James Schutrop: Creating a WOW Customer Experience: Simple Touches That Build Lasting Loyalty

Speaker A: Foreign. Folks, welcome to an episode of our virtual podcast here at High Level. We call these the Spotlight sessions where we find incredible people in our community or around our community and you know, bring them onto our virtual stage to kind of hear their story. What are they building on, what's working, what's not working. And it's a great opportunity for a lot of us to learn from great people around us. And if you are watching this live, please comment so we can engage with you. Tell us what city, state or region you are checking in from and uh, I'm excited to tell you about James. James is the founder and CEO of a company called Scribe Handwritten. Um, James, uh, please correct me if I butcher your bio here. The team has worked extensively to find the right ones. I'm going to read this out. You know, hopefully not as robotic, but either way. James is the founder and CEO of Scribe Handwritten. It's a Minneapolis based company using AI powered robots with real pens to produce authentic handwritten direct mail at scale. Scribe's flagship product is a go high level app that automatically triggers personalized handwritten letters from the workflow builder or to bulk contact list, giving marketing professionals, agencies and SMBs a hands off way to drive response with physical mail. For those kids that are watching this, physical mail is something you get in an envelope in a box by a neighborhood or whatnot. But either way, uh, James has raised a lot of capital, over 2 million from what I understand in the recent days. Serving over 2000 plus clients as a serial entrepreneur. He sold his first company at 25 and previously built successful e commerce brands and, and home service businesses. Um, now 31, he lives in Minneapolis and um, he's on board with us here on a workshop on a spotlight session to kind of just help you all understand what does an integration from in the marketplace look like when we're serving similar customers, kind of building together complementary services. Um, James, thanks for saying yes.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I appreciate you having me out. That was quite the intro.

Speaker A: That's great. So how did this all come about man? Like what is, what is the genesis of this company and your journey as an entrepreneur?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, good question. So kind of like most businesses, they usually come from a pain point. You know, the founder had a problem with something, you couldn't find a solution and then you went out and made it right. And that's kind of exactly what happened here. So um, you know, the original genesis is, you know, within my first business that I had and you know, you can listen to authors going back to the 80s and speakers like, you know, real players preach the power of handwritten letters, whether it's within the sales process, whether it's to existing clients to increase retention, LTV loyalty, things like that. So I had used them in my first business, um, both for, you know, in hope service space, just sending out to neighbors around different projects that we were doing, letting them know that we're in the area, uh, you know, opting for a handwritten letter, you know, being sent to our customer base in the spring, letting them know what it was time for versus just an email which was going to their spam box and then, you know, right after appointments just thanking people. And it was unbelievably impactful, you know, over our email and SMS efforts, um, just because people are getting so bombarded, you know, on those channels essentially. So that was kind of my first introduction to handwritten letters and working that into my workflows essentially. Um, and then when I had an E Commerce brand, um, the revenue that was driven for our company was, believe it or not, the biggest driver in revenue. So about half of the revenue that we produced for that whole entire E Commerce brand given we had a kind of a, a lead magnet on the front end, as many of you guys do for offers for you, your clients, whatever it is. 50% of our revenue is driven through one email flow and that email flow had a conversion rate of 1%. So you know, as any marketer does, and you guys do, you kind of look at the points in the funnel and I go, all right, that's a pretty low conversion rate. It's not massive, but it's making a huge impact on our business. If I can get that 1% to a 2%, I now take that 50% of revenue up to, you know, basically an additional 100 of revenue, whatever the math is on that. So with that, no ad spend, right? Huge, huge drop in profit to the bottom line and doing that. But in order to make it happen, it was a little bit different than, you know, my home service business where I got, you know, a large office staff, admins in the office writing all these things out. I needed to really automate it within my klaviyo and, or Shopify environment. Um, and just kind of boil it down. Programs aside, I needed an apples to apples use case for email automation. But instead a personalized handwritten letter would trigger out with all that same custom variable data. Hey, first name saw. Um, you purchase X, Y and Z or you didn't, whatever it may be. So I called around to all the manufacturers at the time of, you know, handwritten robots, I called around all, you know, what are now my current competitors at the time, and I said, I just need to build it into a workflow and you know, every single one's going to be different. So it's almost like one off, uh, letters. It's not like I'm sending you a big list of 10,000, I need you to email blast them or, you know, mail, uh, blast into neighborhoods.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And they basically kind of told me like, hey, that's not how it works. Like if any of you guys have sent direct mail, like if you're doing one off pieces, basically there's always these press fees and setup fees and all these different things essentially. Um, so I think of the cheapest quote I could have gotten to actually do that and I would have had to build my own API was like $25 a piece because of the press fee and everything. So I was like, man, whoever creates mailchimp email automation, but for handwritten letters is really going to be able to help a lot of people. Especially, you know, that was like right on the cusp of like, we, we knew AI was going to be a big thing, but it hadn't really disrupted our lives like it has yet. Right? And now we're kind of starting to see that where it's like, you know, metaphorically with AI, it's like, you know, there used to be, we're all fishing in the same pond. That pond being the email inbox or the SMS inbox, right? And you've got 100 fishermen on the shore. Well, now there's the same amount of fish, the same amount of fishermen. But the problem is because AI is making emails so easy to send, um, and gathering data so easy to send. Um, all those same fishermen, same amount of fish have now 5, 10 lines in the water, right? So that pond is kind of over fished, over saturated. I think the stat is like the average person gets like 121 emails a day. I think today I got, you know, like 50 so far and two of them were actually relevant to me and not from like a lender trying to like get us quick financing or, you know, take over our SEO services or whatever it may be. So kind of the, this has become a lot more relevant, you know, aside from like making handwritten letters easy, which are timeless, everyone knows that they work. It's just getting into the workflows, but also like, hey, the mailbox is kind of like an unfished pond essentially, and you're hitting it with like the Best lure when you're using handwritten letters. So, um, it's a, it's a really timely dropping of our Go High Level app. It's, I'm sure you guys are all seeing a lot of friction. Um, although ease in setting up email automations and casting a much easier, wider net. Um, you know, people are just getting bombarded and saturated. So that was kind of the evolution of how we got here with the handwritten letters, everything.

