The Nomadic Executive | Discussions With Digital Nomads and Online Entrepreneurs

TikTok, Crowd-Sourcing Content, and the Future of Content Creation With Forbes 30 Under 30 Anish Dalal | TNE079

August 16, 2021 Omar Mo Episode 79
The Nomadic Executive | Discussions With Digital Nomads and Online Entrepreneurs
TikTok, Crowd-Sourcing Content, and the Future of Content Creation With Forbes 30 Under 30 Anish Dalal | TNE079
Show Notes Transcript

How do you become a part of Forbes 30 Under 30 club? In this episode, I am joined by someone who has achieved this highly coveted honor - Anish Dalal, the CEO and co-founder of SAPPHIRE Apps Media and co-host of the Stacking Growth podcast. Join us as Anish takes us back to the beginning of his business journey, from manning the candy aisle at one of their family’s convenience stores to the time he built an app for three figures and received a doubled return, and how these experiences taught him to set his sights on opportunities where others haven’t bothered to look. 


In this episode, Anish shares how watching trends for various platforms allows his agency to smoothly adapt to the ever-changing landscape of social media platforms. Anish also goes into detail about how crowd-sourcing content has made it possible for his agency to create a sustainable and cohesive environment that allows his team of creatives to come up with high-performing content that converts on paid media. Listen on as Anish shares some incredible value for aspiring creative agency owners and creators. 


Timestamps:

[1:19]Anish Dalal’s Introduction to Business

[4:12]How Anish got to work for NASA

[8:36]Do degrees and diplomas really matter anymore?

[14:16]What Anish realized after making six figures on a single app

[21:13]This is the coolest part of running a B2B business according to Anish Dalal

[36:54]This is how crowd-sourcing content can make your business sustainable & profitable


Anish's Links

Get in touch with Anish Dalal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anish-dalal-1b503472/
Learn more about Sapphire Studios: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sapphirestudioscontent/ | https://www.sapphirestudios.co/

Omar's (Host) Social Media:

Instagram - @nomadables

TikTok - @nomadables

Facebook Group - NOMADABLES - Accountability & Growth Community for Remote Workers- Perfect to meet fellow online entrepreneurs, remote workers, and digital nomads.

YouTube - Omar Mo

LinkedIn - Omar Mo Nomads Cast

Twitter - @nomadables

Pintrest - @nomadables

Clubhouse - @pods

WEBSITE: https://www.nomadables.com/

Support the show

TikTok, Crowd-Sourcing Content, and the Future of Content Creation With Forbes 30 Under 30 Anish Dalal | TNE079


Omar

On today's episode, we're going to be covering some fairly new concepts in the online business and social media world. These concepts may seem newish to most of you, but to our guest today, they've been his bread and butter for years. Tik Tok, creator marketplaces, crowdsourcing content, and the future of content creation are all things that our guest is an expert of. 


We're joined by Anish Dalal, an entrepreneur who's built a $5 million a year agency that has Tik Tok as a client, and has been on Forbes 30 under 30. Anish and I play with concepts that gave me some fantastic ideas during the show. In fact, there'll be moments in this show where you'll hear me really geek out about some potential business ideas that can be built off the new wave of content creation, business ideas that if executed properly, could help you carve out your own life of freedom and fulfillment. 


Either way, definitely one of the most eye opening episodes I've ever done. Stay tuned.


Intro  

You're listening to The Nomadic Executive hosted by Omar from nomadables.com. 


Join Omar as he sits down and speaks with leading online entrepreneurs, remote workers and digital nomads about everything from business strategy to travel and lifestyle design. 


Together, we're here to help you achieve a life of happiness, health and freedom. And now here's your host, Omar Mo.


Omar 

All right. Anish, welcome to The Nomadic Executive man, finally glad to have you on. 


Anish

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. 


Omar

Yeah, so, Anish is a friend of my friend Craig, shout out to Craig over here. If you listen to the podcast, which I don't know if his, if you listen to it too much, but I know he does once in a while. Yeah, Anish is a friend of my friend Craig was a really good friend of mine. And Anish runs an agency, which has evolved over the years and is now a creative agency for creatives, for ads spaces, specifically, right, paid advertisement? 


And recently, he's made Forbes 30 under 30. He's a multimillionaire doing what he's doing. And he's just enjoying himself. And today we have the pleasure of having him on. So how are you Anish?


Anish Dalal  

Thank you. I mean, it's great. I'm currently in Arizona in Scottsdale right now. So it's great just enjoying the nomadic life I guess.


Omar  

That's pretty much it. Right? I mean, you've been moving around. He just moved from where recently?


Anish Dalal  

So I'm in Chicago, but I just came to Scottsdale to visit my business partner. And he actually convinced me to get a condo here. So literally just placed an offer, like five minutes before this call.


Omar  

That's funny. Last minute decision it sounds like, eh?


Anish Dalal  

Yeah. Yeah. I was like, sometimes, yeah, thinking too much is not a good thing. So if something feels right, you should just do it.

 

Omar  

I agree. That's something we definitely stand behind what we're doing overall, really, people never take the leap to really make that decision in life, right? Whether it's travel or business or whatever, but sometimes you just gotta do it. 


Anish

Yeah. 100% agree. 


Omar

So why don't you tell my audience a little bit about who you are and what you do and Anish?


Anish 

Sure. Um, so a little bit about me is, I guess I'll just take it back. I grew up in Chicago, Illinois. As I was growing up, my parents were immigrants, they had the typical convenience store. And, you know, before I would go home every day, one of the stores we had, were right by my school. So I would run over to the store, stay there with my mom until my dad came, like four or five hours later from another store we owned, to let us, you know, relieve us to go home. And it was just really cool. 



Like, my mom did something really awesome in the sense that, you know, she would make sure that I just wasn't sitting, you know, at the store? She put me in charge of  the candy section. She said, Okay, this is your budget, you can introduce whatever candies, you want to what your goal is to, you know, run a profitable candy section. 


And that's where I kind of like, fell in love with business. It was just like a game, and it's so much fun. And so, yeah, that was the start of the bug. And then, you know, experienced the internet. You know, I did my version of the lemonade stand, which was I started selling on ebay when I was like, 15.


Omar  

So you always had like, some entrepreneurial spirit inside of you. And it kind of runs in the family too, from what it sounds like.


Anish

Yeah, absolutely. Like it was a, it was just so much fun, like, did the eBay thing, sold things on eBay, therefore learned about the internet, and then started making websites selling things on websites. After that, what I actually used to live with Craig was when I was selling Kindle ebooks on Amazon, I would hire writers from the Philippines, to write about trending topics.


Omar

Right.


