Building the 1st GenZ Social media Agency | Erifili Gounari | Ep 22

Meet Erifili Gounari, the dynamic 24-year-old CEO of Z Link, the pioneering digital marketing agency by and for Gen Z. Z Link has an impressive portfolio of clients, including esteemed names like Deloitte, IKEA, and Everlane, as well as innovative entities such as SafetyWing and Teleport, reflecting the agency's broad appeal across a variety of industries. Erifili's approach transcends traditional marketing paradigms, offering insights into the heart of Gen Z's digital landscape. As a founder, writer, and travel photographer, her holistic methodology isn't just innovative; it's reshaping how brands like United Nations Peacekeeping and Craft Scotland engage with an entire generation. In our conversation, we explore the nuances of marketing to Gen Z, the challenges of bootstrapping a startup, and how to scale a business without compromising its core values. Under Erifili's leadership, Z Link built a vibrant Clubhouse community of 18,000 members, focusing on Gen Z interests, and has utilized platforms to foster genuine relationships that have converted into business assets. We delve into the significance of interdisciplinary thought and the power of embracing our multifaceted selves to enrich both our personal and professional lives. Erifili also shares her insights on "The Draft," a professional ecosystem that enables individuals and businesses to showcase their full potential beyond traditional resumes, fostering authentic connections and opportunities. Closing with a powerful call to action, Erifili shares practical advice on content creation, social media strategies, and cultivating a distinctive personal brand. Her message is clear: Start now, take decisive steps, and cherish the journey. Join us as Erifili Gounari offers actionable insights that illuminate the path to success in the digital age, with "The Draft" paving the way for a more connected and authentic professional world.

Personable is a podcast dedicated to helping listeners become the best they can be by learning from the world’s best in their respective fields. This mission is inspired by my mother, Louise, who encouraged me to become the best version of myself before she passed away from cancer in 2023.

Connect with Harvey:
Harvey's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harveybracken-smith/ 
Harvey's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harveybsmith/
Personable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harveybsmithpodcast_/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7JOTYDER6m2FDrlhop4api

My dad's startup: https://www.thedraft.io/
Donate to the charity we have founded in memory of my mum: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/LouLouRacefoiundation?utm_term=PvByaxmdn

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome to episode 22 of PersonaVol. This is the podcast we hear from the world's best, enabling you to become the best that you can be. Today, I'm honored to be joined by Erie Filly, our goonery. Erie Filly is the founder and CEO at the Z-Link. She was featured on Forbes 30 under 30 in the media and marketing and the youngest categories, which is obviously very impressive. She was the president at the Imperial Innovation Entrepreneurship Club. At only 24 years old. She describes herself on her website as an entrepreneur, writer and photographer. She has built a Gen Z community with over 18,000 members and also hosts a podcast herself called the Expresso Epilogues, with her best friend talking about books over coffee. So thank you very much. I'm very excited for our conversation. I wanted to get started by asking you for you to describe yourself. I always like asking guests how they would describe themselves after reading their usually very lengthy series.

Speaker 2: 0:59

Yeah, that's a good question. I struggle with it because I feel like the things I do are very disconnected from each other, which is why I've just settled on founder writer, travel photographer. These are the three main things I do. So my entrepreneurial side is where I do Gen Z marketing, Gen Z research and entrepreneurship. And then I have a big side that deals with literature, writing, books and everything around that, and then just my main passion that I deal with is travel photography.

Speaker 1: 1:30

I'm very curious, like a big thing, of what I was doing, my research and to use this big emphasis on Gen Z new generation coming forward. Why do you think businesses care so much about Gen Z and why do you have a particular interest in Gen Z and what they're looking at and what they're doing and their careers going forward?

Speaker 2: 1:49

So my interest started because obviously this is our generation, so it comes very naturally. And when I started working in social media marketing, it was around the time where a lot of research was emerging around how to connect with our generation because, being the first generation of digital natives, people just found that more challenging and it seemed like there were a lot of things to figure out around our generation-specific behaviors and preferences that are a result of the way we've grown up, you know, so digitally native. So I was very intrigued by all the research emerging on this area and on how this differentiates our generation from other generations. And, of course, each generation has its own different characteristics. None of them is a monolith, but it's very interesting to just see how brands can connect with our generation and how even employers can work with Gen Z in a way that works best for both parties, based on all the facts that, all the things that make Gen Z unique. So I'm just very interested in uncovering more of that research and understanding those behaviors and patterns.

Speaker 1: 2:56

Did you always have the sort of idea to found a business in mind, or did this sort of just stem from an interest and that sort of led to you building a business?

Speaker 2: 3:05

Yeah, no not at all. Not at all. I was studying art history in uni and I was very vaguely interested in entrepreneurship, but more like how other people build businesses, and then I would very explicitly be like not me, though.

Speaker 2: 3:19

Like this is not doesn't sound like my kind of thing, but I loved reading about entrepreneurship in general and I guess it was a sign I should have known, but I hadn't thought that this could be a viable path for me. But then when I got the idea for the Z-Link and I saw that there was demand and I was able to kind of bootstrap it and get it off the ground with very minimal risk because it's such an easy business model to launch and experiment with, I saw that I really enjoyed building something of my own and just creating something from the ground up. And I was lucky enough that it was in an area where at that time there was a lot of instant demand, so it was easier to grow and build a team from zero with no resources or anything at the start. So I guess I just found out I enjoyed it by doing it and seeing how it went.

Speaker 1: 4:10

Could you describe a bit more about what your business model is and how you managed to build this with, as you say, no resources?

Speaker 2: 4:17

Yeah, of course. So basically what we do is we're the first GenZ-led social media agency that connects brands with GenZ, so we're a fully GenZ team. We're around 25 people around the world right now and we help brands that want to connect with our generation, both through social media marketing content and strategy and through market research. So part of our business is focused on producing original research that understands and helps the world understand how GenZ is special, is unique, how it differs from other generations, and the main thing we offer is the social media marketing part. So the business model itself is very much like any marketing agency, which is a good business model to have because it's very easy to bootstrap. But you don't really need investment to start, like, the moment you get business, you have a margin, so you can start scaling slowly and gradually.

Speaker 1: 5:11

How did you go about? So you have this idea and you have these GenZ-focused employees, but I think, even just reading through some of your own statistics and some others, that I've seen as some ridiculously high number maybe it's even over 50%, I want to say of GenZ want to be entrepreneurs.

Speaker 2: 5:29

Yeah, it's like 5 to 6, something like that.

Speaker 1: 5:31

Yeah, so for you to go and actually go about and build this business. There's a lot of people that have an idea to do something like this, but you've been actually successful in doing it. So what do you think differentiated you, and was it your level of expertise? Was it your determination? Was it your natural intelligence? How did you actually go about making this a success?

Speaker 2: 5:50

Imagine if I was like it's my natural intelligence.

Speaker 2: 5:53

No, not that that's what I want to say. No, it's, and it wasn't my expertise either, because I built my expertise a lot more after actually starting my business. No one feels like an expert when they start. You just end up becoming quote unquote an expert when you're doing things in the field. But you have to start in order to get to that.

Speaker 2: 6:14

So for me, what helped for sure and I know that's what made all the difference is that I it's a mix of two things. One is that I love getting things done. I like I hate overthinking things and delaying them, so I'm naturally inclined towards action. I think the call is like having a bias for action in entrepreneurship, and this is the thing that a lot of people I think lack, where if they start kind of training themselves for it, it would make the biggest difference, like literally just doing things, like get things done, having an idea, exploring it the same day. And then the second thing is being disciplined. So I am very like self driven and disciplined, so it was easy to stick with something once I decided I wanted to start it. Yeah, I'd say just a mix of these two things, but just doing things part is the most important thing, for sure.

Speaker 1: 7:09

Did you ever think of perhaps a more safe route? I mean, I'm a freshman in college and I'm looking at my future career paths perhaps going to finance or trying to find my own business and I think there's a big fear element with entrepreneurship, especially those that have never tried it, in that there's a big what if factor or let's put this off to tomorrow. But being so young, I mean I was very impressed when I heard about you because you're so young and already doing doing this business and doing it well. But did you ever think that perhaps finance or working at a company and gaining experience or going to business school was perhaps a path to pursue first? Or were you always like I've got this idea, I'm just going to go for it?

Speaker 2: 7:48

I did go to business school for my masters here in London and it didn't help much. So I had already started my business in my third year of university and then did my fourth year, then business school, just because I was still like this could go well. But and it was already, you know, it was already going well but I hadn't even considered like dropping the masters or business school path to do just entrepreneurship. So for a long time I wasn't doing the z-link as my main and only thing I so I think I love like, okay, let me get. Let me get this straight. So one of the biggest things that I love like exploring and helping people with is that area of how Gen Z entrepreneurship can become more accessible and less risky and how we can make that education more accessible and easier for people to understand and all those traditional paths.

Speaker 2: 8:50

So for me the way this worked was that first I had my university and I was still in uni, so going the entrepreneurship route didn't seem like a risk.

Speaker 2: 9:00

I was just doing something on the side to see if it would work.

Speaker 2: 9:02

Then I got a full-time job in Silicon Valley that was paying really well and got to invest all of that into my business and everything else. So that was very much like sustaining me and feeling like it was mitigating the risk of a startup failing. So having a job and having the z-link as my side gig for a while just made it a lot easier for me to feel like it's not life or death, like whatever happens is fine because I you know it's my livelihood does not depend on it. So doing something like that, I think, can help a lot, and a lot of people start with just a side gig to keep that level of security alongside them and then, once it gets off the ground, like you know, quit everything else and focus their full efforts on that. So out of the almost four years of running the z-link, I've only been doing it full time with nothing else for a year now, like when I left my previous job. So yeah, it's just a mix of things.

Speaker 1: 9:59

Yeah, I think that's a big presumption. I mean, even in the bias of my own question, that entrepreneurs are people that you know they drop out of school and you know they drop everything and they have a high attitude for like risk. And you know, even in your own answer you'd already you know, you've been to business school and you had everything on the side. I think I actually saw a. I saw a sort of like a research paper, I think, posted on LinkedIn by I think it was like Episode One Ventures or something like that, and it was looking at a. It was looking at a collection of unicorns like billionaires and it looked like a hundred of them and I think only maybe it was like 10% or something like that. Actually, I'm kind of just waffling. I'm getting confused about getting VC. 90% of them got VC investment and the other 10% just went for it themselves and I guess there's somewhat of a comparison of people just going for themselves and that's a really crappy example.

Speaker 2: 10:54

But now, for example, like for you as a full time student. Now do you see it as you know, either entrepreneurship or something else, or because I think people tend to see it like that. But you could also just you know, have your safety net on the side at the beginning and explore entrepreneurship.

Speaker 1: 11:09

I think for me, like right now, like while I'm in university, I want to pursue entrepreneurship as like a sort of side hustle, so sort of like. I see myself as a very like ambitious sort of person. I'm at GU, come try to, you know, do the best that I can for my own future, and sort of like. Finance is a big area of interest for me, perhaps trying to go into investment banking or try and join a hedge fund or something like that, because that's a key area of interest. But at the end of the day I don't know if it's now, in 10 years finding my own business is something that I really want to do, and I'm of the belief that if I don't work on something now, that I'll never work on it. Like there's not just going to be a turning point in my life in eight years. I'm like, oh you know, I've got enough experience, now I'm going to sell business.

Speaker 1: 11:51

I think the seed needs to be planted early on and so, like when I say I'm in entrepreneurship now, like even in this podcast, you could consider entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2: 11:59

It is yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:01

So for me, it's just about gaining experience, gaining exposure and learning as much as I can by exposing myself and by trying things at university, and also. I'm very fortunate to have a safety net in that I have both time. You know I'm going to be at university for three and a half years and I will set the resources like. It's not like I need to earn money at least the next three years to pay for my accommodation or anything like that.

Speaker 2: 12:23

Yeah, so yeah, that's for you. Yeah, you should be the host.

Speaker 1: 12:27

You should host the podcast.

Speaker 2: 12:29

I'll interview you.

Speaker 1: 12:31

Yeah, I think that I think that I would work a lot better. There was a when I started this podcast I mean still very small, but perhaps it could be something for the future and something that I picked up on particularly strong was this idea of community.

Speaker 1: 12:45

I had this, this thought that if you can read a lot of start-up books as well, but basically in the value of having your first thousand users or first hundred users or whatever, yeah if you can get 100 people or one person or whatever that is super passionate about what you're doing and super passionate about your project, then you'll get a sort of network effect that will tell one person or five people and it will grow and the value in that, versus having 100,000 people that will look at your product and never use it again.

Speaker 2: 13:11

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:12

And I'm very impressed that you've been able to build your own community of 18,000 people strong. I'd be curious to learn about, like what the initial idea was for that, how you built it, how the network effect works, or if it was sort of advertising, just sort of the whole story, and what you're trying to achieve by building a community.

Speaker 2: 13:31

Of course, that's one that I almost never like. It almost never comes up. It's interesting, though. So the way this works is you were maybe too I don't know if you were too young to remember, but in like 2020 or like early 2021, I don't know how involved you were in the like just Twitter tech start-up space, but it was when Clubhouse was just a thing, and do you remember that? Where you own it? They never let me in.

Speaker 1: 14:02

They never let me in.

