Building a Sustainable Business: The A.C. Evans of Drips Experience

Aaron Christopher (A.C.) Evans is a pioneer in conversational marketing and is the Co-founder and CEO of Drips.com. Drips is a conversational texting company leading the way for some of the biggest brands in the world. They use automated, humanized conversations at scale for companies like Liberty Mutual, Creditrepair.com, and many more. Drips engages in millions of completed humanized conversations with zero client-side human resources or operators.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• A.C. Evans talks about why he opted for vocational school early on in his life
• Why A.C. dropped out of college to pursue entrepreneurship
• A.C. shares some of his favorite books
• How A.C. builds a sustainable company culture at Drips
• Why you should avoid micromanaging your team
• When to let go of some control and hire someone to help manage your people
• A.C. discusses how they leverage the strength of founding members in order to grow Drips
• A.C. talks about how he and his partners decided to move forward and launch Drips
• A.C. explains how the humanized conversation on Drips works
• A.C.’s recommendations for writing excellent copy
• Who should consider using Drips?
• How A.C. and his partners zeroed in on the business model for Drips
• A.C. talks about the lows and highs of Drips

In this episode…

How badly do you want your business to grow and become known for what it does? You may have seen some successes in your current business setup, but if you want to sustain it, there are some things you need to do to make sure that happens. A.C. Evans knows this first hand as he recalls the inspiring story of his company, Drips, and how he and his business partners bootstrapped it and brought the company to where it is today.

In this episode of INspired INsider, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews A.C. Evans of Drips.com about bootstrapping your company and growing it into a market leader in your industry. They’ll be talking about how A.C. and his partners started and built Drips, the role of culture in their company, the importance of letting go of minor tasks and hiring people to help manage your team, and some tips on how to build a great and sustainable business. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned on this episode

• Drips
• A.C. Evans on LinkedIn 
• Anthony Greco on LinkedIn 
• Katie Angle on LinkedIn 
• Tom Martindale on LinkedIn 
• Blake Squires on LinkedIn 
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
• Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday 
• How to Fight a Hydra: Face Your Fears, Pursue Your Ambitions, and Become the Hero You Are Destined to Be by Josh Kaufman
• Books written by Tim Ferriss

Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…

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Episode Transcript

Jeremy Weisz
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder inspiredinsider.com. I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. You know, A.C. we’re just talking before we hit record here with we like hearing the challenge stories. And so like I had Mois Navone on of Mobileye, Mobil eye helps it basically helps fuel autonomous vehicles. They were acquired by Intel for $13.2 billion. But the real journey, as you know, was a lot of downs not just ups and he had to go back to his family one point and hit take a pay cut and say, listen, we kids, I’m pulling you out of all extracurriculars, we can no longer eat out. I just got, you know, I have to take a pay cut because we need to keep this sustainable. You know, and that’s the reality of anyone who’s been through this journey that happens. Okay, so, check that out, episode out and many more. This episode is brought to you by Ries25 which I co found with my business partner John Corcoran. And we help b2b businesses connect their dream clients and give to them gives them their best relationships by running their podcasts. We will launch and run your podcast so it actually serves your best relationships and you can profile your yo yo the companies you believe in and the people and the other you know CEOs that you want to profile and their thought leadership so check out rise25.com you know there’s a if you go to the about page on inspiredinsider.com you can see the actual motivation behind this is more than just business A.C. It’s like my grandfather was a Holocaust survivor and his legacy lives on and his story lives on, because there was an interview done by the Holocaust foundation with him so you can check that out. On my about page but check out rise25.com if you have questions about podcasting, we’ve been doing it for over 10 years. So I am excited to introduce today’s guests and like literally, I I do this all the time. A.C. I was trying to order a water system for my new awesome office. And I said I do not answer calls from numbers I don’t recognize. So can you please text me before you call me? So I was actually wanting the text because that just made for a better experience for me because I know I’m not going to answer the phone, you know if they if I don’t recognize the number so A.C. Evans I have here who’s a pioneer in conversational marketing, and the co founder and CEO of drips.com. Drips is a conversational texting company leading the way for some of the biggest brands in the world. They use automated humanize you know talk about humanized conversations at scale of companies like Liberty Mutual credit repair.com many more on a daily basis Drips engages in millions of cases. humanized conversations with zero client side human resources or operators. ac thanks for joining me.

A.C. Evans
Thanks for having me Jeremy.

Jeremy Weisz
You know, there’s so many places to start and I do want to talk about, you know, from the startup phase, the scale of phase, the culture and scaling and hiring, but I kind of want to start with the roots the roots of your story, because I was talking to another entrepreneur the other day and they’re worried about their kids and maybe one of their child isn’t amazing at school. And they’re like I’m you know, I’m not sure how we navigate these waters and talk about your journey a little bit from from college.

A.C. Evans
Yeah, even in high school. I was a poor student, you know, I was a D minus student failed almost failed a couple times had to go to summer school to make up I just I wasn’t attracted to the the curriculum or the way it was presented. And I luckily at the time I was in wrestling school. Meaning a school that had a, you know, decent wrestling team and I was on that team and the wrestling coach suggested that I looked into a vocational school. So this was a school where it was more hands on, you would go there your junior and senior year and do hands on training, there was mechanics, cooks. You know, a lot of cosmetology, a lot of different trade skills. And the one course that I joined was digital design, which was I was a great artist, I used to draw a lot. That’s where I spent most of my time during class doing was drawing which, you know, doesn’t necessarily align with the curriculum in math and English and whatnot. But I I joined the vocational school I dug into digital design and I quickly came one of the, you know, top students there I perfect.

Jeremy Weisz
Was it the traditional Was it a motivation thing? Was it like a learning thing?

A.C. Evans
What What do you think it was? I think it was an interesting thing. You know, like, I know I have the same problem today, if I’m not interested in something, I give it very little thought it’s, I have to try to find things that I’m interested in learning about interest isn’t interesting, interested in doing or knowing more about. You know, if I pick up a book and I go through 20 pages, and it’s not like speaking to me, I rarely, you know, nowadays, I’ll just put the book down. But before it was very difficult for me to push myself through that material. And the same was true in school. So I think it was just, you know, maybe it was stylistic of the way they taught, like, that was definitely more hands on meaning I was doing design, I was doing coding. We weren’t just talking about it or, you know, doing, you know, instead of doing history and science, I was able to do automation and digital design and graphics and things that were just more interesting to me. candidly, but out of that I got early placement at the brown stadium. I was the youngest, the youngest person working in the production Aereo the brown so I was in one that was designing all the 3d animation and the helmets flashing and I did the same job at the Cavs stadium.

Jeremy Weisz
So where do they show that is that like were they like break for break for commercial and I see those helmets kind of going boom

A.C. Evans
yeah it was on on the scoreboards was cool because at the time the brown stadium was brand new. This was in 99 I think in 2000 and stadium is brand new state of the art equipment I had been sent to DC to do an in Rochester to do training on daktronics scoreboards which, again, like top of the line new new new stuff, but yeah, it was the it was the boom boom, boom, boom flat, you know, all that kind of animate. We need to find that

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