Blue Collar Culture

Business Results the Old Fashioned Way

Shaina Weisinger | The Dos and Don’ts of Content Marketing

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Content marketing is a big buzzword these days for a good reason. It’s an effective way for brands and companies to build profitable relationships with customers.

But Shaina Weisinger maintains that many businesses are going about content creation all wrong. They’re busting their butts to get content out there… but not using it to its full potential. 

We talk about an approach that bolsters your ROI on content marketing and beefs up your all-important social media presence. Shaina also shares the hiring secrets she’s picked up over the years that have helped her put together a very effective team. 

Tune in for the details from Shaina on all that, as well as…

  • How to create content that resonates with your audience
  • Where to find key people, from managers to frontline employees
  • Outsourcing done right – and what to watch out for
  • Taking advantage of the world’s #2 search engine
  • The vital importance of knowing and accepting the fact that you’re not always going to be right

Listen now…

Mentioned in this episode:

Transcript

Ryan Englin: Alright, well thank you for joining us for another episode of the Blue Collar Culture Podcast. I'm your co-host, Ryan Englin and I'm here with Jeremy Macliver.

Jeremy Macliver: Let's get going.

Ryan: And today we have the honor and the privilege of being joined by Shaina Weisinger. She's the founder and CEO of Repurpose House. They turn long-form content into optimized videos and images for high-engagement social media strategies. Shaina has a background in video production for digital marketing and is on a mission to show content creators the untapped potential and repurposing power of the content that they already have. Shaina, thank you so much for joining us today.

Shaina Weisinger: Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Ryan: So you've actually been on a pretty good journey. You've probably got some pretty good stories of what you've done over the last, I don't know, four years or so that we've known each other. And I would just love for you to give our listeners just a brief overview of what you've been through, some of the challenges you've seen and some of the takeaways you might have for them.

A “Brief” Overview of Shaina’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Shaina: Oof. Brief is going to be something. It's been quite the four-year journey, that's for sure. Especially since you and I got a chance to meet. But we'll do our best and then, you know, feel free to ask to fill in the blanks. So just that super high-level overview, my I started, like you said, doing video marketing as our video production for digital marketing strategies. So that's kind of a big mouthful, but what that means is, you know, clients would come to me looking for video, and most of the time I would tell them that what they want is not what I will, I would say no.

I would say no, a lot of the times because a lot of people would come and be like, Hey, we need this crazy, high produced video that talks about how awesome we are. And I'd be like, No, you don't need that because nobody cares about how awesome you are. Let's talk about a strategy to get them to a place where they care about how awesome you are, and let's create content that will get them there.

And then don't get me wrong, you still need to have the video that's like, Hey, we're awesome. This is what we do. But you also need to engage with people before they get to that point to get them to your website to look at that content, right? So most of what I did was create really great video content strategies based on what the needs are of that business and make sure we're generating an ROI, basically, instead of just creating pretty things that may or may not get views. Within that process one thing that I was struggling with was trying to create a service that was a recurring model, right?

Because one, with video production and how I tried to make it very strategic and film a lot of different pieces of content at once so that you're more efficient with time and budget. The problem is now once they're done like you don't hear from them again until they need to create more stuff. So I was looking to try to create a recurring model. And in that, I started to produce video podcasts. So what we would do is bring clients into studio, they would film once a month, they would bring in four guests, we would stagger them, we create the content.

And one of the things that I included in that whole package was repurposing little snippets of those full, you know, half-hour long interviews into pieces that were, you know, optimized for social media. And what that means is putting a big headline on it, branding, like visually having captions on it, things that I just knew were best practices for social for engagement. And as I was doing that, I was trying to pitch video podcasts to other existing podcasters who were doing audio-only. Some like really big names I was talking to. And the general overwhelming feedback was we don't care about the video part at all.

Like some of them were already doing it. Some of them didn't want to do it, but they consistently said, Hey, if you were just to give us those little assets for social media we'll throw our money at you. And I was like, Well, alright. So there's got to be somebody doing that. And I started to do some research and there wasn't. Like, there were agencies that were doing it in conjunction with like a ton of other stuff. So you've got, like, at least $1,000 a month on just like a full agency setup.

Or there was a bunch of DIY platforms that you could utilize to do it yourself. But the problem is, it takes a while, right? So I started, repurposed us actually, as Podcast Means. In July of 2018. I launched it at an event called Podcast Movement, and it went really, really well. But after a couple of months, we were, there were like two different categories of clients for I mean, prospective clients for us. One was that it was a no brainer for them and they thought we were severely underpriced.