Speaker 2: 14:03

Yeah, really.

Speaker 1: 14:04

Yeah, they never let me in. They suck like that.

Speaker 2: 14:08

Yeah, but so Clubhouse was a thing then, and I guess so you do know the kind of hype that it was surrounded by and I'm typical early adopter in every way and so I was on Clubhouse, you know, day one just trying to figure out if there's any opportunity or anything interesting to do there, and there was. You know, there was a lot of excitement in this entrepreneurial community that is very largely Gen Z, specifically on Twitter, about Clubhouse. So what I did was I got together a few people like maybe 10 people that were also Gen Z entrepreneurs or designers or just you know, in some way connected to this whole landscape, and we started hosting these Gen Z rooms to basically facilitate discussions among our generation, and they ended up getting really, really popular because there was no Gen Z space on the app. It was just like you know, there was, there were tons of random things, but during its peak there was no other Gen Z space specifically and it seemed like people just wanted this opportunity to connect with others that had similar ambitions and similar interests.

Speaker 2: 15:14

So I started this and we called it the Gen Z Club, and you know very easy and it ended up growing from zero to 18,000 in like maybe less than six months, very organically, because the nature of the app was very much about like network effects.

Speaker 2: 15:32

It was very easy, for it was literally people having conversations and inviting their friends to join them, so it was very word of mouth based and we also just promoted it a little bit on Twitter. But the fact that people wanted more people they know to join in on the same conversations and we had like a set time every week discussing things made it grow really fast and eventually we started collaborating with brands and organizations to host conversations, among them and Gen Z. So one thing we did when it was like peaking was collaborating with the United Nations peacekeeping team. That reached out to us and we're like we want a space to just like talk to Gen Z about what our peacekeeping team does and hear what questions they have and just have a chill discussion, and we were facilitating that space. So we did that and then worked with a couple of other brands like Everlane on, you know, gen Z and fashion conversations, things like that. So there was small brands.

Speaker 1: 16:30

You focused on small businesses.

Speaker 2: 16:33

Yeah, literally unknown businesses.

Speaker 2: 16:36

Yeah, yeah, which was really cool they yeah, it was just a matter of the fact that so many people were actively exploring Clubhouse and the opportunities with it that you know, people working for these brands were part of these rooms having conversations, so we didn't have to reach out.

Speaker 2: 16:52

They were, you know, everyone in there were people doing cool things, so it was easy to to access interesting opportunities. So that's how it grew and then Clubhouse kind of started dying down. We also stopped doing a lot there, but I moved the community, or as much of it as I could, into. We turned it into a market research network to facilitate the market research aspect of the Z-link, so anyone that was interested could sign up for our network of paid opportunities where they could make their voice heard as part of our generation on tons of different topics, for brands, for research, for all kinds of things. So that's what happened to it and now it's our just global network that we use for surveys and research and stuff like that. But yeah, it was. It was a great experience and just learning to run a community and see what you can do with it.

Speaker 1: 17:44

Do you think that's something that sort of creators or influencers should be aiming to do as well? Do you think they should all be trying to generate their own communities, or do you think it just depends on who the creator or influencer is?

Speaker 2: 17:57

I'd say I'm much more inclined towards the former, because I can't see why, as a creator, you wouldn't want to have a loyal and engaged community. The benefits are just endless. And if you're creating content, it's you're probably doing it because you want to attract like-minded people, you want to position yourself as a thought leader in some area or something like that, or just further engage with your passions, and creating a community out of your audience, instead of just having it be a very one sided conversation, like a one way thing, can just give you so much more of all these benefits of being active on social media. So for me, whether I'm working with brands or creators, we always try to take a very community driven approach to organic social media, because I think, like why not?

Speaker 1: 18:43

I think there's been a, particularly if you look to platforms that YouTube. 10 years ago there was a very low barrier to entry, very low editing skills, very little money put into things, and now you've got creators like MrBeast who are pumping millions and millions into their videos. They've got enormous teams and they're reaching hundreds of millions of views. What's your view on the sort of future landscape of social media? Do you think that there's always going to be an opportunity for the sort of everyday person or for anyone just to go on and sort of gain a following and eventually build a business out of it? Or do you think over time, that there'll be sort of 25, 30 creators, one creator that's sort of driving up all of the views, all of the money, you know, all of the brand connections?

Speaker 2: 19:30

That's a very interesting question. I think I'd love to hope that there will continue to be space for any creator and keep social media with a low barrier for entry, because, while social media has so many toxic aspects, I think that one of our greatest assets, for our generation especially, is social media in terms of facilitating connection and community and opportunity, and that wouldn't be possible if the barrier for entry wasn't so accessible to everyone. So, you know, personal branding or creating content or just being active on social media right now is a huge asset for our careers, for anything, and it can turn anyone from any background into, you know, like an entrepreneur in their field if they do it right. And I think that, since this is one of the very best parts of the Internet and of social media, I'd love to just hope that it's going to keep going like this. But yeah, you of course have those creators that I think are still going to be driving a big part of the influencer market, for example, like Mr Beast.

Speaker 1: 20:39

What do you see as the sort of the future of individual personal branding? Because a similar sort of time, when Instagram and all the other sort of social media's were coming through, a lot of people would just sort of post whatever on social media because their old employers would have no idea what even Instagram even was, whereas now you've got this new transition in which all the brands are also on social media and they've also got their own presences. And you know, if you typed up Harvey Brackensmith on it on Google, you're going to get every single social media account I own. So what sort of advice would you have for listeners in how they should look at personal branding across their own social media? Do you think that they should be focusing still just on their identity and what they want to post, or do you think they should be looking at what they post as a sort of business and how that they represent themselves to the world as a sort of even perhaps a marketing firm?

Speaker 2: 21:29

Great question. Honestly, I'm still trying to figure that out for myself. To be fair, I think you need to find a mix of personal and professional that works for you, and sometimes that depends on how you diversify your social media presence across platforms. So I do think that personal branding for professional reasons is a huge asset for our generation and we should be using it, especially if especially if you're someone that's interested in, like digital first careers or entrepreneurship. Yeah, it can really just get you so far and expand your network like never before. So if you're not taking advantage of it, you know why. So you might as well.

Speaker 2: 22:10

But then I think it's sad to miss out on the part of social media that's more private and personal still and more about everyday connections, and where you don't have to overthink every single thing you do. So what I'm doing and how I'm handling this which I don't know if it's going to change, it's I just treat every platform differently, like my Instagram is, for now, private. Don't know if I'm going to keep it like that, but I used to have it open for professional things. Then I just realized that I couldn't find like a mix that felt natural between personal and professional, just felt weird. Linkedin is purely professional for me, so I do all of that there.

