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Meet the powerhouse, Fatima Zaidi, the founder and CEO of Quill Inc a full-service podcasting hosting platform and production agency that helps brands launch and amplify their voices through the power of podcasting. Fatima's vision and leadership have not only propelled her company to the forefront of the industry but have also earned her a spot in the limelight as a respected speaker and media commentator.
With accolades such as being named in the Top 30 Under 30, receiving the Veuve Bold Future Award, and being recognized as Young Professional of the Year, Fatima's trailblazing journey is nothing short of inspiring. Her insights on media trends and the importance of fostering a diverse and inclusive culture have led her to keynote on world stages alongside legends like Gary Vaynerchuk and Richard Branson.
A dedicated philanthropist, serving as the Co-Chair of the #Tech4SickKids council for SickKids Hospital, and an academic, imparting her knowledge as a professor at the University of Toronto. Her multifaceted career even includes a highlight of sharing a panel with Beyonce’s father!
In this episode we discuss the importance of video distribution for podcasts and the challenges of reaching a wider audience. She shares her journey of becoming a podcasting expert and the gap she identified in the market that led her to start Quill. Fatima emphasizes the need for data-driven approaches to podcasting and how it can provide measurable ROI for brands. She also highlights the balance between creativity and business management as a CEO. Additionally, Fatima discusses the significance of philanthropy in her company's culture and the impact it has on employee retention. Lastly, she reflects on her experiences sharing the stage with industry icons like Gary Vee and Richard Branson and the lessons she has learned from the five regrets of the dying. In this conversation, Fatima Zaidi shares her insights and experiences as the CEO of Quill, a podcast production company. She emphasizes the importance of prioritizing joy and work-life balance, and how it has contributed to her success. Fatima also discusses the challenges of starting a business in a challenging space and how she overcame them through bootstrapping and strategic decision-making. She highlights the value of investing in team development and creating a culture of growth. Additionally, Fatima dispels the myth that online tactics can replace offline connections, emphasizing the power of building genuine relationships. Overall, her journey showcases the importance of being a well-rounded CEO.
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Kelly Yefet (00:27.125)
Sitting across from the screen from me today is Fatima Zaidi, the founder and CEO of Quilt Inc, a full-service podcasting hosting platform and production agency that helps brand
launch and amplify their voices through the power of podcasting, which, of course, I'm very interested in hearing your story today. Fatima's vision and leadership have not only propelled her company to the forefront of the industry, but have also earned her a spot in the limelight with very respect as a very respected speaker and media commentator with accolades, such as being named top 30 under 30, receiving the Veuve Bold Future Award and being recognized as a young professional of the year.
Fatima Zaidi (01:02.014)
Sorry today.
Kelly Yefet (01:25.777)
Your trailblazing journey is nothing short of inspiring, and I'm very excited to hear your story today. I know that you have incredible insights about the media trends, the importance of fostering an inclusive and diverse culture, and things like this have led you to be on the stage with legends like Jerry V and Richard Branson, so I would love to hear a little bit more of those stories. And you're a philanthropist, so serving as the co-chair on Tech for 60...
Tech for Sick Kids, which is the Council for Sick Kids Hospital, and an academic, so a professor at U of T. So a very multifaceted career with a lot of highlights, which I don't even know how we'll touch on 10% of it, but I did see that you were on a panel with Beyonce's father, so I thought maybe we could start there and understand maybe if that was a career highlight, how you ended up on a panel with Beyonce's father, and then of course I would love for you to share a bit about...
Fatima Zaidi (02:09.526)
We can start here.
Kelly Yefet (02:21.137)
your story and your back.
Fatima Zaidi (02:23.898)
Absolutely. Firstly, thank you so much for the wonderful intro and for having me on your show. I, you know, as a podcasting expert, I was very, you know, thrilled to go through your recent episodes and the production quality is great. Your content is great. So podcasting is a marathon, not a sprint. And I know that you've kept the momentum going. So kudos to you for the consistency. It's, it's, it's something that we don't see a lot in the industry. Oftentimes, podcasters will
Kelly Yefet (02:46.665)
Thank you.
Fatima Zaidi (02:53.712)
start really enthusiastically with a great idea, but then soon after get very overwhelmed with the amount of work that it takes to keep the content going, which people probably don't realize, as well as scaling audiences. So we always tell our clients and the customers that we work with that it's like building your business. There's no such thing as overnight success. And it's been really great to see that you've consistently put out content frequently and great content at that. So kudos to you.
Kelly Yefet (03:22.305)
Thank you, you're making me blush.
Fatima Zaidi (03:26.234)
So you asked me about Beyonce's dad, which is, yeah, it absolutely was a career highlight for me. The funny thing is I actually didn't know that I was going to be on a panel with him. I was invited to do a talk at the creative industries, at the creative industries event. And I actually like love Beyonce so much. I'm a huge fan. And so much so that my team actually got me, you know, those Starbucks mugs that are like, you know,
the ones that you keep in your house. I actually have one of those and they engraved like Beyonce's name into it as like a joke just because I love her so much. And I honestly travel with this mug everywhere I go this Beyonce cup is with me literally everywhere I go with my like to go coffee. And I walk into this panel with my coffee mug that says Beyonce on it. And I sit down on this panel have no idea who is on this panel with me. But there's a gentleman sitting next to me and he turns to me and he's like, Hey,
Kelly Yefet (03:57.201)
Yeah.
