The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Gift3r App Digital Gift Card Mobile App & Marketing Platform at CES Show 2020

Episode Date: January 3, 2020

Gift3r App Digital Gift Card Mobile App & Marketing Platform at CES Show 2020 Gift3rapp.com

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, the Chris Voss Show. Hey, coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to give us a like, subscribe to us on YouTube, hit that bell notification button on youtube.com for just Chris Voss. Be sure to go to the CVPN and check out our eight podcasts that we have over there. It's going to be an exciting week coming up. Holy crap. Next week is the CES show, Consumer Electronics Technology Show. It's going to be pretty freaking amazing put on by the CTA. Be sure we just had the CEO of CTA who puts on the CES show, Mr. Gary Shapiro on the show a couple weeks ago. You can check out that interview as well he always appears over here as a good friend of mine um it's always good to know people at the show uh so we're going to be talking with

one of the sponsors that's going to be sponsoring the chris voss show at ces they're helping us do all the coverage for you you're going to see a ton of tweets and talking about them and today we are visited by the ceo of this uh us. It's Anastasio Turkis. Did I get that right? You got it right, Chris. All right. How are you doing, buddy? Welcome to the show.

I'm doing very well. Thank you for having us and happy New Year's and with lots of excitement at CS to come. I was going to say, yeah, we're doing this on January 1st, 2020. So we're in the new year pretty well and i was like i'm is he gonna show up because we you may we all might have had too much fun last night but we're all here and we all were good last night and all that good stuff so you're gonna be launching a really cool app at ces you guys are gonna have a booth there we'll talk about that here in a bit uh but first uh let's talk about you. What sort of business background? What got you into this business? You're launching what's called the Gifter app. You can find it at gift3rapp.com.

And give us some background on you and your restaurant business and where you've been. Yes. I'm originally from the island of Cyprus, Greece, and I've been in the United States for the last 16 and a half years right now. Opa! Opa, Opa it is, my friend. Let's break a couple of plates. And I came, went to ASU, and then somehow, in a magical way, I got involved with the restaurant industry over here in Phoenix, Arizona.

And believe it or not, I'm not really the best chef or know how to cook precisely, to be specific. So I got involved with the restaurant industry, managed to open up seven restaurants. Lately, as of a couple of years ago i was the founder and of a very popular wine bar a salute kitchen bar over here in tempe arizona that has been around for the last seven years so i also owned a few greek quick service restaurants a pizza place and we we were around the asu community that we happened to be open until 5.30 in the morning. So, you know, being in the restaurant industry, it's been a lot of fun. You

have the ups and downs, but you also have the priceless memories that come through the people you work with and the customers that come to see you. It's a heck of a business. What got you started? Did you do any of that in Greece or did you just find that business when you came over here? No, it was just an opportunity while I was here in the States with some friends

and that was an opportunity for us to get involved. And three guys, three friends started from a small Greek quick service restaurant. We gave it a shot. And in a period in maybe like five years, we managed to open up four locations around Phoenix, Arizona, called Saipus Pita Grill. And back then, the economy was really thriving. People were happy.

People were making money. And of course, a bunch of shenanigans you know like on another level from uh from the economic side of the war and we were able to kind of go through the harsh of 2008 and 2009 where we kind of had to i had to go through the hard times and shut down the business and experience that which uh it's not an easy thing it's not an easy thing to go through when you are like 23, 24 years old, making plenty of money. You own a restaurant and restaurants have this tendency to be considered prestigious because they are hard to kind of run.

So being young, being ignorant and naive, but also have the passion of the entrepreneur that, uh, he never, he never slows down. Uh, we, we went through a lot.

We went through a lot, uh, learn a lot, shut down everything in 2009, went through some hard times and then got back on my feet. Uh, we, uh,

by getting involved with a couple of other restaurants that I helped, uh, consulted and started from scratch, uh, uh, with a couple of other owners. Um,, uh, consulted and started from scratch, uh, uh, with a couple of other owners. Um, but,

uh, it's, uh, it's been, it's been an interesting trip, um, uh, through the years.