Anish 

To put together in a book, a digital book. And then I always sell Kindle eBooks. So like tens of thousands of books. And then that got me into apps. And that kind of brought me to the business where I am today. Got into the app space, got really good at making apps and making them trendy in the App Store. 


Then the company started reaching out to me and be like, “Hey, like we see your own apps are doing well, can you help us market ours?” 


And then that's kind of where my agency started. And then a few years later, I met my business partner. And then we started doing performance marketing, meaning company comes to us, I was like, Hey, can you get us a buyer for five bucks? Like, Yes, we can. And we get them customers. And that transition to where we are today. We were really focused on the creative, and the content that goes into paid ads. And yeah, our whole business, our whole team. That's all we focus on now.


Omar  

Right. So going back a little bit here. You worked at NASA, surprisingly, for a while and you which means you got a degree, obviously. So why are you doing this whole entrepreneurial thing? Why did you decide to go the school route and then get a degree?


Anish 

Okay, so this is actually pretty funny. I always wanted to do the entrepreneurial journey. I always want to run my own business. But obviously, having remembered like immigrant parents, it wasn't because they're like, we'll get a job, right.

 

And I even remember what like I was at the career fair. I already had an internship for the summer. But I was just going to support my friend because he was still looking for jobs. I went with him and then he was interviewing in lines and stuff. 


And I saw NASA and like since I was growing up another thing is, I loved business and I love space. The core of that is just, I'm a really curious person. And to me, like space is the ultimate curiosity of like, what else is out there? 


Same thing with business, right? Like, I won't know, I don't know what I'm gonna be doing next year, the next two years like, this is changing drastically. So there's always that sense of like, you don't know what you're going to do tomorrow. 


So NASA was in line, I just got into line, I'm like, I'll try to, you know, talk to them. I talked to them. I got a co-op, I got into the co-op program, which Craig is also in or wasn't No, he worked full time. And then I was like, whatever cool. I love space, like, let me go work at NASA for a little bit. 


And this is like, while I'm in school, so the co-op program was you go one semester to NASA, you could do one semester at school, one semester, NASA. It was awesome. I met some of the smartest people there. It was great. 


But the coolest thing that happened was that NASA as long as you're a co-op, once you get into the co-op program, you get an automatic job, essentially, it's like the hard part is getting to the program. If you're supposed to go there three times, three tours. And once you're done, they give you a full time offer. Right? 


Found a little loophole. The loophole was as long as you were a student, and you kept coming back for co-op tours, the offer was always pending. So as long as you didn't graduate, you always had a job offer pending for a year.


Omar  

Right.


Anish Dalal  

So then what I did was like, because by this, like I was business so much more interesting to me. And like really important, I really wanted to do it. And so it was fun. So then what I did was I started taking one class a semester, online, you know, just work on my business. So the NASA offer would keep pending. 


So that's how I got my parents off my back. Because for the last two to three years, like after I should have been done with school, my NASA offer was just pending, because I was still a student. Right?


Omar  

So did you tell them?


Anish Dalal

I never graduated.


Omar

Did you tell them hey, like, I'm just taking one class or working on my business? Or did you kind of keep a front on with your parents?


Anish Dalal  

I mean, my parents knew, but NASA didn't know. So. So yeah, they didn't know. So it was great. Because of NASA, I got my parents off my back. And then and you know, the Indian parents are like, super intense, like the business had to get to an ash, like, an unreasonable amount of revenue for them to be like, okay, you could do this full time.


Omar

Right. 


Anish Dalal

Which I probably couldn't have done if I was full time anywhere else, or doing anything else. So NASA was awesome. I got to engage my curiosity, and it helped me, you know, and pursue what I wanted to. 


And to your question I never graduated to have a semester life. So yeah, it was funny to think back, like, why the hell not just go finish the semester, you know, dude, like, since I was little, I always, like, wanted to be that guy to drop out, go to California. And I'm like,


Omar   

Ah, you want that edge to your story? 


Anish Dalal  

And like not gonna be honest, not for anybody else. But like for me, because when I was growing up, I was like, Damn, those guys. Like, they dropped out. They started business in California. I get it. And like, like, that's exactly what I wanted to be. So like, I feel like if I finished school, that's like, like...


Omar

It removes the age. 


Anish Dalal

Yeah, removes the edge. It’s just like, it's less cool to me. I was like, you know...


Omar  

I get it. No, this is such a problem that a lot of entrepreneurs our age have. Like I was speaking to entrepreneurs about this the other day, I went to this little Mastermind in Miami, just over this past weekend. And I was speaking to, like, a group of people that are doing way more than I am right. 


And I was speaking to them. And one of them was a high school dropout, right. So he used to run YouTube ads on... “I dropped out of high school.” That's how he would start his first sentence, right. And that caught a lot of people's attention. 


So I was sitting down, and my friend Michael was there too. He’s also kind of my mentor. And I was speaking to him like, so what's your edge? And he's like, well, I don't know, like, I come from a loving family, didn't have anything, dark past or anything like that, you know, I don't know what my edge is, like, I just, I just am an entrepreneur. I don't know what to say. 


So he thought about it for a little bit. And he's like, Ah, you know what, I figured it out. I know what my edge is gonna be. I'm like, what's your edge? And he goes, he says, I'm gonna purposely mess up my business, and then start a new business just to say that I failed one business.


And I'm like, okay, dude, go for it. And that was his edge ever since then he started using all of his ads and stuff on it. So I thought it was really really funny that people actually think that way.


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, no, like, at the end of the day, and like a more like serious way. It's just, you know, I don't want a piece of paper to tell me like, what job I should get or what I shouldn't. I really think we live in an amazing time or like your performance as an individual, the opportunities you get, right. So I just kind of don't want to give in to that structure, like the education system, but not a ding on it. 


I think there's a lot of like, good times when you should graduate. Like, if you're getting if you're a doctor, or if you're an accountant, you need some, like, you need the paper to make it work. But if you're an entrepreneurial business, like you don't need the paper, so..


Omar  

Absolutely. I mean, when there's like, 18 year old kids running around making multiple millions a year, like, it tells you that you don't really need a piece of paper at all, to really show you what you're worth, you know?


Anish Dalal  

Exactly. So like, that's the more serious part of it. But, and, yeah, like, also, I always like to tell that story, because I didn't like people thinking, Oh, you dropped out of school, you took the risk? It was a very calculated risk, like you don't like, I feel like entrepreneurship or whatnot. 


It's not, it's not people taking crazy risks all the time, there are a bunch of calculated risks. And, you know, eventually they pay off. So, you know, I didn't like, it was literally my senior year, and I had one semester left.


Omar  

Right, so I guess walk us through that journey, then right? You had your business going by a little bit then. And when you say serious revenue for your parents to kind of get them off your back by your senior year, what kind of revenue were you bringing in monthly?


Anish Dalal  

So my senior year, college, my business was doing around like 400k and 500k in revenue a year. So like... So and I still need a two to three years to do the NASA thing to get my parents off my back. So it was still loading. We're still getting to where I needed to go.


Omar  

Right. And then that's when he took the risk of like, you know what, I'm gonna go all in on this. And this was still the mobile app marketing company.


Anish Dalal  

Yeah. So actually, I went all in technically two to three years after that, because I was still doing the NASA thing.


Omar  

Oh, you're keeping them on that leash?


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, exactly. So two to three years later, I think. Yeah. Like, I was doing a pretty much a million dollars in revenue.


Omar

Right. 


Anish Dalal

And it was through the mobile apps where I was making…


Omar  

And that's what it took for your parents to finally realize that, “Hey, this is enough now. It was a million dollars.”


Anish Dalal

It took a million dollars to get them off my back? 


Omar

What kind of margins were you hitting with that at that point?


Anish Dalal  

Oh, I mean, they were intense. Like, I was definitely like, I mean, the biggest cut was Apple's cut. They take 30%. But my losses by 10%. So yeah, 60%, probably.


Omar  

That’s nuts, damn. So that's, I guess that's a good metric for all my Indian listeners here, right? You want your parents off your back, start hitting 60% margins with a million revenue a year, and you'll be good to go.


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, I think that was the thing. I was like, Oh my gosh, and like, it's so funny, because then they're like, Oh, you made it quickly, you know, I can go away quickly. I'm like, Mom, literally, I was, I was in my room, in my parents’ house. I wasn't spending any money. And that was actually great, too. 


It was like, don't spend before you have money. That's like the worst feeling ever. Don't tell anybody how much you making. Like just do your thing. Have fun. And then once you're making a shit ton, then go buy stuff. 


But don't ever put pressure on yourself in terms of like, performing in terms of like making money. Because the whole time this was just - it was so much fun. It was like a game like every day I'd wake up I'd see like, how much my apps made. And, yeah, it was just a game. It was a fun one.


Omar  

Well, before we move on to the transition here of like the mobile app going in, or the mobile app business, the lead business or the mobile app business, in general, going through something else, I wanted to see if you get some like applicable advice to some of my aspiring entrepreneurs that actually listen to this show. 


I mean, I am in the agency business model myself. So I know how easy and non revenue intensive a business model like that is. But just those initial steps for someone is always scary, right? And I speak a lot about agency business models in this business. 


But for you, like even while you were in school, you were doing something full time while you started this business up. So do you have any pieces of advice that you could give somebody that maybe is just starting out or maybe has a full time job? Or maybe it's going to school just like you were and just to take those initial first steps to maybe start their own agency or their own business?


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, absolutely. Once again, we live in amazing times. And the one thing that really helped me was the businesses I pursued, were not capital intensive at all. Like when I started the app business, I still remember I spent $400, making my first app and I don't code. So it's just being resourceful and understanding trends and demand. 


So just to give you a little background about that, at that time in the App Store, everybody was trying to make the next billion dollar company, right? They're all raising a shit ton of money, and then trying to make the next Facebook or the next Instagram. But there's all this opportunity inside the app store where like, you know, like very niche apps could do well, you know, like, oh edit my pictures or a coloring app are like, they're very basic apps. 


But people aren't going into them. Because, you know, they might just make you a few $100 a day, right? So what I did was I saw all that demand. And I'm like, hey, like, what if I just become the guy that hits consistent singles? Like, I don't want to hit like, I don't want to hit home runs all day, like all day. So I saw the demand there. And then I was, the one thing I would give myself credit for is like just being resourceful and like finding coders to do it. 


My first app was 400 bucks. And it went on to make like, like, I think close to a hundred grand. And like, but that's to show you don't really need money to make money in the internet. You just have to find opportunities and hit the trends properly. And then I took the money I made off the trends, like this was quick money. I couldn't like..


Omar

Grow anymore. 


Anish Dalal

Yeah, yeah, you like you could grow to a few million bucks. But like, at the end of the day, then you want a real business, right? Like you want something that can last, you can consistently invest into. Then you got to take your winnings and like invest it into something more sustainable, where like margins are more normalized and things like that. 


So I would always say, look for the demand, don't try to create the demand. If you're not tied to any specific type of product, you're just like, I want to, I want to run a business, if that's your main calling, that was mine, right? I could rent a wood company, I could run an agency, I just want to be successful in business. So the product itself doesn't matter to me, I just enjoy the process of building a business, right? 


So I just went to all the platforms where there was demand, like you go to the platforms, before anybody else does when there's demand. So like in the App Store, back then a lot of demand low supply. So just figure out what the moves are, you know, see what people are searching for, I remember I would do, I would go to the ad, like Apple just came out with, you know, Apple ads. 


And when he would buy ads, it would show you how many people are searching for that specific keyword in the App Store. So then I would go look for high keyword searches that had low app results. I'm like, okay, a bunch of people are searching for this. There's no apps catering to the demand, let's make something. So my first piece of advice would just be cater to already existing demand. And you should get like immediate revenue and immediate profits. And then from there, just keep building on that insight.


Omar  

Solid insight there. So find product market fit before you actually build a product, right? 


Anish Dalal

100%. 


Omar

So carry on from there. So like you, you built the app, you did keyword research, you found what to build, you built the app, you got it real quick money, and you invested it back into the business. And that's where that's where the app marketing business came for other people, right? 


So when you got that stable enough, and where was that transition for you? Was it again, knowing your train of thought here? Was it when you started seeing a trend in a different space and just started moving your business that way?


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, like, there was definitely like one trend. I think I did it for like two or three years. And I just noticed a bunch of people copying my apps, right? Oh, my apps would do really well. And then I bet like, there's just people watching what apps I mean, and they're just copying them, right? 


And it was annoying, because like, there wasn't any necessary IP I had or whatnot. They were just like, you know, niche apps. And I'm like, okay, like, I can't come up with great ideas for the App Store forever. It works while I'm young. And I kind of know what's happening and whatnot, but I can't do that forever. 


So then I just started looking around, like businesses, I can actually build like, right for a while I look at some of my top performing app. So I had like 500 apps, and I had some top performing ones. I'm like, Okay, what if I invested a bunch of my money back into one app and made it into like a brand, right? 


I still remember like, looking back, like, an example was, um, one was like, I had this like Cards Against Humanity type of like, app. And for some reason Cards Against Humanity always said they wouldn't make an app. It just like, against your stuff. And it was like a similar game. And I'm like, dude, if I like put real money into this, I can make this into like, a pretty popular app. So it's looking to that and you know, just looking at other opportunities. 


And then the opportunity just came to me, people started asking me for advice. So at that same time, the app store was getting very competitive. So I was like, Okay, now all these people are rushing into the App Store. Everyone's seeing clear, like, dollars here. You know, the classic analogy is like, if everyone's digging for gold, like, let's just like, let's call them shovels. 


So I'm like, how about I provide a service for all these apps to acquire users, and they can figure out their own business models. And that's where that kind of happened. Yeah, started providing, you know, marketing to all these app companies.


Omar  

So at that point, I mean, the way that you were getting users was straight through keyword research and basically filling in the gaps where a product wasn't there, when you transitioned to getting other apps users. I'm guessing they weren't coming with you like, “Hey, I don't have an idea. Can you give me an idea for an app?” 


They're probably coming to you with, “Hey, I have this app that I want more users on.” So to make up for that, which is a completely different strategy than what you were doing, whenever you're building your own apps, what did you do? Like? Did you start running Facebook ads? Like what was your do?


Anish Dalal  

Yeah. And that was just a learning process in itself. Like, the first step I was actually selling is called ASO App Store optimization. So I would like go get organic traffic for these guys. I would do their ASO, I would optimize their screenshots I would optimize listing. 


So like basically SEO for the App Store. Okay. And that's basically what I was doing my own apps. And it was really cool with these guys. Like, even my minor changes would completely like I would just keeping an open mind and like seeing what my clients were asking me they're like, “Oh Anish, do you also do ads?”


Omar

Right. 


Anish Dalal

Yeah, I do ads. No, I don't. But like, I'll figure it out and tell him that but, you know, you figure it out.


Omar  

Is that an agency? Like? Get the work before you figure anything out, right?


Anish Dalal

Exactly! Right. And like the coolest part about running a B2B business is the probability of success is so much higher than a consumer facing business because your clients or your customers, and I always keep asking my clients, what else do they need? What like, what what gaps are you facing, right? Your clients will essentially give you your next business plan for the next two years. 


And as you keep growing, growing, and keep asking, and then what do you get to do is like, you have all these offerings, and then you trim like, okay, I want to focus on this. And then you grow again, then you trim again, and then you I want to focus on this. So yeah, it was I started off, initially with what I knew. And then I was just reactive to what clients were asking me and then learning. 


And, um, yeah, and there was like a little, even a little side component where like, not got distracted for a little bit. But like, I remember the celebrity emoji apps were super hot. That's how I met my business partner that I currently have. He was like, really good at just reaching out to people. So he get a hold of celebrities, and I was gonna do in the business stuff. And, yeah, we started like, doing a celebrity emoji app stuff. And then we're like, after a while, we're just like, why don't we just do marketing for these people? You know. So that's kind of how that transition happened with a slight detour.


Omar  

I get it. That's a pretty funny story. It's somebody how celebrity emoji apps ended up in there, which I'm not surprised, to be honest. I remember using one myself for, like..


Anish Dalal

They were really popular for the time being so…


Omar

Yeah, nice. So at that point, you're filling in gaps, there was something interesting that you said there to me that I know a lot of agency owners get stuck on. And I mean, getting clients is always the first problem. But once you solve that the service delivery becomes way too broad, and you try to narrow it down. 


So you mentioned that you started narrowing down the offer, and you cut off the fat, you'd focus on once one thing, but then you start adding more things on again. And when you started adding those more things on again, I'm guessing it was when the trend started to change a little bit, and you could offer new services, and then you cut down. 


So really, the business is never, because I think so many people have this idea of like, Oh, I'm going to pick one service. And I'm going to offer that for the rest of my life. Business, and especially with such a, like, ever changing landscape, which is the internet, that's just not possible.


Anish Dalal

Right? 


Omar

So in my head, like for me, you've been the ups and downs in business, you've seen this now the different paths that people take, how long do you think like a solid idea? If you catch it at a good time? Can it really last in your business before you have to start pivoting here and there?


Anish Dalal  

You know, the fundamental idea, I think, can last a really long time. So the way we arrived to just doing content and creative was, you know, me, my business partner, like started to do our agency circa like, 2017. You know, we had goals. We had financial goals, initially, right? And we hit our financial goals. And then it's like, what's the, like, Are we just gonna keep making money forever? Like, what's the goal? Right? 


And then I was like, No, I like the next goal for me is to make an amazing product. And by product being the agency. Like, I want to make something so great that we keep consistent delivering one thing or a few things very, very well, and people love it, right?


Omar

Right.


Anish Dalal

That's doable. So then the next thing I did was after that, I hit up all of our mentors that we knew and all the agency owners that we knew that ran like billion dollar agencies. Billion dollar agencies, and like even like 100 to $500 million agencies, so like very large agencies or agencies that got acquired. 


And my key metric was I all these guys at least had to be 10 years old, like the company had to be 10 years old. Because I'm like, in the agency world, you're consistently delivering service, right? So if like, how do you keep doing a good job forever, right? How do you last? 


So all the guys I talked with our 10 years older or more, all had a fundamental like string that attached all of them. They all did ads. And what I mean by this was, these guys weren't doing like Facebook and Instagram ads, they were doing like high production ads, right? 


And they're doing some form of high production content. And then, you know, that kind of made sense to me, I was like, okay, content, like, if you're doing performance marketing forever, it's really hard. Because like, when you scale, you can't always like when it's you and your co founder, you're like, really good at growth hacking. So if you can kind of do the performance marketing part. But like, as you grow, you can't always be on the latest trends. 


Like, right, if you're trying to run like a 500% business. It's just not gonna happen. But with content, you content, it's more subjective. And you can actually make great content and to have like, proper, like, you know, synergies and understanding of what makes good content. So that's kind of where we got to our current business. I was like, I want to do content. But I want to do like the New Age way. I don't want to do what these guys are doing. But I understand to have a business that can last for a decade, all these agency guys did content. 


Omar 

In one form or another.


Anish Dalal

Yeah, in one form or another, right? Because they were all doing like Coke ads and like, Sue, like, things like that. But the key thing there was, what do you do content, there's a key deliverable, right? Make an ad for me. Okay. This is the ad I made based on your constraints. Here's a key deliverable. 


For like scalable businesses, there needs to be a key deliverable. When it's like performance marketing, it's a little tough, because everyone can be like, oh, acquire a user for me for six bucks, and I'll pay you whatever you need to pay. It's because they can't get anybody for six bucks, or can you get any for ten bucks, right? 


