Video Personalization for Incredible Business Growth

Welcome to the Small Business big mindset Podcast, where we dive into tactical strategies to grow your business. And to make an impact on this world. A huge part of success is keeping your mindset and vision on track. So this is a major part of our process. And this podcast. Let's do this. Hey, Aaron here. Welcome to the Small Business big mindset podcast this week, we have Matt Barnett, CEO and Papa Bear have been joro Hey, Matt, welcome. Hey, guys, awesome to be here. So cool to have you here. And that's coming to us from Australia, one of the many places on my list that I would like to visit, I just think of Australia as this mystical, magical, beautiful land that I hope to get to some point. It seems great. Okay, so Matt, we are just gonna jump right in, I would love to hear a little bit about yourself and your background, and definitely include the start of Bonjour. Oh, because I love that it just is so interesting to me that the video solution that you guys, you guys came up with it to differentiate yourself from the competition and, you know, kind of get over that challenge of connecting with potential clients in different time zones around the world since you guys are based in Australia. So definitely include that part. But basically, a little bit about yourself and how you got started and how you got to be where you are today. Yeah, so I'm actually British. Originally, we're Palmer's we call here, cause here in Australia, moved out here 11 years ago, as a younger man to surf every day, which is not my life. These days, I'm actually creative. Yeah, so I used to be a designer was an artist in London for many years. But always have an entrepreneurial mindset. So came here and start business starting an agency. And we had an agency where we dealt with a lot of sites overseas, so predominantly London, Paris, New York, which we live in Australia, and you're generally about 12 hours out of sync on time zones, makes getting phone calls and galega versions slightly challenging. So back in the day, we didn't the whole league conversion through emails and through the chat. I'm not a copywriter. I'm definitely a jazz hands kind of guy, I like to jump around and have a laugh. So a lot of that gets missed when we were doing our own kind of sales stuff. So testing, as you do try multiple things, we decided to try and send individualized videos to every single lead that came into our funnel. So every morning we would get lists. I used to take a ferry to work, go past the Opera House, which is pretty, pretty cool. So I was like, You know what, I'll get on video on my on my mobile. And I'll do video for every lead we have that comes in and just introduce ourselves and see if we get meetings that way. So john Archer from Ogilvy in London would sign up, I do a video saying, hey, john, this is Matt here, the CEO of a company in Australia. Obviously, I'm not in London, but I will be in six weeks time, I see that you know, you're the camp manager of Budweiser, we've worked with Anheuser Busch, and Heineken everything else. And they would love to come and talk to you about the work we've done there and then pitch you when I'm in London, by the way, have an awesome day. And here's the Opera House. And so the first piece that comes to ever get was this video of this guy on a boat, who they couldn't understand because the wind was too high I was harvest, it'll be like 530 in the morning, be half asleep, but the seagulls flying around. But they loved it. And we tripled the response rate. So in light, people basically came back and said like, This is hilarious, you guys absolutely have to come in and see us. And so we endgame more meetings at the back of that. And as a result more business. And it's all because we just managed to get the cross, like who we were as people in a calm space that was like that was remote because it because of where the countries were ultimately was clients are specific is this video email system with their customers. And we built something they could use. And then some of their customers came in and signed up. And then some of their customers came in and and I guess kind of mid 2017 we realized this thing was starting to grow. And we put some time into it. And then it overtook the original business within about 18 months after. So it was a happy mistake. But a little bit of direction behind it. Yeah. And here we are today. So the best kind of mistakes, the happy wins. So we were before we went live with our conversation, we briefly touched on COVID-19. And so I you know, I feel like your company was just set up so well for that just really well positioned to maybe thrive is too strong of a word. But I'm curious, like, how did the pandemic or is it because it's still here impacting your business? And did you have to shift in certain ways or what was your experience with them? What so like, it's i think i think the ship was already happening a lot. I'll be honest, I think we will Australian based business. 