Nathan Bush: Hi guys.
[Voiceover]: Emily Hayden from E Suite here. We are so grateful to work with the amazingly passionate and talented E commerce community in Australia. But we realise that operating a business has both a social and environmental footprint. That's why at E Suite we not only specialise in matching the best e commerce talent with fast growing retail businesses, we partner with community groups to make a difference.
Nathan Bush: Em and I have pledged 10% of East Suite's revenue to the RE empowerment of indigenous Australians via the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence and Australian environmental conservation via 1% for the planet. It's not an add on, it's core to our mission and our pledge is only the start.
[Voiceover]: We look forward to sharing more about our community partners in the months to come. If you would like to know more about the NCIE or 1% for the planet or even help us to do more to support these great organisations, get in touch. We'd love to hear from you.
Nathan Bush: Visit esweettalent.com au that's e s u I t e talent.com to learn more. Now let's get into today's show.
[Voiceover]: We all think about videos, like, you know, edited videos as film and so we put a video on this pedestal, whereas it's just a window, it's just a comms tool. You know, if you were there in person you'd say the same thing. So I think stop thinking about it by getting dressed up, made up to make you amazing piece of content. It's like being a butcher and someone walks in, you say good morning. We'll be a little bit different here. Bonjour. Everyone who joins the company gets to design their own handmade bear suit from some old grannies in the north of England. I think advocacy or superfans is the like unknown. It's like the untapped resource to grow a business. You know, you don't need 100,000 customers, you need 1,000 who ran to rave about you and tell each. Go and tell 10 people. Welcome to Add to Cart.
Nathan Bush: The podcast that Express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of E commerce. Every month Nathan Bush from 12 High
[Voiceover]: and an E commerce industry expert will
Nathan Bush: share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you
[Voiceover]: at the top of your game and
Nathan Bush: of course keep your customers adding to Cart. Hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and director at E commerce talent agency E Suite. Today's guest is the founder of business that makes all their new employees design their own bear suit onesie. When they first Join. They're also aiming to reshape how we think about video as a tool to better connect with customers. I'm not sure which mission's more important. Matt Barnett is the CEO of Bonjoro, a SaaS based video platform that allows you, your customer service or your warehouse teams to send short personalized videos to your customers via email. Started in Sydney in 2017, Bonjoro is now used across the world and is integrated with platforms like Shopify, Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign. In this conversation you'll hear how Matt had the idea for Bonjoro on his morning commute, how personalized video can help increase conversion rates at certain points in the funnel, and his tips for those who are struggling in front of video. So let's get into it. Thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Signet. Here's our conversation with Matt Barnett, CEO and founder of Bonjoro. Matt Barnett, welcome to ADD to cart.
[Voiceover]: Hi Nathan, great to be here.
Nathan Bush: Lovely to have you here. Now Matt, if we were surfing and let's say we're surfing in Scotland somewhere and I met you out the back on the waves and I said to you Matt, what do you do? How do you explain what you do?
[Voiceover]: We want a one to one personalized video messaging technology. So essentially the idea behind it is when customers perform an action such as coming into your lead funnel, purchasing, getting delivered, take 20 seconds and say thank you with a one to one personalized video.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. Summed up very nicely. Now we're going to unpack all of that today, but to give people an idea of your journey, you are the self proclaimed papa bear at Bonjoro. Tell us how you came up with the idea of Bonjoro and a little bit of your backstory around how you got to where it is today.
