Your contract will not make clients pay

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here.

It's a great question. so I've always been a marketeer. For me, I'm a very creative person, and that was a creative field that I was able to, you know, generate money in. So I started marketing at a very young age, about 16, because I didn't do the traditional university route. I went down the apprenticeship route, which was much better for me as somebody that's quite. Neurodivergent and ADHD, just actually being in the workforce, I was able to really understand that maybe I am an intelligent person. It's just that school was very challenging for me. so I worked my way up to a CMO at the age of 27, and decided I wanted to work in tech really at the premise of digital assets, becoming an industry because I was very early in in this whole field. So really the majority of my career as a marketer has been in decentralized finance. As soon as financial instruments went on chain, I was pretty much at the front line marketing these types of financial products.

Yeah, good question. So I, as I've just described, have a very long history in marketing. and particularly marketing in web three is a challenging topic because from my experience I felt like I was often carrying a lot of my team and then you know, the talent there's a lot of talent gaps and I felt like I was always The one pushing forward high quality work. So I found a lot of friction with you know lots of in-house web 3 teams. And then I also found a lot of friction in agency. So having worked my way up to CMO and building many teams along the way, I had a really good scope. What kind of talent was available and also what it's like to be working with an external agency. So for me, I wanted to go out on a mission to create a much better system and service and model that would actually complement these early stage founders in decentralized finance and other areas as well, but that's generally our speciality. So For me, hiring in-house is very expensive, a lot of friction. It takes a very long time to figure out if somebody's the right fit. And then on the agency side, they are also very expensive and generally require so much handholding and they're not technically proficient. So, seeing all that friction, I decided to design Benzema Co. So Benzimera Co. acts as a full-stat go-to-market team. And we actually integrate with the founders. And as because we work with so many founders at early stage, we're often able to really guide them and help them get from zero to one. And my co-founder is a full-stack developer. So it means that we're able to be very technically efficient. And also in marketing, especially in technical marketing, there's so much technology needed. Like we've built, you know, on-chain platforms to market with and things like that. So That's our edge, is not only are we marketeers and we can fit in fri like without any friction because we know what we're doing, we can also be very technically literate, which is a breath of fresh air for a lot of these founders that, you know, are able to trust that we are able to communicate their product with these.

Okay, nice. So I think we can also talk about the AI thing as well in progressive leadership, because it just gave me a spark of inspiration. So yes, things are massively developing on the artificial intelligence scope. and We as a team, and this is part of progressive leadership, because for me, my team are involved in a lot of the decision making that we have as a whole. You know, this is a piece of all of our company. we build it together, right? So we often debate AI a lot because ultimately, unfortunately, creatives and marketers are being challenged with this technology. From the perspective that we think it might replace us, or things like that, I don't believe that's true for a second. obviously it's gonna replace a lot of things, but it's not gonna replace creatives. so we have a lot of debate about it. and obviously we've had to shift the way that we do things a lot. So somebody from my team said it so beautifully the other day, and they were basically saying, like, We need to be using AI as an extension of ourselves. And you know, this isn't come from leadership. This has not come from me or my co-founder. This has come from somebody that's, you know, in-house and they and they are massively pushing the rest of the team to get on board. So what we've just done, which is really innovative, and this is thanks to having a technical co-founder, is we've just integrated Claude into literally the heart of our company. So we've got rid of our click up system. You know, now we've got this this knowledge base and it follows us in every single call we do. we speak to it, we use it as a creative tool. So I've now got people in my team that aren't necessarily designers able to create really incredible designs. And then our creative director is freed up of it and can sign it off. So we we're like in a spaceship right now as a team because we're all very competent and and we're all very efficient. And we've just been loaded up with the most powerful tool and we've done this change in the last week or so and it's the results have just been incredible. So progressive leadership is also about empowering your team with the tools available instead of being scared and like to have di debates about it, you know. And this is now giving us an an even bigger edge. So that's where we're at with maybe a pro a progressive leadership piece at the moment.

So I've been very lucky at Benzimmer and Co. because as I mentioned before, through working in Web3 for so many years and often being at a hiring manager position, I was able to hire a lot of the individuals that I now work with. So I've known some of these individuals for like four or five years. and often even got them their first jobs in Web3, you know, and then I've left the company. So I think when it came to building Benzim Run Co., you know, it took a few phone calls because I'd already created a lot of these relationships. So I'm I think that's that's quite rare. but what I'd say is that everyone in the team now. We are all very respectful of each other and we're genuinely friends and we care about each other as human beings. you've got to make a lot of very tough decisions as a founder, especially when you know you've got to you've always got to think about the company and the company's health first. which gets very complicated when there's humans involved, right? Humans that you really, really care about. So I think. It is just like a constant balance of I and I always ask myself this question when I'm, you know, thinking about team or setup or what people are doing. And it's like, am I emotionally involved in this individual? and is it affecting my perspective on the health of the company, right? So it's it's about getting that balance. So I think I think it p being being creating a safe haven, having a A progressive environment where people can grow and thrive is gonna be the healthiest, you know, environment for your business. But then you're always having to battle with the question as the person that is, you know, generating all the revenue and keeping the company afloat, you know, is is this particular thing the best thing for the company as well? So I think it's like a a a very interesting formula that you have to come to pretty much on a daily basis. So I always try and give my team, you know, 70% of what they really enjoy and thrive at, and then like maybe the 30% of stuff that's just kind of mundane. So yeah, just want to empower them and make sure that they're adding to the health of the company and vice versa. It's a beautiful thing to be honest.

