Dave Fink - Co-Founder & CEO of Postie | How to Create a Category

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host, Scott DeClaire. The success story podcast is part of the blue wire podcast network as well as the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot podcast network has other great podcasts like marketing made simple hosted by Dr. J.J. Peterson. Now, marketing made simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work. If you like any of these topics, you definitely want to go check out the show, how to write and deliver a captivating speech, how to market yourself into a new job, how design can help and also hurt your revenue, creating a social media ad strategy that actually works. If these topics resonate with you, go check out marketing made simple wherever you get your podcasts. Today, my guest is David Fink. Now, David is a 15 year consumer internet veteran. He is a revenue focus and growth focus entrepreneur. He is a passion for creating disruptive business models and unique monetization strategies. He focuses on discovering opportunities to drive rapid growth and is creative yet data driven approach to marketing and monetization has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for ad tech, lead generation and commerce companies. Over the last decade, Dave has launched and scaled over 20 consumer internet businesses during the early part of his career. He created performance marketing platforms, helping brands as diverse as Walt Disney world proctor and gamble and the gap adapt to the rapidly changing digital media strategies available in the internet world. Today, he is the CEO and co-founder of Posey, whereas team uses direct mail to transform brands, including Lyft, Casper, Warby Parker, and many more. What do we speak about? We spoke about his early role in a variety of different commerce companies, including Dollar Shave Club. We spoke about the importance of experience in building a new category. We spoke about how to win in modern marketing through social media. We spoke about how to market effectively without sharing data as well as some thoughts on the future of marketing that are incredibly important for you and your business. So with that further deal, let's jump right into it. This is Dave Finke, he is the co-founder and CEO of Posey. Yes, so I can tell you kind of abbreviated kind of history of kind of my trajectory, what got me here. I graduated college many years ago and had almost no flickable real-world skills and somehow pretty early on fell into working for a marketing technology company in kind of the web long.no era. I was in Chicago where I was born and raised and I just really early on fell in love with the whole kind of startup culture. The company I was working for was a startup itself, but I was on the sales team for many years there. It was at this first company about seven years and spent a lot of time selling into Fortune 1000 companies, but also had the opportunity to sell into startups. These Fortune 500 companies are 1000 companies I'd shop and would be in the tiny little offices and have a fairly boring conversation and I'd come back six months later. It'd be different person at same office, same set of questions, but I would go and walk into these startups and if it was an early startup I'd be talking usually to some of the founders and they were working off card tables in terrible office spaces and we'd do some business together. I'd come back six months later and they'd be in a much bigger office with 10,000 as many people and maybe a real table instead of a card table. I'd come back a year later and there'd be a bunch of frories in the parking lot and hundreds of people and I didn't quite understand it back then, but there was this energy in technology and the startup culture. Fast forward 25 years later had the opportunity to be involved in launching a wide range of companies ranging from consumer brands to marketing technology platforms and just I've kind of spent my life in four or five year chapters working on taking an idea to market and trying to find product market fit and scale and I'll probably be doing it for another 25 years. You just fast forwarded through 25 years of your life and you just glossed over like you've had I think I think you just went through everything like when you said you just started a couple different companies like when I look on your resume so I'm just going back I'm going back and I think I I don't even see I'm just looking through here right now on your LinkedIn I don't even see like there's a story about dollar-save club that you were part of dollar -save club, no? Because there's a whole bunch of other things on your resume that I didn't even see it there like you had like Q interactive blush beautyfix.com, endemic access group, beach mint, and then obviously policy like most recently you have a whole bunch of stuff so I just I want to dig in the dollar-save because that's a name like everybody knows it's like a huge CPG success. It was incredible I honestly like I mean that that was from day one through you know the you know acquisition from you know to or sell to to Unilever it was textbook fantasy you know startup experience so I was a one of the the partners at a tech studio in Santa Monica called science and we you know we're typically you know first money in investors in in very early stage concepts and and like Dubin who's the founder of a dollar-save club came and pitched us and at that point it was pretty launch you know pretty website he had a rough cut of his initial like world-renowned incredibly you know amazing you know viral video that has become the poster child for how you launch a business in the direct consumer space and and we were taken by him you know the concept excel itself I think was fine you know selling you know men's growing products direct to consumer but it was really his ability to bring a story to life in at a time that YouTube was just becoming YouTube and Facebook was just becoming Facebook it was you know so certainly that that was not a company that that that I started but it was it was a company that that that I was able to invest in very early on and and the first two years of that the life dollar-save club day it was incubated right in our offices that's so cool that's that that's really cool man I didn't so when I was looking at that like you you've been part of some like wild rights but let's like like let's back it up so what are some of the what are some of the I guess some of the companies because you've been involved invested or just helping runs a lot of startup what were some of the companies where you saw success it kind of got you hooked why did you get hooked outside of you know the fact that you were just selling to startups versus enterprise and you and you saw a little bit of the culture and the way they could disrupt and how fast it could grow but when you started working and started what was that first you know entrance point into that type of environment for you well I think what would kind of the bug that really bit me was this idea of there's kind of a career trajectory where it's a series of jobs and you develop very specific skill sets and you kind of work