selling that did that give you cushion for a little while to take some time and spend some time or did you just dive into the next thing?Chris:         Yeah. I sold the company in, yeah, February or March, somewhere around there, and I start to work for a company called Value Rich which was … I was dealing with public company CEOs

and small cap public companies and marketing managers.Andy:                  What were you doing?Chris:         Selling advertising for conferences. I call up all these CEOs and CMO, those type of people. I was doing that, I did that for about three or four months and the conference ended and then I was like, I don’t want to do this anymore.Andy:                  Why did you take the job in the first place?Chris:         I knew the guy and he’s like “Hey man, we got a really cooperation. Come and work.” I’m like “All right. Cool.” Because I was like … I wasn’t doing the wheel thing, I was just waiting for it to sell and it took two or three months for the actual transaction to go through. My God! I’m not really going to do anything in the wheel thing until it sells so let me just go and take this gig. I learned a lot. I learned a lot about just picking up the phone, calling and following up and system for managing contacts.Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         I definitely learned a lot through that process. It was all commission. I think I made 300 bucks a week.Andy:                  Nice.Chris:                  Was it 300 bucks? No, it was $300 every two weeks.Andy:                  Oh.Chris:         So, it wasn’t a lot of money and then it was all commission-based. Once that ended I started a website called Raffle Secrets.Andy:                  Nice. Nice.Chris:         Yeah. It was a listing. I don’t know, it’s called True Raffles. True Raffles was basically a … think of like a portal for raffles across the country. So any churches or non-profits, if they had a raffle they could list it on their site for a hundred bucks a month or something.Andy:                  Nice.Chris:         And so, build that thing out. No, it really wasn’t that

nice. But I did have some really great advertisers, had like Livestrong, McDonald’s charities, I had some really good charities on that site. But it is really to make any money. I was like, I got to change this thing out. I came across some … creating info products. I was like, well, I wonder if I can turn this into an e-book and sell it. Right? This advertising thing is not working because I need to do sales calls and call people, I was like …Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         This isn’t fun. Turned it into an actually e-book and then sold it on the internet, it’s called Raffle Secrets. I end up selling that site about a year and a half later, two years later. I actually don’t own it anymore. Yeah. I create info product with a simple e-book and it goes maybe 80 pages and it showed non-profits how to successfully run a raffle to raise money.Andy:                  Wow!Chris:         I interviewed three experts and … interviewed three experts, create an e-book, turn the interviews into a PDF, gave him the audio and sold it for 27 bucks. And I was like, “Ah, okay.” That thing made a couple thousand bucks a month.Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         I think at the height it made $2200 a month where I was like, “This is kind of cool.”Andy:                  This is like 2006.Chris:                  Yup. Well, actually … Yeah. Let me back up.Sold the wheel company, tried the True Raffles advertising thing. The year was, that was December 2005. I have my last $2,000. Because during that time I was trying to grow this True Raffles thing which is really stupid. I have my last $2,000 and my girlfriend who’s now my wife, she said “Hey, why don’t you do that replicate the website idea?” I was like “Oh, yeah, let’s do it.” So we invested some money, built out this company called My Vibe which was basically replicated websites for distributors of this certain company. All these distributors were trying to sell their products and

this and that. Basically it was an MLM. I didn’t like MLM. I joined this company because a friend is like “Hey, why don’t you get in this?” I’m like “Oh, I don’t want to sell any juice.” But, what I realized was, oh, none of these people have websites. And I heard about a guy that was just killing it, creating these replicated websites for all the distributors in this company. I basically did that, learned HTML. We hired a designer. She designed the site. Had the software called Plexum which is replicated website software and …Andy:                  You found the software?Chris:         Yeah. Found the software that did the replication of the web pages and started selling that for 20 bucks a month. I remember when we launched the site it took seven months to build which is like insane. It was just crazy looking back.Andy:                  How much money did you invest in it?Chris:         I invested my 2,000, my wife put in like maybe two grand or something. I think we put in probably 5,000 bucks.Andy:                  Wow!Chris:         The biggest expense was the web designer. Every page charge like 90 bucks and so I’m like, man, I’m running out of cash just getting these pages created. I was like, I got to learn this HTML and stuff. Went and learned it all and … basically launched the site in April 2006 and we had a 150 people sign up paying 20 bucks a month. I knew nothing about marketing, I knew nothing about launches, I knew nothing about … like marketing per se. I mean, a little bit and so we had boom! Literally in the first week we had a 150 people paying 20 bucks a month and all it came down to was one leader saying “This is awesome. Get your site.” [Inaudible 00:34:18] people sign up.Andy:                  It’s a beautiful little marketing lesson right there.Chris:         Yeah. Absolutely. Right? Get an influencer to tell everybody that your stuff is awesome.Andy:         What did you do when you invest your last two grand into the company? Like, were you nervous? Did you know this was

