When is the last time you used direct mail as part of your marketing strategy? It is an easy one to forget about with today’s digital marketing-driven world.
Joy Gendusa, founder, and CEO of PostcardMania shares with us how using direct mail as a primary or complementary marketing strategy can be extremely beneficial.
Joy grew her business from a small startup in a tiny cottage in 1998 with only a phone, a computer and postcard marketing. That means no capital injections or financial backing of any kind.
And today, Joy has taken that small startup and turned it into an industry leader and Inc. 500 company. PostcardMania employs 286 people, has printed 1.8 BILLION postcards for businesses nationwide, has served over 95,116 businesses, generates over $60 million in annual revenue and now occupies a custom-built facility that stretches from street to street and spans over 60,000 square feet.
Joy regularly appears in various media outlets across the nation. Her marketing strategies and accomplishments are much sought-after and can be seen in the pages of Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc. Magazine and on stage at today’s premier business growth and leadership seminars.
CLICK HERE to check out the PostcardMania website and learn more about direct mail.
By the way, at the time of the original podcast interview recording, Big Sky Franchise Team had not worked with PostcardMania. Several weeks after the interview Big Sky ended up hiring PostcardMania for some marketing support and PostcardMania has asked Big Sky to help support with some of their growth initiatives too.
If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:02):
You’ve worked hard to build your business, and now it’s time to grow. Welcome to the Multiply Your Success Podcast. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team and a serial entrepreneur. And, today’s guest is absolutely fantastic, her name is Joy Gendusa, and you’re going to enjoy it. And, Joy talks all about direct mail marketing through the use of postcards, and using it as a primary strategy, a complimentary strategy, and this multitude of strategies as we go through it. It’s really, really interesting. And so, the question I have for you today is, when is the last time you have actually used direct mail as part of your marketing campaign? And, this is not a plug to try to get you to move forward with some direct mail, but just curious. When is the last time? Have you ever? Have you ever tried it? Did it work? Did it not work? And Joy, and her company share some insights into what makes it go, and what doesn’t. Joy is the CEO and founder of PostcardMania.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:13):
It’s a marketing company that specializes in lead generation. She started her company in 1998 with just a phone, a computer and some postcard marketing, and that’s it. Now today, the company that she started is just a small startup has turned into an industry leader, and a Inc. 500 company. PostcardMania employs over 280 people, has printed more than 1.8 billion postcards, that’s billion with a B, postcards for businesses all over the United States.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:45):
They have over 95,000 clients that they’ve served over that time. And they, last year generated over $60 million in annual revenue, which is just incredible. Joy is a regular in other media outlets, not to mention the Multiply Your Success Podcast, of course. And, some of those other accomplishments that she’s been featured on are organizations like Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Inc. Magazine, and the list goes on, and on and on. So without further ado, let’s jump into this interview that we were fortunate to have Joy on our program.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (02:27):
My name is Joy Gendusa, and my company is PostcardMania. I started PostcardMania 22 years ago, June of 1998. It was actually an idea that came out of a bad experience. I had a small graphic design print brokerage, about four staff, and I wanted to grow my little firm. So, I’m a graphic designer, but I used to be a graphic designer. I haven’t done a graphic design personally in a long time, but I designed a little postcard to mail, to people to get more clients. And, I was promoted to… Now, you have to understand, this is 22 years ago. So, I was promoted to, by a company, a postcard company that only sold to the trade, and they were promoting 5,000 full color postcards for $425. Now, 22 years ago, I’m sure you weren’t of working age yet, I can tell from looking at you, 22 years ago, I could not even understand in my mind how they were offering such a cheap price.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (03:36):
So, I definitely jumped on board and I designed a little postcard, and I overnighted them a CD with my design on it. And then, they in turn overnighted me a proof. When I received that proof, there was their phone number in tiny five point font on my design. So, I called them up and I asked them to please remove that, because I sell printing and I don’t want people going directly to them for printing. And, they informed me that it would cost me $50 to remove it. So, I just said, “Let me speak to your manager.” And, somebody else came on the phone and told me I didn’t read the fine print and there’s $50, but this is my first order, so there’ll be so nice to not charge me and they’ll remove it.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (04:17):
Now, that’s literally hitting the delete key to remove it. But, this is how we keep our prices low, we promote on other people’s marketing materials. I was like, “Okay.” So, I thanked them very much, I hung up the phone. I walked out of my office to my three staff and said, “We’re going to start a postcard company, and we’re going to call it PostcardMania, and we’re not going to put our 800 number that we didn’t have yet on our client’s cards.” And, that’s pretty much how PostcardMania started. It was literally an idea born out of a bad experience.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (04:53):
