The Power of Phrayz w/ Jack Fleming | Ep. 214

In this episode of Biz/Dev, we sit down with Jack Fleming, founder of Phrayz and Socialry, and someone who is deeply embedded in the Wilmington startup community.

Jack is one of those builders who is constantly in motion, running an agency, launching new products, and bringing founders together through things like 1 Million Cups. That perspective shows up in how he thinks about business.

We get into how working across so many industries shaped his approach to marketing, what pushed him to build Phrayz, and why creating content without real context behind it rarely works.

Along the way, we talk about the energy it takes to build early, staying close to the people you are serving, and what it looks like to grow something while you are still figuring it out in real time.

Jack on LinkedIn

Phrayz on LinkedIn

Phrayz Website

___________________________________

Submit Your Questions to:

hello@thebigpixel.net

OR comment on our YouTube videos! - Big Pixel, LLC - YouTube

Our Hosts

David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

Contact Us

hello@thebigpixel.net

919-275-0646

www.thebigpixel.net

FB | IG | LI | TW | TT : @bigpixelNC

Big Pixel

1772 Heritage Center Dr

Suite 201

Wake Forest, NC 27587

Music by: BLXRR

Transcript

[00:00:02] Jack: But from ideation to distribution, we're also finding that marketers are using over seven different tools to create one different post.

Again, our biggest aspect is just streamlining the process for them.

[00:00:17] Gary: Hello and welcome to the Biz Dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm your host today, Gary Voight, our typical host David is not here with us. I am joined by my co-host today,

[00:00:29] Christie: Christy

Bron. 

[00:00:31] Gary: the head of our marketing department and a much better guest than David Kristi Pronto.

[00:00:36] Christie: Hello.

[00:00:37] Gary: More importantly than her, we're joined by our guest, Jack Fleming. Jack is the founder of Phrayz, a software to help marketing agency owners who handle accounts across multiple industries.

Create expert like content, and we're gonna let Jack tell us all about Phrayz in just a minute. But first I got a few weird questions to break the ice and get the conversation going.

[00:01:00] Jack: Ooh, I am ready. Let's go. 

[00:01:02] Gary: all right I'm gonna pose these questions to both you and Christie.

[00:01:06] Christie: Oh dear.

[00:01:07] Gary: So first we'll start with you, Jack,

[00:01:09] Jack: gotta go

ladies 

[00:01:10] Gary: were gonna relax, 

[00:01:12] Christie: Oh, 

[00:01:12] Gary: gonna relax and unwind.

If you're gonna relax and unwind, do you prefer like a movie night at home, just chilling, or do you wanna go to a concert or hang out with some friends?

[00:01:22] Jack: I'm very extroverted, so I tend to get energy from hanging out with people. I tend to not relax and rewind too much. I would say go to the beach, but that wasn't an option. So I would just say, go to concert with friends.

[00:01:35] Gary: All right, Christie.

[00:01:37] Christie: The polar opposite of Jack quite honestly. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I too don't really know what relaxing is, but if I were to imagine it, it would be a comfort sweatsuit and probably like a mandarin orange and PBS. So it's like wild nights. Wild nights.

[00:01:54] Gary: See, I would love to go to a concert with friends, but I'll probably end up staying home on the couch, 

[00:01:59] Christie: yeah. You're the mix.

[00:02:01] Gary: All right. So if it comes to snacking and brain food, Jack, do you prefer salty snacks or sweet snacks

[00:02:09] Jack: Oh, that's a good question. I'm going to go with, let's go Sweet. Because I feel like with salty, you'll also have to get a drink with it. To save, to be frugal. Let's go. Sweet.

I've been on our big Reese's Kick lately. I

used to be a big Milky Way midnight fan with the dark chocolate and the

new get, but 

[00:02:29] Gary: Yeah, those are actually pretty good. Yeah, salty and sweet connected. The Reese's got the peanut butter and the chocolate. It's pretty good.

[00:02:35] Christie: True. Yeah,

I would say probably sweet, like absolutely. My go-tos right now have been like Sour Patch kids, which are absolutely horrific for you. But if I were to go Jack's route and do like a candy bar, paydays are my favorite, and that is salty

and sweet. So it's old. Everything

about me is like very old.