Uh, it's a good business cause everybody needs food. Everyone's got to eat. And I love Greek food. I'm a big Euro fan. Uh, I love Greek salads. They're always so healthy and i love feta cheese so

the mediterranean cuisine is pretty it's pretty amazing i mean you sit on the table and you have uh everything the body needs to survive from your yogurt from your greek salad the greek olives uh it's it's a definitely a healthy cuisine uh as far as i concerned yeah and i mean i mean greece is such a beautiful country and stuff it's such a healthy cuisine as far as I consider. Yeah. And I mean, Greece is such a beautiful country and stuff. It's such a beautiful country. It's such a wonderful place. And it's so amazing in the food. And I'm getting hungry talking about this.

So you've been an entrepreneur all your life. And so now you're launching this app called gift3rapp.com. You can go check it out or you can search for that on the app stores for iPhone and Android. And they call it the Gift-R app. The three is the E, if you will. So what's motivated you to start this app and what is it about? So, I mean, being in the restaurant industry for the last 14 years i have been able to experience the the opportunities and potential the gift cards have uh and we started you know like uh you know 14 years ago we had paper gift cards then we got introduced to the plastic gift cards

later on in the last maybe like four or five years we have the electronic gift cards that they work through email and text messaging so it came mostly as a need how to better serve my customers and the reason is because we had you know we were selling a paper and plastic gift cards at the some of the restaurants that we had and some of the frustrations that our customers had, it was the fact that many times one of the problems that we had, like customers had to call our restaurants to place a gift card order for a friend. And most of the times we had to kind of, you know, take their information, credit card information over the phone, then take, ask for the friend's address so we can mail the gift card.

So it was a little bit hassle-y and I was always looking for ways to better serve my customers. And that's how the idea of how to better serve the needs of the customers and my business and make it more efficient. How can we create something more efficient for the customer, but also efficient for us to maximize our potential when it came to gift cards? So that's where the original idea came about 20 and a half years ago. And then six months later, I sold my restaurant in Tempe and I kind of I thought I would give it a shot another thing that it kind of inspired me it was

the fact that I got married about a year and a half or two years ago and on our wedding we end up receiving about six thousand dollars of gift cards and yeah it was pretty I mean friends really loved us a lot that's nice here's a gift card and it was kind of funny because we received uh i got a little bit frustrated because every single gift card was from a big corporate company and the funny story that i was joking with my wife we got about uh i think it was like 1200 bucks 1500 bucks from uh home depot and uh and i'm like you know it doesn't mean because i got married i'm gonna start digging my backyard or painting the house so we end up with you know that money and uh it's been literally two years

we barely used any of that money and i'm like how can we create something that I can actually give the money back to my local community, you know? Oh, that's interesting. And one of the frustrations doing the research about gift cards the last 26 months is that consumers, the biggest problem we have is that we don't know ahead of time what our friends and loved ones like or need, either on a celebration or birthday, anniversary, or anything. And as a convenience consumer, we end up buying gift cards from local grocery stores and gas stations, because that's where you can find a kiosk full of gift cards, right?

Yeah, they always have those kiosks. And the problem with that is that none of those plastic gift cards cater to a small local business that my friends and loved ones like to support, correct? Yeah, that's true. It's always the big box stuff. It's always the big box. And a small mom and pop business cannot just wake up one day, go knock on targets or safeway doors and say, you know what, I want to sell my gift cards. So small local business, they lose on big potentials on food traffic when it comes for maximizing their profits. So at our restaurants, we will sell gift cards two weeks before graduation and two weeks before Christmas and New Year's, and we will sell a lot of gift cards.

And the beauty with the gift cards is that it's uh it's cash in the pocket of the small local business ahead of time because you sell the gift card today you get paid today and the customers usually don't come in for another 60 to 90 days to redeem their gift even if they show up i mean that was one of the beauties of like groupon because people buy groupons and then they forget about them like i would i would always buy groupons and forget about them. And then I look on it and I'm like, Oh shit, that expired. Yes.

But you know, I mean it, it helps business and you know, you think you're getting a good deal. I'm not one of those people who's good. I know a lot of people like my mom, she's like, we got to use this before it goes. I'm like, okay, there you go. And so you, you guys is, you guys, there's a, there's two different facets to your guys' app that you're doing. You're making it so these mom and pop places,

these businesses can take and use your app to take and market and sell those to their customers. And then you have the other side, which is the givers and receivers. So people like me, if I want to give you a gift card, I can go on your app and do that as well, correct? Yes. So GiftedUp is a digital gift card marketing platform for givers and receivers that help support local businesses. And what do we mean where we're kind of different when it comes to our platform is coming from the restaurant industry and being around people, we wanted to create something