Holy cow. Well, I love it. That seems like every great entrepreneurial story begins with something like that, some kind of a crisis or something happened that you didn’t like. I love it.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (05:06):
Yeah. It’s kind of crazy, because whenever I tell that story, which is not that often, but when I’m asked about it, it’s odd to… We’ll be doing, I don’t know how much in revenue this year, over 60 million, 65 million. I’m not even sure where we’ll end up at the end of December. And, I have 285 staff now. And, that day that I came up with that idea, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I would be doing this, being the CEO of a company this size, or growing like this or… We learned so much.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (05:42):
Yeah. Well, that’s amazing. And, I’m sure for our audience that’s listening in Joy, starting from where you did, I think a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to that where it’s kind of the back of the cocktail napkin plan, it’s like, “Well, we’re going, we’re going to do it, we’re going to make it happen,” and you did.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (06:01):
And then, all of a sudden it starts taking off. So, were there some things that kind of happened, or came along, or anything that you were doing maybe differently or unique comparatively in your industry that allowed you to start growing?
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (06:16):
Well, first of all, there wasn’t anybody competing with me back then. I was taking the very inexpensive postcard, full color printing, directly to the small business owner. Nobody else was doing that for that kind of a price. So, I think our first price was 5,000 for $329. And then, I learned from the people that I was brokering printing through, how they were doing it so cheap. They would just ganging them up all on one sheet, so everybody was kind of sharing in the expensive part of the job, which was the make ready or getting the job ready to print, is the expensive part.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (06:56):
Once you get the paper going and all the colors are good, then it’s all very fast and it’s over with. So, we just had to sell 18 customers to fill one sheet. And, that was really hard. I already forgot what the question was. I just got shoved into my misery of the beginning years. It definitely took me a couple of years to figure out, what is my make [inaudible 00:07:26] break? What volume do I have to sell to actually turn a profit? And, it was a very interesting learning experience.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (07:32):
Yeah. So well, and I find it interesting. So with your business, are you doing the manufacturing now? Are you producing all of your products? So, you went from being a graphic designer to now, a marketing agency and a manufacturer, that’s remarkable.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (07:50):
Yeah. I’m not to get you. I don’t know if you show the visual when you do the podcast. So yes, I swore I was never going to own printing equipment because pretty equipment is uber expensive. And, I swore I would never do it, but then in 2004, we bought the property we’re on now, which was a old abandoned manufacturing facility with a giant backyard. So, where I’m sitting right now is a building that we built in 2009. But, I bought the property in 2004, and I bought equipment in 2005, and my profits just obviously went up when I started doing…
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (08:32):
Even though I had to buy million dollar equipment and a property, I got what’s called an industrial revenue bond at the time, which is very, very… It’s a very cheap loan that’s backed by the government and a bank. You have to work through a bank. But now, when I look back on it, I think the interest rate was like 4%, and back then, that was unheard of, that was the cheapest money you could get. And so, it was a very reasonable monthly payment for me to buy the building and start putting equipment in it, something that we could afford at the time, so.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (09:08):
That’s really, really interesting. And, one of the things I’d like to just talk a little bit about is the idea of direct mail in a digital world. And, I love your branding, your marketing, your blog. It’s so well done, it’s got a spunky attitude. I love it. And for our audience, by the way, you’ve got to check out PostcardMania, and check them out. We’ll link everything in the show links for you to take a look at too, but the marketing’s fantastic. But Joy, would you share, I’m sure just some data stats or information about why direct mail is relevant today, or maybe even more relevant than it has been in 20 years that the internet has been thriving.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (09:53):
Yeah. So, I wouldn’t say the Internet’s been thriving for 20 years. I’ll disagree with you on that. I think [inaudible 00:09:59] was like what’s Google. I mean, it was not exactly… There were no metrics or anything like that back then, but yes, I agree with you, that it’s a crazy digital world. And, I can tell you and everybody listening to this, I know will agree with me, and I’d love to hear from anybody that doesn’t agree with me on this; but basically, you’re so bombarded with digital messages that you don’t look at them, or you don’t notice them. Whereas, when you take a postcard and you flank that with matching digital ads, that’s where you really hit the mark. You really get a tremendous ROI from that. Because, think about it, when you get your mail out of your mailbox, what do you do with it?
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (10:47):
I look at it.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (10:49):
Right away, or do you put it somewhere first?
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (10:51):
No, I’ll shuffle through it while I’m walking in, but I set it on the counter to usually look at it, and then I’ll go through it a little bit later when I sit down, and I’ve got some downtime for maybe five, 10 minutes to make sure I’m really going through it.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (11:04):
Okay, good. So, does that mail ever jump up and interrupt you when you’re trying to send an email, or trying to read a blog or… No, it does not. I’ll answer for you.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (11:16):
No.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (11:17):
Right. So, the beauty about direct mail is that we get to look at it when we’re ready to look at it. So, I mean, personally in the morning, I’m good looking at my email. I highlight the first one, I scroll to the bottom, and then with my command key and know my shift key, I get them all, and I just bulk delete all the promotional emails that… And, I kind of like look through, I’ll stop because maybe there’s one real email in there that I have to read, and then I’ll continue after that. But with direct mail, your message is actually getting to the recipient, and the targeting is fantastic. I mean, you can target very accurately the types of people that your product would be good for, even in your industry [inaudible 00:12:06].
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (12:06):
And, that’s a good point. So, let’s talk about maybe a B2C business kind of gets it, who’s focusing on consumers where you could target households. Maybe talk through some broad categories. Maybe what a restaurant could do just from a hospitality standpoint, and maybe what just a home services business could do. Could you share about that?
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (12:26):
Sure. I love home services because a huge amount of our clients are home services from carpet cleaning to roofers, to HVAC, to kitchen remodelers to… I mean, every kind of home services company can win really big with postcards. So, I’ve seen incredible ROIs. We have, by the way, on our website at postcardmania.com, a massive amount of case studies across so many industries. I couldn’t even tell you how many, like we’ve serviced probably 400 different industries. And, the home services are, there’s so many in that category, and they’re separated out by what exactly they do. So, if people wanted to get ideas on how this could work well for their particular industry, I would invite them to go look at that, because we have so much data on… I mean, it’s ridiculous, like how many times somebody should mail, how many cards, what type of lists, how do they target? Like every industry is different, and it really depends on how aggressively your competitors are marketing in your area, to know exactly what you need to do for your industry.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (13:46):
But, it’s great to see a zillion companies like schools, would do great with tutoring companies, and little private schools. And, you can just read like, what exactly did they do? Who do they target? And, copy their design. If they’re in a different area, if it’s on our site, we have permission to share it because, we have a passion to help small business owners. And so, we try to get our clients to kind of jump on that bandwagon and want to help other people, because it’s a karma world out there.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (14:18):
Sure. Well, I love that. And what about, certainly with the pandemic and I’ve spoken with a few folks at your company, and where they’ve been talking about how direct mail has been even more effective in the climate today, with more people being at home, we’re spending more time at home. Would you talk to that a little bit?
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (14:37):
I mean, we’re seeing incredible, incredible results for our clients and for ourselves. We’re having our third month in a row that’s a highest ever month for us in this December. We just had a highest ever in November, October, and I think also September. And now, we’re going to have another highest ever month. So, business owners are buying direct mail, because direct mail is getting great results. And I always tell everybody, we have a product we call it Everywhere Small Business. And, it’s basically direct mail flanked by digital ads, and call tracking, and mail tracking, we have a dashboard so that you can really see like… I mean, I can’t express enough, obviously you probably know this already, but repetition is everything, everything. You need to be in front of people constantly, so that when they’re ready for your product, you’re the one that they call, especially in the franchise that you have, restoration, right?
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (15:37):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (15:38):
So, how do you do that? Well, you get in front of homeowners, and then you follow up that direct mail campaign with tons of digital ads. Now, they know who you are. That postcard literally makes you real, and credible and local. And then, when they start seeing those ads online, it’s a reminder. So, we feed tons of ads on the Google network, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Gmail ads, all surrounding that postcard campaign, and then, you can track the results. So, I don’t know, I’m a… I practice everything I preach. I mail 180,000 postcards every single week to promote PostcardMania, so that’s why you’ve gotten postcards from me.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:21):
Yep. And I told you, I’ve got the one posted up on my corkboard that was written out. So yeah, [crosstalk 00:16:27] I kept it sitting right there from Zach, yes.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (16:31):
My little child. That’s hilarious.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:33):
Yes.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (16:33):
Anyway.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:34):
Yeah.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (16:35):
So, direct mail now during the pandemic, we have a dentist that was closed, but he could see emergency and most dentist said, “I’m not going to market it, we have to be closed.” So, this one gentlemen marketed like crazy during the lockdown, and got in a lot of new patients that never would have found him. And then, it was up to him obviously to make them love him, and want to come back and be a regular patient there. So, we’ve seen a lot of… What did we do? We did like a daily update, a pandemic daily update from PostcardMania with lots of information for small businesses that had nothing to do with PostcardMania, just like we’re links to different things from different states. And, that helped us a lot during the pandemic, like it made us a trusted vendor. But, I don’t know what else to tell ya.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (17:31):
No, that’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And Joy, we always like to ask every guest as they come on, this idea of misses, makes and multipliers. So, we’d love if you wouldn’t mind sharing with us, we start with the miss first, if there’s a miss or two that came along the way that you wouldn’t sharing, and what you might have learned from it.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (17:53):
I looked at that question long and hard and I thought, I do not have my attention on the past at all. So I’m thinking like, “What was a miss?” “What was a miss?” I mean, I take a lot of shots, and some of them are home runs and some of them didn’t work at all, but nothing that my attention is completely stuck on. And, I feel like that’s probably one of my most successful actions is that I’m ridiculously positive, and keeping my attention in the future. And, I wish I had like a really great miss that your listeners could learn from, but I can’t think of anything.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (18:34):
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And, you know what I found in doing these interviews and it’s self-serving a little bit, because I love learning from other people and other successful people, myself. And one of the things, a common theme that we were starting to see is that very often the answer you gave is what we get a lot of times, where it’s kind of thinking of that, it wasn’t really a miss. Whatever happened, happened, you learned from it, and you were able to adjust going forward. So, I appreciate that. I really do.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (19:08):
Okay, cool.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:08):
Yeah. Well, let’s talk about a make then, hopefully there’s a make that you wouldn’t mind sharing, or something that happened that you could share with the audience.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (19:18):
Sure. I mean, so many things. First of all, practicing what I preach. I started out mailing a thousand postcards a week for PostcardMania. I upped it to 2,500. I sort of hit a plateau. And, it was when we hit the million mark, I was making about $20,000 a week in revenue, a year into my business. And, it was like taking two steps forward, three steps back, it was very [plateauish 00:19:52] feeling. And, I’m sure you know what that feels like, it sucks. You work really hard and you’re not making those strides. And, I decided to… I read an amazing datum. I used the Hubbard Management system at PostcardMania. So, one of the datums I learned there is this datum called Gross Income Senior Datum. And, that is the size, not the quality of an organization’s mailing list, and the number of mailings to it determines the gross income of that organization.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (20:22):