Speaker 2: 22:49

And then Twitter is also a mix where, well, I think Twitter is the best platform to have a mix of both in my experience, and also just a platform that most Gen Zers overlook for that type of thing. But it's where you can be very personal and real and build connections with people very easily, while also attracting like minded people through your professional side very easily, because there's just very active communities in pretty much every field. So you can be posting both and it doesn't feel weird the way it would feel on like Instagram, for example, where it feels like you're just trying to. It feels very like performative, almost like the vulnerability and the the realness of your content. If the rest of it is professional, seems like it fits into like an influencer act in a way. So, yeah, don't know if that's good advice, but that's how I'm handling it.

Speaker 1: 23:40

Yeah, no, I've sort of found. I still find the link very weird.

Speaker 2: 23:47

How do you do?

Speaker 1: 23:48

Yeah, so I think a while ago, like I saw, my Instagram accounts and all that were private. I didn't really. You know, I've come from a little island called Jersey, in the Chal Island, so I didn't really population of 100,000 people, so I think that I only had like 100 or 200 followers, people I knew. It didn't really matter what I did because you know, it's a private account, it's only really friends or people I know. But now, having then gone to boarding school in England and now being in America, I now maybe have about 2000,. But they're all. They're not random people, they're all sort of people that I know. And I think there's a weird disjoint in that my followers aren't followers like I follow literally everyone that follows me.

Speaker 1: 24:29

Yeah it's more just like a way to connect. Nowadays, everyone I meet, I just add their phone number because that's easier. But I think for me and for a lot of especially college kids, instagram and other social media is now just about the easiest way to network with someone. Like, you might not want to give your phone about to everyone yeah, I don't know, on Instagram is a very easy thing, but I do think there's a weird disjoint in that that social media can be extremely addictive and so that, although I'm using this to connect with people, it's the same as Snapchat. I absolutely hate Snapchat. Yeah, because you can well. For me, like, it's so easy to connect with people and message them, but I find that the way that the content or the way that the message present themselves is too addictive. It's too annoying. It's an incessant, never ending stream of messages.

Speaker 2: 25:16

It's so addictive because you have to like open the messages so you're constantly, you can't just see an notification. You have to actually go on it, I see.

Speaker 1: 25:23

Yeah, I never thought of that.

Speaker 2: 25:25

You're right, yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:26

I mean like sometimes on WhatsApp. If my dad ever sends me messages, I might ignore it for a while, because I've seen what he said yeah, so maybe that's, maybe there should be a hidden future, maybe maybe for parents and kids that would get them to open up straight away.

Speaker 2: 25:39

That's true. Yeah, you can't pretend. Sell that to.

Speaker 1: 25:42

WhatsApp. But yeah, yeah, no, I'll sell it to WhatsApp. Don't steal it if the billion people are watching that. If you're listening, do you think everyone should be a creator, or do you think that should only be the 1% or the specialists like yourself?

Speaker 2: 26:00

I don't yeah, I don't see myself in that, to be honest, just like I'm still fighting with actually putting myself out there and creating content. It feels like sometimes to my issue with creating content although I'm the first one to preach personal branding is that when you go a bit beyond the professional, it feels too vulnerable and it's just like you're just perceived in every way, which can work greatly in your favor but also is scary to most people. I wouldn't make the generalization that everyone should be a creator, but I do think that everyone could be, in the way that everyone has something to share that is valuable. It's not just specialists. I think you can learn something from every single person you meet, and even the people that think they have nothing to say do have something to say. It's just a matter of finding out what that is for you that you enjoy talking about, and that people also.

Speaker 2: 26:56

There's so many ways to. Even if you're not a creator, you can be a creator through being a curator. There's people that are just great curators, collecting resources and other things that other people create, and that turns them into a creator in turn. So there's space for everyone, really, and if you have good taste, you can curate. If you're passionate about a topic and are good at teaching people, you can create, and I do think there's space for people that aren't specialists at all, and that's a good thing, because why not put yourself out there and see if people resonate with what you have to say, and if they do, great, you're offering them something too.

Speaker 1: 27:31

Yeah, I think one of the for me now becoming a tiny, tiny creator with this podcast, I think the saddest thing for me is I can't even consider myself a creator, if I was to use that term. The saddest thing for me is the metrics for how success as a creator is defined. So I think of the most common view of success as a creator is the amount of views that you get. The amount of likes you get.

Speaker 1: 27:56

And if you don't get the amount of views, you don't get the amount of likes, or even if you do get a lot but comparatively get less than you did the week prior. The instant thing in your mind is like oh my God, I've done something wrong. People don't like me, my stuff's not entertaining and there's a never ending bar. It's almost like an asymptote in that you're always trying to chase them. That will never come. You either did amazingly well and then you dropped off or whatever. But even for small creators, when you're only getting one view, or nine or five, it can be seen as all oh my God, I'm not good enough. But I think that's the benefit and why I was particularly impressed about your community, in that those 18,000 people not all of them are creators, but what happens is they're either involved in that conversation, messaging or calling or they're taking the information that they got from those calls and integrating into their own lives to get them to get benefits from it.

Speaker 1: 28:45

So, yeah, but I there was one other thing with my own podcast, like some of my earlier ones, got a couple hundred views now. So that's cool. But I did a podcast with a guy called Jonathan Mooney and in America he's an author. He wasn't able to read until the age of 12, dropped out of school for a year and a half, ended up going to Brown University in the US with an English literature degree, so ended up going down doing amazingly well and then writing these books and I did it and it got maybe like five views 40, like barely any and I was.

Speaker 1: 29:21

I was pretty sad and I was like I did this, what felt like one of my best conversations yet, but it didn't get the views it deserved. And then I got I won't say who, but I got a really long message on LinkedIn from someone who's like hey, harvey, like I don't know you very well, but I listened to your podcast with Jonathan Mooney and my son really suffers with ADHD and dyslexia and a lot of the advice that you've got in there I'd never really understood, but having listened to that, I was able to take away some really practical advice and help my son and so for me. So for me, like even now, when I do these podcasts, I get one person messing with each podcast, whatever, and that that value is like a billion times more important than yeah, that's worth more to me than like 10 million views.

Speaker 2: 30:06

Yeah, I mean that's kind of using like impact in a way as a metric which is much better than views. Like views can be very, just a very empty metric, and that's always the case, I think, with content creation is learning to let go of the vanity metrics that we focus on very naturally by growing up around social media and focusing on what you actually want to achieve with your content. It's you're not creating content because you want a million views like what's the actual goal and then seeing how you can reach that. I think that's really nice that you had that experience, because it also shows that you're just reaching the right audience.

