My Interview With Gary Capps - Founder of myCRMSIM

Speaker A: The host of this podcast lived a Life that included 52 trips to Las Vegas to bet on baseball for a living. A, ah, life that included selling over $1.5 million worth of bootleg DVDs and lost it all. A life that included being sued by the NFL for $10 million, a, ah, $119,000 tax, lien, house in foreclosure, no job, divorced, an emotional wreck, living assistance, and finally, on the floor with a gun to his head. And now he's risen from the ashes. From the ashes and turned it all around. This is the Lead King Podcast with Russ Ward. Tactics and strategies to grow your digital marketing business, get clients, and produce amazing results. Russ will teach you strategies that he used to build himself up from one of the lowest points of his life. Now, with a thriving, growing business that just had its first $30,000 month, he can teach you to go from zero to $10,000 a month and more. This is the Lead King Podcast and this is Russ Ward.

Speaker B: Welcome once again to the Lead King Podcast. My name is Russ Ward. I am the Lead King and I am your host. Today I have a very special guest. He is somebody from the land down under in Australia, somebody that I have, um, followed for a while and admired, and somebody that probably a bunch of you already work with. But you're gonna get to hear the cool backstory of how this all came about. How, uh, people are doing massive database reactivations and how people are sending text messages without A2P and all that great stuff. Welcome to the Leaking Podcast. Today, Gary Capps, the founder of my CRM Sim.

Speaker C: Hey, Russ, thanks for having me, mate.

Speaker B: Yeah, man, it's great to have you. And, uh, like I said, I've been following you for a while, uh, been a big fan of yours. And, um, I don't know, I've referred a bunch of people to you because we have these massive issues with a 2P. And, um, you know, that's one of the big problems that your business solves. But is that why you started the business? Or did you start it for another reason to begin with?

Speaker C: Uh, well, we started because we were using, uh, SIM cards. So basically, I guess if anyone's listening, they don't know what we do. Um, we send text messages through SIM cards, through mobile phones instead of using Twilio or lead connector with high level. So the reason why we started doing that was for our own business because, um, unlike you in America, where your cost of SMS is really cheap, um, our cost of SMS is about six times that. So it's about six cents per text message to send and so, and um, six cents us. So by the time you transfer that over to Australian dollars, it's about 9 cents roughly per text to send one message. Which racks up really quickly in terms of cost for clients. So we started doing that in our agency for our clients because of a cost issue basically. And we also had before A2P came in in the US we already had something called reg bundles which we still have, which is similar to a 2P. It's not strict, um, but it's a way that you had to provide information for a business um, to get them approved for a texting number in, in Twilio or LE Connector. So that was also a blocker for us. Or it was just a pain because you had to go to a client and say hey, I need this, I need your business number, I need a verified um, invoice of, you know, where your business is and so on and so forth. So you had to get this paperwork and put it in and it took a while to, to get set up. So basically it was cost and it was a bit of a hassle to get set up. So we did that for ourselves uh, in our business and we've been doing that for bit over four years or so. And then we turned it into a uh, platform that we could on sell to other agencies because other agencies were having the same issues and hence my CRM SIM was born.

Speaker B: So you say you had a marketing agency and basically you were just solving a problem in your own agency. Did, are you a developer? Did you hire a team of developers? How did it come about?

Speaker C: No, I mean I'm not a developer. I mean my background is in engineering and PLC programing so I used to program buildings for a living. That was, that was my start into working life. So anything you wanted to plug into a building and turn on, off, up or down is what I used to do. So thinking of um, like alarms, fire alarm systems, air conditioning, security systems, all that kind of stuff. So I have a very solid technical background but I'm definitely not a developer. So you know we hired, well we now have a full team, uh, and an office and everything with developers in there. But um, we hired, we hired a contractor team to start with to build our stuff out and then as we scaled and now we have like a full product suite with clients on it, we have our own full in house team of developers.

Speaker B: Wow, very interesting. So do you still run a marketing agency or do you do this full time now?

