Automating the Process of Sending Handwrytten Notes with David Wachs

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[00:01:02] Hey this is William Tinkup and Ryan Leary and you are listening and watching the Use Case

[00:01:06] Podcast.

[00:01:07] Ryan how are you doing today?

[00:01:08] Fantastic, how are you?

[00:01:10] That's the big question.

[00:01:11] I'm doing well.

[00:01:12] I'm doing well.

[00:01:13] It's about 104 outside in Arlington, Texas so about a normal average day here for

[00:01:19] us.

[00:01:19] No it's been storming ever since last night here.

[00:01:24] We don't have those things in the summer.

[00:01:27] They happen elsewhere in the United States.

[00:01:29] Sadly we do.

[00:01:30] You're jealous.

[00:01:33] So David first of all do us a favor and introduce yourself.

[00:01:37] Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.

[00:01:40] Sure thanks Ryan and William.

[00:01:41] I'm David Wax, I'm the CEO and founder of a company called Handwritten and it's

[00:01:46] handwritten with a why because everything when I started the company had a why in

[00:01:51] it like a lift.

[00:01:52] Yeah.

[00:01:53] But yeah so what handwritten is is it is the largest provider of automated handwriting

[00:02:01] services in the world.

[00:02:04] We're 10 years old, we use 175 robots.

[00:02:08] Each of these robots holds a real pen and it writes out notes at scale.

[00:02:13] So and then we write out the envelope put a real stamp on it and mail it.

[00:02:17] So what we try to do it came from my need to send out handwritten notes but also my laziness

[00:02:25] and disorganization where I couldn't get my act together to go out and get the cards

[00:02:30] and write them and hand cramp and all the rest.

[00:02:33] So what this does is this turns sending handwritten notes as easy makes it as easy

[00:02:38] as sending an email.

[00:02:40] See what I love about this and Ryan will hate this but what I learned about this

[00:02:45] is Jerry Jones the owner general manager of Dallas County.

[00:02:49] Already hated.

[00:02:50] Yeah.

[00:02:52] Years ago he had a he had a thing that would do his autograph and you just kind of put

[00:02:57] whatever the bit was underneath it and he would put his autograph on it and I thought

[00:03:01] it was fascinating because because I'm sure he gets a lot of requests especially here

[00:03:05] locally you know tons of requests to sign photos of players and whatever the bit

[00:03:10] is right.

[00:03:11] And so I'm like he can't there's no way he can sit down there and do 50,000 autographs

[00:03:17] or whatever the bit is.

[00:03:19] And it was funny here in Dallas to hear on Sports Talk Radio people half of the people

[00:03:24] were like well that just doesn't seem genuine that's not authentic it's it's I'm like

[00:03:28] that just seems really efficient to me.

[00:03:32] Yeah.

[00:03:32] Yeah.

[00:03:32] That's probably my big.

[00:03:34] So you know we actually have some very well known football players using us just for their

[00:03:42] own personal correspondence I was surprised not just signing their autograph but actually

[00:03:46] like writing out handwritten notes.

[00:03:48] I didn't realize football players cared especially these ones who are pretty high profile but

[00:03:53] apparently they do.

[00:03:55] So my answer to that argument is let's go back to the 1960s and imagine you had

[00:04:03] a bad flight on TWA or Pan Am and you wanted to complain so you got out of pen and you wrote

[00:04:10] a letter to the CEO of Pan Am right?

[00:04:12] Right.

[00:04:13] And they wrote you a letter back and signed it.

[00:04:15] Now I'll bet you dollars to donuts they didn't actually sit down and write that letter

[00:04:19] 100%

[00:04:19] They had their secretary write that letter and maybe sign it or maybe they had an

[00:04:24] old school auto pen do the signing too.

[00:04:27] So is what we do any less genuine than what's been done forever?

[00:04:32] If you're a nonprofit and you want to send out a thousand thank you notes to all your

[00:04:38] donors what do you do?

[00:04:40] You don't sit down and write a thousand thank you notes.

[00:04:42] No.

[00:04:42] You have to take care of it.

[00:04:43] You have to.

[00:04:44] You have to.

[00:04:46] 100 volunteers do it.

[00:04:47] Think of Congress.

[00:04:48] It's no different.

[00:04:49] No, I did an internship in DC for the Smithsonian back in the early 90s and my best friend

[00:04:58] did his internship for a senator.

[00:05:01] Yeah.

[00:05:02] And they wrote his signature so they signed the interns signed his signature.

[00:05:07] They didn't even have an auto pen.

[00:05:08] Yeah.

[00:05:09] And so they basically they would sign for it was a stock photo of the senator and

[00:05:14] and they would say so he brought like a stack of photos over one day and we're

[00:05:19] on and he just signed them.

[00:05:21] I'm like my whole life completely ruined.

[00:05:23] Now you're going to tell me Santa Claus is in real.

[00:05:26] No, no, like, first of all, I think it's genius.

[00:05:29] Absolutely.

[00:05:29] I think I love it because when you said it comes from, you know, being lazy.

[00:05:35] I think of that Bill Gates quote about the best developers are lazy because they want

[00:05:42] to find a faster way of doing things.

[00:05:44] Yeah.

[00:05:44] Right.