through you know a very kind of rigid structure and chain commands and and there's nothing wrong with that like that that's a great fit for many people I you know there are people that quite frankly are work within our company that are much more their brains work in in terms of structure and process and organization start if you need that just as much as big enterprise companies for sure but for me and I think my brain always worked more entrepreneurily in in in being able to kind of like recognize an opportunity or recognize that there's a problem and and as soon as I kind of saw just how fast in this kind of technology startup world you could recognize an opportunity or recognize that you may have a solution to a problem get that to market and and very quickly you know create trajectory and momentum to me that that was like eye opening and it wasn't it wasn't like I kind of like a short you know short cutting you know in my career I mean look it's taken been doing this for a lot of years taking me a lot of time to learn and develop skills and and and put it all together successfully but it was that my brain work in terms of not recognizing not getting stuck in process and steps necessary to accomplish things it was it was if something could be done you figure out a way to do it and and I think for me the the path to to using stars as a platform to be able to create things you know it's just it fits it fits the way that my brain works and then and then and I was smitten from pretty early on no that's great man no and and I guess also like you know it's just sort of syncs up with your personality I think it's like to be a founder to get in early stage you do have to have like a certain kind of personality like it's not like it's not for everyone I guess it takes a certain kind of crazy to like love doing this again and again and again like there's it I tell people there's a like an easier way to make a buck for sure I'd weigh more great here than than I did yeah just a few years ago but there's to I mean from from my perspective there's there's just there's nothing like waking up in the morning and knowing that you have an opportunity to to you know finish your day and and realize that you don't even remember how you got there from yeah stepping in the morning to night at night or midnight or or whatnot it was just you had the freedom to just keep creating and improving and optimizing your business but how do you pick how do you pick which category because you've done a whole bunch of stuff so even like the most recent company you're building is very different from any D2C CPG brand even like a traditional SaaS play like it's still like it's it's out there so how do you choose what to go into next because it's not like you're just you figured out like a startup playbook but it's not even like a category specific playbook that you execute it just seems to be like whatever you touch seems to end up working out which is pretty damn good like we should talk after and I can probably you know get a couple hours of consulting just on stuff that I'm working on but how do you have to decide where to go next well certainly I'd be happy to do that and just yeah talk openly here but to be clear like there's no shortage of like things that didn't work and and I'm proud of them like lots of my LinkedIn profile as well because those those were all you know steps to I think a constant journey in trying to get better and better at at you know building stuff and creating value so I think my my ability and anyone's ability to make good decisions comes from some trial and error a lot of awareness and pattern recognition so certainly the longer and the more thing at bats you have you can start picking up on on you know on patterns and and attributes that you know make a business more likely to be successful or less likely to be successful and there are a couple things that are just you know I think common sense to me now but probably weren't common sense to me you know 10 15 20 years ago you know one of those those rules that I try and live by and impose upon our teams and individuals on our teams as well is you know that that you want to be focused on things and spending your time in areas where you're going to get a disproportionate return from them and and you know we work in in a marketing and advertising space at post you and I spent a lot of time there when I was on the brand side and I had you know media buying teams or marketing teams that were trying to figure out you know where should we be spending our time what's the next channel we should be experimenting with to try and you know find you know additional growth or speed up evolution of our business one of the things that you used to have them do is is you know you had to look at are these channels you know optimizable are our prospect consumers you know spending time on those platforms etc do they have the tools and the data and the measurement to be able to to give us the feedback we need to to make those channels successful and you check out those boxes and you hear really excited about but but the the final box and the biggest box is well if you do everything right and you put in all this effort and time you know testing your way through this advertising channel and you succeed and you're and you're you know you're you're doing a good job you know optimizing this channel is it scalable is it big enough is it worth your time and in some cases sure right social channels like Facebook or not tiktok and snap like those are really big massive channels and if you put in the time and effort into those channels you can make them you know not just successful but but that success can can lead to lots of scale business is the same is no different right so you might have a really you know uncover a a a a huge challenge and that challenge you might have a really interesting solution for and you might realize you can build technology your software or infrastructure to to solve that problem and then you look at what what investors call TAM or total addressable market and you realize like this is a tiny little market there's seven potential customers we can build a world class solution totally solve this problem but in the end if we succeed at most we can have seven customers like probably not a good business versus trying to find businesses that you know that have real authentic product a problems that you think you you have a unique solution for and then have a big total addressable market like to me that that's almost the number when getting factor you're gonna work just as hard to build a business that serves a really small niche as you are to build a business that that can be big and scalable why not focus on on something that that doesn't have that same ceiling now what about okay so to to play devil's advocate to that the book behind me played bigger is all about creating a category creating your TAM basically so what is that something that just requires like a an extra level of crazy on top of regular entrepreneurship and going into it because it's just so much work to do when you have that blue ocean or is that something that can also be forecasted or is that too difficult to to really get into in a like