Build Strong Business Relationship With Video Messaging
Better business relationships with video messaging
Our guest this week is Ethan Beute. Ethan is Chief Evangelist at BombBomb, a platform to build better business relationships with video messaging. He is also the host of The Customer Experience Podcast, and co-author of Rehumanize Your Business and Human-Centered Communication.
Questions:
· What is “digital pollution” and how does it affect today’s business professionals?
· Why is the goal of getting attention not enough?
· What does it mean to be “human-centered” in our daily, digital communication?
· What is the role of a video message in the day-to-day?
Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript
Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.
James Taylor 0:00
I’m James Taylor, and you’re listening to the SpeakersU podcast a show for aspiring and professional speakers. This episode is with my co-host, Maria Franzoni. Enjoy the episode. This is a phenomenal guest that we have today, we’re going to be talking about building better business relationships with video messaging. So we’re not talking about zoom. We’re not talking about WebEx or stuff. We’re doing something a little bit different today. And our guest this week is Ethan Butte. Ethan is chief evangelist at BombBomb a platform to build better business relationships with video messaging. He is also the host of the customer experience podcast and co-author of rehumanizing your business and human-centered communication. Please welcome to this show. Ethan beaut.
Ethan Beute 0:47
Thanks so much.
Maria Franzoni 0:49
Great to have you in the center spot there. I’m trying to move you across and it’s not there you go. Hello, Ethan. Hello. Oh, much. Thank you so much for joining us. And it’s wonderful that everybody knows where you’re from because you’ve got it in your name, title because we’re going to be talking about you. Yeah, your company. Yeah. But even before we start, one of the things you talk about is digital pollution. And how it affects today’s business. Can you tell me what digital pollution is?
Ethan Beute
Ethan Beute 1:16
Yes, digital pollution is any unwelcome digital distraction. It’s something that all of us experience. And I think once I start sharing a couple of ideas, you could pile on with some of your own, you could look in your spam folder right now and get a sense of digital pollution. We were talking before we went live here about some organizations intentionally sending fake phishing emails to train their employees to be more scrutinized than what’s in their inbox? And is this link safe to click, can I download this thing that’s kind of on the dangerous end? And we’re training ourselves to protect ourselves from dangerous digital pollution, and kind of the innocent, and it’s that just silly frustrating stuff where you either have a typo or an autocorrect, where someone completely misunderstands what you intended. And somehow, you have to go back and forth and figure out what the person or what you meant. In other cases, we find ourselves, we pick up our phone, maybe. And there are five new messages like text messages. And it’s because someone put us in a group text message, and we’re like, I didn’t ask to be in this group message, I don’t need all these messages. And then in the middle, this is the big thing for business practitioners really in any role. One, we’re often creating it for other people, because we’re not good enough about thinking about who’s on the receiving end of a digital message or experience that we’re creating and sending and therefore, we’re diminishing our reputation, we’re creating moments that people can ignore or delete us, or heaven forbid, block us, and these types of things. And even if we are doing an amazing job of reaching people with a high level of intention, really good, focused, targeted messaging that’s very specific to who it’s for. Even when we’re doing that, we must understand that we’re operating in an increasingly noisy and polluted digital environment, that doesn’t give us the benefit of the doubt that has us fighting for attention even when we deserve it. And people want to hear from us. And these channels also have a visual and emotional impoverishment that I think we all take for granted. And so when we talk about digital pollution, you know, we can talk about it in a variety of different ways, and from a variety of different perspectives. But we need to know that we need to be more conscious, intentional, and focused in the way that we’re trying to reach out and engage people every day. Because these spaces that we’re all increasingly operating in a pandemic or not, are more challenging to reach people and build trust and create engagement and build relationships to generate a more positive reputation. And ultimately, of course, to grow revenue. It’s just getting harder and harder to do.
Maria Franzoni 3:54
Oh, my goodness, you’ve just described so many experiences that I have, either in my email or on social media. It’s just like, I’m thinking, yep, yeah, yeah. Recognize that. Recognize that.