[Voiceover]: Sure. So I was running an agency here in Sydney. We dealt with large enterprise clients so so happens most of those are overseas. So we ended up with clients uk, London, Paris, New York. And obviously our lead funnel was signups and interest and inquiries coming in during the evening here. You know Australia's a great place to live. It's not ideal in terms of time zones. So we're very much a kind of convert by, by personality kind of company. We like, we had a great obviously product and offering but like I'm a very much jazz hands guy, I like to get up and you know, Shadow Baron and we were dealing with kind of creative size as businesses are very important now I'm not a copywriter so email drip campaigns in terms of getting Those kinds of calls, like, weren't fantastic. They're okay. So to try something a bit different, I thought, let's just send the video to every single person that ever gets in touch. And so I'd record a video each morning on the way to work. Like, I used to take the ferry across the harbor. So if they were outside of Australia, I'd get the Opera House, like on the video as well. You know, I'd say, hey, hey, John Archer. Saw you sign up for Ogilvy in London. I see you work on the Budweiser accounts. We haven't worked wise, but we have worked with Heineken, Diageo and a few others. So this is kind of things we've done. Look, obviously I'm not in London, but I will be over there in six weeks. Why don't I come in, bring you coffee and then kind of run you through what we do. And as a result of that being the first piece of comms they ever heard from the brand or from the team, like we tripled our response rates overnight. We, as a result, tripled the amount of meetings we had and therefore tripled me out of business. That was a like, pat on our back. Good little sales hack. One of the, one of the probably 100 that we tried. One of those customers at the end of a meeting just asked like, what's this video email system? Can we use it? I explained it's something we'd done and we kind of sat back and built something that they could use over a weekend, like as a little side project. Inevitably, some of their customers, they sent them to ask if they could use it and some of their customers asked if they could use it. And, you know, within 12 months later, a couple of us on the team decided to work on it full time and within 18 months overtaken the original agency.
Nathan Bush: So just take us back there. So you're running a creative agency at the time, but you're taking the ferry across Sydney Harbour and you're literally just pulling out your iPhone or whatever phone you're carrying at that point, shooting a video and then attaching it to an email?
[Voiceover]: Yep, that's it.
Nathan Bush: And did you have in mind at that point that that was going to be your product or did you just go, this is a great sales tactic, no caveat.
[Voiceover]: The agency and the system we did, we were using video anyway. So we were actually a research agency using videos to core research with like video diaries around the world. So we understood the space. So video is natural thing for us to try as one of Our many tests. No, it was never an intention to build a business like, absolutely not.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha. And what was the point where you went, actually, I think this personalized video service is going to be bigger than our agency.
[Voiceover]: When you see something growing 10% a month and you're putting zero resources or time into it, then, you know, and you put a paywall, people start paying, then there's a point, there's a tipping point. Like this is more than beer money.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And I suppose you could see it then because it's such a different model to agency, where you're selling head hours or you're selling products, but it's more limiting. Right. Than a scalable SaaS model.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. Like with the agency, again, we were an agency built on products, so we had this balance. So yes, we did do our man hours. We also did. Did product too, and unique deliverability. This was obviously full SaaS, which is kind of what we want to do originally. Yeah, the agency is another story. But we ended up in that from, you know, releasing a product and that ended up being the market that took it. So we had a need and a want to do products and kind of like worked that like on product design originally. So again, like the biases were there and the deep understanding was there. So like, although, you know, it was by chance, I guess we kind of knew what to unlock and when it came, we. Yeah, at some point we saw the opportunity. I knew that if we delivered and kind of dug in, it would, it would become something more.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha. And then. So tell us where Bonjoro is now. So base started up out of Sydney in 2017, if I'm right.
[Voiceover]: Yes, 2017 started. We probably started investing probably in 2018. It's going to get the year. We're now in, I don't know, 27 countries and languages. 92% of our customers are not Australian, unfortunately. So we're very much a global business. The team, most of our team is not in Australia either anymore. So we're around the world and that will continue to grow that way. So we're looking at a big jump this year in terms of personnel as well, and those all overseas pretty much. So very much gone from, you know, what was an Australian agency to being a global company, like very quickly, within a short space of time, which has been a joy and a challenge.
Nathan Bush: And what markets are you getting most traction in?
[Voiceover]: So E Comms is a big area. So e comms SaaS is big as well. So we do a lot of B2B SaaS. We then obviously work in quite a few services like areas we use us so communicating with leads and with these clients. And then the final area is education. So a lot of this is online education which is essentially a SaaS model. And then we do work with universities and stuff as well. But essentially they are businesses so that to be like easy buckets. Ultimately we're being used for the same things across all those industries. So being used for lead conversion, being used for early customer activation and engagement and then being used to driving reviews and referrals. Those hold true across every industry.
Nathan Bush: Great. So if we narrow down into the e commerce sector, can you give us some examples of how your e commerce clients are using Bonjoro and personalized video to drive a couple of those areas?