Speaker 1: 30:40

Yeah, I mean even even along those lines, like I'm also starting to transition from. You know, I'm not big at all and I hate saying this, but I feel like I've learned a lot already. But there's also a difference, as I was saying, in the value of the viewers, and I've said this in a previous podcast, but I remember listening to it. I think it was like I don't have you heard of a craze called Ali Abdul? Yeah, of course. So he has a big YouTube channel and he also has a podcast.

Speaker 1: 31:06

Yeah, I think, it's called like the deep dive and his podcast gets a tenth of the views to the normal videos. So someone look at that might be like, well, why the hell?

Speaker 2: 31:17

does he send you to that? It's actually so much more impactful to me, exactly Wow, you're so great. I never noticed they get pure views, but it's very natural To me. Every time I watch a deep dive episode I feel like it gets so much more out of it than any, like you know. Quick productivity video.

Speaker 1: 31:32

Yeah. So I think there's also a need for a conversation on, like the value of viewers, because he was saying that not only he was like. I think I could. Chris Williamson also said this. They get a tenth of the viewers. You know one viewer on that podcast they say is perhaps 10, a hundred times the value. Obviously it's not like a direct correlation, but someone listening to that I think Chris Williamson compared it to like if you are doing a podcast, you're in someone's ear for like an hour, so you're almost like a God-esque person in their mind, dictating what they listen to for an hour, what they think about, and so then they're more likely to provide.

Speaker 1: 32:07

You know, see you as being valuable and also get an attachment to you, which then can be used for more conversations, gaining more value and then, perhaps, in the future, also perhaps selling them a product or something. So, yeah, you should buy my course. After listening to this, I'm kidding.

Speaker 2: 32:23

Yeah, honestly, you should start that.

Speaker 1: 32:27

There's another Gen Z creator. I think you did a panel with her, I don't know if you know her name is Megan Loist.

Speaker 2: 32:33

Yeah, yeah, of course she's a friend.

Speaker 1: 32:35

So I was. I follow her on LinkedIn and I read some of the things that she posts and I tried to get on my podcast as well, but she's too busy apparently Ridiculous, Maybe maybe a hundred subscribers, Gen Z creators yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:47

They've got to focus on the small creators as well, right, but one thing she mentioned was this idea of a portfolio career. So she, I think, is currently a graduate student at University of Oxford and she's also building it Gen Z VCs just like a community like yours as well as building her own sort of online businesses. Do you see this idea of the portfolio career being something that's sort of aligned with what Gen Z are going to do more moving forward, or do you think that this is going to be just sort of like the 1%? They're going to sort of do a load of different things?

Speaker 2: 33:20

I love this topic because I yeah, I think it's a great shift towards portfolio carriers, because I think, okay, where do I start in this regard? So there's a big. Have you read Range by David Epstein? So you should.

Speaker 2: 33:37

It's very interesting book about interdisciplinarity and the thing you might like it and the thing about it and yeah, the thing about it is that we're living in a world now where being interdisciplinary and being a generalist I prefer just interdisciplinary than generalist, but it's much more of an asset than it used to be, but also is a much greater strength in some cases than being a specialist, because the problems that we're dealing with in our world now require interdisciplinary thinking to be solved, and I think we're moving in a way where more and more people are considering themselves interdisciplinary in some way, and that's why a big discussion in our generation is that, because of social media, we feel the need to fit ourselves in a box and fit in a certain category, because you should pick a niche that's easily digestible and easily understandable, so people know what it is you do, whereas for most people, that's not really possible unless you have one single passion and that's your entire thing.

Speaker 2: 34:41

But I see this more and more rarely. For me, all the different aspects of what I do that I'm equally passionate about don't really fit together, and it's really hard to place myself in a single category. Google now says I'm a writer Before it used to say I'm an entrepreneur. It's like I don't even know, it doesn't even matter. There's all these spaces online where you feel like you need a label or a box for you to present yourself. Also, I could plug the draft here.

Speaker 1: 35:12

I was thinking the exact same thing.

Speaker 2: 35:14

I said that was like wait. But yeah, I mean, this is why I love it, by the way. So this basically Do you want?

Speaker 1: 35:22

to explain what the draft is.

Speaker 2: 35:24

Yeah, so the draft is what Harvey's father is building. It's a platform that is kind of like a much better LinkedIn or social media platform that allows you to present all different sides of yourself, not just your professional side. You can create content on it, you can showcase the different things that make you you without needing to fit in a box and, as a result, you can even find jobs through that that are a much better fit for you, because they can see the different sides of yourself that make you unique. So many companies prefer hiring people where they can see the interdisciplinary thinking and all the different sides of them. Because of all these reasons, because they're better problem solvers, because they draw from a greater amount of experiences and perspectives.

Speaker 2: 36:10

So I think a portfolio career fits very naturally within that. We're doing all of those different things and having all of those sources of inspiration and growth in our careers, because the internet makes it easier to do that and it just allows you to explore more things and experiment and get to know yourself better, and now people are understanding that that's actually an asset. It's not a bad thing that you can't just choose one way to go. So, yeah, I love this.

Speaker 1: 36:38

Yeah, no, I think there's quite a few thoughts on that point.

Speaker 1: 36:42

I think, I've been somewhat fortunate. I mean, I'm not in the working world yet, but I went to Eton in the UK. It was a pretty good school and I'm at Duke and I feel like I'm very privileged in the idea that if my CV was to go through a system, I'd get sort of green flags over those two names. But, like, duke, for example, has an acceptance rate of like between 5% and 8%, and the amount of kids at Ivy Leagues in the US is, I think it's maybe like 20,000, but out of a population of 300 million people, that is way below the 1%. And I think it would be very stupid for anyone to say that the smartest people at these schools, because they're all spread across the country or at different schools, and so the way that CVs and the way that management systems are hiring people are based on these green flag labels and what school you went to, what grade you got, when that's not even a tenth of the amount of value you could provide that you could be a coder, a computer scientist, maybe also a father, you're a guitarist, you're a podcast host, you're anything. And this one-sided, one-dimensional, one-size-fits-all approach that every firm is using is not working in a lot of cases. So I think the draft offers a sort of way to get around that I also wanted to add.

Speaker 1: 37:55

I was speaking to a podcast program posted today or tomorrow. Last week I was speaking to a lady called Anastasia Garcia. So she has a million followers on TikTok and she unfortunately had a sort of condition with her hand where she sort of had a disability with it and she was just creating regular dance content and one day she made a funny joke about her hand and it got 20 million views. And she made another video. It got 15 million. And then it got another video. It got 11 million views. And although that was amazing and she built this big community and for that short period of time she was then able to sort of help a lot of people and speak upon the subject and become a spokesperson for that, her actual love and what she enjoyed doing was dancing. She's literally been in dance teams. For the rest of time and the things that she enjoys doing and it's dancing with a TikTok algorithm would only reward her if she posted stuff about her hand and it's similar with a lot of TikTok people in particular about you need to have a niche.