95% of our customers are overseas and we're from almost day one. So I think a lot of companies are working remote. Remote is like client basis. Anyway, today and this is not just SAS companies that as much the e commerce but consultancies are doing it now, right in the States, interstate clients is becoming more and more common, face to face meetings are becoming less common. So again, this was happening, it has accelerated this year, I think especially in terms of how we communicate with with customers. But at the same point, I think companies are doing this. And more importantly, I think consumers are also hitting a kind of breaking point in terms of the whole, like automation, automated emails and lack of personalization. I think we were fine with that first, but I think as we start to move so much that lives online, both business and personal. I mean, humans evolved as social creatures, and you're seeing us hit this point where we've lost those connections and where, and that was done to can't bounce back and strike back to get them again, like we thrive on relationships is how humans are meant to be. And so I think, you know, but the rise of infrastructure support video, video, it's not, it's not video itself, it's a fact, it's the face to face communication. And that's now easy to do, obviously, have data networks that support like, great video connection, you know, like, again, like Australia here on the states. And it's as we're together. So it was happening anyway, the last year, I think it's accelerated it from a psychology point of view. But I don't think it's made. I don't think it's moved as like it hasn't like, it's not like it's just on a dime. Again, like it was already happening. groundswell is already happening. Customers already asking for better service anyway, it's helped. But the good, the good, like, the great thing is like, we were already there, I think, yeah, it was already kind of heading in that direction. Anyway, yeah. No, I totally agree. I mean, for us, you know, what's interesting is that when we so we started launching this podcast, I believe, was in March. So right as the pandemic was hitting, at least the states, right. And, as you know, we have a whole studio setup here. And so the the first vision of this podcast was, we're gonna get local entrepreneurs, and we're gonna get them in our studio, and they're going to be right across from us, we're gonna have amazing discussions and conversations, and, you know, it solves so many problems, and then, you know, COVID hit, and I was just like, Alright, so that's not happening. Also, some of the episodes that we batched nobody cares about what we're talking about, for those. So it's a complete shift. And so we shifted to video and, and just making that face to face connection. And so I just love services like yours. Like I had mentioned before, we started chatting on the podcast, how we are course creators, and Bonjour. Oh, just fits right in so nicely, you know, because it's all online. It's all digital. And there's so many course creators now that you really do have to have that connection and build that relationship. And so can you talk to me a little bit about how, I don't know different companies or industries are leveraging bondora for their own companies and their efforts? Sure. So I tend to look like I got a customer base people who get success somebody in two different ends of the spectrum. So on the one hand, you have industries that actually thrive in relationships, where where trust is absolutely key. So things like consultancies, agencies, legal CPA, financial wealth management, is industries where make the best first impression absolutely wins you customers. And so using vsds, like over text and email and a nonferrous phase pieces, is crucial. And so for those industries, we use a lot of things like lead conversion. So like I did in the beginning, when someone gets in touch bait, like getting back saying your name, the power of that showing that you put support, and customer focus at the top of your funnel, it's one thing to hold well holds true. And again, first impressions do count. But the other on the spectrum, we have industries where traditionally, there's been very little human contact. And this is things like e commerce, e commerce companies, online courses, to an extent SAS companies as well. And if you look at this side, now what you have is an industry where where it's port service, human contact, relationships haven't been at the forefront and so if you start to do these in a way, that it's an amazing way to compete against other people within the industry and back to the point I mentioned earlier about humans wanting social connections. It's incredibly effective even they don't think it'll be and so I think a good example here courseware is actually to me makes sense because each course creator you are micro influence. So you actually like someone that somebody's looking up to their video materials. So when you get a video for that person, like incredibly powerful of it being an example isn't like ecommerce and this is interesting because it's not a space you would think they would ever matter. But if you think if you our e commerce company, it's no longer about selling you know, 110 dollar item to a customer and that's it. It's a case of case sometimes or item but can you Get them to come out five times a year and buy another $10 each time. So they become a $6 clients. And can you get him to go and tell 10 more people, so you get 10 more people like that. So that's becoming a $600 clients, can you get him to leave reviews online? Can you get him to grow and talk about you into that industry, when you sell something, checking in to make sure customers receive that, make sure we're happy with it, and then ask them to go and leave you a leave you a review on trustpilot or something else. Again, incredibly effective. And it's worth the time now because that customer will drive more traffic. And it differentiates us from anyone else in the space. So again, like the way I look at this is, you know, are you an industry that most ships are crucial to In which case, videos, no brainer, like, you