So I went, “Okay…” This is what was written in the sixties, there was no digital, nothing. So I thought, “Okay, so the size, not the quality of my mailing list, the size, not the quality, all right, I am going to double my mail from 2,500 pieces a week to 5,000 pieces a week.” I could barely afford to do that. I was paying myself about $800 a week at the time. And, that’s how much postage was for 5,000 pieces at that time. So I was like, “Ooh, this is like a big amount of money for me,” but I decided I could… I already learned that it took about four weeks for us to close someone. So, I decided I was going to do it for six weeks without fail and not judge until after six weeks.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (21:17):
And I am not exaggerating, five weeks after I started that, we more than doubled our revenue. We jumped to over 50,000, and this was in…. Was it in 2001 now? I think it was probably 2001 now, that when I did [crosstalk 00:21:31]. And, it was a crazy year, because it was around the time of September 11.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:36):
Yeah.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (21:37):
[inaudible 00:21:37] going crazy. So, I doubled my revenue, and then I rode that for a long time, at 5,000 pieces a week. For a very long time, we were doing between 40 and 60,000 a week in revenue, because of that change. And, I had to hire more salespeople, so I would say that was a really good make it. It gave me a stable piece of information that I could operate off of, and in 22 years of doing this, I have never missed a single week of getting my mail out in the range that I’m mailing, ever.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:10):
Wow, that’s impressive.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (22:13):
Like hurricanes, whatever BS is going on in the world, I get the mail out, even through lock down, and COVID and stuff. So, that’s definitely make.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:25):
Wow, that’s impressive. That’s really impressive. And well, Joy, let’s talk about a multiplier, and any kind of a multiplier, something you wouldn’t mind sharing with us professionally, personally, through the business.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (22:40):
It’s almost like the same answer. I feel like it’s almost the same answer. I am so passionate about the direct mail. I would probably make some multipliers. Are they synonymous?
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:54):
Sometimes they are. We’ve had folks who sometimes, when they’ve come on, it’s been a personal thing that they’ve done. Some people have said they’ve, “Once a week, they would lock themselves in their room with no phones or electronics for an hour and just think,” and that was a big game changer for them. Or some people would go for a walk, or some people would use the power of… Oh gosh, what’s the word I’m trying to think of? The manifestation where they would just focus on just one thing, and that would be the only thing they would think about, or talk about, or write about and use these kinds of things. So… [crosstalk 00:23:41].
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (23:41):
Yeah. I mean, I would say probably one of the best things that I’ve done for my company is who I’ve hired to help me. [inaudible 00:23:52] So, I hired Melissa Bradshaw when she was 19 years old. She’s the president of my company now. She’s been here for 22 years.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:03):
Wow.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (24:03):
And Rob, the guy you spoke to is her husband.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:06):
Oh, okay.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (24:08):
And, he my chief revenue officer. He started several years after she did, probably five. She started dating him right away, but I was like, “He cannot work here.” I did not approve, but I love him to death now. So, I surround myself with really incredible people that are so loyal to me, and to PostcardMania, to the whole group. They take such ownership of this company, and their particular role in it. And, that for me is a huge multiplier. Like, without them… I don’t know. It’s like, yes, I have a great ability to choose good people, but to keep people 22 years, 17 years, 16 years. Like, my senior exec team have been here forever.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:57):
Wow. That’s incredible. And I can tell you, and by the way, for our audience, this is not a promotional push or publicity. Joy didn’t put me up to this or there’s no compensation changing hands here. But, I can tell you every person, including you, that I’ve dealt with on your team has been fantastic. The salespeople that I’ve spoken to, from the entry-level conversation, phone call discussion, I mean, it is just truly a great culture that you have built and created to retain people. And, you make it look like it’s a lot of fun, and I appreciate that.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (25:36):
Ah, thank you so much. That is like the nicest thing anybody can say to me, honestly. Aside from you look skinny today, that one is [inaudible 00:25:44] big for me.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (25:45):
That too.