Kelly Yefet (04:09.469)
That's so funny.
Fatima Zaidi (04:25.848)
mug you know that's my daughter's name and my naive state was like oh you named your daughter after Beyonce that's something I would do too and he was like oh yeah no Beyonce is my daughter and of course that was the highlight of my sales career I like couldn't really hold it together and on that event or at that event he talked about how he created Destiny's Child and then managed Beyonce from there for a while in terms of being her agent in his and her career
Kelly Yefet (04:38.855)
Yeah.
Fatima Zaidi (04:56.528)
I just felt like I was that much close to my living idol. I think she embodies professionalism and perfection. She's like just one of those artists that like delivers flawlessly every time. And I think as it pertains to any female in any sort of industry or vertical, you always have to be overprepared because the margin of error is just so low. And I really respect people like Beyonce for not only being on global stages,
professional and then always delivering for their fans and I think that sort of message and work ethic can really be translated to anyone who looks up to her in any industry is that confidence equates to preparation.
Kelly Yefet (05:40.613)
Yeah, that's such a cool story. I feel like I would just completely fall apart if I was in your position, but it's, I love that your, why you love Beyonce and had that moment is so much bigger than just you love her songs. Like there's so much that you can pull from each impactful individual that you see into your life. And obviously we were set up on a coffee chat and I was blown away by you and I felt
Fatima Zaidi (05:45.886)
Yes.
Kelly Yefet (06:10.141)
that just in our very quick conversation of yourself and your journey and how you got to where you are today. So I'd love to understand a little bit more about being the founder of Quill and your journey that got you there.
Fatima Zaidi (06:26.526)
It's very interesting. You can always connect the dots sort of looking backwards. I mean, you know, historically Entrepreneurship isn't in my family at all. My dad's a government worker. My mom was a stay-at-home mom I'm a full-time homemaker and so When it came to trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my career in life The option of being a founder or business owner just like wasn't even on my radar. It's pretty clear to me And I come from a very traditionally
South Asian family so it was very clear to me that I had to join some sort of a corporate organization and climb the corporate ladder and I tried that stint for a little while but it just really wasn't for me and then eventually I had come from a sales background I joined the startup circuit and started helping start up scale from zero MRR to multi-millions in revenue and then one day I just had a thought I'm working so hard to make other people rich why not invest that
time into myself and my own venture and see where it could go. And of course it requires a lot of risk but my barometer for risk has always been typically very high. I mean I picked up and left and left my home in the Middle East and came to Canada at a pretty young age so I felt like
If the odds were going to be in anyone's favor, I feel like I was confident that I could make it work. At the time I was running sales for a marketing agency and saw that there was a really big gap in the space in terms of specialized services. There's tons of PR agencies, there's tons of digital marketing services, but there was no agency out there that was doing it all in terms of audio format shows. And understandably so. Podcasting wasn't a thing until very recently.
It was just around the time that serial had launched and blown up and everyone was I think that was probably the first podcast that most people I know um listened to and so when that podcast came out I started seeing an influx of our clients being like Oh, like could we try that format for reaching our customers and our stakeholders and building a relationship with our sort of ecosystem? And I was like great. Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it But then when I was looking for the resources it was either freelancers who would do like elements of it
Fatima Zaidi (08:43.592)
or there was one agency that was very specialized and amazing, but they were charging like a million dollars for a podcast, which realistically isn't feasible for most companies and organizations. So that's why I decided to leave and start Quail. And it was a month before the pandemic. So I attribute a lot of our success to being in the right place at the right time, hard work.
work ethic, the grind, that's the bare minimum. Every founder comes to the table with those skills. I mean, that's not necessarily something that's novel or different, but being in the right place and creating those opportunities and that element of a variable that you can't control, which is truly just luck, I got really lucky in terms of the timing.
Kelly Yefet (09:29.117)
That's really amazing. And it's interesting on the podcast side, you mentioning that it's, when you got started, it was still a newer thing. And even maybe today, I think if a company is gonna invest in podcasting, it's a bit of an experiment perhaps in the beginning, or at least that's how I think of that. Is it still the case that if a brand or a company is gonna invest in a podcast, maybe they're not gonna jump in all the way because they feel that it's still a bit experimental, or is it?
Is it kind of base case nowadays?
Fatima Zaidi (10:00.246)
That's a really good question. I would say it's gotten a lot better. So we've been doing this for a while now and in the beginning, a lot of our time was spent on the education component of why should you launch a podcast? What does the ROI look like? I think the thing that was most challenging is that we are competing with digital marketing budgets like Google Ads, Instagram Ads, LinkedIn Ads. For every dollar you're putting in to a Google Ad, you're seeing exactly how it impacts your bottom line in terms of ROI. And so we were competing with those budgets.
So it became very clear to me early on in our journey that I was gonna have to figure out how to show our why To the clients that we work with and for context anyone listening We work with fortune 500 brands like PwC and Microsoft and Expedia when you're working with those clients You cannot get away with giving them basic data and stats like how many downloads having listeners That doesn't justify the creation of new production budgets and it doesn't help them understand why they should be podcasting So actually the thing that really helped us
solidify podcasting as a very I would say high profile content medium strategy is We ended up launching a product very early on because we noticed this gap in the market and this product can show you Exactly who's listening to your show and how they're responding to your content So things like age gender household income job title what companies your listeners are working at what channels are they coming in from? Where are they dropping off?
