Joe Troyer 0:46
Welcome to another episode of show me the nuggets. Today we have on a gentleman I just started following David Wachs, I'm super excited to bring you guys up to speed on what David is doing and also to pick his brain a little bit on how he grew a business that has grown by over 300% year over year. So David, your background, you're from Phoenix, you got some software, entrepreneurship and automation in your background. And you're running a company right now called handwritten, give us a little info on handwritten.
David Wachs 1:17
Sure. And Joe, thank you so much for having me on. Handwritten is a very, I think, a very unique company. But what we are is we are trying to make the process of sending handwritten notes or at least perceived handwritten notes, as easy as sending an email or a tweet or anything else. The reason I got in this space is partly handwritten. I ran a text messaging company back before really, that area got crowded, but we would send a million messages a day for Abercrombie and Fitch Toys R Us Sam's Club OfficeMax, these huge IKEA these huge brands. And what I realized is we're all getting inundated by all these texts and emails and tweets and slacks and Facebook Notes and teams messages and everything else. We're getting overloaded with electronic communication. But what I also realized is people when they get a handwritten note, not only is it opened and read, but it is often kept and savored and put on display. So what I wanted to do was figure out a way to leverage that emotional connection, and send and allow people to send out handwritten notes when otherwise they couldn't or wouldn't. So, in my case, I was lazy. And I would end up with birthday cards, and thank you notes in my laptop bag, and I just never get around to sending them. And then they get bent up or I wouldn't have a stamp or whatnot paper, or pen and I wouldn't want to send them out so they'd get left behind.
But I thought, gee, if I could automate this, this could be a thing. So that's what we did seven years ago, back in 2014, is I started the process of automating handwritten notes. Now we have a full platform that allows users to use our API salesforce.com, integration, HubSpot, integration or website, Zapier Integra mat, all these different ways iPhone app, Android app, whatever, to send handwritten notes out at a cadence that makes sense for them. And so that's the software component. And then the hardware component is we currently have 170 robots that we build here in our facility in Phoenix, each robot, that's what I have on the fake background.
Behind me, it's a picture of our facility. We have each robot holds a real pen, it's a Pilot G two ballpoint pen, you can pick them up at Staples, or office Mac's, whatever. And then those notes are written out in the station on the stationery of your choice in the handwriting style of your choice and then mailed within one business day. So we are the largest in the world doing this. That's not saying much. It's a very small industry, but we're the largest in the world by an order of magnitude or more. Doing about 10,000 notes a day, give or take
Joe Troyer 4:05
eautiful seems like you guys have a really easy business model too. In terms of pricing, right? It's flat rate plus postage, is that right?
David Wachs 4:13
Well, it tears so you could go on our website $3.25 Plus postage out the door. Or if you want a custom card, and we run our own digital press. So if you wanted a card with your logo on it or folded, you know, whatever, then that's slightly more because it's more labor on us. But then if you want to prepay a package of 500 cards or 1000 cards, you could get a discount. If you want to join our subscription plan which is growing because you plan on sending five cards a month or 25 cards a month. Every month. Our subscription plans make a lot of sense. And there's discounts available there too. So worst case scenario, assuming you go on our websites and one card full rate, it is 375 for a custom card plus postage.
Joe Troyer 5:01
Gotcha. Cool. Yeah, super simple. So what do you find? Are the top use cases of your guys's handwritten cards?
David Wachs 5:08
It's great question. Number one is thank you cards, which is, I think the best use case period. And the reason is, is I think as a society, especially Americans, we don't think people we have a very entitled viewpoint, we just say, Oh, you bought from me, great. Here's your product. Adios. But so having a full stop, thank you of just thanking somebody for their purchase. Very powerful. We could get into that later if you want.
