Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy, where I interview entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses. Joining me as someone who I’ve only seen in a bear.
Is it a bear costume that you’re on the internet with all the time?
Matt: It is a bad costume, a very hot one.
Andrew: uh, it definitely gets people’s attention. Matt is a guy who has failed, uh, at least a couple of times in entrepreneurship decided that he was con continue anyway. And, uh, I want to talk to you Matt about that because there’s been times when I just wanted to give up, but I didn’t know what else to do.
And so I didn’t give up, I’m curious why you didn’t give up. And instead of giving up, what he decided to do was create this software called , which. I didn’t realize how powerful it was. It allows you to send individual videos to people. Let’s say somebody signs up for your software or signs up to work with your company.
You could send them a video and not just send them a video that their software makes it easy for you to send it to them. But you’ll also get all kinds of stats about them, all kinds of information that’s in your CRM about them, so that you can create a video that’s meaningful, uh, based on their experiences with your company.
And then. When they get the video, you know, if they’ve opened it up, you know, if they’ve watched it and more importantly, and this is the part, I didn’t know, Matt, until I talked to you. If there’s a call to action at the end, like, Hey, thanks for signing up with us, by the way, you should go to whatever you can see how many people go to whatever are you being clear?
Are they actually taking action fair? Is that right, Matt? All right. I invited him here to talk about how he did this. Matt Barnett, thank you so much for being in here. And we’re going to talk about this. Thanks to two phenomenal sponsors. The first, anyone out there who doesn’t know already should know, I am hosted by HostGator and I’m urging you to sign up to host Gator.
By using hostgator.com/mixergy. And the second, the tool that I use for so many of my interviews to understand how people get their traffic, what they do to improve and so on, it’s called SEMrush. I’m going to recommend later that you go to mixergy.com/semrush to try them for free. But first, Matt, I’m going to ask you the most pushy American question possible.
How much revenue you guys producing here?
Matt: So we are about a 1.5 mil. We raised a million Australian say seven 50 us, I guess.
Andrew: Rectally for a bunch of neuro or for what evolved into bungee Euro after those other ideas? Yes, didn’t go directly. Okay.
Matt: Yeah.
Andrew: The lowest point when things didn’t work out in the pre and we’ll get into what those previous companies were, but what was your lowest point?
Matt: I mean, look, it’s a roller coaster. It’s been a few. Um, but we, we launched, we launched the reason I there, um, the failed and I had a fan to walk out and tell the team to quit and we kind of like pulled all in. So I think that’s, that was pretty low at the time. Um, Facing the wall? No, no funds left realizing we’d let people down.
Um, I mean, ultimately we, I feel like we’ve been through a few low points, but it’s probably a good one to start with.
Andrew: And you personally, I go to a low point. What do you do? Do you drink alcohol? Do you just clam up and not talk to anybody? Did you do something else?
Matt: It depends. Sometimes I’ll have a sleep that seems to be the best thing to do otherwise. I mean, I’m very, I’m a very positive person. I’m a huge optimist. So I don’t tend to stay down for very long. And so knowing myself, if I am down like, Oh, we will have off days. I know that tomorrow morning I’ll feel fine again in the morning.
Yeah. It’s like, like last night we had, we, we, we, we hit a wall with some problems and challenges and I was like, you know what, I’m going to sleep this off. I gave him the morning, the sun shining, and then I’m ready to go again. So I don’t tend to dwell on things too much. I think ultimately when you have those low points, Like doing an Austin thing you had in the stand is the worst thing you can do.
You actually have to get on the fixed stuff. So take a small break, but ultimately you could get back on the horse.
Andrew: Dad was incredibly successful. Did you ever look at yourself after one or two of these fellows and to go, Oh man, I’m not living up to my dad is so much better than me. I can’t. Do you ever do that?
Matt: Well, everyone’s got the slide daddy issues. I think it’s, um, it’s Heidi. I like, like you go up underneath. Yeah. Another successful entrepreneur. Like you obviously have a yard stick out there. Only a lot of us have. Our father was a yard sick to try and beat. Um, our days I didn’t have a 2d goes away. I think, I think you want to beat them.
I know the, my, the, my dad, like his yardstick is to live longer than his dad. It’s not about money. Me. I’m like needs, need to make more money than him, but it’s not, it’s not about the money. It’s about like, I think showing them that you can do it. Um, Well, look, it has its pros and cons. there’s obviously benefits.
I think it’s good to have a driving force to go and compete and kind of win. I liked that at the same point. It’s it’s not like they really care. I don’t think he really cares.
Andrew: Right. It doesn’t matter. And still, I still want to show him and I don’t even know that I’ll ever tell him, but it’s still an in my head sometime I go, I want to show him that I did this. Your dad, um, my dad, uh, manufactured women’s clothing. Basically his whole life. He was in the manufacturing business. I think, uh, his big challenge was China eventually obviously took over the American, uh, manufacturing market.
And so he was eventually gonna be pushed out. but he did well and I keep comparing myself to the best of his times. And I also worry about falling into the worst of his times. Your dad did what? What’s the business that he started? Yeah.
Matt: Crossbows. So as an archery, crossbows, he built the biggest CrossFit company in the world that still runs today. The biggest cross archery company.
Andrew: What’s a crossbow. Crossbow is like the gun version of the bow and arrow.
Matt: Yeah. Most of the brain area. So if you ever watched James Bond by a few hours, I only like. That was them. And they were doing the SATs. Now it’s combined international ones out of the States. and now it sends that all kind of like, I guess, kind of archery, kids, toys, catapults, that kind of thing. So not, not tech.
Andrew: A thousand employees, huge company,
Matt: For companies across the world. So for officers,
Andrew: man. I didn’t realize it was such a big market for those crossbows. I’ve never seen anyone use it.
Matt: so here’s the thing. This is like super interesting. I’ve met. I think one person who has one, like, and yet again, this is a state thing. And yet they do like, I think today maybe like, I want to say 200 mill across like the range of products. and yet you will not people that maybe will you meet them, but if you look on their, like their social media and stuff, it’s one of the industries where it’s so engaged.
It’s insane. It’s, it’s, it’s an, it’s an obsessive markets. And so. It’s a really good lesson because you look at it and you go, you don’t have to own the world. You don’t have to even be famous. You just have to dominate one niche and you have to be the player in the niche. And everyone everyone’s be a raving fans, such that they will buy off you for 50 years.