[Voiceover]: Yeah. So two I'll talk about specifically one which has been kind of rise this year is a move from a lot of e commerce companies into doing subscription models. So the industry itself has gone from about 7% subscription to maybe 1415. Now this is not just consumables like a lot of like unique products are doing this as well. Now where we're being used there is when a customer comes in for a second or more purchase so so you know they're returning customer again there's a little bit about time and obviously E commons big funnels. You're then having one of your support or kind of service team drop in and say hey Steve, saw, saw you brought, you know like this is your third purchase of the coffee. Did you know we have a subscription model and it's you know, if you use that purchase on the or at the kind of rate you're purchasing anyway you're actually going to save money and we'll give you all these benefits. If you want to upgrade, click here on this. A 5% discount. Now very specifically around that like one case we have is a coffee company out of Canada who use that to drive their subscription model ahead in the last 12 months and they went from I think 35 grand mor which they built over about four years to 75 grand three months later by specifically focusing on multiple purchase people. And then obviously the thing here is you know stepping in in touch while they were and they would do this in the roasting arena. So it's quite an exciting thing anyway. And so they're doing a lot of customer goodwill and saying do a subscription model that helps us, it supports us and a massive amount of customer shifted over to that. The other area we get used primarily above all else is driving reviews and referrals. So the idea Here is after a delivery of an item, wait 24 hours. Boy, this whole system works on triggers. So 24 hours later you get a notification saying Mrs. Jones has received her island 24 hours ago your then support team reaches out and checks that everything is good and as expected. So the idea here is customer service excellence in an industry where that hasn't been done before. So it's about a competitive edge there. People love that at the end, you know, check in, make sure the item you received is great, everything's as you expected. By the way, reviews mean a lot to us. There's a link here to trustpilot. Can you go and leave us a review? Much more effective in terms of getting reviews generally we see again three times, four times the response rate to those company in Denmark example fashion company so obviously high ticket items decided to go after trustpilot for reviews. Went from a kind of non existent trust piloter to number one in Denmark for the whole of men's fashion within about four months.
Nathan Bush: Wow.
[Voiceover]: In terms of doing this now, they said it's a lot and they went after it hardcore. But the response rate was so good and obviously the goodwill generated from doing these videos was so was so insane that their number one ultimately led to them halving their CAC so their cost acquisition for a new customers coming in. Because again like a lot of traffic shifted to review driven leads.
Nathan Bush: Our partners at Signet helped organic tea business Little Wild Linko go plastic free in their small business supply chain. They switch from plastic lined mailer bags to a completely sustainable packaging lineup all without having to commit to high minimum order quantities. Run wild and free. Little Wild in Co Signet has over 5,500 packaging solutions to help leading e commerce businesses step up their packaging game. Visit signet.netau to find out more. So to talk people through the actual process here because I think it's really important that we get into the details of how this actually works from a customer perspective. I do my transaction as per normal and I will receive an email with a personalized video in it. Is that how it generally works?
[Voiceover]: Exactly, yeah, yeah.
Nathan Bush: And most of the videos are they created by customer service team members.
[Voiceover]: Usually depends on the company, depends on the stage of the company. If you're a small startup just getting going then like often it'll be the founders, you know and the starting team. And I think at that time, obviously I mean like your time is important throughout the process but at the beginning, you know, like I actually have, I actually have one today off a customer that I Bought who's just started up and I was like this is amazing because the founder did it and that's cool in those early days. And so like I'm going to go and leave review no matter what. As teams scale up they tend to be customer support kind of front facing team that do these or potentially in the warehouse. So we've often had people doing it at point of delivery from the warehouse side of things. Again these are team members who to Frankenstein probably a bit more cost effective operationally as well. And to do a 30 second video while they're packing up super easy. We've actually had now at the stage where we've actually had customers like numerous customers in E commerce hire people to do these. So so like some of ends up going full time, some of like hard like part timers. So we see this a lot in fashion and the high ticket items because the results are so night and day that it again pays to do that. It depends on the funnel as well. Like a lot of customers start off filtering that funnel down. So you're focusing on as I said like second third purchases so on your better customers anyway because you know you're going to get a better review etc. As that becomes so effective you need to look at numbers in your funnel and go where else does it make sense? It might make sense to do it on every transaction if that drives X ROI in terms of CAC or in terms of repeat business. Anyway, gotcha.
