Convert More Customers With Personal Videos | Matthew Barnett (Bonjoro)

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Podcast Notes

Wyndly lets you live life without allergies: https://www.wyndly.com

People like to feel like they're being engaged with on a more personal level. Bonjoro helps you get more leads and replies, and also drive next steps by including links to your site, calendar, or other resources. Matthew Barnett, CEO of Bonjoro, joins Aakash to discuss how he is helping over 50,000 companies grow with his product that lets you send fast personal videos to leads and customers, to stand out, build trust, and make more sales. Matthew loves building high performing teams and PLG focused companies. For 10 years he's run one of Sydney’s most active founder groups, X-tech.

Matthew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mbjbarnett/

Bonjoro: https://www.bonjoro.com/

My Website: https://www.aakash.io

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mraakashshah/

Twitter: @aakashdotio [https://twitter.com/aakashdotio]

Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wyndlyteam?lang=en

Music: Syn Cole - Gizmo [NCS Release] provided by NoCopyrightSounds

Produced by Thomas Troy

Autogenerated Transcript

[00:00:00] Aakash Shah: Hi there I'm Aakash, founder of Wyndly, where we fix allergies for life. This is Founders and Builders, where I talk to people who are working hard to bring something new and meaningful into this world. 

[00:00:13] Aakash Shah: I'm here with Matt from Bonjoro. He styles himself as the Papa Bear for automating processes, but not relationships here. Matt, how would you introduce yourself?

[00:00:24] Matthew Barnett: Bear. Pretty much. And then a hug. And then a hug.

[00:00:26] Aakash Shah: The hug. A classic. Classic. Matt, to start this conversation off, why don't you do a quick introduction of Bonjoro and kind of how you found the core problem that Bonjoro addresses.

[00:00:39] Matthew Barnett: Yeah, so with Bonjoro, we run basically a video mastering tool. We've then taken that kind of further, and we're starting to go after this loyalty space. We think there's a space to build essentially like a cut think like a CRM with a loyalty kind of foundation to it. We think there's a much better way to build more loyalty with the customers you have and to drive more lifetime value from them by checking in and spending a bit more human time with those customers. And then the end of the funnel utilizes customers to drive in new people through referrals, through testimony, through product testing, all that kind of stuff. The way we kind of came to the space is running an agency. we're based in Australia. I'm from the UK clients overseas. So dealt with big brands. So generally New York, London, Paris not Australia. When you do that, you have a sales funnel that is coming in predominantly for overseas into a time zone when everyone's asleep.

[00:01:23] It's not easy and I think when you come to enterprise sales, a lot of it's this, right? It's in person and when you're talking about agency and creative side, it, it's charisma. It's the pitch. It's turning up. Yeah. And that's a really big part of it. When someone comes in. Interesting, because you built a bit of an online funnel and the first thing again is like some email onboarding. You just lose 90% of that. Like 80, 90% of the communication we do, it's not in the words that we use, it's in the tone of voice. It's in the facial expressions, it's our gestures. It's in the cadence, it's in all that kind of stuff. Looking to try and break that, and the whole team was the same. We thought, look, well, the best interaction we could possibly give somebody is in person. The second best thing we could do is turn up at least a little bit in video. So what we would do is we'd get those leads over every night, and then the morning I used to take a ferry to the city. Yeah. Across the New harbor. So you get past the Opera house and we'd get leads, and I put my phone and I'd do a video for every single lead that came in. So we'd have like John Archer from Budweiser with SAP. I'd be like, "Hey John! We've worked with Heineken, we've worked with Pernod Ricard. This is what we do.

[00:02:18] Matthew Barnett: Check that. It's the Opera House. My name's Matt. I'll be in New York in four weeks time. Love to come in and see you. And we get that video. It'd be that quick. Like 30 seconds. We ended up building up, because we did quite a lot. We built like a little funnel where it would just basically edit it, host it on Amazon, send it out in an email. It's the first piece of content we'd ever get would be this video from us and we'd time it onto their time zone as well. So we kind of built it in. We triple like versions overnight and people would come back and they go, "Look, we can't really understand you. There's a lot of wind. There's a seagull in your hair. I heard you mentioned Heineken, but this is hilarious," and they were like, "Look, you should absolutely come in. I heard you mention that you were in New York in three weeks time," and then we walk in the office and I go in there and everyone would be like, "You are the guy on the boat," and so you walk in there, Evan would already know you and the conversation would be always like half sold, right? They're looking at you, and they go, " Whoever that is he's obviously showed off. We were creative, show that we cared, showed that we would take time. But the reality was once we'd actually built this little function, it was only 30 seconds of time. How much time do you need to buy a relationship? It's pretty small, right? Long story short, one client asked if they could use this system. So he built something they could utilize. When they started using it, obviously they sent it out.

