Latest / Content, Briefly / Shelf: Hila Bouzaglou is solving the subject matter expertise problem

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Shelf: Hila Bouzaglou is solving the subject matter expertise problem · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  In the face of AI, content writers especially, content marketers, they own strategy, production, and distribution. Content writers will have to find-- You have to go and find where it's hard, not where it's easy. Yeah.
• 0:16
  Go look for where the things are hard. [upbeat music] Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Today we've got Hila Bozaglo.
• 0:28
  She's the founder of a content agency called Shelf, which is based in South Africa, and they specialize in niche content.
• 0:36
  So they're focusing on a handful of different industries like supply chain, regulation and compliance, FinOps, things like that. And within those industries, they get into some very complex and nuanced content.
• 0:49
  Hila's background is very interesting. All of this will make more sense when you understand what she was doing before she started this agency.
• 0:55
  But we also talk about how she's built up the team, what the culture of the business is like, and basically how do they tackle these difficult topics.
• 1:02
  Interestingly, she says that their goal is for the writers to know more about whatever the topic is than the CEO of their customer's company, which is obviously a very high bar.
• 1:13
  So, you know, in a world where subject matter expertise is often the fundamental problem for content marketers, Hila's taken a really aggressive approach to try to solve that problem.
• 1:22
  So really cool to talk to her about how she's going about doing that. She has a wealth of knowledge. Very excited she could be on the show with us today.
• 1:29
  So with all that said, I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do too. [upbeat music] This episode of Content Briefly is brought to you by our friends at Flying Cat Marketing.
• 1:38
  Are you frustrated by your SEO or content agency that just takes orders passively and doesn't advise or bring ideas proactively so that you can never really fully take your mind off the project?
• 1:48
  Or are you frustrated that they pick topics opportunistically rather than ones aligned with your product and go-to-market strategy?
• 1:53
  Or maybe they write generic content that was obviously done by a content marketer rather than someone deep in your customer's niche. Or maybe worst of all, one that just doesn't have time for you.
• 2:02
  Flying Cat solves these problems. As a small agency of senior level consultants with a proven track record of SEO success in B2B SaaS, you get a strategic partner that stands in the fire with you.
• 2:13
  It's not only you that'll be happier when you finally focus on higher level strategic work, but your boss will be happier when you finally start reporting on revenue-driving SEO.
• 2:21
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• 2:28
  Go to flyingcatmarketing.com or use the link in the show notes to learn more. Content Briefly is produced by our friends at Minutia.
• 2:36
  To learn more about their podcast production service, as well as their other adaptive content marketing services, check out minutia.com in the show notes. Hey, everybody.
• 2:44
  Jimmy from Superpath here today with another episode of Content Briefly. Today, we're gonna be chatting with Shelf founder, Hila. Can you help me with your last name? Because I was- [laughs] Bozaglo...
• 2:55
  prepping and, uh... Bozaglo. Okay. Bozaglo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I never- That's the posh Bozaglo in Hebrew, if you do it correctly. Bozaglo- Okay, cool... in English. [laughs] Thank you. I appreciate it.
• 3:05
  I always wanna make sure we get people's names right, and I don't wanna be out here pretending- No, it's a mouthful... I know how to pronounce it. Yeah. [laughs] So you are coming from South Africa.
• 3:12
  You're one of our new partners. We have lots of questions for you about Shelf, the business. You focus on niche content for some industries that frankly I had not actually even heard of.
• 3:21
  So I'm very curious how you go about building content for those customers. But maybe first, would you mind introducing yourself?
• 3:27
  Tell us a little bit about who you are and some of the work that you've been up to kind of leading up to this point. So like many of the people that you interview, I started off as a journalist.
• 3:35
  Studied journalism, wrote for the Mail & Guardian for a little bit, and then I, um, went to London, and I couldn't, you know, get a job in writing, and I found myself at an organization that was a multinational corporate.
• 3:50
  Technically, I actually come from corporate. I started there doing jobs that weren't anything to do with marketing or writing, but I learnt a lot about business. I learnt everything about Excel.
• 4:02
  I learnt so many things, and the area that this business was in was in compliance, technically, that and tax and cross-border tax and cross-border compliance, until eventually in 2016, I did actually become the marketing director because I was the only one in the building that could write or market- Oh, interesting...