So of course, they're gonna be like, I'll pay you a bajillion dollars, if you give me people for six bucks. But like, every time you're kind of figuring out a new business, and you're not really scaling knowledge. So that's what I saw with content. 


And that's kind of why I transitioned, we kind of pivoted the business. Because me and my business partners, like, you know, we hit our goals that we had, initially. But like, what's our next goal? We want to create an awesome business


Omar  

Make sense. It's funny, since I'm in the content business as well, right? There's one thing that I have noticed that is a key differentiation between content based businesses versus like performance based businesses, right? 


And that is, and this, at least from my understanding is, but I would love your insight on this, because you've been in the game for longer than I have. It's that content businesses aren't nearly as scalable as performance based businesses. 


You know, they're just more time intensive, they take more man hours. They can't be templated. If they want to do it properly, you can’t template it, like, for example, repurpose as just creates templates. But even then, there's a particular design that fits each brand. And, you know, there's only so far that you can go with a template. 


So how have you managed to scale a creative business the way that you have? What's the thing is intensive as that?


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, that's a great question. Because like, that's one thing I thought of, initially right away, right? As we were transitioning the business from performance to like, concentrated, I remember the first client, we landed, it literally took my whole team to run that deal, right. 


And I was like, dude, like, my whole team. And like, it was probably 1% of revenue, right? And my whole team can go generate 99%, like the other revenue. So like, 1% of revenue, took my whole team. 


And I was like, Okay, I know, like, but like, I was super bullish on like, I know, contents of future, I'm gonna I need to figure this out. So the thing there was, I wanted to start getting into content where I don't need PMs, always talking to the client. So the hard part with content is it's very subjective, right? Which is a pro and a con con and scaling a pro in, you know, like, when you're delivering product. 


So the initial deal that we did was pretty much like shooting YouTube social for a new Sas company, right? So they wanted some nice videos that they can run as YouTube premium, right? Okay. But I took my whole team to run that deal. Plus, it took us like two to three months, way longer than any performance and vertex. 


And it took so much hand holding and like so much communication. And like, I was kind of getting yelled at the client. I was kind of getting in trouble from the client every now and then because like, we were set up to handle that much communication back and forth, because performance was more like, give me your like, give me what you need. I'll go get it for you. Don't ask how I did it. Just make sure it's quality. Once you get your customers. 


So from that process I learned, I do not want to be in the high production business, there's a lot of people that do it, they do it really well. Awesome. But from that business, you know, as we were collecting content clients, we noticed what our sweet spot was, our sweet spot was like performance content. 


So you know, going back to her performance, you know, background, but performance content is quick, short ads that are very UGC in nature, that we can pump out a lot of, and give to media buyers, on these teams that are, you know, have a thirst to acquire new customers through paid, right. 


So the business model we kind of developed around it was, we want to be on the lower end of content in terms of quality, but high volume. Because we found content is a one interesting space where, you know, something that costs less can actually perform way better than a million dollar ad, right? 


If you had a million dollar production shoot, and you ran it on Facebook ads, as opposed to if I just pulled up my phone and like said something about a product, but made it look super organic…


Omar

Right.


Anish Dalal

Fifty dollar ad very much could compete with a million dollar ad.


Omar 

I see that without a doubt. 


Anish Dalal

Yeah. Right. So... So there's that interesting part of the business, right? Like all these guys are competing on the high production area. But at the end of the day, all these companies solely deliver numbers, right? They need to deliver customers, they have numbers, hey. So it's like, instead of being in this area, where I would have to have a bunch of PMS, high quality PMS, to hold the customers’ hands, a lot of communication going back and forth, essentially a team for each client. 


And that's not the business I wanted to make. Like, that's too people intensive. So I was like, What if we just make a company where we're really good at noticing trends for content, we can pump out high volumes of content, and we can send it to our customers or media buyers, because content burns out quickly, the more money you spend on it, right? So if I can supply my media buyers with, you know, 50 pieces of content every week, they're awesome. They're AV testing it and they random things work. Right?


Omar  

At this point, just so I have some contacts here, just so we have some context. You still have media buyers, but at the same time, you're still making the creative too.


Anish Dalal  

So we have media buyers. And when I say media buyers, we're usually handing it off to the clients, media buyers, okay. But the media buying part of our company's very small. So I actually want to get rid of that too. I just want to be like, Hey, this is content, take it media buyers. Our client for whatever, all the brands we work with running, because it also helps you do two things. anytime something goes wrong in an ad account, like the agency always gets in trouble for it. 


Or if CPM prices spike one week, it's like media buyers. Why did the CPM spike? And a lot of times, it's like stocks, there's really no answer. It's just like, dude, Facebook, just price it high this week. But the clients want an answer, right? Like the best business is scaling is where there's a clear deliverable. 


So for us, it's like, here's the content. This is content we've made, it's based on trends, it works. we've crossed references sit against all the other clients in their data. This is the most optimized content for the week of April 21, 2021. Based on all their data points, here's content, their media values, go and run it. And that's it. 


And that allows our business to be very scalable. And we can move quickly, because we have a clear deliverable.


Omar  

All of this is making total sense. But what I'm so curious about is so you're creating these optimized pieces of content, right? There's two things I'm actually curious about. Number one, what does this content look like? 


It... is this…  I know from what, from my understanding, it's probably like 10 to 30-second videos, but what does it look like? How much production goes into it? And how rough is it versus how polished? 


And the second thing that I'm curious about is you will deliver the deliverable, essentially at a certain date. And then you say that this is the best piece of content for that week. How do you know what's going to be the best piece of content for that week ahead of time?


Anish Dalal  

Got it. So to go off the answer first. You know, when I say for that week, it's more in generalities like this is the current trends for this week. 


Omars

Makes sense.


Anish Dalal

We're watching trends. Like we're watching TikTok trends. We're watching Snapchat trends. We're watching YouTube trends. But a really easy one to describe is like let's focus on TikTok. There's a lot of great... 


We have a team, we're just they just look at tick doctrines. And they look at those trends and they're like, Okay, this is a trend on Tick tock, but how can we make this into an ad?


So there might be, you know, a funny, you know, a funny ad or a unique ad or not ad but trend on Tick tock, and we're always thinking how can we make that into an ad for you know, said CPG company, right. So, yeah, so that's how we focused on trends.


Omar  

Okay, and then in terms of the the video quality itself and the production time?


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, so that's another thing that's super important to me is all of our content should be able to be shot from an iPhone. So - 


Omar

Right.


Anish Dalal

We don't,  because we want the other the other part of the business that I saw that was potential constraint was the creativity, right? If you bring in 50 clients, and we're coming up with so much content, it's like, my team can't come up with that many ideas, right? 


