The Power of Cards in a Digital World with Patrick Gaskin

The Power of Cards in a Digital World with Patrick Gaskin

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 114 of the business development podcast. And on today's expert guest interview, we are bringing to you Patrick Gaskin, founder and CEO of Cardly, a greeting card company that is disrupting the entire industry. Stay tuned. You are not going to want to miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business.

Brought to you by Capital Business development. capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast. And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome to episode 114 of the Business Development Podcast, and today we have an absolutely amazing expert guest for you. Today we are graced with the visionary, Patrick Gaskin, visionary founder and CEO of Cardly.

He is at the forefront of revolutionizing personalized communication. Under Patrick's leadership, Cardly has pioneered a cutting edge technology that seamlessly merges the digital and the physical realms, allowing businesses to effortlessly generate and mail personalized, handwritten messages with the authenticity of real human handwriting.

With a passion for innovation and a keen understanding of the power of personalization, Patrick has steered Cardly towards becoming a global force in the technology sector. His brainchild, Cardly, boasts the proprietary algorithmic solution that transforms text input, imperfections, and all into virtually indistinguishable Replica of genuine handwriting.

This groundbreaking technology empowers businesses to send customized handwritten messages, whether in single or bulk quantities in mere minutes. Patrick's strategic vision has expanded Cardly's footprint across multiple continents with operational hubs in Toronto, the UK. USA and Australia. Notably, Cardly's reach extends to over 50 different countries, demonstrating the company's commitment to providing a seamless and international personalized mail solution.

As a trailblazer in the tech industry, Patrick Gaskins leadership has not only positioned Cardly as a front runner in the personalized communication space, but has also redefined the way that businesses connect with their audiences worldwide. His commitment to innovation and excellence continues to propel Cardly to new heights, making it a go to platform for businesses seeking an unparalleled and effortless approach to personalized communication.

Patrick, it's an absolute honor to have you on the show today.

Patrick Gaskin: Oh, Kelly, the honor is all mine after after that amazing introduction. Thank you so much for having me.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, it's it's awesome. It's awesome. We actually met through what is a mutual friend for me and you and a client of yours, Rodney Lover at work office furniture.

He sent me a card from Cardly, actually, at Christmas time and said, Kelly, you have to meet Patrick. What they are doing here is super awesome and unbelievable and he would be a perfect guest for your show. And after I did a little bit of research, I'm like, yes, introduce me.

Patrick Gaskin: That's awesome. Yeah, we love, we love hearing those stories of people of sending things out and getting that amazing feedback.

So, yeah, that's great. Your cards are beautiful. They're very, very well done. And I want to get into that story, but first tell us who is Patrick Gaskin? How did you end up on this entrepreneurial journey?

Oh, I mean, like all entrepreneurs, it started young. I mean, I've been told that I was trying to sell stuff to the kids in the street when I was six or seven.

So, you know, I've always had that sort of drive to Try and do things. And I also was heavily influenced by my own family's business. So they, my father was, was pretty entrepreneurial, built a business from one store into 50 stores around Australia, hence the accent. And went on that journey with him a bit as well.

So. You know, it's very exciting to build things and, you know it's, it's nice for the ego to sort of build something that you can look back and be proud on. So, yeah, it's been there from, from a really young age and something that I kind of can't separate myself from, you know, even if I go on a, on between roles or I'm on holidays, like I invariably You know, you have to go and get a book or something or a notepad to start writing ideas into, cause it's just, that's just my wiring.

So yeah, I'm one of those serial slash tragic entrepreneurs. It can't can't not be.

Kelly Kennedy: I was going to say, I kind of feel like once you become an entrepreneur, it's like impossible. It's like part of your blood at that point. It's pretty hard to remove it.

Patrick Gaskin: I don't know why we're like the way we are, but yeah, once you've decided that that's the thing that you enjoy, it's very hard to give it up.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Tell me a little bit about about your father's business.

Patrick Gaskin: So you don't have them in North America, but we call it news agencies. That's so back, it's kind of like a drug store combined with a stationary. Business basically selling, you know, what's called news agencies. It's all publications.

So newspapers, magazines in combination with greeting cards, stationary lotteries. So, you know, kind of a bunch of different segments that might be separate stores in the U S and Canada, but in Australia and the UK. They just sort of all combined into one store called a news agency and they that's where he started.

And then, you know, he started in the seventies and back then they were a very strong business of cornerstone of the community. You know, people were still reading newspapers back then. Magazines were important. That's how we got our information. It was pre internet. So they were very. Very solid businesses and yeah, he, he started just working in one and then managed to work hard enough to, to get into a partnership into, into one and then came to left Victoria, which is the southern state of Queensland moved to, sorry, southern state of Australia, moved to Queensland up in the north and again in a partnership for one.

And then. Took over that one by himself in a pretty regional area, and then eventually moved to the capital city of Queensland, Brisbane, and started putting multiple stores on the ground. And I think I, I was, I worked in the stores from pretty much. You know, as young as I can remember, but actually actively working and getting paid probably an unfair wage, sort of 12, maybe so school holidays.

I mean, we did little paper runs and stuff like that before that, but sort of became a bit more serious at sort of 12 and then all through sort of high school sort of helped around a bit, although my education was pretty important to them. So I sort of focused mostly on that for a bit, but as soon as I had finished.

My high schooling and when I went to university, I basically worked full time in the business while also studying full time at uni. And yeah, sort of went on that journey from, I think we were at about five or six stores. So I became general operations manager and pretty important part of the growth story that took us from being a couple of million dollar business to 150 million turnover business.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Unbelievable. Congratulations.