• 4:20
  or sell. Yeah, yeah. There was a sea of chartered accountants and me, you know? So I naturally found my way back into writing, and then I found my way back into marketing.
• 4:31
  Self-taught myself digital marketing and became the marketing director of the business, and by that stage, they had 40 international offices worldwide, three or four different- Oh, wow...
• 4:39
  kinds of businesses across compliance. So I was in a really great place to learn. In 2019, I wanted to start my business, and I was very lucky. I said to the founders, I said, "Will you...
• 4:52
  Will some of the businesses come on as clients?" So
• 4:56
  it was fanta- I walked out, and I had four clients, and I could get started, and I started Shelf in December 2019, and that's how we are niche, because I personally came from niche, so I was able to speak to clients early and say, "Oh, I understand cross-border customs compliance.
• 5:18
  I understand what an importer of record is. I understand what this weird, you know, import VAT is," or... And then there were worlds within worlds inside RegTech and compliance that then allowed us to expand.
• 5:33
  This is already making more sense. I would love to know more about the origin story of Shelf. I mean, you, you're working at this multinational corporation.
• 5:40
  You're, I assume, recognizing a need that some of your clients have from a writing perspective and saying, like, "These people are underserved." Is that how you kind of started- Exactly...
• 5:50
  thinking like, "Wow, I should start a business around this"?
• 5:52
  So I think people tend to go where writing is easy, and there are a lot of industries that are underserved because the writing is really hard.The studying required to understand the industries or the legislations or the regulations or the, just the world itself is so difficult that it's just exhausting for content writers or content marketers.
• 6:15
  And what happens is, is that because it's really difficult, those companies, I think they get burnt because people can only ever get to a certain point of knowledge acquisition with them.
• 6:27
  So the content stops somewhere, and I think that that's what made Shelf different, is that we never stopped. We were always-- when we go into a business, we intend to know as much about that business as the CEO.
• 6:40
  Otherwise, what's the point? Yeah. Yeah. You know. That's-- it's so fascinating because what you're describing is kind of like the fundamental problem of content marketing, which is subject matter expertise.
• 6:52
  And for as long as content marketing has existed, the, one of the main challenges that the people doing the writing don't have the subject matter expertise, the people with the subject matter expertise probably aren't writers or that's not their main focus is marketing, you know.
• 7:07
  And then, you know, the, the marketing folks are always trying to figure out like, "Well, how do we get subject matter expertise? Can we interview people? Can we learn it ourselves?"
• 7:14
  There is very often a disconnect between the folks they're ultimately gonna write for and the people writing it.
• 7:20
  So I assume that that's like your fundamental challenge that you're probably thinking about every day and building the business around.
• 7:26
  So I think it's the one-- it's actually the one challenge that we managed to-- we're closer to solving than others, and I'm glad to be sharing it with anyone that wants to, you know, use this to build their own agencies and everything.
• 7:39
  And I think that you used the word get from the subject matter expertise, and get is passive, and- Mm. You know, so you don't get... That's what makes us different. We don't get it. We don't. We take it.
• 7:53
  We learn it ourselves and then go and show the client, "This is what we've learned. Is this correct? We've connected these dots. Have you ever thought about it this way?" And so many times a client's like, "What?"
• 8:06
  [chuckles] And because we talk to lots of different industries, that dot connecting, and I'm sure a lot of the writers, especially the B2B content writers, they know this already, but because you write for so many businesses, you're able to connect dots when you're with other businesses.
• 8:22
  But when you know the business really well, that becomes even more powerful, and now you're able to share new ideas that the CEO didn't even think of, and that's when you will stick. And now- That's so cool...
• 8:33
  the client will never leave you. So it's the philosophy is that we don't get briefed. We can't get briefed because the briefing is what exhausts the client. It's so tiring for them. We must lead.
• 8:47
  The closer we can get to leading the content and sharing the ideas and learning ourselves, taking the time, and I think that that's the disconnect, is no one-- we're in a position where we have more time to sell.
• 9:05
  I don't know if that, you know, because of leveraging an exchange rate, we can do eight hours of studying for free, and it's because I know that that's the investment that will-- we could go and risk.