But the number one use case is Thank you. Number two, his birthday card, Christmas card. We just finished our holiday period. And you know, we sent through 250 1000 orders just over that period. So you know, thank you are holidays quite important. We were doing some really interesting Winback scenarios. We're also doing some just experiential, if you join our program, which I guess is a thank you card, but really, you know, welcome to The Club, that type of thing. We see like we have a YouTube show, one of the largest morning YouTube shows that uses us. And if you sign up to their fan club, you get a handwritten note from the YouTube posts. And a lot of people are tweeting that are Instagramming it so it's creating a viral aspect to but those are the main use cases. Really. Thank you for your purchase. Thank you for becoming a customer Winback birthday holiday.
Joe Troyer 6:29
Yeah, I love that I was listening to a podcast this morning. And the guy was talking about how they took their churn rate every month, on their subscription from like, you know, 18% to 3% a month. And he said basically, one of the big things was that was the thank you, and was kind of the check ins and personalizing those check ins. So yeah, that they didn't feel automated. And I definitely think, David that this could be a great strategy to help people with churn and to, you know, help people know that you're thinking of them and that you care about their accountant, your relationship, no matter what kind of business you're in.
David Wachs 7:05
Yeah, yeah. You know, we have clients, just to give you a few examples. One is a piano tuner. I love this example, because he's only in your house once a month, once a year, you don't your piano stays tuned for a year. So it goes in your house tunes your piano. A year later, when he sends you a handwritten note, automatically after tuning your piano, he set up with his calendaring system to do that, a year later, when he returns to your house, that handwritten note is still sitting on the piano.
So not only is it open, not only is it read, but it is put on display in what when I was growing up as a kid, my parents called the fancy room, you know, the room that you're not allowed to eat in, and maybe there's plastic on the couch or whatever. But it's a fanciest room in the house, you know, their most prized room. And then the the note is on your most prized possession in that price room for a year. And every time you go and use your lovely piano, you see that note and think, gee, this guy was really nice to send me that note. I mean, think about the brand, the impression value of that it's huge. And a lot of people say, Well, what are you doing your thank you notes or, you know, why do you send thank you notes. And I say it's a full stop thing. Whew, that's a term I want to coin because everybody's looking for ROI, right ROI, ROI. Well, thank you notes should just be Thank you.
And you'll get the ROI later. And if you're asking for a while you're kind of asking the wrong question. That said, the ROI is there. Such as with the piano tuner, we have, we work with an online furniture brands that ships you furniture to put together. They have people calling into their customer support crying because they received a handwritten note. I think a lot of that has to do with COVID and the impact of loneliness, of isolation and loneliness. But I don't think you can under understate the value, overstate the value of a handwritten note, it just has so much impact these days, and really sets you apart from the 140 emails, the average person receives a day in an office and they spend, you know, 24% of their time just managing the read their email, you know, sending a handwritten note avoids all that and really gets to
Joe Troyer 9:13
their heart. Yeah, love that. I mean, think about an easy way to stay in doubt. Right? Standing out should get you an ROI in my point of view, and then like long term, you're right like the piano tuner if just once a year he sent a follow up card have heard yet. It's about time to get your piano tuned again. I mean, how could you not get an ROI on that? $3.75 cent mailpiece.
David Wachs 9:36
Exactly. Yeah. And you know, people spend, you know, what's your cost per client acquisition? If we're if we're talking digital, you know, everybody only talks digitally these days. So what's your what's your cost per acquisition, you know, it's the cost per click, plus the, you know, the conversion rate per click, that's you times the conversion rate per click or whatever it gets you your cost per acquisition. Well, isn't it cheaper to retain a trick Your existing clients. And I guarantee you $3.25 is way less than a cost per acquisition. So I mean, we have automotive dealers that used to send out printed letters, and then switch to handwritten letters.
And those handwritten letters generated 20, or generate 23 times the response rate, as printed letters 23 times, and when you can consider the cost difference, camera notes are more expensive. For one we print on nice stationery versus the printed letter is just the stationery and it's typically junk, you know, a thin sheet of paper, we're printing on nice stationery than writing on that. So we're always going to be more expensive, but and then we put a real stamp on it and all the rest. Were always going to be more expensive. But when you take into account the cost difference, we're still seven times greater ROI. So yeah, I mean, we have outsized returns compared to to other forms of communication.