Ethan Beute 4:03
Any time. You’re like, why did I get this? Who is this from? Is this really from that person? What are they? What am I supposed to do with this message? As the call to action is not clear? Or like, why is it even in front of me like, and so you know, we all know that in our social feeds, when people put that stuff in front of us, and we just ignore it. We don’t like we don’t comment. If that happens three or four times. It’s like they don’t even exist in that network anymore, because social networks are so smart about filtering those feeds. But we have to know that that filtering is coming to every other channel, too.
James Taylor 4:36
Hmm, yeah, we know we’re starting to see Apple made some announcements recently that in terms of changing their email, so things aren’t gonna say go into your email unless it has some certain kind of characteristics to it as well. So why is the goal of getting attention? Not enough anymore? Yeah,
Goal of getting attention not enough
Ethan Beute 4:55
I think you know, sometimes people would say things like, and I’ve heard it even the past couple of years. You know, attention is the currency of the economy. And I think it’s just not, I think you would probably both agree to that trust. If we’re going to say something like that trust is more the currency of the economy. Trust is the grease in the glue. Trust makes everything go faster. And where there’s trust, good people, good situations, good opportunity stick. And so when we think about getting attention, and this is especially true in a video messaging is a theme. And we’ll get more into detail on video messaging, because James, I know you’re a very extensive practitioner and advocate of it yourself. You know, so many people take on something like video messaging or another tool or technique or practice, or like, Oh, this is different than what other people are doing, I’m gonna go get attention. And that doesn’t go far enough. Because if we get someone’s attention, good job, that’s a necessary precursor to all the other things we want to have happened. But we need to be prepared. When we get that attention, time and attention are two of those valuable things that anyone can give us. So when someone gives that to us, as a business practitioner, we need to honor it, we need to reward it, we need to say, I’m giving you more than you ever expected in exchange for this time and attention. And that is where are we consistently if we can consistently do that, that’s where we build trust. That’s what provokes people to reply. That’s what generates conversations, and sharing, and all this other productive stuff that we need and want in our businesses every day. And so if we’re just seeking to get attention, we’re going to burn those opportunities out pretty quickly, we’re going to burn our team members out and we’re just essentially playing parlor tricks to find new and different ways to get attention. The real game is, how do I give someone something that they want more of, so that the next time in front, I’m in front of them, they open it, they like it, they comment, they reply, they click, they do whatever the opportunity is, and in that positive loop that we can create. Trust just reinforces itself. And so if you’re playing the attention game, you’re playing the shallow game, you’re playing in my epic game, and it’s not going to get you as far as you need and want to go with people.
James Taylor 7:04
So when we have that horrible thing of bait and switch, where, you know, the headline on the website or the news feed is like this thing and you go, Oh, that’s interesting. And you go in there, and you’re scrolling for like five minutes. And I still haven’t gotten to like the thing that was actually in the headline, and it’s just and you feel okay, I don’t trust that now that you’re having emails as well, I think of all the emails are coming in my inbox. And I know now which ones are providing not just getting attention, but they’re providing value. They are they’re respecting me or respecting my time. And they’re not going to the there’s a trust element there. I trust them. And I’ll stick them to the front of my inbox, everything else goes into the promotions or, or gets deleted.
Ethan Beute 7:49
Yeah, I love your use of the word respect there. I think it’s exactly the right word. We want to feel respected as individual human beings want to be seen, heard, understood, appreciated. And if we feel respected by somebody else, that’s just an amazing feeling. And so we should think about what are we doing? And how are people feeling on the other end of it? And a keyword I have for what you started that off on James is anticipating sentiment, this idea that like you’ve created this promise that something is going to be worth my time and attention. And so I started investing, but I’m disappointed. So like, I like this and disappointment thing like like, you know, be here at this time for this thing, okay, I show up and it’s like, oh, that was extremely disappointing, that was not worth my time and attention. And to your point too, we start building those associations, humans are pattern-making machines. If I see your name, and it’s associated with something positive, and I see your name again, and it’s associated with a positive experience, again, all of a sudden, you’re on that track likewise. And on the other hand, if our name our sales, reps, name, our company’s name, our brand name starts to become associated with anticipating sentiment of just to use that word one more time, then we’re training those people and then those people and their real behavior are training the machines whether or not we’re worth the time and attention in the future and we can be on the positive track or we can be on the negative track and it’s really up to us.