[00:05:45] And this is one of those things.

[00:05:47] It just seems like a great efficiency.

[00:05:49] Okay.

[00:05:50] Notes need to be written.

[00:05:52] Personalization needs to happen.

[00:05:53] Doesn't mean that you have to do it.

[00:05:55] It just needs to happen.

[00:05:56] At least what it is, is it's I'd say it's a step above preying something out.

[00:06:02] My last business was text messaging.

[00:06:05] So, you know, just to tell you a quick story, you know, it was very six, you

[00:06:11] know, you'd send a text message, people would respond great.

[00:06:14] This one we have piano, a piano tuner that uses a small time, right?

[00:06:18] Right.

[00:06:19] He'll go into your house once a year.

[00:06:20] You only need to tune a piano once a year.

[00:06:22] He'll tune your piano, have an automation set up to thank that person with the thank

[00:06:28] you they deserve.

[00:06:29] In other words, a handwritten note afterwards saying thank you for having me in your house.

[00:06:33] And then a year later when he comes to your house, he often sees that

[00:06:37] handwritten note standing up on the piano.

[00:06:39] So not only is it opened, not only is it read, it is put on display.

[00:06:44] Right.

[00:06:44] You could write an email.

[00:06:46] That's not going to get printed out and stuck there.

[00:06:48] You can send a text message.

[00:06:50] Nobody's going to take a screenshot and print it out and stick it there.

[00:06:53] But handwritten notes have a special place even if they're not a thousand percent authentic.

[00:06:59] It's still that notion that you're trying to do something different and in a more elevated

[00:07:04] way.

[00:07:05] And that's kind of where, you know, this fits in.

[00:07:08] I always joke and I don't often put this on podcasts, but I'll say the unofficial

[00:07:15] slogan of handwritten.

[00:07:17] The slogan of hallmark is when it's good enough to send the very best.

[00:07:21] The unofficial slogan of handwritten is when it's almost good enough to send the very

[00:07:26] best because you cannot scale yourself to send a hundred thousand of these.

[00:07:32] No.

[00:07:32] But you know they need to go out.

[00:07:34] And that's what handwritten helps.

[00:07:36] Well, so a couple things here.

[00:07:38] One, I had zero clue that this was done by robots.

[00:07:42] I actually thought it was a run through printed.

[00:07:45] Like it was printed off, right?

[00:07:47] Like it's actually some of the.

[00:07:49] Yeah, some are.

[00:07:50] But not.

[00:07:51] So it's actually that's pretty cool.

[00:07:52] Number one.

[00:07:53] So I like that.

[00:07:54] Yeah.

[00:07:54] So we passed the smudge test.

[00:07:57] And then for those of that, you know, so you can lick your finger and smudge

[00:08:02] the ink and it smudges because it's written in pilot G2 ballpoint pen.

[00:08:07] The other thing is pen seems to follow the contours of the paper.

[00:08:12] And we use very high quality, Valum paper.

[00:08:16] So it's bumpy and you really notice that.

[00:08:19] Right.

[00:08:19] And then unlike, you know, some of these people like like window installers,

[00:08:23] they'll send you a piece of paper that looks like it's handwritten.

[00:08:26] But it's like printed in brush script from the 1990s.

[00:08:30] That's what I'm talking about.

[00:08:31] It fails.

[00:08:32] And, you know, you have to do it in such a way that, you know, we take a lot

[00:08:37] of we put a lot of work into the handwriting.

[00:08:39] So we randomize the characters.

[00:08:41] So if you write two O's, two O's together look different than two O's apart.

[00:08:46] Two O's apart look different, you know, right?

[00:08:49] On one side, you know, we just we do all that.

[00:08:51] We warp the text.

[00:08:52] We there's a lot of work that goes in to make sure that it looks

[00:08:56] as close to perfect as possible or as far from perfect as possible.

[00:09:00] I should.

[00:09:00] Now is this is it, is it the handwriting of one or is there

[00:09:04] stock handwriting that that I select?

[00:09:07] How does that work?

[00:09:08] Yeah.

[00:09:08] So if you're a famous quarterback, you can spend the money and have your own

[00:09:13] handwriting.

[00:09:15] If you're any, you know, because it's about 1500 bucks for us to go

[00:09:18] through that and recreate that.

[00:09:20] If you're anybody else, you can go on our website and we have 35 or 40 at

[00:09:25] this point handwriting styles for you to choose from.

[00:09:28] You just pick the style you like.

[00:09:30] And then and those are either written by some of my employees or other people,

[00:09:37] clients of ours that have allowed us to use their handwriting.

[00:09:39] So, you know, you just pick the handwriting you like and and and you

[00:09:44] go from there and it's no no additional cost.

[00:09:46] You know, one of the things I'm thinking about, Ryan, like my old son

[00:09:52] in his early development, he had fine motor skills, fine motor skill problems.

[00:09:56] And so he never really developed great handwriting.

[00:09:59] And my handwriting, to be honest, is horrible.

[00:10:02] Same like, like absolutely horrible.

[00:10:05] Like people I can leave my notes out and people will look at my

[00:10:10] no, my kids or wife, whatever they look at my notes and have no idea

[00:10:13] what's on the piece of paper.