Joe Troyer 11:02
That's awesome. So I think there's definitely a no brainer for any marketing agency, you know, you got clients, you got prospects, you should be trying to differentiate yourself from everybody else in the marketplace. But I think as well that this is a great potential service and kind of referral mechanism for you to give to each and every one of your clients. Right. And to help them set up their business. This should be a no brainer. So at the beginning, we talked about David, that that you guys have catapulted here, and you guys have really grown by 300%, year over year, something inception. I'm curious, like, if you kind of zoom out or you pull back a little bit, what would you say is kind of the 8020 of that impressive year over year growth?
David Wachs 11:42
Yeah, so 300%, year over year is a little bit deceptive, I think you're going off the Inc 500. So it's their way of measuring is 300%. Over three years. So we've been growing about 100% a year or whatever, which I'm still happy with, and 300% would be better. This year, we grew at 80%. But if you look three years past, it's more than 300%. But what do I think is, is the cause of that? I think one of the big there several number one, customer service, attracting and retaining our own customers is number one, and really offering phenomenal customer service, I think that's a huge thing. I mean, on our website, we have a money back guarantee, we have people, you know, which sometimes gets taken advantage of
I don't want to waste ways to take advantage of it. But people do take advantage of it. And we kind of swallow our you know, bite our lip and let them do what they're going to do, because it's more important to us to have a money back guarantee. So customer service, number one. Number two is obviously we have to have the best quality of offering out there. I think our website is the best website out there, which is kind of our brand.
You know, it's not like people are driving up to the handwritten building the they go to our website. So we have to have the best website out there. And we're currently revamping that it's been a year long process hopefully comes out soon. So that whole thing they the user experience of using our system. The third thing, I think, is really the fact that we've designed ourselves to be a platform, which not everybody can do. But when I designed handwritten, I did not design a website. I
designed a platform. And what I mean by that is we designed we were API first approach so that we could hang a website off of it, we could hang an iPhone app, we could hang Zapier, Integra mat, Salesforce, Shopify, all these ways to connect to your systems, so that we are plumbing, we're not razzle dazzle. My last company, we did a lot of we, you know, you kind of break your business down into transactional or kind of plumbing, and then campaign right like you have your new store opening campaign and you get all these advertisers and marketers involved and they come up with that campaign and wow, there's a lot of money there.
Let's blow it out. Boom, done, which is great. And I know you're you communicate with those people. And that's wonderful. But I think the ongoing CRM aspect, the plumbing part is really important to grow a growing brand. And because then it's you don't have to have the the spin on the brain to figure out okay, what are we going to market to this month? What are we doing that now?
Now we've, we sold this last month? What are we going to sell this month, we have to create something that's just runs. And that's why we're kind of API first is we just want to be plumbing that just runs, set it and forget it as Ron Popeil would say. So that's, that's really what we've done and integrating with Zapier has been huge integrating with salesforce.com has been huge. Just allowing people to use us how they want to use us and not forcing them to come back to the handwritten site to do what they need to do.
Joe Troyer 15:07
Yeah, I see you guys have a ton of integrations. And I definitely think, you know, getting into somebody's plumbing, so to speak, like you said, are part of the process of every new customer, every third customer or whatever, you know, you guys are part of that process. You know, you guys grow through osmosis as as each and every one of your customers grows. So yeah, like,
David Wachs 15:26
yeah, like, the other day, my insurance broker who sells us for health insurance called us and he says, You know, I've been wanting to use you. But then I saw our insurance CRM system has an integration, and they were talking about integrating with handwritten. So now, now they're advertising for us, right? They've got this huge insurance platform CRM system that is used by insurance brokers and their advertising sending cards via us like, that's awesome. That's the viral effect that comes from being a platform. So So yeah, that's, that's, we want much more of that. I love that
Joe Troyer 16:04
it looks like from an organic and Google ranking standpoint, you guys do very well, as well, kind of one of the top channels for you guys. Besides integrations.