Nathan Bush: So your customer service or your warehouse team will receive a notification on their laptop or mobile.
[Voiceover]: Mobile mostly. Yeah, so that's what mobile. But like, but mobile's easy.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, gotcha. And it'll say hey, Nathan's just ordered this, it's been 24 hours. Successfully delivered. Shoot him a quick video and then that'll automatically attach to that to an email through the email system that they're using and send out.
[Voiceover]: So so again like all your team is doing is is the video and when they record the video will actually pull information from whatever using for your E commerce platform. So let me go with all those. So we'll actually show you. Joe Lemon brought this. They're based in you know, Wisconsin. They're actually a third time purchase. They spent to date $413 and they've done XY. So again like you see information about it so that when you know your team does the video that's shown at a glance they can personalize it in 20 seconds. And so when the user receives it they're like wow, this is actually meant for me. But all delivery, everything else, all tracking, all the response, everything is taken care of by the system. So it's literally a 22nd time, time input a minute max if they want to read it and kind of personalize it. But it's very, very quick, very. It's very operational and yet personalized. This idea of getting personalization, nice mix
Nathan Bush: of using data for automation plus a personalized touch at the end of using that data for personalization, real personalization, not automated personalization is really nice.
[Voiceover]: Exactly.
Nathan Bush: What have been some of the more creative use cases you've seen of it, especially in the E commerce area.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. So I think the warehousing stuff's really interesting. I think so. I think this all comes down to placement. So warehousing like I mentioned, like you know, while roasting coffee beans, people out like while installing like water tanks and stuff, you know, like, like on the move. I think when you're doing things that are relevant to the business, it's just interesting.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: So it's not, it's not actually like, doesn't have to be that. That creative. Yeah. Like but when you see. Packing up your item to send or when you see someone like in the warehousing where they're working, it's. It's a bit of. So it's about transparency here. Yeah. And authenticity. So it's interesting because you've seen something you haven't seen before. It shows as real humans doing the business and that they're trying and they're caring about you. You know, it shows like again the business is legit. You know especially this is really, really valuable for things where you have like obviously like Australian centers or country based centers in the U.S. so you're not necessarily coming from overseas in China and drop shipping. Like that's, that's valuable when you're an artisan, like amazing.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: You know, you see the stuff being done and again like you can like build these up and just do it all in one day. So one day when you're roasting, not like you're roasting their beans there and then, but you're telling it to that experience. I think that's really interesting. I think it's really engaging. I think again, just like you after a wow factor here and again you're back to the artisan thing. It also gets people to go up. Wow, this is, this is legit. These guys actually do.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: Roastery and things. I'm staying, I'm staying for the next few years. I'm gonna tell my friends and people
Nathan Bush: love that behind the scenes, a little bit gritty, a little bit down and dirty. I'm in the warehouse, I'm in with the founder. They love that access, don't they? We kind of think, oh, they just want the Instagram polished posts. So no, they kind of want a bit of everything.
[Voiceover]: People like, we, like, we like people like, like it's about trust. How do you trust? You trust, you get, you gain trust through transparency. And people, especially this year, everyone's in the same boat with everything. So that's understanding. People can share it again. And it's just the fact that brand is willing to do that means that again, like psychologically they're more willing to be transparent around things. They're not going to pull all over your eyes. They're not a marketing company, they're. They're actually a product company.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, gotcha. There was a great example that I saw over Christmas or over Black Friday of a shoe company here in Australia and they're really, really great shoe company, two founders, but they had obviously logistics issues and inventory issues over Black Friday. And two weeks after my wife ordered, she got an email and it had a link to a Google Drive video. And it was the two founders and they're being very open and honest. Two minute video saying, guys, sorry about this, it's not, not acceptable. This is what we're doing about it. And it was like really personal, but it just felt a bit clunky because I was linking into a Google Drive video. Do you also do things like that through Bonjoro where it might not be one to one, but it might be going to a select group of people?