[00:10:14] Now I do as I can read my own handwriting, but so I can see the

[00:10:20] benefit of this for people that have poor handwriting for whatever reason

[00:10:25] or that have some type of fine motor skills, you know, issue.

[00:10:30] And so it's not just about the efficiency of time and things like that.

[00:10:35] It's like they legitimately want this output.

[00:10:38] But even if they could sign a thousand letters, it still wouldn't be legible.

[00:10:43] Right. It still wouldn't be beautiful.

[00:10:45] I'll do you one better.

[00:10:47] We have. OK.

[00:10:48] So for all of my family and friends that are not listening and watching this,

[00:10:53] we still have our wedding thank you cards

[00:10:57] written out because we finally got them written.

[00:11:00] We've been married 18 years.

[00:11:01] We still have them in the box, not sent

[00:11:05] at one point as we start seeing people, we hand them

[00:11:10] and they're like, what the hell?

[00:11:11] A modest will get rid of them.

[00:11:13] But we didn't do for the longest

[00:11:15] because we don't want to write it.

[00:11:18] It was three frigging lines.

[00:11:21] Yeah. When we, you know,

[00:11:23] so having this company gets benefit because my wife just sits there, you know,

[00:11:27] at a kid's birthday party, she has the handwritten app open.

[00:11:30] We have a little.

[00:11:30] Right. As people, as my son opens his gift,

[00:11:35] she pounds it out, you know, copy paste, changing a few things using a template.

[00:11:39] And then they're done before, you know, the gifts are that's fantastic.

[00:11:44] So oh, and then for weddings

[00:11:47] or employee appreciation.

[00:11:49] Or whatever. There's spreadsheet tools

[00:11:52] you can use that you just upload, you know, a thousand notes at once.

[00:11:57] Or we integrate with major platforms, HRMS systems, sales force, whatever

[00:12:02] to automate that process entirely and track it, you know,

[00:12:06] so that you'll know that OK, on August 8th,

[00:12:11] I sent Ryan a card and then on August 9th, I called him.

[00:12:15] You know what I mean? So right all that type of stuff is.

[00:12:17] So so let's say so let's begin to that.

[00:12:21] So what are the use cases that you're seeing today

[00:12:26] around employee appreciation, recognition and things like that?

[00:12:30] How are employers big or small?

[00:12:33] How are they? How are they managing this?

[00:12:36] Before we move on, I need to let you know about my friend Mark Feffer

[00:12:40] and his show, People Tech.

[00:12:42] If you're looking for the latest on product development, marketing, funding,

[00:12:46] big deals happening in talent acquisition, HR, HCM.

[00:12:52] That's the show you need to listen to.

[00:12:55] Go to the work to find network, search up People Tech.

[00:12:58] Mark Feffer, you can find them anywhere.

[00:13:03] So to start with, we do a lot on the recruiting front,

[00:13:06] both from recruiting firms and the companies.

[00:13:11] So recruiting firms will

[00:13:14] kind of do minor prospecting with it.

[00:13:17] You know, if they have 50 people they want to get in touch with,

[00:13:20] whether they're probably at the executive level,

[00:13:22] they can use our service to send handwritten notes to them on their stationery.

[00:13:27] You can go on our website and design your own cards and all that.

[00:13:31] So we have that and then we have employers following up.

[00:13:37] But it's a little tough because that has to be very timely.

[00:13:40] So usually it's post hire.

[00:13:42] They'll follow up and say, you know,

[00:13:45] we're so excited that you're joining in the next few weeks.

[00:13:49] And then certainly employee appreciation on an annual basis.

[00:13:53] There's the birthday card and then a Christmas holiday card.

[00:13:56] Those are kind of the big use cases.

[00:13:58] So it's prospecting after hire and then birthday and holiday.

[00:14:06] We don't overdo it.

[00:14:06] It's not like you're sending a handwritten card to an employee

[00:14:08] or anybody once a week.

[00:14:11] Well, I grew up kind of worshiping and admiring Jack Welch on some level

[00:14:17] and studying him.

[00:14:19] And one of his bits was sending faxes, fax notes from after he'd

[00:14:25] meet somebody in Topiko or whatever the bit was.

[00:14:28] He'd have a note that somebody else took down and he'd write out a bit

[00:14:32] and fax it to him.

[00:14:34] Yeah.

[00:14:34] And he and it's just like it was a very personal way

[00:14:38] of connecting with his leadership and the people that in a way of just

[00:14:43] saying, I don't know, like we had lost that art

[00:14:49] of just acknowledging people and then also giving him some inspiration

[00:14:54] and otherwise and he signed his name to it.

[00:14:57] Now again, we will go back and forth on did he do that or not?

[00:15:01] Because I met him twice and I asked him about it at the last time

[00:15:06] when I met him at Sherm and and he did back then.

[00:15:10] He did sign them.

[00:15:11] OK, so I don't I believe him.

[00:15:14] I mean, what's not what's not to what's not to believe.

[00:15:18] But you know what? What this conjures up for me is my my dad in the 70s.

[00:15:24] He he ran a plant for a car gated car gated industry warehouser.

[00:15:29] And so he was a plant silver intended.

[00:15:31] And so everyone was trying to sell to him.