Maria Franzoni 9:11
I love that word and disappointment I’m stealing that it’s really good. I’m gonna do that I operate. I use I do have a lot of anticipation in life. That’s interesting. So tell me about human-centered how to be human-centered. What does it mean and how do we do it in our digital communication?
Digital Pollution
Ethan Beute 9:28
Yeah, thank you that’s so Steven I Steve is my longtime friend and team member our Chief Marketing Officer here at BombBomb we co-authored both of those books to rehumanize your business and the new one human-centered communication. The subtitle is a business case against digital pollution. We generated digital pollution as kind of the bad guy or you know nefarious character in this whole thing, this persistent cloud that makes our whole digital and online experience a little bit fresher. Treating and annoying and confusing. And sometimes we offered a couple of examples there are phishing schemes and other things, cyber-attacks, malware ransomware. Some of it is even threatening and dangerous to individuals and businesses. And the way around that is some of the themes. And James just hit on it in your last response. At some level, we came up with this framework for human-centered communication, we’re blending the principles of human-centered design, which is a 30, or 40-year-old design practice. And I’ll describe it quickly here in a moment with our daily digital communication. And when we can do that, then it’s more obvious to other people, why we’re reaching out what the opportunity is, whether it’s worth it for them, and whether or not they should proceed, getting us into that kind of positive loop that we’ve been talking about here for the past couple of minutes. And so, the three, IDEO is a design firm, they’re probably the most popular, and familiar proponent, advocate, and practitioner of Human-Centered Design, again, a 30 or 40-year-old practice, they designed the first Apple mouse using human-centered design principles. More recently, the design of water systems in Africa, using human-centered design principles, and all kinds of other products and services and systems and processes. So you can apply it to anything. And it operates at the center of three things. So think of these three circles I’m going to describe. The first is desirability and the needs of humans, what do people need and want? The next circle is feasibility, what does technology allow? And then the third one, the third circle is viability, what is necessary for business success? And when we operate at the center of those three things, and we start the whole process of what kind of message do we want to create? What kind of experience do we want to create? How are we designing a customer lifecycle experience? How are we recruiting and hiring and selecting and onboarding, and engaging and equipping and coaching and developing our employees, we can use these same ideas to inform those processes in the way that we’re connecting and communicating throughout. And the problem is, too many of us are operating at the intersection of viability, we start here instead of starting with the needs of what people want in need, what’s in their interest, what benefits our customer or our prospect or employee, or our recruit or a partner or a vendor or supplier, all these other stakeholders in our success. Instead of starting there, we start with what is business success? What is viable? What how do we define our success, and then we go straight to what is technology allows us to do what’s technically feasible. And you can start to see the danger of what happens when we operate only where those two circles are in our lap, and we leave out the needs of humans, which is to say nothing of the fact that we’re not even making it primary, we’re just kind of leaving it to the side completely. It means that we’re over automating our processes, we’re making too much machine-driven touch, we’re focused way more on efficiency than we are on effectiveness. And what results is a dehumanizing experience for the people executing those systems and processes. And for the people on the receiving end of those messages and experiences. And so, Human-Centered communication is just a call to risk to shift a little bit to the center of where those three circles meet, to put the needs and interests of other people first, and at least on equal footing as our own.
Maria Franzoni 13:23
I love that. I love that. Because I have to say I hate the fact that things have gone so automated, I do miss that human connection. And it seems to always be like a numbers game instead of thinking about let’s have quality relationships and build on those rather than you just feel like you’re a commodity rather than an individual human being. Don’t you love that? Love that, Ethan? Thank you.