And they were like, absolutely, just do it. And the other was, we can't afford that at like, it was like, I think $150 a month at the time. And there was just a Just severe disconnect between the two different people that we were talking to. So we were beating our heads against the wall trying to figure out what the problem was. And we realized pretty quickly that the common denominator between the people who were signing up quickly and great clients for us was that they weren't just podcasters, they were digital marketers who were using podcasting as a part of their overall marketing strategy.

And so, you know, my background is video production, so for marketing, and I was like, Well, I know those guys. So if we're going to do this, let's really do this. So we rebranded, repackaged, we changed our service offering to be able to include like blog posts, doing text motion video, make sure we have thumbnails for everything, image quotes, things like that, because I know what like, a full-fledged marketer is going to need on social. We launched as Repurpose House in November of 2018. And it's been pretty bonkers ever since.

Ryan: Wow, we could spend the whole rest of the time together just unpacking your story. There's so much stuff in there.

Shaina: I put in as much as I can, but yeah, that's the theme. That's pretty much it.

Ryan: I thought that it was great. One of the things that you said really early on was, you talked a lot about brand and you talked about content as it relates to the brand. And I would imagine, based on the journey you've taken, you think that content is important for branding. Is that fair?

Shaina: Absolutely. I mean, it creates authority in your space, for sure.

Ryan: So can you talk a little bit about some practical things people can do when it comes to content and how it can impact their branding?

Practical Ways to Influence Branding With Content

Shaina: Yeah, absolutely. So it's funny because I was just on the phone with somebody right before I hopped on this call with you guys. And, you know, they were talking about how like Gary Vaynerchuk, who is the king of all things content, right? He calls everybody on their bs when they say that, like, Oh, well, there's no content that I can use that will help my brand because I sell X, Y or Z. And that's completely false.

Like, you can always be educating. You can always be like, anything that you can give your audience and when I say your audience, I'm talking about people who could potentially become a customer or a client of yours, like any information that you have an expertise in, or that your problem solves, that you can educate them on, that you can offer insight on, that helps their lives, helps their business, that is all content that they want to consume. So there's like, there's the stuff that talks about, like me, me, me, there's that kind of content.

But like I said, at the very beginning, nobody cares about you. They care about themselves. So the type of content that you can give them that helps them in their lives will be something that makes you a brand or person that they build trust with over time. So when the time does come to purchase whatever it is that you're selling, you're an obvious choice because you've given them so much that they're happy to then, you know, give you their business when that time comes.

Jeremy: That's great Shana. Can you maybe just share a bit so that we can understand a little bit more, how, like give us an example of a company that didn't feel like content was going to be impactful and how that repackages and how they actually could become an authority in their space using content?

Shaina: Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a lot of them out there. And the interesting thing about that is there's probably other companies who do the exact same thing that they do that are utilizing content and seeing results on it. So, I don't know, throw out just like an industry that would seemingly be one of those guys. Any industry, pick one.

Ryan: Construction.

Shaina: Construction. Perfect. Okay. So yeah, how am I going to create content? I don't want to film videos of building the building, right? But that's irrelevant. So now what you want to do is think about if you are a construction company, who is the one person that is the decision-maker to give you business, right? What struggles do they have when it comes to hiring a construction company? Maybe not even just hiring but anything that you have an expertise in about, I mean, I'm not a construction company. But let's just say maybe creating the foundation for whatever the building is, is something that has a billion different components to it.

I'm sure it does. Like prepping the land is probably a big deal. You can literally just educate on that type of stuff. You can just educate on like this top five things to ask a construction company when you are vetting them, you know? And then just go through bullet-pointed lists of like, make sure you ask them this. Make sure you, you know, get their referrals or resources or whatever. Like anything that you know is something that would benefit that one person who is the decision-maker that you're educated on, educate them with.

Ryan: Yeah, I love content. I've been creating content for clients for years. But a few years back, we figured out that creating the right kind of content and putting in front of prospective employees could be just as valuable, if not more valuable, especially for companies who are really struggling to hire right now. You know, one of the examples that I give is create an email list of people that aren't quite ready to apply for a job with you and the next time you have a company event, send them an email that says Look what you missed out on.

Shaina: Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan: It's just educating them on the culture.

Shaina: And it's so interesting. Actually, I don't know that you and I talked about this, but when right, like the inspiration to create podcasts means, which is now Repurpose House, came from me going to the Philippines and the only reason I was there was with another company who had trouble hiring enough people to support their crazy growth, right? Russ Perry. I don't know if you know him from Design Pickle. He's one of Chris Ronzio's, he's like Chris Ronzio's best friend.

He sent me there with them just to capture testimonial footage and a full-fledged experience of the 85 full-time employees he has in the Philippines to then, you know, try to get more employees to sign up to be a designer at Design Pickle. So like that's literally the jumping-off point for me was helping somebody try to recruit better, basically, doing exactly what you're talking about.

Ryan: Yeah. So that's, and that's a lot of what we talked about on this podcast is everybody's struggling to hire right now. And there's just a couple of things, a couple little changes that you can make and you can really get dramatic results. And one of those is content, and testimonials is huge. Testimonial videos I think YouTube's the second largest search engine in the world right now. Which by the way happens to be owned by Google the largest. But video is consumed at such a greater rate and I don't know what the numbers are. You might know, but video is consumed way more than written content.

Shaina: Video is shared %1200 more than text and images combined on social media.

Ryan: Wow. So video is an important part of content strategy.

Shaina: Yes, absolutely. If you are not doing video then you are definitely behind the curve for sure. But what's cool about it is if you have a lot of text content, you can have it turned into like goal cast style text motion videos, and now your texts, that traditionally doesn't do very well on social, can now be video that people actually watch and engage in.

And when I say like text motion videos, I mean, like, you got, let's say you pick 100 words of your blog post or have your stat sheet or whatever, and it's basically like animated text moving in and out with cool music behind it with like stock imagery. And now that little clip is a video that then you can drive traffic to the existing piece of content.

Ryan: And that's way more engaging than written blog articles.

Shaina: For sure. And also, let's keep in mind that if you're sending people to a written blog article from Facebook, Facebook hates it because the number one referring place that Facebook wants to send people is where? Facebook. So they don't want you to send anybody to outside sources. So if you post a link on Facebook, they're going to severely diminish the amount of people who are going to see that post because they don't want you sending anybody anywhere else.

Ryan: Got it. Got it. So what other, what are some other practical ways you've seen people use content besides testimonials, besides talking about your process, has been really good and helping them build a brand or establish their brand?

Shaina: You know, there's gosh, there's so many different ways. Honestly, like industry insights are a really big one. Like if you do something local, sharing things that are local that are exciting to your audience. Like, for instance, my husband's a real estate agent. Somebody did a like, survey on the things that people want to hear about when it comes to Phoenix, The Valley, right? And that the overwhelming response was restaurants. Like, what to do, where to eat, where to be seen things like that.

And so he's creating a whole series on just because he came from the restaurant industry so he's tapping into his relationships, just interviewing restaurant owners and showing really cool places to eat and to dine, right? So it has nothing to do with real estate but he became, he's becoming like the White Pages, Yellow Pages, does anybody remember what those were? But they were big books that were made with a lot of paper.

He's just becoming a, like a resource of knowledge for people who are local and honestly his social media and just like the silly posts he does about what's going on in The Valley has generated him so much business and it's just because they're interesting to watch. They're what they want to hear about. He's not talking about real estate 24/7. I mean, he talks about it, but he also makes fun pieces of content that are relevant to what they want to hear. So like, it's really just all about knowing your audience. That's marketing 101 is what matters to them that I can help them with, you know, that still somewhat pertains to the service that I'm offering?

Ryan: Yeah. So you had mentioned that you went out and you helped Design Pickle with some of their recruiting by creating some videos. And I believe a lot of your team is in the Philippines too. Is that correct?

Shaina: Yeah, that's right. We have I think it's 20 now full-time in the Philippines.

Ryan: So what are you doing for Repurpose House to attract that good talent?

Customizing Hiring Approach Based on Company Culture

Shaina: Great question. We are just now running into a similar problem that Design Pickle has. So yeah, and it's funny because like, you know, you see some company that grows that rapidly and you're like, oh, wouldn't that be amazing? And then you start to grow rapidly you're like, oh crap. So we use Indeed for hiring but we have a couple of different things that we do initially when people apply, right? Right now we're not running ads or anything that are like testimonial-driven because we don't need, we haven't gotten there yet.

But when people come to our like, Indeed posting, we have them first go to our about page, which is basically our culture page. And we have our core values mentioned there. We talk about the things that are really important to us and to our team. And when they apply, they have to submit a video of themselves one, like up to a minute talking about what they're super passionate about. And they have to let us know what of our core values really resonated with them, because we hire based on culture fit and not on like their graphic design epicness. Because ultimately, like what we do is not crazy to do. It's not difficult.

They have to have graphic design experience, but we would rather they be a really great culture fit than the best graphic designer in the world with a massive ego. So that's the first thing that we do. When we actually interview them, we get on a Zoom call with them, like, obviously, there's a time difference. So it's first thing in the morning for them, it's after our day for us. But we do a Zoom call, we have a really great conversation with them. And then we put them through a three-day training that we've created. Anybody who goes through the training gets paid for the training.