[00:15:35] All the vendors were trying to sell the people that have paint or glue or cardboard.

[00:15:39] They're all trying to sell them and man, they knew his anniversary date.

[00:15:43] They knew his kid's name birthday dates.

[00:15:46] They knew all the major holidays in that we were Catholic,

[00:15:50] so knew all those dates and he'd get cards.

[00:15:54] On every one of those dates.

[00:15:57] So I'm thinking about like the old school sales.

[00:16:00] What worked? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:03] And like that stuff works today if you have done well.

[00:16:06] 100 percent. I mean, we have clients calling us all the time saying

[00:16:11] with a photo of a card, they sent somebody because that person sent them

[00:16:16] the photo of the card saying you've just got a client for life,

[00:16:20] that type of thing.

[00:16:21] And within our platform and I don't want to,

[00:16:24] you know, get into all the features of the thing.

[00:16:26] But within the platform, you can upload birthday lists

[00:16:29] and manage birthday and anniversary campaigns pretty easily.

[00:16:34] You can even include like gift cards and stuff like that.

[00:16:36] But yeah, and you know, when I go on podcasts,

[00:16:40] I'm not here to promote handwritten.

[00:16:42] I'm here to promote handwritten with an I, not with a Y.

[00:16:45] Right. Even if you don't use our service,

[00:16:48] you should be sending handwritten notes.

[00:16:49] There's there I think and it's pervasive.

[00:16:53] It's not typically I don't talk about in the terms of HR,

[00:16:58] but it certainly is pervasive to everything.

[00:17:00] We are in a culture of entitlement.

[00:17:05] And when you buy from me, I'm like, yeah, of course,

[00:17:09] you're buying for me. Yeah. Why wouldn't you buy for me?

[00:17:12] But on your side, you've had the opportunity

[00:17:16] to research everything under the sun

[00:17:20] and come to the conclusion that I'm the right company.

[00:17:24] And if I not only could you research everything,

[00:17:27] every service like mine or every product like mine,

[00:17:29] and me being generic product service,

[00:17:32] you could go on Alibaba and have it made.

[00:17:36] Right. So people need to return to a gratitude.

[00:17:41] Thank you mentality.

[00:17:43] And I think that's what society is really missing.

[00:17:46] And that goes to employees too.

[00:17:47] We spend so much of our time.

[00:17:50] Like today, I have an employee meeting

[00:17:51] and one of the things we're going to talk about

[00:17:53] is our employee appreciation party.

[00:17:56] We're having next week.

[00:17:59] So yeah, I mean, appreciation, you know, a lot of you've all heard it.

[00:18:04] You know, being appreciative is great for your own morale.

[00:18:07] It's great for your own, you know, and it's true.

[00:18:11] But people need to hear it because everybody feels beat down these days.

[00:18:15] And it just, you know, it just matters.

[00:18:18] So saying thank you matters.

[00:18:21] I love this so much.

[00:18:23] Ryan, I know you've got a question.

[00:18:25] And after that, I don't want to talk about fulfillment.

[00:18:27] So while I was just going to.

[00:18:28] So David, I wanted to get your take on

[00:18:33] types of companies, size of companies

[00:18:36] that are leveraging something like hand rain in the employee process.

[00:18:41] So and I don't know that you have this information.

[00:18:44] Do you see is it is it a who should use it?

[00:18:48] Yeah, like, do you see large enterprises really gravitating?

[00:18:52] Or is this the the mom and pop deli that has

[00:18:55] or the restaurant that has 50 employees

[00:18:58] that are waitresses and waiters, bartenders,

[00:19:01] and they're leveraging it there?

[00:19:04] I would say for employee recognition, I'd say it's used larger.

[00:19:10] For instance, during COVID, we worked with one of the largest

[00:19:12] vitamin manufacturers in the United States, and they sent out

[00:19:16] just thank yous to all their employees around the country.

[00:19:21] I think it's used larger because if it's like a size of company

[00:19:24] like handwritten, our company, 35 people, 40 people,

[00:19:29] they're going to know why did you mail this to me?

[00:19:33] Why didn't you just stick it on my desk?

[00:19:35] You know what I mean?

[00:19:36] So fair, fair statement.

[00:19:38] But to that end, we could also mail you a bunch of birthday cards

[00:19:41] and you stick them on their desk when the time is right.

[00:19:43] What I love is what it is way off, maybe not what I love about you,

[00:19:48] David, and the way you're explaining this to us,

[00:19:51] you're very pragmatic and have a lot of common sense in this.

[00:19:55] It's like, yeah, just hand me the damn thing.

[00:19:57] Like I know it's not real, right?

[00:19:59] So there's that.

[00:20:00] There's the I think the the lion, William, I guess is what I'm

[00:20:03] looking for between what is genuine versus not genuine perception.

[00:20:10] Yeah, I think the act, I mean, to some degree,

[00:20:13] the act of gratitude is what's important.

[00:20:16] Yeah, this is it's acknowledging and having intentionality about the act.

[00:20:21] Right. Yeah.

[00:20:22] And you know, some of the things we do is like, we'll get all the CEOs

[00:20:26] to to create signatures with us and then we'll scatter them over the page.

[00:20:31] And then, you know, we can ship them out in bulk to the HR manager.