And creativity is very difficult, right? Because I can't just sit them down and be like, Okay, give me 50 ideas, right, it kind of comes. And there's a timing and process to it, and you can't assign a timeline to it. 


So what we've really done is, internally, we have our creative team, which kind of has the high end ideas of what things are working that week, what things have historically worked for content, and what we want to do. And then we have a whole network of creators. So now influencers, creators. 


We think influencers are overpriced. But creators are just somebody that maybe might have a little small following, but they're just really good with the camera, their phone, and they're really good at shots, angles, all of that.


And they shoot the ad for us. So going back to like the quality of these ads, everything from from the iPhone, but we can actually make iPhone ads look as good as possible or as like organic as possible. So we can like do a lot of different things there. And yeah, protocol, yeah, it's just iPhone, iPhone video.


Omar  

That is incredibly interesting. This is like one of those business models that you find in the goal that doesn't really cross anybody's mind, usually, you know, because I've got my own creative agency. 


But the simple fact that you're even using other people to create the content for you and your team is the one brainstorming the ideas for these content creators to create already takes so much of the man intensive hours right off the bat.


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, correct. Because like, if we really want to be amazing, like, my goal for you know, our company this year is like, so we have buckets of creators, and our A+ bucket, like our superstars, and consistently deliver the fantastic ideas, my team will send a general brief, but the brief has a lot of space to be so creative for the creator in it. And they go out. 


And my goal is to have like 1000, amazing creators. So we've been through thousands of creators. And we have, you know, I would say right now a few 100 on the A plus team. And then we have like a big team, and you know, like the volume team. But I want like 1000 or 5000 on my A+ team. 


So like, once anyone comes to us, the brief goes out, boom, it goes out to like our network of creators. And they're super loyal to us, because you know, they get consistent deal flow from us. And they've been trained by my team in terms of what we're looking for. 


Content gets cut, all this raw content comes into my team, my team and our video editors go in, and they know how to edit and how to chop, they chop, edit everything, and then it rolls back up goes into review. And then whatever makes it pass review goes off to the client. This is the batch for this week. So it's very optimized.


Omar  

I know I'm diving pretty deep into your business structure here. But this is we do this quite often on this podcast, so just a heads up. I know I haven't given you much of a disclaimer before we started. But that... so that that makes me a little bit more curious about a few more things there, right? 


So you have your content creation team, when you send out a briefing to these content creators for that first batch of content, let's say for a client, are you sending, hey, I need this piece of content to like 100 creators, and they all create it and you pick the best ones? Or do you have like, one content creator for like one client, and so on and so forth? How does that work?


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, so like, let's say I need 10 pieces of content, like yeah, that'll go out to like 20 3040 creators. Well, everybody gets paid. But the cool thing is, since we're providing so much value to our clients, we can charge way more clients. And we charge like, we charge in two ways we charge in a performance model. And we charge in like just a retainer model. 


Performance model is the most interesting. So the client pays nothing upfront for the content, right? they pay a percentage of what they spent on the content. So it's amazing for them, right? Because we're like, you don't pay a dime for something that doesn't work because you're not gonna spend money on it, because you can tell right away the content’s working or not. 


But if the content’s working, you're going to spend, you're going to spend on that content. And it will take a percentage of fee on that. So our clients get weekly drops or bi weekly drops from us 20 pieces of content, they'll get it right. All of our creators are happy because they're all getting paid and compensated. But our clients are happy because they're getting this volume of content that they're getting to test.


Omar  

And they get to AV Test that to see what works.


Anish Dalal  

Right, because it's not only our idea is it's also the creator's ideas. And that's like a constraint in any organization. Right? It's just ideas, right? So if, like our typical client is like a very, very high spender on Facebook ads and whatnot. These guys are spending millions of bucks, you know, on a given day or a given month, just an ads. And for them, yeah, like, they're happy to pay the fees as long as it works. 


And that's the cool thing for us. It's like, that's how we maintain that relationship with everybody. Because if we don't perform, we don't get paid. If we perform, we get paid. But it's cool, because the cost basis is small for us, we can keep taking that bet all day, because then the clients will scale up, pay for all the losses.


Omar  

So no upfront payments from the clients, but then you have a certain percentage of it. So you must have some cash flow coming in from other sources to be able to pay the creators that are coming in the fold.


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, so just to give you an idea, like, one winning client can pay for all the losses. 


Omar

Interesting. 


Anish Dalal

But the upside is like, for example, we take a percentage, right? So like, let's call it 10% of spend on our content, right? If Sony spends like a million bucks on our content, right? Those are numbers right there and like to create 10 to 15 second ads.  


The raw content, the raw product doesn't cost that much. It's when my team comes in and we edit it, we make it look good. So there's raw supply of content everywhere. But it's like, can you engage it in a right format where like, you get the right creators in, you edit it right? You attach it to the right client, you build them in an attractive way that makes the whole system work. 


So yep. So yeah, and that and like, all the clients are just, we  - they’re all just large companies, right? Or they're very heavily funded, looking to scale quickly.


Omar  

Do you ever work with marketing agencies themselves?


Anish Dalal  

We do sometimes in the capacity where they themselves have really large clients, and they're just like, kind of white labeling us. 


Omar

Right. 


Anish Dalal

Yeah. But I would say like 90% are businesses directly with the client themselves.


Omar  

So they must have like in-house media buyers, that are probably just AV testing your content.


Anish Dalal  

And that's what we look for to like, that's what our learning is where we're like, we don't go into companies, if they don't have media, buying teams. We don't go into companies, where they have we actually say, like, have you guys hired other content agencies before? Like, we want to make sure they understand, like, what they're trying to do themselves and not learning through us in terms of like, content? 


We just want to come and be like, Hey, we're gonna provide you amazing content. It's gonna be fantastic. I need you to spend on it. And then it's cool. Because my learning from the original first deal that we did in content, there was a lot of hand holding and client communications. It's not like, I barely need any PMs. I just need my team. 


Because if the clients like, I don't like how this girl looks in this piece of ad, because let's say they say something super subjective, because she doesn't look happy, right? Or she doesn't look excited. Like, great. All right, take a piece of content out, throw it to the garbage. Alright, let's go through the next ones. They haven't paid for it, right? So there's really no, because like there’s no back and forth


Omar  

Wow, genius! Yes, I have to say this. And like, coming from a content creation space myself, there's so many different things that you mentioned there that would’ve never crossed my mind.


Anish Dalal  

Because like, dude, that was like the hardest thing we were doing that first deal. Everything was so subjective. Because we also work with a lot of like large Chinese tech brands. Because like we, you know, one of our clients is TikTok and unlike from that we have a lot of other Chinese brands we work with. 