Speaker A: I love it. So you had mentioned Klaviyo, mailchimp, um, a couple of others, Shopify and there's a lot of different tools. Right. Very similar to what we do as well. But how did you find us? Like, how did you find High Level in general? Like, what was your journey to this world of marketers?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So actually my first business, my first home service business, we were on Go High Level. My second home service service business for your on Go High Level. Um, before I started Scribe, I was um, you know, running a lot of ads for home M service businesses as well. So I would plug them into a Go High Level CRM just because it made things a lot easier if they didn't have one or they're using some, you know, clunky version of Service Titan or whatever it may be. Um, but really at the end of the day, like, you know, as soon as I started sky, like we're going to be on Go High Level because when we first started, before we built the ability to create these automations and have these marketplace apps, we actually operated as like a handwritten letter marketing agency where we would pull data for our clients, write copy ad copy for our clients, pull tracking numbers, set up split tests and campaigns and really run it. Almost like a meta ad buying agency would be running it with all of our clients.

Speaker A: Like a retainer based.

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. And with that, you know, we were working with a huge spread of industries. You know, it's like we have a hundred clients that come out in a month. Like 10 could have been home service, 20 could have been real estate, five could have been private equity, five attorneys, 10, e commerce. Like it's a big spread, right? And um, you know, a lot of these people just didn't even have CRMs, um, didn't know where to start. And they would ask us like, oh, should we get on like HubSpot or Salesforce? And like what you're going to pay an implementer to get on there is absolutely ridiculous. So, you know, we would just set people up under our Go High Level Agency account, which was really, really nice for them. And although that wasn't like a flagship product of ours, like, it allowed the handwritten letters to be much more effective because as you agency owners know, like, you can put leads in someone's lab, you can give them calls, right? But if they have no way to actually work those, they're going to come back and say they got a bad roi. So, you know, you can lead a horse to water, you can't make them drink, but sometimes, yeah, still grab the cup and bring it up to their mouth and go high level. Makes that so easy. And like, I, like, you know, we've used HubSpot Salesforce, I've used everything. Like, I think go high level is, is the future. Definitely.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, James. So with the story that I think our team put together, I've got a layer of questions that I just kind of want to walk through for our audience to kind of help understand your, you know, your, your lane and what you're doing and how we can all collaborate together. James, you sold your first company at 25. Like, what did that experience teach you that you're still using today?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's a really good question. Um, so this is going to be kind of an honest answer because it's always a flex to say you sold your business, right? So I'm probably going to give the wrong answer. But one of the big things that taught me is that, you know, if you build really, really strong systems and processes and you have a good team and you can remove yourself from the business, that is an asset that is actually more valuable to you long term than it is for the cash that you will sell it for, in, in my opinion, right? So when I sold that business, great team, great SOPs. The last year and a half I worked there, I worked about two hours a week, right? And it was, you know, cash flowing very well. You know, not in seven figures as far as profit goes, you know, but as far as profit goes, like, definitely, you know, six figures and I didn't have to do anything, right? So, you know, like I said, just very, very honestly, I know it's like a flex to say that you've sold your business and everything, but, like, in hindsight, I actually wish that I still had that business business. So to you people out there that are, like, building businesses right now, instead of just thinking about, like, how can I get out, like, I think it really is helpful to think, okay, how can I make this manageable and how can I make this, um, you know, hands off, right? And I'm sure you guys are already working towards that. Um, but sometimes your initial instinct, you know, as an entrepreneur, you know, maybe you came from a place like a survival mode, place of survival mode. Like, okay, I need to get rid of this thing and take the chips off the table. It's like, no, you've done the work. Like, it's doing its thing, like, be patient, you know, and you can have something that's going to pay dividends for the rest of your life. But, you know, that aside, I think the biggest thing, you know, within that business particularly, that taught me was, um, you know, home service businesses are very seasonal. Um, there's a lot of employee turnover. Um, there's a lot of competitors, right? Like in our market, we had like 200 competitors. So, um, really, like, you have to be dialed in on the marketing to compete. You got to be dialed in on your finances to balance cash flow. Your SOPs and hiring systems and firing systems have to be dialed in because you're, you know, a lot of companies turn 80% of their staff every year. You're like top 5%, you know, depending on what home service vector you're in. If you're able to just like, turn on like, 40, right? So you got to be able to spin people up quick and knowing to get people out and know how to bring people into supplement growth and things of that nature. So, um, it really helped me learn everything. You know, just being more of a marketer and that's what we dominated in. It really helped me learn the operation side of things really well. So even with this business, as we're helping our clients, um, you know, and even a lot of them are working towards exits, we can speak to that, and we can kind of understand their whole sales, hiring, and operational side of things and actually consult them on that side as well.

