John Corcoran 12:05
And then you have your first eye other than the newspaper, your first entrepreneurial startup. You’re a co-founder of Spotahome, which sounds like an Airbnb type of platform. You were there for about a year. What was that experience?
Shaheen Samavati 12:21
Yeah, that was a crazy experience. I did that. Like I had this. So at the time, I was freelancing, I was saying I was writing for The Wall Street Journal doing some other freelance gigs. And then I had some friends who were starting this company and just happened to be at the right place at the right time. Again, we’re, or maybe the wrong place, because but basically, they wanted to start, they were mostly Spanish speakers and wanted to start a business that was had international scope. And so I got involved to like, help them with doing all the messaging in English in the beginning. And so yeah, I was part of the founding team. And it was like a whirlwind experience, because ended up being one of the like, I mean, I was only there the first year. So when I joined, they had like no funding, and we’re like, okay, everyone’s working for free. And someday we’re gonna pay you and we get venture capital investment. And I’m actually at the time, I was like, didn’t know if that was ever going to happen. But in the end, it ended up becoming one of the best funded startups in Spain and, like, grew to 300 employees. And it was like a crazy startup story. Yeah. And actually, I, my now husband is one of the cofounders, he stayed at the company, I decided to leave after a year, and start my own project. So but I just like, learned so much during that time, and being part of something that was growing so fast. And like I learned so much about creating processes from the beginning. And I just like this sense of urgency to grow quickly, was something that Yeah, I had never, it was a crash course, basically, and how to start a business that I later applied to my own my own venture, which is not quite as ambitious.
John Corcoran 14:10
Well, it sounds actually super similar, right. But what you do with VeraContent in the sense is, you know, we do a Spotahome, he was creating content, Head of Marketing, designed to build, you know, awareness for the for the platform. And now you kind of spun that out and you do that for for clients as well.
Shaheen Samavati 14:30
Exactly. I did, like build the content operations for that startup. Also, we did do things. We started out in English, but then we did expand into more languages. So I really like understood, like, what goes into that and the complexity that there isn’t like building this kind of a team. And now basically what I do is do that for other companies. Yeah, I would say the type of company that I’m running now is a more traditional agency model with a more I mean, we’re self funded where You know, bootstrapping, essentially. And that was actually something I learned from my experience Spotahome that this like high growth, like, venture capital thing just wasn’t like my
John Corcoran 15:12
bag. Yeah. What didn’t you like about?
Shaheen Samavati 15:17
Um, I say that like, first of all, that so much of it is that there’s so many other voices involved that like you don’t have as much control over the project. Like I like having a smaller project where I make the decisions. And it’s, yeah, that it’s better to have more creative control, because it’s just, there’s so many, once you once you get investors involved, first of all, having so many co founders that we have in this company, we didn’t when we started out, we were six. And now it’s too many people to be making decisions. So actually, two of us left, so they ended up being four, and which I think was better. But then. And then once Yeah, once investors are involved, you’re really like working for someone else again. So I really wanted to just own my own thing.
John Corcoran 16:04
Yeah, yeah. Now, one of the challenges that came with that different operation, more traditional agency model is just managing a lot of people, you’ve got over 200, freelancers, and full timers. Now. That’s just a lot to manage, and in different languages, which is incredible that, you know, I assume you don’t speak all the different languages that you do work on now. So let’s, let’s start with that piece. How do you oversee? How do you manage to oversee work in different languages? That you don’t, you know, speak yourself?
Shaheen Samavati 16:37
Yeah, that’s the secret. Yeah, basically, I mean, we work in in over 20 languages, we don’t work in every language in the world, because it’s not possible to do the level of work that we like to do the quality that we promise in every single language. So we limit like what what languages we work in, we are focused on European markets. And we also do some major world languages outside of that, that are kind of like the most commonly needed. But yeah, I mean, it’s like a chicken and egg thing in terms of like building the team, like you have to find, you have to build this team that you can trust to consistently put out great work in that language. And it takes at the beginning, and there’s some trial and error there. So you have to like build up a track record in that language before you can consistently be great in that language. So it’s obviously taking us time to get there. And yeah, I think, as you probably know, it’s like complex enough to like put out consistently good language, good, good content in just one language. So when you’re working across multiple languages, it just like compounds, the complexity of the operation. And that’s why people hire us.