[00:02:54] Jack: Something that's not chocolate that's really

[00:02:56] Gary: Did you buy that at the five and dime next to the barber shop for a nickel? 

[00:03:00] Christie: Yeah. 17 years ago in a Christmas stocking. 

[00:03:03] Gary: And lastly, if you had to give up one or the other for a month, would you give up streaming TV or social media?

[00:03:15] Jack: It's gotta be streaming TV 'cause I do marketing full time, so I have to be

[00:03:20] Christie: oh true.

[00:03:21] Jack: It I,

that would be like, oh, giving

up business for a month. I don't

[00:03:25] Gary: Okay let's skip professional use. Let's just think personal use,

[00:03:29] Jack: Ooh. I actually did give up streaming for a bit because of the YouTube situation with ESPN. and so I think I can get away with it and go watch shorts somewhere else. So I'm gonna still stick with my guns here and say I want to give up that and stay with social media.

[00:03:48] Christie: Now if I give my answer now, it just sounds silly, but Yeah, no, I might be the opposite of that. Definitely can't give up social media only because I'm a marketing director, but personally speaking, yeah, I guess I, yeah, no,

[00:03:59] Gary: Where would podcasts fall into that?

[00:04:02] Christie: I so predominantly I do. I listen to podcasts all day, every day, like that is my

number 

[00:04:07] Gary: that would be streaming media, but not tv, so that counts. You wouldn't have to give up 

[00:04:11] Christie: I could never give podcasts up. I don't know how I would function in life if I didn't have like murder podcasts 24 7. 

[00:04:19] Jack: I was gonna say sports. Giving up sports is real tough,

especially now with all the basketball going on in the

[00:04:25] Christie: Yeah. March Madness.

[00:04:27] Jack: yeah, but

[00:04:28] Gary: are you guys talking about? F1 just started. That's the most important sport 

[00:04:31] Christie: Oh my 

[00:04:32] Jack: And NASCAR too. Some of my clients, I have clients in the NASCAR space, so I have to go film NASCAR occasionally too. So I'll be at

Darlington and Rockingham very soon.

[00:04:42] Christie: See, there you go.

[00:04:43] Gary: All right. We should probably get back to the actual business at hand on the Biz Dev podcast. So Jack, why don't you just give us the high view of what Phrayz does and who you do it for.

[00:04:57] Jack: Yeah, so we started Phrayz about eight months ago, so it's still really new, but really it is a industry intelligence tool. We're aggregating specific industry information and then transforming it into marketing material that we're funding that marketers can use, but also sales pros and entrepreneurs as well. So we found with, we're like an AI company that hits ai. It's weird, but there's a lot of not bad things, but there's a lot of steps that go into utilizing AI to the best of your ability. Pages are prompting. You have to keep using it 'cause we all know v one of a AI can be terrible. It'll give you like 25 fingers or something like that.

It can

hallucinate and it's gonna actually give you what you want to hear. And so that's not necessarily the best case for a lot of the situations that people need to use general LMS for. And so we wanted to put up those necessary guardrails for it and help streamline the research process that agencies and CMOs and everyone does.

[00:06:01] Gary: Yeah, I can see AI being valuable in, like you said, the research, the planning, the content strategy, the analytics of, targeting what your client. Is looking for, what the patterns and habits of their customers are and stuff like that. But when it does come to actually generating content without like really specific guardrails, yeah, I think that's a, that's something that needs to be like.

Really, you really gotta hold the hand of the, whether it's, a prompt engine that's doing it, or if it's gonna be something from mid journey mixed with something from, open air or anything like that. Yeah. The content generation part itself is still a little bit lacking.

[00:06:45] Jack: that's the goal though, is the combination of tools, right? As

building, as we're bring a software company.

It's like we're trying to save marketers time because we're finding

that marketers are spending anywhere from eight to. Too many hours per week doing content research. And that's really just trying to stay on top of news.

'cause the marketing industry changes by the second, as Christie and I know. But also the industries that we serve too, whether it's in it, cybersecurity, hospitality, construction whatever it may be. There's just things going on and a lot of those general LMS only learn up until a certain point. And so we're trying to. Combine the efforts that marketers use onto one. So it's reading emails, reading news, scroll, social media. We're starting to analyze videos here soon and maybe taking in like LinkedIn articles and Substack and Medium two. But just aggregating all of that industry specific info and then starting the development process.