Speaker A: Makes sense. Um, well, you also build businesses in E commerce, home services and SaaS. Um, James, what patterns show up in every successful business that you've seen?

Speaker B: Uh, the companies that focus on LTV are always the companies that win long, long term. The companies that focus on top of Funnel will win for a season. But as soon as those channels change, so does their growth trajectory or their ability to retain business. So, uh, you know, at the end of the day, it's kind of like I used to, you know, get older gentlemen, you know, when I first started the business, like, you just treat people right, your business is going to grow, right? And I was like, yeah, whatever, old man. You know, like, I. I need 300 leads a month, I gotta have a boom and top of funnel. But then, you know, when you look back three years and you're like, all right, I got 6,000 customers. You know, like, how much is it gonna cost me to acquire 6,000 more customers? If. Or 50% of that half of them churn versus just keeping those. And what that comes down to at the end of the day is like, and this is so true for like, E commerce, home service businesses, um, you know, insurance, like literally anything. Like, if you can create like this wow experience, I call it, where within the first, you know, 24 hours or, you know, seven days of interacting with said company, your customer goes, okay, I'm not used to this type of service. That little thing that they did, that really stood out to me. The handwritten letter. I got. I don't even get handwritten letters from, you know, my real estate agent who just made 30 grand in my house, but I just got it from Chewy, my dog food company or whatever it is. Like, that has a profound impact. It doesn't have to be handwritten letters. Like, one example that I really like of this, um, is if there's any musicians out there, um, there's a company called Sweetwater. They're a multi billion dollar, um, E commerce company that basically just sells all types of instruments and they do something that I just love. So, like, regardless of a customer buys like, drumsticks, you know, if they buy, you know, $20,000 recording studio setup, they have someone literally call out to that person and just say, hey, uh, how do you like the drumsticks? Are they working? Well? You know, also, like, what other instruments do you have? Like, oh, that's cool. I have one of those, like, literally. And then that happened to me. I bought something very small from them. I think it was like a Cape Bones. They called me and just talked to me about music and like, my setup and stuff like that. And I got off the call and I was just. I had that, like, wow experience. I was like, that is crazy. I can't believe they just did that. Like, I'm never gonna buy anything else from anyone ever again. Fast forward, like, six months later I went and like, I probably would have just gone and done this at Guitar center, but literally I went to an online company because of their customer service, which is kind of backwards. You think, like, retail is better, right? Uh, and I bought like $15,000 in recording studio equipment, basically. So, you know, whether you're like Sweetwater and you're doing Touchpoint like that, or like, you know, Chewy you know, the uh, pet supply company, they send out over 10 million handwritten letters per year. You can look up all their data on how that's affected their LTV and everything, you know, or you know, countless case studies like in the insurance space where, you know, you're sending out handwritten letters and creating that wow experience. Like you're having, you know, 10% less churn on your policies, like which over time is like massive as far as roi, um, down to the home service businesses. Like if you treat people well, you keep customers. So as long as you have an opportunity for a reorder, like those are the brands that just kill it long term are the ones that, you know, doesn't have to be handwritten letters but like find a way to create like that wow experience. I think that's why a lot of those, like, um, I don't know if you've seen those viral videos going around of like founders calling their customers.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah, well, I don't need a video. Like, I mean Sean Clark still calls random customers if they try to cancel a 14 day trial even now, just to check in on what happened. What are the learnings, you know, so it's a habit for us. But yes, I've seen those videos on TikTok.

Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And obviously you need customers to keep. So it's like a balance of like, hey, you know, we are obviously still focused on new client acquisition. But Also if your LTV is 500 bucks versus 250, like you can spend 200 bucks in acquisition versus 100, which means you just beat out your comp like yeah, on bidding.