that they can be inviting and engaging and not just another platform that you buy a gift card, you send it and that's it. So some of the cool features the platform has for the givers and receivers as a community is that users get to search and discover

favorite local restaurants, coffee shops, hair salons, and more. And they can also invite their favorite local business at the click of a button to join Gifter app. Another cool feature the app has, they can also invite their favorite, they can also invite their friends they can also invite their friends and loved ones by simply

accessing their contacts through the app and sending an invitation to a friend by attaching a personalized text messaging. That's pretty easy because then you don't have to do all the hey what's your address man I've actually sent gift cards to my friends or like I'll have like a

thing from Starbucks but I'll have to be like I have to call up my friends or like, I'll have like a, a thing from Starbucks, but, but I'll have to be like, I have to call up my friends and be really creepy and be like, Hey, I'm going to send you a Starbucks thing. Can you give me your email address? And they're just like,

that's, um, that's another problem. That's another big problem that the consumers, we have, we don't have a way to know ahead of time what our friends want. And that was one of the problems I was facing in the restaurants where I had to ask my customers, okay, are you sure your

friend likes our business? How do you know? And they will say, you know what? Oh, I just called them up and I asked them. So for us, hence we have an anthropologist on our team, is that when you call your friend and you ask them, what do you want to buy for them you are eliminating the feeling of surprise the feeling of joy that really comes the spirit of joy that comes with the gift and one of the cool features the gift app has it allows you to discover search and discover your favorite local business and if they are on the app you can simply select the the heart button we have and this allows our users to identify their favorite business and add them on their wish list aka a registry list like amazon and target so in three clicks

your friends can go into their contacts, select your name, and they can see your wishlist. And literally in three clicks, they can send you a gift card from your favorite coffee shop, hair salon, massage store, yoga studio. And in this way, we keep the feeling of the gift and the spirit of the gift alive among friends. So that's another cool feature that the app currently has that really differentiates us from, from the classic corporate gift cards you can buy from,

you know, from kiosk and around and around the market right now. And you're right. When I sent that card to my friend, I, you know, I blew my cover, you know, he's like, Oh, you're right. When I sent that card to my friend, I blew my cover. He's like, oh, you're sending me something. And it was a nice surprise.

It was a friend of mine who always invites me out to Thanksgiving dinner. She puts on a Friendsgiving and she always invites me out to the Thanksgiving and she puts on for like 50 singles people in las vegas and she she always reaches out to me because she knows i'm single my family's in another state and so i i had like a deal from uh starbucks and i was like oh man i got this great deal who should i give this to and i'm like oh i should give it to her because she she always hooks me up but then i'm like oh shit I don't know her contact or email

that I guess Starbucks wanted. So I'm signing up to the app right now. Let me hold this up. And I don't know how you guys will see it, but if you get a chance, go to the App Store and type in GIFT3R, the letter R, app, and it should pull right up there. Pull up for me and search.

Or if you want more information, you can also the gift three, our app.com and you can just call it the gifter app the way they have three. So I'm going to go and enter the code in here. Six, three, seven, three.

And my password, which is one, two, three, four, five. Uh, so, um, but this is awesome. 2, 3, 4, 5. No, I'm just kidding. So, but this is awesome.

You know, one of the other problems that I have when you go to those big gift card bins, it's like you got to go down to the store and then you got to look for it. And then the thing that makes me mental is there's so many gift cards, but the one you want isn't on this store's thing. And then you got to drive all over town. got to go to like you know you go to the walmart no it's not there

and then you go to the 7-eleven it's not there and then you know you got to figure out which one has got that card for that company and it's just maddening sometimes you're just like and so i like this because i can just download the app and I can see here. Now, does this know my proximity and my location? So it's going to give me businesses in my local area that support the app? I mean, remember, we are a startup and we are just announcing our launch at CES. We have a dozen of businesses in Arizona that are currently helping us the last year with our beta. And they have been helping us the last year with our beta and they have been really excited we interview uh several uh several people that they've been trying but uh back to your point with uh

not knowing what to give it's really a big problem like i and i had this conversation with uh one of our people on the team a couple of days ago and And he says, you know, I mean, the guy is 38 years old. And he says, man, I gave my wife a gift on Christmas. And I was excited because I knew she liked these types of gifts. And when she opened it up, she literally went quiet and she started crying. And I'm like, are you kidding me? What happened? He goes, I knew she likes