• 9:17
  But if we know something, if we know the business, they, you know, a client won't necessarily leave. But the disconnect is getting the knowledge. The knowledge- That's true... is everywhere more than ever today.
• 9:28
  Just go take it, you know. Don't, uh... It's not passive. That's such a, yeah, that's such a fantastic point.
• 9:35
  If you're open to it, without giving away any of the secret sauce, what does the customer life cycle look like? You know, like, you have a lead. A lead comes in. What do you pitch them? You know what I mean?
• 9:45
  How do you explain how Shelf is different? And then as the deal is in progress, like, what are you and the team doing to prepare
• 9:53
  content ideas, strategy, you know, keyword research or other things that you might be working on that is, you feel are different than what other agencies might do?
• 10:02
  Let me think about it, because there's so many areas that we help within. We help within all those areas, so I'm trying to think of the best example
• 10:11
  to give where, where we really help when it comes to someone that's niche. So the process is the lead doesn't come in.
• 10:20
  So for a content marketing agency, we've built the business on outreach, and we offer that as a service as well.
• 10:27
  But it's, you know, I'm a, I am a, I come from a long line of salespeople, and I, and my specialty in copy and content is anything to do with sales. So I happen to be good at those. I've written hundreds of them.
• 10:41
  I write hundreds of those cold email outreach sequences in a year for other companies and stuff. So I developed a talent there.
• 10:48
  So first of all, all of our business is from good old outreach sales, but we sell something, and this is also relevant for anyone who runs a content agency or for any of the freelancers in the community.
• 11:02
  You are selling something that everyone needs.
• 11:05
  There is not a company on earth that doesn't require content in some shape or form, and therefore, cold outreach, for all of the beating it gets out there in the world, is a very good channel because it's about muscling the person who's not prepared to outreach and getting in someone's inbox at the right time with a service that everyone needs and going, "Do you need us?
• 11:26
  Do you need us? Do you need us?"
• 11:27
  So first of all, we go and get the customer, and I acknowledge that most of the time I'm coming in with something specific, like a content play of some kind of specific thing, maybe something centered around an event and
• 11:41
  pre-event content, post-event content, or maybe it's, you know, SEO angled, depending on what it is. And then when they start working with us, it's the discovery call that really solidifies the relationship.
• 11:54
  The sales call also because it's half the discovery call. I like to ask a lot of questions. People enjoy answering questions about their businesses. People enjoy people that get excited about their industries.
• 12:07
  We write for industries that-They run the world, but they're of- they're not in the forefront of SaaS and everything. Mm. Right. They, you know.
• 12:15
  So when someone, when a creative gets excited, it really makes them excited. So sales, we ask a lot of questions. People love that.
• 12:25
  They like seeing someone else's perspective that's different to theirs, and then they'll- we s-send a proposal for whatever the services are. But
• 12:37
  m-most of the time in the sales calls, we do a lot of proving that we understand their industry. Yes. Yeah. I'm very interested in that. I would love to drill into that for a minute. Mm.
• 12:46
  When you were talking about subject matter expertise a few minutes ago, you mentioned tiring customers out.
• 12:51
  I'm very intrigued by that, you know, and it sort of lines up with what you just said about sort of proving to them that you know the industry.
• 12:58
  I think maybe I'm so interested in that because I don't see it a lot, you know what I mean?
• 13:03
  You don't often see freelancers or agencies saying, "Let me prove to you how much I can learn about this topic so that I can write it well for you." You know?
• 13:11
  And I would love to know, like, do you have a researcher on the team? Like, who's doing this, or is it just part of the culture of the business that everybody does it because that's, how else are you gonna
• 13:21
  educate yourself to the point where you could write for a very sophisticated reader? So what happens at Shelf is that we get pods of writers. So we're, we're a small team.
• 13:31
  We're a team of 12, but we'll have two writers that know everything there is to know about third-party logistics.
• 13:41
  So they'll write for third-party logistics and contract logistics and warehouse management software and, uh, order management software, because in that part of supply chain, it's all connected.
• 13:54
  So those writers start to know... They know more, and they know more, so it's... But we would never give that writer to now go write about retail optimization. It's like a new field. But we'll have writers that- Right...