[00:03:16] There's a natural problem. They growth funnel here that they send out. People see that they came in, asked they could use it, and we put a little paywall in. 12 months later, we just kinda sat on it, realized we had something, and then 12 months after that it overtook the original business. So that's kinda how we started and then we look at that and we go, "Look, it's not actually about video. We always say we're not video company, which is kind of unusual cause that's a primary tool, but it's actually about turning up, right? So you're turning up to a customer and you're showing face and you're trying to get a bit of that coffee shop interaction. A bit of that kind of pitch int eraction As a first piece of comms, because you only get one chance to make your first impression and then where you go after that is obviously up to you. But that's the crux of it. It's actually all about sparking a great first impression, which starts to build loyalty and gives you the best shot of converting that customer.

[00:03:59] Aakash Shah: That's absolutely brilliant. Thanks for taking me through that journey. You'd get a lead in and then you're gonna be reviewing your leads in the morning anyway, while you're on your commute, you might as well make them a video. I think you've already highlighted a insight that you have that I think a lot of people miss, which is video is great, but what video is really enabling is a connection. A human connection where you're saying, "Hey, I care about this more than just a email. Right? This is something that's actually showing up. I made this video for you. Yes, I'll take this conversation." You know, when you started video was not as happening as it is now. Now video is everywhere, especially short form video with Loom and TikTok. Loom. On the business side, you got Gong and Chorus recording every single sales call. On short form video you have YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels and TikTok, and that's taken over the world but Bonjoro. It's pre pandemic, it's pre-video, kind of taking everything over. It's more 2017, 2018 What made you really realize that this approach of connections and connections really being supercharged by video. When did that spark hit outside of, or was it just a story that you shared with me?

[00:05:03] Matthew Barnett: So that nothing happens like by flu. We already worked in video. So the work we were doing with the agency, we did a lot of research by video. So we've been playing video since 2011, I think. On mobile. So we basically got onto mobile video when it first came out and what we're doing was qualitative research where we'd have shoppers go out on with their mobile phones and do shopping on camera in stores, going into their cupboards, pulling out products, testing products, all that kind of stuff or on video. We understood video as a data source. Which is interesting and then what you see when you do that is you go, "Actually, there's also human science as well," right? There's the emotions you get when you do research. You're not so much about what people say, it's what they're thinking and what they're saying and when they're unboxing it, like what they're looking at and stuff. I think subconsciously we knew the power of video and the idea of now everyone's got a video camera in their hand. This device here is your best friend, right? This comes with you on your commute work, it goes into the office. It goes the toilet, it goes everywhere with you, right? 

[00:05:54] Aakash Shah: Yes, we take our phone

[00:05:55] Matthew Barnett: So the way we behave with this versus the computer. It's very different, right? Most people all versus the camera. Video is always on a pedestal. It's a role of film and then suddenly that starts to get broken down. Where we were very early in it, we were paying people to do research and that's why they would do it. That study starts to change. Come back to the first part I said about sales in enterprise and agency. It's a relationship based piece. You have to have the work, but you know, you are also selling yourselves because if you're a consultant. If you're doing work yourself like you are the product, right? You have to get that across and say, "We're playing with video, we're doing sales." it just made sense to do that test, right? Like it was only ever a test. Anything say, "Will this work?" and I think you'll hear about every business in the world, right? Timing is crucial. And we tried other video plays and other things before this and we'd failed on a few things and we ended up in research because that was an area where video could be done because you were paying people to do it and then suddenly you start to have this change where suddenly people going, "Ah yes, I am using things like Instagram and other mobile video things, right? It wasn't Skype that did it. I wouldn't even say it was Zoom. I think it's when people really started to use video on these devices. That's when the change happened, because there's a hump to get over for everyone and you probably wouldn't remember it now, but when people first started doing video, you see yourself on video, there was still this, I think, subconscious thing of the video on the pedestal. People had to get over relaxing and be themselves, and that I think happened on mobile devices, not on desktop first. For a lot of people.