That’s what they did.
Andrew: He still owns a business,
Matt: No, no, he’s he’s, he’s enjoying life. my, my brother was running it for a while. Other
Andrew: but it’s still in the family. You guys haven’t sold it. It’s still a thing.
Matt: That.
Andrew: All right. And still you said to our producer, look, I can’t tell you how many times she wrote it. In my notes, his dad was still present in his life. Why is that such a big deal that you’re even telling our producer about it? I wouldn’t have even thought it said the producer that my dad was present.
I feel like that’s important to you to who you are.
Matt: I think it’s just talking about kind of like, are you born to go into entrepreneurship? Like, and this is all nature versus nurture. I think when you grow up in that environment and you see it, I mean, my dad was great. Like he was always there. I came in later, like my brother’s four years old, meek. He came early in life.
So at that point he wasn’t around as much. Then by the time I came in, obviously the business was, you know, like it looked like a huge going concern. So. Like it shows you that you don’t have to sacrifice family for business. It shows you that you can juggle them both. And it also shows you, again, the benefits of waiting to get into business.
It’s about opportunity during the best, like everything that, that brings to you. And then there’s heart. It’s also incredibly creative. I mean, my father was lucky. I think, where he ran. Besides business, but he spent every single day in his workshop designing. So he was not your typical CEO. I’ll be honest.
He was quite scared about getting on stage and talking and rallying the troops. Um, he had other teams for him. He just loved to go off into his, into his cage and design great products. so like, I look at that and I’m like, I’m like how? Cause like, cause like I love design, I’m a designer, but now I’m like, that’s the smallest part of my job because everything else takes so much time, suggesting.
Andrew: It’s kind of frustrating. And I noticed that you’re a designer. You fucked around with your camera for, for a very long time so that you look good on camera with me here. And it’s not like you cared about me. I told you it wasn’t gonna go be published, but you needed it. I’m looking over your shoulder.
Even that I don’t know what that is, but that white wood just looks especially nice over your shoulder and the frame, the sweater you’re wearing pants. Right? Unlike most of us on zoom
Matt: I am today.
Andrew: and me telling me to all right, so the very first business then that you create in 2012 is a business that helps families capture their life stories.
Why is it because you’re curious about your family story.
Matt: You know, probably not then, because I was younger. I think we just had, I can’t remember. We had an idea. I mean, a friends sitting around had the idea to do the whole family life. Like I think we were playing around with video. It wasn’t just the Elliot, we were videos just on our mobile devices and we’re like, Ooh, what could we do with this?
And I think. There’s a bias. When, when, when you first start and your first company, you tend to think B to C because that’s kind of your experience and where you are. Like B2B comes is much, much better. I like hands down, but that comes later when you understand that. So the first day, and we were playing them out, we were like, what can we do a video?
And then. I think he just got, he just got one of those. He just got a cameraman to do like a life story of, of one of his parents back in, back in Tel Aviv, back in Israel who showed me. I was like, you know, we could just do this. This is amazing. And they paid like 10 grand to get it done. So it’s like, like if everyone’s got a video device in their pockets, could you not just creates a survey of questions and you can educate on this and then each time you go and see your grandmother, rather than getting a professional camera in and doing it.
You know, in one go, you could spend, you know, five weeks and ask her a few questions. Each time filming those responses, have it online. Then, you know, your grandchildren can look at that from that point onwards. So you look at that and you go, like, there’s something that, and so w when we raised funds off, we actually raised funds off that we definitely, I went to the Valley when I was pitching and I met someone there who tried to do it.
And he was like, here are the problems you’re going to have. And I was like, whatever, it’s fine. We’ll go down. And we had these iPhone and see stuff that we were going to have.
Andrew: What are the problems?
Matt: so it was activation was the thing, say the issue we had is that it’s a great concept. There’s no urgency around it. Like mostly.
So yes, I’ll get hands doing it. I’ll get answering, I’ll get to doing it and see, we need to have that champion in the family that does it. And obviously like ancestry and stuff like a lock this, but it’s still quite a low barrier. I think getting into video at the time as well. It was very early in.
Devices needed the extra backs to car push. Um, when it did get urgent was when unfortunately grandmother went to hospital and people didn’t want to film them then because then they didn’t want to remember them in that, in that status. So again, A core issue that I think, you know, now, if I went and started again today, you look at that and you would, you’d find that out early on, you wouldn’t invest, you wouldn’t get build the whole thing.
And I think there’s ways around it. I think there were ways around things like this and these challenges. Um, but first business didn’t know what we were doing. Ran too fast. Um, a base of kind of core hours in terms of what engagement activation.
Andrew: You know what I would, I would still love a tool like that. I don’t want to be there though, to ask the questions. I know I’m great at asking people questions. I’ve gotten personal with you. But still there’s something about talking to my parents and even my wife’s family and asking them these questions just feels too intimate and too personal for me.
I wouldn’t, I would love if I could just put, give them some money kind of stand to put their phone on and then have them turn the app on and the app would ask some questions and not me, you know, and just have them record the answers into the app so that we have it. I don’t know. I think I should do something like that.
Matt: It’s about, it’s a balance, right? Because you know, like this is a whole, like talking to the wall versus talking, talking to an interviewer, you will get, you will get a very different story at the end of it because, you know, then they, like, we evolved as communicators. Like, like you will see things. You’ll note, you’ll notice on the stories you’ll dig in, then I’ll forgotten some of the things that they told you that you think are the great things you need to have.
So you’ll be able to unlock that. Um, It depends again, and they might feel awkward talking to a screen like on the
Andrew: would too. I hate that every once in a while, somebody who invites me to speak at a conference will say, Andrew, your video person to shoot some video, welcoming everybody to the conference. I go dammit, because I know it’s going to take me forever to agonize in front of this, a webcam. All right. I get it.
It closed down. How much money did you raise?
Matt: I think we raised maybe 600 K I think for that, it was just a seed round to get going.
Andrew: And then when it closed, how’d you feel.
Matt: Well, so here’s the thing. We actually didn’t close the company. We, we ended up, so co-founder walks out. I think the stress just took them out of it. Um, we had one very strong investor at the time who we pitched a new idea to and you like, and it was, and it was an unknown idea, but they gave us a bit of money to basically just keep going.