Firstly firstly, let's throw some respect on founders and hir people that actually have hired, you know, teams because you you really go through a lot of like psychological warfare when it comes to actually having a team and having to meet salaries every month. Like that's a whole other experience that is just like unbelievable and pushes you as a human being so much. It's something that has been something that I've loved and something that has obviously caused me a lot of stress and up at night, you know? But it's something that I would never change. I I don't think I could ever go back to being an employer now genuinely. I'm just unhirable at this point. Too much of too much of a leader and a CEO now to to have be absorbed into another company. It would be very difficult. I'd say the main changes is yeah, I've developed a respect for the founders that are doing this. And I think I'm able to converse with them and and empower them as well. Like for example, when what we usually do is we work with a lot of early stage founders. And and being an a an early stage founder, you do have to get very comfortable with risk. So I think that being able to sh support our clients with some of these conversations, like we we we're We often act as like a therapist, to be honest, to a lot of these founders. And it's a really nice exchange. Both, you know, both ways. I'd say that this is maybe a negative sentence, but it's not negative. and that's that truly from becoming a founder, I've completely lost my innocence. You know, there's no innocence now left inside of me. Because you really see the best and the worst people. And you people do try and take advantage of you all the time. so I'm very grateful for losing my innocence because now I'm able to see things for what they really are.

Yeah, we won't name and shame. I think people just generally expect you to work for free, which is interesting. and you gotta give a little bit, right? To get like you need to kind of show them what they're gonna experience through working with you. So I'm I'm very happy to put together like high level strategies and you know, have multiple meetings and things like that. Like we do a lot for free. We do. especially if we like them and read. As a client, but that there comes a line where it does just start to eat away at your time, and you've got to really understand how to be asked to be compensated, like money and these types of discussions, they are quite difficult to have. So you have to overcome, you need to basically have zero fear of rejection, none, if you're gonna go and ask, you know, a certain individual to pay. you X amount of dollars. You really, really can't have any sense of of rejection there and be very okay with the rejection. but also you really start to develop a sense of worth not just in yourself but in your services in your company. And when you truly are doing what you love and providing value, you're no longer selling anything. It's just it's like an exchange, an exchange of energy. So that's really what I aim to do. but yeah, so something as well that you'll learn as a founder is that you unless you're willing to take someone to court, there's really no point in even having a contractual agreement because it's probably not gonna be followed. And that's a very tough pill to swallow. you know, you will get clients clients that will try not to pay you. that will, you know, just change as a human being or have genuine like non-empathic energy towards you and try and genuinely like cause you and your business harm. Like this this is this is the reality of have being in a service agreement with certain clients. Like this is you're just gonna have to get used to that. That's going to happen if you have a services company. People are gonna try and get out of paying you. And it can really, really affect your your company because you've got salaries to pay. Going back to that, you've got mouths to feed. And unless you're willing to take them to court, which costs about a hundred thousand pounds, you know, then you can pretty much just let go of that, of the you know, of them actually giving you your your capital that that's owed. So yeah, you need to be comfortable with that and have certain constingencies in in trying to mitigate that as much as possible.

Yeah, I think we all have.

Hundred percent. Yeah. Psychologically, financially, time wise, it's a huge deal to take someone to call. And it doesn't it and if you're empathic, you don't really want to do that, right? You want to keep things good.

Absolutely. You get this like s sunken cost fallacy. So yeah.

So I wish I could sit here and say we have this framework, because that's something that I'd love, but it's just not that simple, honestly. The clients that we work with are so bespoke in what they do. Like we're very niche that I like to treat each product with the bespoke and respect that they deserve. So everything we do is Absolutely tailored to what they are, even as founders, right? Because when a founder has a product, that product is their baby and they are the parent. So, you know, even the way that we communicate with certain clients, like maybe some are more chilled, they want to meet once a week, some want to meet daily. You know, certain strategies are gonna work for some and some gonna work for others. So of course we've got standardization in our in our frameworks. but generally everything that we do is incredibly bespoke, and we are starting to work with traditional products as well, which is really exciting. So we're we've just taken on a client for a golf glove, which helps you with your swing. So we're We're going into the world of traditional, which is really exciting for us. so that's gonna come with you know, other strategies as well. But generally, just being incredibly high quality in our output, and we really focus on revenue generation as well. Like, nothing that we do doesn't have like how am I gonna make my client money. that question needs to be answered in everything that we do, right? So yeah, sure we can do an amazing brand and things like that. And we do lots of really high quality work, but at the end of the day we always want to lead back to value add So that's what how I really like to work, especially with financial protocols, right? Because you can actually bring in capital and it's so it's such an amazing experience to be like, Wow, we've launched today and there's now seventy million in this protocol, for example. Like that is a feeling you can't, you know, even describe to be honest. And it feels fantastic.

I know.

If anyone says that, they're just lying. I'm sorry. There's no one size fit at all. There just isn't.

Have you even read it? The bare minimum. We have clients that are like both financial products on-chain. One strategy will work really well for one, one won't the other. And I I I I sometimes I can't even tell you why, you know? It's just it's just unfortunately the nature of marketing. It does take testing. But eventually you do find something that works really well and then you just double down on that strategy. But there is no one size fits all go-to-market strategy and I will die on that hill.

So LinkedIn really. I try and do as much as possible there. I'm also in Dubai at the moment, so I'm always very keen to meet with like-minded individuals, whether it's professional friendship as well. so yeah, I'm in Dubai, I'm on LinkedIn, and I'm often in London as well.

Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure.