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March 18, 2024

Mastering Video Personalization in Recruiting with Bethany Stachenfeld

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Elite Recruiter Podcast, the show that’s all about arming you with cutting-edge strategies to elevate your recruiting game. I’m your host, Benjamin Mena, and today we have a very special guest, Bethany Stachenfeld, the CEO of Sendspark, joining us to discuss how recruiters can master the art of video personalization.

In today’s digital age, standing out from the crowd is more important than ever, and Bethany is here to share the transformative tools and technologies that Sendspark offers. Imagine sending out hundreds of personalized videos with ease, addressing your prospects by name, and even integrating specific job titles or personal details—all this without creating multiple individual videos. Bethany will walk us through how Sendspark's technology leverages AI to create scalable, personalized video content, as well as how their platform enhances communication by overlaying videos onto public websites.

We'll explore the practical aspects of video personalization in recruiting, from Bethany’s own journey into the video world to the integration of tools like warmly for identifying warm leads. You'll hear firsthand how this technology can save you time—taking only about an hour to generate 100 personalized videos—and Bethany's top advice for salespersons and recruiters just getting started with video.

Don’t miss this chance to learn from a leader in personalized video outreach. Whether you’re a seasoned recruiter or just starting out, Bethany's insights are sure to be a game-changer for your approach. So, buckle up, get ready to dive into the world of video personalization, and let's make 2024 the best year yet for your recruiting success. Stay tuned!

Are you struggling to make your recruiting messages stand out in a crowded market of AI-generated emails?

In the recruitment world, your ability to connect personally with candidates can be the difference between attracting top talent and being just another unread email. As we venture into 2024, bridging the gap between personalization and efficiency becomes critical. "Mastering Video Personalization in Recruiting with Bethany Stachenfeld" is an essential listen that delves into how recruiters can leverage video to make genuine connections at scale, ensuring that your message not only reaches your prospects but resonates with them.

- **Discover Innovative Video Personalization:** Learn how SendSpark AI integrates with various platforms, allowing you to create personalized videos quickly and efficiently.

- **Insights from a Leading Expert:** Bethany Stachenfeld, CEO of Sendspark, reveals her strategies for using video to enhance personal connections in recruiting, ensuring your candidates feel valued and heard.

- **Actionable Strategies:** Benjamin Mena and Bethany offer actionable advice on incorporating video into your recruiting process. They reveal why video should be your second touch in a sales sequence and how to use it for cold outreach success.

Unlock the secrets to standing out and making meaningful connections with candidates—hit play and transform your recruiting strategy today with The Elite Recruiter Podcast.

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Transcript

Intro [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter podcast with your host Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:20]:
Man, I just want to say once again, thank you so much for everybody that joined the recruiter summit. It was fantabulous. It was amazing. If you want a copy of those recordings, definitely check out the link in the show notes and pick up a copy of those recordings because rewatching those absolute game changer for the year. But now enjoy the podcast episode. I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. I have a special guest with me today, and one of the things that we're going to talk about is making it out of the AI noise. One of the things that's like, we have all seen it nonstop with our inboxes.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:52]:
People are now able to use AI full and automation to write emails nonstop. So the problem is we're kind of doing the same thing as recruiters, both on the sales side and the candidate side. So how do you break out of the noise? How do you do something different? So I have my guest, Bethany Stackenfield, who is the CEO of Sensespark, to talk about how you can use video to really up your game, change the game, and stand out from the thousands of other emails that every single manager is getting. So welcome to the podcast.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:01:24]:
Cool, thanks for having me.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:26]:
So, real quick, before we get started, we normally talk about how you got into recruiting, but let's talk about how you got into the video world.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:01:34]:
Yeah, so in my past life, I was doing a lot of email automation, email outreach for two different startups. And it was at Vidgred. That's the last startup I was at before starting Sunspark. We realized that video was just such a powerful way to connect. Like you said, stand out, cut through the noise, show that there's humans behind the business that are trying to make real connections. But the problem was, when it came to using video, it just wasn't scalable in a personal way. You could take one video, send it to everyone, or you could record individual ones. That took a lot of time using other platforms.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:02:10]:
But as an email automation person, I'm like, oh, shouldn't there be a way where you can take one video and personalize different attributes of the video to different people to be able to send it an email automation different? You know, that led me and my co founder Brandon Brandon Escalante, to start Sendspark and build out just a better way for people to use video to connect at scale.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:33]:
And I think you kind of put the nail on the head. I remember when I first started using video. You're probably going to laugh at this. I'd make a YouTube video and personalize it, create a product, put it on the YouTube thing, make it like a private link and then put that in the email. And by the time I got done doing that and the 15 times I made a mistake, I was probably like 30, 40 minutes into making a personalized video. And I just realized at the end of the day, I'm like, I can't do this.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:03:01]:
That's literally what we're doing. We're doing like, well, it wasn't YouTube, but we were using Vidgrid and then have also used different platforms. But then we're like literally creating landing pages for each so people could book a meeting and it looked kind of professional. And then we were also making custom thumbnails. And my co founder, I want to say this was possibly before Figma, so he was like using sketch to was. It just was way too long and there are all these different moving pieces.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:27]:
So, yeah, hencepark, since I. Some of the challenges I've seen when it comes to recruiting is just like both on the client side and the Canada side is just getting in the like just getting the message. You know, I always harp on this podcast about this template, this email template that I somehow get five times a day from recruiters. And I have no clue where my resume is at since I haven't had one in maybe a decade. And it looks like the same template that I used back when I first started recruiting back in 2005, 2006. Things haven't changed for a lot of recruiters. And the problem is there's so much noise most of the time with most of my candidates and the client side, at least on the client side, it's now way more touches than it's ever been. On the candidate side, it might be the 6th email that comes through.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:23]:
So you can really step up the game by doing video. And one of the questions I want to ask you, since you are the video expert, when in the process does video actually work?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:04:34]:
Yeah, great question. Well, I'll also say that one of the problems of using an email template that really feels like an email template, if you're in that candidate's mind, is the candidate's thinking, okay, I might apply for this job. It's going to be me against like 6000 applicants. People know that the market is really tough right now, and so when you're invited to apply but you feel like, well, I'm just going to spend this time applying and be lost in a sea. Why even take the time to do it? And even if I do, why write a good application? Because they feel like a number and they feel like they're going to be a number. So I think it comes down to whether we're talking about email or video. The goal is how do you make the person you're reaching out to feel like your message is intended for them and they should take the time to apply and put their whole selves into the application because there's been a little bit more thought. And that doesn't mean that you have to take 30 minutes and create their individual personalized thing, but it's just about figuring out, well, what is really going to make them feel seen and heard and that they were properly targeted to do that.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:05:37]:
And I think video can be really powerful just as a way to show rather than tell. Show there's a human on the other side and make them feel special. And whether that's the first touch or the second touch, or it's email or LinkedIn, it doesn't really matter. It kind of depends on the rest of the process. But I think that's the goal, is making people feel seen and heard awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:56]:
And when it comes to when you're really thinking about using video in a sales sequence, should you start off your first message with a video, or should it be like something a little later on down the sequence?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:06:09]:
Typically, I recommend people use it as the second touch. The reason for that is if you're reaching out cold, you really have to keep deliverability in mind. People who are really good with deliverability and optimizing sequences and know what they're doing, they use video in the first touch. It works great. But if you're ever like, really know what I'm doing, I'm just trusting my email automation software to make this work. I'd just be like your first email, no links, no images, don't put a logo on your signature, don't use a picture, just nothing. Get in the primary inbox. Then once you're in the primary inbox, a video as a second touch is going to help you.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:06:46]:
That's where you're going to see the most engagement, but it's extra safe because you're already in the inbox.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:52]:
Okay, real quick. So you're talking about making sure that the video is added in the marketing sequence.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:06:59]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:02]:
Maybe. We're going to talk a little bit about AI here, but how do you get a list of top 100 clients that you want to work with and you want to do recruiting for. You have your email marketing sequence put together and most of us have all that. How do you interject a video into that?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:07:20]:
Well, my shameless pitch for that, we make it really easy to send the videos out in the sequence. So it doesn't matter what platform you use, we integrate with nearly all of them. And if we don't integrate with peers, just say it. And I'm sure we can integrate with it within like a week. But with Sensepark, what you can do is you can create one video and then leave different placeholders for first name, job title, whatever you want to personalize based on either in the video, like the actual what you're saying with AI, or just in the landing page or other content. So you could create that. And then you just choose the platform that you want to share it in. And whether it's Apollo or instantly outreach, whatever platform you use, we'll just give you a little snippet so that you can embed the video in your sequence.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:08:05]:
And in the same way you're personalizing other attributes in the email, like first name, company name, et cetera. That video will use the same contact information and you'll get it so it works super seamlessly.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:15]:
Okay, so real quick for the listeners also trying to understand this. So I can embed a video into my marketing sequence with instantly and all these other email sequence platforms, but I can sit there and say, jim Bob, this job is amazing for you. We do amazing recruiting in your space, but you can use AI to.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:08:42]:
So the way it would work is you actually record the video using the placeholder term watermelon. Right now. It's really good mouth movement. So that's what we're using. So you would record and be like, hi, watermelon, this job's great for you, blah, blah, blah. And then when you send it to everyone, instead of hearing watermelon, they'd hear their own name.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:00]:
That's awesome. It's a good thing they don't hear, hey, watermelon. I didn't even think about that. That is a great way to almost like personalization at scale without you working and doing 15 videos per hour and then figuring out how to add it to your marketing sequence.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:09:22]:
Yeah, it's pretty cool. And actually, so you can say the first name. And then one other thing that we did is, you know, if you look like a loom video or one of the standard videos going on, it's like a bubble, a camera bubble over a screen. So what we can also do, so we have your camera bubble that's like your high watermelon high Bethany video. And then we can put that over any public website as if you're scrolling through it. So what you could do is even take you talking and put it over the literal job description. And you could be Ben, you know, I'm looking for someone for this job and it's scrolling through the job. I think you'd be a really good fit because you've experienced XYZ, something that applies to the whole group, people you're reaching out to or to the company.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:10:05]:
Right. You can be like, hey, I know you're hiring for this role and we know a lot of candidates that could be a good fit. So you're literally showing that job posting in the video and then that makes it feel like super relevant.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:16]:
And one more time for the listeners, I'm not recording with that job video. I just have that job video as a background that's automatically added in here.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:10:24]:
Yeah. So you just take that one video and then you'd upload the list of contacts, the link to the job description, which I'm sure you could get as a CSV form.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:38]:
How long does it take to do.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:10:40]:
This, to set up the campaign? Well, it takes very little time to set it up because you'd literally just do a couple of things and upload your list. I will say it takes about an hour to generate 100 videos right now. I think we can make that time a little faster. So that's the one thing to note is if you're reaching out to 100 people, it take an hour to process. But in that time you can be going out to lunch or doing something else.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:03]:
Okay, I'm not going to lie. I think I'm going to check this out. Once we're done with this podcast, I feel like I'm sitting on a gold mine. By not utilizing the AI tools, it's pretty cool.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:11:15]:
I mean, it's one of those things when you see it, you're like, oh, everyone should be using it, but most people aren't yet. So chance to get out of it.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:22]:
Okay, so this is something that if you're listening when this podcast goes live, do you think everybody's going to be starting to use this kind of technology soon? Or is it going to be kind of like if you're doing it this year, you're still ahead of the curve?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:11:35]:
Well, I think everyone is, but where we're taking the platform is trying to help you personalize on more things what existential crisis? I don't know if crisis is the right word, but one thing that we've really dug into is what is personalization and what is relevance? And I think that that's not going anywhere because the goal of this isn't really to trick someone into thinking that you said their name. It's really to show them the right content at the right time in a way that's really easily digestible. It's just better communication. So right now, the main ways we're personalizing are based in the first name and the website URL. But I'd like to be able to personalize more parts of the content based on more things. So it's just like a better world. It's almost like when you go to TikTok, you're like, oh, all of these videos are really targeted towards me. How do we make sure that that's how your emails feel? Like, oh, all of this content is targeted towards me.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:12:24]:
It's relevant for me. This is exactly what I need to see. This helps me answer the decision I was trying to make, and that's really the goal. So I think that the world's moving that direction, but it's going to get just better and better and better, and I think people are going to love it. It's not like the opposite of spammy, it's targeted communication.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:43]:
And I know this is probably in the future, but how do you even utilize AI to create a targeted thing? Or is it just like, are you guys able to plug into the massive amount of data sets that there is on every single person out there?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:12:55]:
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, we're either plugging into general AI, I would say we're also using a lot of AI tools, too. So there's like general, we use chat GPT for certain things. We have a video, email, script writer. We're going directly to chat GPT. But then for some of the AI stuff, we have built in, we have camera filters built in to touch up your appearance, which is kind of cool because on video you're like, I don't really want to wear makeup. I just would want to look good. So we didn't build our own camera filters.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:13:26]:
We're using deep AR, which has really great tech, and so we're able to plug into it. So I think as more AI stuff gets developed, we're able to just plug into what's out there, what other people are building for business, and roll it into Sunspark. To give you. Our goal is not to be an AI platform. It's to be a communication platform, and we just want to wrap up everything you need.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:44]:
So if you want a good laugh. I try to stay off of video until I've had a shower. Most of the time, I do a lunchtime workout, so I typically don't touch anything. Video before lunch. So are you saying that I can now do videos before lunch?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:13:59]:
Exactly. That's the goal. You should be able to wake up and just turn it on and feel good. It's pretty subtle. Like, it's similar to zoom, where you're like, you don't even notice that you look good till you use Google me. And you're like, oh, God, yeah. Like, little things like that. And just the way we think about developing as well is what are friction points that people have that we can solve with AI? So a great friction point is you not wanting to record until you've showered.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:14:27]:
But if we can fix that with camera filters, we're now doubling the time of day. You could be using Sunspark. So that's how we're thinking about it from a product perspective, and then we're just using whatever tech we can find.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:37]:
Yeah, that's great. I didn't even realize that. Yeah, because I'm totally like, after launches when I do videos, except for on TikTok, where I cannot figure this goes into probably, like, showing my age now. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to turn off a filter on TikTok. I have this glow filter that I just cannot get rid of no matter what I do.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:14:58]:
Then how hard have you tried to turn it off?

