WEBVTT
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Little flex.
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I just got airyphillycom, which only someone that cares about a good domain will appreciate, but it's a good one.
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Gen Z has a really good bullshit meter against like a company trying to push a message.
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Make it viral.
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Give me a viral video.
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Yeah, can you?
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just get me one.
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That, but at the same time, that, like not giving their teams creative freedom, take the risk of just being fresh and not being super, super safe, which is not even Just have a little bit of fun.
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Hello.
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Hi, Kyle, I'm sure you're like where is he?
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So it was funny, as I was in, I was accidentally in the other podcast studio recording studio.
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So I'm just like hanging out in there.
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That's okay, I'm good.
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How are you?
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Good, good.
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Well, thank you for jumping on here with me.
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I'm super excited, of course.
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Thank you for having me Just a nice little chat.
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Yeah, totally Well.
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So it's so interesting that having this chat after especially working together now for a while on Stacklist and I am very knowledgeable on what you do- yeah, I guess now you are from the inside Totally, but yeah, no, it's honestly great, I love it.
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You guys are genuinely like one of our favorite, favorite projects to work with.
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I can't wait to hear how all this started, because that's amazing.
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Going back, what's funny is looking at your experience and your history, thinking about author and Forbes, 30 under 30 and building the Z-Link.
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I mean, you must have just been at this for 20 or 30 years now right.
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Yeah, 30, 30 year career.
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No, it's, it's.
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It really is amazing.
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I would love to know, like you know, going back pre uh, pre Z-Link um and and before you sort of started the Z-Link, what was kind of the history, whether it be family upbringing or what you had sort of seen or modeled or learned or really was, it was sort of getting into entrepreneurial.
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Were there things that preceded the Z-Link that sort of led to that?
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Yeah, yeah, of course.
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So a bit of a random story.
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I don't come from an entrepreneurial family at all and I don't have a business background, but I sort of fell into this because when I was growing up I was sort of very I guess digitally savvy and I was always using social media to build communities around my interests and my passions, from probably the age of 10.
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Too young, but like just typical Gen Z things.
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No, but that's so funny.
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Like, don't give kids too many social media accounts when they're too young or they may build companies yeah, this is, like you know, my, my mom versus my dad.
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My dad was like no, let her.
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My mom was like maybe she's a bit too young to be doing all this um now she's like okay, I never said that yeah, exactly so, yeah, I was um sort of doing that a lot and I I learned just as a hobby how to grow social media pages here and there.
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You know, I was sort of like that 13 year old with 15,000 followers on Twitter and stuff, just like talking about whatever I don't know what, and so I didn't know that was like an industry or a job.
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But I went to university to study art, history and digital media just because never really knew what I wanted to do, kind of just studied what I would enjoy, and while at university I was working part-time jobs doing social media for companies because it was just, you know, the easiest way for me to make money.
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I was already qualified, like I knew how to do that, and they were always looking, um, and then when I was 19, I think, turning 20, I um ended up randomly sort of falling into a rabbit hole that showed me that a lot of companies were well.
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First of all, a lot of research was just rising about Gen Z and what Gen Z wants to see in the world, and like what Gen Z is doing and like what is this generation like mysterious generation up to, and all of the companies that were hiring me for social media were doing so because they wanted, like a young social media specialist, to help them communicate with their young audience.
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So I basically did some research and I saw that no one was really targeting that like helping companies that wanted to engage Gen Z, like companies that were doing cool things but didn't necessarily have the knowledge and the young people around them to communicate what they're doing with young people and do it efficiently.
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So I decided I would start a social media agency that would focus on Gen Z and have a fully Gen Z team.
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And so I was in my third year of university, I was just turning 20.
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And I was.
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I was in the end of 2019.
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And so, officially, the Z-Link launched in May 2020.
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So peak lockdown time Made it easier, but I was working part-time jobs alongside that and I was studying and had my mom design my logo.
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I mean, I didn't have a team and I didn't know anything about raising money, and so I just tried to do it with something like I don't know probably £100 in my account.
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I just tried to do it with something like I don't know probably a hundred pounds in my account.