a sales force like a sales force like I think in that book there's like sales force there's like Kia as examples of just people that they created the category and then sold into it here that's interesting so I didn't read the book but but I am a big reader content I'll definitely put on my list that's interesting that those are the two examples right because you know certainly sales force disrupted a vertical but but there were sear atoms right they were typically server side I think when I first started my career we were using a client side application called gold mine that that did a lot of the same things it just wasn't cloud based and sales force came along and it was better and and and they innovated and they leveraged modern technology and cloud based solutions so I don't know if that if look I'd I would have to read the book to understand the premise of how they're categorizing I'll give you the context actually so they're saying that what what Benioff did was he basically created the cloud movement and just like you know took you know just absolutely took a shit on everybody who had on prem server side solutions that said this is ludicrous is insane this is why you should move to the cloud and then oh look it we just have this great solution that fits that narrative already so that's that's sort of the the creating a category the cloud category and then sold into it with the CRM yeah that looks I think it's like that's fair I mean I might argue a little bit with the author of that book that to me it still doesn't sound like a category it sounds like a complete overhaul and modernization of a category again a brilliant solution amazing company but but when I think about creating categories I think about it to answer the original question you know when you think about creating your own category I think you know timing and lock play a really big role and then there's usually some level of brilliance in there and so you know you look at like yeah Google and search right I think that's probably creating a category right that's a little bit more so I think I think more so then more so then then just moving things to the cloud and like improving and existing category I understand there's a big difference there search didn't really exist and then it's correct correct and and there wasn't a need for it before before the internet and then the mass amount of information coming into it you know into the web so I think like in that case like certainly like timing graduating Stanford at it at a time you know when technology or the internet was just becoming the internet so I think I think timing you know again lot and brilliance like it's got to be the convergence of that at least it builds like a stringer like Google right one of the best companies in the history of the world but but like you know the brilliance of you know of Larry and Sergei like undoubtedly right exists like that company wouldn't have been that company if they weren't as brilliant and capable as they were but they had to hit timing right they had to be at Stanford and Silicon Valley during the emergence of the web there had to be yeah they had to be at a time in their career where they were able to like take chances you know in this kind of coming of age like that like all that had to line up you know similar to when you look at you know YouTube right yeah like YouTube couldn't have been created eight years earlier even five years earlier because broadband was too expensive they couldn't have afforded the servers to distribute that type of content so that's true brilliant to that product but also with tie a little bit of timing and lock is I think is is absolutely critical when you're talking about building one of these like completely new game changing Titan of a company and doesn't happen that often I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now security is one of the major issues big tech is currently facing from AI scrapes the data leaks starting your business solidly can be just as difficult as growing it securely HubSpot is on a mission to help your business grow better with a CRM platform that grows with you start your venture with HubSpot's e to the use secure website builder that scales with your business as you grow ensure your team of two is just as secure as your team of 200 with secure sign on content and asset petitioning and scalable team permissions whatever comes next make sure your business is ready for it learn how your business can grow better at HubSpot.com okay so I want the only reason I brought that up is because later I do want to bring this back to what you're doing with postee and whether or not I guess you're probably just trying to approve a category but I still think there's a little bit of a nuance there like it's not like it's not like you're just going into like something with a huge tam because I don't think a tam exists for exactly what you're doing I think that you're probably disrupting and improving and optimizing but we can go there in a second I was also curious about just to sort of bring back to all the different categories that you know that you've built products in and invested into in terms of being successful you look for a couple things one thing you didn't mention was experience and I and I thought that was interesting so talk to me about how important experience in the category is to success oh that's a double I've sort and depending on probably the moment of the day I can argue I can take both positions in that debate so explain why you can take both positions explain both both lenses so yeah you know I do some investing and and also kind of provide some some guidance to friends who do you you know tech investing yet and yesterday the day before friends sent me over a pitch tag it's a category that I wasn't super familiar with but you know reviewed the data and and the deck and the storyline and you wanted my feedback on it and immediately the the first thing that I the first page in the deck that I that I kind of gravitated towards when trying to synthesize my recommendation to someone I care about when they should invest their you know harder money into this business was the team and and it starts with is the team you have capable of of pulling this off and that's a wide range right it's the right business leaders of the right technicians and the right marketers of the right operations people etc and and and this team was extraordinary you know military backgrounds just really impressive like special ops people but but then they also had a number of years and a very clean trajectory from from their armed service days through developing category expertise and and vertical you know domain expertise and and that made me really comfortable it feel comfortable right like here the these people that they they understand the industry that they're going off after building a solution to you could see how that could lead to demand generation they knew where to go to source initial you know deal flow and new customer acquisition but I also think that on the flip side when you look and you take someone who has deep domain expertise and has been playing in a system for a long time they've been trained to think in terms of let's