Staying on for future episodes.
measuring content stickiness and engagement and just overall giving you a very clear picture of who the listener is and How they're responding to your content as soon as we were able to show that to our clients We saw a huge sort of uptake in our retention And now I would say we're almost in the 90th percentile of brands who come to us who want a podcast Who then invest in season 2 season 3 so it's gotten a lot better But it's because we really had to do the work in terms of approaching
Fatima Zaidi (12:03.536)
podcasting in a data-driven way to be able to compete with those digital marketing budgets. And so a big part of the work that we do is analytics, measurement, ROI, and helping brands understand how the show is impacting their business objectives, which could be leadership, which could be thought leadership and brand awareness, but it could also be lead generation and sales conversions for their organization. It really depends on what it is that they're looking for.
Kelly Yefet (12:31.333)
It's so fascinating and I understand why a marketer might say, I have X budget and a percent can go to podcasting and a percent has to go to everything else. Um, but hopefully as you're saying, people can start to understand how this isn't necessarily competing with the digital budget, but it should be part of your, your full approach. And in my head, I think of, okay, you and I are having this conversation. And if I wanted to, I could turn this into,
a million pieces, right? Like a blog post, a LinkedIn post, a bunch of social, like it just becomes so easy to take this hour. I mean, it's a lot of work behind the scenes, but like an hour of a conversation and flip it into a month of content. So the ROI, yes, and the data backed.
Fatima Zaidi (13:01.768)
Oh yeah.
Fatima Zaidi (13:09.634)
Totally.
Fatima Zaidi (13:21.998)
100%.
Kelly Yefet (13:26.133)
storytelling, yes, but also like the forward-looking element of it as well to me is just so incredibly valuable when it comes to podcasting
Fatima Zaidi (13:35.982)
Absolutely. We don't want a podcast to live in isolation on the listing apps like Apple and Spotify We want to repurpose all of that content for brands existing channels So to your point converting all of their transcripts into SEO formatted recap blogs for accessibility and SEO purposes Converting both audio and video which we're capturing today for example and putting the video on YouTube as a YouTube series to reach a younger audience also converting the video into bite-sized snippets for tick-tock and LinkedIn and other channels
The goal for us is we're creating all of this evergreen content. It's not just a podcast that you're getting. We're repurposing all of the content for your brand's existing channels. And so it's not like you have a newsletter, you have email marketing, you have all these social channels, you're doing PR. So why not utilize this content to extend your content runway?
Kelly Yefet (14:28.477)
Yeah, and I mean, the last piece as well as the network that you're building from it, I think is also incredible. And you and I, as an example, connected on something else, but this has turned into hopefully a great relationship and we can connect a bit more because how often do you sit down for an hour conversation with someone? I don't think it's all that all that common. I want to ask as a CEO and an entrepreneur.
You're balancing, I think, two really big pieces, especially being in the podcast world. There's this creative aspect of podcasting, along with actual business management and growing a business. And I'm curious how you balance those two sides of the coin.
Fatima Zaidi (15:11.022)
So I'm pretty transparent about the fact that I was not a podcasting expert when I launched Quail. I wasn't at all. I saw a gap in the market. And I don't necessarily think that you have to be an expert in something when you start a company. I think you need to see the market demand and you need to see a gap in the industry. So that I was I was the former. I come from a sales background, so I know where the opportunities are.
Like I certainly wasn't the person at the beginning who I would claim as like the expert or go to person on how to create the best podcast. I am now because of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule. If you do something enough times, you eventually become an expert. Um, so very early on in Quail's inception, we were working with a team of actual experts on the creative side. It was a boutique agency called Origins Media House. And they were really talented.
of them worked on vice documentaries. They really understood how to bring a show to life in a creative way. My skill was bringing in the business and scaling revenue and their skill was creative content. Maybe halfway through our journey I actually ended up
six months into Coil launching, I ended up acquiring their company. So they came on as our head of production, head of sound engineering, head of marketing. So that's kind of actually how we started to scale our audiences and scale our customers is I knew that I could bring in the sales, no problem. I had the network of clients and customers, but in terms of execution, you need to know when to delegate to people who are better than you.
Kelly Yefet (16:52.581)
Yeah, it's a theme that I hear with a lot of a lot of these conversations, whether it's a co-founder or someone that has supported you really early on, is that balance of you will find it very difficult to succeed if you try to own the entire journey. So trying, I think delegating is a really important piece of that. And I imagine it's incredibly busy, so you don't even want to own all of it. But the busyness brings me to tech.
Fatima Zaidi (17:07.246)
Of course.
Kelly Yefet (17:20.893)
for sick kids because clearly you don't think that you're busy enough and you're always taking on more opportunities and more leadership roles. So I'm curious what motivated you to get involved with sick kids and what your role as co-chair entails.