going to work? What did you do for cash in the mean time?Chris:         Yeah, what did I do for cash? I think I had pressure going through a little bit actually. No, I think I did. But yeah, so we invested 2,000 …Andy:         Those are the stories that just don’t get told. You know? I think if people putting their last two grand up and then it’s like, okay, but I still have to pay bills and I still have to eat and pay rent and stuff.Chris:         I was living with my parents, right? It wasn’t like I had rent and I had this and that. I think my expenses were a cell phone and a car payment insurance. That’s it. It wasn’t like I had all these expenses. Most of my expenses went to like going out, right? But, yeah.I knew we needed money to invest so we got the web designer, I think it was like 1500, and then … I think just doing odd jobs. I did do pressure washing like washing driveways and rooms and stuff like that. That wasn’t fun. I’m like, why am I doing this?I always knew … because I saw another guy doing this I was like, gosh! This guy has probably has like tens of thousands of people paying him 20 bucks a month. If we do this right I know we can make this thing work. Really just put it together, launched it and … I don’t know. I just knew it was going to work just putting it out there. Yeah, so that was a good site. We actually got an office, we started to build this thing out but I just didn’t like that world. We have the site, I think it was making … on average it was making eight grand a month, $10,000 a month, no affiliates.Andy:                  Wow!Chris:         So, it was like pure cash. And that basically, that money went to investing in my education for marketing. Investing in courses and training and conferences and just going out there and learning as much as I could about marketing.Andy:                  Oh great. Who is the first person you learned about marketing from?

Chris:         Jay Abraham. Yeah, I mean Jay Abraham is kind of the first one that I was like “Wow! This is awesome.”Andy:                  How did you find him?Chris:         2005 I kind of sold the company, going through this whole thing, just trying to figure it all out, how do I sell, how do I market? I went to the FAU library and just getting stacks of books like marketing note; boring textbook marketing book. Just anything I could to learn about marketing. Going online, I learned about Yanik Silver, I learned about Gary Halbert. Then I learned about Jay Abraham.I remember I went on eBay and I actually bought one of Jay’s old tape courses it was How to Get From Where You Are to Where Do You Want to Be tape set. I remember just listening to this thing. I’m like a clunky tape set, tape cassette player and just learned about marketing. I remember that was like the best stuff I’ve ever heard. It was like the most exciting I’ve ever kind of felt looking back. I was like “Oh my gosh!” Jay says marketing is the ultimate leverage. I’m like “Wow! This is how you grow a business.” You got to learn how to market; you got to learn how to sell. That’s what got me like so excited was Jay stuff.A lot of stuff I still use planning our business. One of his concepts he talks about what’s called the Parthenon, Power Parthenon, Parthenon theory. If you can imagine your business as like the Parthenon. Right? It actually got building stands 3,000 plus years later. The columns are still there. Roof kind of collapsed a little bit but those columns are still there. You can imagine your business as the Parthenon. Right? You have a roof which is your business then you have these columns and those columns could be conversion channels, right? How are you converting people? Email, video, sales letters, whatever. Then you have traffic, how you’re getting traffic. Is it paper play clay? Is it SCO? Is it this, is it that? Most people, maybe they communicate with their contacts with one channel which could be email. If you have your Parthenon if you will and

you have one column and you’re just reaching people with email, well, when that falls away your business collapses. That’s one thing I talk about with Automize. How to kind of solidify your foundation first which is kind of build your business. A little tangent there but a little lesson I learned from Jay.Andy:         The MLM company you get out of, you start studying marketing. It’s so interesting, I think, after studying marketing you just look at the world through different lens, I think. I think you look at business through a different lens as well.Chris:                  Yeah.Andy:                  What do you do next?Chris:         We have that business going, it was working. Again, just got burned out. What I did then was went back to the True Raffles thing. I was like “All right, well, let me turn it into the info products. Turn that into the info products, built it out and launch that thing. Again, it was just kind of like, how can I experiment with things that I was learning. Then I apply it to that and then from that created a bunch of other information products and then from that went on to create … doing consulting and doing multiple six-figure product launches for clients and then just doing all sorts of stuff. And then coming in to software with where we’re at today.Andy:         It’s so interesting. I feel like you just skipped a lifetime. I wish we could go into every single detail but sadly we can’t with the amount of time that we have. I think the big lesson here is that you’re just constantly taking action on the stuff. And you’re constantly learning and testing and tweaking and iterating and testing and tweaking and iterating.Chris:         Yeah. I think during that stage it was just like, how can I just do all sorts of different things to learn, right? Because I am still very new in the industry. I’m very new on marketing, and so when I didn’t have that or I didn’t work for a company that had the option to trial these different things. I did try it myself for my own reasons, right?

Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         One is I remember learning about doing product launches and all these guys doing huge product launches and the rush that it was. I was like, “I got to do a launch.” I just want to go through that process to learn how to do that. Right? To me that was kind of like, okay, if you learn how to do a launch, you know how to successfully launch your product in the internet that equals success in many respects. Right?Andy:                  Yup.Chris:         If you learn this process you’ll never forget it, you can apply it to any other new product you ever launch and … it’s psychology. Basically just like, all right, I got to learn this.When I talk to this one guy at a website called gdiet. It was a raw food’s course and he was good but his product wasn’t well-optimize. In a lot of potentially a decent size lists. Took him on as a client and basically re-created his entire business. He had a 35 CD course he was selling where he was packaging, shipping, burning the DVDs, buying the jewel cases, putting them in, [inaudible 00:41:57] the books at Office Depot, doing all the stuff and it was 35 disk. I’m like, “Dude.”I came in in there and just totally recreated his entire business. Outsourced all of fulfillments, got designs; the e-books, the CDs. Everything was completely outsourced. [Inaudible 00:42:16] returns, everything. And did just some marketing with it and really just …Andy:                  Was this one of your first consulting class?Chris:                  Yeah. Yeah. It was the first one. Yeah.Andy:                  What did you charge him?Chris:         Nothing. Charge him nothing upfront and it was the percentage of the revenues. Because I wanted to do it.Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         I want to learn and I wanted to get a case study to apply it to other consulting clients. Right? He had the assets that I didn’t

have but I had the skills that he didn’t have. And so I want to apply and just do it.The first promotion we did, sign the deal in the beginning of January. I believe it was January 14th 2008 I think. Did little promotion, a three-day sale and it was just good copy. It was just good copy, got people to fill out a survey, [totally engage them 00:43:05]. Because he would just send out the same plain HTML text email and it was just like, “Dude, there’s no …” everyone is already knowing what you’re going to do next. Right? Did a survey, got people excited, great copy, let him into. “Hey, we’ve got all these courses, we’re coming out for newer version.” Took a picture of the closet of all his disks. We got to sell them. We have 28 copies left. We did 14 … close to $15,000 in three days from a promotion. The difference is making $500 a month, thousand dollars a month.Andy:                  How excited was he?Chris:         Yeah! I took that … stupid me. We reinvested that to do the big launch, right? This was just a way to fund, getting it fulfilled and getting printed DVDs and all that stuff.So, took that and then did a pretty powerful product launch we did in the raw food space which back then was really … it was kind of the beginnings of it. Sold this course for 495 bucks. Had a toupee of 297 or something like that. End up launching that in a month. The dude is making, again, 500 bucks, thousand bucks a month. Did a $135,000 in 45 days. In the first day we did 25 grand. He was like, “What?”Andy:                  Oh man!Chris:         I was like … number one, I did everything. Wrote the blog, wrote the copy, wrote the scripts. I did a ton, a ton of work because I wanted to do it, right?Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         I wanted to learn it, I wanted to go through the process and experience it for myself what was possible. And we did it. It was hugely successful. Huge lesson learned was … I should have

taken a percentage of ongoing revenue. Like if you’re an SCO guy and you get a client and you do all these work, you get in to the top of search engines and he goes, “Hey, I don’t need you anymore man. Thanks so much. Thanks, I’m here now.”Yeah. I didn’t do that. Looking back on it it was stupid but I learned so much. I made good money from it.Andy:                  What percentage did you take?Chris:                  Thirty-five percent.Andy:                  Thirty-five percent?Chris:                  Yup. Of net.Andy:                  How did … oh, of net. It’s after all of your expenses get factored in.Chris:                  Yup. Plus affiliates and all that stuff.Yeah. He went on, he probably had … he hasn’t really do much more but if I was him he could easily have made passively like half a million dollars a year. And then he just decided to get a little greedy and move on. [Inaudible 00:45:50].Andy:         How did that end up? Was he just like “All right, thanks dude. I’m going to do my own thing now.”Chris:         Well, he got kind of shady. He was … yeah. He just went shady. He won’t return phone calls, because he owed money. He probably just didn’t balance the books too well. What I should have done was the money should have went through my account and then paid him out first. But, it didn’t go that way. He got a little giddy, he got a little happy. He wasn’t putting money in “escrow” to pay the services due. Just fell apart. It just fell apart. He owed me a good amount of money and … yeah.Andy:         I love hearing your story because like every … it’s like win-win-fail, win-win-fail and this just like this constant cycle.Chris:                  Yeah. But, you know, the biggest thing for me was the learning, right?Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         It was like, “Ah, dude, I got this.” I could easily