And we reserve the right to either tell them, yes, you're a great fit, you're on the bench and ready to rock and roll full-time the second that we have enough clients to support you, or, you know, thank you for your time, we're going to go ahead and pay you for that but we don't think that you're going to be a great fit for the team. And going through that entire process and then bringing them on full-time when we have the clients to support it has been amazing. Like our turnover rate has been ridiculously low since we've implemented that, which was really, really early on.

Ryan: Wow. So one of the things that I hear a lot from people that I talked to that are struggling to hire is I'm already short-staffed. I don't have have time to do a three-day training and have them do videos. Like if they raised their hand and say they want to join my team like I need the hand now. How would you respond to that?

Shaina: Well, the problem with that is that it's going to take us so much more time trying to figure out if they're going to be a good fit. And then, probably more times than not, finding out that they are not a good fit and then trying to find what, it's just to me I almost, like, I cringe at that thought process, you know, and I mean? I would rather the existing team take a little extra load because we know that they can and they're passionate and they are incredible while we find the right team members.

Because ultimately what will happen is if we hire the wrong people, like our team is going to suffer even more because we're now investing time and resources into training somebody and giving clients to somebody who's not a good fit and then they have to fix the mistakes that that person has made. And nobody wins in that situation.

Jeremy: How often on your three-day training, how often do they pass versus not pass? Like, what's that kind of ratio?

Shaina: I'd say we're at like a 70/30. We actually had to turn somebody down yesterday. Sometimes within the first of the three days, we'll know that they're not a good fit. And then we'll just cut the losses when we can. There have been like a couple of times where they've got through training and then what we do is the first team that somebody who has gone through training on and is starting full-time goes to is a training team.

So we have one team lead who she only works with new employees and make sure that like, she gets them up to speed, gets them to doing the amount of tickets they need to do every single day. And we've only had a couple who landed on that team that within the first like couple of weeks we kind of realized it wasn't going to be a good fit. Maybe, I mean, since they are remote, maybe they weren't the ones who went through the training and then they ended up showing up, you know, on the daily and it wasn't gonna work. So we, it's pretty low, but as far as like in the training of it, we're at like a 70 to 75% success rate on it.

Ryan: That's great. I want to talk a little bit about hiring key people. So, yes, we all struggle with finding frontline talent, the hourly employees that are doing a lot of the work. But as our companies are growing, there's always a need for the right ops manager or the right marketing person or the right HR person.

And those are a lot harder to find because there's not as many of them. And a lot of times what we see is companies just say, Okay, you know what, we'll just keep looking. We'll keep our feelers out. And if we find someone, great. But when they need somebody, what have you found works for you? Because I think you have a great story about the person that runs your operations. Tell us a little about that.

Shaina: Yeah. For sure it ultimately I do full disclosure, I got really lucky on that. So the story of Sarah is what we shall call this and she is my director of ops and there's no way that we could have done like creative Repurpose House and a lot of just failed as quickly as we did without her here. So I actually knew her because she worked for a colleague of mine for years, and she left his company and ended up working for another business. And when she was there, I kind of kept in touch with her. I just really liked her as a person.

Her and I had grabbed lunch while she worked for him just so I can pick her brain on some marketing stuff while she worked there. And we just got along really, really well. I thought she was amazing. She was just super on top of it. Very personable, presented well. I mean, she was like on her game. So I kept in touch with her while she was at the new company and I knew I was starting, I had just started as Podcast Means and at that time. I grabbed dinner with her at one point and she was talking about how unhappy she was at the new place that she was at.

And, I mean, it just came up. I was like, here's the deal. I would take you in a heartbeat. I can't afford you. I can't even afford myself right now, right? But I was just like, if it's ever something that you're interested in the future, like, let's talk. But yeah, it's a startup and there's literally no money coming in right now. And so she came back at me almost immediately and she was like Shaina, I will work for free because I love what you've done.

We had a chance to work a lot together because I did business with her previous company. And essentially what happened was I was like, I knew I was still making money with my video production company while I was creating the startup. So I had, I made the decision to pay for Sarah before I paid for myself. Which there are, you know, different thoughts on whether that's the right or the wrong thing to do. For me, it was totally a no brainer decision. But I basically brought Sarah on and paid her as much as I could as we brought clients on until I was able to pay her full-time.