We're not doing it fully quite yet. We're not there, but just starting that process. We always want the human in the loop.

[00:07:48] Christie: Yeah, I think it's really when the AI was all starting to really burst and come out for the marketing side of things. What was this a few years ago? It was, internally. It was like, okay, do we use this, do we not? And of course I'm looking into it for my own personal self and seeing how I can utilize it in my processes and I have to say. What I felt like it ended up being good for is cutting that time a bit in the research, but like anytime and creating content, especially for custom software and design, which is what we are in. You're exactly right. It was making sure not only what I'm. Stating in this content or in this playbook is accurate and up to date. But then citing things, appropriately and really having a voice with it all. It was taking me about eight hours for one piece of content to really not only research it, but come up with an outline that was actually thoughtful. And now with AI and things like yourself and companies like yourself, it has cut my time drastically.

I think full time from idea to actually being able to post or have a piece of content is now like three to five hours. So it has really lowered that threshold for me being able to do that. But a product like Phrayz, which I really love the concept of is it still took a lot for me to get there because exactly what you're saying is I almost had to train, or you did have to train it on.

This doesn't sound quite right. Factually even are you sure? And then now I'm counter checking the facts to make sure, and there is no time for that. So having a tool like yourself, which they can trust and go into and say, look, I'm in healthcare, I'm in finance, I'm in, whatever niche field that they're in, and they can trust you, go to you and get that new synthesize and then decide what to do with that news.

I think that's, as someone in the field utilizing things like that's wildly helpful.

[00:09:38] Jack: Yes,

[00:09:39] Gary: Now, Jack. 

[00:09:40] Jack: we're, finding that a problem is the time saving aspect, but also too, it's just the quality of content.

[00:09:46] Christie: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:09:47] Jack: there's a lot of content slop out there. There's over 20,

20 million content posts going out on each platform about per day. And so with the fact that when someone's scrolling, you have literally one second to grab someone's attention and hook them

in, like your content has to be good.

And so it has to relate to your target consumer. Or it has to be like super top level or I ideally more middle of the funnel. But from ideation to distribution, we're also finding that marketers are using over seven different tools to create one different post.

And so again, our biggest aspect is just streamlining the process for them.

But

[00:10:24] Gary: Yeah. Funnily enough just before we started recording, Christie and I were talking about how oversaturated. Like marketing and sales has become with just AI, slop generated content, and it's more of pushing, it's pushing consumers away quicker than it is pulling them in. So you're right. You have to strike that balance and hit the right spot at the right time with the right message.

And speaking of that, 

[00:10:48] Christie: sorry, Gary. Gary's gonna take my thought outta my head. I know he is going to.

[00:10:51] Gary: No, I was just gonna say Phrayz is a newer company and a newer tool that you built, but you built it off the experience you had from marketing already. So you are also the founder of a marketing agency 

[00:11:02] Jack: Yeah, so we initially. 

Built it internally to support my agency. The story behind that is I called in favors to be in a sales meeting with a local distillery. And as I was rambling about my, my content and the results that we've created, the founder stops me and it was, how do you know the intricacies? Of the alcohol industry. There are a lot of rules, regulations, notes associated with it. And as a good founder and sales guy, of course I bs it a little bit. But despite maybe drinking a beer or two in the weekends, it, I just don't know much about it. And so I said, oh yeah, we have a proprietary tool of that helps us stay up to date on all info and a little white lie there.

But it did get

[00:11:47] Gary: No, you're just putting it out into the universe 

[00:11:49] Christie: And it became a reality. Yeah.

[00:11:50] Jack: Oh yeah. And then fast forward to one of our RT

cybersecurity clients. I just didn't want to subscribe to 25 plus different newsletters about different hacks and things that were going on

as a marketing agency. So I wanted a cumulative spot of one place to go.

That wasn't my email to see everything and just get the ball rolling.

[00:12:10] Christie: So how does that work for users if they sign up for you? So say, let's use Big Pixel as an example, because it's just ECS say, we're in because we are the software services vertical. So are we coming to you saying, or am I as Christie, the marketing director coming to you and saying, Hey, I'm spending way too many time on all these tools, reading all these newsletters, educating myself so that I can make us sound educated.