[00:20:34] And when the birthday comes, they can pass those out with a gift card

[00:20:37] in it or something.

[00:20:39] So there's ways to do it.

[00:20:40] But I would say this 10, you know, for for employee.

[00:20:44] I also think just larger companies are better at employees

[00:20:47] at employee appreciation than small companies.

[00:20:51] Small companies are just trying to keep their head above water.

[00:20:55] So, yeah, I think I think it does skew

[00:20:58] this use case, use larger.

[00:21:00] Now, on the other side, we have a lot of small,

[00:21:02] you know, independent realtors and mortgage.

[00:21:05] They use it with their clients in the same manner, but not from an

[00:21:10] you know, they're not given their admin card from us, that type of thing.

[00:21:14] So let's talk about fulfillment.

[00:21:16] The fulfill the backside of this of, OK, someone makes an order

[00:21:21] and it shipped, etc.

[00:21:24] So tell us a little bit about how that process happens.

[00:21:28] Yeah. So we have these hundred and seventy five ish robots.

[00:21:33] I say ish because one always breaks and one always comes, you know,

[00:21:37] whatever, but these robots are running all the time.

[00:21:41] And we it's not just the robots,

[00:21:45] but there's a system in place now that's that's pretty

[00:21:50] overly engineered.

[00:21:51] So when the node is written, we use

[00:21:55] no BS computer vision, artificial intelligence to compare

[00:21:59] the vectors of what was written to what was supposed to be written.

[00:22:04] Right. So vectors are lying.

[00:22:06] So so what we basically do is

[00:22:09] identify on that written page was everything written.

[00:22:13] Were there any errors?

[00:22:14] Did somebody bump the pen?

[00:22:15] Whatever, assuming not that order continues through the factory

[00:22:19] process and gets stuffed in a blank envelope.

[00:22:25] And then that blank envelope, we have some secret sauce to know

[00:22:29] it's in that blank envelope.

[00:22:30] That blank envelope is then written with the appropriate address

[00:22:34] and name and all that.

[00:22:35] So we're able to marry all that up.

[00:22:38] The reason we stuff the card in a blank envelope is to reduce the risk of

[00:22:41] misstuffing. Right.

[00:22:43] And then it goes out the door and the stuffing machines we use are

[00:22:45] industrial strength, which are industrial speed and they remove

[00:22:49] human error. So in and out, a typical order is one business day.

[00:22:54] And then you can expect the post office to crawl it to the

[00:22:58] destination within four to six business days.

[00:23:01] Right. And y'all actually kind of good in some

[00:23:04] maybe not your use case, but if I'm a salesperson

[00:23:09] and I'm just going door to door selling solar panels,

[00:23:12] if I have a conversation with somebody, I get back in my air

[00:23:15] conditioned car, I tap out a note.

[00:23:17] I know that a week later they're going to receive it, which is

[00:23:20] perfect.

[00:23:21] That's right.

[00:23:22] Follow up time, you know, so you just kind of have to adjust for that.

[00:23:26] And so just to double check with you can put return addresses

[00:23:30] on the envelope.

[00:23:32] And do y'all handle postage?

[00:23:35] Do you put the?

[00:23:36] Yeah, it's a sticker.

[00:23:37] It's a standard forever stamp, which just got raised to 73 cents.

[00:23:42] So it's not.

[00:23:43] It's not forever.

[00:23:44] Yeah.

[00:23:46] The other thing we now can do is we can actually provide a

[00:23:49] cost effective delivery notification.

[00:23:52] Now I will say that we've had issues with the post office

[00:23:56] actually following through on their ends where we're

[00:23:59] adjusting things, but basically we're able to encode in the IMB.

[00:24:04] If you ever get a, I'm sure you have a million pieces of mail.

[00:24:07] There's little up and down lines on the bottom of the envelope.

[00:24:11] We're going to encode into that to actually get back some

[00:24:15] information when it's delivered by the post office.

[00:24:18] And we can send that back to you.

[00:24:20] Oh, that's cool.

[00:24:21] So you can it's like a tracking, but you can understand

[00:24:25] yeah, it's like the delivery rate.

[00:24:27] Yeah.

[00:24:28] Oh, that's cool.

[00:24:29] We charge only a dollar for that versus a full, you know, one of

[00:24:33] those big stickers because it's kind of a passive experience.

[00:24:36] The post office, the postal delivery person doesn't have to do anything.

[00:24:41] Right.

[00:24:42] It's very passive, but we've seen a little bit of mixed results with

[00:24:46] the reporting coming back.

[00:24:48] So.

[00:24:48] So David, as I'm working through a use case in my head here as a

[00:24:53] recruiter, for an example, if I'm a recruiter, I'm, we're

[00:24:57] using say HubSpot, something to that effect, the CRM like HubSpot.

[00:25:03] And I'm reaching out to all of my candidates.

[00:25:07] I, in my process, the, the, the candidates that I'm interviewing,

[00:25:12] that I phone interview or meet with, I want to send them a handwritten

[00:25:16] letter.

[00:25:17] So I, you know, use HubSpot right today.

[00:25:19] I can run full film and all that stuff.

[00:25:21] Can I send individual, if I'm only speaking with five

[00:25:24] candidates a week, can I do that?