Speaker 1: 38:58

You need to do this really oddly specific thing. Yeah, not just do it once, but do it freaking three to five times a day, every day. Yeah, that's something I hate because I'm taking the our generation. I feel like it's not a one size fits all approach. So I think the draft and what you're talking about and I think what I'm talking about as well is this fact that we're all multifaceted. We don't know, we're not one thing, we're constantly evolving and changing and I think that's what the draft is aiming to accomplish.

Speaker 2: 39:25

I think that's very needed. Yeah, because it's becoming increasingly like an increasingly important question in everyone's minds because largely of social media and the way that this isn't a real problem. But social media is making it feel like a real problem because the way it's designed means that you have to fit yourself in somewhere somehow, and if you're creating content in some way on the Internet, you probably I feel like most people that do have experienced that and they're like wait, I want to post about this that I'm really passionate about, but right now I have all these followers that just follow me because they want to see that other thing but like it's all equally important to what makes me me and there's just no space on the Internet to do that in a way that feels organic and easy.

Speaker 1: 40:10

Yeah, I'm not sure how I would solve this. Perhaps maybe the draft has solved it, but I don't know how I would go about creating an algorithm that shows people relevant things, because if I go on and if I like one of your posts, there's an expectation both on my part and on the algorithms thinking that your next post should be the same.

Speaker 1: 40:29

Yeah, If it's then the same, then I'm also more likely to be able to like it again. I mean, it's the same. It's the same idea that repeat customers like I'll make a random statement, I'll make a random statistic 40% more likely to buy from you again. Yeah, if someone's already bought from you, they're more likely to buy from you. So then buy that. As someone's like your person, they're more likely to like it.

Speaker 2: 40:48

But like if you were to.

Speaker 1: 40:50

You know, you wrote about your entrepreneurship and then the next day you're like I want to write about being a writer or being a photographer. If there was some way to then get that to the relevant audiences and have multiple audiences at once, or perhaps have a blended audience. I don't know what the answer to that is.

Speaker 2: 41:07

I'm now doing the blended audience on TikTok and it's sort of working like I mean, I'll see. But I I converted my photography account that was growing just because of travel photography into I started like plugging little writing things in there, and that's because I I have an upcoming book publishing end of this year. So putting more of my writing side into my personal brand had to become a more conscious choice. So I was like where do I put this? I guess let's do it on my photography TikTok, because it feels like a personal TikTok. And actually I ended up getting quite a lot of traction on the writing thing surprisingly. So it ended up being very much a blended audience for writing and photography, which I don't know if that's scalable or useful, but I guess I'll figure that out. Like on TikTok, it's easier to have a blended audience because the algorithm shows your content more to non-followers than followers, right, because no one is on their following tab on TikTok.

Speaker 2: 42:07

I mean, are you? I don't know, I'm always on the For you page.

Speaker 1: 42:10

No, I was on, I deleted it. I'm pretty addicted to it. Yeah, I mean, if you went, if you went past like five reels, there's no way you'd even know what you looked at six reels ago.

Speaker 2: 42:22

Oh yeah, exactly, exactly, so yeah.

Speaker 1: 42:26

What's your view on success as a brand on social media? Is there a perfect formula? Is it? Is it like good content, consistency and, just you know, getting it out there? Is that always going to guarantee success? Or is there a secret source? Or even as an agency owner a brand came to, you could never actually go and guarantee them the results that they won.

Speaker 2: 42:52

I think the point where you can't guarantee them the results comes more from the product and the brand's own understanding of the brand's value. So whenever I've seen that it's difficult to deliver results, it's because there seems to be a disconnect between what the brand wants and how well they actually know what they want and how to, and like yeah, and their goals. Like there's a lot of brands that, just you know, have the goal of going viral and that's it, and they don't focus enough on figuring out exactly what they want. And that sort of lack of clarity in your marketing is what can take away from guaranteeing their results. And as an agency, there's nothing you can do if a brand is always just like well, not this, but I can't exactly tell why, and nothing else works either. So, like there's a lot of internal work that needs to be done, but then, once that's done, I think it's possible to kind of guarantee the results, yeah, through consistency.

Speaker 2: 43:51

I mean, if we're talking about Instagram and TikTok, because these are just platforms that right now most brands are coming to us for everything else, just kind of like less, less prioritized the consistency is, yeah, it's a mix of understanding the algorithms and the type of content that they're prioritizing at the time, which changes like all the time, and being consistent and understanding your audience and how to create a valuable community for them. So, for example, right now you can guarantee a lot more easily that if someone posts reels on Instagram every single day, one of them is actually going to take off and take off for good, and you're going to get a couple like tens of thousands of followers. If you're posting like good quality reels actually consistently for however long that takes, but you stick to it. That's going to work on Instagram because that's what's been working for the past like four to five months for creators A lot better than before. On TikTok, they're prioritizing photo carousel posts a lot more than videos, so it's a bit more like.

Speaker 2: 44:59

Yeah, it's a bit harder now to just post consistent video content and ensure that it's going to go viral, but then on TikTok, the algorithm itself always rewards consistency. So over time, I think it's easy to learn from what works for you and still make it work. So it's a matter of like learning from the data all the time when you're posting and being open to experimenting and also recognizing as a brand that it takes time and, yeah, like that's the biggest thing. It takes time, but like there's a way for it to actually work. You just need to be patient.

Speaker 1: 45:31

I have a sort of two-fold question on that. Firstly, being like you know, when I think about trying to make a TikTok, I don't think I've ever actually posted a TikTok, apart from clips of my own podcast, but I've never done one of like me talking or anything. How do you go about making a TikTok that looks clean, that looks professional, that looks like good content? How do you go about wrapping it up in a format that's easy digestible and that people can enjoy watching? Is there a sort of formula to that, or is that just through sort of experience and making so many videos?

Speaker 2: 46:06

I think it's through experience and seeing what works for your audience, because on TikTok people don't care about high quality videos as much as they do about very natural, like human storytelling, and just authentic human content, like very real content that's very just, raw and easy, tends to work really well on TikTok, while on Reels it doesn't work as well and on Reels it tends to be a bit more polished and just like different types of videos work better there. But that means that on TikTok you just don't need to have like a perfect quality setup and whatever. It's more about the all the different nuances that make your video.

Speaker 2: 46:44

Yeah, that yeah, that make your video interesting to people like how well it can grab attention, how well you can convey a story or what you want to say, and it's a mix of many, many things, but the actual quality and format doesn't matter as much.

