Connect with your customers the intelligent way!
David Etheredge is the co-founder and CEO of SavvyCard.
SavvyCard is a Mobile Engagement Software as a Service platform that creates customized web applications making it easy for businesses to create connections, build relationships and drive transactions with their customers through the mobile web.
Learn more about how SavvyCard can help your business with an easy-to-use business card interface by listening to this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur above and don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – Spotify –Google Play –Castbox – TuneIn – RSS.
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0:00
Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go. All right with us right now we've got David Etheredge. David, you're just down the road in the Tampa/St. Pete area, and you are the founder and CEO of SavvyCard. And David, you've you've kind of worked on a problem or you've worked on a product that solves a major, major problem. Now here's the reality. I go to I go to a handful of conferences and conferences are really good for my business. So as an agency owner like I generally like I love talking with people and going to Inc5000 next week, and I know that I'm going to go home with, well, here let me show you. I've got a stack of business cards. Oh, it's not that. But it's basically this is how many cards I come home with. It's about that thick. When I go to a trade show, and I know I've done a good job. Yeah, there we go. Now this seems so old school and inefficient. It's like getting a paper newspaper, but yet it's still kind of the way we're doing it. I don't know. I guess you know, is there a better way?
1:37
Yeah. For a softball. softball. You teed it up? For me? There's absolutely a better way. Look, I was at a trade show a couple of weeks ago and and you know, our primary clients right now are executives at Real Estate member organizations like MLS and when we sign a contract with one of those, one of those real estate member organizations, we tend to get thousands of new users on our platform and their significant revenue contracts like five, six figure annual contracts. So when I need a decision maker at a multiple listing service that I want to do business with, if I hand him a business card, I'm giving him control him or her control over follow up, okay? And I get their business card in exchange, I'm probably going to call the number to find that it's an office number and going through, you know, a, you know, a gatekeeper, or I'm sending them an email, and it's going into an inbox with hundreds or thousands of other emails. And so it's really hard to rise above the noise level and extend the email as a follow up. So what I do instead is I use savvy card and a an a, a sales process that we call sharing text, and it's very simple. I instead of handing a business card, I say, Can I text you my business card and follow up with you later? invariably, they say sure, and they give me their mobile number and when they do, they've just given me permission, right, and they have an expectation that I'm going to follow up with them by text message. So at this conference two weeks ago, I use this on four or five real MLS executives. And I was able to schedule follow ups at the show where I sat down for 30 minutes at the show we're going to close hundreds of thousands of dollars of business off of those those connections simply because I didn't use the traditional strategy of following up by email after the show. I actually started a conversation with them in real time and was able to book a meeting at the show using sharing text.
1:08
So I The reason I have Daniel Thomas on from EvolutionEat is Daniel regularly works with high achieving successful people. They're doing really great work and business. I mean, they're successful in so many areas of their life. And one thing that I wondered about this I said, you know, is there anything that's, that's unique about someone who is traditionally High Achiever in life? You know, when that comes to, uh, you know, having that that kind of that close to ideal body that we want, you know, do we sometimes get in our own way because of that personality? And thanks to Daniel, I learned that Yeah, there's absolutely some things so if you haven't again watched the first and second videos are listened to the first and second podcast episodes about that. Please go back. And listen to that. Got my friend Daniel Thomas. Daniel and I have been working together for as of when we're recording this close to two months. And Daniel has an amazing program. He works with his clients. And there's a couple of ways you have a great group coaching program, Daniel, and then you offer individual coaching, which you and I have done over the past, getting close to getting close to two months, I've lost well, more than 1010 pounds. I think I'm about 12 pounds lost right now. And what's really great is, you know, beyond just dropping the weight, because, you know, because I've done that before, where I just white knuckle it and I'm like, you know, I'm going to eat under 1000 calories a day, and I'm just going to starve myself, but because I'm such a strong willed individual, I can do that. But you know, and I know now that that's not really sustainable, right? Because you're only going to do that for so long. And then of course you get back into regular life and I think can just tell you having gone through that yo yo so many times that, you know, I keep rebounding up, and it's not fun. I'm kind of tired of that, quite frankly, Daniel and I think that, you know, a lot of your clients have not only lost weight, in some cases, significant amounts of weight, they actually keep it off long term. What's the difference?
3:38
Okay, so I'm thinking about this now operations so I am fortunes in the follow up.
3:44
And it's amazing how many conferences I go to exchanged business cards and people are not following up. I do I follow up and as a result, like that's, you know, we've been very successful as you know, kind of agency slash platform, you know, kind of for what we do. And so here's what I normally do and tell me how I could I could make this system work. So I'm collecting all these phone numbers. I don't know who they are, but I don't I don't know who they are, though, right? And so I'm texting them and hoping that they'll either click my schedule link, or somehow we can have that meeting, what what should I be doing? And normally, here's what I normally do. I get all the cards, I scan them all in. And then I have my assistant go through. And so she's reaching out getting everybody on my schedule calendar. That's what we do normally. So I want to be really, really smart. And but you're right, I think it's ridiculous that we're using paper cards.
4:44
So there's two things one in a one-to-many environment, right we have a product called savvy corporate speakers, where I do real estate trainings on a regular basis and I might have mainly realtors in the room. And I don't want to hand out business cards to 50 realtors, and I don't want to collect business cards from 50 realtors, right. So what what they do at the end of my presentation, I say, to get more, you know, to get the slides or to get implementation guides for what I've taught you today, text the word David, to 72889. And my my savvy card will be sent to you by text. And then on my savvy card, there are links to where you can you can get the follow up information on the class, or if you'd like to contact me about additional products or services or what have you, then you can do it through my card. So that's one thing that you can do. And you can do that on podcast, right? You've got an audience that is out there, you don't know who that audience is, right? But you'd love to be able to invite them to engage with you. So this is you know, savvy card for speakers is a mechanism that allow you to do that. That's one let me let
5:51
me try this with you right now. What was the what was I'm going to send you a text right now. So what was the number
5:56
yea text David to 72889 Which is the number that number spell savvy. So it's easy to remember
6:04
72889. Alright, so well, so I've sent the text in and then I should probably get a savvy mess if I did it right 72889. David. So we'll let will let Oh, here we go. Thank you for requesting David savvy card, click the following link to view. Yeah, and then open up.
6:26
It'll prompt you to download my contact information into your phone. So that right there just pop Yeah, it's asking you to download my contact information. Wow. Interesting. 50% of phone calls in the United States go unanswered today. And we all know why, right, because
6:43
yeah, I don't know who's calling me. Can I tell you that? I just I don't accept phone calls anymore. If I don't have a call if I don't see who it is. Because I'm just going to assume it Sam spam. Yeah. So unless they're, you know, this
6:57
new guy that's that's popping up on my phone now. fraud risk, right? You've seen that, right? So So the bottom line is, if you share in text, when you meet a high quality prospect, let's say that you're at a show and somebody says, I'd really like to book you as a speaker, okay? You don't want them to go into an undifferentiated group of contacts, right? You want to follow up with them intentionally in real time, and start a conversation and make sure that you that you know, win whatever that business opportunity is, so what I would recommend you do is you ask them, if you can text your business card to them, they're going to say, yes, you you open up your card, and one of the features on our card is the ability for you to create, you know, canned messages for different types of sales avatars that you work with. So if it's somebody who is a potential, you know, they want to book you for speaking, you would select that drop from the drop down when you share your card, and it would populate a message and then when you go look at that after the show you'll know, this is somebody I met on this day, here's their contact information. They're interested in booking me as a speaker. So just a, you know, it's just a digital intentional digital process, that's going to increase the likelihood that you're going to convert that prospect into a sale.
8:16
Now, I like that a lot. Well, that seems pretty easy. So I've just kind of playing around clicking all the buttons on on your savvy card. And is pretty slick. So, um, so what do we Um, so but now I'm still kind of so my, my I would be. Okay, so let's say that we go through this one more time with me. So let's say I end up collecting like 50 people have texted me, what's the easiest way for me to communicate to all of them and say, hey, let's grab 30 minutes. Here's my schedule link or is there a better way?
8:55
Yeah. So So look at my card, go back on the card. And if you click on the My Sites button. Yes, my calendar is right there at the top.
9:04
Okay, but that's still okay. So I would send a text with them. I'm reaching out to so is or do I join would have my assistant just kind of text each person individually,
9:18
or you just you just tell people text Josh to 72889. We can set up, you know, Josh, or Elledge, or whatever, whatever you want as the text back short code for your card. So when somebody, let's say you got 50 people and they they want to schedule a follow up with you, you can either share your card to them directly, or you can get them to request your card using a text back shortcode. You can have your assistant email or text it to them. You can post it to social media, you can there's a bunch of different ways that you can use your savvy card to engage prospects. That's great.
9:53
And then of course you have like different different designs that you can use as well as Do you have a like a gallery of designs.
10:02
So everything we do is custom. So we're going to do custom designs for you. Like if you sign up for our savvy card for business product, we're going to do a complete custom design for you and for your business, right? Because one size doesn't really fit all and right, give people a bunch of generic templates. I mean, we're talking about for someone like you one of the most important aspects of your businesses, the quality of brands and brand, right, yeah, so using templates is cheesy, okay. You know, you want to have your brand explicitly, you know, communicate what's unique and valuable about you as a business as a business person, right? And so we're not gonna leave anything to templates we're going to design a bespoke, you know, card designed specifically for you will incorporate calls to action that are specific to what you're looking to drive your you know, prospects or prospective customers to do and will incorporate You know any information if you're a real estate agent and you want your certifications on there, if you know if you have a tagline or you've got a particular type of, you know, speaking engagement that you like to speak on with corporate that messaging into your card, so as soon as people get it, you're already you're already communicating the value of, you know, of your brand to them before they ever even get to the point of reaching out.
11:25
Yeah, hey, what's kind of cool is you can actually on your website savvy card calm I'm actually searching for and so I'm looking at all of these other savvy car design. So I'm actually that's kind of nice because now I, I just want to see what's possible in terms of like, you know, being able to make this fit my branding and you know, using flat design, I would definitely be a better fit for me. So I'm going through so you have a search feature right on savvy car calm, where you can kind of see what a lot of these look like.
11:57
That's right, and of course, we can design If you if you purchase that ID card for business or savvy corporate speakers, we can design a custom designed for you that's going to be, you know, going to be exactly what you're looking for your interesting Google material, you know, that kind of flat design, then we can do that if you're interested in something that's more traditional. I've got realtors who are 70 years old, they haven't changed their branding and, you know, 40 years, and they want their card to represent the brand that everybody knows them by. So now we, we, we didn't want to end up with a MySpace problem where people were doing there, you know, people who are not artists and not designers, were creating cards and they all sort of looked, you know, looked amateur, we want to make sure that every card that we that we deploy, you know, has a world class, you know, design and brand to it.
12:47
That's great. That's great. And you and I have a mutual friend in Chris krumitz Oh,
12:53
fantastic. We're I saw Chris at the NSA National Speakers Association Show a couple of months ago and we're planning on going to pod Fest in March.
13:04
Great, great. Yeah, love pod fest, speak there, present there. Great, great community. So well, that's terrific. Okay. So again, if I haven't said it enough in this interview, savvycard.com, and that's where you gonna find David Etheredge, who's the founder. And it looks like so the pricing on a business savvy card is how much?
13:27
It's $149 one time fee, that includes all the design and setup, we're actually adding a monthly fee on the 20th of October, it'll be $9.99 a month recurring. So if if people want to buy before the 20th, then they'll be grandfathered in and never have to pay a monthly fee. But we've had such huge response over the last several months on savvy corporate business that we feel comfortable that that people are seeing enough value that they'd be willing to pay that monthly fee but so you got 18 days to get in under the wire. Get a permanently get a savvy car without ever having to pay a monthly fee.
14:03
Well, sadly, by the time this publishes, that will have been a month about a month and a half ago. So that's all right. Well, I'm sure for the $9.99, you're going to get lots of great ongoing features and development. And
14:16
well, I'll tell you what, if anyone calls our offices and mentions Josh Elledge, we will grandfather them into the $149 and no monthly fee. So we go So there you go. That's a benefit of being one of your listeners.
14:30
Awesome. So you go to savvycard.com, and you can click on the leave a message right there. And that'll be that'll get you through to David. David, I want to thank you so much. Like I said really, really big on like now I love networking. I love person to person, but you're absolutely right, the old business cards. Come on, please. Why are we still doing it that way? Thank you so much.
14:51
Yeah, thank you for having me on your on your show.
14:55
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