I put whatever savings I had back into it again. And we decided to turn it around and we ended up using it, like rehashing the technology and going in. So qualitative research, which is utterly different. Um, it’s something I’ve been talking to one of the customers about, um, we took a bit of a punt on that.
Um, we had some, I guess we had some better, it was B2B for stuff. We had some better signals. We had some payments and for some early lab tests that we did. And I think personally, one of the main reasons we kept going was that we didn’t want to let down, everyone had invested in the company.
Andrew: Okay. And so when you say what this product did was, this was verbate right. And what the product did was what it still
Matt: So it’s quite, it’s qualitative research using video. So essentially video diaries for researchers. So I’ll give an example, um, Huggies, which is nappy ban global. Um, they, they, they want to find out, um, how the market is evolving in the emerging markets. So what they’ll do is they’ll send out a bunch of questions that will be answered over about five days.
And we’re going to find people to do these, do videos, answering questions in like Turkey and Malaysia and India and China and the States and Germany for comparison. And what they’ll be doing is each day they have five questions on video and they will literally go and like film where they store that, that the nappies of the film compared to brands, they use their film, how they actually changed their kids and what they’re doing, how many times they do it a day.
And then we’ll pull this research and we’ll actually put a lot of the data out of it. So we’ll do like tax analysis on that as well, to help people search through it and kind of analyze it. And then new product developers will use this as information to help them go and do new product development specifically.
Andrew: What you said was, we’ve got the video technology here who else needs this type of video technology, but then how’d you make the leap to these businesses, need to understand where people keep their
Matt: I wish I could remember. I,
Andrew: But it was just one of these organic things that just
Matt: I think it was, I think it was a customer that we had in the family thing who, who actually said, Hey, look, I’m a researcher. Would you ever be able to do video for research? And I think that sparked the idea again, like it’s ours and that was quite a while ago. Um, I just know we pulled them together where we essentially turn the system on its head.
We did a couple of projects here in Australia and New Zealand that. Did exactly that they went off really well. We got paid like 10 K a project and we’re like, Hey money. I was like, all that money. Let’s just follow that. And I guess we followed that route. We didn’t understand the industry, which is which again was what was a floor.
And they’re like, we’re going to build another parts. And then she wouldn’t understand, I wouldn’t do it today. You maybe have to at the beginning, um, it was a long learning curve, but we ultimately ended up moving their company to the UK because all the clients ended up being large FMCG and agency brands.
Out of New York, Paris and London. So it was quite a journey where that went in the end.
Andrew: So I’m on the site. You’re still listed as the head honcho on the site. What’s the, what’s the status? It seems like it’s still an ongoing thing. Just not a huge business.
Matt: It is. I feel like I I’d be honest. Like I sit more on it as the board today. So we have a team, we have a team based out of London who on it’s. Um, they, they are researchers. If they are in the industry, it tends to be. So there’s some tacklers and technology, some core technology to it, some proprietary technology that we kind of use three honest it’s 95% is used by the company itself.
And then we hire researchers on top of that. So we start to do insights and qualitative insights on top of it. So we’ll work with clients like donate and stuff. It ends up being quite a, it’s not a public business because we just go into sales and go straight into large organizations and do a lot of math.
Andrew: How big did that business get?
Matt: Probably staying just shy of a million dollars today. Um, we’ve kind of started a lot. I mean, this is, this is web Andre came in yet. He came in, you know, a couple of years ago we decided to kind of like, let, let it do its thing. Um, interestingly, because we kind of sidelined that, assuming that all our resources were going into a new product.
Because bondra is born out of that. Um, and then that company starts to grow when we, when we pull people out of it. And so we’ve ended up in a situation where we’ve had scars, where we would basically start split the companies and starting to grow it again. It’s interesting where it’s this balance of running two businesses is hard, especially when they have extremely different sale.
Like one, one is an inbound business. One is an and business. One is Ed’s pies. One is SMB, very different plays, very different team members, different cultures. Running those two is not easy alongside each other, but at the same point when the one starts to grow and bring money in, we’re still like, okay, well this, this could potentially run on its own, but it needs new team.
Andrew: all right. And so then the new idea, the one that became, I guess it’s hard to even say the biggest hit, but the one that’s growing fastest right. Is and it came up from, it seems like you were trying to do something like this, trying to send video out to clients, right.
Matt: Yeah. So with that, the bait business, because we sold to large agencies and large FMCG is very much a sales process. It was a lot of jumping into meetings and jazz hands and. I’m walking the through video at the time. So it was very much relationship based selling, which I could do. I have no problem with that.
But when it comes to living in Australia and be based out of here and you get clients over in like kind of Europe and America, we had a long leads would come in when we were asleep and there’s nothing we could do that. So we had G campaigns as you do. We got back to bill the next day. We like, I couldn’t get out, get on the phone and call them.
I couldn’t like be like, Hey, look, we’ll come in tomorrow and see you. And so we, we actually had some, we lost a few people with our funnel on that because of that. So it’s pretty simple. We listened and we said, how can we get more of, you know, this like, like who we are across. And so we started doing videos for every lead that we had.
Then I used to take a ferry to work. So I go across the Harbor and suddenly I go past the opera house. Everyone knows that. So I would, we’d actually built a little thing. We use Clearbit to pull information about leads that would come in. So we find out the job titles, where they were, what they’re based on.
We put that into Slack. I pick up in the morning, I do videos on my phone on the way to work, you know, Hey John, from Ogilvy in London. I see your work on the Budweiser accounts. We’ve done projects with Heineken and Diageo. This is what we’ve done. Obviously I’m not in London, but I will be there in six weeks time.
When I come in and show you what we do. And we, we pretty much like got a hundred percent response rate. Every single person came back and they were like, this is hilarious. You absolutely have to come in. Like just, just come and see us.
Andrew: Yeah, and I could see the use. And then at what point did you say we’ve got to turn this into its own standalone thing.
Matt: So it’s, after a little while one of these clients asked the Vegas sign up. I remember coming back to Australia and see my CTO. And I said to him, look, we’re going to have to go in. You’re going to have to go and build this out.
and he’s like, I knew you were gonna ask me that, um, because we’d already done it once we know what he’s flipped once. And he’s like, not again. I could see in his eyes and we, um, We sat in for a weekend, the builts meet they could use, uh, we probably sat on that for maybe 12 months I think. And it just started to grow more and more.