[Voiceover]: Yeah. So we have tools for recording videos, even like recording desktops as well. So if you want to walk through shops and stuff and then you can show us out to small groups or to. Or you can include them in any email marketing campaign. So for mass talk about personalization, there's a few things here. Like there's different levels, different clients. So you know, high ticket item, multiple purchase. Yeah. Like do it in person, one to one, it's worth it. Like, trust me, like it's worth 20 seconds. Like, you'll find out pretty quickly. Lower ticket items, you know, mass, you might want to do smaller groups. So, so do a video day. Be like, hey, it's Tuesday here in Brisbane. Like the sun's out Tuesday the 13th. We shipped off your stuff today. You should have it in 24 hours. Now the point there is that like it's still in the moment. It's maybe not. You're not saying the person's name, but it's in the moment, it's fresh, it's there, it's that day. And that's kind of like still like valuable in the extent. To an extent. Obviously then we're doing stuff for like mass again, like it's a different, it's a different timing, it's coming through. And so that also makes sense. Look, and the transparency is key. It's just balancing where you do it. At what point, I mean, experiment, you know, is a group. Is a group 95% as effective as one to one, in which case do that, you know, is one to one 10 times more effective, in which case pick out where you do that. It's just a balance. But I think again in the, in the moment is, is extremely valuable too. Yeah. Fresh. Like the point here is not, not necessarily just can stuff like. And with the guys you mentioned that was pertinent to that time period. So they won't be sending out that down the line for sure.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. It's getting into a new mindset with video, isn't it? That it, that this video is disposable. It's, it's not meant to stick around forever.
[Voiceover]: It's got like, like. So don't think, like, don't think about video. Drop. Drop the word video from your, from your vocab. We all think about, we all think about videos like, you know, edited videos as, you know, film. And so we put video on this pedestal, whereas it's, it's just a window, it's just a comms tool. You know, if you were there in person, you'd say the same thing. So I think stop thinking about it by getting dressed up, made up to make you amazing piece of content. It's just like a chat. It's like being a butcher and someone walks in, you say good morning, you know, or into a shop. Yeah. Like it's the same thing. But obviously we're doing it with customers who are far, like far apart. That's all you're trying to do.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's it. Do you have any tips for people who get paralyzed by a video camera being on them?
[Voiceover]: I mean to like, so a couple things here. Yeah. Like number one, you use your mobile.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: I think just psychologically mobile is very personal devices. We use them all the time. So I think it's a little bit less like it makes you think less about video when it's on mobile. Get outside, get, get comfortable, take a walk, do it, do it somewhere where you're going to Be less nervous. Secondly, kind of get over it. Like just like do something like this because you have to send that 10 to 15 to 20. Test it. Like when you, by the time you've done 20, if you get some great responses, you'll be like, okay, great. Like it doesn't matter anymore. The first few times you might end up like scripting and reshooting them and stuff. And then you'll realize especially if you have a funnel, like a large customer base, you don't have time for that and it doesn't matter. So what the medium will teach you, will teach you that it doesn't matter. And your time you'll have to do will teach you. So again, if it works for you and it's positive, you'll end up getting rid of the time. I think those are probably the two most important things. Just get on with it and use a mobile device. So again it feels less like a made up video.
Nathan Bush: I think they're great tips like to just get on with it. So really good one. Like even for ADD to cart, I've been trying to engage with listeners a little bit more using Instagram Stories Video and for me it's just, just do it. Just when I'm out on a walk, when I'm going shopping or whatever. Don't think about it. Like we did one for this podcast coming up and I said, hey, we've got Matt Barnett coming up and I was just at an office and I was like, I just got to get it out. It doesn't matter where I am, just do it. Anyone got questions for Matt? And you get questions through and no one goes, oh shit, your eyes looks baggy. Or you've got, you know, what office are you sitting in?
[Voiceover]: Like they don't care
Nathan Bush: you care more than they do.
[Voiceover]: Absolutely, yeah. I mean I don't care. I don't care at all anymore.