Speaker A: So James, I know I would love for you to kind of jump into your screen and kind of do a demo at some point on this call, if you don't mind. But what made you look at something as old school as handwritten mail and think, huh, this needs an AI powered solution. What, what made you do that?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, um, you know, it kind of goes back to that original story that I told and everything, but it was just, you know, I had a mentor who, you know, sent out handwritten letters and it was really impactful in his business. So it was something that I always did from day one and it worked. Um, and I've friends that do this for fitness clothing brands and fitness supplement companies or the home service businesses and those people keep customers. And then at the end of the day, like I just, you know, when I was seeing other solutions, you know, come out aside from that problem that I had, my e Commerce business. It's like they're all pulling on the same string. They're just strumming it different. Right? So it's like, oh, you got an LTV problem, you've got a, you know, uh, outbound ROI problem. We're this, our system is going to help you send more emails, our system is going to help you get more deliverability. Our email system is going to write you better emails with AI, right? It's just more better, you know, pull on the same lever until that lever breaks, you know. And we're at that pinnacle where people are just like overly fatigued on digital communication. So that's where it's like, okay, kind of like the, the Jeff Bezos Blue Ocean strategy. Like, or just in general, like if everyone's doing X and marketing, like what's going to be disruptive essentially, let's just not even hit that inbox. Let's go somewhere else to grab their attention. Right. And what's the best way to do that? Uh, well, direct mail is great, right? But like still like people literally, I could have just said, okay, I'm going all in on direct mail. I don't really view us as a direct mail company at all because our whole goal is people get 10 pieces, they go junk mail, junk mail, junk mail, junk mail. And then they look at the piece that we've created, which we spent a couple million dollars split testing to dial in to like make it perfect. Um, and they go, what is this? A wedding invite? This grad party invite Is my grandma losing her memory? And she sent me my birthday check early. Like whatever it is, like they are going to open that, it gets a, you know, over a 95 open rate. So yeah, just kind of, uh, you know, to answer your question, like instead of just figuring out how to do more or better at ah, what everyone else is doing, how can you actually do something totally different to grab the attention elsewhere?

Speaker A: So what was the, what, what was the point where you're like, you know what, Scribe Scribe could be a SaaS company because there, there's more than just like a one time thing. Like there's got to be a long term relationship or a long term experience. I've got to build for fellow marketers or salespeople or agencies or consultants. Like, what made you say, okay, it's, I think I can build the SaaS off of this?

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, good question. Uh, um, so basically I, when I was coming up with this idea and everything, um, I had a buddy at the time, he owned a direct mail house And I came to him and I said, all right, um, I've got two people that want to pilot this. It was like 60, 60 thousand dollars a month in business, basically. Yeah. Uh, with like the people that I'd kind of pre sold. I said, you, you know, I'll give you this wholesale rate to get these robots in your warehouse. I'll literally just run the whole entire operation and pay for it. So I was.

Speaker A: These are actual robots in a warehouse.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll, I'll show you guys videos here in a second basically. And we do everything in house now. I mean that was just like kind of my beta testing solution.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That allowed me to like, because like I said, I call around all the manufacturers of the robot. So I already knew that they were flying for the use case I wanted to go into. But I sold on more of that agency use case. Like, hey, we'll do more broad top of funnel stuff. I'll split test it in with that. The intent for me, um, because you kind of have to figure it out before you, before you build it. Right. I was told it was impossible. But my competitors and you know, Auto Pen, which like, I'm sure you guys have heard of them because of the news and politics these days, and everything. Um, but uh, I went in there and I figured out, okay, I was running that operation very temporarily, figured out what was actually wrong with these robots, what was actually wrong with the software from an architecture standpoint and how this would need to be rebuilt to align it with the USPS database to remove these setups that I was talking about. So you can basically instead of having 500 cards triggered towards machine, and those are like 500 different setups or orders those can all be batched together with, you know, in the order that the USPS needs them delivered, removing setups. Like the robots can switch from custom messages to custom cards and read those properly. So I kind of architected that all out. Um, and then, you know, we. I uh, went out and just started my own operation and everything at that point. Um, just because truthfully they were, that was never really their focus. They were just happy to have some business for a little bit. So I took over that equipment. We went over to my own facility and I kind of rebuilt this whole operation architecture, kind of the robots as well, the software essentially. Um, and with that, one of the initial use cases that really, you know, showed me how powerful this was was uh, when the first case study I think I did outside of just like some top of funnel, like real estate investor stuff was uh, there was an E commerce company, they're really new too. They're only like 60 days old or sorry, um, six months old I think it was. And you know, I'm sure you guys are familiar with abandoned cart flows where you're sending emails to people that have not paid, but they've entered in like their address information, information and stuff like that didn't make checkout. So you set up a flow where like uh, and we were doing it like very manually until I built the software. But I want to improve the use case. So we had taken 15,000 or. Sorry, yeah, 15,000 or I think no, 10,000 orders. And these were people that uh, were from the abandoned cart flow. They already received the abandoned cart email. But really if people didn't, you know, convert on that abandoned card email within seven days like they were, they were dead. That was kind of the drop off point. So after that seven days, they didn't convert over the email. We would just send all those people automated handwritten letters and send it back to checkout basically.