• 14:08
  become subject matter expertise, and I try very hard to sell to businesses where we can help them or where I can see parallels to the industries that we already service. So- Okay...
• 14:23
  but they're wild worlds, so as long as they parallel, you're still playing in a colossal space. So does that answer your question? Sorry, um- Yeah, it does. It does.
• 14:34
  I just, I'm, I'm, [laughs] I'm, I'm very, I mean, having worked at agencies before, like I sort of know how this goes on the inside.
• 14:40
  I just think it's very cool that you develop the expertise in-house and then do outreach- Oh, yeah... in a way so that you're bringing on the customers that you are s- positive you can serve.
• 14:50
  You know, versus seeing what lead comes in the door and then working backwards trying to figure out, like, "Where am I gonna, how am I- Yeah... gonna make this customer happy?" Mm.
• 14:57
  We've said no often to simple, to simple products and simple industries, because it's ju- it's not ch- it's not necessarily Shelf. You know? That's cool.
• 15:07
  We manufacture air conditioners, and it's simple, you know, that for us.
• 15:12
  But then we wrote for a company that manufactures the machines that produce composite materials for the world, and that felt parallel to everything we write about in wholesale and supply chain and th-that side of things, so we were like, "Yes, that's us."
• 15:31
  You know, so- Yeah... we like the technical side because we know it will lead us to more and lead us to things that not everyone's willing to, to learn about.
• 15:41
  This leads me to the next question, which is where do you find these writers? Here. W-we've got the most talented people in the world here. [laughs] That's a great question.
• 15:51
  So the hiring process, we put, we give tests to the writers at the beginning, and we're not looking for the experience of an industry. What we're looking for is critical thinking.
• 16:04
  So w-we have, what the pattern that we found with the writers that can do this are always the writers that ask us more questions during their assessment. Mm.
• 16:16
  Or they've written comments in their assessment to say, "I'm just explaining what I was doing here because I made an assumption, and I was thinking this, and I was do," you know? And, and then there's parts of the
• 16:29
  test where we can see how they critically assess a, an industry. You know, how far they went to learn about it for the assessment. Are you building pods kind of one at a time? Like, do you build like a,
• 16:43
  a fintech pod, then build a 3PL pod, and then... You know what I mean?
• 16:48
  So we've got, like- Or is it you're just looking at, is it the same sort of critical thinking type of person that could probably do any of those if they spent the time to learn it? Well, that's what we've seen.
• 16:58
  If you spend the time to learn it, and we've got brilliant people that can, but it really does, it's the business model of Shelf that the deeper the writer gets into an industry, the faster
• 17:11
  getting into something that's c- that's complicated to someone else is easier for us. So we have sort of... They're macro pods, so we stay inside certain macro indust- places.
• 17:25
  So which, you know, supply chain, and supply chain is a big place. There is a lot in supply chain. So- Sure... you would never have to move out of supply chain. You could, you know, stay in supply chain forever.
• 17:40
  But yeah, so we have supply chain. I would say inside fintech should be specializations in terms of BNPL or payment gateways, that sort of thing, but not everything in e-commerce management.
• 17:54
  With the B2B services businesses, they're a great place for any B2B writer because you have to find a way to convey the human ingenuity of that business. Mm. Yeah. Which is great.
• 18:09
  Which isAnd that we're gonna need to do that more, and I think that will still be needed, and the only person that's gonna be able to write that is another human, and I don't know if AI will be able to write-- AI will be able to write about SaaS.
• 18:21
  I'm not sure if AI will be able to write about what makes a, a service team brilliant at what it does. Yeah.
• 18:28
  So we've got our, a writing, like a macro writing part of people that write for B2B services, and those services could be in many things, but they're really good at writing for that area.
• 18:42
  AI was one of the other things I wanted to ask you about, so I'm glad you brought it up. Have you found that it's an accelerant to research or writing at Shelf? Or- Research only...
• 18:51
  are there other ways that you're-- Research only? Okay.
• 18:53
  And is that just company policy, like, you just find that that's the best process for getting good writing out the door, but also helping people- The good writing was always there.
• 19:03
  It's just the research, it's culled a lot of time in research, which is great. Um, it's a fabulous research assistant and a, and also a great ideation tool.
