- Duration: 20 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JRX9E6SZ4D6G15TMCJN0XW0Z (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JRX9E6SZ4D6G15TMCJN0XW0Z)
Transcript
[UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Hey, man. [Michael Houck]: Good to meet. Thanks for grabbing some time. [Pormer Sarram]: Yeah, thanks so much. [Michael Houck]: I feel like we should be meeting in Dubai. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That would be nice. [Michael Houck]: That would be great. [Michael Houck]: Right? Because of the guy who made the post. We got to take the meeting there. [Pormer Sarram]: I think that’s a good idea, man. We should do that. [Michael Houck]: Well, cool, man. I guess, how can I help? I sent over our website. And Ocean Doc and I guess what resonated, what do you have questions about? I would love to learn more background also about everything you’re building, obviously, but I would love to hear from you and sort of how we can plug in. [Pormer Sarram]: Yeah, for sure. Thanks so much for sharing that and figured to chat, maybe our timing is a bit off, maybe we’re a bit early, but figured to have a conversation. So my name is Tomer, I’m one of the co-founders of EZtalk. We work with primary hotels and hospitality businesses to automate all guest support, guest engagement and guest bookings. So, you know, that’s where we can connect all the different channels, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, also connected to your hotel software, all the ERP for hotels and basically automate the entire support infrastructure. So, we started one with one property here in Mexico City, we’re now in 24 countries, just mostly through word of mouth, plus a bunch of outbound sales and comments and hustling. And where we are now is we’re trying to figure out how to get the word out without necessarily spending money on ads. We do very little spending on ads, mostly just to learn new ideas, new things we’re testing. So what I’m trying to figure out is whether there’s room for us to invest in content at And I kind of do some stuff here and there, but it’s just very, I write a post and then publish and two weeks go by and I forget. And then we try to like put like a testimonial. It’s just like, it’s just so many other things. So we’re trying to figure out, you know, whether it’s LinkedIn or other platforms, how do we do this? Partly because like we sell mostly to SMBs or like to these kind of hotels or kind of expand to other verticals, but they’re still kind of unsafe. Folks, and they’re just not really on LinkedIn or X. I don’t know if that’s the best place to be. That helps us with like partnerships and platform partnerships, which has been helpful. So we’ve partnered with like software platforms that have a bunch of customers and distribute to their customers. So those guys obviously are on LinkedIn and X and things like that. That’s been helpful. But in terms of like finding end customers, That’s really helpful. I think that it’s smart business. [Michael Houck]: first of all. But second of all, yeah, I mean, look, there’s, SMBs are interesting, because there are these big creators who talk about like, look what they call it, like the boring businesses, right? It’s like the Cody Sanchez’s of the world. There’s like a few other people in this space, you know, Barrett O’Neill, a few other people. And they have pretty big audiences on on especially X, but also LinkedIn. So I think they’re sort of appealing both to the people who run these businesses already, but also to the people who are looking to buy into these businesses. And so I don’t know how much that overlaps sort of with what you’d be looking for. But I guess my point would be that I don’t think that there’s no access to these folks. I think people spend their time on these platforms too. So that’s what I would say. But at the same time, there’s other ways that we can help besides just content. We have the content side, we have strategy, we have sort of workflow optimization. If you’re like, Hey, I want to write the posts. But at the same time, I hear this story all the time about founders who are super busy doing a million things. Like I never have time to actually write the post. [Pormer Sarram]: So yeah, there’s something to that too. Yeah. It’s just content. I mean, we have like one of our go-to-market members is helping, but she is also super busy, so we end up not writing anything. I think the workflow is easy. Strategy, we’ve done some strategy stuff in the past and it just never worked. Just look at it and it just came from the patient’s hearts. I think for us, it’s like the more tactical stuff, the better. [Michael Houck]: You have a few thousand, I think, followers on LinkedIn already, if memory serves. It’s not like you’d be starting So you could get some feedback pretty quick. I would imagine that’s maybe more in the ex-Uber network and things like that, but you actually have a base to sort of build on is what I’m trying to say. [Pormer Sarram]: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. I think it’s maybe not necessarily the end customers, but I think we’ve actually, just through writing some posts, I think we have either our current investors, and I’m just like to have other customers that they’ve come across. So it works, right? Like, it’s just, I need to put in the reps. [Michael Houck]: It’s just like, you know. [Pormer Sarram]: Yeah, I guess, where are you, where are most customers finding you guys today? So we have these partnerships with these, what’s called software platforms, like they’re called CloudVentures, SiteMiner. So we do like webinars on their marketplaces so people find out about us through there. That’s one way. We do a bunch of outbound calls and outbound emails. We do some just inbound. We’ve run some ads before, but we haven’t actually So we’re trying to figure out what works for us. Generally, it’s just us kind of doing outbound, a lot of referrals. I mean, the referrals thing, the fact that you guys are doing that many, that’s really good. [Michael Houck]: So, I mean, that’s great. Yeah, look, on the content side, I mean, we’re happy to help. We have a strong team of folks. So I could give you the, I can give you the Uber, the ex-Uber homie price, rather than the full price. You get a little discount there. But the way we work, just so you have context, is basically it’s month to month. So cancel any time. All we ask is sort of 30 days notice. So it’s effectively two months to start. And then everything’s async. We don’t put any meetings on your calendar except for one kickoff at the beginning. And we go through Slack, and we have a Notion board set up. All we need from you is sort of like voice notes. Like we’ll send questions that come up during our research and we would just ask for voice notes back to where you can just, this is a license to ramble, which is what we want. So pretty lightweight, optimized for founders. So yeah, I guess like what do you see as the main, it sounds like you’re like maybe saying you guys are a little too early for it. Is that a budget thing? Like what’s the, where’s the blocker there? How can I help with that? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Pormer Sarram]: Um, so I think maybe you can actually talk about it. I read the doc, maybe what exactly, like, what exactly is it? Like, how does that actually work? Like, I know a little bit, but I don’t actually know enough. So maybe you can talk about that. Yeah. So basically we have two sides of our business. [Michael Houck]: We have content and distribution and on the content side, we have a team of writers. Basically we’ll do a kickoff call. We’ll learn about sort of what content pillars you want to talk about on your who the audience is that we’re speaking to, what they care about, and sort of any nuances around your voice that we should keep in mind. And then from there, we get to work. We do research on new topics in the niche every week. We send questions to you in Slack. We get your voice notes back. We turn them into sort of unique original posts from your POV. And then we schedule them. We post them on social. We engage with them and all that. That’s the content side of the business. The distribution side, basically, we have a network of about 400 now creators, 400, 450, somewhere in there, in different niches. And we match posts to the right niche creators. And they go engage with the content and amplify it to their audience. So we do have some folks in the sort of, I would say, like SMB retail, to put this SMB in general, There are a few folks that are deepest niche, but we do have some. And so they could potentially go in and engage with your content and amplify it to their audience. So that’s sort of the two sides of the coin. The main thing that we sell is the ghostwriting services, and then the sort of ops and strategy that goes along with that. And then the distribution side, the creator network side, can be packaged in or can be treated separately or left off. [Pormer Sarram]: Got it. Makes sense. What’s the pricing for one or both or and both? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so if we were just doing like one LinkedIn account, we’re sort of going in, we’re taking over the account, we’re doing the opt, we’re optimizing the profile, we’re engaging with thought leaders, we’re writing the content, all that stuff. The normal price is 4k, I think, because, you know, I just like supporting ex Uber founders, we could probably do it for 3k. Depends on which writer, but I think we could probably do it for 3K. So I’d say 3K, and then if we wanted to layer in sort of distribution on top of that, like partnering with these creators, that would depend on sort of how much budget you’d want to put towards that each month. And we could just include that. Some rough guidance there is that for every post, we recommend an average of about $30 boost, and then you’ll get a couple creators leaving comments on it. [Pormer Sarram]: Yep, make sure. And then for that content side, for the first part, you go off of like number of posts or is it like, how does that, how does the frequency work? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so it’s, it’s a little, it’s a little vague, unfortunately, because different clients want different things. Like, for example, let’s say you wanted like all long form posts only, then we do fewer shots on goal, but they’d be these longer reads, right? Maybe you’re more focused on repetition and getting in front of people as many times as possible. In that case, then we do maybe one to two shorter posts per day and get them scheduled and posted that way. And those would just be like little quick hitters, witty things. But with the same CTAs, sort of driving people back to follow you and check out the company. [Pormer Sarram]: Makes sense. Typically, I’m just curious how many posts that would be, let’s say, for us. We’re not trying to go daily on LinkedIn, but maybe we don’t want to go too long form. It’s like the sweet spot in your experience. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I mean, you’re going to get the most growth, like 90% of your growth is going to come from 10% of your posts. Right. And so what I generally recommend, especially if you’re trying to like establish yourself on the platform is to do fewer posts, but make them a little bit more detailed. So I would say like, I would say like either the ideal case would be three long form per week. That’s like what I personally have done on my Twitter for a long time. And what I used to do on my LinkedIn, what I’m now sort of getting back to on my LinkedIn again. So that’s what I recommend. If you’d want to sort of make those a little bit shorter, we could probably do somewhere between three and five shorter per week, and they’d be sort of long enough to be meaty, but still sort of get some of your unique POV in there and still not be like very, very long read. So it’ll depend on length, and that’s something we would hone with you during the onboarding process in the first couple of weeks, getting some data points out there. But my recommendation would be the closer we get to three long form for a person who’s trying to establish the brand, the better. [Pormer Sarram]: Got it. Makes sense. That was super clear. No, that’s helpful. Maybe even a thought. I think, frankly, just being super frank, I think that price point for us is a little bit on the super side, just getting started. I think it could potentially work down the line. But for now, we’re just kind of trying to see if that’s an experiment, if that Yeah, sounds good. I can just check back in a couple months and see where things are at. [Michael Houck]: In the In the meantime, though, if you want to bounce ideas off me, you want to say, oh, we saw this post do really well, this post didn’t do well, just want to jam, just shoot me an email or message me on the Uberslack and happy to jam. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: For sure. Thank you so much. [Michael Houck]: Really appreciate it. Come in. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Great to meet. Talk soon. Bye-bye.