From Startup Struggles to Sustainable Growth: Dennis Kelly's Journey with Postalytics

Dennis Kelly: 00:00:00

We ended up spending nine nights at Children's Hospital in

Dennis Kelly: 00:00:03

Boston, with teams of different people coming in, trying to figure out, how

Dennis Kelly: 00:00:08

to deal with this thing and how to solve it and, that made me step back

Dennis Kelly: 00:00:15

and say, all right, Dennis, the heck you doing here, working these 20 hour

Dennis Kelly: 00:00:20

days, you got a young family, life is precious and can be short and so

Dennis Kelly: 00:00:27

that has impacted my life ever since.

Dennis Kelly: 00:00:30

but also at that particular point in time, I got this failed startup.

Tim Winders: 00:00:46

Hello everyone.

Tim Winders: 00:00:47

Welcome back to another episode of seek go create.

Tim Winders: 00:00:51

This is where we challenge traditional notions of success and explore

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inspiring stories of transformation.

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And we dig down in places like leadership, business, and ministry, definitely

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going to be doing a good dive into.

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business today, but probably tying all that together.

Tim Winders: 00:01:06

I'm your host, Tim Winders.

Tim Winders: 00:01:08

I'm an executive coach and I love getting to do what I do, which is ask questions

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and just talk to really cool people.

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We've got a great guest today.

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Our guest is Dennis Kelly.

Tim Winders: 00:01:17

He is the CEO of Postalytics, which is a dynamic software company

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in a very interesting industry, specializing in direct mail automation.

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I'm excited to talk about that.

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He's got over 30 years of experience in starting and growing Technology

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ventures, it's got a wealth of knowledge to share, real quick.

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Postalytics empowers marketers to do more with less time offering streamlined

Tim Winders: 00:01:40

production, seamless integration in the marketing tech stack and real time

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analytics for direct mail campaigns, which I like to say, I consider

Tim Winders: 00:01:49

direct mail an old school business.

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So it looks like they're marrying some old school stuff with

Tim Winders: 00:01:53

some new tech, which I love it.

Tim Winders: 00:01:56

Dennis, welcome to Seek Go Create.

Dennis Kelly: 00:01:59

Thank you, Tim.

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:00

It's a pleasure to be here today.

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:01

Excited to speak with the Seek Go Create audience.

Tim Winders: 00:02:04

Yeah, I'm glad we're, chatting now and going to have fun, but

Tim Winders: 00:02:08

let's do this before we get started.

Tim Winders: 00:02:09

We've just bumped into each other and I say, Dennis, what do you do?

Tim Winders: 00:02:14

What do you tell people when they ask you what you do?

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:17

that's an interesting question.

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:19

And I think that, when you've lived a long life, like I have,

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:23

you wear a lot of different hats.

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:25

And, so I would currently say what I do is, I'm I try to be, the best

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:30

husband and father and friend I can be.

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:33

and at the same time try to get, startup companies off the ground in flourishing.

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:38

And sometimes those, goals are, at odds with each other and there's, some, time

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:44

constraint challenges in our lives.

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:46

I think, by eliminating everything else, I'm not a good golfer.

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:50

I used to fish.

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:51

I can't fish anymore.

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:52

I got to focus on these things.

Dennis Kelly: 00:02:53

So that's what I really try to focus on.

Tim Winders: 00:02:56

I've always said, I think you and I may be in a

Tim Winders: 00:02:58

similar age bracket, I believe.

Tim Winders: 00:03:01

And, I've been telling people recently that part of life is just coming to

Tim Winders: 00:03:05

the realization of the things you're either not good at or don't want

Tim Winders: 00:03:08

to do or don't want to do again.

Tim Winders: 00:03:10

And I'm the same way with golf that we may lose a good portion

Tim Winders: 00:03:13

of the audience right here.

Tim Winders: 00:03:14

I lived in golf course community for a while, thought, you know, and I'm

Tim Winders: 00:03:18

semi retired, I'm going to play golf.

Tim Winders: 00:03:20

I don't, I don't do any golf anymore.

Tim Winders: 00:03:21

So it sounds like you came to that also.

Dennis Kelly: 00:03:24

no, I, unfortunately, I still struggle, and try to squeeze

Dennis Kelly: 00:03:27

it around here and there when I can.

Dennis Kelly: 00:03:29

and do that very poorly.

Dennis Kelly: 00:03:30

the thrill of the chase is still there for me.

Dennis Kelly: 00:03:33

The execution and results, not there.

Tim Winders: 00:03:36

So you're not going to join the senior tour.

Tim Winders: 00:03:37

Is that what I'm hearing?

Tim Winders: 00:03:38

You say,

Dennis Kelly: 00:03:39

not anytime in the near future, for sure.

Tim Winders: 00:03:42

it's a tough thing, really, though, the, you mentioned something

Tim Winders: 00:03:45

I, I've done this pendulum swing to over the past, maybe 10, 15 years as

Tim Winders: 00:03:50

we've gone through a lot of changes with our businesses and companies.

Tim Winders: 00:03:53

I, for a while dropped.

Tim Winders: 00:03:56

All business items from the, what do you do kind of conversation?

Tim Winders: 00:04:02

I would say I'm a husband, I'm a father, child of God, I would use just things that

Tim Winders: 00:04:06

would be more, I don't know, sound better.

Tim Winders: 00:04:10

and I'm starting to creep back in and use things like I have this.

Tim Winders: 00:04:14

Big umbrella of executive coach.

Tim Winders: 00:04:16

And so I do think it speaks to the balance that's challenging.

Tim Winders: 00:04:21

your startup environments, that's a hard charging environment.

Tim Winders: 00:04:25

That's not a established company.

Tim Winders: 00:04:28

You work, eight hours a day.

Tim Winders: 00:04:30

You go home startups, high energy, and it sounds like you're

Tim Winders: 00:04:32

still in that role, correct?

Dennis Kelly: 00:04:35

I am.

Dennis Kelly: 00:04:35

and, Postalytics is my sixth startup.

Dennis Kelly: 00:04:38

so I've been doing this now for quite a while.

Dennis Kelly: 00:04:40

and you're right.

Dennis Kelly: 00:04:41

It's not a, just a nine to five kind of job.

Dennis Kelly: 00:04:47

that being said, you learn over time that it's also not just the sprint and

Dennis Kelly: 00:04:54

a startup is really a marathon, and you need to think about how you pace yourself.

Dennis Kelly: 00:05:01

In a marathon and, in a marathon, there are little sprints where, the

Dennis Kelly: 00:05:06

best runners are really pushing it and they're trying to, make, a move

Dennis Kelly: 00:05:12

against the field for a particular amount of time for various reasons.

Dennis Kelly: 00:05:18

But at the end of the day, they got to finish.

Dennis Kelly: 00:05:20

and you learn when you do these startup that, you can, if you go through an

Dennis Kelly: 00:05:27

all out sprint for a period of time, you end up pretty burnt out and makes

Dennis Kelly: 00:05:32

it hard to execute over the long haul.

Dennis Kelly: 00:05:35

the metaphor that I try to think of now is.

Dennis Kelly: 00:05:38

Is you're a top marathon runner and you're running against other top

Dennis Kelly: 00:05:43

marathon runners and there's a lot of strategy involved in how much energy

Dennis Kelly: 00:05:46

you exert at any given point in time.

Tim Winders: 00:05:50

So if someone's been involved with six startups.

Tim Winders: 00:05:55

Have you always had that mindset you just shared of the marathon or has

Tim Winders: 00:06:01

this evolved over time, go back a little bit and what have you learned?

Tim Winders: 00:06:04

What have you gained your wisdom from all these six startups?

Tim Winders: 00:06:09

And I know that's a big question, but give us a few items that

Tim Winders: 00:06:12

you've gleaned from that.

Dennis Kelly: 00:06:14

Yeah, sure.

Dennis Kelly: 00:06:15

certainly I, have not always had this perspective on, on startup life.

Dennis Kelly: 00:06:21

I started really in my twenties.

Dennis Kelly: 00:06:24

And, did a bunch of startups in my twenties and thirties, and, in those

Dennis Kelly: 00:06:29

years, I was much more of a sprinter and, I was pushing, midnight, 2 a.