know, there's already wired industry where video isn't being used that much. And you think maybe I should swear stand that which case, give it a go and see and see how it fares for you. Yeah. And so do you have pointers for people who are like, okay, I really, you know, I need to implement something like bungee cord into my strategy. If they're leveraging it as a relationship builder, or to stand out from a crowd, let's say, do you have kind of certain trends or pointers that you can kind of share for people that have a successful engagement rate for their videos? We're not going to live in terms of industries. But I've tried to talk high level. Yeah, I think there's two things. One is one is obviously the video itself. And the other part is, is when to be using the videos. So the way that our system works is we'll will actually plug into you know, any CRM or custom data source, you know, from Shopify, to Active Campaign, HubSpot, Salesforce, but you name it. So the idea is you actually send these at some points on a journey. So the idea is you get a new lead in, it sends you a notification says, this is a good time to send a video, and they do the video, so that the user is receiving that video within the hour of signing up something so it gets very, very relevant. They purchase something, three or four hours later, it's been delivered, and then you wait 12 hours, and then send video again, it's all timely. So there is this the right time. Just the high level, the areas you might want to look at is league aversion, make your best first impression. The second stage we call activation. So for online courses, and SAS, it's when someone's paid you and they can't bored, but they haven't necessarily engaged with your product or material. If they engage with it, you will lose them as a customer. So you use this to make to sort out the ones that haven't engaged, get in touch and say, Do you need help, or his next thing to go and do but important. And third, it's about retention. So anyone who's been with you for a while, tell them thank you just tell how much they mean to you. And they'll stay longer. And thirdly, is a referral piece, which I mentioned in e commerce, but in any industry, asking for referrals and testimonials, in terms of what you do in the video, and how you say it's the most So to recap, timing is, is is key. But building this into your systems, you want to be able to, you wanna be able to send this you know, within four hours of of something happening is key. So it's relevant. Beyond that, I wouldn't worry too much. Authenticity is crucial, depending on your brand. Where, where, where on the spectrum, like, I'll do my videos anywhere, like in my kitchen with my kids running around my feets that we found, the more, the more authentic, more powerful they are. If you are wealth management, do do wear the suit, maybe drop a tie, like I always say, take one step, one step more relaxed than you would normally be. I think if you like that people trust it more. And again, it will it will benefit relationship in that manner, I wouldn't worry too much about looking your best. That's not the point of this. Next thing is that there's a lot of parents name, so make sure you say the person's name. And if they're if you're a b2b company mentioned the company name, if you can say anything else that's specific to them do that will actually tell you what they haven't heard. So if you're doing an online course, we'll tell you, what they haven't haven't engaged with how far they've got maybe Martin mentioned, hey, look, I see you've got to stay asleep at night stage for some help. But ultimately, be yourself. Don't think about too much username, and keep it you know, it's, it's, it's, it's just a check in really, you know, it's under a minutes, you know, you can spend less than a minute and get probably 95% of the benefits you could do if you made a half an hour video. Yeah, like, your time is important. stick to that now, and thank you for putting it that way. Because I think so many, especially on video, they can get intimidated very quickly and think it has to be picture perfect and everything has to be just right. And but you're right people appreciate authenticity and just being genuine, you know, and just like just speaking truth, you know, essentially so thank you for mentioning that because I think that's a showstopper for a lot of people. They're like, if I can do it perfect, then I'm out, you know. So. Okay, so I had mentioned earlier that a lot of our audience are early to mid growth entrepreneurs. So I was wondering if you had if you would share any like key learnings or insights you have for others wanting to go out on You're on their own, or, you know, if they're things that you're like, that happened and you're like, Well, that was a lesson, you know, as you're really kind of going forward in your journey that might help others out. Right, so many mistakes every day, May at some point, everything still buys. I mean, depends on your risk profile, but, like, don't be afraid of making mistakes, like the like, we like, we have a kind of core, I guess, piece of our culture that, like, we encourage everyone to go and test us test. And if you test 10 things, but 80 of them are gonna work. That's just the nature of testing this is and this is how you discover and how you move forward. So if you haven't started the business yet, you know, count at least 10 different ideas. Eight of them are gonna work. One of them might be okay. One of them might be stellar. And you don't necessarily know what that one is. Yeah, the one that seems