operate efficiently the way that things have always been operated and so when those type of people oftentimes come in and they and they have some idea of how they're going to disrupt the industry that they've spent 15 years in and you start kind of going deep and talking through kind of their process and and you know and how they were going to attack the the problem you you realize that that they're they're thinking incrementally different differently than they were at the incumbent that they work for whereas oftentimes disrupts something you you need a complete fresh perspective like you can't be you know saddle down with all the reasons why this couldn't work or or things have to be done the way that they've always been done and and so there are times where when you take an entrepreneur who doesn't have direct domain expertise has applicable expertise and and that person is more likely to be successful because they're just coming in a little bit naively looking and saying like with complete fresh eyes like this is this isn't make any sense like why would you build an entire industry this way you know there's a better framework for how how this industry should be run and so that's you know I do it's so interesting that you ask that question because I do spend a lot of time thinking about that you know when making investment decisions you know like when does it make sense to invest with someone who does have deep domain expertise and you have that confidence that that that they understand what they're going after and when when does that not make sense and when would you rather bet on someone who's coming in completely you know bright item bushy tailed you know ready to run through you know brick walls and it's very completely fresh ideas to a legacy industry could you I guess optimal situation would be like both personalities I think so right or what the industry expertise I was just thinking like just like as a as an entrepreneur going in maybe the person without the expertise would almost like default to and just feel comfortable with like somebody coming from the industry then maybe that might actually dilute their own thought process and and bringing disruptive innovative ideas to a company I think there's probably roles for the right roles for both in our company we have both right so Jonathan my co-founder and I you know we we have deep domain expertise in consumer internet and building and scaling direct consumer brands and building marketing technology platforms in kind of digital quant spaces but we did not have a background in direct mail very specific you know sector within you know advertising in general and and I think because of that it's allowed us to completely rethink the way that direct mail should be executed and this is an interest this year the latest numbers I heard is over 50 billion dollars will be spent here in the US in this channel it's an established 100-year-old vertical with some really big players and and so on the entrepreneurial front the the kind of vision behind you know what we think you know this industry could look like in the future and how it could support advertisers and and brands I think is very different than the way that that senior execs coming out of the direct mail industry you know would think and that works out for our roles but then you know a lot of what we do is around complex operations and logistics you know the heads of those departments you know we've recruited away from from you know big incoming companies because you know they need to have expertise in how to play within the system how the US Post Service works how great forwarding and logistics providers move pallets of mail around the country how you know manufacturers producing you know hundreds of millions of pieces of mail among for us you know behave and operate how to source paper in a pandemic you know there are all these things that if you don't have that that don't make deep domain expertise you have no innovation in the world is going to you know is going to make you successful and so in our company at the executive level we have a blend of I think creative thinkers like disruptive thinkers and you know those individuals who have deep domain expertise and and so I think that was kind of your maybe your suggestion and it was I just wasn't I've never seen I've always sort of seen one of the other that's why because I've never been exposed to an organization where you have both but actually the company that I'm at right now that's what that's how we're trying to build out the leadership team so it's just interesting to get your perspective on it because I was I would hope it would work and that's like the like the just to theorize like what would be the best possible way to disrupt existing category or industry it's like you how do you you bring somebody obviously you have great product but you bring somebody in who's from that industry and you combine somebody who is just a creative entrepreneurial thinker and then like those two in tandem can work together to do like incredible stuff but I'm like living through this right now that's why I was just curious um yeah look I we could certainly take this yeah offline as well but I'm seeing it firsthand that it can work you also there has to be a lot of other components that of course that work collaboratively within you know those kind of different personality types or experience types but yeah I think it's probably a pretty good recipe to have a little bit of both so okay so walk me through walk me through what you're doing with post you then now this is I want to obviously just speak about the mechanics of the business why you chose to go into this industry in particular because again it's very different from what you've done in the past but also let's talk about modern marketing because I think it I think it sort of is very much in sync with getting people's attention just disrupting the constant flow of information the people are getting from all these other sources that they're used to getting information from so yeah give me give me a lowdown on post and what you're doing sure well you know post the at its core is a direct mail channel management platform so for those you know those on the marketing side of things that are kind of listening probably the simplest way to think about it is you know the the the programmatic platform for direct mail the trade desk for direct mail the dv3 360 for direct mail it gives marketers all of the technology and software tools to be able to to to bring best of breed components ranging from you know execution logistics to measuring insights to data science predictive modeling audience created you know campaign you know management and optimization all those things that that we've come to rely on that allow us to leverage the big digital channels social search email etc programmatic and but but layer that on top of an incredibly productive and incredibly high converting channel like direct mail to to bring direct mail more in the mix with your holistic marketing strategy versus running direct mail you know I'm a side or disconnected from the rest of your your quantitative certainly digital addressable marketing strategies now this is okay so