[00:25:27] Or do I have to, does this have to be volume based?

[00:25:31] No.

[00:25:34] From a pricing perspective, there's ways to capture discounts with volume

[00:25:40] or with prepaying or doing a subscription.

[00:25:42] There's a million options on our website, but your use case is actually

[00:25:47] supported within HubSpot.

[00:25:48] So you can go into the HubSpot marketplace, which is their version

[00:25:51] of an app store, install the handwritten plugin.

[00:25:54] And it adds a button to HubSpot where you can click it.

[00:26:00] HubSpot's a little weird in how they implement stuff.

[00:26:03] So it opens up handwritten.

[00:26:05] So you kind of need a big monitor because it opens up in a window.

[00:26:09] And then it pre-populates the address from HubSpot.

[00:26:13] You can then type a template or choose a template.

[00:26:17] And then after you send it, it gets recorded back to the activity

[00:26:20] timeline in HubSpot.

[00:26:22] And you can do that one off all day every day.

[00:26:26] Ryan's already downloading it.

[00:26:28] You're good?

[00:26:29] Yeah.

[00:26:30] We can use that.

[00:26:31] You just converted, during the call, you just converted Ryan.

[00:26:35] He didn't even know.

[00:26:37] Where do I swipe?

[00:26:37] That's what's going to happen.

[00:26:39] The main thing is like so pricing is always the thing.

[00:26:43] Like if you want to get any sort of discount, again, I want to get in this.

[00:26:47] There's subscriptions, which are, you know,

[00:26:50] if you're doing five cards a week or something,

[00:26:53] it's going to be your best bet because you can subscribe, get a discount.

[00:26:57] If you don't use it all, it rolls over that typical, you know,

[00:27:00] the old singular method, right?

[00:27:03] Singular with the C.

[00:27:04] So yeah, there's, there's, there's ways, there's ways to do it.

[00:27:09] I have not heard that.

[00:27:10] There's a lot of prices.

[00:27:11] Time.

[00:27:12] Oh, this is so great.

[00:27:14] We were just talking about cell phones.

[00:27:17] We were just talking about that earlier before the call.

[00:27:19] That's a not singular ATT and Verizon.

[00:27:22] That's funny.

[00:27:23] Yeah, Ryan's got to actually switch a plant, which is always a beating.

[00:27:28] I can see from a business perspective, obviously in sales and marketing,

[00:27:33] but as it relates to talent on the front end of talent with candidates

[00:27:40] being executive search, but also the personalization that I think people

[00:27:44] would love to have all candidates would like to be appreciated.

[00:27:49] And to have something like that, just hit there.

[00:27:52] Hit there again.

[00:27:54] I think I think there's the uptick of direct mail

[00:27:58] because we did it so well in the 80s and 90s, if you will,

[00:28:03] then people got away from it.

[00:28:05] And if you send something to somebody now to their house

[00:28:08] or even to their business and it's something nice, it's something personal.

[00:28:13] And again, it's kind of a recap of the meeting or, hey,

[00:28:16] I really appreciated that thought that you said or whatever the bid is.

[00:28:20] Like, I can see Ryan and I using this for podcast guests.

[00:28:23] Yeah. And like we've just had a wonderful podcast

[00:28:26] and thank you like that's it.

[00:28:29] Oh, now they know what you think.

[00:28:30] Yeah, you've put something in key.

[00:28:32] No. You said, thank you, that's it.

[00:28:35] That's it. That's a big thing.

[00:28:36] Like everybody tries to say, OK, what's the ROI on a thank you?

[00:28:40] Let's put calls to action and you can do all that.

[00:28:44] Yeah, it's going to ruin the thank you.

[00:28:47] Yeah, just say thank you.

[00:28:48] We need a full stop thing.

[00:28:49] Just say thank you.

[00:28:50] I think just say thank you.

[00:28:53] I mean, what does the matter was I seriously have this?

[00:28:56] What's the ROI?

[00:28:57] And I think to myself, you know, what's the matter with society?

[00:29:01] Yeah, what's the ROI of smile?

[00:29:03] How about that?

[00:29:04] Yeah. You know, Albert Einstein, who was apparently pretty smart

[00:29:08] on some things, said not everything that gets measured

[00:29:13] that can be measured matters and not everything that matters

[00:29:16] can be measured.

[00:29:17] And I think it's so true in the case of just saying thank you

[00:29:21] and doing that in a quasi or genuine, you know,

[00:29:25] however you whatever your argument is sort of way.

[00:29:27] Let me give you one quick counterpoint.

[00:29:31] I had a SEO firm, a search engine optimization firm,

[00:29:35] I guess, wanting my business.

[00:29:37] So they fedexed me this thick packet

[00:29:41] and I opened it and inside was a thick card.

[00:29:45] And I opened that thick card.

[00:29:46] And as soon as I opened it, there was a video screen there

[00:29:49] with total blather like corporate blather

[00:29:53] that I could not pay attention to more than a second and a half

[00:29:57] because I was so distracted by two things.

[00:30:00] Number one, I'm a geek.

[00:30:01] We talked about this before the show.

[00:30:02] Yes, I wanted to know how the damn thing works.

