How Ryan Fenn Turned $500 Into a $700K/Month SaaS Business (CHIIRP) #165

Summary

Early Life and Entrepreneurial Drive

Ryan Fenn's journey into entrepreneurship began with a non-traditional path. Growing up in Southern California within a deeply religious LDS family, Ryan exhibited an unusual level of confidence from a young age. "[...] I sold gumballs at school and candy and different things to try to always try to make money," Ryan shared at [02:10]. His entrepreneurial spirit led him to drop out of high school at 16, taking the California High School Equivalency test to pursue his passion for hustling instead of traditional education.

After working various sales jobs and serving a two-year mission in the Philippines, Ryan returned with a clear goal: to become an entrepreneur. The motivation intensified when he married at 25 and moved to Utah with his wife and their first son, Maddox. With only $500 in savings, Ryan felt the pressure to provide for his family without leaning on his parents' support. This pivotal moment pushed him into full-fledged entrepreneurship.

Building the Windshield Repair Business

Ryan's first significant business venture was a windshield repair service, which he started with his brother, Blake. They began door-to-door, offering to fix windshield chips—a service paid for by insurance companies. Ryan recounted, "[...] I prom[ised] myself, and I promised my wife that I would never reach out to my parents for support" ([07:20]).

The breakthrough came when Ryan observed a competitor at a gas station offering similar services. Seizing the opportunity, he approached the gas station owner, Mike, to enhance the customer experience by adding windshield washing and chip repair services. This strategic move resulted in Ryan earning almost $1,000 on his first day at the Chevron gas station ([08:27]). Encouraged by this success, Ryan and Blake expanded their operations to multiple gas stations and eventually secured partnerships with several car dealerships, scaling their business to nine locations.

Transition to Online Education and Scaling

With a successful windshield repair business under his belt, Ryan explored digital marketing and online education. Inspired by Russell Brunson of ClickFunnels, Ryan developed online courses teaching others how to start their own windshield repair businesses. He created video-based courses using PowerPoint presentations and screen recordings, offering multiple packages ranging from $993 to $3,000. This educational venture proved highly successful, generating significant revenue and empowering numerous entrepreneurs to start their own ventures. "I sold about a thousand dollar kits and helped people all around the country start businesses," Ryan noted ([24:35]).

Founding and Scaling Chirp

Recognizing the inefficiencies in lead conversion, Ryan developed Chirp—a technology platform designed to convert leads into booked appointments through automated text, email, and voice messages. Starting in 2018, Chirp initially struggled to find its niche, serving various industries like real estate, fitness, and food trucks. However, a strategic pivot towards home services, particularly integrating with platforms like House Call Pro and Service Titan, transformed Chirp's trajectory. By leveraging Facebook groups and community engagement, Chirp scaled rapidly, reaching $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue ([29:09]).

The Importance of Lead Conversion and Automation

A central theme of Ryan's success with Chirp is the emphasis on "speed to lead"—contacting potential customers within the first minute of their inquiry to maximize conversion rates. Ryan emphasized, "[...] if somebody fills out a lead and then you don't contact, you contact them 10 minutes later, they might have already forgotten that they even filled out the form" ([00:00]). Chirp automates this process by instantly sending text messages to new leads, initiating conversations that significantly enhance the chances of conversion.

Additionally, Chirp focuses on nurturing leads that are not immediately ready to convert. By automating follow-up messages, Chirp ensures that potential customers remain engaged, increasing the likelihood of future conversions without burdening sales teams. Ryan explained, "[...] automation's making this all happen in the background by just consistently following up with those leads."

Overcoming Challenges and Scaling Strategies

Scaling Chirp required strategic hiring and partnerships. An illustrative moment was Ryan's collaboration with Justin Judd, a top-tier SaaS salesperson, who played a crucial role in accelerating Chirp's growth from $100,000 to $700,000 in monthly revenue. Ryan detailed their approach to building partnerships, saying, "[...] we put, you know, over a thousand companies using Chirp and so we've seen lots of different campaigns and lots of different strategies" ([53:02]).

Chirp's ability to integrate seamlessly with various service platforms and adapt to specific industry needs has been pivotal. Ryan noted the importance of a cohesive brand and focused marketing efforts: "It was until some home service guys came along and recommended integrations into House Call Pro and Service Titan [...] Chirp up to, like, a hundred thousand dollars a month in recurring revenue" ([29:09]).

The Role of AI in Chirp's Evolution

Looking to the future, Ryan envisions integrating advanced AI capabilities into Chirp, including voice interactions and more sophisticated automation. He anticipates AI-driven conversations that can handle customer inquiries, schedule appointments, and personalize follow-ups without human intervention. Ryan mentioned, "[...] voice capabilities are definitely happening [...] ideally pretty soon, hopefully this year we will have it to be where you're no longer creating campaigns. You're just, you're just training the agent and saying, hey, you're a follow-up agent" ([60:14]).

This evolution aims to make Chirp more intuitive and self-sufficient, allowing businesses to scale their customer interactions effortlessly. Ryan believes that AI will continue to enhance Chirp's functionality, making it an indispensable tool for modern businesses.

Personal Insights and Stand-Up Comedy

Beyond entrepreneurship, Ryan has a background in stand-up comedy, which significantly contributed to his resilience and ability to handle failure. Performing often in challenging environments, Ryan learned to develop a thick skin, a trait that seamlessly translated into his business endeavors. "[...] when you can tell a joke and have it flop [...] you can never develop them to a point where they're Netflix ready. So it's the same for entrepreneurship" ([68:01]).

Although Ryan has stepped back from active comedy to focus on Chirp and other ventures, his experience in comedy continues to influence his business philosophy, emphasizing persistence, adaptability, and the importance of refining one's approach through iterative feedback.

Final Advice and Closing Thoughts

In a reflective moment, Ryan offered profound advice to listeners: "You are of divine creation with divine capability. If you partner with God, he will light up your path and make you more successful in whatever you want to do beyond what you could ever imagine" ([74:49]). This sentiment encapsulates Ryan's holistic approach to success, intertwining faith, family, and business endeavors.

Ryan concluded by inviting listeners to connect with him and explore Chirp further: "If you want to check out Chirp, go to chirp.com, but don't forget that there's two eyes. C h I I r p dot com. If you'd like to reach me directly, my email is ryanchirp.com" ([75:27]).

Key Takeaways

• Speed to Lead: Immediate follow-up with leads is crucial for high conversion rates.
• Automation: Automating follow-ups allows sales teams to focus on closing deals rather than chasing leads.
• Strategic Scaling: Identifying and focusing on the right niche can dramatically accelerate business growth.
• AI Integration: Leveraging AI can enhance customer interactions and streamline business processes.
• Resilience Through Failure: Overcoming failures in areas like comedy can build resilience essential for entrepreneurial success.
• Holistic Success: Balancing faith, family, and business leads to sustainable and fulfilling success.

Ryan Fenn's story is a testament to the power of perseverance, strategic innovation, and the intelligent use of technology in building a thriving business.

Transcript

[Ryan Fenn]

The leads don't suck. You suck. People aren't really realizing how important that first minute is. You think about TikTok and Facebook Reels and how, how short our attention spans are now as human beings, we are ruined. Like especially post Covid. Our attention spans are terrible. And so if somebody fills out a lead and then you don't contact, you contact them 10 minutes later, they might have already forgotten that they even filled out the form. It's like you're way, you're way too late.

[Jeff Duden]

Hey everybody, Jeff Duden here and welcome to the homefron. If you dropped out of high school, became a stand up comedian and with his brother created a windshield repair business going door to door. If you scaled this business by expanding it to nine car dealerships and leveraging text message automation. If you then generated $2 million by creating an education platform and enrolled a thousand students to build their own windshield repair business. And finally, if in 2018 you created Chirp, a technology platform for converting leads to booked appointments using automated text, email and voice messages. And if today you are single handedly responsible for more conversions than the Spanish inquisition and your three Fs are faith, family and funnels, your name can only be Ryan Fenn. Welcome, Ryan.

[Ryan Fenn]

Now that was an introduction, Jeff, thank you very much.

[Jeff Duden]

That's your introduction. You know, do you believe it when you hear it, how great it is?

[Ryan Fenn]

That was great. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah, brother, good to have you on. I'm, I'm so excited for our conversation today.

[Ryan Fenn]

Thank you so much, Jeff. I'm happy to be here. Excited to talk. Let's rock and roll.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah, man. So I, I did give some highlights to, you know, how you grew up, but it's a great story. Would you mind sharing a little bit about kind of your early life and maybe your early business and you know, your family, how it was all tied into that? Because it's a fascinating story and has to be so inspirational for so many of the entrepreneurs that listen to us on the home front.