And then we started to get some big names coming on board, um, light-based camps that convert kids and their Firefox and
Andrew: was using it.
Matt: yup. And then like Google started showing interest as maybe we’ll showing interest. And we, again, we’d already learned that, that, that. You know, like doing one business was odd, like fitting into the other one was, it was harder.
We call it this and sad. Like I, like, I think to be honest in the hindsight, we probably went on, we probably picked up a little bit late because we’d already done it once. And so we picked up eventually and, uh, me and him stepped into it. Full-time so when we picked her up and decided to go for it, we went through it’s wiped properly.
Um,
Andrew: I’m going to take a moment. I’m gonna talk about my first sponsor. Then I want to come back and ask you what that first version looked like, that people were really using to talk to their customers. The first, my sponsor is Sam rush. You said you think you use it before we,
Matt: Yeah, I’m pretty sure my CMI.
Andrew: what kind of a, what kind of SEO or online marketing are you using? Are you doing right now? Even if it’s not, even if you don’t remember how you’re using SEMrush, what are you guys doing for that?
Matt: Yeah, a bunch of content writing. So around, I mean, now focusing on SEO on that it’s been, the channel has been growing for maybe 12 months. I want
Andrew: the idea is if you’re going to create content to bring in new customers, you don’t just want to try to think about what could possibly be useful for your audience. What could possibly bring in new people you want to say, what, what should we be writing about what are our customers searching for? Am I right?
Matt: Exactly. I let you need to know exactly what is you’re writing and there’s, and there’s a little bit of Bartlett. It’s more people looking for. There’s also where a company you want to position the move to. And by the way, you think there’s a gap in the market. So where, where there’s a gap in content, in a
Andrew: do you
Matt: area.
So for us, we look at it and Miguel, what should we be like? W we, we, we grow our personalization. We can learn about video. We can learn about X, Y. And so we look at that and we go, well, Why do you think that that’s a bit of an untapped opportunity where there’s not many players talking about X and then we’ll kind of deciding on to go for that for a while.
Andrew: uh, so I, I plugged you into SEMrush and it looks like, um, Wistia versus Vimeo is a, is a search that comes up a lot. And so you might look at that and say, why don’t we do that? People are trying to figure it out. Maybe we should help them decide, and then also tell them why we’re better or why we’re a better fit for some cases.
Right.
Matt: Yeah. And that’s literally what we, what we’ve done. That’s one of these we’ve done before, for sure.
Andrew: And you literally have you have that article somewhere online.
Matt: Yeah. I think I want to buy most of skills, but again, that, that, that was looking for what people were searching for.
Andrew: Got it. Here’s another one. Um, how to send video through email and you saw the people were searching for that. And I’m, I’m guessing that you wrote an article about that too.
Matt: Yeah,
Andrew: All right. That’s what we’re talking about. When it comes to SEMrush, what you’re doing is you’re going in there and they’ve got tools for social media.
They’ve got tools for ad buying. I just happened to be looking at this. If you’re going to be creating content, the way that Matt and his team are just go into SEMrush and see what they suggest and get some insight into what you should be creating. In fact, I’m actually going to tell you how to use it for free right now, Matt, they’re not used to giving out these discount codes.
So they gave me this URL that’s really long. And I said, you guys don’t do this much. I said, no, we don’t. I said, I’ll fix it. I’ll create it. So everyone listening to me, I’ve got a special URL. I created it personally. They will automatically put their discount code in, let you use their software for free.
And here it is, go to mixergy.com/semrush, mixergy.com/s E M R U S H. When you do, you’re going to get the tool that so many people who I’ve interviewed have used. And unlike everyone else, you’re going to get to use it for free for a limited time. Go right now. mixergy.com/semrush. Right? That first version, Matt, what did it include?
What did bond Zorro do at first?
Matt: So his desktop, we took a video. We say, you record a video, we package it up and then email it off to somebody that, that was it. The first
Andrew: year was this?
Matt: 2017.
Andrew: 2017, the iPhone was out couldn’t. I have just taken a video on my iPhone and sent it out
Matt: Yes. Yeah. It’s the first, the first version we did the, we let someone go on. So we hacked together in a weekend, so we didn’t go and build out sweat. We just did on desktop to get out the door and see if they would use it.
Andrew: special about it. Why, why didn’t people just use their phone?
Matt: I think it was the, uh, hang on. I haven’t actually, they, we had, uh, I get back. We did a couple of integrations when we first did as well. And when we built it, we had an Intercom integration and the MailChimp integration, I think at the beginning, this is what we figured out because essentially what we were doing is that we could create a trigger that when a lead came in, that we’d actually.
We’d actually fill this, we have a task that we will fill less for them. So we used to plug this in and every new customer you get, we’ll pulling that information. We’ll display it. You can click on that record a video. So we tried to take the thinking time out of it. Yeah. So again, what we were doing originally was manually doing this.
We took that out and then the, and then handling the email delivery. So there’s no need to copy a link and paste into an email and send that we would just you’d finished recording and it would go, and that would be it. And that I think the first version was just that.
Andrew: Okay, that makes so much sense. Got it. All right. And I shouldn’t minimize the, the even sending out video. God knows. If I try to send a video, that’s too big. Gmail will spit it out and say, or even my iPhone will say, don’t you want to send an iCloud link instead, because video’s big video is tough to send, but what you’re doing is saying.
Based on these criteria, we’re going to send, we’re going to add to a list. Every single person, you need to create a video. We’ll also enrich that data with a little bit, right. You’ll also say, uh, tell me a little bit about the person and then with one click, I could create a video and send it out. And that’s the first version.
That’s what people started using and encourage you to continue building the business.
Matt: Yeah. And it, and it was, it was, it was ugly. It was like, it was, it was put together. Like we built it for us that like we built of ourselves primarily over other people, and then we let some other people onto it. So it was never. We never thought it would be a thing. If anything, it was a little side project that that was, you know, interesting.
And the, and the, and that was a bit of fun because we liked building software that people can come into and sign up for. Um, so it was never meant to be what it is today.
Andrew: How did you get anyone to even know that it existed and to try it?
Matt: I think whenever I had him, whenever we had meetings where we talked to anyone, we’re like, Oh, by the way, we have this little, this little tool, you can go and try it out. And then. And then what happens with these things is you see, it gets picked up. So very quickly we moved across the States to start to get SAS companies picking us up.