the best might not be test that, what do you have the one you think might might, might be the one, go test it with 10 customers, you know, the one might not get it, one gets a bit and one them absolutely loves it, go go find 10 more of those and see if that's repeatable. So think big, take small steps, test a lot trial or things you're never gonna get, you're not gonna have one idea. And that's it. And then you made, that's not how it works. It is many, many, many small steps. be okay with that, like, enjoy that, like, embrace that. And follow that process. And, you know, five years later, suddenly, you'll be there on your yacht, drinking, whatever it is you want to drink today in the Bahamas. gotta cut it short. But it's made me step. So there's no, there's no like overnight successes, like it just doesn't exist. Tell us the steps. If you fail, like it's cool. I want to say it again, network around you. Find other entrepreneurs, other business leaders at your level. And then very importantly, get them like one step ahead. If you're just doing a startup, don't don't try to get a mentor who runs you know, Wells Fargo, because because because they can't help you. Let's see if I find someone who's, you know, raise their first fund or got, you know, 1000 customers, you know, if you got a friend as a customer, let's get by Sony's got 10,000. So he's got 10,000 500,000 just useful to help you see those next steps to help you try and minimize those mistakes. But otherwise, honestly, it's just step by step by step. ad infinitum. Yeah, what does that phrase fail forward? You know, and it's, uh, yeah, and I, I love folks like you who will actually be transparent and share that, because I think for so many, they see the success of others. And they're having a hard, they're on the struggle bus, you know, and they're just starting out, and they have this idea, and it just kept, it falls flat on their face. And then they just, well, guess I'm not made to be an entrepreneur, or, you know, I guess I should just give up and go back to my day job kind of a thing. And they don't see that. No, it took years, decades, you know, and it took idea after idea after idea for people to actually become successful and what they were doing. And a lot of times what you started out doing well, you're a great example of this, when you start out doing it's not what you end up doing right, your business morphs and changes most of the time. I mean, slack was what a video game was. They were terrible. And they like, Oh, I should prevent this other thing. It's It's, like, as always, definitely not unique. It's kind of common, I would say. I mean, like, I think like the minimal things keep going. Yeah, I mean, still understand where to stop and move on to something else. But that's not it. That's that's life. I mean, just keep going. No, it's true. And so we're kind of all about the hills holistic view of business, right? So we always ask people like, what as you're running a company, you have a family you have other things going on in your life. So what is it in your routine, whether it's daily or otherwise that kind of like help you stay afloat? professionally as well as personally? I will say on the saying or some someone said to me, Well, you know, you have like, like family business, like health and friends and social and you can can't do like one of those. Well, and probably one of the one Okay, yeah. I do think you ultimately have to sacrifice like you have to make sacrifices and compromises don't expect to keep everything the same. Especially being in families the picture. Look, I think structure is good. This is coming from creative. Like I'm not a structured brain kind of person, like at all. I start every day at 5am that's the best part of my structure. I do most of my conversations early while I'm alive and have an agenda. Most of my important work early and then I structure less important work or work I can do without thinking too. Later on the day. I stop. I'll stop at certain times. Spend time with family. When we have holidays. I and I'll make sure all my teams which off as well. You know people ask me if they have a half dozen years down my mic isn't as dangerous. When he's on my Lego museum. I just take the day like take the whole time of Fuji, because wasn't years and years ago, like take time off, come back refreshed, that will be way more beneficial to the company than you working in that period. I mean, like, it hasn't been like, it doesn't matter. I don't think anyone customer matters. And you have bad customers giving them give your team empower your teams to do that as well. You know, I think, yeah, structure structures the key. Take the structure you have and you know, build that into your culture, if it's good, like tight structure that your team having built by entity collection, and take advice from it. But be okay with sacrifice. You know, I did not party anymore. Those days are long, long gone. Hang it, Matt. So you sacrificed your party and got it? I'm fine with that. No, that's awesome. Are there certain resources you turn to to keep learning? You know, I don't know is it like books, audio, podcasts. I didn't buy some of these people. So I actually won that, okay. Well, maybe like, turn 50 founders in Australia, we saw a bunch of us used to go surfing before work at like five in the morning. And we ended up talking shop. And we end up doing trips. And we do a trip every four months to the beaches and then once the snow and we go along and we'd surf and because seven snowboard and then in the evenings, we have people who can't sit on a