Dennis Kelly: 00:06:36

m.

Dennis Kelly: 00:06:36

in the morning, work days on a regular basis, trying to raise a

Dennis Kelly: 00:06:40

young family and try to do everything, and, It's just not sustainable.

Dennis Kelly: 00:06:46

It's not a sustainable approach.

Dennis Kelly: 00:06:48

And I guess when you're really young, you can do that for a little bit.

Dennis Kelly: 00:06:52

But, I think time has taught that, that, there will always

Dennis Kelly: 00:06:58

be work tomorrow in a startup.

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:01

You will never, ever get to the bottom of your list of things to do.

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:05

Not once.

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:07

And so by accepting that and realizing that it's a daily process of prioritizing

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:13

and reprioritizing and focusing on a few things that we can get done that are going

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:18

to move the needle, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to manage through this

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:23

roller coaster of emotions that happen.

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:27

when you and a group of highly committed people are, 100% focused on, on

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:34

goals, it, it's, it, there are things that happen and the, they come outta

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:39

left field and you think, why did, couldn't I foreseen that happening?

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:43

and it takes you down a rattle hole.

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:45

and then there are days when amazing things happen and, and modulating

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:49

the emotions of those ups and downs and thinking of this over a longer

Dennis Kelly: 00:07:53

horizon, really helps to create a mindset of continual growth, that,

Dennis Kelly: 00:08:01

that doesn't allow you to necessarily get caught up in, in such a.

Dennis Kelly: 00:08:06

A deep sprint that you end up getting burnt out or such a deep

Dennis Kelly: 00:08:10

hole, emotionally that you're having a hard time breaking out of it.

Tim Winders: 00:08:15

I'm curious, and this is a, anyway, it's just an interesting question.

Tim Winders: 00:08:20

I've dealt with a lot of business.

Tim Winders: 00:08:22

I've been around for a lot of them worked with some myself, but were most

Tim Winders: 00:08:27

of yours, I'll use the term bootstrap.

Tim Winders: 00:08:30

I think you know what I mean.

Tim Winders: 00:08:31

What was it just like, you know, you used your funding or some

Tim Winders: 00:08:35

close funding around it, or were there outside investors, there's a.

Tim Winders: 00:08:39

Follow up question I've got to this.

Tim Winders: 00:08:41

You think you might know where I'm headed with this, but, just give in

Tim Winders: 00:08:44

general, what were some or all of your startups as they came along?

Dennis Kelly: 00:08:50

Yeah.

Dennis Kelly: 00:08:51

Yeah.

Dennis Kelly: 00:08:51

So they've really been a variety of different, types of startups.

Dennis Kelly: 00:08:55

and so post lytic is much more of a bootstrap startup, that, we really

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:02

haven't done, really anything from an outside funding standpoint.

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:05

But I've had others that were, for example, right in the

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:09

midst of the dot com, boom.

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:12

and it was about raising a ton of venture capital money and sprinting as

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:15

fast as you could for a period of time.

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:18

and so I've done, angel invested startup, venture invested

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:23

startup, self invested startup.

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:26

and I've got a wide variety of perspectives and.

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:30

I think generally, you have to think a lot about your financing strategy, and

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:36

that, I think you can make mistakes, particularly early, earlier in your

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:39

career by getting seduced by, the ability to go get a great big check.

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:45

and different businesses require different types of capital.

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:51

and so I think you need to be really thoughtful about the funding mechanisms

Dennis Kelly: 00:09:56

that will work for a specific business.

Tim Winders: 00:10:00

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:10:00

So this is a real loaded question because I've had to investigate this with myself.

Tim Winders: 00:10:08

I'm going to ask Dennis of all the models you've worked with and

Tim Winders: 00:10:13

all that you have been a part of.

Tim Winders: 00:10:16

What works best for Dennis, for his personality, for the way he functions,

Tim Winders: 00:10:21

for the way he lives his life, which model I'm assuming is hopefully probably

Tim Winders: 00:10:26

the one you're with now, but I guess as a layer to the question, give

Tim Winders: 00:10:30

some pros and cons and why you pick one over some of the others, because

Tim Winders: 00:10:35

people listening in need to hear this.

Tim Winders: 00:10:36

This is very important.

Tim Winders: 00:10:37

I think.

Dennis Kelly: 00:10:38

yes.

Dennis Kelly: 00:10:39

for me, at my stage of life and where I'm at, this bootstrap model works very well.

Dennis Kelly: 00:10:45

at least in terms of scaling up a business to a certain point and, and, but, that

Dennis Kelly: 00:10:53

being said, I'm at a point in my life where, you know, the, the short term

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:00

need for cashflow is less important.

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:04

and I've had resources personally to invest in this thing in order

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:08

to help get it off the ground.

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:10

and my situation is a little bit different.

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:12

Then other people, potentially, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:15

And so I feel very fortunate to be at this position in my life where I've, raised

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:22

money in different environments, seeing a lot of different types of businesses,

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:27

worked with, very, highly, decorated board of directors, members, in startups.

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:36

and I think.

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:37

A lot of the scars in learning that I've accumulated over the years eliminate

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:43

the need for, some of the oversight and, and structure that, that a different

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:51

financing mechanism, would enforce, on a startup, at least to a certain point.

Dennis Kelly: 00:11:57

You can scale these things on a bootstrap way and get them to a

Dennis Kelly: 00:12:03

certain point, but at some point they probably have to evolve, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:12:07

So they're either going to be a nice business that you run, and enjoy

Dennis Kelly: 00:12:11

running, but if you really want to scale something, the bootstrap model can

Dennis Kelly: 00:12:18

take you so far, but at some point it's going to convert into something else.

Tim Winders: 00:12:24

How important is it for you?

Tim Winders: 00:12:27

To be in a, I guess the question is a control situation because that's a bigger

Tim Winders: 00:12:33

money question also, because obviously if you bring in other people, and the

Tim Winders: 00:12:38

reason I bring it up is that I'm, I, we had a lot of investors with some

Tim Winders: 00:12:44

real estate companies heading into 08.

Tim Winders: 00:12:46

And a lot of that did not turn out well.

Tim Winders: 00:12:49

And so it, it did shift a little bit of my thinking.

Tim Winders: 00:12:52

I was also involved.

Tim Winders: 00:12:53

I was doing some consulting and coaching for businesses during that.

Tim Winders: 00:12:56

com boom.

Tim Winders: 00:12:58

And there was some things I was just scratching my head going, wow.

Tim Winders: 00:13:01

And I think some people, this kind of goes back to knowing yourself and have

Tim Winders: 00:13:06

some self awareness, what is someone's comfort level need to be with, I'm

Tim Winders: 00:13:11

in charge, I'm running things versus.

Tim Winders: 00:13:14

I'm running things, but there's a lot of other people or other people

Tim Winders: 00:13:19

that are having some input, which goes into that funding mechanism.

Tim Winders: 00:13:23

And I'll tell you where we're headed with this.

Tim Winders: 00:13:25

We're going into the ability to be able to pivot and make a big change if you

Tim Winders: 00:13:31

need to, but yet you've got handcuffs that may or may not keep you from doing that.

Tim Winders: 00:13:36

So this is the direction we're going, just so you know.

Tim Winders: 00:13:39

So how important is that control or the ability to make those decisions?

Dennis Kelly: 00:13:44

again, at this point of my life, I enjoy

Dennis Kelly: 00:13:50

having a lot of autonomy, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:13:55

And myself and my partner and a few key people here can sit down and think

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:01

through things and have a lot of different perspectives and choose the direction.

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:07

without.

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:08

Having to go through a lot of process.

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:10

I'm not spending a week every quarter preparing for the board meeting,

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:15

and we're moving quickly, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:18

and making decisions on a daily basis, but again, with that being said, I

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:23

think there are other stages of the business, that really, Would be just

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:29

due to the scope of the business and the scale of the opportunity.

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:33

It probably does, it will require more structure, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:37

and quarterly board meetings and, and then board calls.

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:42

And then dealing with the analysts of the investors.

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:45

the junior folks that are looking for regular updates on stuff.