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Thankfully, I didn't need any money to start an agency, because it was just a matter of like having a website and a domain, and that's all I needed.
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At the start, I was just kind of hoping that I would do all the work myself until I had enough clients to be able to hire, and so that's kind of what I did.
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That's the origin story.
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That's amazing.
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I love how, like there's a similar thread there when I think when you're growing up, you know you get told that you should follow you know, well, there's two, there's two sides.
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One is sort of you need to go to university and you need to sort of pick something that you can create a career around yeah you also have people say you should do your passions.
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I feel like you and I are sort of similar in that way that like I started on computers and I started like messing around with like websites and in early 2000 and I started doing it and I sort of had this moment when I figured I could, I figured out how I could sell them.
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Yeah.
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Someone would pay you five or 10 grand for a website, and so that wasn't my passion, but I did sort of find that that was.
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It was just something that came easy and natural and also had a, and there's demand.
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And there's demand.
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So that was kind of like okay, it wasn't about finding something that I was I was super passionate about, like nature photography or whatever, and I have to like go make this work.
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It was almost what is on the surface that you're really sort of good at and that you can sort of do, and it doesn't take you a long time to sort of learn it, and then immediately figuring out how to how to, how to translate that into providing something for someone else.
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And running with that for a bit.
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Yeah which is similar to what you did.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, very similar.
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So you kind of just fall into this and in my case it ended up just showing me that I could be very creative through this and sort of build my career in a much more free and fun way than I thought would have been possible with my background.
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And so, yeah, I was just kind of like happily unexpected.
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Yeah, do you feel like gen z?
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One of the things that's different about gen z is I'm I'm sort of mentally putting together in my mind.
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What I think of is sort of you go back and watch like mad men era, right, where it's sort of like is smoke, it's good for you, whatever.
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And then we sort of go through the 80s and 90s with like Burger King and Wendy's and like all these sort of commercials that are like really trying to sort of get you.
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It's very corporate and it's very like I'm trying to sort of evoke an emotion for you.
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Do you?
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feel like it's just that that Gen Z has a really good bullshit meter against, like a company trying to push a message, and that is what's different.
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I think definitely, definitely we do, just because I guess, like being the first generation to grow up so immersed in social media and the internet and the first generation of actual digital natives kind of naturally gives you that filter or that kind of radar, because I guess you're exposed to so much information and so many people competing for your attention that it's easier to tell when something's being inauthentic.
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And especially now, like when social media is so oversaturated and everyone is just doing a million things and trying to push a million different messages and sell things, it's just much harder to stand out with a Gen Z audience because you need to be doing something either truly different or just truly genuine, not just trying to sell but telling a story that's engaging or providing some sort of value, educational or entertaining or just something beyond immediate um sales.
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so, yeah, I think it's a lot of that yeah, I almost wonder too, not just social, but think about, like the first kind of season of road rules or or real world, or what was considered reality tv, when it actually was probably the most authentic reality, because people like it really was just cameras capturing people.
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But then, once that formula got sort of crystallized, all you have to do is throw champagne glasses at each other and like storm out, like you just have to make sure that you hit all these beats.
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Then you have all of what came on as, like you know, real world season 12 and and sort of like desperate housewives, you know, or like the real, uh, housewives of orange county, like after a while you really see that they're just playing into the formula and they're just hitting all the right beats.
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And so we've also sort of learned that like even things like that that are considered reality or are sort of shot in such a way that like you're serving it to me but I can see the strings that you're, that you're sort of pulling, then it becomes, you know, even more of that filter of what is actually truly authentic.
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I think it happened with influencers too right is that the early influencers of who we sort of consider of like a lindsey lohan or a or a kim kardashian.
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The early versions of that felt very sort of authentic to who they kind of were from a personality perspective.
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But then you kind of bleed into this like what I also consider is you know you have UGC creators that also will do lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of sort of like I love everything about all the time.
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You know what I mean and you sort of start to feel like are you actually using this?
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Are you not using it?
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And so really getting to true authenticity is is the the?
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The thing I think um does that feel like it's right for for gen z is just 100 trying to hit true authenticity a thousand percent and the.