when when we're actually using this for a marketer is there let's let's understand why this is so useful like why disrupting and being able to measure the results as well through direct mail because as a marketer the first thing you think about is that's antiquated that's outdated maybe I would use that as like part of an abm campaign but it's going to be like a small part of it so what what place or what gap or what void does this post you fill for a marketer and why is it doing it successfully so as marketers in 20 almost 2022 the other one these probably will be 2022 by the time you launch this right it will be 2022 by the time launch this yeah so as markers in you know in in 2022 you know the way that we approach you know our trade our craft is very different than it was you know a couple decades ago so the ability to understand our customers never been been stronger the insight we have into the differences between different types of customers you know how they behave depending on how we speak with them or how we merchandise to them etc yeah that's something that that digital has you know gifted us right and so when you think about this idea of a dressable marketing or programmatic marketing it's an individual or an audience first approach whereas you know at some point yeah yeah brand marketing is is really kind of a brand centric first approach right it starts the brand and storytelling they both need to go hand in hand to build big successful companies and what we what we've seen over the last really 15 years is this movement to to to digital as kind of the way to kind of establish our dressable marketing and really it's two behemoths it's it's search and it's social and and it's Facebook and it's Google and and whether you're a digital native brand that has emerged you know you know from kind of a digital first perspective or whether you're a big fortune 500 fortune 50 company that has spent a lot of time and energy migrating into a data first approach digital first approach to engaging with your customers you've seen a lot of power and success there and you've just always seem to become addicted to the dynamic nature of executing campaigns and optimization the flow of data and the predictive value of those channels but you've also probably dealt with the pain of the of hitting ceilings on those those two giant platforms and you've dealt with the pain of them change their algorithms on you and you you've felt the pain of them convincing you to build you know followers and then and then decide they're going to charge you to distribute content to the same followers that you already paid to you know to build an ecosystem or like we've all lived through that and and there's there's obviously good and there's bad in in all that for us we started feeling that pain about six seven years ago as marketers and we just looked around and said like we can't wake up anymore with with our entire you know livelihood the success of our businesses being rely relying on you know two algorithms working and and so we started you know researching other channels where where you know very similar you know test optimization approaches could leverage good results and in the digital world you know again six six six years ago or so so you know there wasn't TikTok and snap didn't have an ad platform and you were pretty much limited to Google and Facebook and then you know long-term programmatic so we started spending more time offline and in the offline world you know the one channel that showed some signs of some you know some signs of I think similarity between you know digital or with digital was was direct now and and what we fell in law with was there's you know it's it's massive anybody with an address is reachable through the channel it's highly effective you know we had done tons of research on on brands that had you know tremendous successful results across broad sets of verticals and company sizes there's a wealth of data that can be used very similarly to how you build and and train look like audiences and CRM segments on email or yeah on social platforms and with brands knowing more having more and more identity mapping you know on with their data we knew that measurement was really could be really clean possible and so really that uh how moment was like hey this all looks really similar to your programmatic or social or search but it's not a it's not a closed wall guard right and so like US Post Service can't change algorithms on you and can't move people's mailboxes around and try and you know trick you into spending more money with them and increasing your marketing budget and so for us it it became you know it became this this we had this like little twinkler I and said hey I wonder if it's possible to to to evolve the technologies and platform tools that we've come to use to optimize social search programmatic emails here I'm et cetera and bring that over to the direct mail world and the only the only gap that I need to understand is okay so that all makes sense the targeting all makes sense it's falls in line with like an existing marketers experience workflow but how do you get those data points from a conversion perspective because that is the most important metric right so if I'm direct mailing a customer how the hell do I know if they take that letter and then they go on to my website and then they actually buy a product because that would be the only thing that I don't understand how to track with a direct mail tool so there's a number of different ways that um that you know you can run attribution through through direct mail and it's core what's special about it is unlike some of these channels that are kind of freaking out right now about the deprecation of the cookie or the latest version of iOS that that is going to make digital you know tracking harder and potentially you know arguably not existing at some point in the future um the the kind of core match point with direct mail is the actual address right so you have to be able to tell you you're supposed to service where to send a piece of mail to and you have various insights into you know that specific you know address and most advertisers these days have a direct relationship with a consumer either through a web transaction or registration point or a POS system that allows them to to know who their customers are and and and and and you can then match back the the address of a of a converter with the address of a recipient of direct mail during an attribution window and start calculating the direct measurement okay so then that so that solves the so that solves the last the last piece of attribution so then um the last question would be this is marketer is this more of a B2B focused tool or can it be used for B2C where you're you know your average you know customer like contract value or order value is much lower right so the vast majority of clients on the post-e platform are consumer brands really and the widest range of categories um I mean yeah just about anything that you've bought um the end of the last 30 days I'm sure we have multiple clients that are you know selling those similar products and finding value and direct mail yeah the conversion rates tend to be very high