David Fink | Postie
What’s the secret behind the success of brands like Dollar Shave Club and Casper Mattress?
Postie co-founder and CEO David Fink says its about combining a mission driven brand message with deep authenticity.
In this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, David explains why it’s so important to develop a strong brand story focused on the organization’s mission. Think Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why”. But he emphasizes that this needs to come from a place of authenticity, and digs into exactly what he means by “authentic”.
This conversation includes plenty of real world examples of brands that are doing it right.
Check out the full episode to hear more.
Resources from this episode:
Connect with David on LinkedIn
Visit the Postie website
Email David at dave [@] postie.com
David and Kathleen recording this episode
Kathleen (00:00):
Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I am your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week my guest is David Fink, who is the CEO and co-founder of Postie welcome to the podcast, David.
David (00:58):
Thanks for having me.
Kathleen (01:00):
I'm excited to have you here on, I'm excited about our topic, which is around storytelling. And I feel like, I feel like this is one of those topics where marketers talk a good game and we all sort of like, no, we need to be good storytellers, but it's also one of those topics where there's a lot of pardon my language, but. And so I always like an opportunity to break a topic like this down and make it actionable for people. So that's what we're going to discuss today, but before we jump too deeply into it, can you just take a minute and tell my listeners a little bit more about yourself and your background and specifically also what posted is?
David (01:41):
Sure. I would be happy to, so here's years definitely go by, but I'm probably in my 24th, 25th year of being involved in consumer internet startup and growth type companies, always the, the tech companies that I've always been involved with kind of oscillated back and forth between being consumer brands and and then marketing technology platforms that, that kind of powered growth behind these brands always with really a quantitative approach to it. So measurement and optimization testing. The, I think I've been fortunate to kind of live through the rise of social media platforms and these behemoths that have given us the opportunity to engage directly with consumers with a vigor that we've never seen before. And, and, and to me, what I've witnessed firsthand is this blend of pure direct response test and optimization around tactics and strategies and and the, the need and ability and value of building you know, true brand through messaging and storytelling and, and that kind of the most successful companies that I think that we've seen emerging growth over the last 10 years or so have had done both extraordinarily well.
David (03:02):
So I've, I've kind of been a student of the game and, and put a lot of what I've learned to practice throughout those years. And that kind of leads into my, my latest startup Postie. We're about a six year old company and we are a technology platform that that acts as kind of a technology layer to the direct mail media channel, giving marketers the ability to run this channel no differently than they, you know, run it, optimize their digital channels.
Kathleen (03:35):
I love that. I actually am a big believer in direct mail that might sound strange because most people know me as, you know, a digital marketer first and foremost, but little known fact, I, when I owned my agency, which I did for 11 years when we first started, actually, it, it, it was because my husband had been in another business that sold promotional products. And so we opened the agency in the very beginning. He because he broke off from that company and brought some of his clients with him, and we did like, high-end gifting for big commercial real estate companies. And one of the big things that we did back then, we always called it dimensional mailing. But it was direct mail with, you know, three-dimensional objects and it usually branded, and we had tremendous response, like massively huge open rates and response rates and meeting, booking rates, et cetera. And we used to do a bunch of case studies on it. And and it's, I feel like it's flown over under the radar for a long time, and now it's, it's, it's having its moment. And so I'm really excited to chat about that as part of our conversation at some point, too,
David (04:46):
For sure. I mean, it, it's a incredibly powerful channel. And I think what, what is surprising to many marketers is that they kind of the attributes and kind of the strategies and tactics that you apply to make the channel work for your business are really closely parallel to what you do and your digital media, and, and that, that, that holds true, whether you're leveraging the channel for CRM and engaging your customer base, or whether you're looking for top of funnel acquisition and and, and grow and aggressive growth strategies.
Kathleen (05:22):
Yeah. well, I'm excited to talk about this because you, the foundation for all of this, from, from what you've said to me prior to the interview is really around storytelling and what folks who are listening might not realize is you've had some really interesting experiences in your career around this. And like, and that demonstrate, I think the power that storytelling can have. And so you were involved early on through a company, you were a part of in the Dollar Shave Club story. And you've had some other equally interesting experiences. Maybe, maybe we could start with just kind of the concept of storytelling and weave in a little bit how because those stories are now are now well established and they're, they're not super recent. I mean, Dollar Shave Club continues to be a huge success, but it's original kind of viral start was sometime ago now I'm sure.
