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David is the founder and CEO of warm welcome and was recently named a top 100 tech innovator and influencer, David has bootstrapped several startups into multi million dollar annual recurring revenues. David is a startup junkie and he has started service based companies and several software companies. He believes that business can be a tool to help us build better relationships, and connect us to a purpose far beyond ourselves. warm welcome exists because he believes that business at its best is personal and purposeful. David, it's so good to have you on the show today.
Thanks down. It's great to be here. Yeah, of course, you know, what we're gonna jump into for those tuning in is this idea that you can approach your customers in this virtual world today in a more warm and personalized way. And do so with video and content, and not feel like you have to have the most polished approach. And what David brings to the table is this incredible, new software and opportunity to really introduce yourself and insert a nice video message throughout your sales funnel. And it's called a warm welcome. But David Gunn walk us through a little bit more of like a backstory around like what inspired warm welcome and kind of what led you to this point. Sure. So I'm a kind of a startup junkie, I started, you know, my career as a wedding photographer, and I just dropped out of college became a photographer, typical service based business problems, tough to scale got to work every weekend. And so over time, I gravitated towards tech and towards some more scalable things.
But a warm welcome came about when we were creating a different type of video software and a buddy of mine, Eric nof, who has a company called web connects, he goes, I want to use that as a way to greet people and welcome every new customer that we have. And I was like, that's genius like that is the direction that I hope the world goes, I hope we can make things a little bit more warm and friendly and personal. And so we built warm welcome kind of around that idea of helping helping people have better conversations with their clients instead of just broadcasting messages as a client.
That's so powerful, you know. And it's interesting. Like you speak about your background with dropping out going into the service providing route with photography. I went to and I did some photo and video, but like I worked for corporate. And so there is mass communications of email into your Internet's. And I would say, I mean, whether you're a massive company with 1000s, and 1000s of employees, or a team of one to few, as you are in startup mode, the relevancy of breaking down the barriers and having more personalized approach makes warm welcome a suit like this even more attractive. And that's something I'd began to set like my world incorperate several years ago, before I quit, and went full time with my business.
It felt there's a very much of like you said, but kind of a broadcast style. It's like, here's a one sided conversation, we're going to broadcast this message out to you, or to our international employee base or customer base to get this message. But the response that you get from people wasn't really there. And it was very difficult. How do you feel like warm welcome cuts through that noise and makes it more simplified to have that conversation? Yeah, well invites the conversation. And you know, the conversations at the forefront of every interaction, whether it's a video bubble on website or a video, email, it's it's asking the person receiving it to participate, not just listen, not just accept or reject whatever is sad.
But it's saying, hey, let's talk about this. And, you know, that's, I think a common problem that any business has is we get so focused on what is We're creating the service we're providing the product we're building, that we forget that our main job is to help the customer solve a problem that they have. And so kind of flipping the script and saying, you know, hey, what is it that I can help you with? Instead of here's what I have to offer, here's the product I'm building. It's, you know, what's the problem you're having? Let me come alongside you, and see if see if I can help. I love that. So I mean, I get excited about this stuff. I've just started sampling out more in the last few months, as far as video messages from a conversation starter standpoint, trying to get responses.
One barrier, I feel like definitely exists for people. Is this idea, though, that you may get those warm and fuzzies. Right? When you see a personalized message, people are saying your name in a video form? Do you find that it's easier for people to hit reply and respond with the videos? Well? Or is there still often a barrier that exists for those who are like, I don't really not in the mood to shop and video, audio or written word is kind of an easier approach? What do you think that barrier looks like? And how can people resolve that for themselves? Yeah, there's definitely a barrier, you know, people are there, they're transitioning pretty quickly, kind of, after the last year where everybody was working from home and getting comfortable. Basically seeing into everybody's bedroom. It's not as big of a deal.
You know, you got your hair combed, or your makeup on or whatever. But there's still a barrier. So we're not by any means forcing video communication on anybody. In all of our, all of our different widgets, you can respond with video, you can respond with audio, and you can respond with with traditional text. And so it's whatever somebody is comfortable with. But oftentimes, you'll see as the relationship goes on, people get more comfortable just talking like they would face to face.
Now, if you're going out and having coffee with somebody, or you're having a business meeting, you're going to be face to face. And there is an advantage to that. And when you can bring that onto the internet, make it a little bit more scalable, that that's helpful. And so I think the people that transition, the quickest way to win in this new world, where we're selling everything through the internet, but people's businesses haven't caught up yet. They haven't brought that human advantage on to their website. And so that's what we're trying to help them with. Yeah, you know, and something that's powerful for those.
I don't think we've mentioned yet. But literally yesterday, David, you sent me a message using warm welcome, shows up in my email, I can see the embed. So I see your face, click on it, you say my name. And it's personalized that way. And there's something about the approach that is feels so simple, yet genuine. Because it's not like you're trying to be an actor, or present something that you're not right, like you're using your conversational voice. You're not trying to sound like someone you're not, you're not really, really you're not reading off a script. And so even if you're saying something, then you kind of stumble, you just keep going try to do it.