doesn't mean it's an easy channel to get right that's why I think we have a business yeah we're we're bringing yeah some some software that makes complicated things a little bit easier um but uh the I mean the the general average order value of a consumer good um you know compared to the conversion rate needed to get a positive return on your ad spend is well in line with what what direct mail can deliver everyone's a while there's an outlier right you're you're talking about you know selling one off now polish for four dollars and ninety nine cents yeah if that you know and if you're average order value is you know two or three you have bottles now polished and it's a ten to fifteen dollar you know um you know AOV probably harder to make a channel like direct mail works um but yeah subscription products in a rare situation yeah that's gonna say subscription products like anything sure there's a high AOV yeah yeah yeah yeah so so we work with um you know plenty of clients who on a on a per transaction basis the AOV is relatively um light but the expected lifetime value based on uh you know reoccurring revenue model uh is is you have certain more than supports um uh the the cost of the channel and then if I was going to use it for now I'm just being self-explanting if I'm gonna use it for a D to C product um are you acting as say I actually want to send out samples does post the act as fulfillment for that or am I hooking up post the with my own distribution center my own distribution channel how does it actually work with all the different tools that you know are under the hood yeah either either way works um you have the vast majority of avatars are are not sending samples um probably because you know there's more incremental cost associated with that and there are some nuances of what can and can't go through u.s. postal service attached you're fixed to um you know a piece of malware postcard but yeah we have expertise in that and um and there are there's certainly a number of clients especially in I think the skin care spaces is one where we see fairly regularly um you have samples as a component in their in their direct mail arsenal and and we certainly can support those campaigns if they're yeah they're there there are other clients who have uh uh you know a current um yeah they're probably logistics providing that they're working for the the kind of assembly of this sample kit with um a specific yeah a specific piece of mail and and we can certainly you know take possession of those and in more of a dropship um relationship as well so lots of different ways that we can work together how do you okay so um this is part of a modern marketers arsenal how do you how do you win modern marketing how do you marry this up with uh with Facebook with ppc uh programmatic to actually stand out in any category what's your main takeaway so you know for for me uh everything starts with the audiences um and we'll do that one again to you hey not not glad you're doing great um so um uh so that it's a it's a phenomenal question and um and it's one that that we spend a lot of time thinking about ultimately you know in in kind of a modern marketers world you know my my belief is that everything you know marketing starts with the audience and um and it used to be like in you know well one point oh it was always like targeting targeting targeting now to me it's really understanding your first party data um you know there's no excuse for not understanding who your customers are and and and not just understanding who they are an aggregate but but understanding the differences within different segments of purchasers and and and how different segments behave within your customer file when you start there then you need to start looking for channels that you can activate um you know those audiences or that you can use that first party data to build you know look it like audiences and um and and and and and and kind of start your marketing with the advantage right so if you if you think about you understand this specific you know high AOV frequent purchaser customer set um who shops you know in this one specific category and and you've you've done your your research and you have a really good sense on what makes these individuals unique and what type of messages you may respond to then you can leverage that data to go after individuals that you know that look very similar to those you can do that on Facebook you can do that in GDN you can do that I believe through the trade desks programmatically and you can do that on post e through you know through direct mail what were you doing is you're not saying like direct mail needs to work or Facebook or social needs to work you're saying I understand my customer base and I'm going to look about you know you figure out ways to activate audiences that are similar with you know the right messaging and offer and frequency and storytelling and and to me you know that's the beauty of of what we're doing with direct mail it's it's don't think about direct mail as just another channel or something that you do in addition to other things that you're doing in marketing but but rather start with kind of a holistic approach of what you're looking to accomplish within your marketing stack top of final bottom of final retention et cetera think of you know attack it kind of a data first you know insight first approach to understand your customers and the segments within them and then and then bring together the channels that can allow you to activate those audiences and prospect pools with with control and prediction measurement I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's episode swag.com now you know if you've ever received a corporate gift or swag in the past how many of those gifts did you actually keep probably not many which is probably because the stuff you got was not so great I've gotten like a lot of stuff great shows and from companies in the past that I've just thrown out the second I get it so this is why you need to check out swag.com I've been on the receiving end of getting garbage gifts I've also worked in companies where I only had access to a really really small inventory of stuff that I wanted to give my customers and my employees and I knew that it wasn't going to resonate I knew that it was going to suck so what is swag.com well it's like swag upgraded it's the best place to buy custom gifts and swag the people will actually want to keep so they sent me a box because obviously they're sponsoring the show and I wanted to see what it's all about you know I've worked in businesses I want to make sure that the quality of their stuff actually was up to my standards because I can tell you right now that when I get garbage it goes right into the trash it like it really goes right into the trash a second I get back from the trade show or the conference or whatever so I received one of the custom swag boxes from swag.com I loved the unique packaging so it was a beautiful unboxing experience I love the actual products they sent me and there's a whole bunch more that obviously they didn't send me but the stuff that they did send was absolutely beautiful it was very high quality and I can only imagine that if I