Speaker C: We do, we still have a marketing agency. Um, we're not focused on that so much as in like we're not really looking to take clients on in there because this has become significantly uh, bigger than our agency ever was. Um, but we still have clients. I've still got clients I've had for six, seven years plus with us. Um, so we're still servicing SEO and SEM. We still have our white label agency with clients in there using our white label high level. So we still have that, we still have them going but we're not focused on growing that at the moment.

Speaker B: Wow, very cool. So back to my CRM sim. I know you guys originally started out with um, just SMS and we're going to talk about the imessage aspect here in a few minutes. But I know it solved a huge problem for a lot of people, especially with the monetary costs in countries like yours, but also the database reactivations. Like a lot of people were getting stuck on that, on the opt out language, on the A2P and then the sending limitations. Like I'm sure you've had a lot of massive success stories from clients that have used your software to do this. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the big successes people have been having because of that?

Speaker C: Yeah. So uh, like I say, yeah, that is a big problem for people. So they're trying to run their DBRS and getting stuck with like that opt out, that 1% opt out. So you send 100 text messages and you get two people say stop. Then you'll instantly, well not instantly but you know you can get your, your account blocked with Twilio and then you might have to go through a process to try and get it reactivated. Um, but yeah, clients, it's an easier way to set that up with our system. Um, so clients are able to do that and then they can send them out immediately. And we have a lot of clients like they use us and it allows them to deliver on their promise to their client. So the agencies that use us, they can deliver on their promise to their client because they can set them up and say, yep, we're going to do a database reactivation for you. We'll get that started by you know, whatever tomorrow, Friday and they know that they can get it done. Whereas when they go through the Twilio path, um, you know there's people that do very well with Twilio and getting a 2P through and they can get it done within 24 hours. You know, that's a pretty fast time. Personally I've never done it because I've never had to because we always use our system. But uh, from all the people I speak to, like if you can get it through in 24 hours you're doing pretty well. And there's a lot of people that do manage to do that but some people don't and then there's no rhyme or reason why they can't get it through. And then that's a real blocker for an agency because they've told their clients that we're going to get this up and running, we'll be going by Friday for you. And then if they can't get their Twilio uh, up and running it's just a massive pain to them and then they've got to explain to their clients oh look, you know, sorry, we just, we're just waiting on the paperwork, you know or whatever it might be. So that's a real bonus for our clients. And we have clients and one of them, it's not specifically database reactivation but his promise to his clients is for Facebook ads. And he says if you sign with me in the morning I will have your Facebook ads and lead forms up and running with SMS follow up to with by the afternoon. And he knows that he can do that because he's got the templates for Facebook ads. Uh, he gets that up and running and then he can plug in a uh, phone and a SIM card and he knows that he can have that running by the afternoon and that gets clients on board with him quickly because he can deliver on that promise every time. And they like that. So like okay, because they don't want to wait. You know, everyone wants things quickly.

Speaker B: Yeah. And that's something that I learned a lot from, from some of my mentors in marketing is that number one people will pay more money if you're willing to do it fast and number two they're much more willing to sign with you immediately if you can say hey I can have this done by this afternoon or tomorrow or whatever. So, so that's a huge, huge bonus. And guys, just for those of you who might be listening and you're like what the heck is a 2P? Most people that use high level are in the automations primarily. I mean it's, it's a big chunk of what we do with high level but for those who don't know a 2P and I forget exactly what it stands for. Gary probably knows basically you have to register your phone number, you have to register your business and you basically have to get permission from the phone Carriers like Verizon T Mobile, uh, to send text messages over their networks. And here in the United States we have to jump through a lot of hoops. We have to have an LLC set up, we have to have an EIN number, we have to have a legit business and a website, you know, and an opt in form and all this good stuff. And then you submit that for approval and kind of just pray that they approve it. And if they don't, they don't really give you good feedback of why they didn't approve it. You could try this over and over and over and every time you do it they charge you anywhere from like 15 to 25. So there are people that have been out there that have done a 2P over and over for like three and four months and they're just giving up on it. So what Gary has come up with, I mean completely 100% solves this problem and yet some people out there still just insist, no, I have to have this done through Twilio, no, I have to have this done through um, lead connector phone. And, and I really think based on my own clients that were giving me pushback on it, that they just don't understand how easy this is. Can you tell us a little bit Gary about um, the technical side of the setup? So let's just say they're a normal high level user, uh, they're not the most technical person in the world. Would it, would it be a medium hard setup? Would it be, would it be easy? Like what would it be like for a brand new average user?