Feasibility of technology
Ethan Beute 13:46 fv
Yeah, and that is just one quick note there. The interesting thing about the feasibility of technology is that it’s getting better and better at helping us understand individual human beings, and serve that information up to our team members who are on the front lines are directly engaging these people, we can use technology to do exactly what you want Maria to make to you know, even in a company where you have 1000s, or hundreds of 1000s or millions of customers technology allows us to equip our team members to see individual human beings as individual human beings and to create experiences that make them feel like individual human beings, instead of feeling like a number, or a piece of revenue, or a commodity or, or all these other things we could say. And so it’s just a matter of how we use these tools that we have at our disposal and the way that we motivate ourselves in the way we structure ourselves, to serve our customers and our potential customers and our employees and our recruits more effectively because that is the whole reason we’re in business in the first place.
James Taylor 14:46
Now one of the tools we can speak about is this idea of video messaging as one of the reasons I was keen to kind of can bring you on the show to talk about this idea of video messaging, specifically as it was released to The speakers I think I was first introduced to it by David Saverin. Who is a Coloradan over there as well, yeah, he told me about what you were doing BombBomb. And at that point, he was like one of the first speakers I saw using what we think now is personalized video or video messaging. And I just thought this is so cool because as much as I love automation and Maria knows how much I love automation automated things. I also love when you can put that humanistic side you mentioned like the human-centered side as well. And you can play with that and play with them there are differences as well sometimes. So he told me about this. So before we kind of get into maybe talking about how speakers are using, I can share some of the ways that we’re using it here in what we do in selling keynotes selling speeches. Can you tell us what is the role of a video message in the day today? Well, this idea of video messaging will tell us a little bit more about what that means and how strictly BombBomb is related to that.
Human-Centered
Ethan Beute 15:55
Sure, I may have mentioned that when we’re operating in these digital virtual and online spaces, we’re only going to be doing more in the future, not less, no matter how these our economies open up. And we can travel across states and nations and all these other things, we’re still going to be doing more of our work digitally, the virtual online is just a matter of fact. And so to your point, James, we need to find these moments to make a little bit of extra effort to be more personally human. And one of those reasons why is because the faceless typed-out text that we rely on all the time is both visually and emotionally impoverished. Right? It doesn’t have anything to look at or be attached to. It’s missing kind of the how we say it. It’s more exclusively what we say. And we all know that how we say something dramatically affects how it’s understood and what it means to the other person. Right? And what it means to the other person is the determinant of how effective our communication was, did they understand our intent, and here’s the key idea. People care more about our intent than anything else. Every human being judges, another human being on the two words, values, our warmth, and competence. Depending on who you listen to, you might get different words, but it always boils down to warmth and competence. And warmth includes so much of our intent in that word. I mean, what is our motivation? Are we sincere about it? Do we care about the other person? Do we believe in and care about what we’re saying? Do we have the other person’s best interests in mind? Now let’s get on the other side of it. If you are that other person who’s being presented with a message or an opportunity? Yeah, you want to know, is this person capable of delivering on their promises? That’s their competence. But we care about that less than? Do they care about me? Do they see me? Do they understand me? Do they seem to believe in what they’re saying? Do they seem to have my best interests in mind? And if you think about that, from an evolutionary standpoint, of course, we start there, because that protects us, right? If we encountered someone, historically, today, or anytime in the past that was highly competent, but had their interests in mind, we could very easily be taken advantage of. And the farther back we go, the more fatal that decision becomes. And so it becomes necessary to our survival, to protect ourselves by judging other people’s intent. Now, when we type out our messages and send them to people, or we type out our proposals and send them to people, we’re giving them no data, we’re giving them no information that allows them to judge our intent, we’re leaving it up to their own decision to say, based on their experience, and maybe what we’ve done before, we’re just leaving too many gaps and holes and stuff, but their mind is not satisfied in proceeding without that information. So they make it up, our brains just fill in the gaps. And the problem is, also for protective reasons, our brains fill in those gaps negatively, we assume the worst again, to protect ourselves from the worst-case scenario, which historically could have been fatal. Today, not so much. We’re talking about business decisions and dollars and pounds and things. It’s not as fatal. But you know, we still have that protective element in us as human beings. And so when we can mix some video messages in and what I’m talking about is a simple 32nd or 92nd, or 42 seconds, or minute and a half, or minute and 22nd video message that we record or screen recorded can be ourselves and what’s on our screen. When we mix some of these video messages into the rest of our digital communication. It conveys all of those things I was talking about that are missing, who I am, how I feel, what it feels like to be with me how much I care about this idea how much I seem to care about you how much I seem to understand you whether or not I have my best have your best interests in mind. Humans can judge that from us. It’s not as good as being in the same room as one another, but it’s the next best thing. Last point. Again, you mentioned this right off the top. It’s not like Zoom or WebEx or some of these live synchronous video platforms. This is about recording a message when it’s convenient for you. and sending it to one person or five people or 5000 people and each one of them opens it up and experiences you in person at their convenience. And then if you’re using a tool or a system or a platform like ours, or one of the other ones, you get that tracking data that says, who watched it, when, for how long, etc that allows you to follow up more intelligently.