Speaker A: Oh, um, wow.

Speaker B: And we got a 15 conversion rate on that. So I think it was like 1600 or you know, just under 1600 purchases for new customers, you know, for their business, which is huge. You know, when you think, when you think about like how much they spent on ads to bring them all the way to checkout. And that money would have just bleed it out through their funnel, you know, and we're able to like grab another 15 of that. And that's not even counting like the LTV because this was a uh, like a electrolyte supplement product. So like these people are typically then ordering on a monthly basis when they like the product. Right? So that was kind of the moment where I was like, all right, at this point I took a huge risk to create a handwritten letter operation. Your break even is about 3mil in revenue. So with very little business, I've been beta testing this for two months. I went out there and I took out a hundred thousand dollars a month in overhead between warehouse staff, uh, you know, uh, direct mail equipment, like all these different things. Like it's not cheap to have. Like a handwritten direct mail company is a software business. You know, it's a SaaS company, it's, it's a manufacturing company. It's all of these things, right? So that was the moment where I was like, all right, this works. Huge void here. No, everyone else tells me you can't do this. And this is the use case that's most money using handwritten Letters to make your customers feel special. And you can only do that with like birthdays and thank yous and LT increase ltv if you could do the one offs.

Speaker A: So yeah, so let me ask you this. I know a lot of saaspreneurs, watch a lot of the podcasts that we do. Fellow agency owners and marketing professionals. Uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna lay out a scenario, you tell me if this makes sense. So as a saaspreneur, let's say I have a thousand subscribers to my SAS that I'm, um, I'm just white labeling high level or whatever. I have a solution. I'm charging, I don't know, 200amonth. And for some reason I have about 50 to 60 people that cancel their trials every month. Is there a way for me to send handwritten letters to just those 50 to 60 to bring them back into the trial? Or does this work better in like a local area and I'm just blasting like a zip code code. Like what, what are the logistics of like the outbound? Can it be like individuals or can it be like, uh, is it a wide cast net that I'm like, here's my sass. Jump in if you want. Like, what's the use case?

Speaker B: Like, yeah, yeah, 100. So you can send out literally one letter at a time based on any event trigger or any automation that you set up.

Speaker A: Uh, oh, gotcha.

Speaker B: Workflow within go high level. So, and that's kind of what I was saying was the problem was, you know, previously it was just built for like, hey, I want to send to this zip code of people, right? And really like the ideal use case is like, all right, I want to take these people from my CRM. And when this happens, seven days later, I want a handwritten letter sent, then I want an email, then I want these things to happen right now. So logistically, like that is what we built to go have a lot for. So whether it's like, hey, this person in our system, you know, unsubscribed, uh, we want to send them a handwritten letter or, you know, we put them into a stage where it was like customer service issue resolved. Like you can send them a letter, you know, that's triggered by like that stage move it, you know, thanks them for whatever happened, whatever it may be. If you just close the customer or there was a demo with the customer or whatever it is, like that can trigger something. Birthdays, you know, the list goes on basically. Um, but yes, the individual one to one use case, you Know, has been kind of performing perfected by us for handwritten direct mail by removing that setup and a bunch of manufacturing stuff you guys don't want to get into.

Speaker A: But yeah. So, um, if you have a little bit of time, would you. Would you like showing us what this all looks like? If you want to share your screen, I love to kind of just get a demo of what it is. And I'm just thinking through, like, cancellation flows. I'm thinking through confirmation flows. I'm like, abandoned car. Like, I mean, there's so much opportunity in how people can take something so traditional and kind of modernize it, if you ask me.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, 100%. So you can see my screen. All right.