One, one, take the cameras typically from your webcam. But yet, you can still plug in like a nice webcam if you want to. But there's something about that just simplified approach as if you're talking on FaceTime to a family member or friend. And it was the kind of that that first initial response. And so you feel like there's this good feeling of an obligation around like, Oh, you know, I, I want to respond like this is a priority for me, because this is like a one to one reach out versus like, Hey, everyone, like everywhere, you know, it's more a lot more personalized.
And I like that. Yeah, you nailed it. We still have this expectation of response when we see somebody's face, right? If you're walking down the street, and somebody stops and asks you a question, it would be very awkward for you to just look at them, and then keep walking, right? Yeah. But we do that with emails every day when they're just text or a website every day when it's just text or graphics or promotional broadcast type of video, where when we see a human who's talking to us, and ask them this something they were much more likely to respond to that and we are text based communication, even if it's a personalized one to one email, or a personalized message that says we're just getting over text text is a terrible way for humans to communicate.
Yeah, and the difficult thing too is, is sometimes with texts, bait like text message based marketing too. It's it's really fine line as far as like getting contacted to your personal device, oftentimes or business device through text message, which I feel like is most often off putting that it is, I guess, on putting and getting people to respond that way. But there's some that about showing up in email with the personal video approach that we've seen only shipped in 2020, with more people going virtual with their businesses. But the importance of the cell's cycle, and including video throughout the entire customer experience, and realizing, hey, you don't necessarily have to go and hire a professional film crew to film all your videos, you can have these interactions and depending on what you're selling, or simply just what kind of information you want to research and collect from your customers.
You can simply use the tools you have on you from your phone to your webcam, and there's no extra budget involved. Just a simple way to engage. Yeah, yep. Yeah, just have to show them do it. And exactly, you're right, whether it's at the early stage and lead gen or early part of the funnel. By adding video to that is probably the quickest, easiest, cheapest way to increase the amount of leads that actually move on to the next step.
So yeah, on the, on the flip side, right at the end, like having a personal video, or just a video in general, that is more engaging, when somebody is going to unsubscribe, right? Like, put a warm welcome video on your unsubscribe page that says, hey, I'm DJ, I'm the founder. And it looks like we've blown it in some way. I want to make that right, I want to let you know, I stand behind this product. And so push one of the buttons below, you can send me a text, audio message, video message, whatever you want, send me an email. But let's, you know, give me a chance to make this Right, right. Just doing that alone will will decrease your turn. Right. And it's not a personalized video, I'm not sending a personalized video to every single person.
But it's a personal video. It's allowing people to see me as a human, another business owner who doesn't get everything right, I'm putting that out there may have knowledge in that, as they're about to unsubscribe. And I'm just inviting them to give me a chance. And again, it's not hard. It's not something that you have to get all dolled up or take you five minutes to put that on your web page. Right? You're in, you have an immediate result. Yeah, exactly. You know, and one thing that when you did send me that message yesterday, you asked me a question that kind of really brings me back to the simplicity of getting started with this kind of approach of building.
What I like to call like a video sales funnel or building a video supply inside of your business is one of the first steps you can take with mastering content and showing up for your audience is committing to engaging and having one conversation per day with your perfect fit customer. And in doing so, whether it's through warm welcome, and maybe to based on your customer, you know, you have to go through text, whatever it may be, you know, a call, if you have one conversation a day with a customer, not only are you understanding their current problems, a way that you can craft a better solution. But you're able to have that marketing touch point every single day and maybe eventually close them on one of your products and services or just simply just help them and give out that free kind of value. And so to me, it all comes back to that one action item of committing to one conversation at least a day.
There should be many more than that, but at least one a day. Yeah, that is a great, great challenge. And I think people often don't do that because of the time and energy it takes to just coordinating. Right? Yeah. Right to write to a client to try and get you know, synced up schedule wise, like it's very difficult. It takes extra energy and effort to do that. Where when you can do it asynchronously. Right? I could send you a quick little question over video when it was convenient for me and you could answer it when it was convenient for you. You know scheduling no callin Lee no back and forth, it's just done in a matter of minutes. That's a, I think, a better approach, or maybe just a new approach that we haven't had the ability to do before.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's in the fact that you can do it through video. And it's not like you have to drop into someone's DMS on Instagram, or these other places, right? Like, it's, it's literally direct to them or direct to more than just one, as you're talking about with like, you know, avoiding that churn rate and engaging with them. They're at the bottom of the funnel. And I like in a way that it's, it's doesn't feel as spammy. And it's like, what do you have to lose? You're not, you're not going overly polished with it, you're not trying too hard. It's just and you're keeping it simple, keeping a message less than 60 seconds. And like you did with me yesterday, you know, using a perfect egg as case study, to the solution of warm welcome. Is, is a simple message. And you are showing the understanding of the person by talking about them. And then you are inviting them to just to take action on one thing, one call to action in the video. And the call to action is not necessarily be like go by now. It's more of just like, Hey, I'm curious, like, can you reply to me? And then what? what that is going to do is maybe provide some instruction, right?