Fatima Zaidi (17:39.822)
So, chairing SickKids for me, I mean, I think every founder starts their company to solve a problem in some way. But for me, baking philanthropy into my company's DNA has given me purpose, but it's also allowed us to build a really strong give back culture at Quill. And so philanthropy is really at the crux of everything we do. We have a charity budget that's monthly. We donate a percentage of profits to charity.
doing a lot of work with Sick Kids Hospital, but also other charities like sponsoring Syrian families through Lifeline Syria. Anytime there's a natural disaster we usually do some sort of a GoFundMe and just in general really like making sure that we're plugged into the community in various ways and I think like I definitely want to create a profitable company. Being cash flow positive is like the number one priority because if you don't have cash flow you
culture that can give back and ultimately money gives you options so like that is definitely for me like numero uno in terms of our KPIs and priority but that's not the extent of our legacy or the work that we're doing I mean if you can't give back to your community and support different initiatives and truly the bulk of your responsibility is bringing profits that to me is just a really short-sighted way of not being a well-rounded individual
success look like to everyone. For some person it could be being rich, for someone it could be being happy, for someone it could be being fulfilled and for me there's not like one thing that makes you successful. Having a successful company is important but being well-rounded, having meaningful relationships, having a strong community.
And part of philanthropy for me is like one of my core buckets. Like community and philanthropy is like 50% of what fuels me and makes me happy.
Kelly Yefet (19:40.497)
It's so heartwarming and I love to hear that because I think as a founder, it's really easy to get caught up in the day to day and the mission of the company. So I think it's really important that you, that you find the time and not only find the time, I guess, like incorporate it as part of the company and part of your being. How did you, how do you instill that in the company beyond, you know, your role as the co-chair? Is there like a,
Fatima Zaidi (19:46.51)
Yeah.
Kelly Yefet (20:08.985)
element of the culture that allows that to trickle in.
Fatima Zaidi (20:12.298)
Yeah, definitely. We actually have a whole non-profit arm to our business as well where we like give like very discounted and like very, very cheap podcasts. We charge a lot for the Fortune 500 brands and we were an enterprise company, but we will like slash our prices 95% for like organizations, for example, SickKids Hospital. We create their podcasts, but we certainly aren't, you know, it's a, it's a
Definitely an initiative for us where we put it under a nonprofit umbrella Same with organizations like heart and stroke and just other sort of charities that we're really passionate about Giving back also is kind of like a team initiative when we're doing fundraisers things like that. Also, I will say strategically Having a culture of philanthropy really impacts retention It's one of many things that we're doing but nobody's left quill yet Nobody in terms of turnover has left the business yet
on their own accord. So I feel like we there's a I don't want to attribute it just to philanthropy and charity but I think that we're now moving into an era where people want to work with organizations that reflect the same social values that they hold and have.
And I think that they like the fact that, you know, in our job descriptions, it says, like, if you don't love furry animals, then we're probably not the best fit. And we have active fundraisers for North Toronto Cat Rescue going. And, you know, of course, the fundraisers for UNICEF or any natural disaster or whatever it is that we're doing at the time. I mean, we recently went to a senior citizens home and donated gifts and stuff like just after the holidays because they mentioned to us that it's usually a lonely time where
visitors. So just like little things like that where I feel like builds the overall culture long term and contributes to peak retention which is the best way that you can save your company money. I'm constantly thinking about ways to retain our staff because it would be such an expensive mistake to lose any of our players. So like everyone has proprietary knowledge to the roles that they have and it would just be so short-sighted to not invest in the culture and growth.
Kelly Yefet (22:25.585)
Yeah, I think a lot of companies will do these volunteer days or give back in a, let's check the box and make sure we do it. And that's not going to make a difference on retention. Whereas what you're sharing and how you talk about it, it's so authentic and it's truly embedded in the culture. And that's probably what brings this like strength and true bond between the, um, the team and develops that culture. So it's, it's very fascinating. It's, um,
Fatima Zaidi (22:34.503)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Yefet (22:54.501)
an interesting like element of what can drive strong retention. And I think you're right in startups or with founders, it's such a big part of growing the business to make sure that you don't, you're not wasting your time on churn.
Fatima Zaidi (23:07.202)
Yeah, no, I really appreciate you saying that. There's a podcast that I listen to, I think everyone listens to it, it's called How I Built This, Guy Raz, and one of the questions that he always asks at the end of his interview is, and all founders, it's such a fascinating case study, maybe you could ask something similar moving forward to all of the founders that join your show, and it's what would you attribute your success to? Is it luck, is it a particular skill that you have, is it, what would you say the one thing
is that made you successful and everyone kind of has like a different answer. I would say like giving back in community is probably mine like one of the biggest things because I personally have this mentality that like abundance so like when you give back it comes back to you tenfold and so the fact that we're not just concerned about profits I mean cash flow is king for sure but at the end of the day like what you do with those profits I think is
Fatima Zaidi (24:07.496)
your building and so for me that's like arguably the most important part of my day-to-day.
Kelly Yefet (24:14.389)
So it's so fascinating. I wanted to switch gears to building the business and a little bit more of Quill. But before I do that, I did want to chat about your experience in sharing a stage with Gary V and Richard Branson and what that experience was like, if you learned anything from being around them, and what you've taken or reflect on from that experience.
Fatima Zaidi (24:42.35)
So I'll speak to Gary Vee because I feel like he is such an icon to so many young millennials who are joining the workforce and I don't necessarily know, I was listening to his talk, I can't remember the event that we spoke at now, it's like I'm drawing a blank but I think I've been actually stage to stage with him a couple of times on various keynotes that he's done. Luckily I've been on much after him because he wants to follow Gary Vee but I don't necessarily
Kelly Yefet (25:10.133)
Totally.