this type of games and apparently the game I gave her it's uh the game that uh she got as a kid and she was failing to succeed and make it happen and she immediately got overwhelmed and she started crying and uh I I felt so bad he says, that it really hurt my feelings to a point that I felt extremely bad. And that's one of the reasons I love Gifted Up because now you have a way to know ahead of time what your friends like. And the beauty is that some of our users, they said that when you are having a bad day,

it's amazing that your friends can instantly send you a coffee from your favorite local place that only costs $5 and they can instantly change your mood. That's the feeling we're trying to transfer with friends and family. And if anybody wants to send me $5 out there just to change my mood, I'd certainly appreciate it. The only thing they need, Chris, is your phone number. Even if you don't have

the app, they can find a place in your area that they randomly picked up a gift card and they send you. The only thing they need to have is your phone number. The gift card will come to your phone. You will receive a link that says Anastasios send you a gift card from your favorite

wine bar. You will downloadios send you a gift card from your favorite wine bar and you will download the app and the gift card will be will show up in your wallet. Dude this is awesome man you're revolutionizing you're disrupting those stupid card bins at the store man. This is way easier because I've had to

go down there and you're just like I gotta get a gift for somebody I gotta go down to the card thing and then you gotta go in the store and you're just like, I got to get a gift for somebody. Oh, I got to go down to the card thing. And then you got to go in the store and you're like, where's your stupid card thing. And you're going to wander around. I, it's over there. And then sometimes they have like multiple shelves.

They're like on the ends of the grocery thing. You know, like that's on this one. They're like, Oh, it might be on that one over there. And then usually they're like so huge. You're like,

Oh my God, why is there an index here? Like none of these are out. It's just like I just have to look for the logo or something. So I love what you guys are doing. This is pretty disruptive. According to the app and the about us, it says a gifter app. Our vision is to inspire a gift-giving culture of joy, kindness, and happiness.

What a wonderful way to start 2020. Our mission is to create technology to amplify sharing joy while supporting local businesses and communities while bringing joy to online communities nice acts of kindness are certainly wonderful and i love how you guys have got it used your location to coagulate all the different businesses that are in your area that either have signed up for gift three or gift or app i call it uh or you can invite those companies to join so you can press a button i'll just hold it up there i don't know if that'll come up very well on our that looks good yeah there you go and uh and you can so you can

click in invite to join and uh send a message to your favorite company like, hey, I want to send gift cards from you. So do that. And then there you go. And, of course, you've got a search. You've got coffee shops, which are my favorite. So you've got a search element where you can search different things within the app out there in the thing. I think that might just blow out with the brightness of it. But you get the idea.

It's a Google map, basically, and it's got an assortment of different locations that are on it uh you've got a list of your gifts that you've taken and i believe gifted to people so you can keep track of all their gifts does it let you know when people do it it it allows you to uh check out the app allows you to send a personalized text message as well as a picture or a video. So you can take a fun video with a gift with your friend or your family and send it over. And at the same time, it tells you the location of the place that you can redeem it. And it allows you to see the text message from the person that sent it to you, as well as the picture and the video, and instantly it allows you to access their personal wish list

in case you want to return the feeling of joy back with accessing their wish list. So we try to kind of keep that human element. And one of the problems that we think, again, back to our anthropologist, Alex, that we think that is going to be changing with this new decade we are entering is with all these new Google glasses, Facebook glasses, Microsoft glasses, we are going to enter a new era of a new digital era, like the movie, what's the movie with Ready Player One.

People will be on a virtual wall. So our mission is how can we keep this ancient human tradition that goes back to prehistoric times, keep that feeling of joy alive by connecting people. So that's one of the things that we are kind of focusing to make sure we keep that feeling alive and instant instant joy and i like what you're talking about earlier where you can actually in here you can re-gift you can press the button and re-gift the app you're talking about your home depot thing and you're like what

you know we'd really like to you know be able to give that away to somebody and so i love that so if somebody gives me like a gift and i'm like well i'm not a coffee drinker you know whatever it is uh you can take and re-gift that thing and uh let somebody else deal with it yes yes so that's that's pretty awesome and then i i see how it pulls in my contacts uh with permissions of course you guys asked for them and it pulls my contacts in i can search for my contacts and i can invite them to join the app as well i love that feature where i can create a photo or video to people so it's just not this is like here's a card stupid i make like a little video like i care and and here's a card and have fun with that and thanks so it's got like well i can't show you this because i'd be disclosing phone numbers and contacts, but it's got an invite section, and you can just push the invite section.