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The tricky thing with that is that a lot of that comes from just like letting people be creative and do their thing, but most brands have processes that don't allow that and they're not sort of they're still catching up with what it's like um doing social media in a way that engages people, and we just find that the biggest barrier to brands being able to do anything authentic online is that sort of um make it viral.
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Give me a viral video.
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Can you just get me one that but at the same time not giving their teams creative freedom or just the freedom to experiment and have fun with ideas and try new things and take the risk of just being fresh and not being super, super safe, which is not even.
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it's not even just like have a little bit of fun yeah, well, and be open to, to mini lawsuits on something that are not going to destroy your brand, but are also like is it nutter, butter who?
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Who was the recent one on tiktok?
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Who was like who's got that wild out there, like uh that's yeah, that's, not a butter no, oh my gosh, and everybody's talking about nutter butter and it's going all over the place and it's kind of like because you're just watching this thing being like are you unhinged?
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but but it also like that gets passed around and it's like does that do?
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I look at a pack of nutter butter now and think I'm not eating those.
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That is a crazy brand I would never like.
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You know I, I'm not touching that.
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Yeah, no of course not.
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All it does is like, well, when you're marketing just a product that has a million competitors in every market, you just have to stand out in a different way.
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And, um, I guess that's what they're, that's what they're understanding.
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They're just like okay, we're just going to do something no one else is doing.
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Yes, because it's unhinged, but in their case it works.
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So, and at the same time, that is why we really love working with you and the Stacklist team, because, just a little plug in your own podcast for you guys, this episode brought to you by by Stacklist, brought to you by by stackless um, but it's because it's rare to find a team that's sort of like, so open to like the ideas of the young people that they're working with and like fully, just, you guys just like trust us from day one and you're excited about the ideas we have and, just, you know, want to just have fun, play around.
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It's more rare than you would think.
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So I think that's a great culture to have in a company as well that you're building.
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So that's definitely great.
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I almost feel like, though, that it's going to have to go this way.
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I think of even I mean even if you go to look at Slack's Reddit like it's totally different than you see Slack out in the world, but like being okay, just having it be, sort of like adopting a bit to the Reddit community.
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But I think the brands are gonna have to be, they're gonna have to be able to evolve and not like the whole idea of having, like the Coke brand, as you think of what it was, especially in the sort of like it's this crystallized thing that is sort of set and settled.
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There's a brand book.
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Don't, don't break away from this like you've got to stay within the lanes.
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How much can you do with that?
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yeah, totally, and you get sort of set.
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But then you get settled into this like what I think of as kind of like a walmart or uh, you know, target's great now, but also target has sort of settled into this place where I imagine they say we found a good running rhythm, don't mess with it, stay on it, and what?
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happens is then six months, eight months, two years, five years, you get complacent and just staying in that and trying to like block everything out.
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You can't reinvent yourself Like I'm just making this up but a snapchat being like throw everything away, let's start over again from scratch and you're like yeah you know which, which really that reinvention um can be just huge in the authenticity exactly, exactly.
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It's just about like having space to evolve, and with a lot of the big brands it's really really hard to do that um, which means it's easier for whoever has, like, a young team or just a team that's more willing taking risks to stand out totally.
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And then you end up getting, when you have the, the people who are willing to take risks or who come on the scene.
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You sort of get that old, like I think it's procter and gamble that has gillette.
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You have this sort of gillette brand, that sort of only experiments within a small little sort of like space.
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Yeah, and so now it's like we've added rubber to the handle.
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Would you like this one?
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Or whatever.
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And then harry's comes along and just goes, whatever.
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And then it's like they're like where did they come from?
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yeah, they just you know and so, but being able to reinvent yourself like that on a regular basis is probably going to be key yeah, I like that.
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That's the.
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That's a big one.
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How like I, by the way, plug for the z-link.
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I think one of the things that I'm most impressed on that I that I love more than anything, is be coming from agency life, um, and being in the biggest agencies out there to the small boutique ones and everything above and beyond is, I think it's getting a little better about how you engage an external team to come in and work with your brand.
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Usually we had the periods where it was very formal.