[00:07:17] Aakash Shah: No, I think that's totally true. I think you even see it now when people take a video call on their computer versus on their phone. If I say that you're going to FaceTime somebody that has a different emotional component than if you're going to zoom somebody, right? I don't wanna zoom people, but I wanna FaceTime people. I don't actually have an iPhone, but, it's the same idea.

[00:07:35] Matthew Barnett: I try and like zoom my parents because I'm from the UK and they're overseas and I'm like, "Get on Zoom. Call is better. It's much better," and they can't do it. They're like "I'm on Facebook or WhatsApp," and they're walking around and I'm like, "Okay, fine. Don't worry about it." Like you said, there's a different emotional feeling that comes with it, but again, it all comes down to that. That's been the training ground and then Zoom came in and now here we are. Most people are like us where they're completely comfortable on video. We don't think it's weird anymore to look at ourselves this much. It's a great thing. I mean, where do we go next year? VR, AR, is gonna be interesting to play out over the next kind of 10, 20 years.

[00:08:04] Aakash Shah: Do you feel that video reduces spam right now at least? Because it's more authentic than just getting a text message or an email,

[00:08:14] Matthew Barnett: Authenticity is everything, right? Trust has become a challenge. Trust has always been a challenge. I think with any medium it's subject to abuse, right? So what you'll see is when we all got onto email, it was amazing and I think we're all with this cycle where we were happy actually not talking to people. We were like, "Oh, great, they're having some lines. This is amazing. And then that started to get abused. Sms, same thing. Initially it was extremely good and now it's start to get abused a bit more. And there are better laws in place, but again, there's still subject to that videos next to where it's hard to fake. Again, this will change. Obviously with like deep fake stuff coming through, where do you go there? Are there potential trust issues there that there might be down the line? I think there's a lot of work to be done around authenticity of communication. I think video lends itself where it is much more believable given again, five, 10 years you'll be able to fake all of this. We then need to have a look at other protocol will have to go into place so we know what to trust. So it's not just a medium that can do that. I think there's a lot more work to be done around trust in the space, but if we know, we can trust, that's already big step forward. And this is why things like referrals and stuff matter when purchasing. The reason we're talking here is, is because Casey introduced us, right? It's a really important piece and that is trustworthy. I think it's a great time to be re-looking into loyalty and trust around customers because I think those that crack it, take e-commerce massive boom, but now it's highly, highly competitive, right? How do you sell two widgets for two different companies between brands? And it's not gonna be ads anymore. I think that's clear. It's gonna be the ones who build a brand, who get customers to stay around and spend more, ultimately build loyalty and trust and that needs a bit of human interaction, right?

[00:09:39] Aakash Shah: Absolutely. I totally agree. It sounds like you had a really strong insight, and correct me if I'm wrong around video. Is authentic video much better than just email? And then you timed it with people's time zones and that just was leagues better than like a boring drip campaign or a basic outreach, is that correct?

[00:09:58] Matthew Barnett: Yeah, but like I said, it was a test. Right? I think this is the thing when you start a company. Always be testing. I'm exaggerating. You'll probably do 50 tests to get one that really works. I think you'll get some that work okay and your fans really need product stuff. You launch your party, like evidence goes double and then everyone just goes up a little bit. I think it's the most important thing for like a founding team is you have to be in the mindset of like always be testing and measuring and so when you test and stuff. It works and obviously we had the insight and it was correct. I wouldn't say we knew how effective it would be. I think it's bad timing as well, right? Because we've been paying video for quite a long time. If you're playing for something for say healthcare or kind interesting stuff. If you're doing stuff for 10 years and then you're a bit early, if you keep at it. A lot of people say the most important thing about fanny business is you have to stay in the game. 

[00:10:37] Aakash Shah: It staying alive. 

[00:10:39] Matthew Barnett: Yeah. And then it turns out you hit the right time and I was like, "Your time was amazing!" You're like, "Yeah, we'll just forget the five years before that when the timing wasn't so good."

[00:10:46] Aakash Shah: You're collecting knowledge, you're doing all your experimenting even during that time. That establishes a foundation. I believe video is the future. Also, I stick my co-founder, he's a doctor and I just say, "Answer this patient question. We're just gonna record you," and then that's so much easier. It's so much more human. It's actually easier nowadays to record yourself than it is to write a good email and it's more human and people really resonate with that. Let's talk a little bit about this test. You tested this out, you felt like there was something there. What was your approach then when you're like, "Hey, this might be something." When did you decide, "Let's double down here" and what did you say like is the success and how did you find those first 10 clients.