[Ryan Fenn]

Sure. Thank you for the opportunity to share it. I, I, it's a very non conventional path that I've taken. I, I grew up in Southern California. My, my family's family, very Christ oriented, religious. We're from the LDS culture and I, I was always, I, at a very young age, I kind of just had this confidence, just this, this really, I don't know, it's kind of a, a weird confidence. My parents were always kind of shocked by it. I, I, I liked selling things at school. I sold gumballs at school and candy and different things to try to always try to make money and, and like, I don't know, I just had this. I just had this confidence. And when I turned 16, I. I really didn't want to be in school anymore. I wanted to get out and just. Just hustle and I, I dropped out of high school. I. I took the test that California has a test you can take to called the California High School Equivalency. I wasn't bad at school. I did fine. I can get good grades. It wasn't that I was stupid or anything.

[Jeff Duden]

No, man.

[Ryan Fenn]

Did it.

[Jeff Duden]

Did it seem like it, like, took forever during the day?

[Ryan Fenn]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I couldn't. I just. I just couldn't handle being. There's like every day was a battle being there, you know?

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah, I was, I was the same and I didn't get poor. I, you know, I've said before that I, you know, I got a 4.0, but that was two and a half semesters added together and.

[Ryan Fenn]

Right.

[Jeff Duden]

You know, but then I. Then I went and took the. I took the college placement test and I, like, scored really high on it. And my counselor called me and he's like, these grades and this test score is not. It doesn't equate. So I guess maybe traditional school wasn't really for me. Sounds like the same for you.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah, Yeah. I, you know, I. Maybe it's adhd. I don't like putting like these titles or these, like, these diagnosis on things. I think everybody's got their own kind of individual thing that they have, but probably would be diagnosed with ADHD if I went down that path. But I see that as. I see that more as a positive than a negative. I have embraced that. But at 18, I kind of went out. I sold cars for a while, did a lot of different sales jobs and did different things. And then in our church, we serve a mission for two years. So I went to the Philippines for two years and I learned their language and spent time in huts and eating fish and rice on the beach with families and stuff. So that was a really cool experience. And then came home and. And kind of bounced around, you know, just trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. That was like always. That was always a for sure thing. And. But I didn't, you know, really know exactly what that was going to be. I would go to school. My parents really wanted me to go to school, and so I would kind of. Sometimes I would take A semester I'd do. I would do it here and there, and like, I, you know, would tell them, oh, yeah, I'm going to school. But I hated it. Didn't, like, you know, I finished a little bit, but I didn't. I didn't. It was just like, community college stuff that I would just go to just to kind of make them, you know, happy because I. And I didn't have a leg to stand on because I hadn't accomplished anything, you know, so it was like. It was like I kind of was arguing between my. What was in my head and what they wanted. And. And so there was a point. And it was. I got married at 25, and I met my wife in March, and we were married in July. So.

[Jeff Duden]

Is she from the church?

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah, yeah, we met through the church. Yeah. And we, you know, we moved back to California. I was actually living in Utah at the time. Moved back to California, and we had our first son, Maddox, and we. We moved up to Utah because I just. California is not a good environment for starting a business, especially when you're. Have no idea what you're doing. And so I didn't want to deal with that. And Utah seemed a little more friendly for that. And, you know, culturally it was a little better for I. I. Better for my kids. And so I had. I had my firstborn son, and I had about 500 bucks in the bank, and it was like, dang, man, if I don't make something happen, my kid's gonna go hungry. It's like my back was against the wall, and it was like, the one. It was like the trigger I need to really put me into entrepreneur mode, because everything I had done before was just, you know, for selfish reasons or for my, you know, for. For. For my own fulfillment. And. And I could really push myself far enough to just support myself and make enough money to, like, survive and be comfortable as a single person. But once I had a kid, it was like, backs against the wall, you know, let's. Let's get to work. We. We had this. We. We paid our first month's rent and. And up in Utah. Here in Utah. And I had. Like I said about. And I made a promise. I was like, I prom. My parents have been. They were. They were reasonably successful. My dad was a home builder, and he's always. He. We always were comfortable there was never like, he's not rich or any. By any means, but it was. We were always comfortable and successful. And so. But I. I promised myself, and I promised my wife that I would Never reach out to my parents for support, you know, to take care of our kids. And so I, I, it's funny because I, I looked on Craigslist, I was like, I gotta find a sales, I need to find a good sales job. So went on Craigslist, and I, and I saw this guy advertising for windshield repair. And it's one of those moments. I don't know if you've had them, Jeff, but there's moments like when you look back on your life, there's those moments where you look at them and you can remember them really clearly as, like, turning points, like, along the journey. And that one still is like this, Like, I can see myself looking at that ad still, and it was like a very, a very. I, I, I, I consider these, like, the, the, the moments in life where God is lighting up the path kind of thing, and you're kind of, kind of taking these steps. And I, I can look back at several points along the journey and I can look at those, but this was definitely one of them. When I saw this ad and I.

[Jeff Duden]

Was like, yeah, yeah, I call it inflection points. And I, I, in my story, I share that there was. I was driving home from Hurricane Katrina after setting up, and it was the middle of the night. I was driving overnight through Atlanta to get home to see my son's first football season that I was missing. I had three small children at the time, and I decided in that moment that I was going to sell all of our company stores under a franchise model because I was constantly on the road. I mean, we were working in Hawaii, California, the Caribbean, you know, now the Gulf coast. And I just, I was missing them growing up. And, you know, inflection points have three things. People are involved. You just had a son, people that you're responsible for, people that you want to do something with, or sometimes people you want to get away from. Number two, there's a great adventure or an opportunity at hand. And then three, there's a risk of loss because you generally have to give something up to get something great. And when I look like, it's hard to see it when you're in the moment. But, yeah, I've become better now at recognizing when I'm at an inflection point. And I'll just, I've learned to sit in awareness and really be, you know, and play and go backwards a little bit and go forwards a little bit and try to time travel and then just, you know, pull it all back into that moment of awareness and try to make the best decision possible. But, like, those are. And I think that's a function of lots of bad decisions.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for sure, for sure.

[Jeff Duden]

So I'm sorry, you're saying no, the.

[Ryan Fenn]

