Life of an Entrepreneur

This is a repost of episode 1 where I tell you how I started the business and raised $11M. I am reposting this as it's been 2 years since I have been doing this podcast, even though consistency has been something I have struggled with in the past I am super proud of myself. Also, there are so many new listeners that would love for you to know more about me and how I started my business.

One of the main skills you must have as a CEO is the ability to sell.

In this episode, I take you through my exact strategy and tactics on how I don't actually sell but sign the best creators and brands in the world.

For any startup founder and entrepreneur building your team is one of the most important things you will do.

After a 1000 interviews and hiring 250+ people globally, its become quite clear what type of people do well in startups / new companies.

In this weeks episode I breakdown:

-What you need to look for when interviewing

-What skills are the ones you need around you

-Culture

-How to get your team to deliver results alongside their own career aspirations

Thanks

Shan

Over the past 7 years I have helped some of the biggest creators in the world build their audiences. Today I manage an audience of 200M people.

I break it all down in this episode.

As you get older, you get wiser and realise there's a lot of things I would have changed when I was 20 year old. In this week's episode, I give real advice to someone who is looking to start their own business. If you're in your 20s, this episode is for you. 

This episode is for for anyone who runs an agency or has their own brand. If you sell products or services, I give tips on what you can do to increase your sales and grow your business. 

It's time to shift focus and talk about what I'm really good at -- making money! I run a client-facing business called Genflow, and in this episode, I give a proper and raw update on what we're focussing on as a business in 2023, and where my focus will be the most as a CEO. 

I'm currently working 12-hour days, and in this episode I share how I maximise my time to make some life-changing money. 

I've been building Genflow since 2016, and have personally gone through all the highs and lows of the company. This episode is for fellow business owners and entrepreneurs who are looking to grow their agency. I share real, direct tips and advice that will work. No bullsh*t about reading books or hiring a mentor here. It's real actionable stuff to track your sales, retention and growth. Let me know what you thought of the episode on Instagram at @shanhanif. 

The single biggest difference between you and somebody else is how you carry yourself every single day and your daily habits. In this episode, I will be talking about the three habits you need to make a significant impact to your day-to-day, and ultimately become more successful. 

In this episode I take you through my goals for 2023, mindset and what you need to do to be successful. 

OK - so it's the end of 2022.

It feels different this time. As for me personally, we delivered everything we set out to as a business, but at the same time, I feel like we could have done better. Mainly as I know myself, what I am capable of doing, and how much more I can give to this game of entrepreneurship.

In this episode I take you through my key lessons and how you can use it to make your business better.

Are you ready for some plain and simple truth? This episode is breaking through all the bullsh*t of being 'successful'. I have employed 200+ people in my entire career and most people go through the same thing - they put themselves in boxes. In this episode, I share my approach on how you can be more confident and stop thinking you're not good enough. 

It's my favourite time of the year - Black Friday season! This is the time for real entrepreneurs to make money and reach their goals. for the past 10 years, I've used this weekend as the ultimate test of the health of my business, and once again this year we have set big goals for my business Genflow. In this episode, I share very strategic insights into what you can do - as an entrepreneur of the business - to win this holiday season. Let me know what you think. 

This episode is for everyone who thinks they need a mentor to progress in their career... when in fact, they do not. In the early days of my entrepreneurial journey, I thought I needed mentorship and someone to guide me, but very quickly I realised that mentorship sucks. Press play for my reasons. 

Founders and entrepreneurs, listen up. In this week's podcast episode, I cover the nitty gritty details of how you need to prepare your deck and pitch to get investment for your business. I talk about what you need to cover? What investors care about? What your numbers need to say? And how to sell to investors? Let's get into it.

It's been six years since I started my creator company Genflow. This week, we're celebrating. I'm highlighting 6 of my favourite moments, lessons learnt and thoughts. Happy Birthday to Genflow! 

It's been 6 years since I launched Genflow, and in this episode i give you the no-nonsense of being an entrepreneur and everything I have learnt as a startup CEO. Most books or gurus won’t tell you this. The cashflow of the business, the growth mindset and getting the most of your team, I cover it all. Sit back and let me know your thoughts. 