John Corcoran 17:46
Right, right. I imagine. So are you like putting out content in 20 different languages? Or no? Is that impossible? Yeah,
Shaheen Samavati 17:55
no, yeah, we are in Miami for yourself personally for ourselves. No, no. That’s the funny. That’s the irony. We we know how much work it is. And then we don’t invest in in ourselves. We are a small company, and we’re targeting businesses that do that are operated English primarily. So I mean, we generally would make sense. Yeah, we’re generally targeting companies based in, in the US in the UK who want to expand into other language markets. Yeah, so we do all our own marketing in English. Yeah, um, but yeah, but that’s actually I do say, you should only do marketing and in as many languages as you can do equally well as the first one like, so. If you’re not willing to put the same amount of resources into the other language, then you probably shouldn’t go there. And
John Corcoran 18:45
one of the challenges you said is some of the clients come to you and they want to their, their businesses in English. And they want to go to Spanish, German, Japanese, Chinese all at once.
Shaheen Samavati 18:56
Right? Well, like so our clients tend to be like, medium to large companies that have a pretty clear idea of where they want to expand into, but sometimes sometimes they get it right, and sometimes not. I mean, obviously, when they come does we advise them on what, what we think is the best approach. And if it’s crazy, we probably wouldn’t do it. But um, but yeah, we have seen people who, who want to like jump the gun on doing marketing in a market before they have their operations in place to really be able to like serve that market well, because if you are putting it up, putting out marketing content, you have to like stand, you have to be able to deliver on what you’re advertising in that market. And I was telling you before, I’ve actually seen people who will do ads in a language that they don’t even have a landing page for. And it’s like, those people are gonna get to your landing page in English. You might do the ad in German, they see your landing page in English and they’re just going to drop off. Yeah. You’re not going to be converting those people.
John Corcoran 19:52
Yeah. So you really have to put those pieces in place first before you can move into the marketing pieces also. Yeah, exactly.
Shaheen Samavati 19:59
All their business operations behind it the sales team, the customer service, and the product itself. The packaging, I don’t know, depends on what your business is right?
John Corcoran 20:08
Now, the content creation can can take time to build. And how do you like qualify your clients are? How do you ensure you’re working with clients that aren’t going to turn around like a month later and be like, or six, even three months later and be like, Oh, we put on all this effort? We haven’t any clients from yet. How do you? How do you ensure that they see that this is going to take some while but it’s going to pay off in the long run?
Shaheen Samavati 20:35
Yeah, we’ve definitely become much more picky about who, who we work with over the years. I mean, we’ve been in business six years now. And like I said, now we’re really focused on on clients who, who, I guess that don’t need to be so much sold on? Unclear on the idea of content marketing, like they’re already doing content marketing, and they know that it works. And they just need help executing that in additional markets. So yeah, so generally, if it’s working in one market, and we’re not able to make it work in another market, that’s a problem. Because I mean, it should be like proven that it’s going to work and they should have data from, from, you know, the other market in terms of how long it took that to have results. And our aim should be to have similar results in the new market. So of course, there are some cultural, like, there have been times when actually the reaction to a product and a new market is is different, because of cultural
John Corcoran 21:32
told me about that. Can you think of an example or that’s happened?
Shaheen Samavati 21:36
I just I don’t know if the client will like me talking about it. Keep it anonymous.
John Corcoran 21:40
Don’t mention any names or anything like that. You can make a generic? Yeah, no.
Shaheen Samavati 21:45
Well, it was a, it was just a brand that had a product that we were promoting on social media, that in some markets or just, it was like something for holding coffee in your car. And people thought that it was like a silly product. You were making fun of. Yeah. But I think like, in obviously, in the US, it’s very useful. Yeah. Like to drink coffee in there.
John Corcoran 22:09
Right. Right. I guess, to help people, you know, drive to work, you know, whether we use public transit or something along those lines. Yeah.
Shaheen Samavati 22:19
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I think like, yeah, obviously, the messaging around that in one market versus another might be very different. Right? It’s really what, what? Or maybe you decide not to launch a product at all? Because it’s not relevant there.