[00:30:04] I want to do tear it apart and see, you know,

[00:30:07] was a Raspberry Pi or, you know, whatever technology was.

[00:30:11] More importantly, I thought how much does this cost?

[00:30:16] Right. And if it costs a lot of money,

[00:30:20] they're in to make a ton of margin on me

[00:30:23] and I don't want anybody making a ton of margin on me.

[00:30:26] So I was distracted by it.

[00:30:28] It seemed ingenuous and it seemed gimmicky.

[00:30:33] And I thought it did a bad job.

[00:30:35] I emailed the guy back.

[00:30:36] I said, thanks for the thing.

[00:30:39] Let me know where to send it back so you can recycle it.

[00:30:42] And oh, by the way, if you thought about just sending a hundred,

[00:30:44] no, you might get a better response,

[00:30:47] a less distracting response, a response that doesn't garner the same.

[00:30:53] What the hell are they doing for my business type thing?

[00:30:55] I mean, there's ways to be gimmicky with lumpy mail

[00:30:58] and, you know, send a small doodad, but sending a video screen.

[00:31:03] You know, yeah.

[00:31:04] I've had that accent, right?

[00:31:06] Like, so $3 in postage right there.

[00:31:09] I've had three direct mail success stories.

[00:31:14] I've had a lot of failures, but three success stories.

[00:31:17] One of them was with Deploy Solutions, right?

[00:31:20] And we sent we got marble chest sets from the Philippines.

[00:31:25] So like 75 pounds.

[00:31:26] But we opened them up and took the Queens out.

[00:31:30] And if we'd send them for Deploy for a customer, we sent

[00:31:33] we sent them direct.

[00:31:35] We sent them to the VPs, CHROs, etc.

[00:31:38] If you want the Queen, you got to meet with us.

[00:31:40] That's the bit, right?

[00:31:42] Yeah, brilliant.

[00:31:43] 100 percent because that I mean, because of the weight,

[00:31:46] it went through all the gatekeepers.

[00:31:49] It got to the desk.

[00:31:50] Really? The person of you wanted.

[00:31:52] So that one, that one was a huge success for Deploy.

[00:31:56] Another client, we did the head of the golf club.

[00:31:59] So we got one big Bertha was really, really hot.

[00:32:03] We took the head off.

[00:32:04] We sent him the shaft.

[00:32:06] And so we took the heads off.

[00:32:08] You know, like again, sales deal.

[00:32:10] If you meet with it, all we need is 30 minutes.

[00:32:12] Meet with us. You get the heads.

[00:32:14] Brilliant.

[00:32:15] And 100 percent.

[00:32:15] That line don't get shafted.

[00:32:17] That's pretty bad.

[00:32:18] Now that would have been good.

[00:32:19] That's clever.

[00:32:20] And the last one was actually a quasi direct mail.

[00:32:24] We sent we did a deal in San Francisco.

[00:32:27] And we said, if you meet with us,

[00:32:29] we're going to we're going to bring a bottle of opus one to the meeting.

[00:32:34] So all you all we need is 30 minutes.

[00:32:37] And so we did the direct mail.

[00:32:39] Actually, it was an integrated campaign, but but we showed up like gangsters.

[00:32:43] We showed up with a bottle of

[00:32:45] isn't a nice little wine box and all that stuff.

[00:32:47] We showed up with a bottle of opus one.

[00:32:49] Never talked about it.

[00:32:51] Yeah, showed up, put it on your desk and go, OK, here's what here's what we do.

[00:32:55] Here's how it could work.

[00:32:57] You know, like that was the reason you thank you for your time.

[00:33:00] Yeah, here's here.

[00:33:01] Thank you so much for your time.

[00:33:03] Acknowledgement, your time is money.

[00:33:05] And it worked in San Francisco because of wine country.

[00:33:10] Yeah, with it.

[00:33:12] So that but but again is up.

[00:33:14] I think like I've done a bit for ceridian,

[00:33:18] where we gave away gift cards for doing demos.

[00:33:22] And we just basically said, listen, your time's money.

[00:33:25] We appreciate that.

[00:33:27] And here's a $50 gift card.

[00:33:29] If you sign up for a demo, do the demo.

[00:33:32] Card yours. No strings attached.

[00:33:33] Yeah. Just acknowledgement that your time is money.

[00:33:37] So, you know, we're a small to mid-sized organization

[00:33:41] and I used to be the gatekeeper for everything, including trade shows.

[00:33:45] And my name was.

[00:33:46] Oh, oh, too busy these days.

[00:33:49] And I missed the I missed the registration date

[00:33:54] on a major trade show we attend.

[00:33:55] Not sure we were at sure actually, but.

[00:33:58] But I missed the registration date.

[00:34:00] So in my company management meeting last this week,

[00:34:05] I said, look, I dropped the ball.

[00:34:08] I should have passed it off to marketing.

[00:34:10] It was my bust.

[00:34:11] This is what we're going to do if we cannot get a trade show booth.

[00:34:14] We're going to have to use last year's attendee list

[00:34:17] because we won't get this year's.

[00:34:19] Let's send out letters to everybody.

[00:34:22] Handwritten notes as we always do in a drives traffic.

[00:34:24] But if somebody sits with us in the food court.

[00:34:27] Yeah, yeah.