David (06:17):
I, I, you know, I look, I, I love the experience I had you know, watching the Dollar Shave Club business, you know, authentically launch and, and, and, and kind of take off into the stratosphere. And and, and that kind of all happened within a short window of four years, which is, which is absolutely remarkable, right? That, that business went from a, you know just a, an idea in, in Mike Gibbons head to an unbelievable launch, leveraging everything. That's amazing about you know, digital and social media and, and, and captivating both awareness and engagement through storytelling. And and then transcended you know, in, in a very, very competitive you know, product category, two hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, millions, and millions of customers, and ultimately, you know, billion dollar plus exit.
David (07:14):
And and then there wasn't, you know, dumb locker or an accident at all. Certainly timing played a huge role in it, but it, it, for me, it was a very transformative experience I had spent probably the, the previous 10 years being, you know, a really big believer in building out kind of testing and measurement and optimization, kind of iterative marketing practices that go into testing headlines and font sizes and tech sizes and the colors of buttons and interactive elements on, on a landing page. And those are really kind of critical components to understanding, you know, user behavior and engagement. There's a lot of psychology and behavioral economics in there, but what, what does my experience, you know, with, with the Dollar Shave Club, you know, business really opened my eyes to is, is that, you know, all of those optimization components you know, matter, but all, you know, they are much more powerful if, if if they're layered on top of an authentic brand and in an authentic product, and what you have, you know, with, with, with Dollar Shave Club, with everybody certainly knows the amazing, funny, captivating video that, that, that business law to it, and lots of their follow on, you know, storytelling and and, you know, TV and social ads.
David (08:47):
And, and the reality is that, that, that kind of authentic voice that was certainly playful, but very mission-driven that, that, that Mike and their brand team, you know, developed you know also leveraged kind of that same quantitative testing optimization approach to driving distribution and awareness of the brand. But, but the reason that they were able to do that effectively was because they told an unbelievable story that captivated the hearts of kind of this growing, you know, social media audience. And, and that to me was, was eyeopening that the power of having a beautiful, authentic, real engaging, you know, story that that is the platform and then being able to leverage distribution on top of it.
Kathleen (09:35):
So I want to use that as our jumping off point, because I always laugh. I've heard if there's one question I've heard a lot in my career, it's why can't we just make a viral video. Right. And I think it's so funny because like, if it was that easy, if it was just like, sure, let's do it wouldn't we all be doing it. Right. And, and it's not so much about video as a format or any of that, but you touched on it. It's about how the story is told to capture the hearts and the minds of the audience. And so this is not a simple thing to do, so I would love it if maybe you could dig into this topic by breaking down what you see as the building blocks of a great story,
David (10:19):
As a phenomenal question. And, and just to rewind a little bit yes, w once or twice maybe an hour back there in the darker shade days I certainly would be asked and anybody involved in the business that I think would be asked exactly how do I create a viral video? I just want a viral video for me. I could've been viral video. My life would be amazing. And, and you nailed it though, right? Like there's no, like, I think certainly there are, there are just really, you know, brilliant you know, copywriters and editors and videographers that can, can make, you know, great content. We've certainly seen that in an attendant space they're better. And, and, and not as good movies and TV shows and trailers and all that, but when it's, when it's being used to actually, you know, launch or escalate a brand there are foundational building blocks that make it possible to leverage, you know, storytelling and actually get you know the effect that you're looking for.
David (11:17):
I think the first piece is whether you're rolling out a new product, whether you're launching a business or a startup whether you're looking to try and you know, stair-step up to the next level of scale with your existing business or product or service there's there ha it has to start with, with, with a mission and authenticity or maybe better said when it does you eliminate a lot of the friction associated with great storytelling and brand development. And, and what I mean by that is it doesn't mean that you, like, you have to be mission driven, you're going out and solving the, the, the, the most challenging problems in the world. It just means that there's gotta be a reason why you're, you're putting, you know, your product or service into the, into the world beyond just trying to boost your revenue.
David (12:07):
Right. Yeah, yeah. Right. So, so, you know, with, you know we could certainly, you know yeah, let's take a different brand, right? Like, so, so Casper Mattress, I, I thought that story and, and became close with, with some of their founders and was just, it's been another one of those transformative brands that came about during this age of social media and, you know, their whole premise was not that we're a mattress company, but we're asleep company and the, you know, Phillip and the founders over there you know, really embraced the story early on that, you know, there's this culture in the startup world that it, that like relishes and how little sleep you get at night. Right? Like I slept three hours last night, or I haven't slept in a week. Look, I'm, I'm crushing it. And there are people like that.