David Wachs 16:15
What would you advertise on Google? Quite a bit, we've slowed down, or I think even temporarily stopped our Facebook. The way I see the difference is Facebook is awareness, you're driving, you know, this is nothing new, you probably know this 10 times better than I do. But you're driving, you're kind of boiling the ocean, hopefully targeting specific people, but boiling the ocean, trying to drive awareness to them come to you, versus Google, people are looking for the service, and they find you.
So Google ads are very big. We also do a ton of content marketing. We use a service called Market muse, which helps us define our content briefs for our writers, and then we put out a piece of content every day, five days a week. So that's been big. We just tried to make sure we're writing out there. So I write for Ink Magazine, I have guest blogs on other blogs. Yep. It's all that it's a huge content marketing strategy.
Joe Troyer 17:18
Gotcha. Yeah, you guys are doing really well. I see you guys ranking number one in Google for handwritten cards. So yeah, yeah, we're trying. Yeah, that's awesome. And definitely something that our users and people that follow us definitely subscribe to is Google organic and, and pushing that, you know, nothing can beat that really long term ROI from from organic if you can get there. So kudos to you.
I want to jump back a little bit when we focus mostly on handwritten so far, can you tell us a little bit about more about sell it and kind of maybe your journey to exit you know, one of the things that we as marketers and agency owners love to help our clients with and we'd like to do as well as is build with the intent to sell built with the exit. And whenever I have an entrepreneur on the on the line that has actually exited a company, I like to make sure we ask at least a couple of questions down that kind of train of thought or topic.
David Wachs 18:10
Yeah. So from early on, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Back when I was a little kid, I would take my family, my brother's red wagon, his little Jeffrey wagon, it was called. And I'd fill it up with whatever my mom bought at Costco or Price Club, I guess at the time, and then I go door to door selling it. And then if there's nothing to sell, if I didn't have anything from Costco that day, there was one time where I took the family first aid kit. I put it in the wagon, I went door to door, I was like four or five, back then, you know, kids could run free. And I knock on doors and say, Excuse me, is there an emergency going on? And they'd say, No, that's okay.
I'll come back later, I was trying to sell anything, including emergency care. So when I went to college, and I actually started my first business in high school, building computers, I was a huge nerd. But this is before Michael Dell really kind of changed that model back then you'd go to little stores in your strip mall and they would build a computer for you. I worked for one of those and I started my own while in high school and then went off to college and I, I did a business engineering degree because I wanted to eventually start my own business. And then with engineering, I had to choose which concentration or which major and
I chose computer science, not because I love computers that much I did. But it was more because I thought it'd be easier to start a software company than a hardware company and have a lot of cash back. So from very early on, I wanted to do this but then what happened is as like most people came out of school, a lot of school debt, and I couldn't afford to start a company. My third job out of school I got fired. It forced me to push down this path and out of desperation I started sell it which was original really focused on real estate. And this is 2014.
This is way before the iPhone. iPhone I believe was 2008. But the idea was you drive by a house you want info on that house? There's nothing there's the flyer box is empty. How do I get info I called the realtor they're not going to answer. So you could text in using our service for info on the house, and then get a text a few text messages back of info, each 140 characters or 160 characters. And then you would get an MMS message, a picture of the house and all that. And then the realtor would get a lead. So that was our very first offering. And then very, very quickly, I realized I do not want to be pigeonholed in real estate. And I started a second offering called coupons app, which was just general outbound CRM, coupons up, change this name to solid studio, and that's what was used by Abercrombie and Fitch, those were both.
From 2004. It was a much quicker cycle than handwritten. We became profitable, much quicker, we grew faster. But that company, I a lot of those lessons I learned there, I now play the handwritten such as design as a platform first, that would help grow. That was a big one. But what happened was, is when I built it, sell it about two years in I moved back to Chicago. I was in Arizona, and I moved it to Chicago, and I ran it from there. And I went to a digital technology trade show or something.