And now like we have a back pay arrangement, stuff like that. But she was super vital in building the processes. She's very, very like, she's processes and details oriented, which is incredible. So we've automated absolutely everything and she's been a huge part of that. And outside of that I just really like her as a person. Like we laugh like crazy and she's just super cool and she gets the culture. So it was by far the best hire, best decision that I think that I've made in business overall was hiring her.

Ryan: So you started this but you just got super lucky. And I'm not a huge believer in luck. I think we create our own luck. You could have decided, you know what, Sarah's gainfully employed. I'm not going to keep in touch with her. I'm just going to move on and then I'll go look when I need to look. So I do think that there was some of that there. What would you say about Sarah that was the game-changer for you? Like what about her in particular? Like when you had dinner with her and you knew that she was going to be the right person for you, like, what was that? What is it you were looking for?

Shaina: I knew while she still worked for my friend that she was the most amazing hire that he made. So, I mean, literally, I'd use the term if I could find myself a Sarah I would do that. I would hire her in an instant. And then when I realized that she, you know, she left him and she wasn't happy where she was at, I was like, I can't pay you but you'll be the first person who gets paid from this company because I saw what she did for him. And I've got to work with her closely on a handful of projects. And it was literally a no brainer. Absolutely.

Ryan: It's funny because I think I've used that same thing. You need to find yourself a Sarah. And they're like, who is Sarah?

Shaina: Who is this Sarah?

Ryan: Let me introduce you to Repurpose House. You'll learn all about Sarah. I don't even know Sarah, but I feel like I know Sarah.

Shaina: Yeah, I hope so. Everybody should know Sarah and have a Sarah.

Ryan: because you have not kept it a secret that she has been one of the best decisions and one of the best people on your team. So what advice would you have for people that do need someone, a key person for their team. Keep in mind, a lot of our listeners are going to be in the trades So for them a key person might be a superintendent. It might be someone with just the years of experience. They're just It's harder to find, especially since people aren't going into the trades as much. What advice would you give them for starting that hunt?

Shaina: You know, ultimately, for me, I think Sarah was such a great hire also for the same reason that everybody that we hire in the Philippines is a great hire. We actually like just hired another person stateside too. And it's that she's a good culture fit. Like she gets what we're trying to do. She has the same earnestness that I do. Like we both really care about people. Like, we hold a lot of the same values, and I trust her with everything.

Like, we may not agree on certain things, but I trust her as a human and I don't worry about like, the intent of anything that she does, whether she like does the most amazing, awesome stuff or she messes up or whatever. I know her capabilities and I know where her intentions and like heart lies, you know? And for me, that's extremely important. Now, you may have other things in your business that are very, very important culturally or like, just like deeper rooted than just skillset, I guess.

And to me, those are really where you want to start. And you can, I mean, granted, I don't know that you want to like be teaching everybody all these things, but like, there are certain things I had the teacher and that was okay. Like, that was totally fine by me. But she came to the table with a really great skill set. She was eager to learn, but ultimately, she just had the same passion and the same, like, core values as I did.

Ryan: So I heard two things in there. Number one is, you guys don't agree on everything,

Shaina: Which is a good thing.

Ryan: I love that because I always tell people if you agree on everything one of you is unnecessary.

Shaina: That's completely true.

Ryan: So it's important when you're looking for a key person, you're not looking for someone who's just gonna be like, Yes, boss, whatever you want, boss. Yes, boss. That doesn't work. I think the other thing too that I heard was, she's gonna make mistakes and you're okay with that because your vision of where you're going is the same? Like if she decides to take this detour today and it's wrong, that's okay because you're still going to the same destination.

It’s Best Not to Agree on Everything

Shaina: Exactly. And we've had situations where like, we have completely disagreed on, like a step that we should take. One was introducing this whole done for you version of our service, right? I was like, we're not ready, we don't have all the systems and processes in place to automate it, this and that.

And she was like, we just need to put it on the website and start promoting it because we're not going to create these systems and processes if we don't have people who are doing it. And I like, we were on completely different ends of the spectrum on it. And I was just like, let's do it your way. Let's see how it goes. And ultimately, it was the right choice. You know what I mean? And I had to be humble and eat that and be like, you were right and I was wrong.

But like, you know, it's good that we have that like and, you know, and there have been times where she's been wrong and that's okay too. But like we, it's, I'm so glad that we have those like opposing ideas and thoughts sometimes because otherwise we would be stuck in Shaina's way of thinking things should happen and we wouldn't have grown as quickly as we have.

Jeremy: You know Shaina I think it's great to hear how you can address you're right sometimes, she's right sometimes. And when, what I hear from you is when she's wrong, it's okay. There's not a lot of baggage with that. There's not a lot of stuff just being held like, Hey, I showed you, I told you. I think that when teams can get there it's truly amazing what the results can be. It's okay to be wrong.