on a chair and tell a story about a fundraiser or an exit or found a breakup or something else difficult. Or when you kind of like growth child they then locked. We went up for eight years now, it's pretty big. And we still get together two or three times a year. Because all of us run businesses and we're all busy. And so we don't get we don't network anymore. We just do these networking events, and you meet everyone else in the cardboard network and you go and then when you will start to get success. You're so busy running your team and your company that doesn't happen. So we make sure we get together every four months, regardless to share the stories and share learnings and love each other. In fact, that's support I mentioned earlier, like that's how we learn because it's always someone who's ahead of us. And we also bring in like, you know, younger business people as well who below us. So we can help them in the same in the same way in the same method. I read a lot, but honestly, I get more from that than I get 10 times more than that I'll ever get from a book. Yeah, I mean, with I just forget about in person things. It's like, right, there is also in person. Thank you, Donna. But we've done it. We did zoom, we didn't zoom in lockdown. You know, like we jumped on the evening and a bunch of people had a beer or glass of wine and we just chat about things, you know, and some of us don't well and COVID some hadn't as we talked about that a lot of it. Yes. It wasn't quite the same. But things will open up again. Yeah, there's always a way. Yeah. No, totally. Yeah, it's that's, we do something similar over here. We just kind of surround ourselves with other business leaders, you know, and kind of help each other out. And I 100% agree. It's like, if you're the smartest person in the room, you need to find a new room. Because then that means you're not growing and expanding either. So yeah. Okay, I would love to hear about your, as you're looking toward the future, like what's, what's your vision? What are your goals for a bunch or otherwise? Yes, I always have a video company, where what we were doing is helping people do personalization at scale. And we have a we have an ethos that we live by, which is automate processes, never relationships. And that's finally where we going next. So we're looking at, you know, beyond videos tool, can we help you determine which leads and customers you need to invest human capital and argument Simon? Can we tell you which ones about the other ones where it's more effective? Can we give you different mediums to contact people, but beyond the video, different methods to engage and delight them? And then most of all, can we then take all that delight and all those customers now that are having a wonderful time with you? And can we turn them into super fans and get them to start to leave reviews and drive more customers? Because if you're doing this stuff, if you build great relationships, the actual like many benefits, it's not league aversion. It's the fact that when they come in, they will go and tell many, many other people and lots of us have advocates but we don't necessarily utilize them. So we want to see if we can help our customers do this better. Now I love it. And that's gonna be it's, it's more and more of a need, as we continue to move forward to so tell us where people can find you online. So if you do try video, get a bunch Reddit comm and have played you'll get a welcome video from someone on the team. It could be me I still do a number each morning. So if you have any questions, just say Hi, we're obviously real humans here. We're here to help. If you want to hit me up, please do go to LinkedIn if you if you search for Papa Bear. There's three of us and I'm the one that bear see me out. I love the personality. It's so great. Okay, speaking of personality, we end every podcast episode with a fun question. We are total music heads over here. And so we want to know if you could have listened to only one music artists for the rest of your life. who would it be? Ah probably won't know them. But London electricity, old school, British German base? Usually we know but I have not heard of that one, huh? Ah, it's excellent. I wasn't I was gonna do john bass gig where the entire band just played it on actual doll bases and drums. And it was there's a lot of flow going on. It was pretty awesome. That's cool. I have to check them out. It's so I have a huge family. And I'm like one of the young middle to younger of the group. And so I was exposed to music from my early early age and all kinds and Joey as well. And so when I'm, that one stumped me. I'm surprised but good, good on you. stuff that's outside. You're like us and you're like, dude, do I want to check them out? That's awesome. Okay, well, thank you so much for your time. This has been such a fun discussion. I really appreciate it and you've shared so much insight. I know it's gonna help so many people are not our audience. So thank you for being genuine and transparent. Have a wonderful day. Bye to be thanks for tuning in to the Small Business big mindset podcast. To keep the fun going. Check out our Facebook group start and scale an online business For even more free trainings and resources from fellow entrepreneurs. If you haven't already, head on over to Muscle Creative COMM And click subscribe. Join our email list for weekly updates. And if you've enjoyed this podcast episode, check us out on your favorite podcast platform to follow us and give us a review. As always be authentic bringing an insane amount of value and keep crushing it