It's got a list of all my contacts here, and then you can have people. They're all hooked up. I love this. This is way better than going down to the store, hustling down the store. You got everything right in your hand. It's the virtual stuff um and then uh and then if you're a business this is something you want to look into because um do you guys have like a setup or stickers people can have at a business where they can be like you know hey for gifts uh you know go to the gifter app and all that stuff yes we we are

working closely with local businesses and as a local restaurateur for 14 years, it's really hard to sell to local businesses. They don't really want to listen. We don't want to listen most of the times unless you have a really good value proposition that it will actually make me money. And one of the things that I think I've learned in the restaurant industry, the best way to maximize your profits

pretty much with any business you have is with your own customers. And right now what we are doing with Gifter, we are allowing those local businesses to sign up on the platform and get their customers to join the app so they can buy gift cards. But the beauty of that, when you are a customer of a business

and you add your local business into your wish list, it immediately lets your friends know that you love to support this business. So it has that social spectrum. It has that social spectrum that it lets the business, once you create a wish list from a local business and you add them on your wish list, now your friends are going to come and send you gift cards from that business, right? It also, that's a new feature we're trying to hopefully finish up as soon as possible. It sends the business a notification and says, you know what, Chris just sent you a few hundred bucks from his friends buying gift cards right now. Why don't you send Chris a gift card as a thank you from your own business?

So we are trying to kind of give enough value proposition to the business to enhance their margins through the current customers they have. I'm going to go invite everybody who's around me. So we can see this on the board behind you, but I'll read it off the screen from your website. You have some stats here. 91% of consumers surveyed have purchased a gift card. So, you know, that's a popular thing.

I know I have a lot of gift cards. I've gotten lots of gift cards. You've got to be crazy to be a business and not tap into this uh 69 of consumers have purchased a gift card for themselves um i guess you know if you're lonely enough you buy a gift no i'm just kidding uh let's see and you know i mean i know i have to buy a starbucks card every now and then uh 74 of consumers surveyed said they buy gift cards from small business. And you're right. It's something that you can't compete. Like, I don't even know if I've always been a small business.

I wouldn't even know who the hell to call to get in those big cardboards. And it probably costs a fortune. Gift cards are good for your business. $45 is the average amount people spend per gift card. $59 is the average amount spent over the value of a gift card so you know that's the gift card gives them that what's the word i'm looking for like that cue or that uh sort of put up or you know it's basically maximizes your profits without even having to move a finger. Yeah. That's the beauty of a gift card. And one of the things that, you know, with our financial partners,

if a business sells $1,000 in gift cards today, our financial partners deliver their money next day. So for me, it's probably the most powerful tool in every business is the gift cards. And then I just send you a hundred dollar gift card. When you go in, most probably, and if you've seen it from a personal experience, you're going to spend $59 average more on top of the gift card value. So the business maximize their profits without even having to do anything. Yeah. And plus you get a chance of getting new business and that new

business can turn into repeat business for you. You know, I've had sometimes where somebody gives me a gift card and they're like, Hey dude, there's like five bucks on this. Knock yourself out. Whatever. And then you, like you say, I go in and spend 50 bucks and then maybe it's the first time I ever experienced that place. And I'm like, wow, I love this place. I should come back. Thanks for the gift card. Um, 90% is the percentage of people who returned to a business after going for the first time with the gift card. So there you go. Uh, I mean, you gotta be crazy. I mean, open the door for new, new business referrals, because you know, the one thing I've been in all the years that I've been in business, I'm sure that you feel the same way. Referrals are such an important part of your business and getting new business and developing repeat customers. And so the hardest thing to do is to get those new customers. You pay like a ton of money between

ads and Facebook ads. And you know, the old days for me, it was yellow pages. And you're like, I got it. We got to, we got to buy like a giant page ad on the, on the yellow pages. But, um, the, you spend so much time in acquisition and this gives your clients a, uh, great way to do the referral basis. If they refer it, you know, they like it. You know, one of the problems I have is i always i always hunt through yelp to find stuff to eat and i'll tell my friends i'll be like hey man you know uh i found this great restaurant on yelp what is it it's that burger place right over there where is that where is it on yelp i can't find on yelp yep and then yeah i'm like it's chubbies burgers and they're like

there's two different chubbies is it with the ie or the y that literally happened previously and and i it would be easy really like hey fuck it i'm gonna send you 25 bucks just go there and here's the thing it's got the address on it have fun knock yourself out um and so i'm constantly doing that i do i do a lot of yelp reviews um anytime i go someplace new or i go someplace that it feels worthy or not worthy um i, I do a Yelp review and I try and be pretty fair about it. I go, I go there a couple of times, make sure I, I got a good, you know, I'm a reviewer, uh, on the thing, supercharge your brand. Um, so I, I think this is brilliant. And I think, uh, I think you guys really got a cutting edge thing.