• 19:12
  But for the actual process of writing, then it gets in the way, and we just want it out the way. Yeah. We know what we wanna say. We've been doing this for 20 years, you know, [chuckles] like it's...
• 19:22
  And it's not that-- it hasn't been that impressive in terms of r- a long form. It's just, you know, or finding something new.
• 19:32
  It's great for ideation, but we know what we're looking for, and we know what we want to say when we're content planning. Yeah. Yeah. But it's a f- fantastic research tool.
• 19:42
  We've done exercises that would have taken us days in, you know, 30 minutes.
• 19:47
  Can you cite an example, like, of, of a way, like a practical way that you and the team are using ChatGPT or Claude or another tool to kind of make the research part happen more quickly?
• 19:59
  So I've actually-- I actually put this example on the Slack group, which was one of my favorites.
• 20:05
  We had a client who's in an industry, they do FinOps, which is anyone that's u- they help people that are using Amazon or Azure save money in their cloud storage.
• 20:15
  So they were trying to work out who is the buyer and who is the decision maker, and a lot of the time they're coming in for a champion, but they might be replacing that person.
• 20:26
  So there, we took 60 job specs of the decision maker looking for that champion that this company would replace.
• 20:37
  Okay, so we took all those job specs, and we put them into Google LM, and then we started asking, or, uh, just slammed 60 PDFs or, you know, 60 URLs I think it was, of each of the job specs that we found off a database of, you know, FinOps opportunities, job opportunities.
• 20:56
  And we were able to find patterns across all of the job specs for what the pain points might be for the person hiring this role or what their expectations were. Mm-hmm.
• 21:07
  And who was the person reporting into the most, because that would help our client to find who's the decision maker and what was the most commonly cited job title for this role, and that would help us find the champion to maybe avoid when we, when we outreach to them.
• 21:24
  And then ask it, "What do you expect of this person? What-- And what were the three top things that they would have to do immediate, you know, in their responsibilities?"
• 21:33
  And that helped us to actually build their messaging and positioning documents. But if we had done that- That's fantastic... research exercise, it would have taken us days. Yeah. We did it in, like, like 45 minutes.
• 21:46
  Just slammed the questions and got the data, and off we went. It was amazing. Um- That's really cool... we use-- I mean, this is an ironic use case.
• 21:57
  So part of what Shelf has been obsessed with for eight months is trying to work out which content assets will be are hardest to create. And we-- you've been speaking about this a lot on your podcast with so many people.
• 22:11
  So what we did was we needed to build a quadrant matrix for ourselves that had all of our content assets down the list and then criteria on the difficulty of producing it and how easy it is for AI to produce it, so that we could follow and track- Wow...
• 22:30
  the assets on a matrix to see, okay, so, you know, a product description, I mean, that's B2C, but product description way over here, case study or customer success story right over here because it requires interviews, and it's, like, so difficult to actually get a- Yeah, yeah...
• 22:48
  you know. So that-- and to make that, I used ChatGPT. Asked it what goes on my X-axis? [chuckles] Yeah. [chuckles] What goes on my Y-axis? What questions would you-- I mean, uh, done.
• 23:02
  I had the framework for it in 20 minutes, and then I could go away from it to make what I needed. But- That's great... talk about irony. [chuckles] Yeah. That's, that's so funny.
• 23:13
  You know, I find I have a new use case for AI for myself that I'm wondering if other companies will adopt, which is, uh, the sparring partner.
• 23:22
  I've been using this tool called Lex, lex.page, because I mostly write by myself, and so I write, to write like I normally would, and then it prompts me. You know, it will, it will help me find unclear sentences.
• 23:34
  You know, it will find the passive voice. It will suggest reorganizing things. It's really cool in that way. How do y'all handle that same problem internally, the sparring partner
• 23:44
  thing, or, or maybe just quality assurance as a whole? Like, do, does the team peer review?
• 23:49
  I'm wondering, like, if a couple writers are in a pod with a similar topic, are they, are they each other's editors, or is there an editing person or team that edits everything? Yeah.
• 23:56
  There's an editorial lead that's, um- Got it. And so everything goes through that person? Yeah, depending on the industry. Usually, the editorial lead will be someone that really knows that industry well. Got it.