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We all sat around a sort of an oak boardroom right and it was nice to meet you, and we have muffins and we have drinks or whatever, and we sort of talk about it and we write it all up, and then we sort of like we have one person that comes and visits the office once a week or whatever it is.
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You know that that old way of working was just like it was so slow and and you just waste so much time.
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I love how, basically, when we agreed to work together, you and your team just got into Slack and, like day one, we're like give us this, give us that, give us this.
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We gave you access, you got in, you started like making content and just basically kind of like immediately became part of the team and I think that is so great, the way that I'm glad to hear it.
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Yeah, I'm glad to hear it.
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We we definitely want to work fast and efficiently and it's just the best way, and we want to integrate with your team like as seamlessly as possible so that it doesn't feel like you know an external partner as much as like just a growth partner in general, that we can just kind of work with you guys in whatever way works best at any given time to make sure that we can help you with everything that we can provide.
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And so when it's a good team fit, it's fun for us like it's the best well, think about how, how slow and and how long it takes to actually start learning what works.
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If I have to authorize you into a SharePoint and then you have to come in and like onboard all your people.
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We've got to have discussions about how this is going to work.
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Are we going to use Asana?
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Then we start putting backlog items.
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You know what I mean.
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Like it's just like we're all sort of wasting so much time versus you all.
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Just come in and you start like doing content and see what happens and and what works like on day two is I don't know.
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I just love it, by the way, so don't, don't change that.
00:18:57.769 --> 00:18:59.298
That's so good to hear, thank you.
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Always great to hear because I know that our team loves working with stacklist yeah um well, so tell me like uh, when was?
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I want to know, like the week before or the day of like, around that period where you were like okay, I'm going to register a domain name.
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Like I want to do a thing your mom helps with the logo, like what was that sort of period into the first, say month or so, like.
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So I think I probably spent like maybe four, four months like preparing, which I mean a bit too long, um, but what did I know?
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And so I set up a landing page that I designed, you know, and a very average one.
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Um, I spent a lot of time just looking for a domain name and like a general name that was just SEO friendly and whatever, and, um put up some social media accounts and I did a lot of research to see how to structure an agency, because I had never worked at an agency and I had no idea, um, I didn't know really like what services to offer.
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I had freelanced in social media marketing before.
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So I, you know, I I definitely had some experience in the field, but most things I really just learned on the job, like in the first year of running the Zealand, you know, now it's been almost five, but, um, those were the initial stages like a lot of research and a lot of like scrappy bootstrapping and trying to put everything together in like as as efficiently as I could and as cost efficiently as I could too.
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I bet the reason why you and your team work so well and are so quick and efficient and is also because you didn't look at how agencies do it.
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I don't.
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I think.
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I think too many people look in category and be like, okay, here's an agency that's doing great, how do they work and what tools do they use?
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And they try and, sort of almost like cookie cutter, pick that up and try and do it again, but immediately you're sort of like constrained by how the other people did it versus building your own path.
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Yeah, I think you're right.
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I think you're right.
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It's yeah, definitely, because we didn't really have like a quickie cutter format or structure that we were going to follow at the start, like we just sort of figured out what worked best as we went along and we're still changing and evolving.
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So, as I started, like hiring the first people and building the team, because I know you've only worked with maybe five of us, but, um, we're over 20 people in total.
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So just across different projects, that just like the more the team grew, the more I got to learn what works best with our clients and like how, how we would structure it to to do the best we can for our clients.
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Basically, and it was a lot of um evolution in different directions yeah, by the way, that period of like looking for domain names and setting up accounts and seeing that you can get the same one on instagram as you can on x, like that little period, is one of my favorites.
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And you're also like you're almost putting you're coming up with names, and you're sort of you're almost putting you're coming up with names and you're sort of putting it out in the universe how easy is it to get a domain?
00:22:13.586 --> 00:22:15.017
Can I get the socials?
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I have to say it a bunch of times.
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Stack list, like I have to say it to someone.
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See how it gets received.
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Stack list is a great name.
00:22:23.662 --> 00:22:25.266
Yeah, yeah, thank you.