We started to fall into like SMB influencers were starting to use us. We w w we didn’t understand the industries. Uh, we just got picked up and taken, and then you see these epicenters pop up. Yeah. We ha I think Denmark was like, our second biggest country was using it. And we’re like, what? Where’d that come from?
Andrew: And I’m guessing then every time somebody gets one of these videos, they also see where it comes from and they think, well, maybe I should try that too.
Matt: So, yeah, I had to put like growth capability within it, their viral capability, which we, which initially was, was a hundred percent of the growth. And today still does about 40% of our traffic. Yeah.
Andrew: Is this you, this guy right here, right?
Matt: That’s not me. That’s, that’s one of our early and that’s one of our early users. He was a, it was a charity. It was a, it was a charity saving the reef. So, so we, we gave it away free to a bunch of nonprofits when we first started as well.
Andrew: Oh, so the first version did have a price on it, right from the beginning.
Matt: That wasn’t the FA there was a first version which had nothing on it. I think the, I think we put up a price. So we had a first version that we put in a lot of people, like within our network onto that, let them start using it. We then put about holding page. I think you put $15. We had, we had a free version and a $15 version.
See if anyone would pay and then people started paying. I think that was the bit that started to really get us interested in it.
Andrew: And then, um, and so the reason that I thought it was, you was even though it doesn’t exactly look like you, is it’s the costume, is he wearing a costume? Also a bear costume? What’s the deal with the costumes?
Matt: Uh, it’s just like when we first started this, I think again, when you start looking at the brand. I’m a massive fan of brand. We saw that we it’s almost, what we’re trying to do is get people to open up and video train people to be more authentic, do off the cuff video. None of this is added, said it’s about connecting with customers.
And so I think to get people to loosen up a boy, but he has been on the pedestal for years because of, cause it was originally just, yeah, the realm of film and TV. And obviously this last year’s help smash that at the Waynesville understanding you don’t have to look your best to get people to go and take the extra step.
I think we instinctively knew that we had to take it like a step further. So you can’t try and bring customers along the journey with this is what brand does you try and bring customers along the journey with you? So we used to do like all of us because we ever did. We came with the bat again, random idea.
I think characterization, we like, we like what we’re MailChimp had done the early days. We’re going that route. We then got bad suits. Cause it made sense. And we started to do live videos to customers ambassadors. We started sending bad to customers, kids when they hit certain milestones. Um, and then it just kind of built from that extent where they kind of got a bit silly, but at the same point, people love that.
And so what I think we ended up doing, ultimately it was, you know, we have financial advisors who were maybe. They w they wouldn’t do what we did, but they would definitely loosen the title a bit more, you know, we’ll think about doing, you know, these videos, we’re having a coffee rather than just in the office.
So you start to bring people on the journey with us. And that’s kind of continued as today.
Andrew: I see. And so if you’re in a bear costume, having fun on video, they could loosen their ties and relax a little bit. And that’s what it was.
Matt: I felt so, like, some people hate for the brands and stuff. Like, and this is not a bad thing. I think if you’re going to. I think one of the things about having a strong brand is that you’re going to get people who definitely don’t align with it. And people who align with it, like incredibly well. Um, it, it’s your choice.
Yeah. I like, I like strong brands. I think it creates better advocacy. I think you get better super fans like in your existing customers. Um, but you will potentially turn some people off it.
Andrew: How’d you raise money for it.
Matt: We raised, so he did a safe round. With a few high net worths originally, um, that I think we met on that journey of bringing people on. I think couple of them were customers. Um, I think they’re, I think three out of four were customers. They came in, we then evolved that into a, we bought on side two funds, maybe like a few months later off the back of that. Um, when we decided to go full time and we told them like, it was very a days on why we’re stepping into it and. It was just growing with not a single dollar spent on it and no time and nobody working on it. I think that’s the bit, the Carvey site they’ve won at the time.
Andrew: That is exciting that you just suddenly have something where people are using it. No matter what
Matt: Yeah. You look at it and like, again, like it wasn’t, uh, it wasn’t like, it wasn’t a price we were proud of at the time. But if people were using that, look at it and you go, well, if this works then surely. Investigate it and then really thinking about it and, uh, building out is, is only going to work better, which ends up being true.
Andrew: can you say, how the base camp team was using you?
Matt: I think it would be and onboarding. So within SAS, we tend to get used priority by CS team. So signups coming in, so either signups are potentially filtered down to up to product qualified leads or, or paid users. And then their CS team taking 30 seconds to actually welcome them on board to the company.
Uh, but checking in and making sure that if they have any questions, they’ve got someone to go in contact.
Andrew: All right. And then what’d you do next to get more customers?
Matt: I, I think we had, so we had this pro growth off the back of that. We then started to get a lot of influence and influencers using it. I think we had a great, and this comes back to the brand piece. We had a great message at the time we used to say. You know, automated process when they have the relationships.
And we were talking about doing better by customers and spending 30 seconds on a customer. And yeah, the idea of connecting again with customers, I think it was a great time because yeah, personalization has been a topic that’s going to be on the rise within, within online, online industries. Um, I mean, now it’s, it’s, especially within SASA time.
So lobby we’ll talk about this. So we ended up becoming a bit of a, a bit of a poster child for quite a few speakers around that. And so when those came in. We just, again, like, like we were able to take advantage of it with like, one thing we did at the very beginning is we always, we ate our own dog food.
So we were every lead that we ever had in everyday that’s ever come into bond jurors. We sent a video by one of my team. Um, I worked up that day. I’ve spent, I spent seven and a half days of my life sending videos to customers, um, at that long, but we would do this, we do it again, like, like all over the place.
But I think because we treat every customer that way, we still sort of time with every customer. Obviously it shows the product, but it also meant that when we have inferences come in, like Flynn, who’s a big B influencer come in. And, and we, we didn’t know who he was. We treat them the same as everyone else.
And next thing you know, he’s on stage telling everyone to, you know, major events go and download us and use us. And we see like all these signs just rolling in the next day off the back of that, we were then able to go and get connect with him and start. So he had sent his kids bear suits and do these little funny things that essentially it’s the idea of delights like as, as your customer funnel,
Andrew: That makes sense. And I can understand why PatFlynn would want to use you because if he’s responding to someone there, is this sense, is Pat really responding or is he assistant? Is it an assistant or someone else pretending to be him? And what my experience is, if he says it’s him, it’s him. But people may not trust it when they get that personal video, it goes so far to say, not only is it really me, but I’m taking it.