Speaker C: So uh, it's, it's really easy. So what high level do if people are not aware of this is high level have a marketplace. All right, so there's apps that you can download from the marketplace to your high level account. So we have an app in the high level marketplace. We're actually the fifth most downloaded app in the world in the high level marketplace. So we are, I can confidently say we are the number one alternative for SMS to Twilio or Lead Connector because of the volume of clients that are using it and the app downloads that we have. So you download the uh, app into your high level account, uh, there's a simple connection uh, from our account to basically integrate and it connects are platform to your high level account. So then they're synced, um, you download an app onto the phone, it's slightly different. We have image imessage as well which you mentioned, which is slightly different but still very similar. Um, you download an app onto your phone, you Scan a QR code in our ah, in our dashboard which connects the phone into our ah, dashboard and then you literally pick your sub account. Say I want to connect this device to this sub account. So literally if you've, if you've done it a few times, like, like me, I mean I've connected a few times, I can connect one literally a minute. That's how long it takes me to do one um, brand new user who has to watch the video. Like our install video is six minutes long because I'm talking through it and step by step and explaining it. Brand um, new user who has to watch the video and get their phone and stuff. They could be, they could be up and running their first time within 20 to 30 minutes. We had a little bit of um, friendly rivalry in our Facebook group at one point in time where people were vying to see who could get their one set up the fastest as a new user and our fastest. This brand new user from unboxing a phone and getting connected and sending their first text message was a touch over five minutes for a brand new user. And they didn't even bother watching the video. They just went through and went okay, I can figure this out and just did it basically. So you know there's a varying spectrum at the end of the day but like we've made it as simple as you can possibly make it to, to get connected. That's, that's really one of the, one of the main goals of what we wanted to achieve was make a real nice easy process. No, no. Having to fish around and get web hooks and connect an API and do this, that and the other. It's like scanner, echo, connect, you're done.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I, I know that it was super easy for me and I, like I was telling you before, I didn't use your service for a while on the um, SMS side just because I had like a hundred um, HP verified numbers. I didn't really need it but I was doing it for clients and it was just super easy. And the hardest part for me though was um, if they were like Canadian, I would need to like find a phone plan appropriate for them. Can you talk a little bit about like the different phone plans and the different parts of the world? Like what I know you have documentation that tells people about that, but is it, is it difficult to figure out what to do in terms of that?

Speaker C: Yeah. So with phone plans. So pretty much every phone plan comes as unlimited SMS in air quotes according to or in conjunction with their fair use policy, whatever that might be for that carrier or that provider and most of them don't really have a number behind that that. So their fair use policy, most of them say something along the lines of um, basically you can't use our system m more than someone else to the degradation of our system basically. So you can't overuse it. So fair use policy, unlimited SMS doesn't mean that you can go and send a million text messages a day. All right. They're just not going to allow that obviously. So we have uh, we have a lot of users now. We have a big agency group so we try to uh, try to, we have sort of crowdsourced from a of our users in different countries what phone plans they're using, um, how they're using those successfully, um, a little bit of info where, where we can on what the fair use policies are. Um, so we have a list of phone plans in different countries that we kind of, I wouldn't say we recommend as such but we've had good feedback from clients because that is one of the challenges for us is that I mean I'm in Australia so I'm not using US phone numbers because I'm not in the US So we have to rely on our clients, say hey these are good plans that, that we've um, that we've used and we that into a list for clients. So yeah, in terms of that we, we've had some clients who have just literally rung up the telco provider just said hey, it says here your fair use policy is, you know, you can't send more than someone else. What is that limit? Tell me, I want to know. And if you call them up they, they should tell you. Um, so we know for certain plans, how many, what that limit is and then with that as well. There are some things around there too with SIM cards in is that uh, you can't get a brand new SIM card and then just start sending out a ton of text messages. It's a little bit like email. Everybody understands this with email. Set up a brand new email account. You can't then go and send out your newsletter to 10,000 people immediately because 9,900 of them will probably end up in spam because it's brand new SIM cards. Working in a similar fashion is that you know, buy a brand new SIM card. You do need to spend a little bit of time and get some back and forth traction with that and some conversations happening in there which we help people with as well. We've got snapshots, we've got ways to do that with, with AI bots and stuff like that. But as you build them up, um, you can send out pretty high volumes depending on the countries you're in, the, the authority or the, the um, the age of your SIM card and stuff like that as well. But yeah, we provide all that. And I tend to think about us now, we are a tech company and I think more and more about this the more we grow. We are a tech company, we provide tech. But I view us more as an educational company now to sort of actually teach and train people how to use SMS and use it, um, conversational transactional marketing messages rather than like blasts out to people as well. So we really want to help people with that part, which I think is really important.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I know everybody's going to ask because they're going to want to send the most amount of messages possible. Um, what's your pricing on this? I know it's 97 bucks a month, but how many accounts can you connect for that and what's the pricing per account after that? So let's say you want to have a whole bunch of accounts for a whole bunch of clients.