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (25:47):
Yeah. So, I mean, that’s huge for me, because I love these people so, so, so much, and they’re such good people, and we really do have an amazing culture here. Actually, and I think your audience will appreciate this, we have a no office politics policy, a zero tolerance policy, no negative chatter, no office politics. So, if you work at PostcardMania, and you’re not a positive type person, and you kind of get into sarcasm and making people feel shitty, because even when you’re joking, it’s not going to work out for you here. That’s not the environment we have. People spent eight… This is actually, I feel for some people, the sanest part of their day is at work. You don’t know what people are going through. And so, we just want to make their… As long as you’re a hard worker and positive, and willing, you’re going to do great here. And, it is really great culture, so I really appreciate you telling me that.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (26:52):
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And, the final question we like to ask everyone is, what does success mean to you?
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (27:03):
Oh, goodness. For me, success is really being able to pay my people like buckets of money, and I still have plenty for myself. So, success for me, isn’t necessarily financial for me. I mean, I’m not your typical… I don’t own like lots of boats and houses. I mean the Lake Linear house that I told you about, we just got that, but I live in a normal size home. And for me, it’s being able to not have attention on money, because then you never fight with your spouse. And then, being able to pay the people who’ve backed me up all this time, really, really, really well, so that they can do everything that makes their dreams come true. That’s success for me.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (27:52):
Wow, that’s incredible. Well, clearly you’re a phenomenal leader, a great motivator and great at team building, because from your team, from the stories you’ve shared, from the way that your staff and team interact with the customers, prospective customers all along the way is amazing. And as we close this out Joy, is there anything you’d like to leave with our audience or say, that maybe you didn’t have a chance too, or would like to tell the listeners?
Joy Gendusa, Postcardmania (28:22):
Well, I hope that you got inspired to check out postcardmania.com, and see if we’re a good fit for your franchise, because we are passionate about getting results for small businesses. We are a printer, yes, but we’re a marketing company first, and we are super results-driven. So, I want you to check us out. So, that’s all I’m hoping for, I’m hoping that you’re inspired to try it.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (28:48):
Joy, thank you so much for an amazing interview. You are inspirational. I know I’m motivated and pumped up after that interview, so thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and things you’ve learned along the way. So, let’s go ahead and jump into to today’s three key takeaways. So, the first key takeaway from Joy’s interview is to practice what you preach. Practice what you preach, and that’s something I think is really amazing about joining her company. Not only does she sell the postcards, but they also use that as a primary marketing vehicle for their own business growth. And that’s how I actually, and I shared this with her and we talked about it on the interview, found out about her. I was on one of her postcard lists, found out about them and started learning more about it, and just would get a postcard every now and again. And it took a few years for our company to actually reach out, but we did.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (29:47):
Number two, I thought this was really interesting information that she shared when she said that, “The size of your mailing list, not the quality is what determines the actual success of the list or the size of your organization.” I thought that was really interesting data that she shared, that was pretty compelling. So, just something for you to maybe think about if you’re considering a direct mail type program or campaign, or other marketing avenue. And number three, I really liked her definition of success when she said, “Success for her as being able to pay her team very well so that they can do what they want to do.” I thought that was great. And now, it’s time for today’s win-[win.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (30:35):
So today’s, win-win comes when joy talked about never missing a mailer ever, any week, no mailing run has ever been missed for her own marketing or for her customers. And, they’re based out of Florida, so they have hurricanes and all kinds of other natural disasters and things that come along, and she’s never missed that. And for me, what I pull out of that, is consistency. I think what Joy was really sharing is consistency, and this whole idea that consistency compounds. And so, remember that in your own business with your marketing, with your sales presentations, with the customer service you deliver to your customers and to your clients, consistency is going to compound. She’s never missed a mailer. And so, I think it’s a great, great lesson and takeaway. So, that’s the episode today, folks. Thanks for tuning in. Please, please subscribe. Give us a review, share this with any of your friends, family, colleagues, associates, anyone you think could benefit from this information. We would greatly appreciate it. Thanks so much, and we’ll see you back here next week.