actually got this when I was working for companies I probably would have actually used it and to be honest I'm going to start using them for people that work on my show and in my company as well because I know this isn't just a novelty gift that somebody's going to throw it's stuff that they can actually use they have so many unique and customizable gifts that I've never seen anywhere else they have custom yoga mats they have custom apple air pods they even have branded kayaks which I did not know what to think so they carry all these premium brands like North Face Yeti Nike and more and it's all customizable with your company's logo or artwork with swag.com they take care of all of your swag at their warehouse and they ship it to individual addresses or if you prefer you can just send it to a bulk location in one single shipment it's easy to manage from their online portal which you obviously get access to so if this is something that you think would benefit you if you have clients or customers or a team and you want to go the extra mile and you actually want to give gifts that people appreciate which is the whole point of giving these gifts in the first place go to swag.com for the perfect swag and custom gifts right now they're giving everybody who's a success story podcast listener a special offer it's 10% off your entire order but only when you go to swag.com slash success and enter promo code success 10 remember for 10% off go to swag.com slash success and use promo code success 10 and you feel like we have to be of course understanding first part of data is important but it's becoming harder to potentially understand that when I feel like consumers are pushing back on what data is actually shared every Facebook marketer I speak to now is having a tough time getting insights after an iOS update right so how do you how do you combat that still maintain effectiveness when the average consumer is getting much wiser about not wanting to share their data that impacts who is a marketer in a major way so how does direct mail potentially is one facet of the solution but it's not it's not the end all yeah that's a way broader you know challenge and and and conversation you know that that that attacks pretty much every channel first of all you know just there is an advantage and and and we didn't set out to solve this problem we just happen to be maybe this is some of the luck we talked about right place the right time but in a world where digital could move more and more to contextual and less addressable it just increases the power and value of of a channel like direct mail where you not relying relying on on a cookie or digital fingerprint but you're actually using household address level data as as your identity key so your direct mail will always be an addressable channel and and I think could play a more powerful role in in a marketer stack over time depending on how the evolution of some of these compliance yeah technology changes happen but I I think customers getting wiser is or consumers getting wiser is is is a good thing not a bad thing I agree yeah and I don't see a world where consumers are are going to be unwilling to share data they're just going to be selected in what data and to whom they share so you know when you think about just building you know quality businesses yeah that's you got to build a quality product you know you want to think about good ingredients or components you want to think about an authentic marketing you know messaging and you want to treat you know your customers really well and power treating them well as being honest and forthright and upfront and transparent which is what all this privacy you know movement is an in regulatory changes that are trying to you know motivate and send you have brands to to think about you know like there's no there's like nothing in privacy you know you know changes that are are saying that you can't capture data in a customer it's just talking about you know what appropriate ways and notification and and how to you know how to recognize it that that information potentially belongs to the consumer not the brand and you need to ask for it so if you're a brand that has a reason to be asking for that information you're transparent about why that you know customers sharing that information will get a better experience you'll be able to innovate faster you will communicate more directly I think consumers that like like being savvy isn't doesn't mean that they're not going to share that information it just means that they're going to choose who they share it to and it's not going to be so readily accessible and I think that's a great thing but that doesn't change that doesn't limit our ability to be quantitative it just means we have to be a bit more mindful and thoughtful and and forward you know with with how we capture data is not a bad thing which is definitely I think it's not a bad thing at all maybe marketers got like a little a little lazy a little lazy for a little bit yeah I don't think the typical marketer was like evil like no and thinking in any of the ways I think yeah I think maybe laziness or you know getting a little too caught up in what was possible versus what should be and and this movement is a good thing yeah I want to I want to always I always ask like rapid fire stuff to pull out like career insights from you but we did a lot we did a little bit of I guess startup category definition and how to tap new categories you spoke about marketing posty was there anything else that is top of mind for you in terms of direct mail future marketing startup entrepreneurs I know like each one of these could be like a separate show yeah let's keep doing it I'll be back tomorrow it'll be great all right let's do I would do this I would do a full I would do a full like playbook from pre-revenue to like you know your first million first five million anything to be a really good show too because I just love that topic and it's science when when I was at yeah part of the incubator that's all yeah I know that's all you did so I think that would be good too first dollar and then you know yeah in some cases first three hundred million dollars but if you want to do another one I'll do another one all right we'll do it we'll do it all right you should know that you're this here's here from someone else so maybe like in a couple months all right deal yeah all right so before before I pivot into some rapid fire stuff closing thoughts on future of marketing but also more importantly if people want to contact you social media website email whatever you want to drop where do they go yeah I mean certainly LinkedIn is a super easy way to to meet me and communicate and LinkedIn Messenger is a great one once we're connected so feel free to shoot me invites there yeah if you're interested in connecting with Posty the website's great a lot of content and information there that can get you started but certainly if you fill out the the lead request form you'll you know we'll get you routed to the right team member and and yeah I think those are the two best okay perfect okay so let's go through some I guess some career insights here let me just pull up okay so first question I want to pull out from