Speaker C: So yeah, so we have a couple of different plans. I'll talk through different. So we, we are uh, the only company that offers SMS, WhatsApp and iMessage all in one platform. So we do all three. We're the only one that does that. Uh, SMS plans, which is what we started with, um, is they start at $97 for up to 10 sub accounts with 1 SIM per sub account. So basically one number attached to each sub account. If you want to add more, then you can add as many SIM cards as you want to a sub count. So if you want to double the volume or whatever it might be, or have a number per sales rep, you can add extra SIM cards to each sub account and they start from $10 um, per additional SIM card. And those plans there they go from $97 for 10 sub accounts all the way up to 497 for unlimited. And if you're on the unlimited plan, then it's only $3 for every extra SIM card. So, so pretty pretty cheap for that. Um, and then we have WhatsApp. So WhatsApp is a bit different. It's 29 per number. That allows you to use a regular WhatsApp number rather than the business number which, um, if you're using those will make you use um, what do you call it, the verified messages. You get stuck in the time windows as well. So you can't use those as effectively as you can a personal number. And our new imessage service that's just released is 29 per number as well. I should say actually sorry for both WhatsApp and iMessage. 29 per number for the first 10 and then after that once you get past 10 it's 19 per number. So you, it does get cheaper as you add extra numbers.

Speaker B: Right, okay. So the thing about the 497 plan that you guys have is agency owners, that's just a no brainer for them because they could literally bring in new clients constantly, constantly have new SIM cards coming in and they never have an issue ever within a 2P are sending out text messages. So I'm sure you have a lot of agencies on that big 497 plan that's unlimited, right?

Speaker C: Uh, we, we do. We have a good few. Um, a lot of people are in that mid tier though. So we offer a very good mid tier one where they're up to 50. Um, the 497 plan, I mean be honest, in the High Level community there's not, there's not a massive amount of agencies that have massive numbers of sub accounts as well. Anyway, so we have a good few on there. We've got some, we've got some of the bigger players that are using our system on the 497 plan. But most people do fit into our uh, middle tier plan around that 297 mark. Cool.