In this week's episode, I give an update on my new fundraise for my company Genflow. I also answer some hot questions on what investors are looking for? What type of investor you need for your business? And what are the red flags

I'm back! In this week's episode, I talk about the 5 biggest lessons I've learnt in the last few months of scaling this business. In the early days of Genflow, we were a very small team of 11 people and we signed some of our biggest creators who we still work with. Now with a team of 100+ around the world, things have evolved and we've got more processes in place. But is this good for the business? Press play... 

I talk a lot on here about how I'm growing my business and working with creators as an entrepreneur. But in this week's episode, I want to share a little bit more about me... that's unrelated to work. Listen in for 10 things you didn't know about me... yes, I used to be a professional dancer. 

Let's talk NFTs as April is turning out to be the biggest month in the NFT world with huge record-breaking projects and even bigger volume trade numbers. In this week's episode, I share my plans for how I'm venturing into NFTs, the difference between cryptocurrency and NFT, and why you need to start caring about it. It's still not too late... 

I've been getting asked about this a lot lately... what is work/life balance? Especially when you're an entrepreneur. In this week's episode, I dig into what work/life balance means for me and my business. For some, it's working 9-6. For others, it's making sure you're doing all the things you love and balancing that out throughout the day. This one is for my fellow entrepreneurs who are struggling with balance.

In this episode, I talk about my biggest lessons and wins from the first quarter of the year. I think this will provide value to any founder or senior team member who works at a startup. Let's get into it.

Now, let me tell you all about it so you don't make the same mistakes... In this week of the realest entrepreneurship podcast, I take you through real-life examples of hiring a team, what I did wrong, what I learned, and how you can spot the same trends that ultimately led me to build a 100+ team.

I'm back! After a very busy start to the year, Life of an Entrepreneur is back! In this week's episode, I talk about why it's important to lay down the operations of your business and make sure you're doing things that get the job done... and not how the management books tell you how to do it. 

I’m back with another podcast after a few weeks of settling into LA life, and I’m letting you in on everything that’s been going down since I moved here. I’m sharing the challenges of running the business on another continent, the big goals we have set for our Acquisition team, and the company-wide strategy for 2022.

I turn 33 today. In this episode, I share a little perspective of what we learned from this past weekend of Black Friday mayhem. The positives and the negatives (too commercial? Do people even care?) of how agile every business needs to be. I talk about what our creators did, and why PrettyLittleThing did 100% off this Black Friday. 

Plus, it's my birthday... and I'm in the mood to reminisce. 

It's my favourite week of the year and in this episode I am taking you through how I have planned black friday for over 30 brands and creators which will generate millions in revenue. 

I am now in LA and this week talking about my plans here in USA, what I am trying to do with Genflow, what are my targets, how I am going to do it etc. I also talk about how hard its been just moving from UK to LA and managing the HQ!

As always - let me know what you think!

In this weeks podcast I break down what I am truly building with my company Genflow and how big the opportunity is. I also introduce the idea of the next funding round and what my plan is. I then break down what I have been doing in Dubai.

New episode every week. Real behind the scenes of running a business. 

This week its something different, a real breakdown of why I am investing in building my personal brand, my actual strategy and execution. For anyone wanting to build their own brand, an audience and their profile as a whole you will find this useful.

In this week episode I take you through my last week as it had some amazing high points but then some real stressful moments. This is what it is like and I know many of you go through this too.

It felt good to share this openly so let me know what you think by tagging or messaging me on IG @shan.hanif

New episode every Monday! Make sure you subscribe to be notified.

New episodes each week. Follow my journey of running a business in real time.

This week was good and bad:

The Good:

Launched a new service - Genflow Drops - I talk about some of the things I had to do to get this done and live. 

Planning 2022 with our chairman and what I learnt from it and how you can apply it too in your business

The Bad:

Had an in person meeting with a client and their lawyer to resolve issues, was very stressful. 

Hope you like this episode, have a great week and thanks for listening. 

In this episode I talk about whats changed about me and the business as we have grown to team of 90+. Key learning in the way I work, think and have the team execute and how you can use some if it in your businesses.

I also give you a general update on the business and what’s the plan from here. I then highlight some key personal learnings and how I am trying to improve and why.

Episodes every Monday from now (new podcast setup!) - Share with me on Instagram @shan.hanif and let me know what you want to know more!