Fatima Zaidi (25:12.444)
I agree with his like philosophy and like mantra to business. His philosophy is very much like hustle, grind, grind. It's a race to the finish. If you don't get there, there's somebody else who's going to outwork you and get there first. And for him, when you ask Gary Vee, like what a success, he will 100% say it's how rich you are, how much money you're making, how hard you're working, it's all about your career and work. And I just don't necessarily know that I agree with that. My younger self would have definitely
if you looked at the way that I...
And I still work really hard. I just work smarter and differently. But if you look at the way that I worked at the start of my career because of icons like Gary V, who I really looked up to, I feel like it just wasn't sustainable. Like if you look at the pillars of success of being a well-rounded person, I was excelling in terms of my career and work ethic and the amount of hours I was putting in, but like all of my other records were empty. Health, fitness, relationships,
traveling, all of the buckets that make you a cool, well-rounded, interesting, smart, dynamic person. I wasn't checking any of those boxes. So over time I've really shifted who I admire because I think it's so important the message that you're putting out. And I love people like Adam Grant and Tim Ferriss and...
Folks who really attribute success to, you know, all of the buckets and cups being full rather than just the one. There's, um, and I love talking about this story, but there's a nurse called Bonnie Rare. She's a palliative care nurse. And she interviewed, I think it was like a pool of patients that were basically dying on their deathbed. She interviewed a bunch of people and she asked them what their top five regrets were.
Fatima Zaidi (27:02.91)
And then based on their top five regrets, she wrote a book. Or yeah, she wrote a book. And...
This article honestly, it's so fascinating because this is like a case study of like what people regret in their life It wasn't a small sample pool. This is something that she did day in day out and I actually have the five Regrets of the dying framed in my office because it's a reminder to me every day on how I want to Live my life in terms of being successful and well rounded and these are the five regrets that they had I'm going to share them because I want everyone to pay attention The first is I wish I had the courage to live a life that was true to myself and not what
Kelly Yefet (27:33.269)
Please.
Fatima Zaidi (27:39.196)
others expected of me. So powerful because like how many of us are people pleasers and get caught up with what's expected of us rather than like what's true to us and I'm definitely no stranger to this. The second is I wish I hadn't worked so hard. So again this goes back to the gear of these of the world hustle but like no one's gonna remember the deadline that you turned in on time or you working till 2am but you are gonna remember the friend's birthday that you missed or
just something to think about. The third is I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. The fourth is I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends, so again community and relationships. And the fifth is, and this is the most powerful one, I wish I'd allowed myself to be happier.
Kelly Yefet (28:27.678)
Oof.
Fatima Zaidi (28:28.614)
I know right that last one really that one is the most powerful for me and like literally have it circled and it's framed it's like my sister framed it for my birthday because I it's like a reminder for me and that's how I try to make all of my decisions and it's like if something's going to give you joy put that deadline aside the work will still be there tomorrow you can work efficiently between the hours of nine to five I don't work evenings and weekends I take a lot of vacation and I still have a successful company so if I
else can.
Kelly Yefet (29:00.881)
It's so powerful. I recently picked up from my brother who does it, a habit of every Friday night dinner, doing a rose and a thorn. So what's something that wasn't great, but what's like something that you are really proud of or happy from the week. And I can't remember what the last piece was, but there's something, maybe a root or something. It was like, what's future looking like? What are you excited for in the coming week?
Fatima Zaidi (29:11.192)
Uh huh.
Fatima Zaidi (29:24.022)
Rose buds.
Kelly Yefet (29:25.457)
Yes, thank you. And I had never heard of it, and I've never done it before, but we've kind of like incorporated it now, and it's just so beautiful. And I think it hopefully empowers the last piece of like, if it's hard to identify what that rose is of the week, maybe that wasn't your best week. Like maybe rethink it for the following week of how can you make sure that you are happy and appreciating things, you know, times there's gonna be rough days, weeks, months, but that's powerful, wow.
Fatima Zaidi (29:51.01)
Totally.
Fatima Zaidi (29:54.534)
I actually love that exercise. I do it every Friday with my team, like one-on-one before we log off for the weekend. And like, it's so telling for me as well, because especially lately I've found more and more that my thorns are diminishing and I have more roses to share. And it could be because I do this exercise and I'm looking, it's like the gratitude journal, I'm looking for these roses throughout my week, but also just starting to make better life choices on what serves me and what makes me happy
Kelly Yefet (30:17.045)
totally.
Fatima Zaidi (30:24.408)
prioritizing that work-life balance.
Kelly Yefet (30:29.937)
Even, I mean, to the point that you spend time with your team going through one-on-one, their rose and their thorn, I think is really powerful. And it goes back to the retention of people really being heard, appreciated, the time to speak to you. I think that's incredibly powerful.
Kelly Yefet (31:00.133)
I wanted to chat a bit about the early days of starting Quill. And I imagine there are a lot of challenges because you're starting a new company in a new industry, essentially, and having to educate and build a lot of trust around the space that you're building in. I'm curious if you can speak to, you know, starting a business in a challenging space and how you overcame some of that.