Speaker 1: 47:02

You also mentioned data. Are you collecting this data through the content that you and the brands that you work with? Are you generating it through the content that you produce, or are there sort of other resources that people could use to go about finding about how to create viral videos? What's trending, what's working? You mentioned the PhotoCarousal on TikTok. Is that just through experience, or is that? Are they posting things? How are you getting this data?

Speaker 2: 47:28

Things are just available through every platform. So if you're creating content, for example, tiktok stands unifications now that's like PhotoCarousal are working much better, you're going to get 30 times as many views. So like it's literally telling you. That's one way. Tiktok does that. Instagram not really. The other way is looking at your social media analytics. Like for every brand, we do this every month and we do a deep dive in every part of their social media analytics and see what it means based on our experience. It doesn't mean that we need to adapt or pivot part of the strategy. It doesn't mean we need to double down on something Like being very much on top of the numbers is really important because you can learn a lot through it, and it's actually not just looking at the numbers but being ready to analyze what they mean.

Speaker 2: 48:12

Like if it's not enough to say we had three videos go viral and they were about this topic, you have to go further and say why did the videos about this topic go viral? What is it that people liked about it? Is it the controversy that started in the comments? Is it something else? And then see how you can experiment with those things and elements again and learn from that what works for your audience and your brand. And then there's also reports that are produced by social media platforms. Like usually, most social media platforms have some sort of trends reports that they release occasionally that just shine a light into what is working well on the platform, like what has been trending. There's a lot of newsletters you can follow that deconstruct that, so it's a mix of all of those things.

Speaker 1: 49:01

I wanted to try something. You can say no, because I know it usually takes one to two weeks. I wanted to falsely use your services right now and I want to give you a task. So my podcast is at getting barely 100 views, perhaps over a few months, couple of hundred. I'm posting every week. I want to say that the content I talk about, apart from when I talk about random VCs, is usually very good, but my setup doesn't look good. I've got my crappy dorm room bed in the background. So what advice or what would the actually what would the content game plan be from you to me on how for me to go and grow this podcast over shorts, over how many times I should post, over anything? Have you got any thoughts on how to generate the perfect game plan for past the ball?

Speaker 2: 49:54

Yeah, 100%. Well, both. Free social media strategy fine, okay, I would start by saying that you need to define two to three content pillars that make sense for your brand. So first of all, for me to understand it better, I would ask you a couple of deep type questions, which we can do now in a way like briefly, but like tell me, I guess just very briefly, who you want to reach through the podcast and why, like what you want to help them with, and then I'll tell you, okay so it's kind of a selfish reason, but I want to hear from the world's best, from the initial interest, because I want to get to a point where I can become one of the world's best in some, some field.

Speaker 1: 50:41

So it's just, although it doesn't look like it, it's actually essentially a self improvement podcast, because I think there's parallels between a writer and athlete, a social media agency owner, in their mindsets. So I want to help anyone that wants to improve themselves in terms of the mindset, in terms of their learnings, to become a better version of themselves.

Speaker 2: 51:01

That's great. That's great, perfect. Okay, in that case, I think I would do the recon pillars. Let me think about it as I go, but it's hard to without writing anything down.

Speaker 1: 51:12

Of course I'm sorry for your spot.

Speaker 2: 51:14

No, don't worry, it's interesting. One would be so okay. Basically, defining like two to three content pillars means that you split the content that you'll be posting into different areas, so then it's always easy for you to create content and know why you're creating it. So a lot of brands and podcasts and people just like. They're like oh, I'll post a clip and it's like why, what's the strategy behind it.

Speaker 2: 51:38

So in your case, I would recommend something like and that's just based on this like.

Speaker 2: 51:43

If I ask you more questions, my answer might change. But one content pillar I would suggest would be self improvement, which means so if you post like, say, seven posts per week, like one per day on TikTok or on reels or something like that, maybe two or three of those posts would be related to self improvement and that means that you can be posting like podcast clips or lessons or just like tips you learned from people, designed as quotes or posted as clips or whatever you can like, play around with a format a lot, but with the aim of reaching people that are into self improvement content. So you can get, especially on Instagram, hashtags do work no matter what anyone tells you, so you can really get it seen by the right people. And then on TikTok, the algorithm would again pick up that you're delivering self improvement stuff and show it to the right people. So that's like such a big area on social media so you could be posting the biggest highlights and the biggest lessons from your podcast that are related to that and the things that you feel can directly help a viewer, like if a random person sees something on their TikTok for you page from your podcast.

Speaker 2: 52:50

What clip would you choose that they would actually want to save? Like focus on that. Why would you?

Speaker 1: 52:54

want to. Is it quality or quantity, because some people are just telling me, like post, like 20 clips, maybe one of them will go viral, or should there be a very tailored approach to the sort of content that I'm trying to put out?

Speaker 2: 53:05

I'd say more of a tailored approach. It is both a mix of quality and quantity. Like you need to be consistent with it and propose, like once a day, if you can, some people do twice a day. But yeah, say that you like. You know, 30% or 40% of your weekly content is in the self improvement content pillar. So that's one. The second one I would recommend is trying to think of what the third one is. I'm not.

Speaker 2: 53:29

Oh yeah okay, yeah, the second one I would suggest would be the community content pillar and that's like I'm biased, because I always recommend a community content pillar to almost anyone I work with. But it's a way to keep community at the core of what you do, without it being an afterthought, and what that means in practice is that maybe a smaller percentage of your content doesn't need to be actually like splitting three, but a smaller percentage of your content is about asking your followers questions, contributing to your community, like having like discussions with the people that follow you, starting conversations. That's really important, and you'd be surprised like people don't really do that. So community is what gets people to feel like you're not just talking at them, you're talking to them. You're facilitating conversations around topics that interest them. So having that as part of your strategy and your content breakdown means that you will actually be sticking to it, and that's really good for the people that follow you.

Speaker 1: 54:24

I thought I thought about one stage trying to do like maybe like live streams or like before I was before or after interviewing a guest either get people's thoughts on what they'd be interested in knowing about them, or, after I post an episode, doing like follow up, live stream or something to try and get people's thoughts and if you think that'd be a good idea.

Speaker 2: 54:42

I think that's a great idea. Yeah, that would go under something like community. I think, yeah, something that's very aimed at getting your people engaged further than just watching your content. Yeah, I think that's that's a very right path to be thinking in. And then the third one I'm unsure about. Maybe there wouldn't be a third one, maybe you're good with just these two, but the one I thought of that could be cool is the you content pillar.

Speaker 2: 55:08

So for brands, what we do, there's like always a pillar about the brand itself, or the brand story, or the brand's founders or the behind the scenes, or like you know just like what? Because if a brand is always posting about their product, no one cares to follow. So they need to actually be providing something educational, something entertaining, something more than that. If you're just a platform posting about what the platform does, no one cares. So that's like the the product slash brand content pillar. That's for brands. For you, I think you could do something where you focus on the storytelling behind like Harvey. Why is Harvey doing this? Like who are you? Why are you interested in this? What have you learned from people that?