duplicate that. Right? And so we went on to do that. So the next client is actually my partner, Trevor. He had to bring a business, Private Money Blueprint. Trevor, whom you’ll see in a bit, he had Private Money Blueprint. He said “Chris, let’s do the launch.” I said, “Let’s do it.” And so we put it together and Trevor is a really good marketer. And at the time it was a brand new business, zero list, some connections. It was brand new. Everything was brand new. Applied product launch formula if you will. Trevor, I think, we did 107 grand in a week.Andy:                  Wow!Chris:         Trevor and his partner Patrick went on to build that company to multimillions. That was … cool. I got a new business in a week. Boom! Now we can grow.Andy:         Wow! It’s so cool. Chris is referring I’ll see Trevor in a bit because we’re … I’m at a Mastermind with him and Patrick right now here in Boulder. They’re in town.Wow! That’s wow! So, you built the foundation of that and …Chris:                  Yeah.Andy:         And then, did you move on to the next thing? Was that just like your [inaudible 00:48:01] before the launch and then …Chris:         The launches are a lot of work, right? At the end of the day … it’s a ton of work, right? The first one was awesome because I went through it, the second one was awesome, I did it again. Third one is like, all right, I’m doing this for everybody else, let me do it for me.Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         After that, through that process, again, we are doing webinars and teleseminars and emails and all the stuff and … I wanted to create a real business, right? From that, just on the discoveries I was like, well, I want to automate text, I want to automate voice and there’s nothing out there to put into our marketing funnels. And so I went on the journey and that’s essentially where Call Loop came from was the frustration of not

having it for our own marketing and then realizing that, oh, a lot of people probably want this too. Tell my co-founder who’s the lead developer and … yeah, just kind of builds it from there.Andy:                  Cool. I want to ask you some marketing stuff.Chris:                  Let’s do it.Andy:         For somebody … you said the first launch you did you wrote great copy for, where did you learn to write great copy?Chris:         I stole it from everybody else. Actually, just … yeah, just learned it from everybody else. At the time it was Frank Kern’s Mass Control.Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         Quite a lot of the stuff that he did to it and just kind of added my own twist. But I think the interesting thing about writing copy is for me is when I’m not writing copy with my name on it. It’s so much easier.Andy:                  Oh my God! Billion times easier.Chris:         Right? Like it’s really hard to write copy or to be persuasive because you have about your … in writing from you, right? It’s so much easier when you can be somebody else and then apply all these … you’re somebody else. You’re not that person and you can step away from it.Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         Writing copy for that was so much easier. I find it very difficult sometimes to write copy in an email that has my name on it or add a persuasive twist on it. What I tricked myself to do, for example, coming up with a blog content, I have a hard time … not coming up with ideas but coming up with … actually, writing it. HARO, which is Help a Reporter Out … I’m a part of that and basically … Are you familiar with that?Andy:                  Oh yeah.Chris:         Yeah? Basically what it is is people or news outlets needs stories and so they say, “Hey, I’m looking for whatever story on X,Y,Z” or “What’s your take on social media and business?” I’ll

find certain topics and it’s so easy for me to reply and then literally create a mini article from that reply because number one, I’m writing it because I could get press and number two, it’s a lot easier to communicate with one person. I tricked myself to how do I create articles but write it as if I’m talking to one person and actually can talk about it intelligently. Rather than sitting on a piece of paper and going, “All right, what the hell am I going to write about?”Andy:                  Oh wow!Chris:         From HARO I’ll just look at topics and I trained my DA to like, hey, find topics and just email them to me saying Forbes wants an article written about X, Y, Z. I’m like, “Oh, okay. Whatever.”Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         And so it allows me to just kind of like write an email, that’s a mini article and then expand upon that mini email into a larger article.Andy:         Oh, that’s brilliant. For people who have never written copy, where do they start?Chris:         Where do you start writing copy? I think the biggest thing is, number one, write it as if you’re a different person. There’s actually a book I’m reading now, it’s called Bird by Bird.Andy:                  Yeah. I’m reading that right now too.Chris:                  Are you?Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:                  You probably know the inch by inch. Maybe you’re there yet.Andy:                  No, not yet.Chris:         So, she talks about how do you write detailed descriptions and she says not to focus on the whole broad approach of what you want to write about. Like, hey, write about this paper. Well, what you want to focus on is like that inch by inch and then describe that inch by inch kind of thing on there. For example, if you’re describing … maybe the emotional ups and downs of an