David (12:59):
Yeah. We've heard about presidents and extraordinary people that claim, they need five hours of sleep. You know, I think there's pretty good either. You know, certainly having kids helped me reduce the amount of sleep I can function on, but, but you know, when, when I'm well rested and well exercise, the welders, like I, my performance across the board, better data, better CEO, a better husband, I'm faster in my runs. Like I, you know, your life is, is, is, is better in a more performing in general. And, and, and that, you know, company, I, I, you know, did a phenomenal job, not just being another mattress in a box company that was competing with this, you know, this category that, that seemed to explode on nowhere. But there's a reason why from a brand perspective, they, they were leaders over and over again, and always pointed to you as, as kind of really defining the category.
David (13:53):
And that, that was the authentic story that they were able to, you know, embrace and turn into, into a business and a brand that revolved around this idea that, that sleep is important. Sleep is cool. And and if you kind of embrace the, the quality of furnishings in your, in your bedroom and create an environment where you can, you can actually fall asleep at night and you can wake up well, rested that you'll be more productive in your life. You know, that's different than saying we make the best mattresses. Our foam is better than, than their farm, our Springs, you know, our, our, our, you know, we have a hundred Springs, they have 80 Springs which are features, and then maybe can lead into a benefit statement. You know, to me, it, you know, that, that, that, that, that building block foundation is, you know, having a mission, getting people to want to embrace sleep and, and, and kind of change this cultural norm of, of, of you know, what it means to get more sleep or less sleep like that, that turned into kind of a launch pad for lots of great storytelling and brand development.
David (15:00):
And, and, and then when they layered on distribution, paid media on top of it, to try to amplify that story you know, they were able to do so much more efficiently than, than if they were just going out and, you know, talking about features and benefits. So those are really, to me that the two core foundations, it's, it's having kind of a mission behind why you're putting, you know, something, your product service business into the world, and and rallying behind that, and really embracing and believing in that. And, and the other is, is ideally making that, you know, having that come from a very authentic place, so a problem or a challenge that you've, you've uncovered in your, your business, your life, et cetera. And, and, and then, and then you know, focus on putting out a solution to that, that problem. Yeah, it, it, it, it's the difference between lasting brands or the opportunity to build a lasting brand and maybe just build a, a little, a little revenue stream
Kathleen (15:58):
And you dig in a little bit to the concept of authenticity, because I do think this is another one, like storytelling where people use that word, and it's, it's very hard to nail down, I think for some people, how do you define authenticity?
David (16:17):
Well, I think it's just, it's believableness. It's, that's, that's actually a word.
David (16:28):
I'm all for making up words that are understandable. You know, I think it starts with the, the businesses leadership or founding team and executive team, and and then you know, permeates the entire organization which is the, the heart and soul of a business, right? Like, like a TV ad or a viral video is, is not the heart and soul of business that the heart and soul of the business is, is the, the people that are innovating and, and and building that business on, you know, day in, day out. And, and I, I think that, that, that authenticity has to come from, from within if it's going to be lasting and and, and truly, you know, effective and, and, and believable. And, and that, you know, if you do think about tying that back to, you know, the, the kind of fundamentals we talked about before, right?
David (17:23):
If, if, if the reason, if there's a reason why you're starting a business and going through kind of all the effort and the pain, the joy and the sorrow of kind of that, that path that you're inevitably going to go on. And, and it starts with recognizing a pain point that exists in the world, no matter how big or small it is, and then focusing all of the energy in this company to try to solve that, that, that problem, and then help you out help drive awareness that there is a solution. That's just an innately going to be out authentic. That doesn't mean that every piece of creative, every line of copy, every image, every, you know animated piece of content that you put out there is, is going to resonate and land with the audience. But I think the aggregate you know, end result becomes you have a story that, that that, that is believable, that, that is representative of kind of the, the, the founders, the employees, the executives, the culture of that, of that company, and the reason that they exist.