Speaker B: Okay, so this is the part most of the people are going to want to hear about. And that's why I saved it for the end. Um, as many of you know, I've been promoting um, imessage for High Level for a while. I started out when I went to the High Level conference last year in Dallas and I saw these goofy guys out doing a protest against green Bubble Bubbles. Like they literally went to uh, Craigslist, they hired some professional protesters, they held up signs and they were protesting green bubbles walking around on a street corner. And I went down and I was like, what the heck are you guys doing? And they explained to me that they were basically doing promotions for ads they were making so they could do imessage through High Level. And they explained to me that, you know, this is how we have it set up. We have like 6000 phones in a warehouse and it's super expensive. But I actually became their very first reseller for a company named Center Blue. And they were really cool, great people. Love their CEO, love their mission, love Their vision, but they were super expensive. I remember they required me to do a $1,000 setup fee, and then it was $1,000 a month. And it, it was very popular because a lot of people here in America and Gary and I were talking about this, like, um, other parts of the world don't understand this American obsession with blue bubbles, but we do have it. A lot of us do. And so a lot of people wanted to be able to send imessage from High level, and they were willing to pay a thousand bucks up front. Um, but what I found was as a reseller with those guys just wasn't sustainable. They weren't seeing the return on investment. Paying $1,000 for an iMessage line, even though the response rates are much higher, they still weren't getting the return on investment. So I had continually gone out looking for other solutions. And there were a couple other providers out there that were not as expensive, but it was still very costly. And it just didn't make enough sense for people to, to actually go ahead and sign up for the program. So now that Gary has this, through my CRM M simulation, um, I'm a customer, I'm using it for myself. And, um, I went through the whole setup process multiple times. I've talked to Gary's developer because, uh, I'm just, I'm. I'm very curious about the tech side of things. Like, hey, how does that work? Why does that break? Why does that crash? Stuff like that. And I can tell you, these guys are on top of it, man. Um, like, I had a little bit of a problem because I, I set things up and quite honestly, um, I didn't watch the setup videos, so it screwed up for me. And I'm sure a lot of people are like that. But Gary, um, everyone's excited about imessage for high level, especially at the price point you have, because as opposed to $1,000 a month now we're down to 29 bucks through you guys, plus, you know, some other, other things we need to have. Um, can you just talk a little bit more about the imessage and why it's so popular and, you know, what's going on with it.

Speaker C: Yeah. So, yeah. Thanks, Matt. So with imessage, so it's only been, it's literally two weeks, Two weeks and one day since we launched imessage. And, um, you've been very helpful in that as well, because with anyone who's ever developed anything, if they've ever developed a piece of software, will know that with all the best Testing in the world. We had beta testers and stuff. Once you actually launch it out into the wild is when you really find stuff out as well. So everything works. And it all worked swimmingly for, uh, beta testers and we had everything working then we put out in the world and then we find some of the things and different platforms where there's an issue or a challenge and so forth. So that feedback is something that we really thrive on as a company because it helps us to grow and develop. I think we've put out, um, about six updates in the last two weeks, basically to our, uh, imessage system based on feedback because, you know, you don't know what you don't know until you go out and rush. You've been very helpful in that as well in some of the stuff that you found. Um, so that's been really good. But with releasing that, I guess, uh, I could say part of our goal as well is like as uh, a company, as an agency owner myself, all, uh, Right, right. Is that I really understand that with imessage, it's not really that feasible for most agencies to use imessage for their clients if it's going to cost them $1,000 a month. It's just, it's not something you can do and go to a client, say, yeah, cool, we can get you imessage if you want and that'll be a thousand dollars a month. Or we can use Twilio for you, you know, if. Take us out of the equation. Or we can use Twilio for you if you're in the US and it's going to be $0.01 per take. Next. What do you want to do? The value isn't really there. It's very, it's a very hard sell. So what we've done as well as part of, you know, our company, is to make sure that we've made it really affordable. So it's 29 per number and we've also made it. So it's a little bit different now with imessage and you mentioned it there, Send blue. Um, and some of the others are doing this. They've got thousands of phones and they've got hardware in a warehouse. All right. Or all stacked up somewhere nice and neatly. But we allow you to bring your own hardware so you can use your own iPhone and you do also need a Mac computer as well. So we explain all that in our, uh, in our instructions. It's again, it's very easy to set up and install. You just download our gateway, connect the things Together and you're good to go in a few minutes. But with that you then reduce a massive amount of the overhead and cost because you just, you just run it, you just have a computer running and an iPhone and away you go. You can connect any old iPhone, any number. So there's a massive cost saving in that because we're not managing, um, the overhead of the hardware. We also believe that that gives us a massive advantage for our, uh, users as well because we've got a massive distributed network. Everything isn't sitting in one place. Now. I don't know Send Blue's technical setup, obviously that's pretty secret to them. I mean they don't even display their pricing on their website site, which I find odd. But uh, we, we provide all of that. We provide all our pricing, we provide all our setup guides. Everything with us is very, very open and upfront, like our support knowledge base. Everything that people can see, everything that we do. But we have like a distributed network for all our uh, users. So you've got your hardware, you've got your phone set up in your Mac, Russ in your office. And then we've got clients who are in their country, their office, they've got their clients with it set up. So it distributes everything out into different places. Now having that set up in one location is going to be more challenging. Like Apple are pretty smart, so they're going to probably figure out at some point there's all these devices in one area sending out these messages, I would think. So Having that distributed network allows us to have a safer system, we believe, and also just reduce that cost massively. So now you can go to a client, say, hey, look, uh, even as an agency you can mark it up, mark it up two or three times and say, look, it's going to be $50, $97, whatever it might be. And then we can connect iMessage for you as well. Would you like that? There's actually scope for margin for clients to use this now fully within their agency and with their clients.