Inflection points can be, like, bad decisions. Like, they can be. They can be, you know, But. But I like what you said there, because I was just about to say. I don't really. I can look back and see these points, these. These inflection points, but I don't know when they're happening. And now that you say it's like, oh, you can. It's like you're. You're. You're ahead of me there where you can. It's like, I'd like to be able to recognize when they're happening better, but there's definitely a deeper conversation there. But. But yeah, I consider this one of those inflection points. And it's funny because it sticks in your mind. Like, I can. I can. I can feel the same feelings as sitting there reading that Craigslist ad. And I just thought, this seems like a good thing for me right now. So I interview with the guy. He's. I go. It was so funny because, like, if you. If you were. If you were traditional in any sense, you would have looked at this and been like, dude, you're. Get out of here. What are you doing? Because, like, he interviewed me. He works at. They worked at a car wash, and they enter. He interviewed me at the car wash, you know, and he was like, it was winter time. It was freezing cold. I'm from California, where I'm from is cold, but not nearly as cold as Utah. And he's in a jacket and gloves. And I'm like. I'm like, okay. So I sit down with this guy. He's like, okay. So what we do is cars come in for the car wash. If they have a crack in their windshield that's, you know, the size of a dime or a quarter, we can save it from spreading. We can save them from having to replace their windshield by. By injecting resin. And we get paid by the insurance companies to do it because they don't want to have to pay to replace the whole windshield. So it's free to the customer. It's. You get paid. We get paid 65 bucks. And I'll pay you a $20 commission for every time you fix a windshield and you can fix. You should be able to fix between five and 10 a day. And I'm like, cool. All right, that. That should do it. That's. That. That'll like, you know, help me survive. And so I get to work for this guy in the. In the. Just the freezing cold weather. And it's just. We're out there, Cars are getting their car. Customers getting the car wash coming through. We go up, wipe down their windshield after they went through, and if they saw one, say, hey, by the way, you have a chip in your windshield. Let's go and fix it. And I did. I started doing five to ten a day, and I was making 100, 200 bucks a day. And it was like, okay, cool. I at least can pay rent and pay, you know, feed my kid, and I don't have to ask my parents for anything. And. And then my brother was. My. My younger brother Blake was also. He was. He was out here as well, and he was working for another company. And he saw what I was doing, and he's like, that seems kind of cool. Do they need somebody else? And so. So he. He came along and started working with us too. And then after about two months of doing this, we found out that the owner of that company was doing shady stuff. And he was. He was taking insurance information and processing more claims illegally and, like, behind the customer's back and, like, using it to, you know, like, he or he would claim a replacement versus a repair and get three or four hundred dollars instead of 65, you know. And I immediately was like, well, I can't. I was super bummed because I was like, man, this was a good opportunity, and this guy's ruining it, and I'm not gonna work for him. Cause I have integrity. And there's like, there's nothing. There's no amount of money that I'll sell that for. So. So I was pretty bummed. And I was like, man, okay, back to the drawing board. But then I was like, well, you know, this guy's getting paid 65 bucks per repair. I do five to ten a day at a car wash. If I could do two or three a day and owned the company, I'd make 180200 bucks a day myself. So I. I took what little money I had, like 300 bucks, and we bought Blake. My brother and I, we each bought a windshield repair kit. You can buy them online. And we're like, well, how are we gonna get customers we don't have? We don't have a car wash where people are coming through, because that's that guy's business. You know, he had that set up. And so we started by going door to door. This was like, again, going back to I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna go to my parents for money, so I'm gonna go door to door. So I would knock on doors and I would say, hey, I. I'm a local windshield repair expert. Do you have any chips in your windshield? And it worked. Like, people would be like, oh, you know what? I do have a chip in my windshield. And I'd go into their garage and I'd fix it. And then I'd get paid by the insurance companies the 65 bucks. And I could do four to eight of those in a day. And then. So four to eight at 65 bucks was, you know, that's more money than I had ever made. It was great money, you know, and I had no overhead. I was going door to door, so I had no. No, no office space or anything. And so I did that all through the summer, and I made. I made great money. I was able to support my family. And it was a. It was. It was good. It was just. The problem was, it was. Door to door was not really scalable and also not really sustainable in that winter comes, and I don't want to knock through the winter. And it was like this, you know, so as winter was approaching, I actually, this is another. This is another one of those moments. We went down to. My parents were still in California. We went down to California, and I remember it because it's like, I remember exactly the gas station this happened at. I remember the movie we were going to see because it was. It was Thanksgiving, and we were going to see a movie with my parents, and we stopped at a gas station, and we saw somebody washing windshields as people were getting gas. And then I noticed that they had chip repair on their shirt. And I was like, I'll bet that they're offering chip repair to people as they're coming to get gas. So I immediately go back. We go back to California. I go to our nearest gas station. I go to the owner, and I say, hey, I want to. I want to upgrade your customer experience by washing everybody's windshields as they get gas. And if they have a chip in the windshield, I'm going to offer to get a chip. So it'll be free for you. I'll pay you a little bit every time I get a chip repair, and then we can do so. Now people are coming in for gas, and I say, hey, thanks for coming in. It was Mike. He owned the Chevron. I said, thanks for coming into Mike's Chevron today. As a courtesy, we're washing everybody's windshields. And I would just wash their windshield for them. And then while I'm doing that, obviously looking for a chip in the windshield. And then if I had one, I go, oh, by the way, over there at our tent over there, we'd have a pop up tent. I said, over there at the tent, you can pull over there and I can fix this little chip in your windshield so it doesn't ruin your windshield. And they'd go, how long does that take? About 15 minutes. How much does it cost? Well, it depends on if you have insurance or not. Who do you have? Geico. Oh great. Geico does it for free. Pull over there, give me 15 minutes, I'll take care of it and you won't have to replace your windshield. And that was like, that was my key. That was my key to the, you know, starting my successful journey as an entrepreneur. And that first Saturday, so we started on a Saturday at that gas station. I did 15 repairs. So I made a thousand dollars, almost a thousand dollars in my first day at that gas station. So that was, that was like, you know, really cool. And so then we started. We're like, well, what's the next obvious thing? Let's get another gas station. So we get another gas station. Next thing you know, we had like four gas stations. And then, and then we're out there hustling. And this is, this is important, like for anybody that's like on an entrepreneurial journey, like the ideas happen in the hustle. Like you have to be, you have to be going, working, doing, and then the ideas are going to come and things are going to happen. But if you're trying to sit at home going, okay, what should I do next? What am I going to do next? It's never, you're never going to be inspired. It's never going to come. You have to be doing. And then things happen. So we're out there washing windshields. My brother washes this one guy's windshield and he goes, what are you guys actually doing? And he's like, well, we do chip repair. And he goes, well, I'm the manager at the Nissan dealership up here and we have a lot of cars coming in for service every day for oil changes and whatnot. Why don't you have a guy up there that does it there? And so we're like, oh, cool, yeah, let's try that. And because it's like indoors, we're not outside in the wintertime. And so we get into the Nissan dealership and we do like five to ten repairs. A day out of that spot. And then he goes, I also manage the Honda dealership. And there's a lesson in that, in that process, too, because we were in the Nissan dealership, We're doing really well. And he had said, hey, let's get you into the Honda dealership. And he kept saying that. And then he would go, I got to talk to the guy. I got to talk to the guy. And then it never would happen. And one day, you know, I'm a big. I'm a big believer in gratitude, in. In obviously expressing gratitude with. With people you encounter and then also with God. But I think the principle is the same at all levels. It. It. It brings. It. It opens the doors, both through what God has to offer and what, you know, people have to offer. And so one day I just said, you know, I'm gonna just go up to him. I'm just gonna say, I'm just gonna tell him how grateful I am. And it was. And it was like, I wasn't gonna pitch anything. I was just like, I need to. I. I feel like I haven't really been grateful. I just keep asking him to get me into that Honda dealership. I need, you know, I just need to go up and say thank you for what he's already done for me, you know? So I go in his office. I just said, hey, I just want to let you know, like, we're making great money here, and it's been such a good thing for us. I just wanted to say thank you. And that was it. And he literally pauses and he goes. He goes, yeah, you're welcome, man. This has been really cool. Let's call the Honda guy right now. Let's get you in there. It was like. It was like one of those immediate. Immediate. Like, obviously, gratitude sometimes it's not that immediate, but this was one of those moments where it was like, dang, you know, it works.

[Jeff Duden]

So he goes, when you do the right thing, sometimes the right result happens to me. Immediately.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah, immediately. And then sometimes it doesn't, but yeah, and you can look back, and it's like, it's okay if it doesn't. You can know that the principles at play. And it's working as long as it's sincere, right? And. And so he calls the Honda dealership. The next day, we were in the Honda dealership. And then. And then we. And then from there, we expanded into, like, nine different location, different dealerships. That was the most sustainable of the models. The gas stations were great, but the weather, again, was a big problem. It was hard to find guys that were willing to do that hustle. But at the, at the, at the car wash or at the dealerships, people were, we were able to find people that were more willing to work at the dealerships because it was indoors, more sustainable, more consistent. And so we got into nine locations and we're doing really well. And of course, as an entrepreneur, it was like, okay, what's the next. Like, I want to, I want to keep growing. Do I keep growing this business or what do I really, you know, what do I really want to do? And I've always loved digital marketing. I've loved, I, you know, I dabbled in like, affiliate marketing and I understand how to build a website and all these different things. And, and I, and courses were start. Just starting to become a thing online. Like online courses back this was 2014, and ClickFunnels was just getting going, and I knew about Russell Brunson and what he does. And so I was like, I wonder, I wonder if I started a windshield repair, like, how to start your own windshield repair business. And I talked to a friend of mine who's very, very wealthy, and he's like, he's like, can people reasonably make 50, 60 thousand dollars a year doing this? And I said, yes. And then he said, then you have a major opportunity in front of you. If they can reasonably do it, they can learn it quickly, and you can teach them how to do it, then you have a really big opportunity because that's where, that's where big money's made is in op is in helping people discover new opportunities. That was his thing. And so I, I, I sat down at my little, I had, I had a Mac Mini and I just did PowerPoint presentations and I created videos. I didn't, they weren't even, they were not great. They were just screen recordings of me talking. Okay, here's how you approach a gas station. Here's how you approach a dealership. Here's how you ask somebody for their insurance. Here's how you, you know, all the little steps to doing the repair and then how to actually do the repairs. And I put together a little course and I hosted the videos in a membership course thing. And I started doing different ways to get leads. I would do, I would post in. There's a local newspaper website here that has classified ads. I posted in there. I posted on Facebook, I posted. I did. There used to be a magazine that would go around that you could get at the store called Small Business Opportunities. And it had like, little. Yeah, I bought a ad in that I bought an ad on franchise Gator where they, you know.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah.