• 24:08
  Even if, you know, if the writer's semi-new, whatever happens, the content strategist or the editorial lead, um, sometimes both, will always check the work.Yeah, yeah.
• 24:18
  Got it And then, um, what I think AI, um, will be really useful for, and we're on our way to trying to do this, with clients' permission, because this is the, the thing, but if the client has their own lexicon
• 24:32
  and things to watch out for, or we are updating their lexicon. So a client is like, "Don't use the word enabled anymore." Like, "Great. Thank you." Yeah. "We never wanted to."
• 24:41
  [chuckles] But you can put it on a never use this word, and then there's some AI tools that are happening now where you can put in the lexicon and, and then it will watch it for that. I think that's- Yeah...
• 24:54
  lexus, like, so, and then you can have your multiple clients, and that is a wonderful use case for AI as well. Yeah. To check- Totally... you know, we told you never to use this word.
• 25:04
  Sorry, it was a different writer, they didn't know. Just don't want that to ever happen. So this is one of those really fantastic use cases for AI. Absolutely.
• 25:13
  I mean, having been on the agency side, like, certainly have gotten the emails back from a client be like, "This piece is really good, but we told you 15 times we don't like the Oxford comma."
• 25:23
  Even something as simple as that, like, "Please, we don't wanna keep telling you this." You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that's such a tiny example, especially when the brands- Ton of cases...
• 25:31
  have like take the time- Yeah... to build a style guide and they want it followed. So, you know, it's great. I did wanna ask you just one last question about company culture.
• 25:39
  You know, I'm just trying to get a sense of like, what are the team dynamics like? What are...
• 25:44
  You know, I'm thinking through even like common situation at an agency where like you're trying to get something out the door, you know, the client wants this thing you've been working on, and the team is saying like, "You know, we really want it to be good.
• 25:54
  We're trying to make it as great as it can be, and it, it just takes time. Like, we need the time." And then it creates the tension, and then someone has to communicate to the customer, you know what I mean?
• 26:03
  To me, that's very much part of the culture of the agency.
• 26:06
  So you don't have to answer that specific scenario, but if you could just speak a little bit to, like, what are the dynamics of the team and like how do you all, what are the vibes like working at Shelf?
• 26:15
  One of the company values is scribes need positive vibes. [chuckles] So- Oh, I love it. [chuckles]... that's actually one of the, the values. But, um, we took project management seriously from the get-go.
• 26:26
  So we've got three dedicated project managers/traffic managers, and they herd us, [chuckles] herd all the creatives- Yeah... and make sure that we're doing everything to deadline.
• 26:38
  And our ops manager and I have done a lot of work at trying to hone that, trying to get better at the science of how long does something take, and trying to make sure that we give enough time for it, and we know that we will make mistakes along the way, but when those mistakes become more than anomaly, 80/20, whatever it is, then we go, "Time to change the internal time allocation for that."
• 27:05
  So- Mm-hmm. Right... we might have started off, at the beginning where we thought, okay, and this is because re- with Shelf's model, everything is productized when it comes to content.
• 27:14
  Not so much strategy or the distribution management, but in content we've productized everything. It's a menu. I'd like four blogs, no onions, one case study every quarter, [chuckles] you know. Yeah.
• 27:25
  And it's productized and not value, but it's not a, you know, even though there is value there, but it's a product because then
• 27:33
  a person can't ne- I don't, I don't know whether [chuckles] to share this, but then a person can't negotiate with you twice. It's- Sure... twice. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So- That makes sense...
• 27:41
  but inside that, we, it's, we take the risk. We take the ri- we must take the risk. If we set out to do an e-book or an eGuide in four days, and then eventually we realize it's ta- you know, we need, you know...
• 27:58
  When I say four days, I don't mean four days, I mean eight hours times four of pure, solid writing. Right.
• 28:06
  And it could be divided according to whatever you have to do, but I'm just saying this in terms of four full working days.
• 28:13
  Let's say you need all those hours to write, and then it turns out that we start to see, hmm, it needs more time, then we shift it and we change it. So then we say, "Take six days."
• 28:24
  So I don't know if that answers the question, but it looks like on the surface that everything can be different with clients, but it doesn't have to be.
• 28:35
  So if we structure a project properly, we can get, take everything we need- Yeah... to do work.