Kathleen (18:27):
So you have "why" right, it's sort of the way you described the mission-driven. It reminded me of Simon Sinek, start with why. Why are you doing this? And then you have the, the concept of authenticity or believableness, which is now a new word that we have coined. And then those are the foundations, but then you have to actually craft your story. So how do you approach that process?
David (18:55):
That is a, that's a, that's the $10,000 question these days, I think with inflation, it might be the a hundred dollars. So the, the, I will be honest and say that I surround myself with people that are much better than I am at storytelling. And, and and what those people kind of enable me to do is to take the thoughts that are, that are in my head and that maybe have shaped you know, the why, and, and turn it into content. That's understandable by people that aren't inside my head and that's challenging. And, and it's not because I have any like, pretty good, like, brilliant thoughts in my head or what not, but, but, you know, my thoughts make sense to me the way they form formulate them and kind of make sense of them is certainly kind of a construct that I've worked on in 45 years.
David (19:53):
But that doesn't necessarily always play or lend itself to you know, through, through, through any type of communication whether that's conversational or you know, brand assets, et cetera, that the folks that have helped me more effectively kind of build that story in a, in a way that's accessible to you know, various target audiences that I've tried to engage throughout the years have been just extremely talented at running through lots of discovery, asking lots of questions, building their understanding of of kind of that authentic you know, original founding story behind the business product or service that, that that I had been putting out or working on and, and, and then are able to, to pull in teams that are good at translating that into visual copy, text you know, video, audio content, and it, and it really does take a village, but I believe in that across the board, you know, there's, I've never met a human that has, you know, every single skillset known to humankind.
David (21:02):
And and these are all these are all skills that take lots of practice and, and development. So I think the key, again, either starts with understanding, like, I love that, that you, you tied it back to the why because you know, the many markets can relate to that and have, have, you know, have studied that. But, but if the why's generally clear to you and there is that authenticity in that, that, that, that, that why that it's done, it's a matter of you know, collaborating with the right creative content storytellers in your organization or outside of your organization that can help you you know, extract that information and impact in ways that make sense. With that being said, you have to put some compounds around around that storytelling, otherwise you can lose the authenticity. So it really does have to be your, you know, your story that, that credibility, but, but told through through, you know, a, a concise accessible series of, of microphones.
Kathleen (22:14):
We started out this conversation talking about Dollar Shave Club. Are there other companies out there that you think do a particularly effective job at this? Of storytelling?
David (22:29):
There are tons. You know, when you look at the I think the, the, the, really the plethora of what I would call digital native or emerging brands that have been built on on on, you know, in, in the age of, of not just digital, but really social media most of those brands have all tried to build you know, authentic brand stories. We, we know the ones that have been ubiquitous in their category, right? So we talked about Casper. You know, we, obviously we talked about you know, Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker is another one of those transcendent brands that has been very authentic from the start very consistent with, with their, their messaging and their their, their their story today is very similar to their story. You know, on day one there's a brand that, that I love.
David (23:30):
And what is enthusiast big shopper of REI, big kind of Patagonia. There's a brand called Diore that that has you had a meteoric rise to to success, not everybody their brand, but they're, they're quite big distributed, both direct to consumer and through the big outdoors and active and running stores product, the quality of the product is unbelievable from the start vacated to a very specific audience. It was not built out of New York and Madison avenue was built out of, I believe, Encinitas, or certainly a neighborhood in San Diego. I highly recommend you know you know, audiences going and taking a look at that brand. Hasn't quite gotten as much attention as some of that, those first kind of digital native brands. It would, you know, I, I wish I had a little bit more time to, to think through this and kind of dive through a little bit more research, because there are a lot traditional brands that do a phenomenal job as well. They you know, I could speak to brands that are close to me that are more traditional. A lot of them are built out of passion category. So you think about Jake Burton and Burton snowboards, right? That, that was, that was an absolutely kind of natively built brand around a new emerging category. Think at this point it's about a 40 year old brand
Kathleen (25:01):
Doesn't feel like it, but it is right.
David (25:03):
Yeah, it's crazy. But but, but everything that they stand for has been very consistent. You see that in the surfing community too. I've recently moved to Austin, getting the wake surfing used to be that, you know, within the wake surf companies in, in I, I had my days of logging miles on, you know, with, with running shoes on I'm a big fan of ultra. It may have this, this concept of of a minimalist running and they've been very consistent with that messaging from the start. They, they went out and thought there was kind of a problem with, with what the big footwear giants were putting out into the market that weren't actually that they believed anyhow. You know, we're you know, adding to positive running forums. And I, I read
Kathleen (25:57):
The book, born to run,
David (25:58):
Then it's an amazing book
Kathleen (26:01):
I used to get runner back in the day. My body just has now told me that I'm not allowed to be any more for various reasons, but yeah. Great book really interesting.