[Ryan Fenn]

Sell business opportunities and, and you know, you're, you're franchise. So you know, and I started getting leads coming in and I started closing deals and I was, I got to where I remember having a thirty thousand dollar month and just being like holy cow, dude, I'm like crushing it. And, and what did the course sell for? I saw I had three packages, so I had a, like a plat. I called it Platinum. What did I call it? Starter. Starter. Something in Platinum. Starter Freedom and Platinum Maybe platinum was $3,000. I had, I had deals with the, the people that sold the kits, the windshield repair kits. I called them and said hey, can you put my logos on your kits and I'll sell them for you. And they, they agreed to do it. And so I had two, two manufacturers. One of them had like a high end, premium, really nice kit. The other one was cheaper and actually preferred that. I actually liked that kit more. It was fine. It did the work. It was fine. But people like this bright and shiny kit because it had like bells and whistles and stuff. And then I would say okay, for $3,000 you get the kit and you get our training course and then you get access to me. Anytime you want to call or text me, I'll answer any questions you have. That's $3,000 for 1695. So 1695 you get the smaller kit that gets, that gets the kit, the online training and then access to me for six months. And then the, then we have a 993. That's the kit in the training. No personal coaching. Yeah, you, you can use the, the kit in the training, but I'm not going to get on the phone with you.

[Jeff Duden]

And so, and so the ribeye, was the ribeye in the middle. I mean was that the one Most.

[Ryan Fenn]

People, most people that was probably 90, 80 to 90% of our sales. The three thousand dollar kit made that one look more reasonable. If we start other one, you know, you know how it is, you know, the psychology, everything. But then there's always those guys that every now and then are just go no, I gotta have the, I gotta have the best, I gotta have the thing, I gotta do it. And they get it and they get it and it was fine and we provided a good service for them as well. And there was, those were the guys that cried the, the, the least that, that like needed the least attention were the, were the ones that spent the most money. But, but I sold about a thousand doll a Thousand kits and help people all around the country start businesses. A lot of them were successful, A lot of them weren't. You know how it is. Some people get excited about something then give up too quick. But we had a lot of really great testimonials come through. A lot of people saying, hey, you changed my life. I'm making 500 bucks a day, I'm making 300 bucks a day. All these different things. And it was really cool to see that because like for me as an entrepreneur, that was the ultimate entrepreneur like thing was helping other entrepreneurs find opportunity and make money. You, you totally, you, you can relate to this.

[Jeff Duden]

That's right.

[Ryan Fenn]

And so now the way that I discovered how to sell it was I was selling through these various channels. And then I set up a Facebook ad, a lead form which was just a. If, if you're familiar with Facebook ads, they have a pre built funnel that has an ad and then a form that already has their information filled out in it. And then they click submit, right? And then that, that data is sent to you as the, as the advertiser. And so I would get these leads, I was spending about 10 bucks a day and I was getting leads for about a buck. So these leads would come through of people that were interested in starting a windshield repair business. And then I would call them or I would text them and have a conversation with them. And if they were interested, I would send them a webinar that I had that we were doing. So I'd send them a link to do the webinar. And I found that if I texted them, they responded. If I called them, they wouldn't answer the phone. And so I got to the point where I was just texting the leads. Every time they came in, I would text them. And then I realized I could automate that. So I pieced together some systems and I. And every time a lead would come in, I would send a text message and I would say, hey, join us for our webinar. Then I understood that, hey, my webinar, I've recorded it. I don't need to have them wait. Why don't I just send them the recording right away and if they're interested, we go. So then I automated the now I'm not sitting on a webinar. Every couple of days I just send the pre recorded one and so the lead would come in, I'd send them a text with a link to the webinar. Say, hey, watch this webinar. If you're interested, book a call with us. So they'd watch the 45 minute webinar, and at the end of the webinar, I'd say, hey, if you're interested, click this link, book a call, and they would schedule an appointment with us. And we were getting like 10 appointments a day. And we were selling. Just. Me and my brother were selling windshield repair kits every day. And we did like $2 million through that process. That's incredible. Yeah, yeah. And that's when it was like, okay, cool. Text messaging is a really great way to convert leads. And so I had the idea and I had been. I had a friend who owned a software that did text messaging, and we used it to piece together this funnel. And I was like, man, I want to take this whole process and put it all into one software. And so that's when the CHIRP idea was born. And we started programming chirp in 2000. What did I say? 18. And then by early 2019, we had a minimum viable product. We had the basic framework for texting and for getting leads from Facebook into the system. And then we just started. We just kept adding features, adding features, adding features. And for about four years, we struggled to find our, like, our niche. A lot of people are using it. We had people from real estate agents using it, some restaurants were using it, you know, all these different companies, but.

[Jeff Duden]

We didn't have any, any fitness.

[Ryan Fenn]

We had, we did have some fitness. We had some CrossFit gyms using it, actually.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah, yeah, we, we, we, we cobbled together, I built a fitness brand. We cobbled together our own cocktail of technologies to, to do that, because we have high attrition every month and we get leads and like, you got to be like texting them with a picture saying, hey, hey, I'll be here at noon. You know, come 15 minutes early for your orientation. And, you know, and then the reminders have to go out and all of that. Right. So totally super high touch. And, you know, there's technologies that, that, you know, we were able to put together to do that back in the 2018, 2019 time frame. In 20.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We may have crossed paths. The, the. We had some CrossFit gyms and then we even had like, food trucks using it. We had, I remember a pizza guy used it. He sold a lot of pizza through it. He would sell, he would send out texts to his base and say, hey, our pizza food truck is going to be on this corner at this time, you know, and then people would show up. So it wasn't. But the problem is we didn't have a cohesive message. We didn't have, like, our. We were everything for everybody. And it just didn't. Like, it didn't resonate very well because, like, a dentist would come along and he'd go, well, how do I use it? And I go, well, this real estate agent over here is doing it like this. And he go, I don't care what the real estate agents doing. Like, are there other dentists using it? You know? And so we kind of had this, like, I don't know, just like, it was just. It wasn't a clear, cohesive brand at that point. And we had. We were struggling somewhere in the 20 to 30 thousand dollars a month range. We'd kind of just live in that range of recurring revenue. People would come on. People would cancel, and we just kind of lived in that cycle. And it wasn't until some home service guys came along and recommended integrations into House Call Pro and Service Titan, right? And because they're. They're using it and they're like, oh, man, it would be so cool if it could do this. It would be so cool if it do this. And we're like, oh, that is interesting. Oh, let's check that out. We started building these integrations, right? And next thing you know, we have this really robust integration into House Call Pro. We also had it with service time, but housecall Pro was, like, primed. Like, we had. We just started getting a bunch of inquiries. People, like, we needed to do this news. And then next thing you know, I'm sitting in my. I'm sitting in my house, because this is during COVID I'm sitting in my house. And I would just go into these Facebook groups, and I would. People would ask questions in the Facebook groups, and I would answer them with, like, a solution and say, oh, you can do it like this. Oh, you do it like this. And then that's. That generated demos for us. And I filled up my calendar for about a year. I would fill up my calendar just through Facebook, just commenting and. And engaging people on social media. And I got. I got chirp up to, like, a hundred thousand dollars a month in recurring revenue. And I realized, like, home services was where we needed to live. And, like, that's where we needed to just focus 100 of our effort. And so we kind of. We kind of closed the doors to everybody else. We didn't close the doors. If people came along, we'd still sign them up, but it was like, we're. All of our energy, all of our marketing, all of our Messaging is going to be directed towards home services, right? And so now I'm at this, another inflection point. I'm like, dang, okay, I've got to figure out how to scale this business. I'm at a hundred thousand dollars a month. I want to get to a, you know, million a month, right? And, and I couldn't do it on my own. I can't just sit and sell this forever. I, I, like, there's a point where the owner has to step away from sales, right? And, and so I read that book, who not how, if you've ever read that book, I highly recommend.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah, he's coming on. He's coming on the podcast either this month or next month.

[Ryan Fenn]

Oh, sweet. Okay, cool. He's great, Great guy. Read that book. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna sit down and I'm going to call a hundred people. I'm going to go on LinkedIn and I'm gonna find a hundred people who claim to be good salespeople for software companies in their bio, you know, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a list of 100 people, and I'm gonna call through and I'm gonna find a guy that can replace me and start selling for me. So I sit down. This is another, like, clear inflection point. I sit down, I pull up LinkedIn, and I hadn't been on LinkedIn in about two years. I, like, there was a time when we were doing chirp where I was like, oh, maybe LinkedIn's a good place to find people. And I added a bunch of people. And I kind of played that game where you add a bunch and try to find leads that way. And I would reach out, and I hadn't been on in two years. So I pull up LinkedIn and I had all these messages in my folder from people I had reached out to two years ago, but just hadn't followed up with them or looked at them. And there's one guy, the very first person I see in my messages, I click on it and it says, quota Crusher. Unicorn builder. The best SaaS salesman you've ever seen. SaaS for anybody doesn't know software as a service. The best sell.