Speaker A: Yep, I see your screen. Let me get out of the way here. Um, so, yeah, there we go. Do you mind zooming in just a little bit?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Give me a second. Does that look a little bit better? Yeah, yeah, Perfect. Perfect. Okay, so first off, uh, you know, if you go into the Go High Level marketplace and, and you look up Scribe handwritten direct mail, you're going to see our app pop up. Um, and from there you can download it, install it. And what happens then is you actually see something pop up on, uh, your sidebar here that says send handwritten letters essentially. So when you do that, I'm just going to back up one step to make it, uh, seamless or kind of the normal experience for you guys. You kind of have two options. So you can send one letter or send many letters. And that is just more of like an instance in time. Right. So that is more what you talked about, Paulson, where it's like, hey, I have this list that I got from X data provider, and it's a CSP file and I just want to upload it and I want to send to a thousand people, ten thousand people, whatever it is. Um, or maybe you had a very. Like, you just want to send one letter to someone, but you don't want it to be a part of a workflow. But, like, you know, you just had a really interesting customer call, you know, and, you know, someone's husband passed away and you want to just send them like a personalized condolence card. Like, it's probably not standard. You have an automation or flow set up to do that automatically. So you can go in there and you can literally just send one letter. The, you know, bread and butter. Best use case, you know, both for you and your clients, if you guys are agencies, is really the reoccurring mailings. Uh, because you know, consistency is king, whether it's the gym or customer service and increasing ltv. So if you're going to set up a reoccurring mailing, and this could be, hey, every time someone has a birthday, every time we close new customer, every time someone unsubscribes, like Paulson says, um, we'll get into, you know, how you would generally do that in the workflow. But the first thing you're going to do is you're actually going to create that campaign, essentially. So first what you would do is you would name this campaign. So you would say, uh, you know, customer, birthday, birthday card. Right. We want every customer, when their birthday comes up in the system, to get a birthday card. You know, maybe that's for an agency where you're helping the insurance space, um, or Medicare or whatever. So you would hit create that. And now you have this custom list. And since you're going to use it for an automation, you're going to hit use for automation and you're just going to copy that name because you're going to enter this into the workflow. So your workflow, which is driving who sent this sense to, connects to the campaign you're building, building. Then from here you're going to choose a card design. So you can create a card design and you can design it right in the system by uploading logos and things like that. Um, or you can simply just select a card design that we have. Um, actually, real quick, I'll just show you what the card looks like too. So like I said, we spent a couple million dollars split testing this, figuring out what works, what doesn't. Um, from ad copy to what type of card, what type of envelope, what's on the card, what's on the envelope, what type of stamp should it have, have, and what's your deal? You know, what we've landed on that is the highest converting by far is that folded greeting card with, um, the handwriting on the inside. And then you have a greeting card, apple. So it literally looks like something that, you know, you just grab from like Trader Joe's or the can, you know, the grocery store off, uh, a rack. Because it has to like. The reason why this works is it doesn't feel like marketing. If it feels like marketing, it feels like direct mail, feels like it came out of, you know, a print shop. Yeah, it's not going to land the same. So with that, I actually always recommend like omitting the logo from the card. Believe it or not, depending on the use case, I see three to five times higher response rates. Omitting the logo on the card and just putting something generic on there, like, hello, hope you've been doing well, whatever. Because once again, think about, like, what would you grab from a store if you're looking at a piece even if it's handwritten with QR codes all over it. And yes, you can do QR codes, but be careful with them. It's like, use real intent and strategy behind how, like there's logos all over it and promos and all these things like that no longer feels like one. A customer service touch that's going to give them that wow effect or even believable that like you guys wrote this out because it seems like it just came through a marketing campaign. Um, so that was a really interesting finding through all of our testing. So you'll see these laid out, um, vertically. You know, the top would be the back of the car. At the bottom would be the bottom.

Speaker A: Oh, gotcha.

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, you have, all your designs that you have already designed would be right here. Um, like I honestly just use stuff like this. Like I just made this. But like this honestly works better because once again, this, although it doesn't like look super fancy, it's not about that. Like some of the best cold emails or, you know, not even cold emails, but just normal emails are not the ones with the sickest graphics, but the ones that like really feel like they came from a person because they're written by a really good copywriter and like all the signals around them, it wasn't like double dash hyphens from AI and stuff like that that, you know, so that's kind of the equivalent here. But yeah, once you've chosen your card, you know, just to recap, we name the list we copied, use this for an automation to our clipboard so we can take the name of this list and put it into our automation later. Um, now, you know, if we add some ad copy, we're just going to drop that into this right here. One thing that's interesting is like we have this automated thing here which natural handwriting style. It will change the margin and randomize it on the left hand side of the card. So you can always. Because like you'd never have like a rule, a ruler, you know what I mean?

Speaker A: And like, yeah, funny thing is I have such a bad handwriting and like, like mine's pretty obvious because it looks like chicken scratch sometimes.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: But I don't mean it to be so. Yeah, if I, if I were to do this, mine would Look a little messy.

Speaker B: Well, and we didn't go into all the details on the handwriting. Like, guys, this is a hundred percent. Like, you cannot tell that it wasn't written by you because we have an algorithm within the robot that basically there's thousands of different character variations for each individual character. So, like, as you can see here, like, none of the L's are going to look the same. Like, you know, you see three T's here that are completely different. And it's also going to vary pressure. So, like, you get those gaps in the ink and it gets a little bit thicker at the bottom of the J and all that. And you run your fingers over it like you feel the indentation from the very.

Speaker A: What do these robots look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll show them to you. I'll show you a better video here.

Speaker A: Wow. So this is set up on the back of High level, essentially.

Speaker B: Yep, yep. This is all in our facility. So we're the software company and the manufacturer. So you guys are getting the best possible price.

Speaker A: Wow, look at that writing English like it's Arabic backwards.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's funny.

Speaker A: Wow. I mean, I, I could imagine a world where you can get really creative. I mean, like, now I'm like, should I, should I set this up for all my Spotlight session guests as a thank you note, like, I might, I might send you one. James from your own company. 100.