Am I then coming to you and saying, I need a package, and you're saying, okay, what's your vertical? What are the, what do those verticals touch? What does that look like? And then here's the package. And then when I go to my, let's say, portal for Phrayz, or when I log in, it's then. Customized to my particular needs?

Or is it more of a generalized tool

[00:12:51] Jack: It is more it's a mix right

now. So we initially created it as a. Custom inbox situation

where you would have to once you made a folder, you got an email address associated with that, and then you go in and resubscribe to things.

And then we created an ability to, for you to join other people's folders.

So it's

Like a community aspect to it. But we're now developing, again, developing it into us just managing all of the info that comes in. So there's less front end of account creation. And so you can just come in and. Click on the software industry folder and we'll outline what information that's coming into that folder. Like our ai industry folder has about a hundred different 140 different sources going through it per week.

[00:13:38] Christie: And so then the users then going in there and picking that information, and then is it up to them to then craft the content or is then social re there creating the content for them based on what they chose? Or is it like a mixture of both?

[00:13:50] Jack: We automatically create summaries blog outlines, infographic, carousel, outlines, video scripts, and we're working on ads too. So we are, we automatically get that ball rolling a little bit, but it's not, again, full full content creation. I don't like, I don't trust it necessarily, but I do think down the road we do want to integrate with design tools because of the outlines that we're creating would be able to feed those design tools better.

So if it's automatically, if we're automatically taking in the info and we can add your brand details to it, brand customization, we do have that ability to add your URL tone of voice industry when we're then adding that to the design aspect of things and put it into netto banana or whatever, 

it's gonna be able to have all the necessary details that it needs to create better content too.

[00:14:41] Christie: That makes sense.

[00:14:42] Jack: But that's down the road. 

[00:14:43] Gary: watching. I was gonna say, it's crazy watching how fast AI is getting, I guess you could say better or just smarter or just more advanced and the content creation when it comes to graphics and video. There's certain levels of imagery that it does really well at. And if you can prompt it to make something just beautifully cinematic and gorgeous, but at the same time, that's one out of a hundred shots. A lot of times people without the experience and the knowledge to actually prompt these image images and videos into existence, like you're not gonna get the same quality. But that's just like any other, design skill.

Over time, you get better and the software gets better and better. Now it is getting a little crazy to see how fast. AI is implementing updates and changes to the software, and it's getting not just marginally better, it's improving almost like one x two X every time. So I can see in the future image generation, video generation in the marketing and ad space almost being fully automated, and it's just in that world does, the human kind of fade in and out when it comes to the consumer side because while all the images can be great, all the videos can look perfect. When does it lose that actual touch to reach the consumer? And are you seeing any kind of drop off when it comes to, not content, that Phrayz is generating, but just AI generated content in marketing and sales as a whole.

[00:16:13] Jack: Yeah, there's, say everyone uses this AI to create content. Right now it's just leveling the playing field where everything looks the same, So again, it's a, it's A part of making more specific content to your ideal customer that just resonates with them. Like you're automatically still as a marketer gonna have to create content that's fitting a different demographic from the get. And so you can't just build a good product image and hope it fits the masses. You're still gonna have to create different pieces of content to fit different dimensions and different demographics. So that, that's bare minimum. But I think what people see on ai, there's also this underlying concern that people have that it could also be fake. And so like deep

fakes are a big concern. And I've already heard plenty of stories from the Colin and Samir show and from Kevin O'Leary. And people are these, and all the sharks people are just ripping their stuff.

'cause all, there's always videos out there about 'em. They're saying, oh, this. Mark Cuban or whatever is endorsing this product, and when they're not actually doing that, right? And so

there's automatically a concern, and I just don't think you get that as much with a blurry iPhone video of someone walking down the street. We're definitely not making that. But right now our focus is more on the the industry information aggregation side of

things. But with the content side, it's just completely different. It's get, I don't wanna say it's

getting outta hand, but it's with there being 20 million posts per day on each platform, content has to stand out.

And if AI's making it all level, it's not helping it. Stand out. Stand out.