[Jeff Duden]

That's a claim. He, you, you said, I'm looking for somebody who claims it. And he, yeah, he's claiming it.

[Ryan Fenn]

I'm like, cool, Unicorn builder. That's what I want. Unicorn builder. And if for anybody that's not familiar with that term in, in software unicorn, if you get to a billion dollar valuation, you're a unicorn, right? And. And so I'm like, all right, this guy's. This guy's talking some trash. Let's see. Let's see. And so I call him up, and it just so happens to be Justin Judd. And so if anybody knows Justin Judd works for is with Chirp. He's. He's just an absolute killer. He is the most relentless competitor I've ever. I've ever met. And. And it just so happened, out of my hundred people I was gonna call, he was the very first person that I call. And so I call him up, and I'm like. I'm like, hey, you know, I own this software company. You know, I'm not. I'm not really. I don't really know what I'm doing with. With recruiting sales guys. So I'm just kind of just getting to know some people, see if anybody's interested in having a conversation. And he's like, yeah, I. I actually, what's funny is I recently left my company that I worked with, and I'm. I'm. I'm actually looking for another startup to. To work with. I was like, dang, this might be a good fit. So he comes in, we sit down. I was like, this guy. This guy seems like a good fit. Let's. Let's give this a shot, you know? And he. He's like, yeah, I'll do it for, you know, like, I'll do it for cheap for a few months. And if it takes off, then we'll work. We'll work out a commission structure and just figure out what.

[Jeff Duden]

We'll.

[Ryan Fenn]

What makes sense. And. And so he comes in, and our first day, I go, I don't. I don't really know what to do as far as how you want to approach this. I've been doing it on Facebook, however you think. And I said, my idea has been to create a partnership program. I don't really know how that's going to look, but I want to just start reaching out to people in the space and just start seeing what. What. What we can do. I didn't know what a best practice or coaching group was. I didn't know who Tommy Mello was. I didn't know who nexstar was. I didn't know anything at this point. And so we sat down and we just started researching and we started putting on our. On the board, on a whiteboard, the people we thought we should connect with. We put 35 people, companies, coaching groups, marketing groups, different people that we saw, you know, saying stuff on Facebook. And we just put 35 people on that board. And every day we'd come in and go, okay, where are we at with this guy? Where are we at with this guy? We're at this game. We go through that list of 35 people. We didn't know it at the time, but that was a full blown vision board that we were manifesting into our lives. If you guys, you know, I'm a big believer in that stuff. I, I think it's, I think it's all related to how God works and all this stuff. But, but this effort and this energy, putting it out into the universe. And we got, the crazy thing is, is we got all 35 of those partners and Tommy Mello was one of them. He's an investor now in the company nexstar Service world. Just a bunch of marketing agencies. Rhino. There's anyways I could go through Rilla's, you know, there's all these, all these different companies and influencers that we matched with. And now we took it from, you know, a hundred thousand where I was. So I went from 20,000amonth to a hundred thousand on my own. And then with me and Justin, we've taken it to now 650, 700,000amonth. And our goal is, our goal is to get to 15 million in annual recurring revenue before we make some sort of, you know, offer, whether it's, whether it's to sell part of it or do some, some sort of, some sort of deal at that point. But. Right, but that, that's been the, that's the straight line story. Right? It's more like this, but it's, that's, that's where we're at today. And now we're, now we're, we just made a strategic hire yesterday and things are cranking along so well.

[Jeff Duden]

Incredible story. Thank you, thank you for sharing it. And we're, we're catching it right here on, on the way up. So let's talk about the software, let's talk about, about Chirp. And I mean at the core of it, it's, you know, if you think about marketing and you've kind of got this fundamental root of marketing, right, that's basically, you know, a small business. You're going to stand up websites, you're going to do your best to optimize for SEO. You're gonna, and that's going to be on, you know, for all search and, you know, and then, and then, you know, which, and by the way, Chat Gemini, things like that are moving up. There's other considerations now to where people are going to be searching. And then, and then, of course, then, then you do some paid and you, you, you start doing some paid, you either hire an agency that's going to run paid traffic for you and you've kind of got this. All right, my, my front, my digital front door is open and people can come in and browse my wares. And if they're so inclined, they can fill out a form, right? Or they can pick up the telephone and call or, you know, maybe engage with a chat on the website. But like, that's not good enough, right? Because at the end of the day, if you call, I mean, we know this in, in franchise deals, like you're nine times more likely to get a deal with somebody if you talk to them in the first 30 minutes. I mean, if, if, if somebody goes to a third party lead source and like an Angie's or somebody and a lead comes in, I mean, if you can auto dial or auto people back first, you're much more likely to get the appointment. So, you know, speed the lead is what matters. So now and then you've got this concept of, I mean, the second thing is this concept of kind of elevated conversion which sits on top of this stack. And I understand, like in reality it's a funnel and it's all integrated because they might come to the website and then they go to the website, they fill out a form, they don't buy right away or you can't get them back. So now they've got to go into some conversion tactic, right, where you're texting them or calling them or voicemailing them or, or whatever. And then they're going into some other, you know, Lazarus campaign where you might call them, you might call them twice today, once tomorrow, that goes on for seven or nine days. And then at some point, 30 days later, you send them an email that say, are you dead? And something like that. And so all of this is going on, but then, and then, you know, and that's kind of where you live. And that conversion strategy that sits on top of the foundation. And then almost above that, there's this other, once you get the conversion set up, there's campaigning that you can do on top of that, right? So you can say, oh, well now based on our data, we understand that here's another customer set that maybe we weren't paying attention to or we didn't. Like you said, you got to be in it to see it. So now that you're in it and you've got flow it's like, well, what if we could get more customers out of. By attacking this type of referral partner or this type of direct customer or, you know, and then you get, now you get segmentation and customization, which CHIRP allows you to do. So, you know, you saw this opportunity inside of this conversion space. So, like, can you give us some examples of some of the things that CHIRP does exceptionally well and places where, if implemented properly and if managed properly, that it really makes a difference in somebody's business?

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah, for sure. So the first thing you said it. Speed to lead is a huge problem. We put the. Especially new business owners, young business owners, they put the. The surface level is marketing, right? Oh, I need leads, I need leads. I need leads, I need leads, I need leads. They're not. That's like the biggest problem to solve. What they're not realizing is that leads are just the very beginning of the process. And if we don't convert those leads into jobs, we don't make money. And if we don't convert them at a high enough level, we're going to get squashed in marketing because somebody else that does can spend more money to get a lead. Right. Gary Vaynerchuk said it. He said, he who can spend the most on marketing wins, or he, he who can spend the most to get a deal wins. Right? Because. Because now I can go to Google and say, oh, you're willing to pay $2 because you're only converting one out of 10 or whatever.

[Jeff Duden]

That's right.

[Ryan Fenn]

I can pay. I can pay $3 because I can convert one out of five. So I'm going to beat you. And so you have to go, all right, I need to convert at the highest level possible so that I can pay the most money for marketing. And now I can be the best. And so speed to lead is first. That's where the person has raised their hand. They've said, I'm interested in your product or service. I've submitted my information. I have a minute to contact that lead if I want the highest conversion rate. I was very frustrated before when we were kind of living in this space of generating leads and helping people generate leads because we generate leads. And they'd say, oh, these leads suck. And then I'd look and go, well, you took 30 minutes to call them or you called them the next day or whatever. The leads don't suck, you suck. And. And so people aren't really realizing how important that first minute is. It's. It's the very. I mean, you think about Tick tock and Facebook reels and how, how short our attention spans are now as human beings, we are ruined. Like especially post covet. Our attention spans are terrible. And so if somebody fills out a lead and then you don't contact, you contact them 10 minutes later, they might have already forgotten that they even filled out the form. It's like you're way, you're way too late. Right. And so we find that if we can contact within that first minute, we're gonna, we're gonna capture that information, we're gonna send a text message and we're going to start a conversation with that lead within 30, 30 seconds to a minute. That's going to be the first step to converting. And we do that exceptionally well because we are connected with all different types of lead sources. Like you said, Angie, leads, thumbtack forms on your website, anywhere that somebody could submit their information. We can capture that data and then immediately send a text message. And we'll get text back all the time. Wow, that was quick. Thanks for responding. Yeah. And then they have the conversation and close the deal. So speed to lead, crucial, super important. But only the very beginning of this process that's going to help us convert the leads that are ready to convert now. And then there's going to be a huge portion of those leads that are going to go into a bucket that say, I'm not ready to convert just yet. And those ones need nurturing. We've heard it a million times. The fortune is in the follow up. You're going to close, you're going to close leads on the front and that's great. But again, we want to get the most out of our marketing and get the most money. So we also need to convert these guys over here so that we can spend more money on marketing. And so we have to follow up. And the problem with manual follow up is you're never going to get somebody willing to do it consistently. It's not cost effective. Because the actual amount of time it would take to nurture and follow up with leads doesn't give you a return that is, that would make up for the cost of actually doing that.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah, way too expensive.