Speaker B: We already gave, uh, Sean and the founders some. Like, they have a free account and they have sent hands letters like after their meetings. I don't know if they've used it, but they have it and they, uh, they got the access and everything. But we gave that to them like last week. So I'll get you set up with that as well and you can start.

Speaker A: That's awesome. I mean, the, the natural touch here. I mean, what you said was, um, you can, if there's anything else you want to share, you can share. Um, but my thought, I'll show how

Speaker B: you connect this to a workflow and. But.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. Yeah, let's do that.

Speaker B: You first. Okay, cool. Basically, when you're just going through and doing that, that took a minute. Then now you have the call out there. Like, hey, first name. You can call out whatever you'd like. Just like an automated email essentially in there. These buttons kind of allow you to do different call outs based on what's set up in your list. And then you can see that preview. Okay. This is what the front of the card looks like. This is what the back of the card looks like. And it's not previewing the data from, um, this right now because there's no data feeding uh, into the list from the automation. No contacts have entered that workflow yet. But once that's all set up, now we're going to actually go to the workflow section. So pretend that you just created a new workflow. You select your trigger. That could be birthday reminder. It could be you guys have set up work workflows before you get it. This could be literally anything within Go High Level. It could be a tag, it could be a stage change, it could be a custom field is entered, anything you can start a workflow with. Once you do that, then you're just going to hit save that trigger. And then I'll just X this out so you can see it. But, um, delete this action. You're going to now create that step for Scribe and you can have a bunch of steps before this, after this, create time delays, anything you can do within a workflow. So you're then going to look up Scribe, send a handwritten letter, send contact Scribe campaign. And you do jump into your Scribe account, which when you download the app automatically with your Go High Level email and everything, we create a free Scribe account on the back end. Um, so you'll already have your Scribe account, but you just copy this URL

Speaker A: here

Speaker B: and then that's going to bring you over to your Scribe account in Settings where you just quickly grab your API token, super easy, copy it, go back over to the workflow and go high level, paste that API token and then actually remember, I copied this, I uncopied it. So you're just going to copy this again?

Speaker A: Oh yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Campaign name. And then now this workflow is connected to that campaign that we just made.

Speaker A: Gotcha, gotcha.

Speaker B: And then if you did have custom values, um, you know, like birthday, month or product name or whatever it is, like those aren't default within, you know, Go High Level setup, but you can always like grab those obviously by just doing that. Um, and then when you are doing that, we'll talk about it in onboarding. We have videos on it, but you'd probably want to build the campaign with custom values within the Scribe nurture system, um, instead of in the GoHavel app widget. Just because there's like way more features in here essentially. Um, it's a little bit more advanced. But regardless, it's essentially the same thing. You're to trying choosing card designs and entering call outs and copy and Looking at a preview. So yeah, once that's all good, like you literally are just going to save that action, you're going to save that campaign, test the workflow to get a contact sent through. But then you can literally see, you know, within your Scribe account when you go under my campaigns that, um, like this was one, I didn't set that other one live, we just did. But like I did this one right before for the call. Literally all your campaigns right there and then it's live and submitted. So it'll just trigger letter through. Um, if you don't, when you set it live, um, within this section, you submit it, it's going to ask if you don't have any credits with Scribe, you can just go view subscription options.

Speaker A: Yeah, this is going to be my next question. Was the pricing.

Speaker B: Yeah, so the pricing. And I'll give you guys a code which is going to give you 10 off. Um, that's going to be GHL 26. But essentially that pricing is going to range from typically, you know, if you're doing an automation, you just want to do the monthly because you could cancel at any time, like literally you could cancel it tomorrow and you just get better pricing for signing up for it. But you know, you're ranging from like, you know, sub two bucks, you know, you know, to like three bucks basically. Plus you guys are getting the 10% off with the GHL 26 coupon code. Now if you are an agency and you want to resell this to your clients, talk to us separately actually. Um, because we have basically reseller pricing and reseller structure, which is completely different. Um, and we already have resellers that we're onboarding right now. And kind of our initial group is, is limited but for every single letter that triggers out you guys as resellers or influencers, uh, for GHL, whatever it is, you can make like 25 cents per trigger that's going out, sometimes more at the lower price points even. So when you think about the fact like, oh man, I have a thousand insurance agents and all of them are going to send 50 thank you letters per month or whatever it is, like literally you're talking six figures a year and you know, usage based white label revenue. So, um, yeah, tons of OP there.

Speaker A: Incredible. Um, so let's do this. If you want to stop sharing, we'll kind of close out the combo here. Um, my thought is, um, Sorry, uh, my camera is not on yet. Back on.

Speaker B: You are good.