[00:17:58] Gary: Yeah. The reason I ask is because I'm. I'm trying to pretend as if Christie was doing earlier, if I was a, a business owner or a startup, I just wanted to find some way to market myself beyond my own capabilities. And I keep reading and hearing stories about, oh, just use AI to do ai. It's just, it's simple.

You don't even need to do, there is an actual threshold to where that is a value or a hindrance. So when you use a product like yours Phrayz, and you have a team that actually knows marketing, those tools in your hands is gonna be far more effective for that person. So on a scale, of the clients you have now, or the clients you go after, is there a certain type of business that you're looking to, work with?

Is it small business and startups up to medium size or are you aiming for enterprise in the future? A hundred percent baby. But

[00:18:52] Jack: Our beachhead is definitely smaller marketing agencies. There are a lot of great full scale go to market pools out there. We have some pretty big competition in space like Copy.ai, Jasper, Blaze. We focus on doing one task very well and they still have a good bit of prompting that needs to be done on the user side. There's a lot of onboarding that needs to happen and that's just the biggest concern that I've seen is just I want an easier system out there. But we're tracking smaller agencies right now 'cause that's like my own. It's easier for me to relate with them and talk with them. We do have some pretty big agencies who have created accounts as well have become some of our beta users. We're still learning,

we're still doing feedback sessions and demos and we're still doing everything we can just to get the name out there and still get great data from our users.

[00:19:51] Gary: So you mentioned talking to startups and having a mentor and being involved in like the startup and entrepreneur space. I see here that you've also been a lead organizer for something called a Million Cups.

[00:20:01] Jack: Oh yeah, it's, 

[00:20:03] Gary: tell us what that is?

[00:20:05] Jack: 1 million Cups is, was started by the Yung Marion Coffin Foundation out of Kansas City, Missouri. And then it was started in an effort to support. Entrepreneurs and the communities that surround them. And so it's a weekly event that's every Wednesday at 9:00 AM here at UNCW Center of Innovation Entrepreneurship. And every week we have about one to two entrepreneurs, newer entrepreneurs under five years old is typically what we look for. And they give a six minute presentation. It's not a pitch. So just talk about themselves and what they're doing, where they're planning to go, and they get 20 minutes of q and a.

So it's a really. Great time for them to not only work on public speaking, which is a great skill for them to learn, but interact with the community, get questions, suggestions, and connections from the community. So it's our, it's really a rising tides, floats all boats effort.

It's just a great way to be in community with other like-minded entrepreneurs. There's been some quotes that we've heard from entrepreneurs that, one man cups helped me not to quit. Because entrepreneurship is very hard. So being in community

with those people is very important. And so I, we've been, I've led this community for a little bit over two years now, but it's we have about 70 to 80 regular attendees now weekly. And so it's getting to be a pretty, pretty popular thing. We have people tuning in from Raleigh and across the state. To our specific location as well. But now Durham just started a community as well. They have one down in Myrtle Beach too. But it's a great stepping stone for not only like aspiring entrepreneurs or students or people moving to a new area or just people starting to build something who don't, aren't necessarily looking for investors or the growth stage side of things yet.

It's a great first step for everyone.

[00:21:54] Christie: Was there any pain points that you were hearing over and over again, or things that the founders really needed help with or support with over and over again?

[00:22:02] Jack: It is typically the amount of customers that people have. 

[00:22:05] Christie: Or don't have? 

[00:22:05] Jack: Yes that's usually the biggest need. It gets hard 'cause they can't afford my agency anymore. I'm telling them like, Hey, you have the time. You gotta make content on your own. It's very, gonna be very difficult, but you have to do it.

[00:22:20] Christie: What would be like your number one piece of advice for doing the content? I always try to think of that for myself. Okay, if I'm gonna sit down and dedicate five hours of AI time or like creation or using these tools, like what is the most purposeful thing I can do with my five hours right now?

What do you think that is for these businesses that could utilize their tools and put something out? What is that product productivity look like?

[00:22:42] Jack: I always like to connect it to something else that you love too. That's not necessarily business related, possibly.

That's for me. It could be CrossFit or going to church or I have a few other interests as well.

my, my LinkedIn

is all over the place 

[00:23:00] Christie: You're a church boy who goes to CrossFit 

[00:23:02] Jack: yeah, but it's I just want to make it as easy as

possible.