Nathan Bush: And, and after a while it becomes really easy. So yeah, I think just get onto it. It's really great one. Just a quick one on. Just to tie up the Bonjoro piece here, can you give us an overview on what the onboarding and the commercial agreements look like for a typical retailer?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, so. So it's mostly self service. So hop on board. Free trial, 14 days, no credit cards, nothing. Try that. Talk to my team. You'll get a video from one of us when you come on board. So all those videos will be unique to you. What we do provide for every single customer is a setup. Call if you'd like one. We don't care how big or small you are. So hop on board, call with that and they'll talk through. Like if you explain exactly what you do in E commerce, we've seen like thousands and thousands of customers, so be able to help you out. Specifically get on board, try it out, like do your 1520 videos. Like you're working very, very, very quickly. It's binary.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: Doesn't work for you. It does not. Then it's, then it's, it's up to you. Credit card in monthly subscriptions or annual cancel anytime, no questions asked. Like no lock in nothing. So again like it's, it's minimal risk. Absolutely.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha. And what kind of dollars are we talking at per volume? Like roughly. I mean it's all on the website people check out.
[Voiceover]: But yeah, like starts $15. Like sorry, US$15 let's say like for single seat for small usage. If you can't just getting started, like highest plan $79 and then we do charge $15 for team member after that. So if you want to have multiple team members on there. But we're not talking anything to break the bank here.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, we're, we're talking accessible for most retailers to at least give it a go.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Nathan Bush: And in terms of integrations, what are your most popular integrations from email platform perspectives?
[Voiceover]: So we do have about 15 direct integrations. So everything from Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, EntReport, HubSpot, Salesforce, all that. We also plug into Shopify directly as well. We also have a zap. We like one of Zapier's fastest growing apps. So if you want to plug into any other system, so Big Commerce, WooCommerce, etc. We've got a bunch of Zapier integrations set up for those as well, which we use to get started. Essentially. Plugins are kind of anything pretty much. If you can't find it, talk to us, we'll give you a hand.
Nathan Bush: Once you're in Zapier, you're pretty much into most platforms, right?
[Voiceover]: If you're not there, we have directive integrations. People often move to Zapier when they start to do crazy things. They're like, oh, I want to filter out someone who is a third purchase. But like this ticket item, but only if they're based in New Zealand in Wellington on a Tuesday. And then like for that kind of stuff, we're like, okay, we'll go here and we'll even give you a hand. Send a bit like if you like to. But start simple.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, nice. Awesome. I think that's a really great overview of Bonjoro. Thank you. And it's really exciting. I think it's a great opportunity to do that personalized video. And just a great opportunity, I think too to give your customer service teams and your warehouse teams something that's a bit different to do, especially if you're looking to develop different skills and just give them a bit of excitement for the day. I think it's a nice thing to try. On your LinkedIn bio, you say your tagline is, my love of building great products is only surpassed by that of building a great culture. What do you mean by that?
[Voiceover]: I love everyone I work with. I guess it's a little bit different here. Bonjour. We're a little bit intense on the whole brand thing because like teams around the world, we can't. Everyone who joins the company gets to, gets to design their own handmade bear suit from some old grannies in the north of England that we fly or we were flying team. We would fly team together once a year for kind of all hands like retreat. So we did Edinburgh last year. We did, I think down south here in Australia paddleboarding and diving with the Seals like the year before.
Nathan Bush: You don't.
[Voiceover]: This year I think you don't have
Nathan Bush: to dive with the seals in your bear suit, do you? Because that could be dangerous.
[Voiceover]: No, no, no. They might think you're a nice looking lady seal.
Nathan Bush: HR would have something to say about that. Yeah.
[Voiceover]: So that's obviously been a bit of a challenge this year with lockdowns. So yeah, I would also give you like team an extra flight to fly around the world as well and meet each other and kind of build relationships. So we're kind of navigating how we do that. Hopefully this year will open up towards the end. I don't think anything will happen before June, but we'll see.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: So I think like good culture, like it's everything. Yeah. People are more incentivized to work. People work harder, they work smarter, they stay longer, they bring in other great team members. You know, it's not that hard to align everyone on kind of company goals and thoughts and mechanisms. They behave great with customers. So your front, you don't have to worry about like training like your front line because they just behave in the right way. So I think if you can get culture right, it's absolutely take us here, like as a product company, we have two things to do. One is build great products and the other one is get and train great people. That's it. Like, we don't have to do anything else at all. Like, if we have the best people doing the best jobs and we have the best kind of processing culture around, that the company will excel.