I've seen a few different versions of like gift card apps, but I've never seen things that are doing like you guys. You guys are like the Yelp of gift card apps. We do have a nice value proposition. And another cool feature we have is, and I love that you support local businesses with your reviews. I mean, people are very powerful. And most of the times people do want to help the local businesses how to get better.

We also, you know, as you search and discover, we also allow local businesses to instantly set up a discount on a specific gift card. So if a business is promoting discounted gift cards, we allow users as they search and discover local businesses. If you are having a gift card, you don't have to pay us for promotion. Just set up a discount and your business will show up first on search results on our platform. Oh, that's going to be great for the ladies. They're always looking for discounts. Oh, my God. My mom's funny. She's like, we've got gotta go to the store and do

this thing i'm like i'm like why she goes they're having a discount on shampoo and you're like didn't you don't you have shampoo yeah i have shampoo but they're doing the discount so you gotta get it now and you're like really yes um but that's you know that's how people work i mean i used to sit in cruise groupon back in the day and and every now and then i get into it and i'm just and i'll see something and i'll be like i never buy that but it was a good deal yeah i'll go ahead and i'll go and nail that to the wall and of course when it comes to the burgers and fries of course um so this is brilliant if you're a business out there and you're trying to expand your wares with your income and your customer base for a restaurant,

especially if you're a small business in your area, of course, it can't hurt to have that locality. There's the map on there. You know, my biggest thing is wherever I'm at, I'm like, where's food within, you know, a mile of here? So that helps bring a lot of people in. And then you've, you know, you've got the business side of it where people can, uh, sell their, sell their, um, so their gift cards. And then you've got the givers receivers. I love the reshare or the re gift sort of aspect of it where you can be like, well, I'm not really an Italian food lover. And do they if I regifted it?

Does it tell the original person to give it to me that I regifted it? It keeps giving. I mean, we can track, the business can track where the gift is at any time. But can the person who, if a person gave me a gift card, will they know that I, well, that motherfucker regifted it? No, no, they won't know you regifted it. They won't know you regifted it, even though we have

uh we we have some thoughts around the gift giving uh to keep give uh keep the keep the gift uh pushing forward because you know that is um i don't know if you're familiar with the maori indigenous peoples in new zealand uh the maori indigenous people people of the Polynesian people of New Zealand, they call this element of the spirit, they call it HAU, H-A-U. And it literally means the spirit of give it where they talk about the spirit of generosity, kindness, love, and it's what compels the receiver to want to give back and reciprocate the feelings of joy. So there is another thing that they call it the Kula ring, that it goes back to another indigenous culture where people exchange, travel hundreds of miles on canoes from one island to another to exchange a necklace.

And if they give this a necklace, they will give you back a wristband. But if I'm correct, and don't quote me on that, I think the necklace, the people of the tribe, the chief of the tribe, let's say they will choose a bead, and each bead has a gift value on it. And they used to keep giving it, and then they would go from one tribe to another, stay there for a while, and then keep giving it. So the gift, it has something that everybody wanted to participate.

And be part of it. The gifts that keep on giving, I guess, if you will. Bravo. So we want to kind of uh focus on uh designing the way that it always finds ways to enhance that feelings of joy that we have and going back to talking about the business we also offer a free version of our platform because like i said local business we want to see the value. Yeah. This is the value. Because, you know, with everything that is out there right now, you have some food delivery companies.

