- Duration: 21 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01K0A0RNYHYEJRBDZKZHASWVC4 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01K0A0RNYHYEJRBDZKZHASWVC4)
Transcript
[Heather Hall]: It’s going well, got a lot of things going on. So good stuff, just busy. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, it’s better than the opposite. 100%. I’m excited to see how we can maybe help take some of those things off your plate, potentially. So tell you about us and kind of what we do and all that. So I guess first, I would just love more context from your side, like what your current priorities and goals are, specifically around content. Maybe we just start there that I can go into more deeper stuff about about how we work Sure. [Heather Hall]: Sure. Well, I kind of started started my own business as fractional, uh cfo services Primarily focused on growth companies in financial services sas tech enabled sectors. That’s kind of what i’ve done since 1994 getting myself there But yeah, I finally decided to just start, you know, start my own thing. So god I want to say maybe like in April, I think I made the decision, made the plunge. I was kind of one foot in, one foot out. It’s just comforting the stability of a full-time job. But at the same time, I just can’t imagine going into a company and here are my goals. I mean, I’ve done it for 30 years. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Role before we sold to a strategic, that’s what keeps happening, right? Getting a company and I’ve been doing these startups and either we merge and I’m out of a job or sell out of a job. So that was kind of the impetus is, all right, got laid off my last three roles. I mean, in positive light, right? Because it was a successful exit. So can’t complain too much. But while I was at that that last company, I had the bandwidth, so I was trying to get just some side gigs. So I’ve had one company that’s a prop tech company. And then I picked up one other that’s in the cannabis vertical, but they’re really data as a service. They sell data to the growers, et cetera. So that’s been really fun, especially seeing all the names of the companies they work with on the NMR schedule. This is fun. Um, so I’ve got that going on and then I just had an opportunity. Actually, a guy I used to work with a couple of jobs ago, um, a company, I co-founded a startup and we had a cloud native form, um, that allowed registered investment advisors to buy and sell bonds, just create a lot of transparency around a really opaque market. The company we merged with this guy, George, he was a head of North American sales. So he’d since moved on. He contacted me about three months ago and he’s at another company doing what he does, but he wants to create another fixed income platform, very similar to what we built at 280 Cap Markets. And he’s needed some help with the financial modeling, but now it’s morphed into, he wants me to be on the founding team. So I’m kind of, yeah, I’m kind of, and I really, really liked George and I think it’d be a lot of fun. So I’m considering doing that and then just kind of keeping my, my two clients that I have. Again, I don’t know if that the cannabis one’s going to turn into anything more cause they just wanted a financial model, maybe, you know, here and there. So to be honest, I mean, that’s kind of where I’m at now and we’re, we’re, we’re moving along with, you know, talk to attorneys on capital structure, things like that, this thing I’m going to maybe do with George the fixed income AI platform. So I’m kind of just kind of where I’m at right now. I haven’t been really marketing Sapphire super hard because of this other opportunity. So that’s kind of where I’m at right now. Makes total sense. [Michael Houck]: It sounds like it’s like you’re at an inflection point. You’re at this like kind of interesting point. And so yeah, I guess like let’s play both of those worlds out a little bit because what we do is, you know, we help with content creation and then distribution, uh, through social channels. So that can be linked in, that can be X, that can be an email newsletter. Um, and we have a creator network with, you know, I think about 550 creators with about 60 million total followers. We can sort of loop into an age with 10 and blow it up and amplify it and all that stuff. [Heather Hall]: Like do you do, so like those ads I see, on Facebook, right? Say, for example, you know, like Fractional CFO Services or whatever, those kind of like copy that you create or something different? We can do ads. [Michael Houck]: What we find is that you’re going to be able to build more trust, especially for like a high ticket offer if you’re organic content and then having creators who have credibility in the niche already. Engaging with it about how interesting you are and how interesting the offer is and you know your your knowledge and that so we find that that for high ticket sales tends to do better um but we we can approach it from either either angle for sure um we manage paid media budgets for a bunch of folks too so it’s um yeah but um but yeah so that that’s sort of what we do um so I guess like it sounds like you’re sort of at this branching And if you go down to the Sapphire and go kind of full throttle with that, then yeah, it probably makes sense. [Heather Hall]: Let’s do something. Yeah. Yeah. I haven’t been like my, you know, I’m limited budget right now. I did a, you know, pay to play a couple, uh, really great articles, uh, with a company called pathos communications, but it’s expensive, you know, spent like 7,500 bucks and it’s just, I can’t afford it. So, so that was great. To like get started until I get more clients, right? And then, you know, I’ve just been doing my, I’m gonna have it in a couple of weeks, which I gotta get on that this week, but I’ve been doing my weekly blog posts for Sapphire, try to create content that’s helpful and interesting for founders, right? Founders of startups, mainly it’s geared toward, I just find they need so much help with just the finance piece. I mean, it’s