00:22:25.266 --> 00:22:47.265
But like that that whole thing of, I imagine, like what were some of the other options that you were thinking about during that period before you did the Z-Link and good for SEO.
00:22:47.265 --> 00:23:00.902
There was like almost nothing, and so it came because I wanted to be like a bridge between Gen Z and brands and sort of like that link between them, and yeah, hence the Z-Link.
00:23:00.902 --> 00:23:02.780
I'm just having to look back soon.
00:23:03.082 --> 00:23:03.884
That's so great.
00:23:03.884 --> 00:23:13.946
So what was the first, like your first month or so once you get it set and settled, and how did you go after or sort of get your first clients?
00:23:14.515 --> 00:23:28.813
Yeah, so what I did was, at the very start, I really just posted about the Z-Link on my Twitter and my LinkedIn and, I think, instagram, and I was just like look, I'm starting this if anyone cares, and that's how.
00:23:28.894 --> 00:23:40.925
I got and you had a good following right around that period um, on twitter I did everywhere else not really, but on twitter I had, I think, just over 10 000 followers at the time and, um, I got my first client from twitter.
00:23:40.925 --> 00:23:42.288
I think maybe my first two.
00:23:42.288 --> 00:23:46.381
That was just enough to learn how to do sales and some proposals and stuff.
00:23:46.381 --> 00:23:55.105
And then what helped a lot at the initial stage was basically the first month of the Z-Link being live.
00:23:55.105 --> 00:24:09.115
I did a lot of research to find journalists that were writing about Gen Z in just major publications online and I DMed a journalist on Twitter and I was like, hey, just so you know, I've just you know I love your writing on Gen Z list on Twitter.
00:24:09.115 --> 00:24:14.807
And I was like, hey, just so you know, I've just you know I love your writing on Gen Z and I I just launched this agency consultancy focusing on our generation.
00:24:14.807 --> 00:24:16.199
It's going to be a fully Gen Z team.
00:24:16.199 --> 00:24:21.320
Like, if you ever need a source and I can ever help in any way with a story you're writing, just let me know.
00:24:22.123 --> 00:24:44.026
And it just turned out that she was writing a story about Gen Z consultants sort of like Gen Z marketing as a concept, and so she featured the Z-Link in her list of like three or four marketing agencies slash consultancies and that was for Business Insider and that ended up bringing a whole bunch of clients actually for a while.
00:24:44.026 --> 00:24:46.557
And then she wrote about us again and again.
00:24:46.557 --> 00:24:55.465
I think she did a full solo profile on me too a few months later and it was just great for business More than she knew.
00:24:55.465 --> 00:25:01.785
Like I told her I was like I owe you a bunch of clients, but that was just because of just a DM really.
00:25:01.785 --> 00:25:06.787
So like being smart about getting press coverage at the start helped a lot.
00:25:07.175 --> 00:25:11.338
I love that process, by the way, and you detail it and I have the PDF.
00:25:11.338 --> 00:25:14.545
I'll have to link it in the stack for this episode.
00:25:14.705 --> 00:25:16.169
It's such a great way to.
00:25:17.015 --> 00:25:21.186
I think too many people think about, like you know, all of the sort of formal ways of doing it.
00:25:21.186 --> 00:25:38.779
But I love those sort of early scrappy sort of processes of being able to reach out and find stuff like that and I imagine that helped with 30 under 30 too, is having the business insider stuff too right definitely yeah it, it must have.
00:25:39.141 --> 00:25:52.703
um, I guess there's a lot of things that they look into, but um, like getting a lot of press in the first two years or so, just by really reaching out to a whole lot of people, was something I would definitely recommend.
00:25:53.535 --> 00:25:54.961
Yeah amazing.
00:25:54.961 --> 00:25:59.157
So all of a sudden, you went from registering domain names and putting up.
00:25:59.157 --> 00:26:02.018
Hey, by the way, I'm starting this thing to like whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:26:02.018 --> 00:26:05.961
Hold on, everybody, line up, We'll get to you in order.
00:26:05.961 --> 00:26:09.501
Is that when you started bringing team members on?
00:26:09.521 --> 00:26:12.601
Yes, so it was kind of like that.