[00:34:29] Convention center.

[00:34:30] Got you.

[00:34:30] To cost us $8000.

[00:34:32] We will divide up that $8000 by the number of meetings.

[00:34:37] They will get $400 cash.

[00:34:40] Yeah. Just for sitting with us.

[00:34:43] It'll probably be more effective.

[00:34:45] It'll probably be more effective.

[00:34:48] Yeah.

[00:34:48] I mean, it would be interesting to see the A.B.

[00:34:50] tests on this, but I like that actually because it gets you

[00:34:55] away from the busyness and the loudness and all the craziness

[00:34:59] that comes into trade show floor.

[00:35:01] It actually might be more effective.

[00:35:02] Yeah, well, we'll see.

[00:35:03] I mean, it's the problem is getting the attendee list,

[00:35:06] but we'll just go off last year's.

[00:35:10] So I think that one of the other things I was thinking

[00:35:13] about is performance reviews.

[00:35:16] And especially where people on both sides, where people

[00:35:19] have done exceptionally well and where people need

[00:35:22] some guidance.

[00:35:25] I could see people, especially in large corporations,

[00:35:28] tying this to a performance management system

[00:35:31] like success factors and be able to do this.

[00:35:35] And again, it's going to be documented.

[00:35:37] It's in their record, but it's another way to like,

[00:35:40] okay, we had the meeting.

[00:35:42] We talked about it.

[00:35:43] Here's the things you're doing well.

[00:35:45] Thank you so much.

[00:35:46] Continue.

[00:35:48] And the same thing for the people that aren't doing well.

[00:35:50] It's also important for them to get that the acknowledgement

[00:35:55] of the meeting and the importance of what was said

[00:35:58] between the two people.

[00:35:59] Yeah, yeah.

[00:36:01] So I think there's plenty of you.

[00:36:02] I think there's plenty of talent use cases.

[00:36:05] There's a ton.

[00:36:05] Yeah, absolutely a ton.

[00:36:07] David, one question that one of the questions I had

[00:36:10] from earlier is you mentioned templates.

[00:36:14] You can go and create what you want to say

[00:36:16] and all that stuff.

[00:36:18] Am I, as a company, am I able to go in there

[00:36:22] and say create five different templates

[00:36:25] and then have variables baked into those templates

[00:36:29] and say, for example, William works in engineering,

[00:36:33] but you work in marketing.

[00:36:36] So you're an asset to the engineering team

[00:36:38] as opposed to marketing

[00:36:40] and then have like five or six templates

[00:36:42] for each individual department.

[00:36:45] So it's a little randomized and kind of makes,

[00:36:48] you know, makes it a little more personal for people.

[00:36:51] Yeah, you can.

[00:36:55] I'm terribly sorry.

[00:36:56] I only have a few minutes left.

[00:36:57] I got to get back.

[00:36:58] Yes, the short answer is yes.

[00:37:01] The long answer is there's two ways to do it.

[00:37:05] The two ways to do it are if you do a bulk upload,

[00:37:09] you can create unlimited data fields or whatever,

[00:37:14] that replacement keys where every single note,

[00:37:18] it could be like dear first name,

[00:37:20] so nice meeting you at location, custom snippet closure.

[00:37:26] And what I mean by custom snippet is

[00:37:28] you could then go through and fill in all those

[00:37:30] custom snippets.

[00:37:31] Hey, Ryan, love the new backdrop

[00:37:35] that you don't have on your...

[00:37:38] Nice.

[00:37:39] We were joking about that before the thing.

[00:37:42] So you could do that.

[00:37:45] The other way you can do it is in the website,

[00:37:50] in your little address book that you create,

[00:37:53] you can create unlimited data fields,

[00:37:56] I think they're called.

[00:37:58] So in addition to first name, last name, business name,

[00:38:02] you can create unlimited additional data fields.

[00:38:05] So if you wanted to create a data field called department,

[00:38:08] which would be useful just for whatever,

[00:38:11] and then you can insert those data fields in the document.

[00:38:15] In addition to templates,

[00:38:17] we had to get on the AI bandwagon

[00:38:19] and about a year ago we added ChatGPT,

[00:38:23] so which just kind of makes...

[00:38:26] For a while we had an account manager come up

[00:38:28] with ridiculous templates and add them

[00:38:30] to everybody's account as a starter.

[00:38:32] Now you don't need that because ChatGPT does it for you.

[00:38:34] You can go ahead and thank Ryan and William

[00:38:37] for being on their podcast

[00:38:38] and it'll write the most flowery note you've ever heard

[00:38:41] and then you just use that.

[00:38:43] And if you like it, you can then save that as a template

[00:38:46] and use that moving forward too.

[00:38:48] Love it.

[00:38:50] David, thank you so much for carving out time

[00:38:52] for us in the audience

[00:38:53] because I absolutely love what you're doing

[00:38:56] and I think it's important.

[00:38:57] I think the emphasis on gratitude

[00:38:58] and thank you needs to be heard more.

[00:39:02] So we appreciate you brother.

[00:39:03] Hey thank you and I will email you after the show

[00:39:07] to get your dresses and obviously thank you

[00:39:09] both appropriately as well too.

[00:39:11] Absolutely.

[00:39:12] That works.