Shaina: Right. It boils down to trust, ultimately. And I trust her, you know what I mean? I trust her to make great decisions. I trust her to own her faults. I trust, you know, and she hopefully feels the same way about me. And I think that's the reason why we're able to be honest enough with each other about when we disagree or, you know, ideas that we have because we, there's mutual trust there and knowing that, you know, we'll figure out a way to make it work regardless of whose idea or it was. Who's right, who's wrong and mistakes made things like that. So I think that's the biggest thing.

Jeremy: That's amazing. You've mentioned a couple times how you're hiring for culture over skillset. You know, that's a popular term that's out there. And a lot of times it feels more theoretical than you and I both know it could be. Can you give us like, how are you screening for, to make sure that they're the right culture?

Shaina: Yeah. So and ultimately, like people can still slip through the cracks and we've experienced a little bit of that too, but not very much. I feel like if you can do the best at like, filtering out then you're putting yourself in a better spot than you would be had you not. But ultimately, one great piece of advice that I got from actually the like, one of the guys who was doing a lot of the hiring for Design Pickle was asked what they are obsessed with. And if they're not obsessed with something that means that they won't have a passion.

Their passion for your company, your culture and your business, if you're trying to cultivate that kind of feeling within your business, that won't exist there either. Because if it doesn't exist in their life in general, then it's not going to be a good fit. So for us, it's one of the questions we ask, What are you obsessed with? And for me, it's like if somebody asked me that, like, I would kind of be like, I would get stuck on that a little bit.

But ultimately, the answers have been pretty awesome because we record all of our calls and answers have been like dogs or like, the most random answers and they're like, kind of shocked when they get the question. And Sarah does all the hiring calls. So she'll come back at me with like, You'll never believe what this person was obsessed with.

And everybody who has had that answer has been just an awesome hire. And I don't know what the correlation is, but it's really, it's been really, really cool. And another thing that we've kind of implemented is the thought of would I want to be stuck in an airport for 24 hours with this person? Because we all have done it with Design Pickle. Like we actually got stuck in an airport for 24 hours coming home from the Philippines. And that's turned into one of the hiring metrics is like, do I want to be stuck with this person for 24 hours? And if the answer is no, then they probably shouldn't be on the team.

Jeremy: It's very, very interesting way of looking at that. That's a, do I want to be stuck in an airport for 24 hours? I don't want to be stuck in an airport for 24 hours.

Shaina: Right. But if you're stuck in a situation that you're not happy about, is this a person that you're going to want to kill or that you're gonna be okay with, like just being there, you know what I mean? So, because that, to me, is kind of a safeguard for your team, because they're going to be working with these people every single day. I'm not going to be seeing them every single day.

So if I don't even want to be around them that often, you know, why am I going to throw them into a team situation where they now have to deal with this person? So those are two things that we kind of like hedge our bets on. And like I said, ultimately, it's not 100% foolproof, it's just a really nice way to kind of get to know them more personally than just their skill set.

Ryan: Yeah, I like that. You said something about Sarah that I want to dig into a little bit. You said you trust her. And trust is one of those words, I think it's thrown around a lot and most people can't really define what trust is. It's one of those things like we'll know it when we see it. But what are some things that you guys had to go through as you got to know each other that helped create that trust or hope create those bridges to trust so that you could just say, Hey, I trust you, go? Not have to micro her?

Shaina: Yeah, that's a great question. So, I am a self-admitted control freak. So that was really hard in the sense of business stuff initially, because like, I ran my own business with the video marketing, and I did everything, you know? So being able to then start passing the torch on, literally anything was difficult at first. And I think that trust as far as like being able to manage certain things in business is a lot different than just a gut feeling of trust.

But as far as like knowing that she can handle things and being able to pass tasks and like real, real responsibilities off to her that grew, you know? I mean, I knew her as a person, I really liked her. I knew her enough to know that I trusted her in general ish. But then being able to see how she performed, how she handled, you know, when mistakes were made, which like, weren't massive, but small things at the very beginning of a startup, like things happen, right? How she handled herself how she fixed them.

Just giving her more and more responsibility to just manage herself is what allowed the trust and her capabilities to grow. As far as like, as a person. I mean, think about it. She helped me build this entire thing. If Sarah left, I'd be devastated. And she could literally just go and build the same thing with somebody else if she wanted to. I don't worry about that because I know that that's not going to happen. I trust her. We have had multiple conversations about that. But I think also building a relationship with the person that is there like, Sarah and I are super fortunate. We both get along really, really well. We're both super goofy.