Patrick Gaskin: Thank you. I mean, look at the time though, you don't realize that because, you know, it's obviously a family business. You don't know if you're half decent at what you're doing because, you know, the risk of nepotism was, was high. Did he have a choice? Of having me as as you know, his right hand man, or was it because I was actually competent?

So that was always my concern. So at some point I went, well, I better go and find out if I'm pretty good. So I did, I did when we, when we managed to get the business to a certain size, where we had some interest from a bigger retailer to come and acquire the business. I took the opportunity to go, okay, well, that's, that's, that's my time to, to leave.

It was also, we were getting to what was that? 2009. Or so, so the iPhone had been around for a couple of years. Then I knew, like, I remember very clearly the day that Steve Jobs stood on stage, even just to announce the iPhone. I went, okay, this, this vertical is going to be challenged, but the idle time that, you know, smartphone, there was no smartphone, really.

I mean, if you had a Blackberry, great, but most people didn't have a very compelling device in their pocket. They were still buying newspapers, magazines, That was an important part of the business that brought in a lot of traffic, you know, and as soon as I saw that that was going to be challenged, I went, okay, well, we need to be starting to think differently.

So so yeah, I, I, I saw an opportunity to go and do something, something else, and I, I was going to go overseas or do something completely different, but this company that acquired us said, Oh, no, no, no, you come and come and work for us. So I moved from Queensland down to Victoria and moved to Melbourne and, and took on a sort of a senior leadership team.

role there and in business development and was charged with helping that business transition to, to, you know, the digital transformation of moving to eBooks and running their eCom sites and things like that. So which was awesome opportunity. Now it took me to Canada, it took me to a partnership with Indigo books in Canada investing in the early days of Kobo, which has been a great technology success out of Canada.

And yeah, so. Really, really interesting. But of course, I was all very entrepreneurial, even in a large retail business. I was given a bit of freedom to go and think a little bit creatively and around the edges, which I loved. I actually, I quite enjoyed it. And yeah, I got to do some, some pretty cool stuff in a short amount of time.

And yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: My gosh, like what an unbelievable journey that you've had, even from a young age.

Patrick Gaskin: Oh yeah. Yeah. Like I do look back on it now and I go, I've done a, I've done a few things like even just that trip to Canada, you know, I, I think I'd only been with the company for a couple of months. So for me going from from, you know, Brisbane, which is pretty much Big country town is over a million people, but it's, it's, you know, it still feels a little bit regional all of a sudden flying across the world to cut a deal on a, on a tech now on a technology play that was, you know, pretty transformative at the time.

I was like, okay, how did I get here? So it was a bit of imposter syndrome going on, but yeah, no, it was, it was, it was fun. And then the journey kept going from there, you know, once I was in that role. Not for not too long, Samsung came knocking and said, Hey, look, we, we've had some dealings with you and we want to get you to come and do similar things for us and, and work in, in our sort of transformation.

That was the point that they'd only had the first Galaxy phone out. So it was Galaxy one and they'll bring in Galaxy two to market and they're like, you know, content's huge. We need to focus on digital content, help us with, you know e learning and e books. And that was the original thing. Cause they, they didn't understand that space and I did.

So, you know, it was one of only maybe a couple of people that really even understood that vertical at all in Australia. So they were like, yep, let's, let's get you in. And then I started work on music streaming and smart TV content and working with national broadcasters. Yeah. So it was, it was, It was a very quick role shift, you know, for working in a, in a family business, which was, you know, it was scaled but all of a sudden getting to do some, some really cool stuff in tech, which had been a bit of a passion for mine from, from early doors.

Like one of the, one of the things you learn, I think in retail in particular is that. You can only be as good as your weakest link when it's, when it's a very people dependent organization. So wherever we could, I saw that, well, technology can help sort of mitigate against that, you know, sort of shortcoming of, of businesses that are two people reliant.

So I became quite passionate about, okay, well, let's look at the internet and, you know building transactional websites and these types of things and, and testing and learning how you, Go from traditional business models to disruptive business models that are using technology at their heart. So that got me, you know, on the journey that I've kind of still want at the moment where I'm trying to disrupt sort of more traditional ways of working with, by embracing technology.

Kelly Kennedy: The thing that I find really interesting about it is your business development background, that you're really coming at this whole thing still from the standpoint of relationships are key. How do we build relationships, but still allow technology to help us do it better?

Patrick Gaskin: Yeah. I mean, that, that is absolutely the, the thing with, with Cardly.

Like when I got to the, the point of saying, and I, you know, I first. I knew I needed to do something in this space. It was kind of before startups were really a, a well established path, certainly in Australia. I think Australia was a bit slow to the, to, to move into this space. And I went, Oh, I know I need to do something in this space.

And my first thing, because I've been to these multiple companies and helped them with digital transformation was to go, well, I'll start an agency and I'll do, I'll help them do digital transformation. But what I really wanted to do, and I didn't realize it at the time, was I wanted to be part of digital transformation and doing it myself.

But when I got to that point and went, oh, okay, this is actually, What I want to do, I then sat down and went, well, what do I know? What do I understand? What am I passionate about? And I do remember being very clear that when I worked at a company like Samsung, which was, you know, very impressive company, but very massive, very scaled.

And really they, they were still in the the mindset of just shifting boxes. So, you know, version one followed version two, version three, you know, so it was smartphone, you know, galaxy one, galaxy two, here comes galaxy three. You know, it was, it was very cyclical and ultimately they weren't big on like maintaining relationships.