Fatima Zaidi (31:23.53)
Yeah, the biggest challenge was the fact that it was right before the pandemic and it was really, really hard to raise funding. And so we were running out of runway very quickly. In fact, we actually signed a term sheet with an investor that was putting in the bulk of our...
that we were doing a pre-seed round and he pulls out at the very last minute because everyone had taken a bit of a hit from the stock market. It honestly ended up being a huge blessing because the amount of money he was gonna give us for 20% of our business is now how much money we make in a month. So.
at the time didn't feel like it was the best thing that could have happened to us, but of course we connected those dots looking backwards very quickly. What that forced me to do was to get creative in terms of how we were going to get cash flow positive and I decided I wasn't going to bring in, we're completely bootstrapped and decided not to bring in any external funding.
which was, I think, extremely valuable for a couple of reasons. One, today I retain all of my business and I have no investors and VCs breathing down my neck, which means I have been able to really enjoy this process and journey. I have a ton of founder friends, whole community of amazing entrepreneurs, and the ones that have VC-backed funding are very, very stressed. They're not having the same experience that I'm having
accountable to justifying every dollar spend, every mistake, every balance sheet to their investors, they no longer own their company. And so I'm really, really glad that I didn't go to VC route. And honestly, I don't know if I ever will want to even my next company, even my third company, I don't know if I ever want to go the investor route. The second sort of benefit for me in terms of like, really making that decision to not bring in funding and to figure it out internally is every minute that I would have spent pitching investors,
Fatima Zaidi (33:21.208)
customers. So I found product market fit very quickly. There was a cap to how quickly we could accelerate growth because of course we were bootstrapped. We had to be strappy, we had to grow incrementally. You would kill. But...
it did allow us to get to cashflow positive very quickly because we ruthlessly prioritized the areas that would bring us money and funding, because we had to, we had bills to pay. And so I wouldn't necessarily say that there's a right or wrong way of doing it because some businesses do require that oxygen and cashflow. But what I will say is, I think the media does a really great job of profiling companies that raise funding, but not of the companies who manage to successfully bootstrap.
Because of that narrative, every founder thinks that they have to raise money and they don't actually stop to think, well does my business need the funding? Can I find product market fit and then raise funding so that I have a better valuation? The other thing is, I tapped into all of the government grants and resources and I brought in a total of a quarter of a million dollars in funding and grant funding in my first year at Quail. So, and now it's even more than that because the more you make money, the more money they
like they invest it back into your business. So people don't realize this, that if you are a founder, especially a female founder.
Kelly Yefet (34:36.405)
Right.
Fatima Zaidi (34:43.038)
And especially if you're in the tech space, there are so many grounds you can tap into. There's a futurepreneur loan, that's $20,000. It'll give you right away, you have 10 years to pay back, the CanEx Sports Grant, OCE, Talent Edge, Career Foundation for hiring, IRAP and Shred if you're technical. The list is endless. And so if you're willing to put in the grind and effort and get scrappy with grant funding, you might be able to scrape by without bringing in any sort of dollars.
Kelly Yefet (35:10.589)
One of the previous conversations on the podcast that I had was with someone in a VC that worked at a VC, and he used the phrase VCEable. Like, is your business VCEable? Because if it's not, if it doesn't hit these thresholds, you know, it's probably not worth your time or our time. And instead of trying to figure out how to make your company VCEable, invest that in growing the business. And to your point, it takes...
it's almost a full-time job to raise. So why not find alternative routes to bring in that money without having someone breathing down your neck at the end of the day. And if those government grants and such that you can get it, then it makes, it's hard work either way, but I think that makes a lot more sense.
Fatima Zaidi (35:54.966)
Yeah, totally. We are now a VCable company. We're a SaaS revenue product, but now we don't need the funding. But we do have a lot of VCs reaching out now that said no to us in the early days or wouldn't even take a meeting that are now like, damn it, we wish we had.
Kelly Yefet (36:00.721)
Yes. Right.
Kelly Yefet (36:10.761)
That must feel nice.
Fatima Zaidi (36:12.358)
Yeah, it does in a way, but also we totally made the right call to not go down that direction. And if we raised money today, we would get a really good valuation, which is great. But to your point, it is a full-time job and it's a very disheartening, demoralizing process. Not only are you spending so many hours and getting so many rejections and no's, you're getting told how to run your business from people who actually don't know anything about your business.
Kelly Yefet (36:27.473)
Yeah.
Kelly Yefet (36:37.768)
Yeah.
Fatima Zaidi (36:39.738)
Not always the case, but I just, yeah, there's so many, there's so many, I would say, questions that I would have if I was to go down that route, and I'm fortunate that we, well, we haven't had to, at least not yet.
Kelly Yefet (36:53.633)
Did you have to change when you were planning for VC and then deciding to go the bootstrap route? I'm sure there was a moment that you were like, okay, let's actually switch gears here. What were some of the things that you had to change in the business to go the bootstrap route?
Fatima Zaidi (37:04.226)
Mm-hmm.
Fatima Zaidi (37:12.354)
So we launched our agency, that's what we did. So we initially launched with a product and we realized to scale the product we would have to, we required a lot of capital and funding. And so I realized when the investor pulled out that we needed cashflow, we needed something to bring in money that was gonna fund our product if it wasn't gonna be investors the money had to come from somewhere. And I was like, well, one thing that I know we can do really well is launch a podcast and provide production services. So why not do that? Be in the trenches with our customers,
Kelly Yefet (37:16.69)
Okay.
Kelly Yefet (37:29.906)
Right.
Fatima Zaidi (37:43.349)
continue to find the gaps that would serve our agency, and then flesh out our product based on those key learnings. So that's what we ended up doing. We ended up pivoting to be a service model first, and then maybe...
