"You can’t control everything, you can only control how you respond" with Jamey Elrod
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Jamey Elrod is a co-founder and Chief Customer Officer of Text Request, a SaaS tool that enables two-way text communication between businesses and their customers. Jamey is a serial entrepreneur who has built multiple successful businesses over the past 30 years with her husband Brian. Today, Jamey leads the customer success team at Text Request, and is proud to have achieved numerous milestones, most recently closing 2019 with $2.2 million in annual recurring revenue with no outside funding.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
I was born and raised in the Chattanooga, Tennessee, area. I did a lot of extracurricular activities in high school, and also met my future husband and business partner, Brian, then. We went to different schools and met a John Cougar Mellencamp concert! We got married during college and then moved all over the Southeast for Brian’s work (which was in logistics) — Tampa area, Birmingham, New Orleans. I was a full-time mom for most of those first 8 years, but I was always working on some business idea — making and selling crafts and a fitness franchise, among others.
After about eight years of this, we wanted to move back to Chattanooga. I took our first-born son with me at first (we have three boys now), and told Brian to move up, too, as soon as he could. That’s also when we started our first successful business, Educational Outfitters. We were buying school uniforms for our son, but there weren’t any local vendors, so we said “here’s an opportunity!” We sold a car to start the business and sold clothes out of the back of another vehicle for the first year. We opened our first retail location in 1999 and opened a second location a couple of years later in Knoxville, Tennessee. We franchised the business after that and had more than 40 locations at our peak. We sold Educational Outfitters in 2008, but still, run it today. Around 2013 we started a franchise business called JockSale that was consignment sports equipment. Our sons would use the equipment for a season or a year, grow out of it, and then we’d have to get more. Every other parent of an athlete had the same problem, so we opened up a shop to solve it, sold a handful of franchises, and sold the whole business a few years in. It was not as successful as we wanted it to be, but we learned a lot during that period and also started Text Request, our business text messaging software company.
One question that always comes up is “How do you and Brian work together?” What’s it like being business partners and married? Who does what? And truthfully, all our partnerships and working together have been just that: partnerships. We have different strengths that complement each other, and even before we started our first business, we always wanted to start businesses together. It’s just a part of who we are, and these days — 30 years later — we can’t imagine it being any other way.
What inspired you to start your business?
Brian and I have both always been entrepreneurially minded, and each business we’ve started came from a problem after which I’d ask “Well why can’t you just…?” For Educational Outfitters, it was: “Why do I have to order from a catalog or drive two hours to get clothes?” For JockSale, it was, “Why do I have to buy brand new sports equipment every six months?” For Text Request, it was, “Why can’t you just text them?”
We were sitting in a restaurant with our youngest son, who was a toddler at the time, and who was having a very “toddler moment.” We wanted to just pay for our food, bag it, and leave, but we couldn’t get our server’s attention. That’s when I asked, “Why can’t you just text them?” When Brian and I finally got back to the car, we looked at each other and said, “You know, that’s not a bad idea.” The original idea was that a customer could text for service or to order food, and it would show up on a screen in the kitchen. Then we started thinking about who else you’d want to text for service. Hotels came to mind and a few others in hospitality. We looked around and there wasn’t away for a business to text back and forth with customers at the time, so we created it. Obviously we’ve evolved a lot since then, but the problem then is the same problem we solve today: Customers don’t want to call or email, and these broken communications cost businesses revenue. You’ve got to text if you want to reach your customers, and we give businesses a way to manage texting professionally as a team.
Where is your business based?
The great land of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Aka, Gig City, since we were the first city in the United States to introduce a gigabit fiber network.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
We originally tried to build an app. Brian and I are business-minded, but not developers. So when we had the idea for this technology company, we knew we needed a tech partner. First, we found someone to build a mobile app for us. The app didn’t really meet our standards or our vision, and the people we were working with weren’t a perfect fit to do it either. Then we were introduced to our tech partner and third founder, Rob Reagan, who was a software consultant before joining our team. We hit it off and built an online software as a service (SaaS) tool for Text Request so that businesses could text from a computer or any other device.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
“Awareness” is tough to measure, but I think it’s been by hitting milestones. Being successful. When you’re new, people who might become your customers only care about you so far as you can solve their problems. The press doesn’t care too much about you either, because there are lots of businesses being started, and they seem to care mainly about what makes you different. When we started hitting revenue and customer account milestones, we suddenly had better stories that people wanted to tell. But it’s tough getting to that point. It was a lot of grinding, just talking to customers constantly, trying to give them the best software that would meet their needs, and digging for more people to talk to.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Personally, my biggest challenge was probably finding direction. I knew I wanted to start a business, but what? And how do you do it with limited funds? People say stay persistent, but I didn’t even have the money to be persistent. What eventually worked was just keeping my eyes open for opportunities, and eventually the right ones came along, and when they did I acted.