David (26:11):
And, and the interesting thing about her netbook is a, is a, I think that's much of the science in there has been disproved over the years, but it's not about that. It's a story, it's a story. It's amazing. It's, it's I think that the author truly believes in in cause minimal this minimalist approach to running or running style and and it, and it certainly screams of authenticity. It also is empowering. I can, you know, I was, I was at a state, I read that the originally where I was like fading in my miles, couldn't seem to keep up and get motivated. And next thing I knew I was adding twice as much mileage, you know, those are, those are those, those stories are really powerful. And I think that ties back nicely to this idea of of, you know brands that are built again authentically around passion categories to solve problems. They tend to create motivation in the consumer base and and create joy. And, and, and that's why we buy things, right. That's why we travel. That's fine. We go shopping it's it's yeah, certainly there's some component of needs, but beyond that, it's, it's, we're trying to add value in our life and, and, and brands have the power to do that.
Kathleen (27:28):
So I'm going to totally put you on the spot right now. You have, Postie what, what's your story? Why did you, why did you found that company and what is it, what is it you're trying to solve?
David (27:43):
Well I appreciate you asking that our, our story really is, is equally authentic to, to, you know, to, to, I think, any of these, these product based brand stories Jonathan Ned and rip my co-founder and I, we we'd been working together for about six years at a tech studio in Santa Monica that invested in incubated bought and sold consumer internet companies, brands, and technology and marketing technology stats. And we like many brands recognizing those emerging trends. Certainly got a lot of value in in investing in, in social and search and, and the emergence of this web two, 3.0 you know media, media, meteoric, media rise. And and look, we can name names, right? Like you have lots of investment, went into Facebook, both dollar and time and effort learning how to, you know, market and reach consumers and engage, drive engagement on those plat and on that platform, Google as well.
David (28:53):
And, and there's a lot of value there, there still is, but those are marketplaces. They became very powerful companies. We've all had the experiences of getting, you know, making the investment in, in those platforms. And then they changed their algorithms, or, you know, you know, they're encouraging you to spend money to build your fan pages. And then all of a sudden we're saying, great, thanks for spending millions of dollars building these fan pages. Now, if you want to reach these fans, you actually have to pay to, you know, boost your posts. And we've all played that game for awhile. And again, those were great launch pads for brands, but eventually you reach a point where you realize, like you can't build a profitable business just on those two platforms. And so for us, it was a matter of like, Hey, there's unbelievable amount of tooling that make it possible.
David (29:41):
You really complicated, really scalable things on those platforms. But we still need to own our, our, our, you know, the relationship we have with, with customers and prospects, and we need multiple ways to reach those customers. And so we started looking for other digital channels that, that were scalable and that could potentially allow us to leverage those same kind of you know, tools that, that the, the two big giants provided. And there just wasn't anything at that point. I mean, it's just six years ago you know, snap was not on the, you know, it was not the scale that it is right now, tectonic didn't exist. There's a word there, wasn't a next emerging you know, media platform on digital. So we turned to offline and and because we had this kind of quantitative approach, we do want to be able to measure, you want to be able to leverage data.
David (30:34):
And we do want to be in control and be able to predict the return that we're getting on our media spends that it led us to channels that that, you know, looked a lot like digital channels and direct mail was the one that got us in trade. It, you know, it, it reaches the entire addressable market. It's 20% bigger than Facebook and Google. Anyone with a physical address in the U S is reachable through mail. There's really quality compliant data sets that are out there that can be used in very similar, predictive and modeling ways as, as we rely on social and programmatic digital for, and, you know, with brands, having direct relationships and building their identity graphs with their consumers, there's lots of ways to get clean, direct measurement. So you have scale and reach. You have you know, data in the components to test and optimize performance, and you have clean measurement that looks to me no different than Facebook or Google or programmatic
Kathleen (31:35):
And actually to not to interrupt, but better in some ways I literally just posted about this this morning on LinkedIn, that, you know, the traditional construct of performance marketing is really dying. And because when you look at what's happened, there's a couple of things in the past few years. GDPR has, if, if you're compliant with it has made it so that if somebody doesn't accept cookie tracking, when they come to your site, can't track original source of visits, iOS 14.5 made it virtually impossible to retarget, large swabs of people's audiences on Facebook, iOS 15 is making it impossible to really know who opened your emails because of the email sandboxing. You know, and in 2023, Google is going to deprecate third party cookies if they stay on schedule. And so all of these developments are making it difficult, if not impossible to use the traditional methods that we've had in our tool set as marketers to, to develop performance marketing kind of funnels. And so what not changed is direct mail and its ability to get in front of people. I just think that we have written it off as almost like too old school. And so there's not a, there hasn't been at least recently tons of innovation in that area, although I think that's starting to change. So I think that's exciting.