John Corcoran 22:33
Yeah. Now, how do you manage so many people? You got over 200? Freelancers, a dozen full timers. So that’s, that’s a much larger group of freelancers. I’m curious to know, like how you manage all those different people, but then also, like, from a cultural perspective, how do you avoid, they’re becoming like, a second class citizen type of feeling for the freelancers? How do you keep, you know, kind of keep them in the fold and, and make it feel like one company? Because a lot, a lot of companies out there struggle with the idea of, of doing anyone who’s not full time? You know, that’s a struggle for them that that that whole concept of it. So how do you how have you manage those things?
Shaheen Samavati 23:17
Yeah, I think a lot of clients work with us because of the complexity of dealing with freelance teams and wanting someone else to deal with that. So yeah, that’s kind of like what we’re experts at. And so as a member of EO I was I did the Entrepreneurs Organization Accelerator program, and I’ve been working on like implementing scaling up best practices over the years, it was actually something I was trying to do on my own even before the Accelerator,
John Corcoran 23:42
but I went through it as well, amazing program. It is yeah.
Shaheen Samavati 23:45
And so the whole thing about, I mean, I really believe in in establishing, like your company values and your purpose and really like transmitting that to the team. And that’s something that we’ve, I mean, I think we’ve always had just very strong values, even before we made an official statement about it. But and then that’s something that also this like sense of community, like it’s something that we’ve really been working on since the beginning. And it’s, I guess, yeah, I was telling, we’re telling you about this Content Mix community that we built. And it’s actually a community that I started even before starting the company, because I just wanted to connect with other writers.
John Corcoran 24:23
So it started as a Facebook group that you created, because you just didn’t find that there was a place for content creators, writers to connect.
Shaheen Samavati 24:33
Yeah, actually, I originally started the group because I was freelancing. And sometimes I would just come across jobs that I didn’t that weren’t a fit for me, and maybe someone else could benefit from so I just, it was just this place to like, share opportunities with other freelance writers, and then it ended up Yeah, I mean, I think it just the community grew on its own. And then when I started the company, we ended up using that group to like, recruit a lot of our writers and I and then We, as a company, I decided to like, Okay, we should really build, put more resources into building this community create content just for them. And yeah, so that’s how like The Content Mix was born.
John Corcoran 25:11
So is it? Is it something that is primarily a feeder tool to find freelancers that you hire? Or is it like its own separate business that has a profit motive or that you sell products and services through?
Shaheen Samavati 25:27
No, we have thought about that. Like, maybe we could offer training courses or something to this other audience, because we have this very, like engaged audience of writers, a lot of them who really like, that we don’t work with directly, right. Like, I mean, out of everyone in that group, maybe 2% of them we’ve actually hired or, I don’t know, maybe more, but actually do some number crunching on that. But anyway, a, ya know, it’s really just something that I could add a personal interest that has become this recruiting tool for us. And, yeah, it’s, it’s nothing more than that at the moment.
John Corcoran 26:04
Got it, got it. But it’s worth putting the effort into really building it out adding more resources to it because of the value that it brings just in terms of like a funnel to
Shaheen Samavati 26:12
hire people. Yeah, absolutely. I
John Corcoran 26:14
mean, I think that’s one of the bigger challenges for many agencies, right is getting talent.
Shaheen Samavati 26:19
Right? Like, I think, like I said, like, at the core of what we do really is managing talent. So constantly having access to really great writers, is like, the bread and butter of what makes our business go right. Like,
John Corcoran 26:32
I mean, that’s such a fascinating, it’s such a common question amongst different agencies, you know, where do you find good people? Where do you find good people to hire? And you did it like, almost backwards, like you built the community first before the company even existed? And that is a source for good talent.
Shaheen Samavati 26:50
Yeah. And we’re like, constantly getting people reaching out to us, like wanting to work with us. And it’s, and I think it goes to show like, yeah, we’ve done a good job in terms of like, building. I don’t know, building buzz around what we’re doing. People are excited about working for us, even though we are like a pretty small company. I mean, we’re kind of we’re not Facebook or anything. Right, right. But yeah, people see us as like, like a kind of, I don’t know, cool, like, place where people are really involved, because they can see, and the interaction that we’re having on our groups.