Thanks!

After a 2 month break I am back! New episodes coming every Sunday so make sure you are subscribed and lets get to some real business talk.

In this episode I cover:

-How we signed Logan Paul - the actual true story

-Last 2 months update - Back in London now

-Scaling my team to 80+ and how that has changed everything

-Struggling to do my new job as CEO of a larger business and how I am trying to get better

-Living my dream and what how that feels and what it means for you

and more!

This episode is a real reflection of what you feel at times as an entrepreneur. The stress of trying to do so many things at once, feeling paralysed as you can't solve everything, being in-charge of people and their careers, struggling with time and the constant battle between ambition/energy.

Everyone feels lost and overwhelmed but I how you push through that is what you makes you.

Let me know what you think. 

In this episode I take you through my actual strategy with Genflow. I recently raised $11M and so how will I spend it? How do I make sure we hit our targets and grow the business? How do we not get complacent? How do we remain fast, agile and not lose quality? The pressure of the insanely fast growing creator economy we operate it.

Key things I talk about:

1. Grow our current clients
2. Metrics / data led approach
3. Track all main metrics
4. Social media
5. Insta - followers daily movement, post performance, views on bio/profile - generate conversion metrics on followers and click to link
6. Review impact of Facebook and other channels
7. Website analysis
8. Metrics Dashboard / monitoring / alarm
9. Driven by the KPIs, to drive decisions
10. Grow our Genflow brand
11. Educate the content creators to be entrepreneurs
12. Based on audience 1st approach
13. We’ll teach you how to build an audience
14. (every kid to dream to work with Genflow some day)
15. Hire a marketing team and dedicate resources to Genflow brand
16. Performance Marketing
17. How do we do this and invest, how does make, what’s the model
18. Deploy a growth team
19. Sales people to acquire new brand clients
20. (Q3 full force / offence)
21. Prepping for new joiners, so they get productive quickly
22. Develop our technology
23. Reduce the manual effort to make cross team working and international
24. Support processes to address issues (workflow)
25. Genlytics
26. Data to understand an influencers data to compare and take sales to predict sales
27. (supports 360 and talent agency partnering)
28. Identify influencers with potential, identify them and sign them
29. Build on top of social media APIs
30. Automated Zendesk customer service response
31. Remote hiring engineers (5 hour time difference max), now able to deploy talent around the world.
32. Some teams need to be in the office, some don’t
33. Under 25’s can learn a lot in person in office)
34. Grow internationally
35. Satellite marketing offices (Q3/Q4) growing the team in LA to grow team
36. Shan leading the development
37. Could add Sweden, Brazil, LA, Miami
38. Could be individual people spreading our wings, in different locations
39. 3-6 month delay in getting clients launch, so sooner the better!
40. LA offices going to be smaller
41. Genflow Studios
42. Build this in London

I decided to make this episode as some of this stuff I think of every single day and want to say it out loud so I can be held accountable and I can look back at it to see how I did against myself. Also if you work in a startup or have your own business you will find most of the points I make super relatable and should help you think of your own strategy.

Let me know what you think

This is probably the most talked about things today. On one side its the Hustle Culture of working non-stop and the other is about self-care and focusing on "you" so in this episode I go through what I think of work life balance and how I personally manage it.

I have to warn you my thoughts are not for everyone and you may disagree but I fundamentally believe it has led me to the position I find myself in today. Press play, listen and let me know your thoughts. 

Both of these words are thrown around a lot but only a few truly understand what it means to have ambition. In this episode I talk about what's changed from me and some interns trying to build something, getting our first few clients, to building a business where I have 60+ employees and generate multi million in revenue yearly. 

The truth is people think and often believe that "successful people" are more organised, better at working and just living their life in a way that is way greater than them and hence why they are successful.

I disagree, press play and let me tell you why. 

This is a real, step by step breakdown of how I raised $11M for my business Genflow. In my experience people never share how they actually did something, they give you the sales pitch, here I go through why I decided to raise, what my business plan included, how I approached investors, prepared for pitches, dealt with rejection, worked on deal points and ultimately after 10 long months completed the deal of my lfe. 

If you want to know what it takes to raise money for your business just press play.