Like they were, they were quite happy to just say, just come and buy The next one, and that was very much the culture of smartphones in those early years. It was always like, okay, get the next model every year. So they didn't care too much about the relationship. I've found that quite jarring. Cause it's like, if you build a relationship with the customer and learn that from retail, like if you build a loyal customer.

Probably got them for life so that there's value in, in building relationships. So when I got to this point where it's like, well, what do I want to do? I thought about what I knew. So, as I said, you know, my family's business had sold greeting cards. So I understood that space. And I also knew that I didn't want to just sell Technology for the sake of it, I wanted to add value and I wanted to be like, well, idealistic perhaps, but I wanted it to be something that sort of made a positive difference in, in the world.

So where I landed was, well, actually, you know, and it was, it's really that mindset shift from working somewhere like Samsung, where you're selling technology and the new technology product, which people probably didn't need to go into selling something that people did really need. And. That's where I came back to relationships and personalization of, of messages and content and, and how to deliver that in a meaningful way, because, you know, it's, yes, it's a product.

Yes, people pay for it. But what we're really selling is connection. We're selling the ability for people to talk to each other often in ways that they're not even comfortable doing face to face. So, and that's again, that's something I learned in the early stages that. In with greeting cards, people buy greeting cards almost as an, you know, there's a social contract there that there's an expectation, but they're also an excuse for people to be quiet, vulnerable and say things written down that they wouldn't necessarily say face to face.

So we started very much in the consumer mindset, which is more that, right? So obviously it's a bit different in the business. Perspective, but in the consumer space, if you're sending a card to a loved one you might say things like, I love you, but you might not be comfortable saying that out loud, so you might write it, but you mightn't say it.

So yeah, I quite liked that fact that we would be selling a product. Yes. Hopefully making money. Great. But also actually contributing in a meaningful way to helping people connect and stay connected. Especially in a fast moving world where we're all sort of getting inundated so much. Noise that it's yeah, and it was a more traditional business model that sort of is a bit slower paced important.

And yeah, so that's when I got to that junction. That's why I kind of landed more while I land up where we are in the decision process because I like those things about the product. And I've continued to like that. Like we do get. You know, you've given me some, some amazing feedback today even, but we get some just really delightful commentary from customers saying, you know, you've allowed particularly during COVID and, and these types of instances.

But, you know, often people are dealing with those things on a daily basis where they can't be with their friends and family and that they're still being able to connect. Using our technology to enable that. And that's, that's really cool.

Kelly Kennedy: It's all about the feeling, right? And it's so funny because we live in a time where I do feel like the, the emphasis on cards and the importance of them is starting to wane.

A little bit. And I think that you're on the right path here by saying, well, hold on, hold on. Cards ain't done yet. There's just a better way to do them. Because, you know, growing up my family was heavy on cards, right? We got birthday cards. We got Christmas cards. Like cards is a big deal. You did not like, you didn't get a present maybe, but you definitely got a card.

Like it was absolutely critical. And yet I've seen the other side of it with my fiance's family, where it's like, they rarely give cards. And I'm like, No, no, no. You got to give cards. It's important. And we've given cards to all of our clients throughout the years at Capital and, and it's been, it's been critical.

It's, I think that there's this feeling like, do we really have to do that? And my answer is why wouldn't you? Right. You know, I mean, the reality is, why wouldn't you take, you know, five minutes out of your day to thank a client, a customer for, for the amazing relationship and the opportunities that you've had with them over the year with a simple card.

And it, it, it creates feeling. It's not like when you read a card, it's not just like, Oh, that's another card. You genuinely feel good. About writing that card and receiving that card and so I do think it's important and you know, it's like I said, it would take a BD guy I think to really recognize that importance and say, you know what we can do this better.

Patrick Gaskin: Yeah, well, I mean, that is the thing that that occurred to us very early on, right? So absolutely. Yes, it's it's about. In the, in the consumer context, it's about these very close interpersonal relationships, but you're right. It absolutely touches on something primitive, but we've been doing it for a hundred years.

Greeting cards. We've been doing these personalized mail letters. So good. We do letters and note cards and other things as well. But personalized going to the effort of putting pen to paper and writing and saying something to someone has amazing cut through. Because it just taps into, as you say, that sentiment of it, and it's like, oh, someone cares, you know.

I always look at the juxtaposition or the contrast with e cards. Yeah, people got really big into e cards and they just don't mean a lot because they're digital. There's no tactile thing going on. There's not the surprise and delight of, Oh, someone sent me some mail. Cause I mean, now that's actually pretty rare to have a piece of, a piece of physical mail turn up and all of that plays so well.

In the BD space, because you're now talking about tapping into all of that stuff that people aren't get. So as we steer more into digital, a physical product has actually more impact than ever before. So, you know, we see basically 100 percent open rates with a product that. Started life as a digital product, gets 100 percent open rates and conversion rates that are usually 10 to 15 times more effective than email.

And that's really powerful from a business perspective. The one thing I always try and balance out though with, with, with people that really go, wow, well, I just want to use this to like, Cold call and, and, and, and do like just generate, generate, generate is that. Don't forget that there's a bit of a social contract here too.

Right? So if you're leveraging the power of, of that amazing engagement, you've got to be genuine, but try and avoid going straight for the hard sell. You know, I think good. BD people sort of get this is it's about the relationship. It's about understanding the other person's perspective, making it very contextual about them, and then explaining how you solve their problem.

Not going the other way, like, Hey, if I got a deal for you, you know, me, me, me and by the way, you can, you know, this might help you. It's gotta be you, you, you, and a little bit about me. And. This does that very, very well. You, you've got the, you're going to get their guard down, right? Because they go, you know, our cards turn up in a craft envelope, the real stamp on it, handwriting on the front they're going to get open.

So you've got this great opportunity to have a real piece, you know, a real moment of engagement. We, we see the contrast, you know, people that go and think about that and like put themselves into the position of the person receiving it and keep it pretty genuine and authentic, outstanding results, like amazing.

Those that go, well, I'm just going to use this like any other Blast, you know, type tool, not so much because they're not thinking about the context of, of, of how it plays in the market. But yeah, I mean, that, that was the thing that, and the B to B side for us is obviously it now is bigger than consumer.

It's you, you know, we get used a lot, still mostly from a relationship building perspective, like a big part of what we do is automating. birthdays and anniversaries in the context of other clients or employees. So, you know, we've lived through the times of the, the great resignation and, and, you know, people are trying to maintain and retain their team and, and keep them feeling appreciated.

And this is a great part, you know, there's got a good role to play in that. And at the same time, It's so much, you know, the old adage, it's so much easier to retain a customer than it is to gain a customer. So retaining your clients, you know, showing your clients that you care and, and using them as a referral tool to help get more clients is really important.

the smart thing to do. And this is again, it's got a great play in that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. So tell me when you created Cardly, what was, what was your goal? What did you want to do with it?

Patrick Gaskin: It's funny. We've, we've kind of shifted the, the goalposts a little bit on that. Not, not surprising. I mean, startups tend to tend tend to pivot.

I mean, we haven't pivoted too much away from the core concept and product, but I think originally we, we were very much about just seeing if it could work and trying to help change the way that greeting cards traditionally operated. So, you know, to, to give that a bit of context. So traditionally the old, you know, Drugstore type or card store model is that lots of cards are produced, they're shipped into the store.

Hopefully they sell, but if they don't, they're pulled out and they get pulped and the process rinses and repeats. It's run by, you know, in North America, two massive companies, American Greetings Hallmark. They dominate, they sort of, this industrial complex around greeting cards. And we're like, well, you know, that's, it's not great for a lot of reasons.

One, you know, it's not good for artists. So independent artists don't get paid very well if they, you know, They just sell their artwork once and it could be used a bunch or they might just work for the greeting card company and they're just rewarded, you know, very non not relative to their contribution.

So if they create an amazing design that's really popular, they weren't they don't get extra benefit on the back of that. So we thought, okay, well, how do we make that bit better? So we, we, we paid really good commissions to artists to, to create beautiful designs and pay them every time. The card was used.

So we thought, okay, we'll change that bit. The other was that yeah, this waste quite wasteful model, a lot of the cards off produce offshore as well into China. So there's a lot of production time, effort, energy, environmental impact that we could take out of the model by just going with a print on demand model.

So only cards are produced when they're needed. And then. The final thing was like, well, can we make it faster? So particularly for cross border things, because we operate in multiple countries and we've done that pretty much from day one, although we expanded into Canada more recently, but you know, it's allowed people to be sending cross borders much more quickly than if they went to the post office and paid a whole bunch more for postage to get it across the country or across, across the world.

And yeah, so those were the sort of initial things like, well, let's just do it better. Let's like, and that had come from where I'd been, which was like, you know, ebooks, music streaming. It was just like disrupt the, the, the establishment. So that was the initial objective, but then it became a lot more focused around, okay, let's.

Help people make more meaningful connections. People are doing things on their smartphone. They're doing things in on the computer. How do we make that experience seamless as well? So that it's just do it where you are. Don't think about going into the store or whatever. So so then we shifted more towards, you know, making it a really great experience and and and.

And that became the focus and then obviously business started to really use it. So there it's becoming more about how do we make it more scalable? So how do we make it automated? How do you connect it to your various CRMs that you might use or other systems that you use? So it's about integrations and you know, we've built this really cool Templating tool that allows you to make every message entirely contextual.

And then more recently, it's like, okay, we've got this thing going, businesses like it, but they don't really know if it's working so much. So it's like, well, how do we let them know that it's working? And that's when we started looking at and the pandemic helped a little bit with this, but QR codes finally had their moment.

So we started to use personalized QR codes so that if I sent 10 cards out to people or 10 pieces of mail. out to people, even though the, the QR code would link potentially to the same form or YouTube video or whatever we wanted to send that person to after a call to action. Each of those QR codes is actually unique to each of those 10 people so that we can then report back in the same way that an email click can saying, Hey, this was Kelly.

You know, he clicked on this at this time. He actually clicked it three times or scanned it three times. He's really, he's really warmed up. He's pretty keen on, on what it is you're, you're talking about. So we could close the loop and we could start to give them that analytics around a piece of physical mail and what, how people were interacting with it.

And then we've also expanded it into. You know, gift cards that operate in a very similar fashion. It's also just sort of QR code driven and that builds into the whole rewards and recognition. So turning it from being just a piece of outreach into something that actually shows, I appreciate you not just enough to write something, but actually to give you something that might be valuable for you.

So yeah, that's, that's kind of broad brushstrokes been, been the journey and the objective of course, underlying that is to build a a bigger, More scale business over time that eventually, hopefully has a decent payday and makes my family happy.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, I, I'm very confident you are going to accomplish that.

You know, I mean, I, I talked to you at the beginning of the show. I actually received one of your Cardly cards this Christmas from one of our sponsors who is also Huge advocate for you and actually made this introduction possible. So I just want to give a shout out to a Rodney Lover. Thank you so much.

He's a, he's a sponsor. He's the CEO of atWork office furniture. And he's like, you got to meet Patrick Kelly because he's got something that's really, really impressive. And then he sent me a card and when I received it, I was like, wow, I was actually blown away, Patrick, because the font that you guys have have keyed, I'm sure that you created it.

It's a full on perfect handwrite. Like you can barely tell, you can tell only because you can tell it's slightly printed. But aside from that, you can barely tell that it is not actually handwritten. How did you do that? That's very impressive.

Patrick Gaskin: Yes, I mean, that was, it's been a bit of a journey for sure.

But that was one of the most formative principles, right? So when we first sat down and went, well, how do we make It better than the traditional way of greeting cards. A bunch of people had already started doing sort of print on demand greeting cards. And we looked at what they did. And in most instances, they were very focused on the, the artwork piece.

Like, you know, you could put your, I could put a picture of you on the front of a time magazine or photo time magazine thing and say, you know, man of the year and, and what have you. So it was all about sort of making the card a bit quirky and funny. But the inside Was just type like it was just straight text and it occurred to us, it's like, well, that's not how people do greeting cards now.

And if I go into the shop, buy a beautiful card, it's now static. I can't change the look and feel of that card so much in terms of what's on the front. But what I do is express myself inside the card and I will handwrite and I might even potentially, and we sort of, we found in our research about one in three people will do a little picture or a doodle, you know, a little thing of balloons or, or something that, you know, the picture of the dog or whatever it might be.

Yeah. And it could be bad. It was fine to be bad. That was, that was part of the, part of the whole thing that, you know, it's, it's a little bit of expression for me. And we spoke to a lot of people about that and I was like, well, yeah, the artwork is important because that's the, that's, that's the, that's the initial expression.

Then you open it up and then it's all about, well, what do I think? And, you know, some people just write happy birthday, but most people will take a little bit of time and write a message. So we went like, well, that's, that could be our, that could be our thing. That could be how we differentiate. That could be how we make it different and more impactful than what's currently in the market.

So we set about working out how to do that. And yeah, it was, Where we landed was an algorithmic approach that we've got patented. But basically we take samples of people's handwriting, convert that into several variants of fonts mush it together in such a way and, and have this algorithm do, we call it humanization.

And also emulate the way ink is applied. So both this ink effect and this humanization in, in combination creating something that looks, as you say, virtually indistinguishable from the real thing and But with all the benefits of it not being that so, you know, in North America, we've got some competitors that have got robots holding pens and stuff which is, which is definitely one approach, but they tend to just use like a very standardized font with without too much variation.

We've got a lot more variation on natural. Linkages of letters and so on that does that in the way that people write. But more to that, you can do the doodles, you can add signatures, you can add QR codes. You can, you can add some more dynamic elements. We can have multiple people write in completely different pen colors, you know, multiple signatures in different pen colors.

Things that robots can't do, we can do very easily and at scale and help make this piece of content. Even more impactful and more importantly, measurable when in the business setting, measurable and allow you to do some really clever things with, with things like QR codes, where you could literally link into a, you know, if it was a e com retailer, you can send out a birthday card, person scans the QR code, automatically applies a discount to the to their basket so that they're just like, bang, you know, here's your birthday special offer, scan the link and you're halfway to transacting.

So nobody else can kind of do that because of the approach they've taken of going, let's have something hold a pen. So yeah. So yeah, we've, we've continually improved upon that, continuing to improve upon it. But yeah, it's got pretty good. It's got, it's pretty impressive now.

Kelly Kennedy: It is the most authentic fake handwriting I've ever seen.

Put it that way. It is, it is. Almost indistinguishable. And I would say, and the only reason that I say almost is because you can tell just slightly that it's printed, but man, if you could ever figure that one out, yeah, you're, you're on there. There's no way anyone would ever be able to be able to tell.

And, and it's, it doesn't matter. Because you still read it just like it's a real handwriting. It still feels authentic.

Patrick Gaskin: That's, that's the thing. And it can be in someone's own handwriting. So it can be their own handwriting, their own signature. So it is as close to the real thing as possible. And let's, you know, let's, let's be very clear here.

If someone has got the time to do it, You know with their own pen to paper absolutely do that like it is an extremely useful and extremely powerful way of engaging with your clients customers team members like you should do it if you can but I think we all know that we don't have the time and there's a risk we're going to forget and there's a chance that we're not going to be able to leverage.

The benefit of doing it because we're just too time poor and that's the problem. We're really solving for is that, you know, if you can't do it, you should do it and here's a way to do it. And it's so close that people are going to be perfectly fine with it. And that's the thing, you know, people. I've come to us and gone, Oh, I think it needs to be with a real pen, but actually now I've seen it.

Absolutely. It doesn't. And I can do this at scale. So this is a better, better fit for me on it. You know, the classic one is we've just come through obviously the holiday period. People are really time poor during that time of year. Everyone's in a mad rush to try and finish off the year and not many people have got time to sit down and do it that way.

So we can, we can certainly take that burden from them. But then throughout the year, like. You know a couple of great use cases where I think it has a role to play that quite obvious one is that, you know, if you are providing a service and your business is reliant on things like reviews, for example, one of the most fundamental ways of getting more reviews is to ask, but also the most fundamental reason why people don't.

get the review is they don't have time to ask. They don't ask or they don't, they don't say, Hey, could you give us a review? Why not automate that with something that's really powerful and actually pretty expressive to say thank you in the first place and use it, you know, automate a thank you card that goes out have that QR code that they can just scan and write a review, like with just super, super easy from their smartphone.

And it, and it works like, you know, we see. People doing that with, for Google reviews and it's automatically triggered. So, you know, they'll, they'll, they'll use jobber or, you know, so like a trade person or something, they'll complete a task. The task is completed in their CRM card gets sent automatically.

Thank you. Card arrives, person writes a review. It's just a sweet, beautiful thing that just, just closes the loop. Customer's happy. Business is very happy to get a positive review. And everything moves forward, you know, that's just one of so many types of examples, but you can largely scale this thing. And I think one of our advisors sort of said it's like sentiment at scale, which is, which is quite, quite an interesting way of thinking about it.

And it, and it works. So you've given like a few use cases, but I think, okay, so I'm sure that there was a time not so long ago that businesses understood how to use cards. They did. And it's one of those skills that I think has over the last decade or two decades has really fallen off a cliff a little bit.

Kelly Kennedy: And so what I'm hoping that we can maybe do is do you mind just giving a few more examples about how organizations can use cards to, to handle business development tasks, to handle a customer relationship? Just what are some more examples of how we can utilize cards to do business better?

Patrick Gaskin: There are so many, but let me, let me give you a couple of the highlights.

Just before I do that though, I think you are 100 percent correct. And obviously the thing that changed was that people could reach people with email and email became the predominant method for engagement. The problem with that is that it's also become. So overused that getting cut through becomes really challenging.

And I think when in that BD space, you know, if you're relying on things like newsletters or e newsletters or, you know, business updates these types of things to have. Cut through, they just don't, the open rates are heading in only one direction. You know, single sending, sure. If, if people are, have got a good relationship, they're probably still getting reasonable open rates and that's fine.

I mean, it's clearly an important communication tool. We're not advocating for replacing it. When it's things like birthdays anniversaries important updates that you really want to make sure people get. I think there's a super important role for, for our product to play. So back to your question examples.

So yeah, the, the, the two most common are for things like birthdays and anniversaries, just because they're fully automatable. So to put that into some context it's possible to craft the perfect card. Message choose a bunch of different birthday card designs and fully automate the system to ingest a list of contacts and have them the cards arrive on or just before their birthday automatically so that they go, Hey, this person cares about me.

They've shown that I'm worth. Spending and this is the thing it because it does cost something it's not email, you know, everyone believes email cost nothing. So, therefore, you care about me zero, right? There is a correlation between the effort you've gone to and how you're received as a, you know, how you're valued.

So, by sending something physical, gone to the effort of sending something, something physical. It's got a real stamp on it. Well, that's that's that's. I know that cost something because stamps have got really expensive. So they know that you've gone and shown some care. So both in the context of birthdays and anniversaries, you can fully, fully automate that.

And that is, that is something that's, that's very popular outside of that. Yes, it will be things like, We've got something coming up that might be, this might be more appropriate for a letter. And it's like an invitation to an event or an invitation to a webinar, seminar, whatever it might be. It could even be a digital event.

That's fine. But to get people, you know, make them aware of it, to get them engaged on it, they're using physical mail as the, as the. the invite or the opener to that conversation and using the QR code, the personalized QR code to link it back through and track the engagement on it. And it's very common for us to hear, well, when we did fire email, we got a certain amount of response, right?

We actually got three times that because we used the use of physical outreach instead. So, which is, which is awesome. Then the other more common things are yep. Holiday cards, All the time, like that's hugely important reaching out to say thank you for the year that's just gone, you know, obviously we're in January or this will probably get in February, you know, not so relevant to be thinking about now, but at the end of the year, hugely valuable, you should be showing your clients, you can thank them for the year.

That's just almost the social contract we've got. So we make that very simple and super scalable. And then. Most of the rest will be things that are automated for purposes that are very specific to that business. So in the context of e commerce, it might be they haven't transacted for a period of time.

It might be they haven't transacted for 150 days and the usual cadence of people shopping might be 80 days. So the full and outside of the usual. So they spend. You know, that they trigger something to go out that possibly both a special offer and a call to action in, you know, in the guise of a personal piece of correspondence and outreach to reengage part of their database.

Similarly, they might just do that because they've got some special deal going or where have you thank yous post meeting. Hugely important thank yous post contract signing, or, you know, it's just got to that deal one stage in a CRM automatically triggering the thank you. And the thank you can include a gift card and, you know, really deliver on some value there.

So saying, you know, thanks for signing this contract. Here's 200 to spend it. And we see that across a bunch of verticals. So in a real estate business, they might be sending them like a, a supermarket voucher because they've just moved to their new house. So they might. Time it so that it's when they arrive in the new house, instead of sending them a gift basket of food that they may or may not like, they're sending them a voucher that they can use how they want.

And the way we do gift vouchers is very flexible too. So they can say, yep, spend it at a particular retailer or swap it for something else. So that family or that, that the purchaser could say, sure. Yeah, I'll, I'll spend it at the supermarket or actually no, I need some, I just need. A bunch of odds and ends from Amazon, so I'm going to swap it for that.

Or I, or I, you know, or whatever it might be. So that gives them, people really appreciate that too. It's like, it's a gift without strings attached because they've got the flexibility of swapping it for, for what makes sense for them. So yeah, thank yous, automating the thank you process at the right point.

The review request, which I just spoke to very, very common as well. Again, fully automated based on what's happening. In, in a CRM and then just ad hoc things that you might pick up in sales. So, you know, you've, we've just had a conversation. Let's say you drop some tidbit about an important date that's coming up for you, or it's just happened.

And I just want to send you a congratulations. So I know that you're about to tick over your first year on with the podcast. That would be a great reason for me to send you just a congratulations card on how awesomely you've done over the past year. And. Why not? Right. Like if, if we've built that rapport and I've importantly, I need your mail, your mailing address.

But if I had that. Boom, that would be a great, great reason to do it. And you, I'm sure if that turned up at the post, you're going to go, wow, like you've cared enough to do that. That's, we've just taken our relationship to another level and that's, that's, you know, that's the thing. And, you know, that's a bunch of ideas, but like literally people come to us every day with something new.

I'm like, Yeah. Okay. That could work. That would totally work. So, yeah, it's, it's really, I think it's it's what's appropriate to the organization. It's what, what's appropriate to your you know, the product you're selling. The, you know, the, the size of, of the purchase is actually a huge driver for this, we find that people who have higher value in their sales are more likely to use, use us.

So real estate, hugely popular you know, automotive also, you know, pretty big purchase professional services where people are spending, you know, tens of thousands of dollars with a professional service provider over the course of each year. They absolutely know that. They should be doing these things because these customers are high value.

These customers are spending a lot of money and they should be shown that you care about them, you know, and not feel too transactional. I think it's different if you're selling stuff, that's not, you know, it is more transactional, possibly not a fit, but that said, e commerce is super transactional and we still see it being used in those sort of verticals as well.

So it's It's multifaceted. There's tons of applications. And I think like the most important takeaway here, people is cards are not dead.

Well, as I said, like there's, there's plenty of articles out there saying that physical mail is more impactful than ever because it is becoming rare. I think the statistic now is that the average household in the USA receives fewer than two or three pieces of handwritten mail a year.

So what's. Think about that from a BD perspective, if you're able to leverage that, I mean, those three pieces are getting written read yours is going to get read as well. So that's what makes it so powerful. So it's playing to our strengths. And I think if you can just bring the right mindset and smarts to it and execute well, it's extremely effective.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, and I also want to touch on the fact that your website is absolutely beautiful. You've done a really, really great job laying it out and making it easy to use. I think that being the other side of this is that like, yes, not only is this platform really effective, it's actually easy to get this done.

They've laid it out really well. Like, congratulations. It's very well done. It's beautiful. It's engaging. It leads you down the correct paths to where you need to go. And yeah, I hope that we send an absolute ton of people your way, Patrick, because I think what you're doing, even though it's not like it's not new technology, the way that you're doing it is new technology.

And it's using it in a more effective way than it's ever been used before. You have really reinvented cards. Reinvented them in the best way possible, and frankly, it's, it's going to leave an impact. I think you're going to give Hallmark a run for their money.

Patrick Gaskin: Here's hoping, here's hoping, I mean, that was the original thing, right?

Was to disrupt those, you know, those guys have been at it for a long, long time and haven't evolved a whole bunch. So, yeah, that was, that was the original thing. And yeah, thank you so much for. for sharing that experience. A lot of time and effort has gone into creating a really intuitive UI. That said, you know, from the business side as well, we've we've got some pretty good plaudits around our service and support.

So when people have come to us with, you know, their particular challenges and what they're trying to achieve, we're, we're there to You know, guide them through that process as well. So.

Kelly Kennedy: You also have a great environmental policy. And you know, I mean, it wouldn't be fair not to talk about that. You know, can you, can you just talk about your environmental policy and the things you guys are doing?

Patrick Gaskin: Yeah. So thanks for, for, for. For raising that because it is something that I kind of alluded to before. But yeah, there's a lot of waste in what happens traditionally in this space. I mean, generally paper products are great. You know, we think about recycling and, you know, what can and can't be like paper is 100 percent recyclable.

Certainly the way we do it with there's no embellishment, you know, in our process, you know, we're not putting plastic, there's no plastic in the process at all. So it's a very sustainable. Product that we're putting out there. I know people think, Oh, well, you know, postage and that there's, but of the waste that we have in the world that we can't avoid, this is actually not really bad waste.

This is fully recyclable and all of what we do is with sustainable materials. So we're, so everything we're sourcing is, is FSC. Council kind of remember the last C what it stands for. But yeah, so certified as being a sustainably sourced from proper correct forestry methods we do use some recycled materials as well.

And as I said, there's no plastic introduced into the process and in the consumer side of things, yeah, we've went, we'll hold up. Of course, there are trees still being cut down to, to, to, you know, and that has a carbon impact. So how do we offset that? Well, we've, we've, we've tried to do that in a pretty, pretty aggressive way.

So we basically, for every tree that is used in the, in the production of our cards, we're planting 50, possibly close to a hundred trees in, in, in place of that. So we're trying to have an outsized positive impact on, on what we're doing. And yeah, we've, we've planted. Tens of thousands of trees at this point.

And yeah, that's just, so for every hundred cards get sent out, we plant five trees. I think it is. I'm trying to remember, but I'm pretty sure it's five trees. You might have it in front of you, Kelly. So yeah, so we're trying to have a, a really positive impact on, on that side of things. You know, I've got a young family and you know, the, the world is Pretty challenged from an environmental perspective.

So if there's some things that any organization can do to, to contribute positively, they, they should. And for us, given that there's always been that concern about paper and I don't really know why we're so concerned about papers, not the problem. It's definitely not the problem. Plastic is the problem.

From a pollution perspective. So yeah, we we've, we're trying to do the right thing there.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And you know what, frankly, you are, you are making a difference. You know, the reality is there's a lot of companies that do a hell of a lot less. So I think you're very much on point either way. And, and, and it's a great policy and either way.

You know, as long as you are making an effort, which you are a big one you know, I mean, I think it shows a lot. It shows a lot about your character and your values and what's important to you. And I think more and more that is becoming something that is important to the world. And so, yeah, congratulations.

It's the right move.

Patrick Gaskin: Well, yeah, so it came from just trying to, Do it better. That was the guiding principle. Like, how do we make it better and not having waste as well? The other thing is, you know, I mentioned the advantage of shipping locally. So even if you just think between the USA and Canada, I don't think we really have any direct competitors so much in Canada.

So we're the only people that post locally in Canada, which means that there's less carbon. Impact for, for what we're doing in Canada versus people who are mostly shipping from the US, you know, that stuff's been trucked across many, many miles to, to, to even just get across the border. So yeah, wherever we can, we try and do it better.

And I think eventually we'll end up having operations both on the East coast and the West coast of Canada for the same reason. Big country, you know, if we're only shipping from the East coast, which we do at present you know, there's still, there's more environmental impact we can remove from that process.

We will.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. Well, Patrick, you know, I have to ask you because you have literally been an entrepreneur your entire life, whether you liked it or not. We have a lot of new business owners listening, a lot of founders, a lot of startups, a lot of CEOs and executives, and a lot of people who are future CEOs and executives who are standing on the sidelines.

Maybe they got a great idea and they want to jump, but they need that little kick in the butt. What's the best piece of entrepreneurial advice that you think you could give them?

Patrick Gaskin: Oh, that's always so hard to come up with one piece of advice in these things. I think the one thing I would say, especially if you're a little bit risk averse, is think about how you can de risk the step off point.

So, you know, if you could be leaving your cushy current role and, and really stepping into something that's outside of your comfort zone. I think if you can think of creative ways of testing it and validating your ideas, you should absolutely do it. Do that. Like I've seen quite a few entrepreneurs, their first foray they've had a great vision, but in, in executing it, they've, they've really probably over committed themselves and over risked or put in too much risk into, into validating their idea.

I don't like that for two reasons. One, okay, it could be, could be quite wasteful. They could end up burning a lot of money and find out that it's not a very good idea. But the other is that I think it probably ruins them for the rest of their life in terms of taking risks and being entrepreneurial.

And that's not good because more entrepreneurs in the world is not a bad thing. I think if if you, if you've got good ideas The world will largely be a better place if good ideas are seen in the light of day. So yeah, and I, I guess it's not great clear advice, but, but where you can look at it critically, you know, really challenge your ideas before you, yeah, you put them in, into the world and don't be afraid to have multiple ideas, you know, before you, you really put your chips in on anything.

But even when you start doing that, try and validate it, talk to lots of people ask for lots of opinions, go to people that you might know are not going to. Beep. You know, cause when we ask people things often people are too polite, right. To tell you what I really think. So go and ask the hard questions and say, no, no, no, no, no.

Really? Like, don't just go, yeah, cool. Everyone said it was a great idea and then it didn't work. And like, why didn't anyone tell me that they really thought it was a terrible idea? You know, so almost have An amount of skepticism yourself and it's hard because you're like, you're just so enthusiastic, right?

I want this thing to be a thing and I reckon it can work. It should work and but seek out people who are going to tell you some hard truths and really challenge you. If you can't challenge yourself, get some people that can really challenge you and ask you the tough questions so that, you know, you're giving yourself the best chance of success from the very start.

Because. Lots of people have been there and done that, and they've probably got some great advice. So if, you know, I think Sam Walton always said it best, but there's probably no new ideas. You're always standing on the shoulders of others that have been there. So both sides of that, you know, think about your idea in the context of, is it different enough?

Is it got enough variability in it to, or, you know, it's different enough from the original ideas that you're building upon that, that it's got a chance of working, but also go and talk to other people and validate that, you know, the ideas Make sense to more than just yourself.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. So that's it.

People validate your ideas. Patrick, this has been an absolutely amazing episode. Thank you so much for getting up in the wee hours of the morning in Australia to have this conversation with us. It's been a pleasure.

Patrick Gaskin: It's been great. I'm not a big fan of talking about myself, but hopefully, hopefully some people get some value out of it.

And yeah, if anyone has any questions or is interested in the product in any way, feel free to reach out. We're always here to support people.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. And what is the best way for them to reach out to you? Obviously they can go to cardly. net to check out the website and pick cards and order them, but if somebody wanted to reach out to your team, Patrick, what's the best way for them to email you?

Patrick Gaskin: Yeah, we've got a pretty, pretty active support channel there. So just support at cardly. net if you want to go directly to fire our email, but the website's not a bad starting point. You'll, you'll find lots of information about, you know, the Business use cases. Some that I've probably forgotten to even mention, but yeah, having a look through the business portal is a good starting point.

And yeah, it's cost nothing to get a sample because nothing to create an account and have a bit of a look around. So I encourage people to just have a have a play and see what they think of the product. And if they like it our team will will guide them on that journey.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And I'll, like I said, I'll be the first to say your cards are amazing.

There's no question that if you're listening to this and you order cards for your business or for your clients, just go to Cardly. They are awesome. Patrick is awesome. You can tell he's a very humble person and honestly, great, great place to do business. So feel free. Go check out Cardly. Patrick, it's been amazing until next time. This has been episode 114 of the business development podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020, his passion and his specialization.

Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.