Nathan Bush: That's right.
[Voiceover]: That's it.
Nathan Bush: Tell us about that. Getting great people. Because what, what do you. If you meet someone for the first time, they're turning up for a job interview, or you're just speaking to them on Skype or whatever, how do you go. How do you know that's a Bonjoro type of person? Is there any specific traits or things that you look out for?
[Voiceover]: I mean, like, we know within, like, five minutes. So, like, it's easy. Like, transparency. Like, absolutely. So with us, and this is us specifically for company, like, you got to be transparent. Like, you got to think, like, can I have a beer with this person? Like, we want to go for lunch with them tomorrow. Like, they have like, like, very, very open, very transparent, very authentic, no bs, just kind of straight to the point. Like smart, like, intelligent. Like, and then like a hunger for problem solving and a hunger for kind of growth because we're quite independent here. So we tend to give people a lot of. A lot of license to go and try their own things and solve their own problems. And so I want people to like, we're not that. Maybe this is a bit of a floor. Yeah, we're not. We're not amazing at management training. So I think in that stance, we want people to go, be able to find the issues and then test to solve the issues. And we'll give you everything you need to do that. But again, you need to have the hunger to go and sort out what's not working, stand up, talk about it, and then go solve it and test. And then if you fail, that's fine. We don't care. Test again, test again. So I think spoiling those is quite easy. There's quite a few pertinent questions we can ask around that, and that's before we even get into the details of the role. I mean, we're at a stage now where we're trying to hire more specialists. So, you know, like, obviously we have more vetting process now than we do before, like, around certain skill sets. But then the first interviews we keep fairly short because we know I'm always looking by the way, like. So the other thing is, like, you know, if I think about, like, our last few hires, we knew them all 12 months before we hired them. Yeah, like, that's a common trait, is that I'll meet. I'll meet Customers I'll meet people on thinking you fit great. When the time comes, I'm here to reach out. Yeah. So I think don't wait until you're going to be hiring to build relationships. Build them early and if you never end up behind that person or never comes to play, that's fine. You've got a great relationship.
Nathan Bush: That's a really great tip because I think a lot of people make the trap of I'll wait until I've got a specific position, got the JD written up, got it in LinkedIn, seek, whatever and then I'll go find that person. But to have you kind of know the trajectory of your business and you know what's coming up right over the next 12, 24 months to have those relationship building is a really great starting point.
[Voiceover]: And if you met them and you know them and you build relationship with them over that time you'll work out 100% what their skills and weaknesses are and whether they're good to go. I think everyone should still go through a formal interview process regardless though.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: You know, you should have other team members interview them anyway and you should let them know that that even though you've talked about this, there will be a process you will go through. We have to tick you off like if you don't get it, but no hard feelings like this has to be done. So make sure that's transparent from you as well.
Nathan Bush: If you are coming back from your Christmas holidays and need to give your brain a jump start, Shopify's the Future of E Commerce report will get you going. They've interviewed industry leaders, investors and e commerce experts to give you the five trends that will shape e commerce in 2021 and beyond. And while 2020 was a free kick for many in E commerce, the game is going to get tougher. With increased competition, fulfillment pressures and higher acquisition costs being the upcoming tests, this report goes into detail on what to expect so you can plan for it. Sadly, the future still doesn't hold hover boards. To read the report, visit shopify.com enterprise the future of E Commerce or just Google Shopify Future of E Commerce Report. How do you personally relax and turn off? Because I could imagine with customers and team all over the globe that you would be semi switched on most of the time. What's your personal escape from it all?
[Voiceover]: I have to be doing something 100 with my brain, otherwise I can't switch off. So yeah, surfing, absolutely. Like getting out. I mean like I'm British. I moved to Australia so I could disappear off the radar completely. So Adventure and I have a family and a young daughter, so we're taking her out. So we went, like, out last weekend. We kayaked, like, 5Ks, like a secluded camp spot on the lake with no one else there. I can't count that. We can start staying. Yeah, I think doing that kind of thing again, when you evolve the moment and just switching off your, like, Internet, we, like, 24, seven, you know, like. Like, Sunday is like, Sunday, like here is like, well, Saturday. Here's Friday in the States, in Europe, and then it never ends.