Speaker B: Right. And that's, that's a really big deal because I've gone out to my clients and every single person I talked to said, yes, I want it. Um, and as for me, you know what I'm doing, uh, I'm actually using your system to actually start a, another business and other agency owners might want to do the same thing. So, you know, there's a lot of people out there that don't want to. If they're not Mac people, they don't want to get an iPhone, they don't want to get a Mac, Uh, they don't want to figure this all out. So I'm actually doing a couple of things where I'll actually host it all for you and I'll run it for you. And then if you want to cancel, that's fine, I'll just move your system to somebody else. That's something I'm providing. And then the other thing I'm doing, because a lot of people I talk to actually work kind of technical like me. They're like, I don't want you to do all that. I'm actually doing zoom setup calls because I was one of the early adopters to this. Um, I'm jumping on zoom calls, charging a one time fee and then I'm just walking through the whole process of how do we set up the Mac, how do we set up the iPhone, how do we connect it to your system and your platform and how do we make it all work? Because as you know, I had a lot of questions when we first started because everything was brand new and thankfully you and your developer team were really helpful to me. But I think your average person that bumped into those questions might not have even known to ask the questions I was asking just because I was just so deep into the weeds of it, you know, so there's a lot of opportunities out there, guys. Um, you can, sure, you can use iMessage for yourself, you can mark it up, you can resell it, but you can also do what I'm doing and you can have your own little host of um, like I have a, I have a rack here and I don't have a lot of clients yet because I just started this, but I have about six MacBook computers that I'm going to put on this rack and I'm just going to start hosting this for people that want me to host it, which is pretty cool. Um, but I will tell you that the, the setup, if you know what you're doing even a little bit, it, it's really easy, especially if you're an Apple person. If you're an Apple person, all you need to do is have an iPhone, you have a Mac, you make sure your Apple ID is connected both on the same, the same system on both of them and you just connect to Gary's system. I mean, it's so easy and it's so, so cost, um, effective. Um, one thing I did want to ask you, Gary, that's popped up recently for me and a couple of clients and I don't know if you've heard about this or in your group or with feedback is the number one issue we have had is as soon as we set up a new Apple ID for these new devices we're getting like Apple's instantly banning them and I haven't had an issue with getting them unbanned. But I have to call Apple, I have to go through this whole process. They have to unban it on their side. Have you heard anything like that? And do you have any like recommendations to not have that happen?

Speaker C: No, no, honestly I haven't. We were on um, DMs, I think it was last night and you mentioned that you'd had that issue and I think it was with a second hand Mac that you'd purchased. Was that. Yes.