We do not take ourselves seriously. We have a lot of the same, like, you know, thoughts and values and things. We love Beyonce. So that's a thread that we are both, you know, so together by which, you know, if you don't love Beyonce together then what are you at all? But like we got a chance to spend a lot of time together at conferences like, you know, like literally morning noon and night all day next to this person. I could spend 24 hours in an airport with Sarah because I have many times. So like, that also contributes. It's like another layer of like the Okay, she can do the tasks and do them well.

I can trust her with that. But then that builds the personal, like emotional type trust as well. So we've really solidified that. And I feel like that really only took a couple of months because she came and we got thrown into event season. And we got thrown and creating all these crazy systems and processes that I had to just give her because I didn't have time to do it myself. So we were kind of, it was like the perfect storm of not having time, having to build all this crazy stuff and then having to present it to the world and be around each other 24/7. So we were in an interesting, pretty unique situation there.

Ryan: So one of the things I heard in there was focus on building a relationship that's outside of just the work for those key people. It would really be helpful.

Shaina: I would say so. Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan: So you had mentioned that even though you do a culture screening and you have your questions and everything set up, you said, you don't always get it right. What have you done to be able to tell, hey, we didn't get this one right, and then what do you do about it when you don't get it right?

Shaina: That's a great question. So we have now, and so speaking of building trust, our first main hires have now become leadership roles in the Philippines. So like, we have Rachel who was our first full-time hire ever a little over a year ago. She is now the team lead of the training team because she has a background as a teacher and she really wanted, she loves that part of, she does education. So I was like, well then educate and teach our new employees and so that was a good fit for her and then we have like, Youbel was right after her and Youbel does like all of our operations stuff over there.

And so we have people who have grown up in the ranks. And now what's really cool is when it comes to bringing on new stuff, we asked their feedback because they're the ones dealing with them every single day. So when we make a poor hire, we're like, Listen, what can we do to make our hiring process more clean for you, and make sure we're picking the right people? So, you know, Rachel will give us a lot of feedback on, she actually came to us and was like, I think this, and this would be a great idea to implement.

And when we, you know, talk to people that we're interviewing, and one of them was what are their system requirements? Like, what are their computers need to have? What does their internet speed need to be? And that was something that we didn't really think about because we are not in the Philippines, we are not dealing with the same, you know, situation as far as like, what kind of machines and bandwidth do they have? And that's something that Rachel ended up having to find out later once they're on her team and she's trying to train them.

Oh, their computers aren't fast enough to handle the workload. So now we've implemented other questions and other things to make sure we're vetting even more before we send them through. And I mean, that's going to be an ever-evolving process. Like as we start to see more trends in employees that just aren't going to work or are going to work, we can implement that into the screening process too.

Ryan: Got it. So one of the things, I think a lot of our listeners will be feeling like, hey, that's awesome that you can do all this. You guys all get to work from home, you all get to, you know, remote work for it's like, there's all those cool things that a lot of the culture books talk about. But I think, for me, having that separation between the leadership team and the team in the field, essentially, it actually creates additional struggles in being able to really embrace the culture, wrap your arms around and say this is who we are, and do you align.

And I think in a lot of organizations that happens too. You have a call center floor that the managers and the leadership team doesn't sit on. So there's that distance between them. You got the leadership team, and then you've got the crews in the field. And so there's that distance. So what advice would you have for our listeners on being able to really just wrangle in the culture and make sure it's consistent and authentic and it's really getting out there?

Ensuring a Consistent and Authentic Company Culture

Shaina: You know, that's something that I'm really starting to put a lot of attention on the beginning of this year, because we're now getting to a place where we're growing so much that like we do a weekly, like town hall call, basically, where everybody is on the Zoom call, right? Like we do at the end of our day, they do it at the beginning of theirs. And initially, for a really long time, like, we could talk to everybody, because there weren't that many people and now it's growing so much that it's like I'm running into this, like, I want it to still feel like an authentic culture but I can't personally get a chance to talk to everybody every single time, you know?

And I know Sarah can't either. So now we're trying to like figure out how to maintain that culture through this growth, right? But one way, obviously, is talking to your not obviously but for us, it's obvious that we need to be really engaging with our team leads, with everybody who's running the show over there and taking their feedback and taking their feedback seriously and implementing it. Because we've, they've been there for over a year, we trust them, they've done an incredible job, a better job than I could have even fathom.

And I need to trust their feedback and implement it to make sure that like the experiences that they have on their side of the world, really, are what we want them to be, you know? And they've grown with the initial push of like how we want this culture to be, and so they've embraced it as well.