Two years after we had a full-fledged scaling agency that was working with Fortune 500 brands, then we went and launched a version of our product that obviously took off very quickly after that because A, we had the capital to fund it and scale it, but B, we built the product for ourselves. What were the pain points we were experiencing as producers trading a show and what were the pain points our clients were experiencing and what would they pay for? And now we have a natural sales cycle. So all of our agency customers
Kelly Yefet (38:10.44)
Yeah.
Fatima Zaidi (38:26.552)
our customers on the product side and then we opened up the product when we found product market fit with our customers to the rest of the world so now our competitors are all on our product as well which is another thing that I feel like we've done really well is nurture relationships with our competitors from early days early days and realizing that we can all work together to fill competitive gaps and like collaborate with each other which I feel like we do really well in our industry and then they came back and became customers for our product.
Kelly Yefet (38:49.853)
Wow.
Kelly Yefet (38:55.657)
That feels unheard of, but very, very cool. What were, I mean, it sounds, the VC to being bootstrapped and launching one product and then evolving to make sure you had cashflow are seen like these pivotal moments in the start of Quills. Are there other, as you reflect back over, the last handful of years of starting the business, like these monumentous moments that.
were pivotal in the success to where you are today.
Fatima Zaidi (39:27.558)
Instinctively is a really big one and that's not necessarily like one moment or one aha situation But like I credit a lot of our success to the amazing team that we have and our team is truly amazing and I get asked all the time like Like how do you make your hiring decisions? Are you working with a recruiting agency? And I think
I think it's been very instinctive and intuitive. So that is actually, I would say, the unicorn skill. It's not like any monkey can bring in revenue and do sales and do it well. I think that is, and if you worked at Salesforce, you know how to do sales. But I think the real key is hiring the right people and investing in them and scaling their skills. That, I think, is something that I've been able to do quite well because we were a junior slash intermediate team
but then I brought in external resources that were like top of their game to help level up our team to get into those places. One example that I love to use is
One of those three people that we acquired from Origins Media House joined as a community manager. It became very clear to me early days that we didn't need a community manager. We needed a data-driven growth marketer. And so she was very interested, but also didn't have the experience. And so I brought in a huge like, just like the guru in data-driven marketing, a fractional CMO who I couldn't obviously afford, you know, his salary is like half a million dollars a year, but he came in as a consultant
very closely with her and now she's our VP of Marketing and the best data driven marketer I have ever worked with. She brings in about 40% of our leads monthly through ads, optimization, content, community initiatives and she's done such a great job of lead generation and impacting our bottom line.
Kelly Yefet (41:08.137)
Wow.
Fatima Zaidi (41:22.322)
She wouldn't have necessarily had those skills or I would have necessarily not find someone as amazing as her if I hadn't taken the time to actually invest in her development. It would have been so much easier, easier in quotations to go hire a CMO who's done it before. But like I wanted a young team. I wanted a young team that wanted to really level up and like in turn, they've been super loyal.
Kelly Yefet (41:47.357)
like so fascinating because in my head I'm like, if there's a, you know, an aspiring founder or someone early in their journey hearing this, it's like to have really great retention and a really incredible culture, which it sounds like you've developed, it's giving people the room to grow, hearing that, you know, you heard that she wanted to, you know, or was interested in going to the digital route instead of saying you're a community manager, time for you to move on, like.
you obviously had the relationship with her to actually know that was something she was interested in, and then bringing in the fractional CMO to help nurture her into that position is, I think all of that is a different way of working. I don't think it's very typical, but it goes to show the value of investing in your people and finding the right paths forward.
Fatima Zaidi (42:38.834)
And letting them find their path to like our head of production ended up moving into our head of product or VP of product role and she is amazing at product. She truly has found our calling or our contractor marketer ended up becoming our senior producer and obviously didn't happen overnight. But I think that you know people are allowed to have career changes and I think that if they have the work ethic and if they have the
Kelly Yefet (42:57.542)
Yeah.
Fatima Zaidi (43:04.526)
um, right attitude, then it's really like the CEO's job to like nurture the skills and to get you to where you have to be. Like that is my responsibility. If you're checking all the other boxes, like no one should be faulted for not having everyone has to start somewhere. I mean, I certainly did in my career, but if you have the work ethic and the acumen and the attitude, you're literally, you can literally excel in any role. So I think that is the way that I would do it because it's allowed me to save a lot of my burn rate as well. Like you can hire.
Kelly Yefet (43:11.4)
Yeah.
Fatima Zaidi (43:34.62)
a younger teen that's hungry to level up their skills and not pay half a million dollars for a data-driven CMO.
Kelly Yefet (43:39.953)
Yeah. How is your experience with the fractional roles? Because I think that's becoming more and more popular, giving founders the opportunity to tap into these exceptional talent that come from these high growth companies or come from whatever works for you and whatever you're looking for without the full time commitment. So it doesn't hurt your burn rate as much. How like is that something you
you're consistently leveraging or in this one unique example.
Fatima Zaidi (44:13.77)
Yeah, so I do work with a lot of fractional people, but not in a full time capacity. So what that means is I bring in fractional people to work with my team. So our product person has a fractional resource that she can tap into. We have a fractional CFO that works with our finance team. We have a fractional CMO that works with our VP of marketing who's amazing. But their job is to provide leadership, mentorship,
of what we're doing, advice, and sort of help level up our internal team. So they're not our full-time CMOs or our full-time CPOs, but they're the way that we work together is they're supporting our team. Like one thing I realized early on is I don't have the skills to be able to support my CMO. I'm not a data-driven growth marketer. I don't have the skills to help nurture a VP of product because I'm not a product expert. I can.