[00:11:23] Matthew Barnett: So obviously the first client we ever had was a customer. I think a couple of the customers asked about this. We put them on, it's not as simple as that. We put them on and then so the funnel built, right?We did a lot of like legwork and door knocking. We're based in Australia, which today is not our market. 99% of our sales are overseas. I love Australia. It's 20 million people, right? . So that's our cap there, right? But in those early days it's a good testing ground. I mean, a lot stuff gets tested in Australia and New Zealand because it's kinda like off the radar. You're out the way because it's smaller. You can walk into pwc, you can get into the banks, you can meet people a lot easier, I'd say. And so what you do in those early days is you actually have to hit the road and go meet every type of customer that you think could use us. We did trials with PWC on the enterprise side. We did trials with universities. We did trials with nonprofits with financial advisory. We did it with SAS companies and we met most of those in person. Somewhat were clients of the original company or someone people we'd met while building our business, who wouldn't last few clients, but just no friends and friends and stuff and you just basically have to go in person. What you're looking for is your ICP, right? Like your ideal customer profile. Again, you don't necessarily notice at the time you're just trying it out. You just have to hustle and hustle and people will talk to you and they'll like the idea and you'll get build and then whether they use it or not is next dimension, right? Just because someone likes something doesn't mean they get in. Because you have to handhold those old days and then when you launch a product, if somebody. likes what you do. They use it and in three months, four months time, they're still utilizing it on a weekly basis. They're still active in the product and the products excuse me, the language is kind of shitty. Because it's an early beater, right? 

[00:12:46] Aakash Shah: Yeah. I mean, when you're early, it's not what you have in your head.

[00:12:50] Matthew Barnett: It's not a beautiful thing yet. If they use that, then you've got something, right? And then if you're gonna Webkit that. Then off the back of that we essentially seeded. We actually met a few of our investors from that seeding process as well. We had a few clients then becoming investors which will happen again, which is a vague sign of validation of the product. We then had a natural product-led growth funnel counter the back of that. Certain customers would be great if popular growth, certain ones wouldn't. So you had this dimension where we like great customer, good LTV stays long, doesn't get its own new customers. This customers super low and this is a whole loyalty thing. Super LTV pain in the ass, but for every 10 videos they send, we get a new customer. So, although their MRI isn't very much, they're actually much better customer in the long run than this. This is the whole law's thing. 

[00:13:27] Aakash Shah: What did you, did you intentionally build your product for that built in virality? Was that something you kept in mind or was that something that emerged unexpectedly?

[00:13:37] Matthew Barnett: Look, I'm a product person. That's my background. So I built it in understanding it'll be part of it. Our previous business was completely different. It was an agency. Yeah, it was. It was sales. So now we are smaller ARPU funnel SaaS. That was sales, A big revenue project based. Different teams, different attitude. Sales team versus market. Completely different. We always try to build into it and now then when we realize we started to focus on it. I always think we're a bit slow on the uptake. Again, I look at a company who did this really well. I think Loom was extremely good at this. I think they understood straight away the PLG side of it and they went kind of big and broaded into the B2C space. I think they're really good success story and they really, really focused on that straight away. I think we were a bit slow where we didn't realize what we hadn't until a bit later because I think our mindset probably still in doing sales and converting and stuff. So you have to shift. We now had two companies with very different brands, very different attitudes.

[00:14:24] Still us creators at the heart of it, but it's a different company to run. You have to hire different people and you have to change the mindset. We've always done like a B2C brand in the B2B space, whereas in professional services you don't do that, right?

[00:14:35] Aakash Shah: No, not at all.

[00:14:36] I love to say this is all absolutely planned out, so back to testing yet. You gotta try a lot of stuff. That doesn't work if you don't pick up when you get your breaks. This is the data side of it, you need to be able to recognize when something is working and you need to be able to recognize the leaning indicators versus lagging, right? If you wait until you've got revenue potentially that's too late on. You need to underst. What's happening here? So tracking, like the way your traffic is coming from. Is it coming from the PLG piece? And just how much does that traffic convert to other sources, right? If it converts 10 times the rate, that's your PCA. Go down, go deep on that funnel. Again, it's a little bit hard when you look back and understand what you know now and try and pull apart in those early days. It is very much you're testing and that you're looking for when you get repeatable success. Then the question is, how big is that market or how big is that customer base? So is it worth investing and to go and repeat it a thousand times more?