I don't know some goofy trade show in Chicago, and an investment banker came by my booth named Todd. And he was legit. He wasn't one of these guys trying to sell your business. You know, these, you know, your family business. Like there's a company out there called generational equity. And there's some shady ones out there. But sorry, generational equity, I'm sure you're fine. I don't want to, but focus more. I mean, this guy, his pedigree was legit. So. So what I did was, it actually went down the path of generational equity to it just wasn't a good match. So let me let me just say that, although they're quite good for many people, but But I said to him, I said, you know, gee, I'm very flattered. You're interested in selling us two years, and we are nowhere near being sellable. And he said, Oh, you will be.
And he, for investment bankers. You think they're jerks, but this guy was the nicest guy ever. He's stayed in contact. And then what happened is we grew to about 5 million in revenue with 40% margins. So we're pump pumping out $2 million in profit a year. And I called him up. And I said, you know, I think it's time to sell because there was a whole bunch of CTC, like communications regulation and stuff that was making what we were doing harder. We weren't spamming, but we're getting accused of spamming, which didn't look good.
David Wachs 23:03
And also, there's a lot of competing technologies, there's push notifications, and all the rest. So I said, you know, gee, could you help us with that sell process? And he said, Yeah, we ended up being the smallest deal they ever did, because $5 million is still very, very small. But he ran a process for us and anybody in your listenership that is listening. Listen closely. When you run it, when you sell your company, do not sell to your customer that calls you and says I want to buy you do not sell to your competition, if they call you up and say I want to buy you. Or if they do if either of those two things happen, great.
Call your investment banker and run a process. What a process is, is an option. Not really not, it's, it's like putting your house on the market, you want as many bids as possible, because your competitor probably will buy you but probably for 10 cents on the dollar 80 cents on the dollar, whatever it is, they're not going to offer you top dollar. So we ran a process. We packaged up our business, we put together all the financials. The investment banking firm, went out and met with a bunch of people, different people, we had three bites. A guy on a company on the West Coast, a company in the Midwest and a company on the east coast. In the end, we ended up selling to the company in the Midwest who was very close to where we were, it was in Detroit.
We were in Chicago, it was a very simple, great cultural fit all the rest. So it took about I want to say four to five months for that process to go down. I will say two things. The process was so stressful. I ended up in the hospital. It literally wrenched my guts. I was in the hospital for like four days with just weird stuff. issues. I was a bachelor at the time. One night, I woke up in the middle of night saying, Oh, I don't feel good, I went to the hospital, and they were going to operate on me. It literally wrenched my guts. So try to have a little perspective when you go through that process and not get so emotionally attached.
Number two, post sale, you have what's called an typically have an urn out period. And please let me know if I'm getting into too much, oh, this is a great. So you have an urn out period. So the company will buy we got purchased in 2012. And they'll say, Okay, we want you, the owner to stick around for two years. And for the first year that it'll be performance based as part of the sale, so some of the sale price will be held back. And we'll be you know, you've done great until now. But how are you going to do the year after we buy you, that's what they want to know.
And then the second year, there was actually no performance involvement, but I had to stick around those two years. We knocked it out of out of the park year one. Year two, they used that as really the integration year were they because they knew I was going to fly the coop as soon as that year was over. So a couple things, try to negotiate the shortest turnout period you can, you will not want to if you're an entrepreneur, you're not going to want to work for somebody else, especially somebody else that takes over your baby. And I'll talk about that in a second number to think very hard about your salary during that are out period, shoot for the fences.
I did not shoot for the fences. I had a good salary for those two years. But I should have asked for a lot more because that that discussion is kind of separate from the sale of the company discussion. So really try to shoot for the fences on your own personal salary during year two. Back to running the company. So year one after acquisition was very much we ran individually still. We had our own office in Chicago, your two they opened up at the company was called a prize or hello world they changed their name. Now they're part of Merkel, if you know who they are. So, so he pries hello world had an office opened an office in Chicago, we moved into that office, they replaced me as head of mobile. And I had to watch the new head of mobile in the company run my division into the ground.