David (32:56):
I love that you brought that up. We probably don't talk about that enough. You know, that we certainly didn't see, we were at to claim that we predicted the changing landscape and, you know, measurement online. And we're all still kind of waiting to see exactly how things evolve, but, but certainly there's been no shortage of conversation with our clients and within, you know our, you know, our data teams and measurement teams about the, the power that, that the the increased power of the DMA provide advertisers with in a world where we're measurement becomes really hard. And it goes back, you know, digital moves more back to contextual targeting and whatnot, which likely won't deliver the same return that, that some of the, you know, our current targeting methodologies online provide, we'll have to see, we'll have to see you know, it's not, not definitively gonna affect or dramatically gonna affect what we do and continue to invest in as a business because our mission is still the same, which is, you know, how, how do you put the, how do you empower marketers with the same level of technology for, you know, strong targeting, ease of execution, accuracy of measurement on top of this powerful, direct mail channel, that's, that's been the missing piece for many, many years there.
David (34:25):
The, the, the, you know, it is a, it is a a bit of a secret. I mean, th the direct mail space is still roughly $40 billion a year, just in the U S so there are many brands that maybe they're not talking about it as much, but but, but who have embraced direct mail for many, many years. And so it's a core component of their growth, engagement strategy. There are more brands that we're seeing in the, in the emerging kind of digital native set that are masterful at digital marketing and, and are recognizing that they need to be omni-channel embracing some of the traditional channels that are powerful and scalable and, and drive great engagement. And, and so we've seen a tremendous movement over the last six years. I mean, literally thousands of brands that are the Postie platform and are getting great results.
David (35:16):
But I, I think, you know, the, the, the, the, the way that the, that the tactics in, in what cage have you done in direct mail have been around for years, it's just been very, very clunky. And a lot of it's taken lots of people. There's been so much emphasis and focus on things like managing vendors and procuring the, you know, kind of raw you know, ingredients, paper, ink securing time on printing presses, the complexity of logistics behind efficient. Yeah. Long lead times. Like all those things have kind of encouraged brands to, to engage more dynamically or engage with channels that can behave more dynamically. And, and our focus in, in, in what we've been at for the last six years has been yeah, making the direct mail channel behave as dynamic as any digital channel. And and that, and that all of a sudden turns it into pretty darn powerful you know, media platform.
Kathleen (36:26):
Yeah, definitely. So we're going to shift gears cause I'm worried we're going to run out of time and I'm going to ask you the two questions that I always ask everybody at the end of my interviews. The first being that things are changing quickly. We, this is the sort of the theme of our whole conversation, right. Things are changing quickly in the world of marketing. How do you personally stay up to date on all of it? Do you have like certain sources you rely on to keep yourself educated?
David (36:59):
Thank goodness for RSS feeds pretty meticulous about following and consuming but while I got from the affiliate antenna 10 tenuous amount of content on a daily basis and, and those are everything from the, the, the tech trades, you know, Tech Crunch and Pendo and Crunchbase keeping track of kind of you know, innovators in, in, in both technology and in consumer internet. But then, you know, we, we engage with, with brands and so many different verticals that it's, it's important to stay on top of you know, what's going on in our clients product categories. So I read quite a bit of you know, vertical, specific mostly digital trades have been certainly, you know, the advertising you know platforms of, of ad we can digit day.