[00:15:23] Aakash Shah: It sounds like you've been able to repeat it a few thousand times more because you've been around quite some time.

[00:15:31] Our customer base has changed a lot over that time. E-commerce wasn't in our wheelhouse at all then and then that market has changed. The markets are not stationary, right? Technology is not stationary and the world isn't stationary and look at the last five years. Best example ever. Look how much change we've been through, right? I think that's a really important lesson as well, is that doesn't matter when you crack it, you may have to crack it again and again and again. Your first market is not necessarily your end market. This has happened multiple times in great companies. You need to be testing and noting what's happening. And if your funnel changes, that's fine. You just need to change with it.

[00:16:01] Aakash Shah: And that comes back down to the testing and the agility and everything that that offers you. I love your philosophy. I am gonna have to adopt it. We're gonna change direction of the conversation a little bit. There are two questions I love to ask everyone that comes on. The first one is, if you go back to when you were starting your agency, not Bonjoro but before that, what would you tell yourself as you started that journey of your life? You don't have a long time. You just have a few sentences to impart some wisdom.

[00:16:28] Matthew Barnett: I was gonna say, I would tell myself, this is a marathon, not a sprint, but then I wouldn't tell myself that because I've told myself that you wouldn't have the energy. You have to sprint and then it ends up being a marathon of sprints.

[00:16:38] Aakash Shah: Marathon of sprints. That's actually the real phrase, 

[00:16:41] The challenge of this question is I just don't know if I'd listen to any advice I would give myself. I think you have to make mistakes. I almost think I would sit back and let myself do the same journey because you have to have hard mistakes that hurt.

[00:16:52] Aakash Shah: Yeah.

[00:16:53] Matthew Barnett: Before the agency had another company where founders blew up and we lost money and we went that whole ripping apart. The good thing then is that is it now you realize how important team is. I just don't think I would change it because without having made some stupid mistakes, we wouldn't be where we are today. If someone was like, "You shouldn't do this," I'd be like, "I'm gonna do it anyway." That's the founder's curse. I think I'd probably just let things play out because you might upset it the wrong way. That's probably what I'd say. Mistakes are okay.

[00:17:20] Aakash Shah: Mistakes are okay itself is worth sharing.

[00:17:22] Matthew Barnett: Here's the point. You look back at every fan that made to stage where we are. You look at the cohorts, the ones that are still here, every single person is effed up and made mistakes, and everyone's made mistakes that can kill the company. Like multiple times over. Everyone has run out of money at some point. They've had crucial team leave. They have found the breakups. They've messed up fundraising. Everything's happened. But the ones that are still here, the ones that keep suckers for punishment keep getting back, right? 

[00:17:47] Aakash Shah: Yeah. 

[00:17:47] Matthew Barnett: I do believe time in the game is really important because that's how you develop your expertise and that's how you develop your understanding. I would love to be where I am now at 25. I wasn't gonna learn this much in that time. Some people do. I think some environments are faster paced. The West coast is faster paced than Australia.

[00:18:02] Aakash Shah: Oh man. Don't come to the East Coast. We're gonna be way too fast for you then

[00:18:09] Matthew Barnett: Maybe I would've done an extra year in the States. Maybe that's the only thing I would change. . That's probably it.

[00:18:13] Aakash Shah: It's very humble. I love that. What's one thing that surprised you throughout your journey?

[00:18:19] Matthew Barnett: The sheer amount of change. I think you have this mindset when you start. " Here is the plan, and here we go," and then you look about 10 years later, you go, "Well, that didn't go to plan." It's fine. Right? It's not about the destination, it's about the journey.

[00:18:29] Aakash Shah: Right.

[00:18:30] Matthew Barnett: I feel like I'm saying all these cliche tropes. But it's true, right? The journey is the fun part and when you get there, I know founders who've got there and sold or got there and hit success and they get bored, right? Everyone's like, "Oh, I'm gonna take three years off," and like six months later they're like, "So I've got this other business I've started and like it happens every single time, right? Very few leaders bow out and disappear. It just doesn't happen. It's not about the money or the success at the end, it's about continual success. You have to keep coming at overcoming challenges, otherwise it gets super boring. I don't think you realize how important that is until you get a bit older and having families and kids and team growing up and beat this. You realize that the game is everything.