David Wachs 27:23
The closest thing I can give an example of is imagine you spend at this point, so 2004 to 2013. So nine years of your life, renovating and building a Corvette 1962 Cherry Red Corvette you spent all this time the thing looks bomb when you're done it just looks perfect. And then you hand that Corvette over you put the Corvette up for sale in an auction you know a lot of buyers have that Corvette the guy that offers you top dollar just turns out to be your next door neighbor. Great, whatever convenient you give him the Corvette He then puts it on his front lawn and over the course of the following year you see him take a sand belt sander to it the wheels fall off the the bumper rusts out you know the engine blocks destroy everything is just frickin destroyed on that car.
And you have to sit there and look at it every morning with your cup of coffee that's what happened during the year to have that earnout process and it is hard I don't mean to sound like poor little rich boy because I you know you did okay during the sale but it is very very hard and you have to have some emotional distance to what you build prior to sale and you have to know that once it's not yours it's not yours and your employees are going to fly the coop all my employees dead you're gonna fly the coop hopefully before your employees do because it'll be harder you know, hard to watch.
But you really have to expect a difficult time and it was difficult. So I don't know if I'm rambling but but the big run a process that's number one absolutely get an investment bank or a business broker if you you know if you're a smaller business and run a process do not sell to your to the first guy that rings your door and says hey, I want to buy your company.
Joe Troyer 29:21
Now I love that I'm creating an auction is huge. We just exited a company that I acquired about two years ago and yeah, probably one of the biggest takeaways definitely agree with number one create creating that auction creating that process was huge. We had an offer on the table and ended up rolling it into a process or an auction and ended up with a way better buyer out the other side. So definitely agree with that.
Number two, I mean the emotion and gut wrenching I mean it's it's awful. Just that that four or five, six month timeline, whatever it takes to actually exit the UPS the downs the day to day it's it's awesome. And I'm really sorry to hear about your hospital stamp, but I'm not surprised.
David Wachs 30:06
Um, no, that was that was before I sold that was during the selling process. I was just so stressed out about selling the company. I just ended up in the hospital, but I'm crazy. Literally your cuts twist. It literally
Joe Troyer 30:20
was crazy. It was a nightmare for me as I, as I reflect on it, you know, happening basically the last six months of last year. And that was one of multiple businesses, but it was gut wrenching. I mean, that one business threw me off completely in every other business. I was just in a funk. Like it was hard to see straight the thing straight. Yeah, gut wrenching is the right way to put it for sure. I can definitely. I can definitely see how you ended up there. And yeah, thank you. You know, luckily, I think by creating that auction, we're able to end up with a better buyer.
That was that was the Fit longer term. And that was a better fit. And it wasn't just all about the money. We ended up getting really great terms, but probably accepted an offer for a little less cash to get paid out faster. Less last time, we didn't have an or night, but we didn't have an urn out at all. And and it was it was a really good thing for us and our customers. It was the right person. So definitely agree on those top two tips and then earn out Yeah, man. I can't imagine the 1962 Corvette just getting hit with a belt sander. Man, that analogy is something but it's so true.
Luckily, I'm not having to deal with that. But I can just imagine how awful that would be. I know how, how wrapped up my emotions were just during the sale. I couldn't imagine that actually giving away the keys to my baby. Right. And then like literally seeing get hit by a belt sander after and being stuck there having to participate. Watch it, but from the sidelines not being able to do anything. I can't imagine.
David Wachs 32:06
Yeah, I mean, you know, when we sold to Hello world, it was really about. I mean, to your point, it had been the best cultural fit, because I thought it'd be a great home for my employees. And we had 25 or so employees and I really wanted to find a good home for them. And I thought I did. Some of them did stick around. But a lot of them flew flew the coop. But yeah, the second year was super hard, because it was hard on my employees because we had our own, you know, we have very tight relationships with our customers. And they were they also claimed, you know, they probably sent an email to Abercrombie and Fitch and so yeah, you know, that's my customer. I have relationship with them. But they're the big gorilla.