David (38:00):
And, and we've also just created a culture here at the Postie oftentimes driven by slack to circulate content to to our general channels or department specific channels. You know, we deal with machine learning and we deal with structural data engineering when we deal with user interface and experience, and we deal with with sales and sales strategy and how to onboard and service accounts and stuff. So they reading those trays. And then I you could see my bookshelf. So some are to you I have a an aggressive reader. And so I'm probably, yeah, I'm probably tearing through, you know, 30 to 40 books a year on management. I'm a big proponent believer in behavioral economics and and that's a topic for a whole other other day, but the, I I've come to accept that. We think we're all free thinkers and there are functions of the brain that get us to do things that we don't even, that are not fully our choice. I have a lot of fun standing and learning. So yeah.
Kathleen (39:08):
Any particular one or two favorite books that you've read?
David (39:14):
So yeah, there's, there's there are two behavioral economists that that I've been reading a bunch of and have mastered read some of their papers. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky they've actually won the Nobel prize. And they're fascinating and brilliant reads. There are some they certainly have complex papers that you can read, but then there are also some more kind of commercial reads. And, and so one of the books that Daniel Kahneman published is called Thinking Fast and Slow highly recommended for any just you know, intellectual mind out there, anyone working in marketing, anybody who's working with people or you know in management. And then there's a book by Dan Areli, I believe is how you pronounce his name called Predictably Irrational. I see more on there. And and, and they're in the same vein. They're, they're kind of behavioral economic principles that help you understand that again, that we're not all fully in control of our decisions and they're, they're super fun.
Kathleen (41:22):
I love that. I'm always looking for good new books to read. Second question. This podcast is all about inbound marketing, and I would say that, you know, I use a very broad definition of that as anything that a qualified audience to you who do you think out there is doing really great work with inbound marketing, either a company or an individual.
David (41:52):
Okay. so there's a, a friend and colleague who has, has been in the tech space for quite a while. His name is Orin Hoffman. He was one of the founders of a company that probably many of your listeners use Live Ramp and and has over the last year or two launched a new company in the data space and he's just been incredibly smart. And in how he's built you know your relationships and awareness of his, of his personal brand by authentically, I think giving back to the community. So he's built an email list that he calls five reading links and he, he, he releases basically recommendations for great blog posts. Sometimes it's long form content. Not all of it is, is tech industry specific, but it's all content that that he's consumed, found value in and is sharing.
David (45:33):
And he does it without asking for anything back. It's we all get, you know, our inboxes are well, are, are, are overloaded. But when we get something that's actually valuable and thoughtful and, and, and resonant to us you know, at least for me, I tend to look forward to it. And so that's actually, you know, one of the few emails that I actually look forward to getting each month, I think it's brilliant when he launched his new company, there was no question I was gonna you know, look and engage and and spend some time getting to know it and seeing if there was an opportunity business. But that, but his, his actual kind of you know, inbound marketing effort was more about w was, was, was answer literally connected to to the next business he was going to be putting out. I, I just think I think that's brilliant, right? He's he was playing the long game. He's adding value. He's not asking for anything. It's not self promotion. It's community building, it's just pure value add. I, and, and I, I just think it's, it's one of the smartest things I've seen in a long time.
Kathleen (46:43):
I am definitely going to have to go check that out. Cause I love everything about what you just said. All right, well, we're coming to the top of our hour. So if somebody is listening to this and wants to connect with you and ask a question or wants to learn more about Postie, what are the best ways for them to do that?
David (47:01):
Certainly you can reach me the email you know, I asked that if it's something authentic, reach out, if it's yeah, I, it's hard to keep up with just pure inbound sales but, but I want to connect authentically with people. My email is, is dave@postie.com. My LinkedIn is a great way to connect casually for the log for the long run. Kind of a religious user of LinkedIn. It's the easiest way to track of, of of my network. And they're easily kind of search for those people that, that we could use help from, or or, or gain value from. And then certainly yeah, there's, we have a brand new postie.com website that has a ton of content on what we're up to. Certainly could fill out a lead form there. And if you put in the note section that you're looking to reach me, it will a hundred percent get to me.
Kathleen (47:58):
Great. All right. Well, I'll put all those things in the show notes. So if you want to connect with David or learn more about Postie head to the website at kathleen-booth.com and you'll find it there. And in the meantime, if you listened to this episode and you enjoyed it, I always ask, and I hope you'll consider going to apple podcasts and leaving a review or telling your friends and colleagues about the podcast. And if you know somebody else doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next best. That is it for this week. Thank you for joining me, David. This was a lot of fun.
David (48:36):
I had a blast. Thank you.