James Taylor 20:19
I’m James Taylor, keynote speaker, and speaker business coach and this is the SpeakersU podcast. If you enjoy listening to conversations that will help you launch and grow your speaking business fast new thought possible, then you’ve come to the right place. Each week we discuss marketing strategies, sales techniques, as well as ideas to increase the profitability of your speaking business and develop your craft. You’ll find show notes for today’s episode, as well as free speaker business training at speakers u.com. This week’s episode is sponsored by SpeakersU the online community for international speakers, SpeakersU helps you launch grow and monetize your speaking business faster than you thought possible. If you want to share your message as a highly paid speaker, then SpeakersU will teach you how just go to SpeakersU.com to access their free speaker business training. It’s interesting, you know, we we, the what we often do as speakers, I always feel like we were given email. And as speakers, our best asset is our voice, hopefully, you know, things were using our voice in that way. And then suddenly, the tool that we’re given to sell and market ourselves is a written tool. So it feels like I’m going into battle with one hand tied behind my back. At least at least. So I when I learned about BombBomb and doing short video, emails, it was a real game-changer because suddenly I can feel I can put my personality in. And, knowing about signs and things, you know that when you see someone’s eye to eye, even if it’s not live, if it’s not synchronous, you know, the oxytocin kicks in their building of empathy. And you’re able to kind of go in, you’re able to communicate in a slightly different way than if you’re just writing a long email, it just doesn’t come in. So I just kind of want to share a memory of those some of these things that we do in terms of how we use the app. And I’d love to know, other ways Maybe you’re seeing people using BombBomb, especially the work that we do as speakers and experts and thought leaders. So we use it all the time. For cold outreach, we see an opportunity out there, you know, conference and event. I’ll just do a little quick 45-second video that you were saying, Hi, I’m James Taylor, I’m a keynote speaker on blardy blardy bear. I just saw your conferences coming up. I would love the opportunity. I’ve spoken for very similar clients in your industry for maybe mentioned them, here’s what we can we’re going to bring to the event. Let’s schedule time, let’s put a link Yes, you can do like the cold outreach that gets used a lot. The one that is just I’m still amazed how it almost feels like I have an unfair advantage. This and which is when I win like Maria and I would do this all the time when we do a discovery call with a client. We’re having a conversation. And at the end of that conversation, it’s over to the client to decide, you know, the next steps that you want to go ahead. Usually, they’ll often say, Okay, give me a week or you know, give me a few weeks while we share I speak with the rest of the team. So what I’ve tended to do and I think was David averin the first taught me this was I’ll just film a little quick video straight afterward. Just a little recap. 45 seconds recapping on that conversation, this is what we’re going to bring to it this is how it’s going to make your audience love it, you know, all those kind of things. And then you see them opening with the stats on that. And then the cool thing is sometimes about a week later, I’ll get a notification x y Zed person just opened and watch this video again. So I know they’re back in buy mode they’re now considering and that’s my perfect opportunity to send them a quick email saying hey, I know we spoke last week about me coming to speak at your event. Is it you ready now to make it to make a decision. And then they come up Wow. I was just thinking about that conversation you just had if we looked at you’re a mind reader. This just feels like an unfair advantage that I have over other speakers so that you’ve given it away I’ve given a few I’m not the only one I think David’s average was he’s a master of this stuff.