We're the little company. So they got the the Abercrombie and Fitch relationship. And my salespeople and account managers that were running that how to play second fiddle and it really wasn't fair to them. But I was just like, I just got to get out of here. You know, what am I supposed to do? We have to play nice with our new acquires, and there was very much not that NIH not invented here syndrome with them. There was not intended here with us, there was infighting, and commission splits. And it was really hard. Additionally, I don't know what to do about this.
But when we got acquired by Hello World War II prize, which then became Hello World, which then became Merkel, what happened was, we got acquired to be the icing on the cake of this agency, they had a very strong agency with no mobile component. So actually, we are one of two mobile companies they acquired. And then they wanted to be acquired. So they got acquired by a private equity firm called catterton partners. And then catterton, was responsible for paying the earnout.
And they didn't. And you know, they're a billion dollar private equity, multibillion dollar private equity firm, and they didn't want to pay the earnout because hello world he prize wasn't hitting their numbers. But I could give a you know, two F's about if he prizes hitting their numbers, the deal was for hand or sell it to hit its numbers, which we did, and catterton had to respect the contract that we had. So in the end, I, you know, I had some very unpleasant words for catterton.
And I threatened you know, we were the only growing profitable section any prize, and I threatened to call my clients and tell them what was going on so they'd all quit and then you'd have nothing and In the end, they paid us an urn out. But, you know, when you're structuring your deal, and you have a document, literally, people probably can't see but a three inch thick document to go through make sure there's protections that in the case of an acquisition of the acquire that there's absolutely a bulletproof document there. So whoever acquires the company has to follow through.
Joe Troyer 35:26
Yeah, that's a great segue. Man, this is awesome. I think we could talk about this probably for hours, I really appreciate your insight on sell it and also handwritten, definitely guys check out and written, I think, an easy opportunity for you guys to plug into your business. We're all marketers. We're all using Zapier.
We're all using Integra mat and all these automation platforms. So it'd be very easy for us to integrate with you and start using the service. So definitely guys, check them out. And in wrapping this up, I wanted to ask David for a recommendation, I feel like at the end of every podcast, everybody asks like their podcast guest to recommend three books, I do something a little different. I'm an avid reader.
But if a book sucks, I put it down. I don't continue reading it. And so I like to ask other entrepreneurs have the one book that has made the biggest impact on who you are the way that you do business? And ultimately, why? Because I'm after those great books, not the Okay, don't finish books.
David Wachs 36:27
I mean, honestly, the one book and you've probably heard it quite a bit is E Myth by Michael Gerber. That book was recommended to me in my last company, it is an easy read. And well, well worth that he's fought you know, he has a follow up to that, like E Myth revisited and all these other, but E Myth by Michael Gerber. Because what it really talks about is that whole notion of work on your business, not work in your business. I'm still working in my business at handwritten, but I'm trying very, very hard to work on it, not in it. So yeah, E Myth.
Joe Troyer 37:01
Perfect. That's awesome. So we'll link you guys up in the show notes. Obviously, David, if somebody wants to reach out to you, what's the best place for them to do that?
David Wachs 37:10
David at handwritten calm, and that's HNDWRY Ttn. spelled a little funny like Lyft, or you know, a y f t. That's the best place. I recommend everybody try handwritten. You can request a free samples kit, just go to a hundred.com click business, you'll get get a whole samples kit. Or if you sign up and use code podcast. You have to sign up with a username password. It won't work with Google Facebook. But if you sign up in use code password podcast, we'll get $5 in credit, which is enough to send one code.
Joe Troyer 37:41
Yeah, that's awesome. And like I said, everybody uses all of our users use all these integration platform so it would be easy to play with it and get it all set up and see how you like the system. But go check it out. Thanks so much, David wax for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing all your nuggets. super appreciate it. And everybody. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Show me the nuggets, audios.