[Ryan Fenn]

Way too expensive. And then, and then sales guys just hate it. They just hate. Yeah, following up. And so I've always kind of like, I've kind of like, instead of trying to force the sales guys, you know how it is, Owners and sales guys fight all the time because they're like, you're not converting at a high enough level. And the sales guys are like, you're not giving me good enough leads. And it's this constant battle, right?

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah.

[Ryan Fenn]

And so the sales guy, the owners are always going, follow up. More follow up, you know, and, and it's like, well, why don't we just, instead of forcing something that's totally unnatural, let's just take it off their plate and automate it and just make it happen in the background. And now when somebody does. So let's say, let's say the lead comes in, they don't convert. Fifteen minutes, you know, four or five days later, over a process of a, of a few follow ups, the guy responds, oh, you know what? Yeah, sorry, I've been busy. Yes, I'm ready to go. That's like a brand new fresh lead that sales guy can now jump on and close a deal. It's, it's, it's every bit as good as the, the hot leads up front. And so now you're producing more opportunities for your sales guys. They're happier, they're more, you know, they're doing the thing they love doing, which is closing deals. You're happier because you're making more money on your marketing. And automation's making this all happen in the background by just consistently following up with those leads. And you can be as aggressive or non aggressive as you want to be. I tell the joke because early on there's one H Vac guy, he said, my policy in my business is I either reach them or I get a restraining order. Those are the two outcomes. Those are the two outcomes that we're going to have. And so I tell people, you can go as, you can be that aggressive or back it off from there. I recommend to back it off a little from there a little bit. And then I like what you said. The Lazarus campaign, where, okay, let's say over the 14 days they don't convert well, we still have their data, we still have their information. They haven't responded, they haven't opted out. It's next to free to keep following up. There's a small cost in sending text messages, but it's, it's basically zero. And so by the time, you know, there's been times where a text message six months later goes out, says, hey, you reached out to us six months ago about getting your system replaced or whatever the, whatever the thing was, did you. Were you able to get that project finished? And they go, oh, you know what? I didn't actually do it. It's time, It's a better time now, or whatever. And there's a, there's the occasional lead that'll bubble back up. Yeah, it's another free lead, you know, that would have just disappeared into the system. You never would have seen him again. You never would have talked to him again. But because that text message, little lifeline went out to him, you know, they respond and, and there you go. And so those, that, that front end conversion that happens at the estimate and all these different things and the reason we excel and are good at this is again because we trigger these to happen at the right times on the right people. So that's, that's where I live. A lot, a lot of our, A lot of our effort is on the front end converting leads, abandoned calls, making sure if an abandoned call happens that they're getting followed up with. Every, every way that every little leaky hole in your business, we're trying to find that and plug it up. And then, and then from there we try to turn them into raving fans. Get more reviews by following up consistently to get reviews. A lot of people have a review system that'll send out a text, hey, leave us a review. But they don't follow up beyond that.

[Jeff Duden]

Just one.

[Ryan Fenn]

Just one. Yeah. We'll. We'll send out multiple to try to get. Because people want to leave reviews and they just don't have time and it's a pain. You need to nurture them a little bit to get them to leave a review.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah.

[Ryan Fenn]

And then post job nurturing, referral requests, all these different things that can happen after to maintain a relationship. Filter change reminders and just, you know, birthdays and different things throughout the year to keep them engaged and keep you top of mind so that when it's time again to do service, they don't go somewhere else.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah. Do you know you'd mentioned who, not how. Dan Sullivan. I don't know if you run in that strategic coach circle or not or if you go. Have you ever heard of a marketer named Dean Jackson?

[Ryan Fenn]

I've heard of Dean Jackson. I don't know anything about him, but I know that name.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah. Brilliant guy. Brilliant marketer. I was very fortunate to get to meet him last year. I actually retained him to do a project and to really build a pilot for a play. And you know, he talks in his marketing, the way he teaches it. There's a, there's a before unit, a during unit and an after unit. And you know, there's, there's activities you do before, there's activities you do during, and there's things you do after and what you just walked through fit perfectly dovetailed into his before, during and after unit. You know, raving fans and referrals and all of that in the after unit. And then what you're doing to make sure that the people are happy with the fulfillment and of course, all the nurturing on the front end. But, and, and we hired him to do a play and, and I, I really liked it. And it, it was a way to, you know, without, you know, giving away his, all of his genius that you got to pay him for, but you know, to a way to uncover customers that might not be ready today, but sometime within a hundred days and 100 weeks are going to be ready to. They raise their hand and you can do it through a, you know, a high, low, a high value, low, you know, zero cost offer. Give them some information that, that would give you an indication before anyone else in the market would know that these people are interested in your product or your service. And then now the trick is you have to have a system during that 100 days to 100 weeks to keep engaged with them. And it has to be conversational and it has to be, you know, so he uses nine word emails and nine word texts, you know, because, you know, you don't write some big flowery thing with bold letters and bold, you know, all of this and oh, we're the greatest company on the planet. You know, it's like, hey, you know, you know, Ryan, are you still interested in having a fence repaired or installed? You know, whatever it is, and it looks like somebody just picked up and followed up with you.

[Ryan Fenn]

Right.

[Jeff Duden]

But I mean, it's, it's automated and.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yep.

[Jeff Duden]

So, you know, I, I, you know, but it's. So as I think about this, and my question to you is if I'm, if I'm an operator, a single business operator, I don't have an IT staff. Maybe I outsource my marketing to a great company like Rhino or somebody like that. Like, what's the implementation like? Because I know when I talked to Tommy and, and I think I was speaking to maybe Tommy and you at the same time, but it was like when he saw it, he's like, okay, well, I have, I have 42 different things that I want to do with this technology. And I'm going in this weekend and I'm going to make 42 videos and I'm going to make this, that, and the other thing you have out of the box, a basic set of campaigns that people can start using immediately and then customize as they, as they, you know, as they See Necessary. True.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we have, you know, over a thousand companies using Chirp and so we've seen lots of different campaigns and lots of different strategies and lots of different ways to use it. And we have pre built campaigns and I got the idea from Russell Brunson from Click Funnels. If you, if you know anything about Click Funnels, it's a funnel building software for marketing. And what he did was pretty smart. Was he, he, he said if you build a funnel, there's a code here and you can give that to somebody else if they want to duplicate that funnel their own ClickFunnels account. And you could, you could, you know, you could sell, you could basically sell your funnels to other people and give them that code. And, and so early on when we developed Chirp, I said let's develop a code for, for campaigns and then we can hand these campaign codes to people and they can just populate them into their account. And it's become now where people just share them, we don't really sell them, we don't have them for sale but, but they're just there and available. We have all these pre built ones ready to go. And so when you onboard with us, we kind of go through. What do you want to have implemented here are these pre built campaigns. We can walk through and change wording in the text messages or whatever you want to say. We can have AI implement, we can have AI respond in the conversations if you want or have it just be single one off text messages. And then these are pre built ready to go. And then as you, as your mind starts to just see, like you said, you got to be in the game, you got to be in there doing it, but you start to come up with more ways to use it. There's lots of cool ways that have popped up that I didn't think of that our customers think of. You know, like I have. We had one where she said, you know, I want to send out a text message whenever somebody books an appointment with us on it to get an estimate. I want to send out the, the thank you for booking text and then I want to send a second text message a couple minutes later that says, by the way, we understand that this could be financially burdensome. I don't know our exact wording, but.

[Jeff Duden]

Right.

[Ryan Fenn]

If you want to take a look at some of our promotions, we have some great financing options here and a link to their financing. They use good leap and there's other, you know, obviously other ones out there and so you could click Apply, get approved. And now you have approved customers before the cuz before you even get to the house. And it's like, that's like a slam dunk, easy deal because the person already has their, their financing lined up and everything. Yeah, and so that was a bit.