John Corcoran 27:24
Yeah. What about I want to ask you about, I often say that the thing that you do best eventually becomes your bottleneck. What I mean by that is that, you know, like, for me personally, like, I’ve always been a writer. And eventually you get to the point where it outgrows you, and like in order for your company grow, you can’t just do that, you know, in like, for you, like your company is creating content. For others. I imagine that you do a lot of that for yourself. But then eventually you kind of fit this, you realize, like, in order to grow beyond this, we have to do other things as well. How have you approached that? Or have you just said that, you know, what, we’re just going to keep on doing what we’re good at, this is what we do best? And we’re going to double down on that, or do you branch out and start doing other things for yourself, if that makes sense?
Shaheen Samavati 28:13
Yeah, I Yeah, our own marketing strategy has been completely about like reputation building, and not so much about, like direct sales, I guess, like, that’s something that, like, our core competency really is like content creation, like, you know, showing that, that we’re experts like that. We know what we’re talking about, like creating content around that. But not, but in terms of like, I don’t want to say that we’re bad at it. But it’s true that, yeah, and in terms of like, outreach or like, and also just like converting things into sales. So that’s just not like our strong point. Like, we just want to help people. Be these altruistic and those like the same like in the community. I was, I was saying, like, I created it, just because it was there was a need for it. And I, you know, and it was something that could help but not like, with a fine, like, so much of a financial motive. Of course, it benefits the business, but I’ve never, I mean, luckily, clients pay for our service. So we’ve got that.
John Corcoran 29:17
Yeah, I mean, it’s working. Right. So yeah, yeah. But I also love that you’re gonna like despite Yeah, you’re kind of saying, we know who we are. And we are authentic to who we are. And we’re gonna keep on being who we are, in a way, right?
Shaheen Samavati 29:31
Yeah. Yeah,
John Corcoran 29:32
that’s true. We’re running short on time. But I do want to ask you about because I asked, I love asking this question to an agency owners March of 2020. Or maybe in your case, it might have been February 2020. But what what was that like for you? When you started to see this pandemic unfolding? What were you thinking, you know, you’ve had your company at this point for about, I think four years at that point three or four years. Were you thinking oh my god, I’m gonna lose everything I built. But what was that like?
Shaheen Samavati 30:01
I’m extremely optimistic person. So I was like everything will be fine. This whole pandemic, this will be over like, quickly, three ways. The same way. It’s no big deal. And then yeah, it was a little scary at the beginning because a lot of a lot of clients were just like putting a pause on their marketing budgets. But then yeah, luckily for us, I mean it. It turned out that a lot of like, a lot of marketers weren’t able to do other types of marketing and decided to like double down on content. So in the end, we had a really good year in 2020. So it worked. It worked out well. And that since I think anyone in like digital marketing space a probably saw some benefits from that. Yeah, and yeah, things have kind of normalized since then. So yeah,
John Corcoran 30:47
yeah, definitely. That’s interesting. All right, I want to wrap things up with the last question that I was asked, which is a big fan of gratitude, especially expressing gratitude to those who helped you along the way. And when I asked that, you know, what I’m really getting at is mentors and peers and contemporaries. A lot of us like to thank our family, we’d like to thank our team members, and that’s totally fine. I think that’s wonderful. But I love to hear what peers, contemporaries mentors, you know, you would want to shout from the rooftops and just thank them for what they’ve done for you.
Shaheen Samavati 31:23
Yeah, I definitely have a lot of them. But I will be, I won’t go. I won’t get the whole list. But I’m definitely the late great John John Thompson. He was the founder of the intern program at the newspaper that I first got my foot in the door called the Dayton Daily News. And he was kind of the visionary behind their intern program and helped a lot of people. And then definitely, I give a shout out to my friend, Natasha Mason, who’s the founder of International Women in Business. It is a great community, really supportive, and she’s a great business, mentor. And then also, well, of course, you know, Entrepreneurs Organization, everyone behind the Accelerator program. That has been a huge benefit to me.
John Corcoran 32:04
That’s great. Shaheen, where can people go to learn more about you, connect with you, and learn more about VeraContent?
Shaheen Samavati 32:11
Yeah, so veracontent.com is our company website. Then slash mix is The Content Mix community, and where you can find links to all of our, all of our social media stuff there. So veracontent.com/mix.
John Corcoran 32:22
Excellent. Shaheen, thanks so much.
Shaheen Samavati 32:25
Okay, thank you. It’s great being on the show.
Outro 32:27
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution podcast.