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:48

there's a whole nother layer of management that goes into having professional

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:53

investors involved in your business.

Dennis Kelly: 00:14:56

and, at other points in my life and other businesses, that really is what

Dennis Kelly: 00:15:01

was necessary right from the beginning.

Dennis Kelly: 00:15:03

and so you've got to calibrate your expectations around, your ability to just

Dennis Kelly: 00:15:11

Make decisions and move, without, selling this to a broader audience and, moving

Dennis Kelly: 00:15:17

all the stakeholders along with you, and, I'm not, it's not like my approach to

Dennis Kelly: 00:15:22

business is that of a dictator where, I decide everything and I tell everybody

Dennis Kelly: 00:15:27

what they're going to be doing every day.

Dennis Kelly: 00:15:29

I prefer a much more collaborative.

Dennis Kelly: 00:15:31

Environment, but I'd rather, do that, at least in the early stages of business

Dennis Kelly: 00:15:37

with folks are very close to it and, rely on some third parties for some

Dennis Kelly: 00:15:42

thought leadership and assistance and looking at it from another angle, but

Dennis Kelly: 00:15:45

really be able to, to manage those interactions as I see fit, as opposed

Dennis Kelly: 00:15:51

to More of a external structure.

Tim Winders: 00:15:55

yeah, that makes a lot of sense because the thing that I really

Tim Winders: 00:15:59

love about having a conversation with someone who is, I'll use the term mature,

Tim Winders: 00:16:02

we don't use the word older here, but we'll use the word mature is that I think

Tim Winders: 00:16:08

maturity is when you start realizing the environments, the areas, the businesses,

Tim Winders: 00:16:14

the situations that you thrive in that they, I'll use the term nourish your soul

Tim Winders: 00:16:19

versus, things like, I love where you Talked about early on in your career where

Tim Winders: 00:16:23

you were probably working 20 hour days.

Tim Winders: 00:16:26

I did similar.

Tim Winders: 00:16:27

I always joke with people during the nineties.

Tim Winders: 00:16:29

I think I slept about four hours a night Maybe and I was proud of it was

Tim Winders: 00:16:34

the problem, I like boasted about it and now i'm going You know, I wish I

Tim Winders: 00:16:38

had a few of those sleep hours back I think part of is just the journey that

Tim Winders: 00:16:43

we go on which I don't want to, I don't want to spend a ton of time on this,

Tim Winders: 00:16:48

but I'd love to go over a little bit of your journey to get up to where we are

Tim Winders: 00:16:51

with Postalytics here, because anytime someone says they've been through, six,

Tim Winders: 00:16:56

six startups and I've read through, they Are varying, they have a wide scope.

Tim Winders: 00:17:01

So, uh, as, as succinct, but I may slow you down along the way, walk through,

Tim Winders: 00:17:09

Dennis's journey, coming out of school, sounds like you jumped right into

Tim Winders: 00:17:12

startup world and just went from there.

Tim Winders: 00:17:15

Correct.

Dennis Kelly: 00:17:16

pretty quickly.

Dennis Kelly: 00:17:17

I get out of college, moved to New York, for my first job, which was

Dennis Kelly: 00:17:22

actually with Prudential insurance.

Dennis Kelly: 00:17:24

And I was in a wonderful training program, at Prudential insurance.

Dennis Kelly: 00:17:30

there's six months in a classroom and moving around to different.

Dennis Kelly: 00:17:34

segment of their, what they call their group insurance business, which

Dennis Kelly: 00:17:37

is, health insurance that, that they were selling in there at the time.

Dennis Kelly: 00:17:41

Prince was the largest insurance company in the world.

Dennis Kelly: 00:17:43

and it was a major player in the healthcare phase and, really rolling

Dennis Kelly: 00:17:49

out HMOs for the very first time in the 1980s, at least on the East Coast.

Dennis Kelly: 00:17:54

and so I was a part of that and was trained on underwriting

Dennis Kelly: 00:17:58

and marketing and sales.

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:00

Ended up in a sales office, reported to a wonderful leader there, former,

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:05

Air Force Colonel, who had built a great sales office in New York

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:10

and and then I learned how to sell, I was selling health insurance,

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:13

knocking on doors, trying to build relationships, and, So great lessons.

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:18

I would tell anybody if you want to learn how to sell, go to New York and

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:24

start knocking on doors and you'll learn how to sell and you'll learn

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:29

that rejection is not personal, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:33

it's just a part of the game and it may come with a little extra flair

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:37

when you're in New York every day.

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:39

so great experience there, but big company.

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:42

lots of layers of everything.

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:44

and after a couple of years, I really felt like, Hey, I want to gain a

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:48

little more control over my destiny.

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:50

And a buddy from college and his brother were starting up a computer

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:54

company, up here in the Boston area.

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:57

and so they needed a sales guy.

Dennis Kelly: 00:18:59

So I quit my job, took a huge pay cut, and jumped into this, really

Dennis Kelly: 00:19:04

early stage company, that ended up.

Dennis Kelly: 00:19:08

Shifting a hundred times before we figured out what to do with it.

Tim Winders: 00:19:11

And this was a computer company in what year?

Dennis Kelly: 00:19:15

this is, 1989.

Dennis Kelly: 00:19:19

Yes.

Dennis Kelly: 00:19:20

And right before the explosion of PCs, and which ended up being something very

Dennis Kelly: 00:19:26

important for us, there was a general shift in computing, in the computing

Dennis Kelly: 00:19:32

platform that occurred, from these, what were called mini computers, to

Dennis Kelly: 00:19:36

these, I call them ironically named minicomputers because they're the size

Dennis Kelly: 00:19:39

of my desk, and, to, to the PC world.

Dennis Kelly: 00:19:43

and when that happened, the cost footprint of selling the solution

Dennis Kelly: 00:19:49

that we had at this company plummeted, and our potential market exploded.

Dennis Kelly: 00:19:55

And so, by taking advantage of that shift in computing platform,

Dennis Kelly: 00:20:00

this business was able to take off.

Dennis Kelly: 00:20:02

and it became a fundamental reason why it had explosive growth and we had a great

Dennis Kelly: 00:20:07

outcome for that first startup that I was involved in, just right place, right time.

Dennis Kelly: 00:20:12

and we were able to take advantage of that major shift that occurred.

Tim Winders: 00:20:17

I was just curious about the years there because some people listening

Tim Winders: 00:20:20

in, I'll go, okay, computer business, not realizing what really the eighties

Tim Winders: 00:20:24

were for computers and the shifts and the change, I mean, that's, when pretty much

Tim Winders: 00:20:29

Apple and other places even came to be.

Tim Winders: 00:20:32

in the early eighties, we did not have computers on our desk

Tim Winders: 00:20:35

by the end of the eighties.

Tim Winders: 00:20:36

We all did.

Tim Winders: 00:20:38

And Back in the stone age, we'll go ahead and say, back there.

Tim Winders: 00:20:41

Yeah, we didn't even have cell phones back then.

Dennis Kelly: 00:20:44

exactly.

Dennis Kelly: 00:20:46

that,

Tim Winders: 00:20:46

did that go from there then Dennis?

Tim Winders: 00:20:47

where, what was the transition after that?

Dennis Kelly: 00:20:50

we sold that business, made a little bit of dough and then

Dennis Kelly: 00:20:54

right at the very beginning of the dot com era, I was, I had left the company

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:02

that acquired, the, Genesis, which is the first startup after running sales

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:06

for a while, took some time out of the home, passing around, looking for

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:10

the next thing and connected up with a guy that had some similar thoughts.

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:16

And we launched a company called anyday.

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:19

com, which is one of the very first web based calendar and scheduling system.

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:25

And, and so if you use Google Calendar today, it's essentially a knockoff

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:29

of what we built, back in 1997, 1998.

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:34

Really early internet.

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:36

And, raised a bunch of dough, got some great venture capitalists on

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:40

board and key executives and we built this thing, and we're able to

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:44

sell it before the window collapsed.

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:47

at the end of the dot com era, and, had a great experience there being

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:51

a completely different model, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:54

where it's raise a bunch of money, spend it hard, fast, grow this

Dennis Kelly: 00:21:59

thing as fast as possible, ended up selling it to a company called Palm.

Dennis Kelly: 00:22:03

and if you remember the Palm pilot, they bought any day,

Dennis Kelly: 00:22:07

worked at Palm for a while.

Dennis Kelly: 00:22:09

spent a ton of time in Silicon Valley where they were based and, watch that

Dennis Kelly: 00:22:14

whole thing disintegrate, ended up becoming a disaster, and, there's,

Dennis Kelly: 00:22:19

I think books have been, or will be written about what happened at Palm,

Dennis Kelly: 00:22:23

but, tremendous learnings, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:22:25

Amazing learnings watching what was happening inside of this newly

Dennis Kelly: 00:22:29

public, fast growing, company in Silicon Valley at that time.

Tim Winders: 00:22:35

I loved my Palm Pilot.

Tim Winders: 00:22:37

Gosh, I was, coming along in the, late 80s, early 90s.

Tim Winders: 00:22:40

I was, doing leadership training and had our own business.

Tim Winders: 00:22:43

And man, when that Palm came along, man, that was like the greatest thing ever.

Tim Winders: 00:22:49

And boy, had they had their act together, they could have moved into

Tim Winders: 00:22:53

what, jobs ended up doing, which is, the, but then, we can also talk

Tim Winders: 00:22:58

BlackBerry and other companies like that too, that had, there was a lot

Tim Winders: 00:23:01

of them that had the opportunity, but I also think it's good to learn.

Tim Winders: 00:23:06

From what some would call failure.

Tim Winders: 00:23:08

we talk about redefining success here, give me, give a learning point or two,

Tim Winders: 00:23:12

you mentioned books can be written, but give a learning point or two, not

Tim Winders: 00:23:15

let's don't go back to the success.

Tim Winders: 00:23:17

The two exits, let's go to the city.

Tim Winders: 00:23:20

Cause you obviously were part of the buyout at the other acquisition.

Tim Winders: 00:23:24

They wanted you around and you had to be around when this was going on.

Tim Winders: 00:23:28

What's something you took from that, that you kept using time and time again.

Dennis Kelly: 00:23:32

I think that, there were so many things that happened at Palm, that

Dennis Kelly: 00:23:37

were, were great lessons to be taken.

Dennis Kelly: 00:23:40

so number one, Palm IPO ed in 2000, acquired Anyday.

Dennis Kelly: 00:23:48

com, right at the same time.

Dennis Kelly: 00:23:50

and at the time, raised a billion dollars and a billion dollars in

Dennis Kelly: 00:23:53

the bank, which was a massive IPO in the tech world in the year 2000

Dennis Kelly: 00:23:59

and a billion dollars in the bank.

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:01

The first thing that the CEO did was go and drop.

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:06

400 million of it on a new campus.

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:12

So, so, you know, we're in this beautiful building in Santa Clara.

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:18

It was fine.

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:19

It was great.

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:19

but we had to have the signature campus, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:22

That, that everybody in Silicon Valley, all the big players

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:25

have a signature campus.

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:27

We had to have one.

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:28

So there goes more than half of the money goes right out the door immediately.

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:32

not anticipating, maybe it'll be a downturn, at any point in time, when

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:35

that little cushion, but, so that was one, right, like, my goodness, don't

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:41

get caught up in all of the symbols of success, in, but, I think more, even

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:49

more fundamentally, the management at Palm was not able to get out of its own

Dennis Kelly: 00:24:56

way, there was too much kind of fighting about the soul of Palm and, whether or

Dennis Kelly: 00:25:02

not the existing world that was Palm, the developer community, the ecosystem

Dennis Kelly: 00:25:07

around it could ever transition into something other than what it was, other

Dennis Kelly: 00:25:13

than making incremental changes, they were afraid to kill the golden goose

Dennis Kelly: 00:25:19

that they had with real innovation and the original founders of Palm ended up

Dennis Kelly: 00:25:24

getting out and started, handspring.

Dennis Kelly: 00:25:26

which used the Palm operating system, but turned it into a phone, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:25:30

But it was underfunded and, it was a bad time to be starting this thing.

Dennis Kelly: 00:25:35

And it was really that inability to make a call on your core product.

Dennis Kelly: 00:25:43

and try to build something that would eventually, make that thing die.

Dennis Kelly: 00:25:48

that, that was Palm's real, family as an organization.

Dennis Kelly: 00:25:51

and really taking that and absorbing that, that knowledge was so important for me.

Dennis Kelly: 00:25:57

and, so then I left Palm, ended up jumping into a, Palm ecosystem startup

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:05

that had built some software in the Palm environment and was selling to big

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:10

corporations, to the enterprise, selling mobile software for managing, work.

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:16

Courses that were out in the field doing work.

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:20

and so the most painful lesson of my career, came, at, as

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:26

a result of this company.

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:27

this was the one company that completely failed that I had started, or I didn't

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:30

start, but I was c e o of this company.

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:33

Failed, went out of business.

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:34

Everybody lost their money.

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:36

and, so I was hired to come in.

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:38

I'm coming from Palm and so I know the environment.

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:41

I know mobile computing at least as it was at that time.

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:45

And I worked with the CFO, we put together a business model, they called

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:51

for, we'll say, 2 million of investment.

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:55

It would take us about five years.

Dennis Kelly: 00:26:59

And, so I showed up at a great big venture firm.

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:02

I had deep relationships with, grant success committee day in the back pocket.

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:08

and I sat down in the conference room with an associate who said to me, Hey, Dennis.

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:13

I looked at your deck, I looked at your presentation, you can walk

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:17

out of here today with financing.

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:21

Except for one thing, we need you to not take two million dollars, we need

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:28

you to take eight million dollars.

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:32

And because we don't want to write a small check, we don't write a big check.

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:36

And if you can massage your numbers and make that work, you'll get a

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:40

commitment today and you're done.

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:42

You can get off the road, you can get back to work, you can get back to

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:45

your heads down building this company.

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:48

young CEO, sales guy by training.

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:52

I'm sitting in the conference room.

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:53

I have a few minutes to make a decision.

Dennis Kelly: 00:27:55

I said, yes, close the deal, figure it out later, get the deal done.

Dennis Kelly: 00:28:01

So I took our spreadsheets and projections, changed everything to

Dennis Kelly: 00:28:05

take eight million dollars to spend all of that and then have sales numbers

Dennis Kelly: 00:28:11

that are spiking quickly as important to support this entire model, sold

Dennis Kelly: 00:28:16

it, got the eight million dollars.

Dennis Kelly: 00:28:19

And then the business was not ready to spend money that quickly by any

Dennis Kelly: 00:28:22

means, sales were not nearly enough to support the model that we had created.

Dennis Kelly: 00:28:30

And, so that decision to let easy money or let a financing strategy

Dennis Kelly: 00:28:39

dictate my business strategy.

Dennis Kelly: 00:28:43

Was the single most painful lesson that I've learned along the way

Tim Winders: 00:28:49

Yeah, the, and money, what a temptation to, what a, because

Tim Winders: 00:28:54

isn't that, this is where we pick apart what success isn't more money.

Tim Winders: 00:29:02

Always the answer.

Tim Winders: 00:29:03

See, I'm disagreeing with myself right now.

Tim Winders: 00:29:06

So you're really saying more money is not always the answer, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:10

it is not it was not the right money for that business at that

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:17

time and this is think about this.

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:21

This is at the very beginning of the mobile computing market

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:27

and we had software that made it super easy to create mobile apps.

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:30

how many mobile apps do we think of can we think of now?

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:32

there's untold millions of mobile apps.

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:35

We had software that you could drag and drop and create a

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:38

mobile app quickly and easily.

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:40

And it could work whether you had a cell phone connection or not have a

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:43

cell phone connection, like crazy.

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:46

And, but it was early, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:48

And so the use cases were, they're not as broad early.

Dennis Kelly: 00:29:54

and yet I was tempted by that big number.

Dennis Kelly: 00:30:00

And by working with people that, this already preexisting

Dennis Kelly: 00:30:03

relationship with, and it was easy.

Dennis Kelly: 00:30:05

and, we always figured out we'd make it work.

Dennis Kelly: 00:30:08

not really when you take money, you are laying a foundation for your business.

Dennis Kelly: 00:30:15

There are expectations around that money.

Dennis Kelly: 00:30:17

There are, legal, responsibilities of people that are sitting on the board.

Dennis Kelly: 00:30:23

and those people have their own dynamics, their own drivers.

Dennis Kelly: 00:30:26

of behavior and outcomes that they're looking for.

Dennis Kelly: 00:30:31

And it is so important to find the right financing for your business at the

Dennis Kelly: 00:30:39

particular point in time that you are in, as opposed to allowing your thinking

Dennis Kelly: 00:30:47

about the business to be structured by capital that's easily available.

Tim Winders: 00:30:53

Hey, Dennis, at what point, and I don't think it was

Tim Winders: 00:30:57

just now here on the podcast.

Tim Winders: 00:31:00

At what point did you realize you may have made a mistake and what

Tim Winders: 00:31:05

did that do for you internally?

Tim Winders: 00:31:07

What were you like going?

Tim Winders: 00:31:10

What do we do now?

Tim Winders: 00:31:11

Or, did you realize that?

Tim Winders: 00:31:13

some, sometimes we have this optimism and really startup

Tim Winders: 00:31:17

and business people really do.

Tim Winders: 00:31:18

We sometimes are overly optimistic and think, okay, we could sell our

Tim Winders: 00:31:23

way out of it, or we can grind our way out of something like that.

Tim Winders: 00:31:27

But at what point there was a time that you went, Oh, when was that?

Tim Winders: 00:31:31

And tell me more about that time.

Dennis Kelly: 00:31:33

yeah.

Dennis Kelly: 00:31:33

So within six months, we had hired some really good people, really good

Dennis Kelly: 00:31:42

salespeople, sales management, marketing people, and when it became clear that the

Dennis Kelly: 00:31:49

pipeline was not developing as quickly as it would need to in order to support the

Dennis Kelly: 00:31:57

revenue that we were expecting to come in the next year, it, it became clear

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:02

that we had, Overextended ourselves.

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:08

and, but at that point, I had sold this thing, I bought into it, I brought all

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:15

these people on board, to support this vision and having that conversation at

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:21

the board level about, Hey, this is not.

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:24

The short term thing, that no change the people, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:28

if the results aren't there, change the people, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:31

It didn't work.

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:33

It was a fundamental issue, not a people issue.

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:37

so it crept in fairly early.

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:40

and.

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:41

We did our best to make something of it, but ultimately it was a failure.

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:46

And, so scars and lessons, but, but you learn more from difficult times

Dennis Kelly: 00:32:54

than from easy times, in my belief.

Tim Winders: 00:32:57

so a quick recap.

Tim Winders: 00:32:59

I love what you brought up with, handspring.

Tim Winders: 00:33:01

I, what I heard there was that they got to a point where they had something good,

Tim Winders: 00:33:06

but they were protecting what they had instead of looking at new opportunities.

Tim Winders: 00:33:11

And then I love the example that you just brought up.

Tim Winders: 00:33:14

It's like more money's not always the answer.

Tim Winders: 00:33:18

And it goes back to the conversation we had earlier, where it's okay, there's.

Tim Winders: 00:33:22

I don't want to say there's strings attached, but there's stipulations

Tim Winders: 00:33:25

when you do things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:33:27

And, and that was a great lesson.

Tim Winders: 00:33:30

all right, so now let's, we're getting closer to this business that you've

Tim Winders: 00:33:33

got now, which is fascinating me.

Tim Winders: 00:33:35

I look forward to it, but is there a step or two we're missing in between?

Tim Winders: 00:33:38

Are we getting close to getting this one started?

Dennis Kelly: 00:33:41

We're getting close.

Dennis Kelly: 00:33:42

I'll just quickly touch it.

Dennis Kelly: 00:33:43

So from there, took some time off.

Dennis Kelly: 00:33:46

and then jumped into a retail startup, believe it or not, and, so I was involved

Dennis Kelly: 00:33:52

in building out, retail stores in the mobile space, it been living in mobile

Dennis Kelly: 00:33:57

there for quite some time, had a lot of thoughts, a lot of ideas, had a partner,

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:01

we built that company, and we had about 50 stores in three states, ended up

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:06

selling that and had a nice outcome there.

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:10

and then, back in 2013, I reconnected with this brilliant software architect who I

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:17

had known through any day and some of the other, subsequent startups and, he, it

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:24

turns out he moved a couple of towns away.

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:27

and he said, Hey, pick up this bag gig I got going.

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:31

I had, he had a business, and he wanted to do a direct mail

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:35

campaign to promote an event.

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:37

so he was working on that direct mail campaign and saw, huh, there's

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:41

not a lot of tools to help me.

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:43

capture, interest when somebody responds, there's not an easy way to, to do that

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:48

and and then talk to the printer and they're, they seem really old school, so

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:52

he built the software that, that he could, be a part of the direct mail process.

Dennis Kelly: 00:34:58

And surround it with landing pages and, and then, email

Dennis Kelly: 00:35:02

marketing and some other things.

Dennis Kelly: 00:35:03

And, he had some really customers and say, Hey, you got to take a look at it.

Dennis Kelly: 00:35:08

So I thought at this point, 2013, like direct mail, isn't that,

Dennis Kelly: 00:35:13

on the way out, isn't it dead?

Dennis Kelly: 00:35:15

and, but then you dig a little more and yeah, it's certainly not the primary

Dennis Kelly: 00:35:22

step marketing channel for a lot of companies anymore, but it's still a

Dennis Kelly: 00:35:27

40 billion a year industry in the U.

Dennis Kelly: 00:35:29

S.

Dennis Kelly: 00:35:30

So great big old legacy marketing channel and nobody in Silicon

Dennis Kelly: 00:35:36

Valley is paying any attention.

Dennis Kelly: 00:35:37

So very, underinvested in from a technology standpoint.

Dennis Kelly: 00:35:42

And sounds like an opportunity and that's really what led to the launch of BoingNet.

Tim Winders: 00:35:48

Yeah, let me pause you one second.

Tim Winders: 00:35:49

I want to, you and I are of the generation where, when we start hearing,

Tim Winders: 00:35:55

a lot of things that are popular in the world today about being vulnerable

Tim Winders: 00:36:00

and things like that, we'd like, yeah, we don't like to share that.

Tim Winders: 00:36:03

But I would like to know, is there anything you could share

Tim Winders: 00:36:07

about your mental state going from the, what we'll call a failure?

Tim Winders: 00:36:14

We'll call it a failure.

Tim Winders: 00:36:15

I've really come to.

Tim Winders: 00:36:17

Really say that they're learning experiences, but were you gun shy at all?

Tim Winders: 00:36:23

Did you lose a little bit of your, as Austin Powers was saying of your mojo?

Tim Winders: 00:36:27

Were you wondering if you still had it?

Tim Winders: 00:36:30

talk to me a little bit about that.

Tim Winders: 00:36:31

You don't have to, we don't have to have a therapy session here.

Tim Winders: 00:36:34

I'm not saying we're going to go into, I don't have any tissues or

Tim Winders: 00:36:37

anything, Dennis, but I do, because I realized I had to really do some

Tim Winders: 00:36:40

reflection on, I lost a little swagger, but I needed to lose a little bit.

Tim Winders: 00:36:45

But I didn't need to lose it entirely.

Tim Winders: 00:36:47

So what was going on with you mentally as you were going through that time off

Tim Winders: 00:36:51

and then this next thing came along.

Dennis Kelly: 00:36:54

I think there's a, there's an important thing that

Dennis Kelly: 00:36:55

happened in that failed startup as well.

Dennis Kelly: 00:36:59

my wife and I had our second, child.

Dennis Kelly: 00:37:02

Our daughter was, nine years old, at that time.

Dennis Kelly: 00:37:08

And, and I'm hard charging, trying to, make this startup a success, despite

Dennis Kelly: 00:37:16

all the things that became apparent that it was not going to be successful.

Dennis Kelly: 00:37:19

I was trying to prop it up, working my tail off, and my daughter ended up

Dennis Kelly: 00:37:24

with a massive infection in her brain.

Dennis Kelly: 00:37:28

and, an abscess, actually, the size of a, like a golf ball, on her brain.

Dennis Kelly: 00:37:35

and We ended up spending nine nights at Children's Hospital in Boston, with

Dennis Kelly: 00:37:41

teams of different people coming in, trying to figure out, how to deal with

Dennis Kelly: 00:37:45

this thing and how to solve it and, that made me step back and say, all

Dennis Kelly: 00:37:52

right, Dennis, the heck you doing here, working these 20 hour days, you got a

Dennis Kelly: 00:37:56

young family, life is precious and could be can be short and so that certainly

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:04

impact has impacted my life ever since.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:08

but also at that particular point in time, I got this failed startup.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:12

I got this thing going on in my life.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:14

I fortunately had some success and had some, money in my pocket.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:17

And my next thing I thought, you know what, I'm done with tech for a while.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:21

I don't want to deal with tech.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:22

I want to do something out in the real world and, just leave

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:26

this environment for a while.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:27

and the demand, because in my mind, I only knew one way to work, and that was.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:33

All in all day, every day.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:35

And so I did this other, this retail startup, which, it didn't

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:38

require nearly the energy and work.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:41

And I was able to spend time with my family and my kids through

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:45

middle school and high school.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:46

and, it was a wonderful experience.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:50

I learned a ton in the retail world.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:52

and that really set the stage for me to come back to tech and

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:55

to say, you know what I missed, I miss working with brilliant.

Dennis Kelly: 00:38:59

Software engineers and there's so many amazing people in the tech world that if

Dennis Kelly: 00:39:05

I structure this the way the right way, I can have a little bit more balance

Dennis Kelly: 00:39:10

between the old Dennis and then, a more sustainable way to think about a long term

Dennis Kelly: 00:39:18

growth model for a tech based startup.

Tim Winders: 00:39:21

Yeah, that's a, that's that redefining success

Tim Winders: 00:39:24

that we like to drill down on here.

Tim Winders: 00:39:26

you're still, you know, used to have the skills and all that, but

Tim Winders: 00:39:29

the mindset shift is different.

Tim Winders: 00:39:31

and I do want to say this, we always look for little clips and

Tim Winders: 00:39:34

sound bites to pull from this.

Tim Winders: 00:39:36

We've got Dennis Kelly saying that the tech world is not the real world that

Tim Winders: 00:39:40

you're going to go work out in the real world on that little blip there.

Tim Winders: 00:39:44

Hopefully we won't have to flip that out.

Tim Winders: 00:39:46

so you were in this fake world, you went to the real world and then

Tim Winders: 00:39:50

you went back to the tech world.

Tim Winders: 00:39:53

so we're where I really want to be because this is like a cool story and I love the.

Tim Winders: 00:39:58

The merging of this legacy business, what I would, I sometimes word it old school.

Tim Winders: 00:40:04

I hope that's not a bad thing.

Tim Winders: 00:40:05

Legacy sounds better, direct mail.

Tim Winders: 00:40:07

I've spent some time doing quite a bit of direct mail myself, but I

Tim Winders: 00:40:12

love kind of the progression here.

Tim Winders: 00:40:14

So bring us up to speed.

Tim Winders: 00:40:15

Tell us what was going on there early on and then how that, pivoted or

Tim Winders: 00:40:20

transitioned or whatever went on there.

Dennis Kelly: 00:40:22

yeah.

Dennis Kelly: 00:40:22

so my business partner started this, little app, called BoingNet, that you

Dennis Kelly: 00:40:27

could sell to people that, that are in the direct mail production world.

Dennis Kelly: 00:40:32

So we're selling to printers, selling to agencies, and the

Dennis Kelly: 00:40:35

software which surround a direct mail campaign with digital elements.

Dennis Kelly: 00:40:40

Landing pages, microsites, email marketing, text messaging, and hey,

Dennis Kelly: 00:40:44

I'm helping people do the direct mail, but I can sell all these

Dennis Kelly: 00:40:47

other things along with it, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:40:49

We thought this is a no brainer, great way to bridge the direct mail

Dennis Kelly: 00:40:52

world, bring it into the 21st century.

Dennis Kelly: 00:40:55

And so we built some great software, sales were low, longer sales cycles than

Dennis Kelly: 00:41:04

I guess what I had, we had anticipated, required a lot of professional services,

Dennis Kelly: 00:41:09

and it was going okay, but it wasn't really matching our expectations or

Dennis Kelly: 00:41:16

certainly the pace of growth going on in the marketing tech world, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:41:22

And so after a couple of years, and having gone through the experience before, we

Dennis Kelly: 00:41:27

said, you know what, the fundamental problem we're selling to the wrong people.

Dennis Kelly: 00:41:33

We're trying to sell a technology solution to people that

Dennis Kelly: 00:41:36

don't want to buy technology.

Dennis Kelly: 00:41:39

and what we were able to learn, though, is that by taking some of

Dennis Kelly: 00:41:44

that software we built that analyzed who was going on a website in

Dennis Kelly: 00:41:50

response to a direct mail campaign.

Dennis Kelly: 00:41:53

And learning from the email marketing workflow, we thought, you know what,

Dennis Kelly: 00:41:59

if we go solve the bigger problem is that direct mail is too hard to do,

Dennis Kelly: 00:42:04

that direct mail is not connected to the marketing tech stack, and.

Dennis Kelly: 00:42:09

we already have some analytics, so if we go solve these other problems and

Dennis Kelly: 00:42:14

start selling directly to marketing teams, a solution that will help them

Dennis Kelly: 00:42:19

deploy direct mail in minutes instead of weeks and make direct mail sit right

Dennis Kelly: 00:42:24

alongside their email marketing and their digital marketing right inside of

Dennis Kelly: 00:42:28

their CRM, their marketing automation tools, and then have those detailed

Dennis Kelly: 00:42:32

analytics about what's happening in a direct mail campaign that are new and

Dennis Kelly: 00:42:35

unique, then that's a much bigger market.

Dennis Kelly: 00:42:41

And so that really formed the basis of our pivot from Boynet to Postalytics in 2017.

Dennis Kelly: 00:42:48

And then, Postalytics has been a great growth story ever since,

Dennis Kelly: 00:42:53

where we've been growing between 60 and 80 percent annually.

Dennis Kelly: 00:42:57

from year one.

Tim Winders: 00:43:01

And one of the things that I think we have to do this for

Tim Winders: 00:43:04

some folks that are listening in.

Tim Winders: 00:43:07

There's a whole generation that they don't even know what we're talking

Tim Winders: 00:43:12

about when we talk about direct mail.

Tim Winders: 00:43:14

I just went, we had to go clean out, we had to go to Atlanta and clean out my,

Tim Winders: 00:43:17

mother in law's apartment, she was going into a facility, and she had like two

Tim Winders: 00:43:21

months of mail that was sitting there.

Tim Winders: 00:43:24

And so I was, we're nomads, so I don't get a lot of mail anymore, which is fine, but

Tim Winders: 00:43:31

it was so interesting for me to go through all the direct mail that she has received.

Tim Winders: 00:43:38

And she's made a couple purchases.

Tim Winders: 00:43:40

So once that happens, there's triggers that come even more.

Tim Winders: 00:43:43

And I do want to say this, that I, Love direct mail, because that was what

Tim Winders: 00:43:49

helped us launch when we were doing our real estate companies in the early two

Tim Winders: 00:43:53

thousands, one of the first things that we did for growth was a cheesy, horrible,

Tim Winders: 00:44:00

I'm almost embarrassed to say what they called a yellow letter that looked

Tim Winders: 00:44:04

handwritten that I wish we could have automated at the time, but we had a team

Tim Winders: 00:44:09

that wrote all that, you know, we copied and wrote out names and stuff, and we

Tim Winders: 00:44:13

bought a boatload of single family homes.

Tim Winders: 00:44:16

From that.

Tim Winders: 00:44:17

And I was involved with, I was involved with some masterminds

Tim Winders: 00:44:20

that were transitioning from direct mail to electronic.

Tim Winders: 00:44:24

I think the thing people do, Dennis, though, is they're always

Tim Winders: 00:44:26

looking for the easy button.

Tim Winders: 00:44:28

And when email came along, everyone thought, Oh, I could wash my

Tim Winders: 00:44:33

hands of this and move along.

Tim Winders: 00:44:36

But I always say that some things don't go away.

Tim Winders: 00:44:38

We just build layers upon it.

Tim Winders: 00:44:40

And it sounds like that's what y'all have done with Postalytics.

Tim Winders: 00:44:43

Correct.

Dennis Kelly: 00:44:44

That is correct.

Dennis Kelly: 00:44:45

Yes.

Dennis Kelly: 00:44:45

Yes.

Dennis Kelly: 00:44:46

So the reality is that it's a very effective marketing channel.

Dennis Kelly: 00:44:50

and, and what Postolitics has done is built a lot of software around it to make

Dennis Kelly: 00:44:55

it faster, easier and really to work in conjunction with those other channels.

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:01

And so that's really the message.

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:02

It's not don't do email, don't do digital, just do direct mail.

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:05

It's, do all And, and direct mail should work together in concert with

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:13

your other marketing channels so that you've got continuity, you have a

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:17

physical touch, a physical presence that is backing up what people are seeing

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:21

online and through their email and having a physical thing that you hold in

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:27

your hand, that you read, that you set aside, that you show to somebody, that.

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:32

Adds a significant amount to the way your brain processes a marketing

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:37

message, the way that your brain can recall a brand, recall an offer when

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:44

you hold something, it is different than when you're just looking at a screen.

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:49

And so brain science is backing this up.

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:51

And so really the story is direct mail should be in software.

Dennis Kelly: 00:45:57

It should be living inside of software and it happens to print.

Dennis Kelly: 00:46:01

And that software needs to be coordinating with all of your other marketing channels.

Dennis Kelly: 00:46:05

And so that's really the primary story that we're telling today.

Tim Winders: 00:46:11

Yeah, and I guess one of the things too, and maybe you can

Tim Winders: 00:46:13

address this, one of the things that I used to struggle with the right

Tim Winders: 00:46:17

mail was You know, doing split test.

Tim Winders: 00:46:21

I love doing split tests and also loved, getting information back

Tim Winders: 00:46:26

so that I can make decisions.

Tim Winders: 00:46:28

When email came along, I think people realize that it, it

Tim Winders: 00:46:33

made that process quicker.

Tim Winders: 00:46:35

It became a quicker process, but it sounds to me like what you've

Tim Winders: 00:46:38

done is you've set some tools up that are merging those together.

Tim Winders: 00:46:43

Would that be correct?

Dennis Kelly: 00:46:44

that's right.

Dennis Kelly: 00:46:45

So we've created, tools that enable a marketer to understand exactly where

Dennis Kelly: 00:46:52

their mail is in the creation and the delivery process by tapping into

Dennis Kelly: 00:46:58

some little known tools that the U.

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:01

S.

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:01

Postal Service offers on the back end.

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:03

We're actually Able to track each piece of mail through the entire

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:07

delivery process, and so we're able to see exactly where your mail is.

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:13

And then we've embedded tools that came from the original Boeing that product.

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:18

That allow you to create unique URLs for each recipient.

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:25

And those URLs may be printed as full URLs, or they may

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:29

be represented as QR codes.

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:33

And as we know what's happened with the use of QR codes, since the

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:38

pandemic, everything's exploded.

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:40

And so that's become a very acceptable way for marketers to, to help people leap from

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:47

the physical world to the digital world.

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:49

and so now 70 percent of our campaigns have these personalized QR codes on them,

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:55

and people hit that QR code, and all of a sudden, hey, I know this is Tim Winders

Dennis Kelly: 00:47:59

from this particular piece of mail from this campaign, and here's when his mail

Dennis Kelly: 00:48:04

was delivered, here's when he hit this QR code, here's where he went online.

Dennis Kelly: 00:48:08

And then we're able to package all that up and communicate back to the CRM to

Dennis Kelly: 00:48:12

say, Hey, CRM, Tim is online right now.

Dennis Kelly: 00:48:15

Here's what he's looking at.

Dennis Kelly: 00:48:16

Here's where it came from.

Dennis Kelly: 00:48:17

And you may want to trigger an email to go out, right away.

Dennis Kelly: 00:48:21

You may want to trigger a sales rep to pick up the phone.

Dennis Kelly: 00:48:24

so making that data surrounding the direct mail delivery and response actionable

Dennis Kelly: 00:48:30

and able to easily analyze to see what's working from a testing standpoint.

Dennis Kelly: 00:48:35

has been a huge innovation.

Tim Winders: 00:48:38

Yeah, that's good.

Tim Winders: 00:48:39

I want to ask in just a moment about the type of people that are utilizing

Tim Winders: 00:48:45

Postalytics and the type people that should be, but there's one

Tim Winders: 00:48:48

more decision type question I want to ask you that we went over fairly

Tim Winders: 00:48:52

quickly and that was the transition from the BoingNet to Postalytics.

Tim Winders: 00:48:56

Thank you.

Tim Winders: 00:48:58

To Postalytics, I think a lot of people need to have the awareness to make

Tim Winders: 00:49:03

business pivots, decisions, and things like that, because what you did, if

Tim Winders: 00:49:10

I'm getting this correctly, you had a business, a tool that you had made some

Tim Winders: 00:49:15

adjustments to the tool, but you were, you thought there was one customer group.

Tim Winders: 00:49:20

people that did the printing and all that, I think is what I heard

Tim Winders: 00:49:23

you say instead of the people that consumed the printing and used it.

Tim Winders: 00:49:29

And I don't know that people really recognize what a big pivot that was.

Tim Winders: 00:49:34

How hard was it to do that?

Tim Winders: 00:49:36

Did you just wake up one morning and you talked to the partners and said,

Tim Winders: 00:49:39

Hey, listen, we need to do this.

Tim Winders: 00:49:40

what was just a little bit of that process, because at some point

Tim Winders: 00:49:43

you started getting some clues.

Tim Winders: 00:49:44

It's not working.

Tim Winders: 00:49:45

What do we do?

Dennis Kelly: 00:49:47

you're 100 percent right.

Dennis Kelly: 00:49:48

and, so while we're struggling through why isn't this taking off the way we

Dennis Kelly: 00:49:53

thought, we started actually hearing from, potential customers of Postalytics

Dennis Kelly: 00:49:59

knocking on our door and say, hey guys, you appear to be living in this

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:03

space between digital and direct mail.

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:06

we just implemented Salesforce, we want to try direct mail.

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:10

It's just painful, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:13

It's these people that they didn't have the background in direct mail.

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:16

They didn't know like what the whole process look like.

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:19

And they're looking at it from the outside.

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:20

are you kidding me?

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:22

It's going to take all that just to get a campaign out.

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:25

And so we heard this a few times.

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:27

They're like, we want to talk to HubSpot.

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:30

We want to talk to Salesforce.

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:31

We don't want it to be so hard to do.

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:34

and that's really what, gave us the confidence.

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:37

That, hey, if we shifted our ideal customer profile from this print service

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:43

provider to the small to midsize business who is investing heavily in their

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:49

marketing tech stack, then that is a group of people that A, are, have already shown

Dennis Kelly: 00:50:58

they want to spend money in technology.

Dennis Kelly: 00:51:01

B, they want to leverage the investment they've already made in their CRM, and

Dennis Kelly: 00:51:06

then C, are running into the lower email open rates that everybody's seeing,

Dennis Kelly: 00:51:14

the higher cost in all the auctions in the pay per click world, so the cost of

Dennis Kelly: 00:51:19

acquisition in digital is getting higher and higher, if this alternative can

Dennis Kelly: 00:51:23

plug in and be easy to use, then we'll get a lot of those people and that's,

Dennis Kelly: 00:51:28

so we heard rumblings from the market.

Dennis Kelly: 00:51:30

We did some testing and it became clear that this was really the problem to solve

Tim Winders: 00:51:35

What was the time frame from the Oh, we've got a problem to we've

Tim Winders: 00:51:40

turned this ship and we're now moving in this direction all, full steam ahead.

Tim Winders: 00:51:45

What was the giving me a much years, days, minutes?

Tim Winders: 00:51:49

How long, what was the timeframe?

Dennis Kelly: 00:51:51

it.

Dennis Kelly: 00:51:51

It was really a four to six month process.

Dennis Kelly: 00:51:53

We looked at a few different ways to take what we had already built

Dennis Kelly: 00:51:57

and repackage it in, in, in a smart way and, expand the audience.

Dennis Kelly: 00:52:03

And have a faster sales cycle.

Dennis Kelly: 00:52:05

So we looked at a few alternatives.

Dennis Kelly: 00:52:08

Within six months, we settled on this.

Dennis Kelly: 00:52:10

And then it was about a nine month build process from there.

Dennis Kelly: 00:52:14

So it required sticking the fork in a previous effort.

Dennis Kelly: 00:52:18

We had to lay some great people off, unfortunately.

Dennis Kelly: 00:52:21

to conserve cash.

Dennis Kelly: 00:52:22

and then, rebuild and come back out as portfolio.

Tim Winders: 00:52:26

the growth sounds awesome.

Tim Winders: 00:52:27

And I love burgeoning.

Tim Winders: 00:52:29

I love when someone can take a, what we'll call legacy, not

Tim Winders: 00:52:33

an old school, but a legacy.

Tim Winders: 00:52:35

And bring it up to modern day because I think that, it's not nostalgia, but I just

Tim Winders: 00:52:40

think there's still some things out there.

Tim Winders: 00:52:44

I think I heard you talking to a guy that they do billboards.

Tim Winders: 00:52:46

see, I worked in a billboard company when I was in high school and people

Tim Winders: 00:52:49

go on billboards or radio or, Oh no, I only want to be on podcasts.

Tim Winders: 00:52:54

No, I think sometimes the answer is and not or.

Tim Winders: 00:52:58

You know this and this.

Tim Winders: 00:53:00

All right, Dennis, a couple quick questions here as we wrap.

Tim Winders: 00:53:03

Give me, I'm not looking for specific businesses, but tell me the type

Tim Winders: 00:53:09

industries that are really hitting some home runs with Postalytics that

Tim Winders: 00:53:16

You know, you could say these are some and then i'm also going to ask you who

Tim Winders: 00:53:19

should be looking at you That might be listening in and then we'll do

Tim Winders: 00:53:23

some wrap up here before we finish up.

Dennis Kelly: 00:53:26

sure.

Dennis Kelly: 00:53:26

So at a high level, we look at Postalytics as really a horizontal

Dennis Kelly: 00:53:31

software tool, that could be used by every business in the world.

Dennis Kelly: 00:53:35

And you can make an argument, anybody who's sending email, anybody who's doing

Dennis Kelly: 00:53:39

email marketing should be doing direct mail to complement their email marketing.

Dennis Kelly: 00:53:43

And I'll tell people, hey, think of us as sort of MailChimp.

Dennis Kelly: 00:53:46

For direct mail, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:53:48

Like just about anybody ought to be using this.

Dennis Kelly: 00:53:51

That being said, there are certain verticals that have, use cases

Dennis Kelly: 00:53:57

that, that really need direct mail.

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:00

And so obviously real estate, and it's very broad, footprint of residential

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:05

and commercial, the investment side.

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:08

and then more recently.

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:10

Property tech.

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:12

Real estate tech is a booming business.

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:15

And so direct mail is becoming a part of those solutions that are out

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:18

there in the property tech world.

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:21

and so that's been a big area for us.

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:23

another one is nonprofit, right?

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:26

We're investing very heavily in the nonprofit space.

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:30

60% of all donations to US nonprofits still happen by check.

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:36

and that represents a tremendous opportunity for us.

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:39

And then, the other one that has really taken off in the

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:42

last year is our agency channel.

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:45

And so we built a version of post politics designed, to be used by marketing agencies

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:52

and, marketing agencies control a lot of direct mail you get at home, the.

Dennis Kelly: 00:54:58

postcards from the landscaper, and the restaurateur, and those type of things

Dennis Kelly: 00:55:03

are often being built by a local marketing agency that has a direct mail practice.

Dennis Kelly: 00:55:08

And so we've built a tool that empowers those agencies to be very efficient

Dennis Kelly: 00:55:14

and to, have an ability to scale their business without adding a lot of staff.

Dennis Kelly: 00:55:18

and so some of those verticals are really areas of concentration.

Dennis Kelly: 00:55:22

but we view the opportunity is very horizontal.

Tim Winders: 00:55:26

Yeah, I mean i'm sitting here thinking about Somebody

Tim Winders: 00:55:29

who owns a pizza restaurant, someone who owns a local business.

Tim Winders: 00:55:33

I'm assuming that, the way the pricing structures are still makes

Tim Winders: 00:55:36

sense for them to do some work with you guys all the way up.

Tim Winders: 00:55:39

I think y'all said small to medium.

Tim Winders: 00:55:40

that's, I think there's so much opportunity.

Tim Winders: 00:55:44

And I do think that if there's a business owner listening

Tim Winders: 00:55:46

in, they've listened this far.

Tim Winders: 00:55:49

I think they at least need to check it out.

Tim Winders: 00:55:51

If they've never done some things or they've done some

Tim Winders: 00:55:53

things and they just didn't like.

Tim Winders: 00:55:55

The way it worked in direct mail.

Tim Winders: 00:55:56

So where can people go if they're just intrigued, they want to get more

Tim Winders: 00:56:01

information, they want to connect with you, they want to ask you more, whatever.

Tim Winders: 00:56:03

Where do you want to send people?

Tim Winders: 00:56:05

And then I've got one more question here that we'll wrap up with Dennis.

Tim Winders: 00:56:08

So where can people go if they just say, you know what?

Tim Winders: 00:56:09

I need some more info.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:11

Sure.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:11

Sure.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:12

So probably two places.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:14

First would be our website.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:16

Postalytics.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:17

com.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:17

and we invest very heavily in the website.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:20

Tons of great content, thought leadership, how to do direct mail,

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:24

how to do it with automation.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:26

Tremendous amount of content there that we've developed.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:30

And so that's P O S T A L Y T I C S.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:33

dot com, postpolitics.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:35

com.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:35

And then secondly is LinkedIn.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:37

both, the company Postalytics and myself on LinkedIn.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:41

and from other, another channel standpoint, if you're a LinkedIn

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:45

person, Hook up with us there, follow the company, connect with me.

Dennis Kelly: 00:56:49

And I'm super happy to interact and work together with folks through LinkedIn.

Tim Winders: 00:56:54

Excellent.

Tim Winders: 00:56:55

for those that are checking out the notes, we'll attempt to put

Tim Winders: 00:56:57

those links down in the notes.

Tim Winders: 00:56:59

So Dennis may not love this conversation.

Tim Winders: 00:57:02

We are seek, go create.

Tim Winders: 00:57:04

That's our title.

Tim Winders: 00:57:05

I'm gonna let you pick one of those words over the other two is my

Tim Winders: 00:57:07

last question and why seek, go or create, which one do you choose?

Dennis Kelly: 00:57:11

I'm probably a create guy.

Dennis Kelly: 00:57:13

I like to build businesses from scratch.

Dennis Kelly: 00:57:15

I like to be involved in the very beginning of them.

Dennis Kelly: 00:57:18

and so I think that create is the word that resonates most with me.

Tim Winders: 00:57:24

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:57:24

Excellent.

Tim Winders: 00:57:25

Dennis Kelly.

Tim Winders: 00:57:26

Thank you.

Tim Winders: 00:57:27

Postalytics.

Tim Winders: 00:57:27

Y'all go check them out.

Tim Winders: 00:57:28

I think that's valuable for a lot of leaders and business owners just

Tim Winders: 00:57:33

to know more about direct mail.

Tim Winders: 00:57:35

this conversation has been awesome.

Tim Winders: 00:57:36

I've loved going from the transition and, and all the, Evolution

Tim Winders: 00:57:41

that I think Dennis has had.

Tim Winders: 00:57:43

I think it's been valuable for us to listen and learn with that.

Tim Winders: 00:57:46

We have new episodes here every Monday at seek, go create until next time.

Tim Winders: 00:57:52

Continue being all that you were created to be.