Nathan Bush: You know, there'll always be something. Right. Do you find that when you have those moments where you switch the net off and you go out kayaking that your best ideas come or do your best ideas come when you're in the grind of it all?
[Voiceover]: Both. I don't know. There's a recipe for best ideas. Ideas come, like, a lot of best ideas come out, come off other team members. Like, they're not mine at all. So other team members will bring them in, then we'll kind of look at them, and then that'll spark other ideas, and off you go. I think when you're looking at sessions, like, right now we're planning out 20, 21. We're planning out what, like, the way we do this. We start with the problems. We're like, here's all the issues we're going to have this year. Here's our weak points. And then, like, that's going to spark ideas to go and solve those. Now, obviously, I think thinking offline, you will think of ideas, but at the same point, that's me always thinking, like, to truly, like, when I truly switch off, like, I try and switch off, like, absolutely. Surfing is a great one because, you know, if you're not concentrating, you drown. So it's pretty good.
Nathan Bush: It's a fair point. It's a fair point. All right, Matt, what is next for yourself and bonjour. What do the next 12 months hold? As much as you can predict what the next 12 months hold?
[Voiceover]: Yeah. So we want to go deep on the whole idea of personalization at scale. Yeah, video is great. It's. We're not video company. We're a personalization company. So I guess kind of looking forward. Can we help to. Can we help you spend your time better? Can we tell you where you should put the time? Where you shouldn't put the time? Which customers you send a video to or message or talk to versus which ones you shouldn't? And off the back of that, can we Help you create more advocates Because I think advocacy or superfans is the like unknown. It's like the untapped resource to grow a business. You know, you don't need 100,000 customers, you need 1,000 who ran to rave about you and tell each. Go and tell 10 people. Like that's it.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah, great. So building those super fans with your clients, I love it. And then lastly, how can people get in touch with yourself or the team if they want to know more?
[Voiceover]: So hop on the onejoint.com like like I said, if you sign up, Warren team will be in touch with the video. Just have a chat to them, you know or hop on a call if you like. Any advice at all. Again, the more specifically you can explain what part of your funnel you're looking to improve, the better they can help you. Myself like LinkedIn, type in Papa Bear. There's only three of us and I think I'm the guy in the bear suit. So reach out.
Nathan Bush: Just be careful of the other two.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, don't trust them.
Nathan Bush: Matt, thank you for joining us on Add to Cart. It's been so good just hearing more about your solution which I think is really unique and I haven't seen anything else like that and I like that it's a really easy entry point for people to at trial without a huge investment in time or money. So I think it's definitely worth a go for any retailers who are thinking about how to improve this their service and increase their super fans, as you say. So thank you for explaining and sharing your story.
[Voiceover]: No problem mate. Thanks for having me along.
Nathan Bush: Cool idea. Hey, so my favorite part of the interview was when Matt pulled me up for referring to it as video and I was like, isn't that kind of the whole thing here? Is that we're talking about video? But his point is valid. If we stop thinking about videos as masterpieces that need to be polished, but just treat them as one of the most powerful and authentic connection tools that we have, maybe we can hyper speed up our relationships with our customers and if it only takes a minute to film and send, well, all power to you. It kind of reminds me of Walmart's recent activity to make 500 of their employees Instagram and TikTok influencers. They've basically given them the tools to go out and speak to customers directly via these platforms. Check out their Spotlight program if you want more information. If we can reshape how and more importantly who can use video in our businesses, there's huge opportunities for stronger connections for those retailers who who really want to trade on authenticity to finish up, I have three resources for you. Firstly, if you're a first time listener of Add to Cart and you want to stay up to date with new episodes, head over to add to cart.com and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll let you know every time a new episode drops, as well as giving you my three takeaways from each episode and a link to the transcripts so you can know that this is an episode that you want to dive straight into. Secondly, if you want a weekly roundup of the best e commerce case studies tools and research, sign up to the High Five Friday newsletter which is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the e commerce news and send you the bits that I think you can take action from. Sign up at 12 high 12 hrgh. And the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, head over to esweettalent.com we are a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands. Check it out. Sign up to the email and get in touch with me if you want to discuss your next move. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep those customers adding to cartoon.