Speaker B: So, so in my case I, I purchased a Mac off of ebay. Uh, I think I paid $117 for it. And then the coolest thing guys too is, is I bought an iPhone 7. The seagull will actually work with an iPhone 7 and I paid 25 bucks. Um, and yeah, well I'll tell you what, there is, there is actually something else I wanted to tell you in your developer team too, but I might as well tell you on the podcast. Um, with an iPhone 7, depending on the carrier they may not have a SMS forward button on there, there and so on. On the newer phones there's, there's an option to forward sms and all that means is that the way it's set up now is if imessage doesn't go through it's gonna, it's gonna back up to green text message, regular sms. But if you don't have that forward SMS button on there, it's actually not gonna do it and everything's just gonna fail. So I learned that by working with Apple, um, over some, some troubleshooting calls. So if you are using a much older phone like I am for this, um, I'm probably gonna upgrade it because I won't be able to revert back to the green text messages. Um, so that's just one thing.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, you messaged me about that last night and this is what we thrive on as well because I actually instantly. You sent me that last night that's actually now in our uh, support docs basically to put that in there. Um, but with the thing with the Apple id. So the only other person I'd heard of who had an issue with Apple ID was the same situation as you. They bought a secondhand one. The Apple ID had been um, Spammed on the computer so they couldn't use it in their case they went back to where they purchased it from. They bought it from um, it was cash converters which is a um, like a pawn shop basically in, in Australia so you can go and you know floggy things for cash. So they went back and they exchanged it for a different, explained the problem to the shop owner and they purchased or uh, they swapped it for a different device. So that's the only thing that I've heard with someone else at the moment. I hadn't heard until you messaged me last night about getting it unblocked with Apple and that was even a case. But again this is all stuff that we will get through user uh, feedback because we kind of supply everything at the end of the day in terms of like here you go, here's the training, here's the device, here's the software, do with it as you will so to speak. And then we grow off of user feedback because we've got thousands of users so our users can provide us great feedback like I said on the sim plans, all those kind of things it helps us. So that's something I guess that we'll find out as that if it's occurred for you and it's curved for one other person before we'll find that out as we go. The only thing where we've seen that is we were trying it. There are certain places um, where you can hire Mac Minis online for between 50 and 100 US dollars per month to actually rent an online Mac Mini. We were testing some of those as an option and we found that those had had their Apple IDs blocked already. So it's pretty obvious that people are renting those for whatever purpose, spamming the hell out of that machine and then getting them blocked. So we weren't able to use those machines again we'll go back to our community with some of this and there'll be other people that will want to test these things as well which will help us with feedback. And if there's a way that we can get those unblocked maybe then, maybe then they are a viable option. If people don't want to have a physical hardware device, um, like you're getting in a uh, in a rack, then they can rent a Mac Mini online. But again this is all stuff, it's very very early days as in two weeks and a day since we launched imessage what we know today and what we're going to know in three months time are probably going to be very different things, but it's still a great system, it's a great way to do it and it's, it works incredibly well. Really, really happy with the way that it's. It's come out.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And, and just one more thing to add to the Apple IDs. Um, I actually went through and I got three of them unblocked now because as I was going through the process, I was like, I might as well just get a whole bunch of them and have them saved up and have them clear. Uh, what I noticed is if I called in and I said, hey, this is, um, I'm just using this for a secondary business line. The only reason I'm using this Mac and this phone is just to do messages on a side table. Um, they kind of sort of understand that and it kind of makes me not look like a spammer as I'm doing it. So I just told them every time I called, I was like, this is for a secondary business line. I just need you to unblock this because I'm using it for my business. And they verify who you are, send you a couple messages. And I think the more legit you make yourself rather than. I know some people hate like calling support and they yell at them and stuff. Like, you just got to be nice to them and make it seem like it's a legit purpose. And it is a legit purpose because honestly, if you start spamming people with these imessage bots anyway, like, they're gonna block your Apple ID in two seconds. Because I know you, you guys recommend, what, no more than 50 a day, new conversations, right, Gary?

Speaker C: Yeah. So with I. So imessage and SMS are uh, two different beasts basically. So just to step back to sms, first of all, with SMS you can do higher volume, like through the Android phones and sms you can get up to, um, one message per minute through sms, like standard sms, depending on the carrier with. And the age of the SIM card, stuff like that, imessage is definitely lower volume. Um, the safe number as we understand it at the moment is up to 50 new contacts per day. Now you can send as many messages as you want to those 50 contacts, but no more than 50 new contacts or new numbers per day. Otherwise there's a good chance that your number could get looked at and potentially, um, blocked by Apple. So what you've just said is actually really helpful for us because we can add that to our docs because I'm sure that there were people, there will be people that will get their, their Number blocked by accident or whatever, because accidents do happen. I've personally got one number blocked ever. I tell this story all the time. I've had one SIM card blocked in almost five years of using it. And it was an accident. A webhook fired. We sent out two and a half thousand Google reviews like that and the SIM card got blocked. But we simply rang up the provider, said, hey, there's something weird going on with our phone number. And then they unblocked um, it for us. But having this feedback and these conversations that will all go back into our knowledge base, that's all help for our, uh, other users and go, okay, well if that does happen, here's a path for you to take so we can help supply the information. So that's, that's really good info to have for us.