That's helpful for your business. But start that conversation that can happen every day. So yeah, no, I just I think it's so I think it's incredible. I think it's so good. And it's it's much better, more genuine way to show up. Beyond say just spamming people, which I'm sure you get many of these across social media, and you're messengers of people trying to do business with you and pitching right off the bat. Yep, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, we started out with just video email. And then we realized, hey, the website is really, yes, goldmine. And we can help people improve their websites dramatically by this, you know, conversational video level, or video embed, and you can have a nice big video on your web page that people can interact with. And, you know, that's something that you would have thought would have happened 20 years ago with the internet. Right, because you walk into a store, while there's somebody there to greet you, you know, you walk into the Apple Store, there's somebody there to give you a warm welcome to say, Hey, we're glad you're here. Is there anything I can help with, with, you know, you walk into almost any store, there's going to be some sort of sales rep or clerk is there that welcomes you, greets you, and ask if they can help with anything. The internet is void of humans, right?
We have these chat bots, which everybody hates, we've got these, you know, text base kind of customer service things. But that's all like completely missing the human touch the human element, right? You don't you don't communicate empathy, over a chatbot, or even a customer service chat, right? It's just almost impossible to do so. So all you can do is give people information if you can't help them really understand the product much better through text, right? I'm selfish. I'm thinking I'm trying to describe it through the text of a live chat widget like Give me a break, right? Why can't I just be on an interactive live video with somebody from the company, they can show me the product, they can walk me through it. Like, that builds trust so much faster than someone you know, chatting back and forth, giving you canned responses. And, and yet, it's taken us It took us this, you know, COVID thing for people to realize, Oh, geez, there's a better way to sell online. Maybe we should add humans back into the internet. And so it's it's funny, the things that disrupt our art are kind of status quo way of going about things.
But anyway, we're excited about the change. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure as you're saying that, as I thought, I'm sure many of you listening or watching thought the same thing of one of your most recent customer service calls, say with another company where you're trying to get customer support. And you're either put on hold for most likely hours on end, like I feel that way and you're you're getting annoyed and frustrated because it's like you get to one department they're like, Oh, this is not really our department. Let me put you on hold again, you list systems, crazy cheesy music, and then you're put to another line and literally there's been times that I've like been linked Up to probably three different departments before they actually maybe resolve my issue with something whether it's like government related, business related, and the customer support support experiences is terrible, because it's causing you to waste a lot of time.
And so to eliminate that and get direct to human to get the support, you need that video approach and the on demand experience, right, because like thinking like, why we've gone to on demand TV and film watching from the Netflix or the amazon prime of the worlds, it's because we no longer want to have to deal with commercials, which is, again, that kind of time waste. We want direct access to the content we need right now. And the answers we need right now. And so that on demand customer support, I think is incredible to have that back and forth. And a response time that works with with our timeline as well. And in videos is such a great way like whether it's like face to face, maybe you have to use quick screen share, to demonstrate a resolution. And this is just speaking the customer service side, let alone the other aspects of the customer experience.
You know, we're talking about the website, we're talking about email, and other forms of communication. So yeah, no, this is great. Yep, yeah, just about any business, you know, we're kind of more in the tech space. But think about somebody that's selling versus online. Like, if they were to go into a print shop, there would be somebody there to talk into the differences as a person. Right? And show them this one. Oh, look how this one hands look how this one opens, look at the zipper. Right? The Internet, they don't have they think that a pretty promotional video, and some text is going to sell the person it's like no, have a person have a human there, just like you would if you had a store that's available, you know, they can be working on other things, if no one's if no one's there to chat with them.
But if somebody on your website is wanting information about your product, thinking about buying it, why would you not be there present to help them, you know, buy your stuff, like a no brainer. But we think that fancy graphics and text is going to do the sale and it's just not. Yeah, or help us stand out too. I mean, it's just it takes sometimes just a little tweaks to that experience, and not to have just like another mediocre website experience, which is, you know, truly an online store or storefront going to your website. And that's where people actually buy what you offer online.
And to make it as easy as possible, like be that person who greets them at the door, which is when they land on your website. And And so yeah, like it's hopefully you feel the inspiration around stepping into using video more with your sales conversations and customer conversations. Because it's it is truly a warm welcome. Have an experience. Make it genuine and show for your audience that way the Internet has been it's been good for buying things but terrible for selling things. And yes, we're we're trying to make it a lot better sales experience for both the business and the customer. Yeah, incredible.
Well, David, this has been so good. Where can people learn more about warm welcome. And get started with building out that, that solution inside of their business? Yeah, they can just go over to warm welcome calm, check it out. Lots of different ways to use it. You can use it just kind of embedded video on your website or through emails. We're creating some neat use cases for podcasters to help them own their network and not be as reliant on the platforms, you know, helping people get the names, email addresses of their clients. Because if you sell something on Amazon, you don't know who bought it. you distribute a podcast, you don't know who's listening.
We're trying to help businesses get control of that again, and just have those direct conversations with the customers. Yeah, wonderful. Well, we'll definitely make sure to include that down below. And David, thanks so much for your time. Yeah.
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