Short Email Videos
Ethan Beute 24:17
Yeah, I love David he’s awesome. And he is he’s right up the road from the fstrangest use of BombBombus. I’ve met him in person a couple of times I’ve read his books just a great guy. And I appreciate I did not know that connection. By the way, James before this time that we spent together I’m so glad that he inspired you and I’m so glad you’ve taken it as far as you have that follow up after the discovery call or that first appointment is one that I recommend to everyone in any business but especially in this one for a couple of the reasons you already offered. So I won’t double down on that one. Another one that I’ll share is if you’re in a position of putting forward a proposal, you know, I know sometimes it can go the other way that we’re where they’re putting a proposal to you but in the case that anyone’s putting forward a proposal on any type of engagement, speaking engagement, consulting, engagement, etc. You know what people normally ask about, you know what people are excited about, you know, people are sometimes confused about. And then you also know if you negotiated someone with someone on it, do a screen recording, as you present the proposal, don’t just say it’s attached, and give it a look. And let me know when you want to talk about it. Do a screen recording with yourself in the corner, the proposal on the screen and just do a quick walk and talk through it and highlight things that typically confuse people and why it’s there. And what it means if you’ve negotiated something point out. And you’re not going to see this explicitly, but they’re going to feel it is, I heard you, I listened, I included that in the proposal. Here it is right here, your direct interests are right here on this page. And so that’s another great use case. Another one is after an engagement, following up to say thank you, obviously to the people that made the event possible, where you feel like it’s appropriate, requesting a referral. Hey, I hope that you know, I thank you for sharing that speaker feedback with me, it seems like I was well-received, hey, if you know anyone else, putting out an event that would be a good speaker for if you could just do a mutual introduction, that’d be amazing. Like what however you prefer to request referrals, that’s another great way to do it. And to do it with video, because it kind of that social reciprocity and even obligation people feel, especially if you’ve performed or overperformed for that person. Another thing I like to do when I go to live events, especially if I’ve been on the stage is that, of course, I’ll provide calls to action, but also bring those to life. So if I’ll often give out my email address, because I don’t mind hearing from people directly. I don’t worry about the volume, as many audiences as I’ve been in front of on podcasts and sessions like this and on stages. so few people reach out that the ones that do are super engaged, you never know what those relationships will build. And so I’ll give out my email address, or we’ll swap business cards or that type of a thing. And after the event, I’ll take all of the emails that are in my inbox, and all the business cards and whoever else I meet might be collecting contact information. And I’ll just try and block an hour or depending on the size of the event two or three hours, and just send personal videos. And in the case that it’s a business card, I’ll just scratch a little note on the back so that I can remember kind of a personal nugget about that exchange. So I’m not trying to remember all, you know, 42 of these people all at one time, you know, three days or a week after the event. But that personal follow-up afterward. I feel like that’s how you build a legacy. That’s how you build a personal reputation. That’s how you make other people who cared enough about your presentation reach out to you or come up to the front of the stage afterward to ask you that question they were too afraid to ask in a group setting like honoring those people who actually care and reach out and raise their hand and step forward. I feel like if you do that consistently throughout your career, doors are going to open for you that you don’t even know to exist because you’re just operating in a way that makes people feel awesome.
Pay it Forward
James Taylor 27:59
There’s another one and in fact, there’s another one on that just you suddenly made me think of it reminded me of I haven’t done it for a while because I haven’t been to so many airports of late. But when I used to live, in California, we used to go over the Bay Bridge, and we used to pay for our car, you know, when before there were the things you could just go straight through, we used to pay our toll. And then we always pay for the person behind us. And I just used to love driving off and then looking in the rearview mirror and watching their face as they look confused. Because the total attendant said, Oh, the guy in front just paid for you. And they’re like what? So this idea of paying it forward. The other thing I do, I don’t know how many other speakers do this. But at the end of the speech, when I go back to when I go to the airport, fly-out or sit there in the lounge, just open the BombBomb app, and then I’ll do a little personal video, usually, it’s to the CEO because I’ve had or the owner of the event, because I’ve had a conversation with them. And I’ve usually asked them as well at the end. Know what you’re thinking about for next year. What’s your theme going to be for next year or something, I’ll sense it. Like, for me, I speak about innovation, creativity, very often after that, there’s a certain type of topic that might come after that. And I know some really good speakers. So what I’ll usually do is I’ll do little videos. Thanks so much for forgiving me. I would love it if you just leave the testimonial on my LinkedIn. But I also wanted to recommend a great speaker for you for next year. Her name is blah, feel free to reach out I’m happy to connect the two of you as well. That’s generated a lot of business for other people. So any speakers out there? We’re doing this, you know, pay it forward. It’s not always just about you think about the client like Ethan was saying there put the customer at the center customer-centric and think how else can we serve them and sometimes that’s not you as the speaker to do that.