Hi, I’m out to see you and to talk to you. And then I get to how it is. He’s sending it to someone they’re going to go investigate. What’s Pat using. I could see how this would be a. A natural for what you called SMB, uh, influencers has online advertising or, um, done well for you at all, or is it all search engine optimization and virality.
Matt: We’ve just started playing with it. So we, we, we literally spending on Mo like spending on marketing probably six months ago. Um, we had just done timed online ads. We are looking to do pretty easily. Is this just the, like, we don’t, we know we’re doing, I’ll be honest, but we gained like three to four month paybacks, um, on it.
So.
Andrew: I mean, every dollar you spend comes back to you within three to four months, that makes a lot of sense then.
Matt: So it makes a lot of sense. And it’s quite interesting because you look at that and you go, well, that it’s very binary. Um, you know, like you put a dollar in, you wait, and then you get out in three months and that’s all upside from that. So it’s a little bit, it’s interesting. Cause it’s, it’s made of, it’s what we’ve done traditionally, which has been quite.
I guess harder to quantify methods. Like obviously the viral side that the growth has been core to what we’re doing, and it always will be the influence of stuff. We start to get deeper there. We started to do stuff, more stuff around partnerships. So we integrate with, with Entercom and ads campaign, and we do a lot of content with them and, and like 15 other integrations.
We were like the is fastest growing apps for like a couple of years in a row. So we did a little alongside that and vote, vote off the back of those larger. There’s larger partners. We continue to do that. So it’s, we had so much that we were going through and testing. It was all kind of free and it was already working well, but I guess paids been one of the last places we’ve come to, um, which I’m perfectly happy with because now I’m like, okay, well that’s another channel that we can go and unlock.
Andrew: All right. Uh, my second sponsor is HostGator for hosting websites. Matt, if, uh, I gave you a HostGator account and you had nothing else, no business, no money. You just had to start from scratch. Do you have a sense of what you might build? What’s the first business you’d build. If you had simple hosting package, it was easy to use.
Matt: First thing, I build either a few business ideas. They will tend to get quite complicated,
Andrew: What’s an easy one. I got to hear your idea.
Matt: ugly creatures. Is that your fund? So a, an environmental fund. Uh, for Crete, forget pandas, forget paler BAS focused on insects and amphibians. And the wildlife is under, under on the challenges that we wouldn’t normally put up as poster child and I’m backing projects and bringing limelight to
Andrew: Ah, so that’s an easy thing to do. Put up a website, call it ugly creatures. I love that name, man. Someone’s going to take it. It’s such a good name. And then instead of giving, instead of if you’re giving somebody a gift of saving an animal, might as well be this ugly creature that nobody’s paying attention to and doesn’t have enough money and support in the world.
That’s what you’re talking about.
Matt: Yeah. And so your impact can actually be much higher for every dollar you give.
Andrew: What about a business? What’s a business that you might launch. It feels like you’ve got one kicking around your head.
Matt: Sorry. I think you’ve like, I’ve talked about this is I think when it gets into data, that data measurement as a SAS, you are never on top of it. The more you build it, like you’re always on the undercover more data, use track more data. And so you actually need to get quite savvy and quite technical before you really start to do a good job of this.
And yet, and yet I feel that when you first get started, at least. There’s a lot of clear things you could be told to track these track on day one, that now, if I start another business, we go and build our budget off day one and go and set it all up. Um, but it’s actually the stuff you can track from day one that is visible to the whole team that really like brings to light what it is you’re tracking and tells you when, when you’ve made changes, if it’s been effective or not.
Andrew: So, what you would do is you would, you would create software that did that tracking from the beginning
Matt: Yes. Uh, I, I think the key here is, is understand that in reading and understanding where tests have worked and where they have worked, because you changed the full time, it’s quite hard. So if you can actually try and take, I mean, this is like, this is kind of what we do with Andre’s day, try and take some of the thinking out of it.
Try and try and give people the results without too much brain power. Hopefully help people navigate those early days a bit better.
Andrew: Do you know what I would do just to piggyback off of that? I would say there’s a lot of analytics software right now. That’s there. That is just too fricking hard to use. Just do one service, come to my website. I’ll do nothing, but install the fricking analytics on your site and give you the reports that you need and I’ll go away.
And if you need any more than you could pay a monthly fee to have the analytics analyze, but it’s a pain, a neck to install. It’s a pain in the neck to figure out how to adjust. What do you think of that?
Matt: No. I agree. It’s like, it’s like, somebody gives you an Excel sheet and they’re like, okay. Here’s all the way to the bottom to use it. Like you’re on your own. It’s like, give me a template. I can just put it into numbers and it’s done, like give me the tablets where I’d have to think, and you, and you can use, you know, thousands of other companies.
Who’ve done this before to give me a great first result, which might not be perfect, but it’s, I can get it going today.
Andrew: Right. Exactly. Just give me nothing, but you set it up for me and you need to know what I need, but I don’t, I don’t want to have to figure it out if it better yet, have the, have the report come to me, but it’s like set up our software for us. Cause we’re running our business as a service. How about that?
Set up our software as a service where a business just gets the software up and running.
Matt: Or, you know, or, you know, what you’re, what you’re really selling is, is. It’s time and brainpower because the hardest thing in a company is, is making decisions. And that’s when you try and build it from scratch, you’ll have to make a lot of decisions. It’s easy when your brain power for the day, you can’t spend that on your business, give someone this, or they can get on with solving the other problems that are more important.
Andrew: I would say for everything, just here’s the price to have WordPress set up for you. Here’s the price to have Google analytics set up for you. Here’s the price to have a Bon Jaro set up for you. Like the whole thing. Here’s the price to have pipe drive set up. We will just. Set your software up, you fill out a sheet and we’ll do it.
That that’s an interesting business model. All right. Let me say this to my audience, whether it’s that idea or anything else, all you have to do is go to hostgator.com/mixergy. They will set you up in business right away. Their website is so fast to get started with, and it’s so good that I’ve used it now for years.
And most of you didn’t even notice it. It just works. Go get hosting. That’s inexpensive, just works and is dependable from HostGator. And if you use my URL, you’ll get their lowest possible price. That URL is hostgator.com/mixergy. All right. I gotta, I gotta say there’s a lot that I love about yourself from again to what I love.
Here’s the one problem that I’ve got as a recipient. I can’t always listen to a video. I would love it. If I could just see, I get that. It’s a real person. I get that. They’re really talking to me. Let me read it. Cause I’m a faster reader than most people are talkers. What do you think of that map? Yeah,
Matt: I agree. I’ll just say, watch the space where we’ll be releasing something pretty soon.
Andrew: because the message that Pat is really talking to me, the path Lynn is talking to me. I could get an a second, the fact that I could just read it is good. Can I give you a suggestion for what I’d like to see? All right. Scrolling transcript that I can just double click on. And the video goes to that part of the transcript.
And I know this is a pain in the ass, cause I’ve wanted to do that for my interviews. I can’t get a tool to do that. I’d love it. Um,
Matt: We do this on our research projects. So the research tool that we have does that because people have to jump around, analyze the data. So we have a whole search through banks and banks and banks of video that do this.
Andrew: I need, you know, I need that.
Matt: possible.
Andrew: I want it only for podcasts I wanted, even for audio, I actually pay for PatFlynn software for PA for publishing our audio on my site. It’s a good podcast player. It lets people go fast-forward and let them play it in double speed, et cetera. The one thing I wish is we already have a transcript.
Our transcripts automatically can have timestamps on it. If somebody wants to hear the way, the way that you said yes to me to see if you were being sarcastic or truthful or, or enthusiastic. I just want them to be a little double-click on the transcript. And then listen to you say that, um, that’s really important and the same thing here, because I may not care to hear all of what Pat saying to me.
I just want the gist that he’s there, but if he said something really interesting, I might want to double click and hear it directly from him. But basically the bottom line is that’s a nice tab. I just want to read it. I don’t have time for people’s 45 second video. I know that sounds petty, but 45 seconds a long time.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah, I hear ya.
Andrew: You’re working on that. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna push any further. I’d like to see that. Um, here’s, here’s what I love. I didn’t realize this until I saw how design pickle was using, uh, Bon . They apparently will send videos out as team members to their, to their customers. And then they said that there’s some stats that they could look at afterwards and they compete to see who has the highest stats.
And I asked you before we got started, what kind of stats are they looking at for their videos? And you started blowing my mind with what’s possible. What are you guys offering with stats and action.
Matt: So highest level, uh, in terms of like messages and sales, we tend to get about 70%, 70 to 80% open rates on those messages. So pretty high, it says cutthroat engagement. Uh, we tend to see about three times response rates of any other messaging type that is out there. Um, that will vary. It can be much higher, much lower, um, off the back of that more interestingly than it is that we can then plug those stats back into if you’re using a CRM or some other kind of software tool.
Uh, for customers when you plug this stats back in again. And so that will allow you to do is to run AB tests. So with, with design people, ultimately what the stats come down to is do they convert more, more, more sites in the first place? So, so does want to see us, him practically reaching out and connecting with the years and letting them know that our help does that help convert those customers higher.
And so they measure those, the measure of people who view those videos versus that that B test is normal. Drip email campaigns meant to come that say. Measure those and go, does this work and AB test.
Andrew: Oh, I didn’t realize that. Okay. That’s even, that’s even more interesting. What I thought was I was thinking of, I wanted to use bond zero to land guests for my podcast, and I shot a 45 second video. Let’s say 30. Cause I could be faster that says, Matt, I really love your business. I just saw what you said on Twitter about how funding could be painful, but you have to stick through entrepreneurship one way or the other and just keep going.
I’d love to have you talk about that on Mixergy. Uh, all you have to do, if you’re interested is who’s hit the link below and just pick any date on my calendar online and I’ll interview. If I sent that to you, I could even see what percentage of people clicked on that link. If it’s for me versus Ari, who’s our producer.
She could send it out and say, you really should be on with Andrew. Andrew would have a great time talking to you. Just hit his link, right? That’s possible.
Matt: Yeah, this is all custom links and the videos, I guess, where it gets interesting is, is as you start to understand this more is directing different customers down different paths. So, you know, for instance, deciding whether you were already does the video in the first place, and it might be a certain States of, of, uh, of speaker needs to come from you.
Whereas other status has made, maybe she can do the same with links. Certainly certain customers like a high PQL to go and book a demo with one of the sales team versus, you know, a lower PQL here’s the help docs. If you need help, hit us on support online,
Andrew: What’s PQL mean.
Matt: sorry, product qualified lead. So someone who’s signed up.
Andrew: maybe they go to, to me, if they’re less qualified, maybe they go to Ari.
Matt: That’s it. Yeah, exactly.
Andrew: All right. Give me one, one other use. Let’s close it out with one other possibility. What else can we do to use Bandura to close more sales?
Matt: Sorry. I mean guys, the completely, other end of the funnel, which I think is incredibly important and it’s probably not as obvious is this is Dubai driving things, use case studies and testimonials. So where this plays a great space is after someone has paid and been with you, maybe gone through three months or they’ve hit their year, or if you’re an e-commerce calf customer, even, um, when you’ve got to a good point on the customer journey, dropping a video and just saying, look, thanks so much for being with us again.
If you have any questions, like we always say the help, um, by the way, reviews mean a huge amount to us. That’s the trust part. Lincoln is in this, in this video. Would you mind going and giving us one. That, what we find is that we get a huge response rate on reviews or to go into a case study or to leave a testimonial.
Um, when you go and ask in person, because it’s much harder to turn day human than it is to turn down a little pop up email, basically.
Andrew: Especially for something as easy as a testimonial. If I was trying to close a sale with a video, that would be harder, but Hey, thanks for being a customer for a year. If you really like the work that we’ve been doing, would you mind helping me get another Trustpilot review? I’m trying to get to a hundred.
Matt: and off the back of that, when you say taking this, taking this time again, this is what, this is what you’re already selling here. So it’s not video is time that you’re selling. You’re showing that you can sign up. Do you think you’re going to get more positive review because of that as well? It actually influences the review itself.
So we ended up with a better view of people were like, Oh, the support’s amazing. These guys are awesome. Like, you know, like the product’s great. So, um, instead of like to give you a better view of the back of it, and that’s not a direct funnel, but if things like reviews and case studies, et cetera, lead into top of the funnel, which they would do through advocacy, then that starts to drive that and turn your existing customers into a growth channel.
Andrew: Free less people send out 50 videos a month. I’m not doing a sales pitch for you here. I’m just kind of interested in this. That’s more than enough for most people, would it, would it still work with triggers where something like a new customer? It does.
Matt: Yeah,
Andrew: Don’t you think you’re being too generous with that?
If it’s a real business after 10 they’ll know whether they want to pay for you or not. What’s the other 50.
Matt: It’s in flux.
We’d like to support smaller companies. We’d like to support small teams. Um, I think let, let, like there’s value there. Let’s see if they get value as they grow and as they become a established business, then the stock, there are other mechanisms to upgrade. So we do have obviously limited videos, which like teams are saying a lot more, but then we also have things, like we mentioned the custom links that go in the videos.
We have those. So be able to put customized links to the videos, custom branding. Custom landing pages. That’s that customization is a painful feature, but if you’re starting out to ask you that we need that. So
Andrew: All right. That makes sense. All right. So I guess with the 50 free videos that they get with that free level, they’re also promoting Bangarra with that free level,
Matt: exactly. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a shared benefit.
Andrew: Yeah. All right. Congratulations on your success here. Phenomenal, phenomenal that you’ve been able to do this. Do you think you’re going to be able to beat your dad’s business?
He did a couple of hundred million dollars a year.
Matt: Yes. Yeah. But I think we have to go way beyond where we are today. So I think this is a great starting point. Yeah. So, so videos, not videos, not the playing field that we’re in. I think video is a wonderful medium. I think what we’re really playing in here is methods to help you convert and keep more customers through, through personalization.
And during that scale, I think there’s a lot more that has to be investigated within that space. So we’re starting to move that way beyond being a video tool, into being a personalization platform. Um, it’s going to be a hard year.
Andrew: What else? What other personalization is there? That’s real.
Matt: Yeah. So I think, I think you can come into, I think there’s a lot of stuff around the advocacy piece.
So like I mentioned here, how do you better create super fans and advocates? I think most of us don’t do a good job of this. I think most of us have customers. We have a very small percentage of people who rave about us and talk about us. I think there’s methods to go and drive that
Andrew: Give me one. What could you do for that?
Matt: So it’s about time. It’s about, so when, when something good is happening, when it’s been a good experience, recognize that as a trigger and then gain well it’s in to reach out and talk to them and meet them across. Yeah. It’s a lot of, it’s about timing. It’s also about recognizing which customers to invest time in versus other customers.
So understanding what customer is likely to become an advocate as well. This is a bit of data piece in this, and then again, reaching out in person at some point.
Andrew: Got it. So there, there are other tools do video. We mentioned Wistia. Wistia is known for video hosting. They’re phenomenal. They created something like this where you can send out a personal video, even do screen share, and send it out to people. What they’re thinking of is how do they make video more accessible?
What you’re thinking of is how do you make video more personal? How do you, how do you know when to send it out? What to send it, who to send it to that’s you you’re much more likely to have a service where you ship out a bear costume or something on behalf of your customers, to their customers to win loyalty.
Then you are to have the next new feature. Then you are maybe even to have a 4k video.
Matt: Exactly.
Andrew: Right. That’s what you care about. You just happen to be in the video space today, but the real thing that you’re in is how, how do you take care of customers at the right time with personalization?
Matt: Think you wrong an awesome way to communicate, but we’re not in the, in the market of like eight HD perfect video and, you know, host a video and that kind of thing. Yeah. Like this is a great way to communicate right now. It’s one of many mediums. What else can you do to like, ultimately the goal is how do you make customers for life?
So not, not have a customer lifetime value of, you know, $2,000, but how do you get a customer to stay for 20 years? But how’d you do that?
Andrew: and when you were talking about how you sent Pat a bear costume, I was a little envious that you had a process for doing it. Now we do too, but it’s very clunky. Imagine if it could be much more streamlined than that, like if you could send automatically send a customer, something like I use rippling for, uh, paying our team.
One of the first things that rippling does is they say. What’s your name, what’s your social and so on. They take all that stuff so we could pay them, but they also say what’s your t-shirt size and that’s so that automatically, if I have everyone’s t-shirt size, if we decide we’re going to send out a t-shirt to the whole team, I don’t have to ask them.
I could just surprise them because the form takes that we don’t have that type of system for customers. And you’re thinking not just that, but how do you delight customers at the right time? The right place? I totally see where you’re going with this. I think it makes a ton of sense. All right. I suddenly got serious about this.
I think this is the first time that I started without a smile the whole time. This is your thing. This is your mission. Now you a little, do you feel like maybe you read a little too much or maybe we’re getting into like the heart of why this business matters to you and that’s why you’re serious.
Matt: I think customers don’t know this as well. Yes it’s. It’s never just been about video, which makes it we’ve mentioned makes it hard from a strategic point of view, leash, like a way of going because you like, but like, we’ve come now this area let’s go step into the unknown. Like once again, um, we kind of enjoy that as well
Andrew: I would love it. If the, here are a few different things that you could automatically send to your people, it’s not that hard to send stuff, but it’s a pain in the ass. If you do just one.
Matt: Yeah, exactly.
Andrew: You know? Oh yeah. Now you got my mind going on this stuff. All right, Matt. Congratulations on your success for everyone who’s out there.
Who wants to go see it? I know I talk very fast. I was born in New York. I am in San Francisco. I should have been like a chill out California, but I’m not. I talk too fast. I’m going to slow down and say it’s Bon Zorro. It’s Bon, J O R O B O N J O R o.com. I get no affiliate commission, right? You will not sponsors or anything with me. I’m just enthusiastic. Alright. And I want to thank the two sponsors who are customers of mine, who I’m equally enthusiastic about the first. If you’re doing any online marketing, if you’re doing social media, if you’re trying to get people to your site, I’m letting use SEMrush for free. All you have to do is remember this URL, please don’t post it online or I’ll get in trouble.
It’s I literally will get in trouble. I, I thought that that nevermind. It’s mixergy.com/semrush. And number two, when you need a website hosted, go to hostgator.com/. Mixergy. Thank you, Matt. Thank you all for listening. No, that was great. That’s it?