[00:19:07] Aakash Shah: The game is why we do it. I'm not that young man. I'm probably a little younger than you. I don't have kids yet, but you're not talking to an 18 year old here.

[00:19:16] I'm not saying you, I'm just saying you as in like plural you. 

[00:19:19] Aakash Shah: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Live for the challenge. I like that. So is there anything you would like to share with the audience? Where can people find you? Who should be looking out for you? The mic is yours.

[00:19:29] Matthew Barnett: Two things. If you wanna try out loyalty and try video and try connecting with customers in your funnel especially for your SaaS company, then head to Bonjoro, hop on board. You'll get a video from one of our team so you kind of experience it firsthand as well. Personally, if you wanna meet you out to me, go LinkedIn, type in "Papa Bear". It's my official title. I think there's two of us. I'm the guy in the bear suit. Reach out and hustle me. This is the other part. You need a fair network. You need to ask advice. You need a badger people. Not enough people do this. I think people are too nice or just don't give answer. Ask and you shall receive. I've been extreme cheeky in my career. Half of where I am is because I've got advice from people who are much better at this than me. Try Bonjoro, reach out. If we can help, we will do.

[00:20:07] Aakash Shah: Wonder.

[00:20:08] I agree. I don't think people ask enough. I think people ask bad questions. If you put in a modicum of effort, I would repay that. I'm happy to spend 45 minutes on the time, acting like I know what I'm talking about with a college student.

[00:20:23] Just some of the nonsense that we hear. One thing I wanted to ask you about is one thing we've struggled with. We're very video focused. If you go on our YouTube, we have literally hundreds of videos, our TikTok reels, all that jazz. We approached it because it was a content play. Because we saw that there was no content out there for what we were talking about and Google promotes. If you even have like a 15, 20 second video on your page, Google will rank it higher than anyone else.

[00:20:48] It was a very mechanical content play on our end but also a lot easier for me to get my co-founder to do a 30 second video instead of a 1500 word article. We're struggling with expanding that into our emails and creating an engaging experience in the email with Bonjoro is it, I haven't signed up yet but I'm going to do it after this call. It's the same deal where it's like a link to a hosted video.

[00:21:10] Matthew Barnett: It's not different. Look at us more of a comms platform than a content platform. You can create videos and host 'em and then share those out just as like a side piece.So the comms part essentially a plugs into funnels. If you guys are using Intercom or Salesforce health parts, 

[00:21:20] Aakash Shah: So we are e-comm, so we're in Clavio.

[00:21:23] Matthew Barnett: So, you plug into Clavio and then essentially you set up a few filters. If League Qual, like ilquality is X send into Bonjoro or just send everyone in. When that comes in, we'll notify our team. Then the idea is your CS team probably is checking in and saying, " Hey John. So he came in." We will deploy information from the CM so that you can go, "Hey, I see you've done steps one and two, but you haven't done done steps three and four. Look, there's a calendar booking link. If you're hop on the team, have a chat through that, or you can link a piece of content." There's a little message you do, and then there's the space we put videos and calendars below that so you have a video and be like, "Watch this video" on YouTube. So you can embed those videos in that system. It's very much that 20 second like little chat where you pull the information about the customer and it's a personalized intro. We have a testimonials product now, which is kind of the other end of the funnel, which is once you've got great customers, gather video testimonials, gather assets and then basically embed those and kinda share them out. It is that more than the content pay. One medium's not the answer. Video's a great medium, but you're gonna need to use good text at some point as well. The best people who do video content, like join Wistia's blog. They've always done a really good job. ProfitWell, I'd say is the other one. ProfitWell's like SaaSting, but 

[00:22:20] Aakash Shah: Yeah, I have a SASS background, so I know ProfitWell. Actually met Pat a while ago. He came out with a good bag.

[00:22:26] Matthew Barnett: Yeah, he is great. So ProfitWell built a media company.

[00:22:29] Aakash Shah: Yeah.

[00:22:29] Matthew Barnett: And then they bolted on a SaaS product, right? Wistia did the same. I think in terms of like the content side, those are the ones I would say look up to within the space.