[Jeff Duden]

Of a buying signal.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah, exactly. So that, yeah, so that was a good like campaign that one of our customers came up with that now we make available and say, hey, do you want to use this one? And you know, and so we have these all pre built. We help you implement them, we help you trigger them at the right points and then it's just your job to close deals as those leads are being nurtured.

[Jeff Duden]

So yeah, how, what, what would be a reason that an implementation didn't go as well as it could have?

[Ryan Fenn]

There's, there's sometimes where people will come in and they'll go, I know that's how everybody else is doing it, but I want to do it this way. And they'll come up with some crazy way to do something. Yeah, yeah. And so we're like, okay, will try to make that work and then it doesn't work sometimes. Or, or sometimes they'll have a system that. And what we do find is everybody like it's, it's so crazy. Software, Software takes on a life of its own. Nobody uses Service Titan the same way that another company uses it. Like everybody uses it their own, has their own processes and their own ways of doing things. And so there are some times where we go, well, there's no really way that we can trigger it the way that you're envisioning it to happen because of limitations from, from the way you're doing things in Service Titan. So, so sometimes, certainly there are things. And then of course if you don't use a system that we're integrated with, there's fewer automation opportunities, but there's still the ability to do it, to trigger these things manually. It takes some extra work, but it's still worth the extra work to do. So there's, there's, there could be a number of reasons that it wouldn't go as expected, but generally, and that's why I employ like we have a customer success team and their job is to become funnel building masters, like I call these funnels campaigns so they can problem solve and look and go, you know what, we can't do that organically with Service Titan. However, if we create a zap with Zapier to do this and send it over here and then do this, we can do it and they'll come up with creative strategic solutions on how you can, you can get your vision accomplished. I very, we very rarely say, no, we can't do that. There's. Sometimes we have to figure out some kind of duct tape way of doing it, but usually we can figure it out.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah, I've noticed that with, you know, AI is having an impact in all kinds of businesses, software in particular, and you're starting to see some feature creep. People, people were a specific tool and now with AI, they're kind of expanding and people, people have to make a choice. Business builders, like, you have to make a choice like, do you expand into voice? Do you expand it to this, do you expand it to that? Or do you kind of stay, do you stay in your lane and collaborate with other people that are staying in their lanes? What, what do you see as the evolution for CHIRP going forward is. And you know, I, you, you may not want to talk about some strategic ideas that you have or some paths that you going down, but, you know, are, are you going to be using AI to, you know, to, to make your, I mean, like one of the great, I mean the ability to just interpret customer communications and read them right. Has given rise to a whole new industry of companies building referral automation software. Because, like, referrals was really hard. Like, but for us as a franchise platform with, with multiple brands, like, how do we navigate referrals from one to another without again, having that person talk to somebody and say, what are you looking for? And this, that and the other thing. But now you can read voicemails. You can, you can, you can even have AI reading calls with our operators and pulling, pulling out the opportunity to move those people to another campaign because they've maybe indicated an interest in something else that we do. So, you know, now it's like it can get, you know, now, now that anything's possible, you know, everything's possible.

[Ryan Fenn]

So.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah, yeah. So how are, how are you thinking about CHIRP and, or is it going to be an expanded platform and maybe some voice capabilities? Are you going to, are you going to go deeper into what you're existing?

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah, voice capabilities are definitely happening. They're becoming commoditized. And so it's, it's like just, we just have to have it in there, but it's not going to be our, it's not going to be what we basically market the system as, but it's kind of people are expecting it to be as part of this.

[Jeff Duden]

But what exactly does that, what is exactly, does that mean? For, for the listeners here. Voice.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah. So somebody calls in and, and, and calls, let's say, let's say you send a text message that says, hey Jeff, thanks for requesting information. You know, I'd love to get you on the call. Let's, let's book a time. And they call the number. They go, no, I want to talk to you in person. Now an AI voice can answer and say, hey, thanks for calling. What do you, what are you hoping to accomplish? Or what do you know, what do you need? And they'll say, oh, we want to, you know, my, my system broke and I need a new, I need a guy to come look at it. Oh, okay, great. Let's look at our schedule and see what would work. And it'll actually follow through and book them to your calendar. So the whole process of getting them booked is done via text and voice all along the way with no human, no actual human interaction. I, I have, I have my reservations on some things. I, I, I'm, I, I believe there's going to be a pushback at some point where people are going to start to go, if I don't talk to an actual human, I don't want to talk to you. And then I, but I, I think that's a ways off. I think people are going to really like AI for a long time and I think it's gonna, there's gonna, I think there's gonna be a cycle. Cycle. But for now we are, we are leaning into it 100% and, and ideally pretty soon, hopefully this year we will have it to be where you're no longer creating campaigns. You're just, you're just training the agent and saying, hey, you're a follow up agent. Your job is to follow up. And, and so you don't have to guess, you have to say follow up. Day one, follow up day three, follow up day five. The AI agent will just go, cool, start. You just trigger it and say, start following up. And now it's gonna, it's gonna sense when to follow up and how often it should based on the conversation. And so it'll be more like a human following up based on what's going on with that particular lead. So it'll be more, more customized to that person rather than just the same campaign for everybody.

[Jeff Duden]

Well, yeah, it's the concept of, like agentic AI.

[Ryan Fenn]

Right.

[Jeff Duden]

So like right now there's a bunch of disparate tools that everybody's learning to use. Tools to create content, tools to create campaigns, funnels, tools to code. Yeah, but what's coming is an agent that sits over the top of all of those technologies that you then just speak a powerful future into and it figures out how to build it for you. And, you know, even to the point where, hey, build me this type of business. I want to build a painting business. I want to build it in the city. I'd like you to create me websites. I'd like you to build me an ad campaign. I'd like you to file for my trademark. I'd like you to register me with the Secretary of State. I'd like you to set up my tax ID number. I'd like you to recommend an accountant to me. You know, and you just like it it.

[Ryan Fenn]

I mean, and then there's a point, Jeff, where there's a big button that just says, make me rich. And you push the button.

[Jeff Duden]

You think, you think it's gonna work? I don't know. That's why I'm rich. That's why I'm glad I'm in property services. Like somebody.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jeff Duden]

Ultimately somebody's got to go out and do it it. But who knows, maybe we'll be, you know, sending out robots before too long to do all this stuff.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. Who knows where it goes? And I like what you said. It's like you do all these tasks and then it's like, okay, now I'm going to put a layer above that, do something that does all these tasks for me. Where does that end? Right? Where is like, it's a pretty crazy path.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah. If you, if you read Ray Kurzweil's book, you know, the Singularity is nearer than he. He has an idea about where it lands. You know, I was listening to, to Musk talking to. I forget he was. Which, which podcast it was on. But yeah, he's like, hey, I think it's going to be 80, 80% probability that it's going to be good. And it's. No, you know, it's going to be. He says it's going to go one of two ways. He goes, But I think 80% of probability, it's going to improve life. It's going to make everything better. We're gonna, we're gonna make it our. A tool for us to use and, you know, we're gonna be able to improve quality of life and, and get people doing higher value things instead of tasks and, and elevate everything. He goes, but then there's a 20 chance that it goes really bad, you.

[Ryan Fenn]

Know, and it's probably, and it's probably worse than we could ever imagine.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah. He said, but so it's not, it won't be in the middle.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yes. Yeah. He's interesting.

[Jeff Duden]

He seems relatively thoughtful.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah. Yeah. The rocket ship builder.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah. You think? Well, you know. Well, I'm excited that you were on today and looking forward to building a deeper relationship with your company and, and having you help us, you know, continue to get better at acquiring customers to all of our brands and, and all of that. I, we didn't get a chance to talk about stand up comedy.

[Ryan Fenn]

Probably for the better.

[Jeff Duden]

Really.

[Ryan Fenn]

No, no, no, it's fine, it's fine. Yeah. What question?

[Jeff Duden]

You were a dabbler, you dabbled a little bit.