And so, we also have, like an open line of communication to like, obviously, there's like a line of, you know, a chain of command where, you know, content hackers, which is our initial hires have to go up to their team lead and team leads go from there. But there's always, we always make sure there's an open line of communication where like, if there's a real problem, or there's something we can be doing better as a culture for you, let us know.

And we've had people come to us and say, if they've experienced issues, we've had more people come to us, telling us how they finally feel like they're in a place where they feel like, safe and secure, which is incredible. But I feel like it's about making sure people can really feel like they can be honest and open. But for us to make sure that that filters down into all of our content hackers it's making sure that we're still growing and maintaining the relationships with the leadership roles over there.

Ryan: Wow. Yeah, you said open and honest a few times. And I know that Jeremy's probably smiling a little bit because that's pretty much what he says to every team he works with. It's like, the goal here is to be open and honest. And I think for a lot of people, that's a lot easier said than done.

Jeremy: And that's really, it's commendable to see how you've been comfortable when they give you feedback to really look at it and really take it into consideration. Let's just be an open, willing to listen. And then honestly, assessing it and seeing how it can help you because we all get to see the business from different perspectives and different angles. And sometimes our blind spots are somebody else's focal points. So they can help us along.

Shaina: It's exactly right. Like I tell the team leads over there consistently, like, I am not on the front lines with you guys. Like, you guys are client-facing, you guys are all communicating with each other, it would be really arrogant and ignorant for me to say that I know what's best on their side of the coin because I'm not there consistently.

Like, what I really really enjoy doing is hearing what their perspective is, getting feedback from other areas, like Sarah's thoughts on it, you know, trying to understand where the client-side is, and then coming up with a solution that works for everybody. But to just assume that I know what would be best for them is like, I feel like it would be just unfortunate and it wouldn't really be aligned with our culture in the first place because I have to listen to them in order to make sure that we're serving them the way that I initially intended it to be.

Ryan: That's great. So what's next for Repurpose House?

Shaina: Hopefully a lot of growth.

Ryan: Yeah. Is that the focus?

Shaina: Yeah, so we just started running ads. So we're trying to optimize that. And now we're doing the whole do as we say, you know, that we're like doing the stuff we tell people to do now that we have the bandwidth to do it. So

Ryan: You're creating your own content now.

Shaina: Yeah, we're great. So we are, you know, starting as we're trying to, we're testing a lot of stuff. So we're going to be doing a lot of that this year. We're kind of scaling back events because we're trying to run that budget somewhere else. But really, it's just a lot of growth. We're going to be doing a couple of events now where you can come in and basically take two days, film your content, have it repurposed, have it scheduled, you have a quarters worth of all of your social media posts just done in a matter of two days.

So we're starting to like really build with that, those quarterly events can look like and then we're doing a lot of educational content. So we're going to have a whole other arm that's just like hey, you know you, don't want, like you may be Repurpose House isn't the right fit for you. But if that's the case, we'll teach you how to do all this stuff. And then having like, paid courses as like, powered by Repurpose House so that we can, you know, help people who still want to be generating content, but just maybe aren't where they need to be in order to utilize us as a service will.

Ryan: That's cool. That's cool. Well, hey, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. I've really enjoyed our conversation. How do people get ahold of you?

Shaina: Yeah, so I mean, I'm all over social kind of, at, it's Shaina Weisinger and the spelling is crazy. So it's SHAINA WEISINGER. So Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, it's a lot of puppies if I'm honest. So I kind of took a backseat on posting a whole bunch of like super influencer content because I did that for one minute thinking that it was going to be the end-all of the business when I stepped back and we ended up doubling and sales that month.

So I was like, sweet. I can back off a little bit and post about puppies. So you won't see a ton of like super, super content-driven type stuff on there. But for that kind of content it's, you're going to want to look for Repurpose House Co on all the platforms.

Ryan: Alright, and then do you have a website, like if they want to learn more about Repurpose House?

Shaina: Yeah, it's just repurposehouse.com. We've got some examples. Check it out. Yeah, definitely. And then there's a, we haven't a couple of options where you can opt into our newsletter where we always offer like really cool value, right? The value content, like stuff that you can learn. We're always trying to educate. We're always trying to, you know, make your lives better in content. So sign on up.

Ryan: Well, thanks again, Shaina. I really enjoyed your stories, the lessons and knowledge that you have in this. I'm very excited for what you got planned for Repurpose House. Thanks again.

Shaina: Yeah. Thank you for having me. This was great. Thanks, guys.

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