[00:22:37] The ones you see, like with your Voicement video. I look at why they've been successful. They have tried every single content medium under the sun. So about testing. They just tested everything, text, video, podcast, podcast guests, short form, long form, data, case studies, the whole lot, white papers and they basically worked out what works for them. It tends to be a blend of those pieces. When they do those messages, they're very short. The emails are very kind of concise, but they're always looking out at content elsewhere. I wouldn't be surprised they have the most active email lists in the world. Again, putting content into the messages is good. You've gotta have a hook. I think keeping your messages shorter and driving straight to the content is the piece. Don't have 10 things in there. Just have one. If you've got a great video you're doing, quick recap and then link into it. Content's hard, right? Because you can produce all the content in the world, but you need start to reuse that and direct the funnel to it and start taping people through.

[00:23:27] Aakash Shah: I think content is hard for the first time, but once you know the story that you're selling, it's like that one story will drive everything through. It's just finding that story. For us, it's been uncontrollable sneezing. Uncontrollable sneezing is the thing that took off for us? But like, someone comes in, they click our blog post, they sign up. That really works well for us.

[00:23:46] Matthew Barnett: That is awesome. That's really cool. 

[00:23:47] Aakash Shah: Sometimes I miss being in SaaS because it's a lot more personal. I have a background in six figure, enterprise SaaS. You go, you whine and dine somebody. There's a lot of human there, but in consumer it's all about volume and like how many people can you get on? You see a lot more of these more surprising things pop up, at least in my experience.

[00:24:05] Look at us here. We are a final play. We were a mid volume tool really. So where we actually exist is an e-commerce SaaS and like online education, right? Those are our markets. it's systemized, but it's like 20 seconds of humanity again and again. You're getting your team each do 10 videos a day and cover over a hundred customers. Then you filter down for the leads that are worth spending that 30 seconds on. That's the idea. It is very much a process. Once it's set up, you get a notification, you do video, you get back to work. That's kind the way it works. It does involve some time, which I think is fine. You can always go back to is it worth paying 30 seconds on a lead? All leads equal. No. But if you hit the one.

[00:24:38] Aakash Shah: Then it's worth it.

[00:24:39] Matthew Barnett: That is the one that takes you a hundred minutes to get there, but that's fine, right? Which is why e-commerce was never something we ever thought we'd play in because e-commerce is like selling widgets. Turns out it's not. The amount of chat and e-commerce around lifetime value retention, repeat purchase now that's been borrowed from SaaS is really interesting cause people are realizing competition is no longer on the first sale.And then brand is really important. So how do you bring brand into that play? Stores can do this. Bricks and mortar can do it because you can talk to us who come in, you can involve them in the experience, but more, it can be a bit more experiential online. You've got to inject something a bit different into that. I think online gifting is really interesting as well. I think putting little notes in Econs that they go out handwritten stuff. I think little surprises and delight moments that every customer thinks is unique, but it's part of a funnel. This is the key. It's gotta be surprising, but absolutely operationalized. 

[00:25:27] Aakash Shah: We put candy in our packaging, and so every time you get your medicine, you get some candy, so it becomes a joyful moment instead of like, " Ugh, what's happening?"

[00:25:37] Matthew Barnett: I live on the bush, on the outskits of Sydney. So I bought a machete for going out and cutting these back. The guy sent the machete, sent a handwritten note in calligraphy with some sweets.

[00:25:44] Aakash Shah: I was wondering where that was going.

[00:25:45] Matthew Barnett: I thought it's hilarious. I was like, "Well, expected that."

[00:25:49] Aakash Shah: Well, it makes a story out of it, right? It turns a boring moment into a story which makes a memory, which is a very human thing. Well I love this conversation. I enjoyed meeting you. Might hit you up for that beer. Depends. I hope you have a great day.

[00:26:02] Matthew Barnett: If you're in the city, come and say hi. It'd be great to meet you. Otherwise, have a good day. Anything we can help with, hit up me or Casey anytime. We're around 24 7, so whatever you need.

[00:26:12] Aakash Shah: Thanks so much. Goodbye Papa Bear.

[00:26:14] Matthew Barnett: See ya. All right. Bye mate.

[00:26:16] Aakash Shah: This episode of Founders and Builders is brought to you by Wyndly. At Wyndly, we fix allergies for life with personalized treatment plans that train your body to ignore your allergies.

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[00:26:50] If you want to live without allergies, then visit https://www.Wyndly.com that's wyndly.com. Remember, life's better without allergies.

[00:27:01] Aakash Shah: Thanks for listening to Founders and Builders. Make sure to subscribe and share this episode with a friend. You can find more episodes at https://www.aakash.io. That's aakash.io, or just find Aakash on Twitter @aakashdotio.