Speaker 1: 55:49

You're gonna give me an existential crisis.

Speaker 2: 55:52

Yeah, definitely I never posted the.

Speaker 1: 55:55

TikTok, but I was just there thinking.

Speaker 2: 56:00

Who is Harvey? Yeah, so that could be cool, because people love seeing the human side behind the content they consume and you obviously are good at, you know, talking to people, like being, like being engaged in podcast, yeah, being personal, exactly. So that could be the you know, harvey, being personable pillar where people get to know you better, because eventually, that's what they're going to want to do if they like the content you're delivering and they're engaging as a community. So, yeah, I would suggest these three.

Speaker 1: 56:31

Because I it's quite funny I just wrote all that down, so thank you so much for that.

Speaker 2: 56:35

That was a lot.

Speaker 1: 56:36

Yeah, I actually had a. I hadn't done it, but I was sort of thinking about that the whole way. I actually wrote about this prior to the podcast and that the main goals of the podcast one expand my network. Second, for me to learn. Third, for the listener to learn. Fourth, to build in discipline. And a lot of people, quite a few people, have said to me that, like Harvey, like you know, you could improve your lighting, you could do this, you could do this, you could do this. Why don't you stop, spend like two months planning all out and then do it again? But for me I'm like, oh, if I stopped, I wouldn't start again.

Speaker 2: 57:08

Yeah, I know, but.

Speaker 1: 57:09

I will get to that point. But I I actually thought about that personal branding side as well, because if quite a few people have said to me is like, oh yeah, like podcasting, it's so oversaturated, how do you ever expect to break through? So my theory was and still sort of is and sounds like similar to you. I haven't done it yet. But if there's a way that I can curate my own sort of personal brand because right now I haven't even done an intro to this podcast you know, it's like a year and a half or whatever and I haven't even done an episode explaining what it is and so anyone coming on and saying, oh there's just this kids, the hell is this guy interviewing these people? But I think if there's a way that I can both show who I am, the path I'm on or at least where I'm trying to get to, as well as why I'm doing the podcast.

Speaker 1: 57:53

I think then I could sort of build a sort of community, similar like minor people.

Speaker 2: 57:57

Exactly, yeah, yeah. So it's very meta in a way, but like why it's like content about you and the podcast and what you're learning from it and even the discipline you're building from it and everything like people love to hear that.

Speaker 1: 58:10

Do you? I'm going to call it. I'm going to call this guy out. There's a I know actually I won't. I won't call him out because that doesn't look good.

Speaker 1: 58:18

No, I won't say who it is. I won't say who it is, but someone I spoke, especially towards the end of last semester. I spoke to a lot of entrepreneurs at Duke. I maybe had about 30 conversations even now, just like lunches, dinners of people figuring out who they are, how they're building their businesses.

Speaker 1: 58:34

This wasn't on the podcast just for my own curiosity, yeah, and as well as me trying to offer what little insights I have towards their businesses, I tried to get their feedback on personable and what I'm trying to achieve. And I spoke to this one person and I was like, hey, I'm Harvey and I'm doing this podcast. But he was actually like, yeah, this is like a crap idea. I had podcasts over saturated. He gave an example of. He gave an example of podcasts where they're doing stuff that are more relevant.

Speaker 1: 59:04

Aka, if they did, like an NFL podcast where there's a game every week, someone would always, in theory, watch that game because it's more. Watch that podcast, sorry, because it's more pressing about the game, whereas my podcasts are more evergreen and that they're always lasting. So my question to you is after having met me for 59 minutes, do you think it's worth it for me to keep going and is there room for success for a small creator like myself, or is there also room for realism, in that you know there's so many podcasts, I don't have a big brand, I'm not a famous actor or actress or whatever, and that I actually have to be realistic and perhaps generate content in another field?

Speaker 2: 59:43

I think there's definitely potential for you to keep going and actually succeed, because not if you are just publishing podcast interviews and stopping at that, but if you're creating content with the best of the podcast and you like why people should care about you doing this, then I think there's great potential because, while the podcast market is over saturated, there's only one, harvey, and that applies for everything like really so it's. I think that's definitely how I see it that if you like, anyone can succeed as a creator if they managed to show the sides of themselves that make them unique and that get people engaged and interested. And I think that you combining this with actual, tangible self improvement, knowledge and insight from experts around the world, like it's really cool. There's so much tangible value for people and maybe for them to actually come and see that value and find everything you're doing. It needs to be a mix of that the self improvement content, the entrepreneurship, everything and you. So I do think there's potential. I'm not just saying that.

Speaker 1: 1:00:49

I could talk to you for hours, but I understand we both got to move on with our lives. You've got plans to make billions of pounds for, Clearly. So my last question I asked is to every guest is what is one thing that a listener can take away from this podcast episode whether it be something you said or didn't say that they can take and implement in their own lives?

Speaker 2: 1:01:11

The just do things thing that I said 100%. I say this all the time, I'm very consistent with it Literally get things done. Very lean startup of me in a way, but I mean it in the way that there's never going to be a perfect time and you literally just need to take a step right now, today, to like try out and see the things that you want to do. Like there's never going to be a perfect time, you're never going to feel ready or like an expert. Everyone gets imposter syndrome, everyone like wonders if they're capable and whatever. But you need to be one of those people that actually put something out there, whether it's a landing page, a social media account, a piece of content. Get something done so that the first step is done and you go from zero to one without thinking about it further. That's the best thing I can say.

Speaker 1: 1:01:56

Yeah, finish strong is what they say. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me today. I think we only arranged this podcast like two to two or so days ago and I did one yesterday. So when I was like it's good this morning and I was really tired, I'm going to screw the start, this isn't going to go well, and I started by giving some great questions, example but I honestly I enjoyed this so much. I feel like I learned like a tremendous amount from you.

Speaker 1: 1:02:21

And I think there's also strategy, exactly like I also think it's like something in my mind. I was like you know, there's someone that you're only 20, 20, 24 years old and you're building this agency and you know you don't have 10 million or so followers. So how could you go about building similar size audiences for brands? I wasn't sure. You know, I pride myself on trying to ask good questions. I feel like every question I asked I asked you smashed out the pot. If I had the money, if I had the money, I'd work with you. So I feel like I managed to get that little bit of free content in there.

Speaker 2: 1:02:56

I'm really glad it was helpful, really like you asked the best question, so it helps.

Speaker 1: 1:03:01

Well, thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 1:03:03

I'm excited to see what you do next and yeah, Likewise, and if I can help in any way, let me know, like outside of the podcast, but of course,