Maria Franzoni 29:45
brilliant brilliant, brilliant. Ethan How can people grab this wonderful tool and how can they connect with you?
BombBomb
Ethan Beute 29:52
Super thank you for that. Again, my name is Ethan beat you can see it on the screen. I welcome direct connections I’m on all the social networks by my first And last name of course BombBomb isn’t all this on all the social networks by the word Bom twice put together you can learn more about the book at BombBomb comm slash book you can see both of the books there including this new one human-centered communication a digital case a business case against digital pollution and the BombBomb platform is at BombBomb COMM And you can learn more about it there if you have questions about it you can reach out to me directly Ethan eth n at BombBomb comm there is a two week free trial on pretty much every single page of the website if you want to get in there and try it out. James kindly mentioned the mobile app and I love that use case of you know, at the airport, it just has this like you’re bringing someone in this little moment of your life but in this personal insincere way. And it’s just a really interesting thing to look at, especially if you’re oriented so that people are walking around behind us just like an interesting moment of your life where you’re expressing gratitude, great use case for the mobile app works in Gmail works and outlook works and a bunch of other platforms as well. As you can get in there, try it out. And I recommend starting by sending some Thank you Good job or congratulations people to people. You know, think of people that you’ve interacted with recently or people you’ve seen in there in your social feed, just I keep it down on in a notebook that I keep next to me at my desk. And I just keep a running list. And I’ll just stop for 15 minutes in a day when I see that I have a block of time available. And I’ll just send videos to all those people. And I do it a few times a week. And it just really makes people feel appreciated. And it makes me feel awesome to like if you want to feel good. send messages like Thank you Good job, and congratulations 10 minutes a day, a couple of days a week. It’s just like this. It’s amazing. It feels great to you. It’s so great for your business relationships, and it’s healthy for everybody overall because everyone enjoys getting that message, you know, get replies like I loved your email, which no one ever says it’s like this, or you made my day or I needed to hear that today. Thank you so much like it’s just it’s simple but so meaningful. It’s kind of like a modern-day, handwritten note.
Maria Franzoni 32:00
We have to do a thank you video James for Ethan.
James Taylor 32:04
We have to do thank you. But what was the strangest use you’ve seen so far of someone using BombBomb? Um, you can rarely share publicly that is Yeah,
Ethan Beute 32:13
it’s not the strangest that well. Okay, so we do two quick things. One, you know, we’ve always had a very, we’re very pro-human. And we actively work in a variety of ways with the resources we have, and that we continue to create by serving people with a valuable platform. We’re constantly investing to re-humanize. We call it re-humanizing the planet to re-humanize populations of people who’ve been dehumanized by systems or circumstances. So we’ve long had like in anti-nudity, anti-pornography state. And you can imagine that those businesses came to us in the early days, they’re like, we want to subscribe, and we’re like, No, you cannot subscribe. And so anything that falls into that category, people wanted to do that. And we’ve had to cancel accounts to shut people down. So that’s like the most kind of over-the-top use. But something kind of fun and interesting. Like we have really practical use cases, like people that do ceiling of walls and concrete in basements, or people who replace and repair roofs. And some of it’s just like really practical stuff. And like you James has taken out the mobile app. But instead of saying thank you, customer, they’re saying, hey, customer I’m on your roof net right now. Or hey, customer, I’m down in your basement, right? Now check this thing out. We have all kinds of people in all kinds of businesses using this in a variety of ways. I think most of what we’re talking about when we’re talking about speakers is like you are your own best differentiator at some level, you are the product that you’re selling. So you need to be in these videos more often for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways. But for other people who have like physical products or they operate in physical spaces, it’s fun to see people bring others into those moments. using video which is still photos don’t do it typed out in text doesn’t do it. You know, property surveyors, where is the property line? Where are the utility lines, buried underground, this type of stuff, you’re doing videos, just there are so many use cases delightful. I’ve learned so much from our customers in our community. Just like you know, you got your initial spark from David, I’m getting that spark all the time. From now. 10s of 1000s of people and the early days it was with dozens or hundreds of people. But it just constantly re-engages me with this idea that there’s just different and better and almost anyone working in a professional capacity can benefit by mixing one or two of these messages into their day.