And so I'm like, Hey it doesn't have to be on A-D-S-L-R camera. It can literally be the front side of your phone. Ideally it's the back camera, but it could be like literally you walking and talking.

Make sure you put captions on it and then just post it and try it. Like you're not gonna, most people just get bogged down by the sheer amount of platforms out there

and the whole like 

[00:23:27] Gary: that was gonna be my question. 

[00:23:29] Jack: much less

creating a 10 80 by 1350. Now dimension photo

for Instagram or vertical reel, or a LinkedIn header or whatever it may be. People get bogg down and just don't even start. 

And so I'll just say, just start somewhere and polish it as you go. 

[00:23:50] Christie: Yeah,

[00:23:51] Gary: It is

crazy 'cause I just actually heard it's a videographer that I do follow. 'cause they also just give great advice about, imagery in general. But they were saying like. When they started, they were always hesitant to publish stuff of their own because it wasn't as professional as the stuff they were doing for clients.

So they would shoot themselves in the foot and just not put anything out there. But over the years you've seen like that level has gone up so much that the scrappier, the video is, the more homemade it looks, the more personal and the more engaging it is.

[00:24:23] Christie: Yeah.

[00:24:23] Gary: It, the more authentic it seems, the better it does now.

So the, not like less polished on purpose, but just when it comes to that. Being a barrier for someone saying what? My video doesn't look as good as, this guy's or the company that I really want to be. Like, there's stuff, they have professional voiceovers and animations. I don't have any of that.

So why bother? Actually, you'll probably end up doing better than them if you have an engaging and heartfelt human to human connection and a good story to tell.

[00:24:52] Christie: And you'll get 

[00:24:53] Jack: your competitive moat. 

[00:24:54] Christie: yes.

[00:24:55] Jack: It's gonna be your competitive moat when every, everyone's making things with AI because it can produce things quickly.

[00:25:00] Gary: Yeah, 

[00:25:01] Jack: Your energy and your personal

brand will be your, is your competitive mode.

[00:25:06] Gary: Now have you seen with all the platforms that are out there and I'm sure there's different ways to target the algorithms for these different platforms that, reach certain customers, but have you seen any, are, is there still like the major ones? I know Google Ads used to be the thing and it was Facebook and it was Instagram and it was TikTok.

Now it's like a combination of everything. But is there one or two platforms that you recommend to be like the go-to? Just start there and see if you get any traction.

[00:25:31] Jack: Generally it's Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. Is our big three right now. Most of the our clients don't have the capacity to they don't pay me enough to do the three posts a day that you need to do TikTok 

Or, 

be satirical in any way. 

So I'm still struggling to sell them on dancing on camera. I actually just started work with a maid service here, and I'm like, Hey, we need to do this idea. I want to get this person dancing on camera. To cleaning. 'cause that's immediately the stereotype when people think of it like a janitor is someone with a CD player and

mopping and dancing on camera.

We're gonna riff off of that. And but our big three are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube right now.

But we're doing a lot more with LinkedIn as well. It just takes a little bit longer. People don't think that they're. Target customers are on LinkedIn, which is wild to me.

[00:26:23] Gary: I think it's, that's depending on your industry too.

[00:26:27] Jack: It 

[00:26:27] Gary: if

you're selling jeans with custom made patches on 'em, maybe not

LinkedIn.

[00:26:32] Jack: That's true. But there's still gonna be, LinkedIn is a place that employers will allow professionals to be on during the day and so you are able to target

Anyone

[00:26:42] Gary: I didn't think

[00:26:42] Jack: business day. But also it, the bombs are on LinkedIn.

Who will buy those jeans? The people moving to your area who wants to use your service are also on, are on LinkedIn too. 

And with the targeting ability of LinkedIn on the professional side of things, that's why it's more expensive. But our big three are Facebook Instagram, YouTube, because YouTube's owned by Google.

We just think it's a generally good place to be, to nurture anything Google related. So you have the best SEO. And there's the whole side. You do like long form content or short form, so it's got a pretty big prep to it. But that's generally the big three that we focus on.