always like an afterthought, right? It’s like, oh, I’m familiar with QuickBooks. And so someone on their founding team, you know, and it’s, but it’s like, it’s on a cash basis and they don’t have all their SAS metrics like in order. It’s just, it happens every time, no model, no budget, nothing. So. [Michael Houck]: Well, if it’s relevant, you know, we’re not, we’re a pretty lean team. I keep, I keep our operation pretty lean. Manage everything myself, I’d be your primary point of contact, not handing you off to some account manager or something like that. So when I think about when I hear $7,500 for two articles, I’m like, Oh, my God. Yeah, no, I know. Three plus months of social content. [Heather Hall]: That’s more what I’m looking for, Michael, because, you know, they did a great job, right? It was like, Okay, I’ll just spend the five, which was, trust me, I was really painful, but they did a good job. And it kind of got me started, but it’s like they keep pinging me, hey, someone else is interested, but it’s like, I can’t pay you five grand. But yeah, that’s fine over a longer period. I don’t want to spend that like for a one-off is more what I’m saying. Totally. And I would echo that. [Michael Houck]: I think when you’re early on, it probably makes more sense to spread it out more rather than having it be this big Okay. Well, look, here’s what we can do. Maybe, um, I think it sounds like you’re still figuring things out in what direction you want to go, which is good. Yeah. [Heather Hall]: I’d say George has got it. He already has investors circled up and everything. It’s like, I’ll get paid. So it’s, it’s super, I mean, I’m, I’m really kind of leaning towards that, but we haven’t talked comp or any of that stuff. So he’s got a big medium. Towards the end of July with like a big investor group. So I kind of want to wait, let’s see how that plays out because I mean, I definitely love having my own business. I just need more recurring clients, you know, and I need to work harder on that piece. Like I know that I do, but yeah, some help would be amazing. Tell me like just a typical, you know, we just got like five more minutes, but tell me just like a typical, like, like what you would do, explain more the creator aspect of it, just so I fully understand, like just hypothetically. Yeah. Our process is built for founders and execs, like super busy people. Right. [Michael Houck]: And so when we would start working together, you and I, and a writer from our team who would sort of become your partner, right? Like they’re your dedicated partner. The three of us would get on a call and we would go super deep on your background, your target audience, what they care about, how we want to talk to them, content pillars, tone of voice, we go super deep on all that stuff. And we build sort of a persona for you from that. And then on a weekly basis from that going forward in a shared Slack channel that I would set up. On Monday, we would drop in questions that came up during our research that we think you might have an interesting POV to share about. And then all we need from you is you pick up your phone you open slack You drop a two three four minute voice note where you just ramble on those topics You just give us off the cuff thoughts as authentic as you possibly can sure And because it’s off the cuff because it’s a voice note we can hear the intonation the emotion the ums and ahs right all the subtleties And then we incorporate that into the content and we deliver a batch every week to you for your review And, you know, we’ll work to get a few weeks ahead so we’re not sort of scrambling as it becomes a stressful weekly process for you. But then once you approve the content, we handle scheduling. We actually do engagements and other people’s content on your behalf. So we get some free profile views that way. We manage people who reply to our content and also then we do like weekly reporting, performance reporting metrics and things like that to you too. And you and I can do sort of strategic reviews and iterate on strategies whenever we like, usually like monthly or quarterly. And so that’s the process. It’s super lightweight, like I mentioned. And we do everything in Slack. [Heather Hall]: Perfect. Love Slack. Awesome. So yeah, so let me, I’m super interested and you like got good, good vibes from you. So, you know, there’s so many people ever just, everybody wants something and I’m just, you know how it is. And it’s exhausting. [Michael Houck]: You can, you can tell when someone’s going to sort of maybe be like not the easiest client to work with or something like that. [Heather Hall]: But like I get a good vibe from you too. So you can like Sunday morning, intense, but I’m very responsive and cool. Okay. Let me see. Yeah. Let’s just keep in touch. And um, all once George has this meeting It was scheduled for the 24th and then he wanted to push it out a week because we’re still trying to get costs and things like that. So I can build out the financial model for him just at a high level. [Michael Houck]: One other thought could be, I mean, obviously if you’re jumping into something new, you’ll probably want to devote all of your time to building that up as effectively as you can with George. But one thought would be that if you do go that route, and you do have sort of the stable salary sort of coming in from that, we could build up an audience for you while you’re at this company. And then let’s say the same thing happens and it gets acquired and you’re some like event down the road. Oh, like amazing. What’s next? [Heather Hall]: By that point, you would have the audience. It makes sense. Get it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 100%. Awesome. Cool, Michael. This was super informative. Really helpful. Cool. [Michael Houck]: Thanks, Heather. I will We’ll send an email over later tonight, just TLDR what we talked about, and we’ll go from there. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Perfect. OK, thanks, Michael. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye. See ya. Bye.