Everything is challenging when you’re starting a business. Probably financing was the most challenging. Text Request is self-funded, bootstrapped. But we didn’t initially intend to stay on that path. We looked for funding for a while and struggled to find a good partnership. It was very stressful. Eventually, we said, “forget it, we’ll do it ourselves.” When the only options were to survive or die on our own, we found a way to survive. To bring in a few more customers, and a few more, and a few more. Eventually, we became profitable, and have been doubling every year since. That challenge turned out to be a blessing, really. We’re glad we can make our decisions today without worrying about outside investors.
How do you stay focused
I don’t do anything special. Working is just what I do. It’s what I love (that and my family). After a while, it just becomes part of who you are and you always want to keep feeding it. I need time to rest and recoup and spend time with family like anyone else, but I genuinely enjoy spending time with our team and the work that we do, so motivation comes naturally.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
Personally, by our support. I head our Customer Success team — our goal is to make sure customers thrive, have great experiences, and improve their businesses because of us. The time and attention and care we give makes us stand out from others who are either too focused on “process” or won’t give customers attention unless they spend a certain amount. Every customer is a part of our family, and we treat them that way. You can see it in our Google reviews, too. There are 100 5-star reviews that all talk about how much they appreciate the support and service.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
It’s been split between cold email outreach and organic search. It’s very easy to go to a business’s website, tell them “I know you’re trying to accomplish this goal, but this problem is in the way. Here’s what we’ve done for others and what we can do for you. Want to see a demo?” It’s quick, it’s effective, and with millions of SMBs in our target audience, there’s an almost never-ending supply. Organic search took a while to build, but now if you Google search for anything around businesses texting, there’s a good chance we’ll have a page or blog post show up on the first page.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
I don’t know about one, but there are 5 pieces that I swear by.
Be flexible!
Adapt to each day.
Create moments for peace and routine.
Find time to exercise.
Help others.
Things are always going to be changing, and you have to be able to go with the flow. You can’t control everything, you can only control how you respond. It helps me a lot to have a few small things that help me stay calm and centered, like a quiet cup of coffee in the morning before everything gets going. If I’m not active, or doing something for my physical health, I will go insane. And then helping others, be it family or employees or friends, truly makes my heart happy.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
I’m slightly embarrassed to say I haven’t read a book for myself in quite some time. I do read a lot with our 4th grader though. Ha! Reading with him is more important and we really enjoy that time together. The last book we read was “How to Steal a Dog” by Barbara O’Conner.
Of course, Text Request is my absolute favorite app because it allows me the flexibility to be away from my laptop and assist our clients even while out and about! Hmm. I love listening to music so I’d have to say Spotify is another app I enjoy and use almost daily. Quite a few years ago, I learned how to strum the guitar. After our youngest was born, I was just so busy that I let that hobby fall to the side. Since we’ve all been homebound, I downloaded the GuitarTabs app to brush up on some basic guitar skills and try to teach myself to fingerpick. I’m seeing first-hand that motor skills sure do change as you get older!
Our marketing department has assembled some awesome podcasts and blogs. I do enjoy reading what they publish each week — they are such a talented group!
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
Honestly, it’s Text Request. I use it every day, all day to connect with customers and help make their lives better.
Who is your business role model? Why?
My husband! That may sound a little cheesy, but Brian and I have worked together from day one, and I am always inspired by his contributions to our businesses. I even “quit” once (ok, maybe twice) during a particularly frustrating situation, and he encouraged me to come back to work anyway. I love the dynamic we have.
How do you balance work and life?
As I mentioned in a previous answer, working is something that I love. So to me, it’s less about balancing work and life and more about making sure I am focused on the right things at the right time. Anyone who knows me knows that my family comes first. I care deeply about my business, but I make sure that I have time to attend sporting events, graduations, and other family events. Part of being able to make time for those things is having an incredible team that I can trust to keep things moving forward when I’m away from the office.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
I am a firm believer in the power of family time and exercise. I need both to feel energized and productive at work.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
Work is always in the plan. But, on a personal side note, we originally had planned to travel quite a bit on the weekends to watch our youngest son play baseball. We have so much fun spending time with our baseball family and watching the boys compete. Our oldest son is in the Air Force and we had also planned a short vacation with him. But, COVID 19 and the shut-downs have certainly put a kink in our schedule. Hopefully, we will at least be able to take a short vacation with all our boys sometime in the near future.
How can our readers connect with you?
I would love to connect — just text me 734-237-3333 or you can send me an email as well jamey@textrequest.com. I look forward to hearing from you!