Kelly Yefet (44:53.758)
Right.
Fatima Zaidi (45:13.672)
him, like that's my background and my skill set so don't need a fractional salesperson to help him but in all the other areas where I can't provide that mentorship and guidance to my team I like to bring in fractional people who are top of their game and have them work as like the mentors while they sort of level up in their career so it's a win-win for me because it means that I'm not responsible for their development but I'm seeing the fruits of their labor immediately.
Kelly Yefet (45:29.853)
Yeah.
Kelly Yefet (45:34.965)
Totally.
Kelly Yefet (45:41.845)
I'm so fascinated by the fractional world and how popular it's becoming. And I think it's such a awesome way for startups to really, to use your words, like level themselves up and get to that next stage by being able to interact with talent that maybe they wouldn't be able to hire. So kudos to you. We're at our final two questions. So the last question that I always ask is,
Fatima Zaidi (46:02.722)
Thank you.
Kelly Yefet (46:11.814)
You've gone through an entire journey. You've learned a lot. You've pivoted and you've shared a lot of that. But founders are often told a lot of myths that once you actually get into the nitty gritty, the day to day of it, you realize that myth is not true. So I'm curious if there's something that you were told or that you hear other founders saying that you would want to dispel.
Fatima Zaidi (46:36.398)
So the one thing that I would say is now because of digital marketing and the fact that we're such a digital society, we can all run our businesses from our couch without ever having to interact with our customers or the outside world because of SEO and ads and all these scalable tactics where we allow us to hide behind a screen. I've seen this huge culture of phenomena of founders saying invest in digital and you replace offline tactics with online tactics.
But in my experience, I would say online tactics, offline tactics have the power of forming stronger relationships. And I've built my entire network one handshake at a time through meaningful relationships and connection. So for me, it's about providing value and community is everything. And so.
like digital is amazing and like of course we invest heavily in AI and you know are completely doing everything that we should from like a social presence but I would say it doesn't replace the human connections and the importance of like meeting people face to face and shaking those hands and building and it doesn't have to physically be face to face but building genuine relationships the way we are doing right now and so I don't know whether or not that's a myth but I'm seeing certainly seeing a trend of people moving away from community
Kelly Yefet (47:33.438)
Right.
Fatima Zaidi (47:53.968)
relationships and providing value to people more towards what's scalable, what's instant gratification, what can I do overnight? What's going to give me that quick hit or quick win? And there is no shortcut to success and building a company is a marathon not a sprint very similar to podcasting and It's the genuine momentum that needs to keep going
Kelly Yefet (48:13.597)
Yeah, it's so true. I just saw a post on LinkedIn about growth marketers and brand marketers living in silos, not working together, and having very different objectives and goals. And I know what you talked on is a little bit different, but the idea that growth is just like quick wins. How do we increase conversion and optimize whereas brand is much more about.
perhaps there's like an offline element where you're really building connections and relationships and thinking about the long-term. And I have a brand and growth background. And I think there's such a, as growth becomes more mature, a really nice way to bring these two things together. And if you think about brand and growth, not in silos, but bring them together, it goes to show how important both brand growth, online, offline, like.
truly omni-channel can make sure that you are building for the long-term, like long-term sustainable growth. And to your point, I think part of that is also really investing in offline and, you know, people are real. We need to feel that interaction, so.
Fatima Zaidi (49:21.883)
Mm-hmm.
From the short period of time that I've known you I feel like you do that really well building genuine Relationships that are authentic and providing value to your network I think that this approach is a lot more sustainable and is going to be very scalable for you
Kelly Yefet (49:36.485)
Yeah. Thank you. And hopefully other founders are doing it as well. My very last question. So as you know, the podcast is called How I Became. If you were to name the podcast, giving your journey and what we've talked about today and just what you're feeling, how Fatima became fill in the blank, what would you name the episode today?
Fatima Zaidi (50:04.255)
Um, I'm a pro.
Kelly Yefet (50:06.418)
Mm-hmm.
Fatima Zaidi (50:07.014)
I'm laughing because I have 50 cents, get rich or die trying, playing in the background of my head. But honestly, I think it would be how I became the most well-rounded CEO. I want to be known for that. I don't want to necessarily just be known as how did she scale in such a short amount of time doing a multi-million dollar company. Like yes, that's great and it can be impressive in its respect, but lots of people have been able to do that.
Kelly Yefet (50:11.452)
I love it.
Fatima Zaidi (50:36.088)
is how you scale to a multi-million dollar company while still enjoying your life and being having balance. And so for me it would be how I became a well-rounded entrepreneur.
Kelly Yefet (50:49.941)
It's a perfect title. And I know we were chatting very briefly before the episode started that you have started to do like short vacations, but more frequently to enjoy life. And I think everything that we've talked about today embodies that well-roundedness. And you talked about it in also like these buckets to make sure all your buckets are filled. So that is a perfect title for you. Thank you so much, Fatima, for joining me today.
Fatima Zaidi (51:12.342)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me Kelly. I can't wait till this episode comes out and I encourage everyone to take a look at some of Kelly's past episodes as well. Some really great content in there and some people that I really admire, founder friends and people in my ecosystem that have been doing this a lot longer than I have, have walked the walk and have lots to share.