• 28:44
  So we have a skeleton process where we get the outline and the research approved so that p- someone isn't having to read, the, the client isn't having to review 8,000 words on a page. They've reviewed- Yeah...
• 28:57
  the skeleton. They know where we're going, you know. So we've got a very strong project management team. And then culture-wise, it's interesting to build a business fully remote.
• 29:09
  I know lots of people speak about it, but the culture is we sit alone in our, [chuckles] in our rooms around South Africa.
• 29:18
  But then what Shelf has done is every single year we have conference, and the 12 of us get together, and I bring in external speakers, and we do things for clients, and we do fun writing things like creative writing workshops and, um- Oh, cool.
• 29:33
  That's awesome... and we hang out, and we go somewhere nice. This, the one this year we went to like a game farm, like a safari type thing. So- Very cool... 'cause we can.
• 29:43
  [chuckles] But yeah, so, and then that's where we, we build culture, and then we try and keep it going through the year. Yeah. Yeah.
• 29:51
  Every Tuesday morning we get together, and not to necessarily talk about work, just to hang out. Yeah. That's great.
• 29:58
  A couple days in person goes a long, long way for a remote team that otherwise, like you said, hanging out at home, [chuckles] you know- Well, yeah. I'm, I'm also-... typing away on their keyboard can be lonely...
• 30:08
  and I feel so bad, like they don't, you know, they've gotta use their coffee, their, you know, [chuckles] it's like...
• 30:14
  So once a year we, we go somewhere really special and do something awesome that we can all look forward to. Yeah. But yeah, working at home is hard to, you know, you feel alone. I mean, they're not alone.
• 30:24
  We speak to each other on the phone or on Zoom all day, every day, but- Sure... at the end of the day, you're alone. You know that feeling.Oh, for sure.
• 30:32
  I'm ten, almost 11 years into working from home, and, um, I wax and wane with it. Sometimes I'm like, "Ah, this is the greatest thing. Why would I go to an office?"
• 30:38
  And then other times I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna go insane if I have to sit in my basement for another day [laughs] looking at a computer," you know? Cool. Hila, thank you so much for your time.
• 30:48
  So cool to hear about what you've built. Just such a unique origin story to some of the other agencies that we've chatted with on this podcast, and, uh- Why? What is the usual origin story?
• 30:58
  It's d- it's a little different for everyone. I mean, we've had certainly a couple in-house SaaS content marketers, you know, just- Hmm... identify a need for content and go out and build it.
• 31:08
  There's the freelancers who, you know, over time accumulate more work than they can handle and start to subcontract, and that kind of builds into an agency over time. But I don't think...
• 31:19
  We haven't had anybody who have, like, deep expertise in a niche world and say, like, "Wow, these customers in particular are really underserved, and there could be a very good business to be built in this arena."
• 31:32
  So I think it's a great story. Big world. So I think everyone-- I think that in the face of AI, content writers especially, content marketers, they own strategy, production, and distribution.
• 31:49
  Content writers will have to find, you have to go and find where it's hard, not where it's easy. Yeah. Go look for where the things are hard, and because cerebral is under attack, go where muscle is required.
• 32:05
  [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Which is why I think what you're doing with Help a B2B Writer Out is so important, because it's muscle. Mm. Yeah. It's hard work. It's time-consuming.
• 32:18
  It is hard work to sit all day and look for opportunities. The founder and the marketing director are just not gonna be able to do it. So th-that's- Yeah... a great example of muscle.
• 32:33
  So I think w- don't look for where brains are required. [laughs] Yeah. Look for where muscle is required, and your critical thinking will do beautiful things there. But go where it's hard work that requires muscle.
• 32:47
  Hila, we'll of course link to The Shelf website, your LinkedIn too, if that works, and then if you're working in content in a business that's niche, and you could use some, some kinda heavy-hitting content help, we'll have a link to book a call with Hila.
• 33:02
  She'll ask you lots of questions, um, explain how this all works, and, uh, sounds like potentially a really great fit for quite a few businesses. So Hila, thank you so much for your time. Thanks, Jimmy.
• 33:11
  Uh, really appreciate it. It was so nice to see you again, so nice to chat. Absolutely. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. [outro music]