Benjamin Mena [00:15:01]:
I now mostly just upload videos to Instagram. And I have it. I use an automation software, so it automatically goes to TikTok now.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:15:09]:
That's fine.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:11]:
Just so I don't have to go on TikTok.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:15:15]:
TikTok is like a scary place. I get so hooked on it. We'll post videos. TikTok. I always post it from my computer. I'm like, I can't lose an hour to TikTok. Right? Post, close my eyes.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:30]:
That is exactly why I use an automation tool. To go from anything I post on a real. On Instagram, it automatically goes to YouTube, shorts, and TikTok. Just so because every time I went to go upload on TikTok, I'm like, 30 minutes later, I'm like, God dang it.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:15:43]:
Populate to defend it.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:46]:
Then I get, like, 25 views on my video, and I'm like, I just lost 30 minutes of time. That's recruiting time. Well, what do you see with the future of video and artificial intelligence within the sales cycle.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:15:57]:
I think it really comes down to figuring out what information people really need to see at the right time and then being able to generate that and send it to them. And that's high level. But an example of that is let's say you've been talking to a customer for a long time or like a prospect for a long time, they kind of ghosted. But now they're on the website and you see that they visited certain pages automatically, right? Then taking that information from previous conversations, current activity, think it's going to be possible to generate a video that can kind of guess what they're trying to figure out right now, provide them exactly that information and send it all automatically. And so if you think about that, that's just better for everyone. It's going to save you time. Like doing research, manually recording whatever, it's all automated. It's going to save them time because they're trying to figure something out.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:16:52]:
And now instead of making them schedule a meeting that they're going to have to wait for or sending a lot of material that they're going to have to sift through, you're just able to figure out exactly what they're trying to figure out and convey to them really quickly and send it at scale. So you kind of get these very personalized, asynchronous buying experiences that are really efficient on the company side and really relevant and helpful on the buyer side.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:15]:
Okay, let me take a step back. One of the things about the recruiting world outside of the rest of the sales and the marketing world, most of the time, we're probably a decade or two behind when it comes to cool SaaS, cool technology and cool things. So you're saying that we could potentially, in the short time future, if a company goes that we've interacted with, goes to our website, looks at something, we can automatically set up an automation tool that includes video to almost help land the sale.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:17:45]:
Yeah, and you could do that right now I was just talking to someone that uses warmly to identify warm visitors on the website. And then they use HubSpot to set up some automation and then they're automatically generating the videos in Sendspark and sending it out so you can do it. Right now you're just kind of putting together pieces. I think it's a little bit clunky. And we're working on having more direct integrations with tools to make it more seamless. But yeah, you can totally set that up right now. It's just not totally done for you. But I think the future is like everyone's just doing that because it's normal.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:18:18]:
And you can be more creative about what's said in the video right now you would record one and you have one placeholder. But I think we could have more placeholders, more dynamic content, even written with LMS.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:31]:
Is there any other cool AI technology sales tools that US recruiters probably should know about but don't?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:18:39]:
Well, I would say warmly is great just in terms of getting high intent people to reach out to because I think that's like half the puzzle. One part of the puzzle is communicating really well using video and well written content, but another part is just knowing the signals of when to reach out. And warmly does that well. So you can see people are on your website or they're taking certain actions. And I think that's important because one of the challenges with email, it's great because you know you're getting the right customer Persona, ideally the right contact information. They're going to see your message because it's in their inbox. But the big question is timing. Are you hitting them at the right time? Is it a little bit like maybe they're doing this right now? So the question is how do you get the intent? And I think that's when warmly could be really helpful.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:19:25]:
I don't know if there's any other ones that stand out right now, but.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:28]:
I'm sure they're for the listeners. I'll have the links to both Sendspark and warmly in the show notes so you can check that out. My mind's kind of blown that that could be an automation tool, but that's also probably just me living in my own little recruiting bubble. So before we jump to the next part of the podcast, is there anything else that you would love to share about video prospecting?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:19:51]:
One thing I guess I'll just say is we talked a lot about AI and automation, and I think that's really important for prospecting because with prospecting, a lot of it really is a numbers game. But I think there's also a time and a place where you do want to do a personalized video. And I would just say the way to split that is if you're kind of doing math outreach or you're personalizing based on a group level, like actions people took, like ICP Persona, things like that. That's when the AI personalization is really valuable, because you're not personalizing off the individual, you're personalizing based on the list. And so it's super scalable. But then I'd also say the time to use more personalized video could just be like, if you're already talking to someone, they have questions and you want to address them and make them feel really special. I don't want people to be like, oh, I'm against actually recording videos. I think that's really valuable.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:20:42]:
You just have to be efficient with your time.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:45]:
Some well, want to jump over to the next part of the podcast. We call this like the quick fire side of the house. And we'll kind of reword this for sales and prospecting. But for a recruiter that's just getting started, this industry, it's 2024. With everything that you know about sales and prospecting, because of what you do in the video space and how many videos you've seen and kind of like the success numbers, what advice would you give to a brand new salesperson or a recruiter that's just getting started?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:21:12]:
My advice would be to do the things that don't scale first. It's not like unique wisdom, but I think when you hear about all this AI and potential, et cetera, it feels really magical at your fingertips. But I try to perfect it on an individual basis and then figure out what you're doing that's working and then make that scale. And I even do that with videos. I'll make ten personalized videos before I make one for automation because you just hear yourself speaking to a real person. You're going to say different things than writing to a group, so just do everything manually before you do it.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:47]:
And the same question, but for say, us old dogs that have been around 510, 15 years that probably aren't using video like we should, any advice to us?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:22:00]:
When it comes to video, I think the hard part about adopting video, if you've not used it for a long time, the hard part about adopting anything if you haven't done it for a long time, is like you have a system that works. So I try to figure out how to make it fun for you. Maybe use video to make it fun. I would do the opposite of what makes it scary. And I think what's scary is making a video and sending it out to people you don't know. So I'd make some videos and send it out to people that you do know, like clients you've worked with for a long time, internal team members, friends, start kind of at a less scary level, and then people be like, oh, it's so cool, and you'll feel better and you kind of get the hang of it. And then when you're sending it out to people you don't know. You already know what you're doing.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:44]:
Awesome. And has there been a book that has had a huge impact on your own personal career?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:22:51]:
Okay, so a lot. Like, I read a lot, but I'm going to tell you right now, I'm reading Elon Musk's biography, and I just think it's an amazing read for anyone. There's a lot of things you see and you're like, oh, this is amazing. I want to do it. And then with Elon Musk, there's also a lot of things we're like, this is very different from what I want to do, but I think it's worth reading just to kind of see, like, all right, it obviously worked on some level, not perfectly, but to see the way he's doing things, he's thinking about things, people respond to that. I think that has influenced me a little bit in how I run Sendspark, and not necessarily that I'm emulating him, but I'm also picking a lot of things. Be like, this is where I'm going to draw a different line. But I think you got to see what other people who are successful do to know things yourself.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:37]:
And I feel like you're a little bit on the forefront. But how do you think AI is going to impact the future of recruiting as a whole?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:23:46]:
My hope is that it helps people really think about what relevant means. I think when people like right now, it's going to be so bad because there's going to be so much noise, but I think it's actually going to be the opposite. I think we're going to really start thinking about, oh, what's relevant? What do people really care about? What are they really trying to see? And instead of personalizing off superficial things, like where you went to school, which maybe actually is more relevant for recruiting, but personalizing off superficial things, it's going to be like, what are they really trying to do, and how do we communicate that? Well, so I think that I feel like it just makes us level up a little bit.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:22]:
Oh, I love that. And kind of like jumping down towards when it comes to you and your own personal success. And you got a SaaS company that's been growing pretty well from what I've seen on the outside. What do you think has been a huge proponent of your own personal success?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:24:42]:
Yeah, I mean, there's so much, I'm going to say so much of it is, like, luck, too. I would just say there's a lot of stuff that isn't fun, a lot of stuff that's just like, you're just kind of doing the basics until you get it to work and just trying to respond to customer emails quickly and be on top of things and help people. And I think if you just kind of like, there's so much noise, but if you just kind of focus on doing the basics really well, it adds up and you kind of look back and you're like, wow, we learned so much. We did so much. This is what was good use of our time versus not, but you don't know that at the time. So just try to do. I just feel like I've always, myself and my co founder, we try to really not take shortcuts and to just do a lot of things right. And I think that helped us build a really long foundation, a really strong foundation.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:25:25]:
And then as we've added more on top of it, we've had a good foundation to grow from versus taking shortcuts earlier on that maybe would have left us hanging in the current.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:36]:
And this is going to be a two part question, so I'll ask the first part. But everything that you know now, the ups and downs that you've experienced, if you could sit down and have a cup of coffee with herself shortly after school, as you're jumping into your career, what advice would you tell yourself?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:25:50]:
Ask more questions and better questions. Just ask questions all the time. People answer questions like, you'd be surprised what you can ask. And people answer. And I feel like they used to be scared of asking, and now she just, like, last weekend or a couple of weeks ago, I went out with a friend and we're like, hey, let's just talk to random people and ask questions. And it's weird because when you think of it that way, it feels so weird to do. But in a business setting and just in a social setting, the more you ask, people answer. And you can learn so much.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:20]:
Yeah, I mean, good questions, great answers, same question. But going back to January of 2019, everything that you've learned with Sensepark, if you could have a conversation with yourself that week, what would you tell yourself?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:26:39]:
I think that I would have, well, the truth is I would have told myself to really focus on customers that were willing to pay a lot of money earlier on. I think that we spent a lot of time on people that weren't willing to pay, and that is indicative of how valuable your product is. And I think as a founder, it's really tempting to be like, oh, we'll just build this. Oh, we want people to use it or, oh, they're using it, but the problem is people might use it because it's free, but they're not really your customers. Or even worse, people are not using it because it's not valuable to them and it's free, and then you're, like, optimizing for the wrong thing. So I think that freemium, things like that are a really great way to scale the company when you know what's working and you know who your core customer is, the value you're providing, and you know that really well. Free stuff is a great way to get more customers, but you shouldn't start with that. And I think a lot of founders and I definitely was in this boat think that you should start with it because you haven't proved it out or built it yet.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:27:42]:
But I think the fact that people would or wouldn't be willing to pay is a really important signal. And if you give it away for free thinking, like, oh, we're trying to prove out this concept, you're giving yourself false positive feedback. And I think that took a little bit of time to figure out early on. So probably could have saved, like.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:01]:
Well, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners?

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:28:07]:
I just say try to use more video. It's different. Might not work at first, but either just cold calling, you're just emails, nothing works at first. Just do it, play with it, and you won't regret it.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:19]:
Awesome. Well, Bethany, I just want to say thank you for coming on. I am a Sensepark user, and I feel like based on this conversation, there's a lot of not utilizing, but it is so nice to be able to cut an extremely quick video and get it over to somebody that I'm having a conversation with. And it really just cuts a lot of the noise out. But I'm excited that really just to dig more into the AI side of the house, and I really feel like one of the challenges of 2024 is just the email noise and how do you get somebody to respond? And I think video is going to be one of the game changers for 2024.

Bethany Stachenfeld [00:28:52]:
Amazing. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for having me. This was great. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:57]:
Awesome. And for the listeners, I cannot wait for you guys to crush this. Let's make 2024 your best year yet. All right, thank you.

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