Speaker A: Yeah, my, my thought is what you just addressed the pricing, whether I want to Resell this as a white labeler or a saaspreneur, where I want to add this as a essentially usage revenue or blade revenue. Right. Um, and then the other opportunity is for myself, like, do I want to send to my own customers? Right. So there's a plethora of options here that I think all of us can be excited about. Um, my last question for you is, in this world of AI, where does handwritten letters stay long term? Like, do you feel like, you know, it could, you know, is this, is this here to stay? I know principles of marketing still applies regardless of that AI boom or not, but do you feel like, um, this is something we should implement long term for our customers?

Speaker B: Oh, 100%. If you don't feel you need us now, you're gonna need us in two years or a year for that. Right. Like the. The pond that everyone's fishing from, there's only going to be more lines in it, and eventually those fish are either going to be all dead because they've been taken out of the water, or they're just going to be like, I'm literally going to starve myself because every time I buy a lure, I get hooked. Right. There's no real worms in here. Right. So people are going to get overwhelmingly fatigued. Um, have you seen the, the Ryan Gosling Blade Runner movie?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know that scene where, like, he's just depressed, he's down, he's, like, walking through the rain, and there's just all these digital ads, like, jumping out at him basically everywhere, like billboards, like, it's this just dystopian scene. Um, you know, maybe it won't be. That will. That is kind of where we're heading, where, like, nothing is facing him. You know, this girl jumps out, you look lonely, Whatever it is, trying to grab his attention because literally all the ads are just white noise. It's. He's so overwhelmed with just this world that he's living in. So, uh, I don't want to be doom and gloom or anything like that. Um, I personally view AI as a great tool to become a better marketer. Um, but I view also it as a threat, um, in the sense where it is going to create, like, major ad fatigue and saturation on certain channels. And you're already seeing that happening and uptick over the last three years.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So figuring out, you know, how you can actually, you know, bring this to other areas is going to be huge. Um, this was like, you know, our. Our main VC from the. That led this last round, like, they're only investing in companies that they feel are undisruptible by AI or, you know, RAI involved, basically. Um, and, you know, they feel very strong, like, you know, unbiased. Don't take my word for it, whatever it is, like they're putting, you know, their money where their mouth is and they have, are accredited by the sec, have follow these regulations and get their investors returns like they're betting on this horse. Um, so, yeah, uh, you know, digital saturation is real. Um, dehumanization of business relationships is real. Um, and I think the more that AI is prevalent, um, the more people are going to crave human connection. And through all the changes in technology, from the horse and buggy to the car, from the yellow Pages to the Internet, um, from Google Ads to meta ads, uh, one thing that holds true Even today in 2026 is people still love human connection. They want to feel appreciated. And when you give a customer that wow experience. So I really preach this for the biggest use case is straight up, if you got a customer or your customers have customers, they need to be getting a thank you, like letter when they first work with them. Because the studies on that and just ask AI, speaking of which, was a good marketing tool for research, you know, and a lot of things, right? Ask it like, you know, what can I expect to happen from an LTV standpoint when I send every single one of my customers a handwritten letter versus don't find me 10 case studies, you know, that show this, you know, in X industry, like it, it's out there on all the Reddit forms. Like, this is stuff that works. Uh, it's really just making it easy, right?

Speaker A: So I love it. Well, James, thank you for your time, man. With. This was a exceptionally wonderful and refreshing session for me because I'm, um, I feel like you're on a mission to replace the intimacy of marketing with customers. Right? And I think that's where that's a big missing point in the world of AI today because we, like you said, everything is desensitized and dehumanized. Often with advertising, you know, marketers tend to ruin things, as we all know. And you know, you're bringing some of the traditional things back in a cool way. So we appreciate what you're doing, what your company's doing. Um, we appreciate you jumping on the podcast today.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I really appreciate you having me. Uh, like I said, guys, if you want to, you know, go get this, search in the Scribe Go high level app. Um, scribe handwritten direct mail, use the code GHL26 if you want to get 10% off and you know, additionally if you're an agency, um, if you want to be a reseller, if you're an influencer and you know, you want your own code to promote this, seriously, um, you know, both on the influencer side, you know, and reseller side, we got six figure opportunities community with the how usage based. This is essentially um, so you know, reach out to us. We would love to connect one on one or if you want to self service, you know the GHL marketplace, that's how you do it. If you do want to connect with me one on one, I'm literally going to give you my personal phone number. Um, and other people can reach out to me too.

Speaker A: But.

Speaker B: 952-797-2914 My personal email is jamescribehandwritten.com S C R I-V E H-A-N-W-R-I-T-E-N.com and our website is that email URL. Uh, scribehandwritten.com so yeah, uh, looking forward to helping you guys out and we will see you at uh, the level up event this year. So stop by our booth. We're literally gonna have one of our robots there live in action and you'll be able to see the robot doing everything and whatnot. So especially if you have kids, drop them by. Kids love that. And we'll have a cool giveaway too, so awesome.

Speaker A: Well, thanks for watching everybody. I love to follow you as well on social media. My handle is Paulson Speaks. I'm active on Instagram and LinkedIn. I'll see you there. Bye for now.

Speaker B: Thanks guys. Take care. Sa.