And it was just, it was so subjective. It was just like, she could be a little happier. And             then like, my team goes back and tells the creator like, be happier. Like, it's so subjective. It's like..


Omar

Yeah, it’s too much back and forth. Too much communication.


Anish Dalal

Too much back and forth. There’s too much back and forth, right? Yeah. It always seemed once we delivered the ad itself, like, they were happy. But like, no one was ever super excited, because everyone always had opinions and like, you kind of had to like agree in the middle like, okay, let's get this approved. Let's send it out. 


But in this situation, it's awesome. Because it's like, we're like, just run what gets approved by your team in terms of branding guidelines and let the numbers speak. Because the ad performs well, let's keep running. So there's really no back and forth between my team and the clients team besides things around brand guidelines.


Omar  

Right? And really, at the end of the day, being subjective is kind of ridiculous if they AV test two things, and the ones that they hated is the ones that ended up performing well, right?


Anish Dalal  

Exactly. And that's the best part, right? Because like, I just want to take the subjectiveness out of content. That was like the biggest hurdle of content. And that's when I saw when I was doing my like research with the 10 year old companies that did content. They were just so staffed up on high level PMS, right? 


Because, like, if I don't know if Coke’s our client and you're making an ad for them. You know, if they're saying the people don't look happy enough, maybe you have to reply and like, okay, we're trying to make it look realistic. So that's why they're not happy enough. 


Omar

You niched the whole thing.


Anish Dalal

And like, and you then they have to be able to maintain the relationship with the client, right?


Omar

Right. 


Anish Dalal

And in our company, the only people that  talk to clients is me and  my business partner. And that's it. 


Omar

That's nuts.


Anish Dalal

And our team just performs. Yeah.


Omar  

So I'm trying to think of like, applying that exact same business model to something else, like let's say, agency owner, specifically, who would be completely unemotional about the content that's coming in, but rather just focus on what's working, maybe you get them something at a smaller scale of like, 10 pieces of content out there to them.


Say, hey, try this for your clients, and you get your creators to make that and then boom, all of a sudden, the agency owners can pay you a cut, so that that could turn into a pretty strong white label business model.


Anish Dalal  

Yeah. No, 100% like, you know, and all this sounds great right now, in terms like, also what I'm saying, but like, we're still, you know, we're getting we're dialing in our processes and whatnot. So I'm just excited to like, really dial this in. And this is like, definitely like the model I want to move forward with, in the next few years until like, somebody else tells me otherwise. 


But,  yeah, like, with the agencies, I just noticed that like, if you do like the whole, the whole goal is to do something well enough and make it's like, when you deliver something, there should be clear expectations of what you're delivering. Because often there's not and like, no one ends up happy. 


Because even you might think, like, Hey, I delivered what they asked me and they're like, no, and half the times the clients don't know what they want. And they're kind of making it up along the way. And then the first person that goes under the bus is the agency. 


So when, when the transaction is super clear, that's why like, some clients will be like, Can you guys do the media buying for us? The whole way we got also on to content was like, we're learning that media buying isn't what it used to be. Like, Facebook's AI does a better job than any media buyer does that’s trying to like, touch up everything, you know, go under the hood, the only real input is created, that's what your ads are working on. 


So some people will be like, Hey, can you run her ads, you know, we'll pay you extra. You know, sometimes we'll do it. But historically, from lessons learned, like, I don't even want to touch your media buying. 


Because, you know, an account can get flagged or like, there's too many things that can happen. Or they're like, oh, the CPA went up. And then it's like, oh, it went up because of you like you're running Facebook ads. It's like, no, everyone's CPA went up, um, you know, across the board. But those are just conversations you don't want to have. You want to make it... My goal is always to get to a place where it's just super, this is what I'm offering. Here you go. I'm done.


Omar  

Deliverables. Clearly. Not subjective deliverables. But here's that this is what you're getting.


Anish Dalal  

Yeah. And so it's awesome. Like, here, here's content for the week, run it. Right, let me know what works. Well, let me know what doesn't, that's it.


Omar  

Yeah, good. Because there's always a little trade off in there to write I think a lot of smaller agency owners think that, well, I know I do. Because what I think is, oh, if I get to, to focus on “Hey, this is what you're getting this, these are exactly the way it's going to be. And you can't care about this, or that, because I'm giving you this.” 


Like, I'm always gonna think that the person my client is going to think this is a bit too stiff. And this might not be even what I want. So I'm not going to do business with them. You know, but we you've solved that with the fact that you already have so many different pieces of content coming through the gate number one, number two, you got your risk reversal offer, which is pretty much a no brainer. 


And then number three, even if they're slightly subjective on things, you'd be like, okay, throw this out with this, keep this and then AV test these things and let's see what happens.


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, exactly. So it keeps that whole process easy. It's really good, we can find a product, that's, you know, the cost basis is low, but it provides high value, which in this situation, you know, there's these companies raising hundreds of millions of dollars trying to acquire customers, right? And they're spending God sums on Facebook ads. If you can make their ads just 5% cheaper, you know, they're, they'll pay you whatever you need to be paid. Right? So that's one. 


And then the second part also is really figuring out, like, what the right type of client is, when we go through those ebbs and flows. We always shave off clients. Because like, we'll grow and we're like, once we go into the content space, we picked up a bunch of content clients. We were like, okay, you're not our fit, you're not our fit, like now we know our perfect fit. 


It's usually, you know, a company with the, you know, growing really fast, usually, like freshly raised funds. You know, their, their their Instagram, Facebook first. And they have a media buying team that understands what we're doing. Right. And like they understand the value of content. 


If we have to explain the value of content, we're probably a little premature for the relationship. So also figuring out what the right client is perfect. But I would just also reiterate like, it takes time to get there. In the beginning, you have to do all this stuff, you have to often offer a lot of things, do more broad parts of the funnel to initially get either get revenue in the door or figure out what your niche is.


Omar  

That is amazing. I'm guessing in the same regard, you guys don't do any of the copy either.


Anish Dalal  

No, we don't, do we just do the content trailer. And like, but but that like, like decreased over time, right? We're like, before we were running the ads, copy, content. But I always only wanted to focus on content, like, because even in copy, you can get like, I just remember like before, like the things that like just come up like fire alarms, like, Oh, this copy got approved it had this in it or, or we can't have this type of copy, or whatnot. 


But you know, I'll just like, I just want to focus on the content, like these guys know, their copy, they've run a bunch of copy. But sometimes if the content’s a little fresher and like, maybe if we don't like your copy, we'll give suggestions. But we love that we're not running their Facebook ads. Because we're, yeah, we're not accountable for the Facebook ads.