[Ryan Fenn]

I was pretty serious for a little while. This was before, this was in the, early, in my early 20s when I was going to, pretending to go to school. I heard a guy over, I heard a guy, I overheard a guy saying, oh, I go to this stand up comedy workshop. And I was like, oh, I gotta do that. So I, I went to the improv and I did this workshop which was run by a guy named Gary Cannon. He's, he, him. And I became really good friends, even though he's a total scammer, because the idea of teaching somebody to do stand up comedy is a scam. And, and, and so, but I happened to just be good enough that I could, I could get some laughs and, and, and I was able to do about 10 to 15 minutes. And so I, I opened for some people. I, I worked, I did some old school comedians, guys from like In Living Color and stuff. I did stuff with them and they're like, Polly Shore. I hung out with him, Daniel Tosh, some of these early guys. And I did, yeah, I did, I did. I would open and I would, I would do like 10 to 15 minutes. I did that for a few years. I didn't ever get paid. It was, it's a, it's a hustle where you, you work for five, 10 years before you even start to get paid. But there was a point where I kind of had to make a decision that I'm a fan. I always wanted a family. I'm a, like I said, I'm a religious guy. And so it was a very dark world. A lot of drugs, a lot of alcohol. And I never, I never, I've never had, I've never drank alcohol. I've never even, I've never even tasted it. And, and so I'd be around a lot of this stuff and it was, it just felt really damaging to my soul. And I was A clean comic. I didn't, I don't swear, I don't do any of that. But in order to be successful, you basically just have to perform everywhere and you have to be busy all the time and just putting yourself out there. And that meant being around really filthy stuff a lot and.

[Jeff Duden]

Right.

[Ryan Fenn]

For some people, that's fine. For me, it just, it just didn't feel like the life I wanted to live. And so I, I pulled, I pulled back and, and you know, I've, I, I now do, I do charity auctions now. So I do, I, I can auctioneer. I do the auctioneer chant. And so I do charity auctions and, and I get to speak at a lot of these events and I'm, I get, I get to get that creative side out that way. But it's with more purpose than stand up comedy.

[Jeff Duden]

So, yeah, what did it inform, what did it, what did it teach you about failure and how did it inform your entrepreneurial journey in terms of fear?

[Ryan Fenn]

The. Well, so, yeah, it's the scariest, they say. I, I don't. For, for whatever reason, I wasn't born with that fear of going on stage. Like, I, I don't. I'm more comfortable on the stage than in the audience. But when you can, when you can tell a joke and have it flop because I bought, I bombed a lot. You know, everybody, everybody that does did it has, you know, and when you can get to the point where it doesn't really bother you, that's like, that's like a big deal. It's still, it's. I mean, I never got to the point where it's totally bulletproof, but, but definitely doing that. Everything I do now kind of feels, you know, it's like I can get on a podcast with you or with it, you know, whoever, and it's just like, what are you gonna do that's gonna be worse than bombing, you know, in front of 100 people? So, so, you know, it gives you kind of this thick skin, this kind of bulletproof feeling. And, and then that's really good for entrepreneurship because jokes are developed. What people don't, what people see are really well developed jokes. Like, if they watch a Netflix special, they don't realize that that joke probably took 30 or 40 iterations to get the timing right, getting people to, to buy. And so, and so if people give up on their get, you know, if you give up on your jokes too soon, you're never gonna develop them to a point where they're Netflix ready. Right? And it's the Same for entrepreneurship. Like, if I had given up on Chirp at that early stage where we didn't know where to go. That first four years of just like, man, it was just, we were trying material, you know, we were trying new jokes and eventually one joke hit and it was like, all right, I'm going to tell that joke a hundred times at different audiences until, you know, I'm going to keep telling it until I stop making money with it and move on to the next. So it's a, it's a development process that, that I learned through that, that, you know, kind of gave me that, that foundation.

[Jeff Duden]

How much, how much material you have right now?

[Ryan Fenn]

Right now I have zero. Don't ask.

[Jeff Duden]

You couldn't do. I mean, like, but I mean, if you had to do a tight 10.

[Ryan Fenn]

For charity, I couldn't do a tight 10. I couldn't do it. I, I could, I can, I can always get a good laugh. I can open up and get a good laugh. But it's always, it's always organic. I don't have written jokes. Jokes now I'll go up and, and based on, based on like what other speakers have said. If you saw me at rilla, I made a joke with Sebastian about his mother in law being there and, and got a laugh. And like, so all my stuff's now just organic and just fun. But I don't have written jokes that would be. I did more, I did jokes because, you know, I'm Mormon, so I told jokes about being Mormon, you know, and, and that those always got good laughs. I'd say stuff like, oh, you know, let's get the stereotypes out of the room. I don't have three moms and 60 brothers and sisters. I have, I have one mom and 60 brothers and sisters. You know, stupid stuff like that. But yeah, they're, that's a different life. So.

[Jeff Duden]

Well, I mean, I, I, so when something strikes you, you don't like, talk it and you don't have a little secret file where it's like, oh, that would, that would actually be a good bit. And you just put it in there and sock it away.

[Ryan Fenn]

Generally. No, now I like, everything I do now is just, just is going to be based on the, the situation, the room as it is. So, so like I, I spoke at Tommy's event. I did it. I was actually, I was at Tommy's house and I was making fun of him for being super rich and I was like, I was like making fun of him for like, he's becoming like, overly like dependent on his like butlers and stuff. And yeah, I was making fun of him and I did do that joke because it was like, I'd be like, you know, put on a. Get me my DeLorean, you know, put on a pornographic film for me. You know, like, I'm like, like. And. And that. I was getting him to laugh, so I was like, oh, I'll do that. I'll do that at the show. And I did it. I got some laughs. So. So, yeah, but, yeah, I'm not. I don't develop material like I used to, for sure.

[Jeff Duden]

Well, it doesn't pay, right? I mean, we got. We got enough things to think about there.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah, that's the thing I make. I. Yeah, with my level of capability, my skill, I probably could have got a job on like a cruise ship or something. I probably could have made it to where I was at least making money and like supporting my family. But it would have been like 10, 15 years of struggle and, you know, whatever. Now it's like, I make a lot more money. I get. I get the. I get the fulfillment and I get to do it. I get to have fun. But, yeah, I don't. Yeah, there's. There's no money in it unless you're like, top 1%.

[Jeff Duden]

Well, awesome. Well, this has been great having you on. Do you have time for a curveball and a fastball?

[Ryan Fenn]

I do, absolutely.

[Jeff Duden]

All right, curveball. Gun to your head. Oh, here we go. Gun to your head. If you had to start a business in the next 30 days that you're not currently in, what would you do?

[Ryan Fenn]

Not currently in, like, totally, like just out of the. Out of home services, out of everything.

[Jeff Duden]

Anything. Anything. Could be a home service company or anything. Just, you know, do you. Is there anything that you've thought about that's like, man, if I had time to do that, I would like to do that.

[Ryan Fenn]

Yeah. With the skills. With the skills that I have, I would probably try to create content for reals, for short form content and develop and develop digital products to sell through short form content. Yeah, educational products through short form content. So TikTok reels, these kind of things that can go super viral. I would create. I would use AI to create content that is like, I would obviously want to use authentic content that I. That I. That's from me. But I would use AI to formulate it and create a course or create ebooks and then I would create short form content using comedic style organic reels and point them towards educational products that way. Probably that would be something that would Just be fun for me to do. If it was like, hey, you got to make money for your family, like, right now, I would definitely be like, as much as I'm really good at digital stuff, home services is where I'd probably turn my head and go, okay, if I got to get out of digital marketing, I'm going to get into home services specifically. Probably try to get into H Vac. So.

[Jeff Duden]

Nice. Yeah. Well, you've got. You understand how those sausage is made over there?

[Ryan Fenn]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Duden]

All right. And the fastball. Yep. Last question. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?

[Ryan Fenn]

One sentence to me, make impact in somebody's life. You are of divine creation with divine capability. If you partner with God, he will light up your path and make you more successful in whatever you want to do beyond what you could ever imagine.

[Jeff Duden]

Perfectly said. Can't improve on that, brother. Perfectly said. Ryan, thanks much for.

[Ryan Fenn]

For.

[Jeff Duden]

Thanks so much for being on today. How can people get in touch with you?

[Ryan Fenn]

Obviously, if you want to check out chirp, go to chirp.com, but don't forget that there's two eyes. C h I I r p dot com. If you'd like to reach me directly, my email is ryanchirp.com. i'm an open book. You can also add me as a friend on Facebook. Just look me up. You'll see me smiling. And I like to put out fun content. I like to put out, you know, I like to connect. I like having relationships with people. The bigger the better as far as this earthly family goes. So feel free to add me there. And yeah, that's. That's. That's how you get me.

[Jeff Duden]

So thanks for being on Ryan, Jeff.

[Ryan Fenn]

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

[Jeff Duden]

Yeah, yeah. This has been fun. This has been Ryan Fenn here with Jeff Duden. We have been on the home front. Thanks for.