They send you an order. They take 25%, 30% from your money. They're extremely painful for small local businesses where take that much, but give the local business, empower them where they want to stay with you and keep that relationship in a transparent and genuine way. Because it's not all about money. We all want to make money, but at the same time, we want to make a difference that it's really touching people's hearts and people's business at the same time. I think it's a really's a it's a really high-minded sort of thing that you're trying to do there and of course change the world and make people give more um i i've certainly i've been on the receiving end and gifting end of

you know sometimes i've gone to the starbucks line and you know and this happened to me a lot in vegas somebody would pay for the last two cars or something behind them and you'd pull up and they'd be like the person in front of you paid for yours and the person behind you and uh you'd be like okay well just here's 20 bucks you know let's uh what i forget what the term for it is but you know just pass it on down paid forward paid forward there you go and uh so if with businesses if I'm a restaurant, you've got like a probably reporting backend website where I can see, you kind of alluded to that earlier, where I can see all the usage, sales,

all that sort of good stuff. Yes, yes. Businesses have access to our payment processor backend as well as our gifted app backend where it will literally take three minutes to set up three three clicks to set up your gift cards I will take you 10-15 minutes to fill up the application and wait about 24 to 48 hours we have a an approval process that our businesses have to go through our payment partners

since we are in a very highly regulated industry we need to make sure that the receiver is the person who is signing up, the business is the legitimate businesses and the businesses have access to the backend where they can also

the free version I mentioned before, businesses can issue a link from the backend where they can attach $55 gift cards and send a promotion to their customers where customers can instantly download the gift card and go into the business. And there is a difference between a $5 gift card and a $5 coupon, you know, and customers know that. And usually with the testing we've done, people will come back to the business on an average about 45 to 60 days. And they usually spend that extra amount from 85 to 100% more on top of the gift card value and we've seen uh some of the business we

have like we got a very positive feedback overall and don't take me wrong at the beginning it's hard to kind of show the value proposition uh about the the product we have created and as you have seen you said like this is not your average way of delivering a gift card. So it was hard to explain to the business owners what we do. But the moment they will download the app and they will see what exactly and how it does it, they recognize the value because they know their customers. They know their needs. So we're hoping that people will open up their arms and welcome us in a positive and a kind way.

Like, you know, like we want to be welcome. I think it's awesome. I think it's awesome. So you guys are going to be at CS. You're going to have a booth there. Do you have your booth number so people can get that?

Yes. Our booth number is 52, nine, five, seven. A definition. We are exhibiting at the Eureka park, a sun's expo. this is the first time we

will be there we're excited um we have our anthropologists coming in our uh chido our payment expert that she's been in the payment industry for the last 25 years and she was she was part of the team that they pioneered the e-commerce payments back in 1995. Chido Collins, Dr. Alex Karkodis will be there, coming actually from the island of Cyprus. He's flying in. Oh, wow. And one of the cool things that we have on the team, Chris,

is that I've been working on this project for the last 26 months. And I tried to bring friends that they were from my circle of friends and knowledge and talent unconditionally for the last year to offer something in the team and to me to put the project together. So that's something that we kind of, this culture of unconditional giving is what we're trying to kind of preach and pass to the world. And you can see that from, you know, Gary Vee, Oprah, Will Smith, Warren Buffett, Lady Gaga. They've been talking about this love, this spirit of love. This spirit is not about becoming successful. It's not about all the media that we see what we see. It's all about touching somebody else's life how can

you make a difference in one person's life and feel fulfilled feel that joy of that gift of you know based on science right now we know that people give to charities people that as you get older you understand the power of giving and it it has been proven that it helps us be happier and also be healthier. So we want people to recognize those small acts of kindness. And the gift card industry is $116 billion industry in the States that is due to triple over the next four, five, six years, I believe. And it's no doubt that people want to give and they want you to experience that joy, but it happens to be in a form of a plastic gift, right? Or an electronic. So our mission is to enhance that feeling instantly, you know,

and some of the people we, pretty much everybody we talked to they had their own way of uh okay i'm gonna use it like that you know talking to people in the restaurant industry that they serve in the restaurant industry they work you know these people we work five six seven days they work in the restaurant industry and when you have a birthday like some of the people we interview they said i just don't have time to buy my little niece something. Now I can instantly share a gift from that place. We also had several teachers that we interviewed from high schools that on a teacher's appreciation day, what do you do? You get several gift cards from big corporate companies and it's always the same. Where now, all these kids can give something

to the teacher that is more personable. We also talk to non-profit organizations. We want to work with them and we want to be able to touch as we go and move forward. We want to be part of the movement that Jeff Bezos started. He donated $2 billion

to help the homeless community and school communities over the next, I think, what, 10 years? Yeah. So Facebook, everybody's trying to make a social impact. So how can we, the people, be able to donate five bucks,

the ones we are able to donate five bucks, and at the same time, instantly make a difference into our homeless community, into our local communities. So how can we the people be part of that bigger picture and vision of we want to help. We want to be part of the social influences that are trying to make a difference. So on a later version of Gifted App. That is awesome, dude.