Omar  

A lot of frustrations come with running Facebook ads. And I think a lot of people, especially now in 2021, that Facebook ad agencies are just sick and tired of. 


Anish Dalal

Yeah.


Omar

I... just from seeing the trends already. I think it's gonna start skewing more towards YouTube ad anyways. Yeah, you know, and that's where the creative really comes into play. You know, that's where it really starts getting fun for you guys.


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, no, it's actually interesting that you just mentioned that, like, one of our agency partners, actually. They're like, hey, like, we really need some YouTube ads. Can you guys do it? Can you guys shoot them? Like higher end stuff? 


My whole thing is like, I won't shoot anything if you can't do with an iPhone, because that kind of just goes against the business model. Because I want to have unlimited - unlimited supply of creators.


Omar  

Yeah. Which means a limited supply of creatives and not limiting yourself to something that's high risk. I get it.


Anish Dalal  

Yeah. So but then the cool thing was like, they're like, Okay, well, let's give it a shot. Let's do YouTube ads with like, “How you guys doing?” So then when we started sourcing our craters, I have like really good lighting, you know, a really animated and like, we check with what are like the highest performing YouTube ads that work in a similar space, right? It's not cutting from scene to scene. 


So it's a lot of those, like, you know, they're talking to the camera and whatnot. And we're like, we can create great YouTube ads with our business model. You know, we're testing with that right now. And I, I'm very confident we can do it. 


And I'm super excited, because then that just opens up the whole YouTube funnel, which historically is very expensive, like, people pay 10k for like, you know, like…


Omar  

High productive, creative right? 


Anish Dalal

Exactly.


Omar

And it's funny, because the trends themselves are showing like, I mean, if, if it's five - a 10 year old kid can kick a football across the street on Tick Tock and get 10 million impressions. I mean, what's stopping anybody from making a really nice iPhone5 shot video on YouTube and being incredibly high performing, right? I mean, this is the world we live in.


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, exactly. So like, I really just enjoy the area where you are in with content. And I really think, like our key things in our business is like the ability to unlock creativity through crowdsourcing for greater pools. And so like, you know, as we grow, I just want to have a team that just takes care of our creators, but with them and like, and doesn't treat them like, you know, how, like, sometimes there's like influencer agencies that like, they work with a lot of influencers, but it's like, they're just everyone ideal comes up. 


But I want my, like, A+ team, like every week, they get an update from my team, my team, right. So that unlocks the creativity part. And then if volume is really important to like, we've seen the craziest ads work, and they're so random. 


And that's a great thing about working with a client that understands content. They don't judge the content, because they themselves know, like, they don't know what's going to work. And the really smart media buyers, those are the guys that don't judge the content.


Omar  

It's funny, like, the higher you go up the little ladder of how high or how big the customer is, the easier it actually becomes to become service delivery, right? Or even get the payment in the first place. It's, I think it's funny how that works. But they just have more hair on their balls, to say subjectively.


Anish Dalal  

Absolutely, yeah, they know what they want, right. And they know what they need. And the like, when you can clearly fit into a function. That's the best part. 


But that's not to go against saying like, in the beginning, you'll have to do everything. So I wouldn't take the advice where we are right now for the likes of you.


Omar  

It's definitely a solid ecosystem and infrastructure that you've built over time and realized through testing.


Anish Dalal

Yeah, yeah. So that's, I think, comes with time and like when we started to do this content stuff, you know, we felt like this like we just started fresh again. We had a performance like backgrounds and like what works. Which kind of also led us to the content area where like, all these guys are hiring us for performance, but like to be honest my team's not like, graded as I'm like, what are we doing? That's amazing. It was just the content they were making. And so we're like, okay, let's just focus on that part.


Omar

I want to kind of pivot into a different conversation here really quick. So that's a remote part, right? So something that we're really big here on this podcast is doing things completely remotely, right in the lowest in the keeping the highest margins possible while being completely remote. Is your team fully remote right now that you have? 


Anish Dalal

Yes, right now it is. Yep. How do you find it? How do you manage that? Do you have like any sort of applicable tips as a high level, I guess, executive of a company or CEO of a company? 


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, I would like we do things like for example, some of our teams in Arizona right now we make sure you know, every now and then we bring a whole team together. Because it's very important for like creativity, I think creativity is hard. All the time remotely, remotely, we're very good at doing processes we already have in place all this fantastic. 


But when we're going on like our next, like, if we land a big client, we need to be super creative about it. We'll bring the team all together, you know, for a few days, and we'll just really strategize and come up with ideas. And then we get those briefs and everything's done. And then we'll send it out to creators. 


But meeting in person is still very important for the creativity part. The processes can be done remotely, so, yeah. 


Omar  

So it's kind of like a little war room that you have going on, figure out the strategy from there, go remote and disperse again. 


Anish

Exactly.


Omar

That sounds like such a fun business model, man, I'll tell you. 


Anish Dalal  

No, it is. It is fun. Like one thing I would say people need to understand and realize, we basically live in amazing times. We can pretty much do what you want, do it where you want. Do fun things. And I mean, doesn't get any better than that.


Omar  

Absolutely, man. Well, damn, I feel like I just paid for a full-on mastermind. Honestly, it doesn't happen often where I have a podcast guest and I feel like I should pay them for for coming on my show. So thank you so much for all the value dropped there, man. 


Anish Dalal

Absolutely. No, this was great. 


Omar

I got one final thing for you here. And this is a question that I asked every single guest that comes on my show every single one. And they've been from all over the board, all across the world. 


And that is if you had a billboard in space. And on that, and I'm sure you've heard some variation of this question before. If you had a billboard in space, and on that billboard, you could write whatever you wanted, and some universal language that everyone on planet Earth could read. And every time the sun rose up, the billboard was there right on top. And every time the sunset, no one could see the Billboard. They could see it for the rest of their lives. What would you write on there?


Anish Dalal  

Yeah, to be honest, it would just be something like just “look up” or something like that, like, because I think it's really important to you know, we life's awesome. I just look up, be inspired. And that's why I really love space. It's like, there's so many cool things happening, be part of something and then, you know, build something together and just literally go out. 


So then probably do something like that. 


Omar

Super meta. I like it. 


Anish Dalal

Yeah, no, 100% because at the end of the day, like, much like business, like life is just a game. Just have fun playing it, and then, yeah.


Omar  

That's awesome. I like that answer, man. All right. Thank you so much for coming on today, Anish. 


Anish Dalal

Thank you appreciate it, man. 


Omar

Absolutely, man.