So typically, my flow is it's going through the ideation and through chat chatt. And then I'll edit a little bit on my own and then I'll even put it through Quo bot too. There's a little

AI humanizer. Function, and you can even paraPhrayz, you can even Phrayz things to be 

more 

easily 

[00:27:37] Gary: get it. Phrayz, that's 

[00:27:39] Jack: yeah, so that's why we called it paraPhrayz Phrayz is because in marketing and sales be considered an art form

and there's no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to marketing strategies. They're all in a lot of strategies and content that really does work out there. And so you can just not take everything

that someone's but you can paraPhrayz it. Yeah. So

That's where the name comes 

[00:28:00] Christie: It's a formulaic type of thing, and that is very true. A lot of people and a lot of startups try to waste the time trying to reinvent the wheel, and there is no reason to do that. And you're not even trying to do that. You're like, here's one thing and we're going to do it very well, and we're going to take this stuff that exists and we're going to serve it to you in a way that is the most useful, not overwhelmingly less useful.

It's the most useful. So yeah, I think that's a 

[00:28:23] Jack: That's how you market, that's how you market properly, and that's how you sell properly.

Like we all know that. 

[00:28:29] Christie: Agreed. 

[00:28:30] Jack: I don't, it's great that Chatt can do everything for everyone, but in terms of

[00:28:35] Christie: But can it really, can it do anything for anyone? That's what I ask. No, we'll be censored in one moment. Like everything will, it

[00:28:43] Jack: They have business cases and then personal cases. And I think with me building. And this being my first real main software endeavor, it's I just wanna build a really specific tool that does things really well,

but also like saving professionals time. And so we do

wanna combine the flow and the d different softwares into one

to make a really great tool. 

[00:29:04] Christie: Perplexity is

[00:29:07] Gary: I think you're onto something here because the concept of marketing is very simple, and especially for like small businesses, you could tell them how simple it is and how effective it's gonna be, and it's gonna sound great. But then when they get into the actual okay, so where do I start?

It seems like you guys are making that a lot easier for them and bundling everything that they might need or question together in a way that's gonna be a lot more intuitive for them to actually come out with something to market at the end.

[00:29:34] Gary: So Jack, through your experiences with a Million Cups and your marketing agency and now Phrayz through your different journey with each one of those, what would you say are your top three pieces of advice?

And I know you touched on it a little earlier with Christie, but what would you say are your top three pieces of advice to any new small business or entrepreneur to aim for success?

[00:30:01] Jack: Never be the smartest person in the room. Put yourself in rooms where you could literally be the minority or you're in a room with more experienced CEOs or founders. Just constantly search for rooms where you can learn and develop. Going off of that a little bit is reverse networking. Instead of just trying to like talk to everyone. Focus on one person. Like Christie is she'd be a great use user for my software. She has marketing friends too.

So I can go and ask her, who else do you know that could benefit from my software? So reverse networking and asking one person for many more connections. 'cause you want those warm connections too. Then a third I just think failing faster.

Failing faster so you can learn from it and keep going. I think people wait for a need or something to build something or like a perfect time to do something. That probably won't happen within the timeframe that you think is gonna happen. I just think you just gotta spend the money and do it. If it fails, it fails. But at least you're doing it fast and you can recover from that and spend maybe five grand instead of 50 grand.

So fail fast.

[00:31:16] Gary: Awesome. All right, if anybody wants to learn more about you, Jack, or Phrayz the software, where's the best place for them to find you guys?

[00:31:25] Jack: We're at Phrayz.com so it's super simple. I looked for MG Domains before I looked for trademark searches. That's what I did first. I'm all over LinkedIn. I am a self-proclaimed North Carolina business influencer. So I'm

all over LinkedIn, but social

[00:31:43] Christie: I have not Shut up.

[00:31:45] Gary: She just does it under the name David Baxter. 

[00:31:48] Christie: yeah.

Heard. Yeah. Everyone's wow, David's so cool. I'm like, no, it's not.

[00:31:52] Jack: but yeah, Phrayz.com and then LinkedIn, Jack Fleming, that would be the best places.

[00:31:58] Gary: Cool. We'll make sure we put those links in the show notes. And so for any of you small businesses or entrepreneurs that need marketing and maybe a little intimidated by it, but feel like you're gonna give it a shot, I suggest talk to Jack and talk to Phrayz.

Alright, for everybody else, we're out and we will see you next week. 

Goodbye.