That is freaking awesome. So this is pretty cool. You can go to gift3rapp.com. That's gift3rapp.com. And if you're a business, you can download it. I think this is a brilliant idea. Oh, one other thing I want to mention. You mentioned about how, you know, when some people

get a gift card, they get a plastic card. That thing gets lost. Like half the time I'm going to a restaurant and I'm like, has anybody seen the restaurant card? Like, yeah, I know it was here somewhere and you know, it's under the seat of my car or something, you know? And then finally I'll just be like, oh, screw it. I'll just go pay full price.

Um, and, uh uh and then of course you know it shows up when you don't want it and then when you do want it's gone so the nice thing about this is it's contained on your phone and uh i imagine you know it you know a business doesn't have to pay to make plastic cards for the thing with the little scratch off thing in the back i always looked at those i'm like how much do people pay for this? Um, but, uh, so it's, it makes it harder for them to lose the cards, the values there. They can always have it. They can re gift it, everything else. And of course, if you're a giver receiver, one of the first things I'm going to do now that I have the app is I'm going to go invite all the local people to join it so that I can have them at the ready. If I want to give a

gift, cause I've told so many people, there's a few places that I moved. I recently came up to Utah to write a book. And so I got a chance to try some new restaurants. And so I was like, hey, have you tried that Cubby's burger? There's a Cubby's burger. It's really good. People are like, oh, no, I haven't tried it. And I'm like, you really should.

And they're like, okay. And then they'll call me later and be like, what was that? And it's like, you know, here's $ bucks or 10 bucks or 20 bucks five bucks just go treat yourself have a good time and then you know maybe if they like it they'll they'll send me one back because god knows i need more burgers um so you guys are going to be at ces if you guys are doing at ces go into the sands the eureka parks down there. I think it's on like the second level down at the main floor. And there's a lot of great companies that are down there, a lot of innovative stuff, cutting-edge technology that they're basically going to be the future disruptors.

I mean, I think the future Amazons and Microsofts are all down there in Eureka Park at one point in time. And so you can visit with you guys, check out the app and all that good stuff, and download it. And you can get a course on iPhone, the iOS system for the App Store, and the Google App Store, and you can put it on your phone as well. And invite your friends to it. So, you know, sharing, caring is good, right? Sharing, caring, and spreading some love.

Spreading some love and feeding some people, damn it. Anything more we need to know before we let you go? No, we are excited to be part of your show. Thank you for having us. We are excited to see you and meet you at

CES next week. We are hoping people will open their arms and download and give Terape a chance and see how we can all make a difference not only to us, but also to our local communities and

local businesses. We are all about the spirit of giving and we are ready to make a difference. That'll be awesome. And if you guys watch the hashtags we'll be putting out across the show, usually pound CES, CES 2020 will be the other hashtag. And I think CES show.

There's a few of them that we use though. I think there's also a CES show 20. It's a bit of one of everyone's are being popular. So you'll see us outputting the show. This of course will be on the podcast. And then at the booth, we'll be doing a booth interview. So you get to see the Gifter app booth, see all the guys in it. We'll be doing some interviews,

see what you guys are doing there on the floor and all that good stuff. So if you're at the show, be sure to go check them out at Eureka Park. If you're not, just search pound CES. You can monitor what's going on. You can see the hashtags combined. Of course, we'll be tagging their Twitter. What's your guys' Twitter account, by the way? It's at gifterup. Gifter up.

Okay, at gifterup. Yes. All right, sounds good. Well, thanks for being on the show with me. It's been wonderful to have you. We should have you on later to talk about our, we have the Startup Unicorn podcast. We should talk about, you know, starting up businesses and starting up uh uh you know your restaurants and everything else and the experience you go through and lessons and stuff so i'd love to have you back again thanks my audience for

tuning in we certainly appreciate having you guys be sure to uh go to the cvpn and uh gift wrap it to your friends so that they sign up and subscribe to all the podcasts out there. And like I say, be sure to tune in. I think on the six is when we start going crazy with all the interviews that we're going to be doing six. I think it's the sixth or the 10th that the show is, and it's going to be wild. All the different stuff we'll be doing. So thanks for tuning in.

We'll see you at CS and we'll see you next time.