Speaker B: Right. Well, I'll tell you what, Gary, this has been a really awesome interview. Really appreciate you taking the time because I know it's bright and early over there in Australia. It's tomorrow our time here in the US and um, like I said, I, I've really admired you, uh, followed you, watched you along the way and I know a lot of other people have, so they're really going to be happy to hear from you. Just, um, want to thank you again for your time today and um, just let the audience know, uh, what's the best way to, to follow you get to be part of your ecosystem, your group, and, and where to find all the stuff that you sell.

Speaker C: Best place, go to, uh, my crmsim.com find us on there. There's links to our community, there's links to all our different products. Join our Facebook group. Um, probably should have had that ready. Facebook group, my CRM, sim, M, whatever it is. But yeah, if you go to mycrmc.com you'll find everything through there. Our agency group's pretty cool as well. Well, we provide heaps of tons of training, education, value. We do webinars every week. We have open office hours. Like we really are about trying to make sure that people do this the right way. Like we don't want people spamming at the end of the day. I always want to make that really clear to our users, like ultra. If you're going to buy this and just be spamming people, don't, don't do that. Like you're going to get your one, you're going to get yourself blocked. You're not going to get value out of it anyway. It's not going to work. Follow the processes that we provide and we provide snapshots, we provide custom GPTs to help write text messages. Do everything the right way and you will go further basically than trying to really shortcut and just smash stuff out. It's not going to work very well for people. So we want to train and educate people to do things the right way.

Speaker B: Is that a, uh, is that a separate group from the MYCRM SIM group? Is that a different group or is it all in the same place?

Speaker C: We have a Facebook group. Um, so our Facebook group. Oh, actually I've got it here. Facebook group, sorry, facebook.com forward/groups, forward slash. MyCRM Sim. So that's our Facebook group. We've just set up a Go Colab community as well on High level because last week we've been planning on doing this for a while, but last week there were a spate of big groups getting shut down, including the official High level community that we all would have seen. So we've set up our own Go Lab community as well. So we have both of those now to make sure that we can put all the information out and get it to users. Because Facebook groups are amazing, um, but also they have a bit of a limited reach. Our Go Colab group is a good place to go. You'll definitely, definitely get the info in there.

Speaker B: Yeah, I actually just joined it the other day, so appreciate the invite. Um, and guys, I will put all of Gary's contact and the groups and all that stuff in the, uh, show notes. So wherever you're watching this at, there will be a, um, blurb of text underneath with links and things. Um, in full disclosure, if you guys are going to sign up for CRM sim, I am going to give you my affiliate link and appreciate if you use it. And, um, that's all I got today, guys. Um, I really appreciate Gary's time today. Gary, any last words before we say goodbye to you?

Speaker C: Last words? I think just use text messages. Use them responsibly. Use them for your clients. Follow a good process. If you do database reactivations for your clients and use the snapshots and everything that we provide, you will do incredibly well. And think about having conversations through text message. This is what I want everybody to understand, right? Have conversations through text texts. And even if you're sending out a group message or you're sending out, uh, a message to a thousand leads, consider that you're sending that text message to one person and you're having a conversation with that one person and you want them to respond to you and you will do way way better than sending out these text message blasts that I see people do. So have conversations, guys. Conversational text is going to win the day for you.

Speaker B: Thank you, Gary.

Speaker A: You've been listening to the Lead King Podcast with Russ Ward. Russ Ward has been through everything. Losing houses, money, a, uh, wife sued by the NFL, tax liens, and through it all has risen from the ashes. Yes, the Lead King podcast covers tactics and strategies to grow your digital marketing business, acquire clients, and of course, get results. But more than that, we talk about the mindset that's required to endure the frustrations, the failures and the setbacks of growing a marketing agency. Email russ@russwardthelead.com on Facebook at the Lead King and on Instagram at Lead King Digital Marketing. And the website is the lead king.com if you want to grow your digital marketing business from nothing to 10k a month and beyond, and if you want to learn how some of the best in the business did it, you're in the right place.

Speaker C: Place.

Speaker A: Till next time, this is the Lead King Podcast. Signing off.