Maria Franzoni 34:41
And you imagine dog walkers out with your dog send you your dog. I want my I tell you about my car company. When I had my car service. They sent me a video showing me around the car showing me that this is that that was fine. This was my checklist that was for this and we’ve run out of time, James, what have we got left? I’m sure there’s something we’ve missed. Well, we’ve missed
Tip of the Week
James Taylor 34:59
We always do this little thing like a tool of the week or Tip of the Week. So I don’t know if you have one Ethan van, maybe Maria, if you have one before we finish up this week,
Ethan Beute 35:10
I will start with you, Maria, how need to generate mine.
Maria Franzoni 35:13
Okay, so mine is not related to video mine is related to banking. So if you have a limited company in the UK, it’s really hard to set up a bank account with a high street bank. It’s literally like pulling teeth. So I recently changed my business, I need to create a new business bank account. And I went to the Starling app. And I have to say my experience was amazing. Within 24 hours, I had my new account. And it’s really easy to access. They tell me when money comes in and where it’s come from, they give me a little ping, which I love. I love that particular Ping. They tell me when money’s gone out and who it’s gone to is just so easy. It syncs with my bookkeeping and accounting package. Love, it cannot say enough about how good it is. I won’t mention the High Street banks that give me grief styling is excellent. There you go. That’s probably for UK more than I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s International. But certainly, from the UK point of view, it’s great.
Ethan Beute 36:08
Awesome. I’m going to go with an anti-app, I’m going to go with silence and perhaps silence with solitude, and perhaps silence with solitude with movement, walking, running, hiking, whatever. And the reason I say that is if you’re watching a show like this, and you’ve made it all the way to like minute 36 or 37, you’re investing in your learning and growth. So I assume you watch other videos, you read other books, you listen to podcasts, and you’re constantly investing in learning and growing. And for me, something that was super valuable that I started doing maybe even a decade ago was intentionally taking out the earbuds and just spending time with my thoughts. Sometimes I’ll focus on them and other times, I’ll just see what happens. And that’s for me, and I’d be interested in your take James. For me, that’s where a lot of creativity comes from when I give my mind a break and the chance for seemingly disparate ideas to kind of intersect and, and make a new idea because there are no new ideas under the sun. They’re just new combinations of them. And I think our brains are an amazing app. And I think, in our society and our culture, especially for younger people who’ve never been trained to accept boredom as a legitimate potential reality, which I grew up with a lot of from time to time. And so you make something of it with creativity and imagination. I think make forcing those moments into our day is a huge value to your personal and professional growth and development. So I’ll go anti app.
James Taylor 37:33
Now. But yeah, we’ve had the yin and the yang of the two things there. Ethan, thank you so much, Maria, lovely to see you again
Maria Franzoni 37:40
this week. I’m do thank you. So I thoroughly enjoyed that. That was wonderful. Thank you.
Ethan Beute 37:45
I need to thank you so much for the opportunity. I appreciate you both so much. And I hope you have a great rest of your day and we’re not that far away. hope people will have an amazing weekend.
James Taylor 37:53
You can subscribe to the SpeakersU podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts while you’re there. leave us a review. I appreciate it. I’m James Taylor and you’ve been listening to the SpeakersU podcast.