00:26:12.601 --> 00:26:17.826
Yeah, little by little, it was really like scrappy.
00:26:17.826 --> 00:26:21.065
I just figured out the structure of the team as we were doing it.
00:26:21.065 --> 00:26:22.240
But yeah, it was kind of like that.
00:26:22.240 --> 00:26:35.025
There was a year where we went from like five people to 20 or something like that and then had enough capacity in the team and enough people to not really need to hire more for a while.
00:26:35.025 --> 00:26:41.384
So it was just a matter of having enough projects at the same time that allowed us to hire in a smart way.
00:26:41.384 --> 00:26:45.506
And we were getting from the start of the Z-Link existing.
00:26:45.506 --> 00:26:50.596
We were getting a lot of inbound from a lot of gen z content creators wanting to work with us.
00:26:50.596 --> 00:27:05.405
I think they just wanted like a fun remote environment that would be, um, full of people their age, like just doing fun things and being creative, and so we got lucky with the people that reached out, because that's how I found most of the people in the team.
00:27:05.405 --> 00:27:11.768
Like I never had to do a very like traditional hiring process ever, um.
00:27:12.896 --> 00:27:23.189
So, yeah, I've kind of like that good, lucky did was this were you searching on like uh, fiverr and upwork and other places and then started to sort of build your network, or was it?
00:27:23.289 --> 00:27:32.363
like friends and family or social I think maybe one person came from Upwork and stayed as a full team member.
00:27:32.363 --> 00:27:36.002
The rest came from social media.
00:27:36.002 --> 00:27:47.522
We got a lot of TikTok DMs, a lot of Instagram DMs, and then if we needed someone for a role, I would always post on our Instagram and then people would just send in their portfolios.
00:27:47.522 --> 00:27:50.355
So a lot of social media-based hiring.
00:27:50.355 --> 00:28:00.211
And then we started building a network of people that were submitting their interest to work with us, but we didn't have yet the capacity to take them on.
00:28:00.211 --> 00:28:05.519
So we vetted the ones that we liked and we built a network of maybe a couple hundred that were interested.
00:28:05.519 --> 00:28:18.049
And so when we needed a network of maybe a couple hundred um that were interested, and so when we needed a project to hire for in short notice, we would just tap into our network of, like, pre-vetted people that we knew wanted to work with us, um, and say, hey, there's a project if you'd like it.
00:28:18.049 --> 00:28:22.354
So that was good as well nice, well built.
00:28:22.453 --> 00:28:40.346
Building a social company and building up the social following makes it easy for hiring and sourcing, because you don't have to go out and use agencies or look too much on boards or things like that when you can just say here's what I've got and everyone kind of comes to you.
00:28:40.346 --> 00:28:40.988
That's awesome.
00:28:41.069 --> 00:28:42.837
What was it like for you like hiring?
00:28:50.170 --> 00:28:51.173
was it like for you like hiring?
00:28:51.173 --> 00:28:53.638
I started, uh, I've sort of run development and design and operation teams for in agencies for a long time.
00:28:53.659 --> 00:29:16.481
So I sort of did the hiring and sourcing and um, and for me, I started this as a side project and I really I um our current developer who builds our browser extensions I connected with on Upwork was like I have a thing and I made the worst crude site like wireframes for how it should look.
00:29:16.481 --> 00:29:19.217
I was like here's an Ellume video.
00:29:19.217 --> 00:29:24.256
I'm like here's what I'm thinking, and I think it was like 500 bucks, and he and I started working on it.
00:29:24.256 --> 00:29:31.576
And then I got this sort of working prototype and when, when I used it for the first time, I was like oh my gosh, this is the thing.
00:29:31.576 --> 00:29:34.319
And so I just knew like that I just had to keep going.
00:29:34.319 --> 00:29:41.747
And so, yeah, I had gone back to some of my network and then, between Upwork and Fiverr and now our biggest one, we use Contra a lot.
00:29:42.329 --> 00:29:42.991
Oh, I love Contra.
00:29:42.991 --> 00:29:44.576
Oh yeah, that's where we found you as well.
00:29:45.617 --> 00:29:46.560
Oh yeah.