entrepreneur, talk about one little facet of that, one little inch by inch and describe that in detail and go deep with it. I don’t know.I guess writing copy is … I read a lot of email and I’ll save a bunch of email that I like. I came across killer headlines [inaudible 00:52:49], subject lines and I just kind of store it away and do it. Now, again, I don’t write a lot of copy but when I do I have to be in the moment and that is … it’s not me that’s writing it, Joe Blow that’s writing the copy. I’m a different personality and how can I apply that when I write and just free flow. But Gary Halbert, I’ve learned a lot from Gary Halbert just reading that stuff.But I think copywriting has changed and evolved in the last couple of years. You have a lot of like the positioning of salesy copywriting but I think it’s more about transparency and just kind of growing into your own self. I have a tough time just being comfortable with me and writing about me and not letting people necessarily know everything about me. But, what you’ll find is a lot of the guys that are kind of open and extremely transparent are the ones that are succeeding today. Great example is the dude from Passive Smart Income.Andy:                  Oh yeah, Pat Flynn.Chris:         Dude is super transparent. Yup, Pat Flynn. There’s a lot to learn from that. Just kind of opening up and … it goes beyond copy. It’s just life in general.Andy:         Yeah. It’s so true. We had a Mastermind a month ago and one of the guys used around the Hypnosis Network in …Chris:                  Oh, Mike Lovitch?Andy:                  Yeah. You know Lovitch?Chris:                  Yup.Andy:         Lovitch is incredible, he’s brilliant. He’s very direct and just … but we are talking about the idea of how vulnerability is like … it’s almost becoming this new popular thing of transparency and vulnerability. It’s the cool thing to do. I thought that was a really interesting reflection that he shared.

Chris:         Yeah. I see a lot of it. Right? Because people are drawn toward that. They want authenticity. I think the ways of persuasive copywriting is kind of … I wouldn’t say … I mean, it’s not going to go anywhere, right? But especially being on the internet, if your own personality brand, you can’t really do that. You just got to be authentic and people will either like you or they’re not going to like you.Andy:                  Or not. Yeah. Just that over the top overly salesy stuff is. Yeah.Chris:                  Yeah. [Inaudible 00:55:12].Andy:                  It’s not working anymore.Chris:         It works, trust me. Hey, [AGORA 00:55:16], they don’t make half a billion dollars a year with not a good copy. But, again, if you’re building a personality business or software, it’s a different take. And I’ve had a hard time positioning Call Loop with writing unique copy that’s engaging but not too salesy but kind of pushing a sale if you will. You got to kind of … there’s a fine line with that.Andy:         That’s interesting. It would be interesting if Call Loop had a personality behind it or more [of one 00:55:51]. Not like … like how [inaudible 00:55:54] with AppSumo and the Sumo has his own personality that he writes from. It’s a neat idea to get away from a personal brand tied to a business I think.Chris:         Yeah. Every company need a personal brand, right? I’ve kind of made my way there but I haven’t really stepped in to that role. Just because of … probably my own insecurities, right? Just like, oh, I’m going [inaudible 00:56:18] and be that guy. Yeah, just all the questions I think we all struggle with.Andy:                  Yeah.Chris:         I think it comes down is like number one being comfortable with who you are and being able and take on that position. And then acting quick. Right? I think a lot of us and … [makes you 00:56:37] included but I definitely have a perfectionism type to me which is, in many respects holding back from really kind

of seeing my true greatness and I think everybody has that in them. But the people that are kind of moving forward to are the ones that just go and put out and are everywhere without kind of that hesitancy of making it perfect.Andy:                  Beautiful man. I know we’re wrapping up on time here.Chris:                  Cool.Andy:         Where can people go or learn more about you, about Call Loop or Automize It? Where can they find you online?Chris:         Yeah. Just go to callloop.com. C-A-L-L-L-O-O-P. Three Ls or two Ls, either one. We got both domains which is nice.Andy:                  Nice.Chris:         So, callloop.com or to automizeit.com. A-U-T-O-M-I-Z-E-I-T dot com and that’s it.Andy:         Dude, thank you so much for coming on here. For anyone in the audience, shoot me an email and let me know what questions you wish I would have asked Chris. Just podcast at thefoundation.com. I’m really curious what … what would you have like to see me asking that didn’t get asked in the show. But Chris, thank you so much man.Chris:                  Absolutely.Andy:                  Awesome.Chris:                  Cool man.Andy:                  Talk to you later.Chris:                  Ciao.