you is biggest challenge you've had in your career personal professional life what was that had you overcome it gosh that's a great question I think probably the biggest challenge and maybe like darkest time was the first time I was I took on an entrepreneurial challenge I was building a startup funded by another company so I kind of stepped into an environment where there was a few a few million dollar budget and a general idea and I was it was really my first attempt to build something from the ground up and I'll be honest I just I did not do a great job and and it was lack of knowledge my everyday being overwhelmed I think that was that was my my first wake up con is probably the first time my career where I was doing something that I think I was just underwater on and and and ill equipped to to handle I that that was just those are dark days it was it was I you know I could feel myself I think like drowning a bit and and and and and I could have gone very differently right it could have it could have I could have walked away from that experience and said oh I'm not cut out to be an entrepreneur but I think I just got angry and bad and was frustrated at at how little I knew about so many things that you need to know to be successful launching a company and and I just kind of put my head in my back to work and it worked out but it was a very humbling experience I think and and and I it was the first time I kind of had to acknowledge I wasn't so good at what I was doing and that was long long two-year stretch that is a long two-year stretch to feel like you're drowning that's not that's tough but it all that matters is how you come out of it at the end of the day that's really all that matters yeah I agree if you had to choose one person who was incredibly impactful in your life there's probably been many we have to pick one who was that person and what do they teach you this is it's tough I'm gonna I'm gonna do a blend because I have to make sense so it's definitely my mom and dad so I have two parents that are are our wonderful parents my dad passed away a few years ago my mom is still alive and well and and they grew up in a commission only business where they had very high aspirations of the type of life that they wanted to for themselves and for us as a family and and they had very unpredictable finance and and kind of personal personal finance some good years some bad years they from a very young age instilled that they in either they didn't care what I did professionally they wanted me to find something that I was passionate about they wanted me to make sure I got an education and they wanted me to be financially in control of of of my life and be and and and and and I think that translate self into my sisters and myself as as in work ethic quite frankly so I think that that when I took away from kind of seeing some of their their stresses and their motivation and the life lessons that they were trying to impose on us to make our lives a little bit easier you know played played its way out you know as as you know you're always in you're always a student you're always learning you have to be working your butt off at all times you gotta keep your eyes open and you gotta be in control of your destiny and I think that's tremendously shaped yep my my don't like but certainly my career good very good advice if you had to pick a source to learn or grow from it could be a book podcast audible anything that you could be business non-business what would you recommend people go check out well so I'm a huge consumer of behavioral economics and behavioral psychology books I you know I my team here will laugh they're if they're listening this because I pause you know insights and examples even from like crazy psychology you know university studies that I think are applicable um I'm looking at my shelf my bookshelf right now to make sure I get it right there's a book that I've been recommending quite often to people my spear it's it's kind of a good primer to be a behavioral economics I'm called thinking fast and slow by Daniel Keniman and he's a double prize winning behavioral economist there's a number of other books by him and I think he's I think his partner was Amos Tversky as well as a bunch of papers and what they have you know the idea behind behavioral economics essentially is that we all think we're like these free thinkers and making decisions and the realities like our brains are wired to respond um you know uh specifically to to to very stimuli and you kind of realize like yeah maybe we're not all as free as we think we are uh so that I know that book I haven't read it in a minute but um it's been a while but that book is like slightly depressing because you you've realized that a lot of the things that you thought are of your own design are not at all I think I totally get why you're saying that and and it does like like I think it's an anxiety provoking but yeah but when you start understanding what is and what isn't controllable um then uh and and the whole concept behind like thinking fast and slow is that there there are like reactionary um uh responses that we have in certain situations and that's kind of the fast part of your brain and then there are times that that um you know that rationalization takes over and can you kind of slow things down and take control um so it's like your instinctual brain versus your thoughtful brain uh look it may helps me understand my dogs a little bit better and my kids when they're developing brain uh yeah they have a little bit more empathy that someone responded some way maybe it's not because they're jerk or um weren't thinking right the trends yeah they're just wired that way and we had a trigger point and it caused a instinctual reaction no it's good it's a good book he's brilliant just uh I just it's a good recommendation that I think anyone should read it if they haven't um yeah definitely okay um if you could tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be oh my 20 year old self I guess I have to like think where like what I what I was doing was 20 uh uh what I think I would tell my 20 year old self um you don't know that much and you should ask a bunch more questions that's good advice it's very good advice um and in the last question what is success mean to you oh gosh we're like we're going deep here um six uh I think success is staying in the game long enough to always have another achievement that you're looking at um for for me um and there are a lot of interpreters that that have reached I think like like incredible success they've had a monster exit and I think they there's a common threat there's there's a certain sense of emptiness like after that happens like what are you going to do next so I guess there's a lot of reasons why there are so many serial interpreters out there but I think to me it's always like um successes is is achieving but being able to push the goal post so never quite getting there but also not because you're you're failing but because you're accomplishing so much that it's opening up new doors uh I just I to me that's it really is the path um you got to accomplish along the way but it but it's the path it's not like getting to some end game you