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Russ Johns
And welcome to the pirate broadcast and today is another interesting day. It's a special day because I have a guest that I just thoroughly enjoy what he's doing. We had a conversation. I don't know it's probably been a couple of years now. And I was so shocked and surprised and I was just enthusiastic about what he was doing. Some of the goals that he set and some of the focus he has in place, or the mission he's on right now. And he is the CEO now, of zest.is. And so welcome, Yam, how are you today?

Yam Regev
Great. Thanks, Russ. Thank you so much. And you're right. We've been waiting for this one for way too long, isn't it?

Russ Johns
Yes, it's been way too long. Well, I just, had to develop a show and get things going. And so we could promote you a little more.

Yam Regev
Oh, that's good. That's good. So yeah, it's a worthwhile, right. So I'm down for that if you can promote us. Let's do that. Now getting into finally do it with you, that's for sure.

Russ Johns
Well, and I wanted to share your story because you know, you've been in the tech space for a while and , doing different things and different activities. And one of the things that I noticed and we've talked about is the focus on what you're doing and one of the things that I've always been challenged a bit by it as you know, I'm distracted by so many things, you know, technology is always moving target and it's like, okay, I want to learn how to do this, I want to learn how to do that. I want to learn how to, you know, create content, do video, audio, all of these things, and I love learning. However, the thing that you brought to the table and the thing that I'm most admire, by what you're doing is the focus and attention you've placed in zest.is and, and so bringing this community together because it's really a community. So maybe you could explain for those that are unfamiliar with just kind of what, what it is and who it serves and how it helps.

Yam Regev
Yeah, sure. Well, I'll be happy to do so. And thanks for the opportunity. Again, there are so yes as much as a marketers with the mission critical information and for the task of tomorrow, if that makes sense. Right? So eventually it's it's a platform that can match content with whatever marketers you know, like me and you. Most seniors mold juniors whatever it is content that they need in order to do their job much better. We see ourselves as a platform that fights info obesity, I'm not sure if it's a term that you are aware of, but we feel that we actually, in trying to help those professionals to fight information overload eventually cost us, you know, a lot of time. Exactly. And we believe that there is enough educating a micro content on the web, you know, like articles and videos and podcasts, and all that, but there's no solution that can distill the content for you understand what's good for you and not and what's not, what's more relevant and when you should consume it, what type of format is better for you to consume and when, and how many of pieces of content you need to consume, you know, on a daily or weekly basis, in order to do two things. First of all, to build your professional knowledge. The other thing is to stay, keep yourself updated with what's going on in the industry. So we all, you know, have a lot of police officers, a lot of people, we follow a lot of, I don't know, RSS feeds that we are subscribed to. But no one is telling us yet this content, of course, it's relevant for you. Yeah, but you should meet in two weeks from now, not now, because you're still not their responsibility of microlending path. So you can see that as and I don't know, Spotify for professional content, or you're a guy that will that will help you to build yourself by yourself in a much more productive and dignified manner.

Russ Johns
Well, I I love the fact that it's also a community. I know you have a lot of, you know, people in the community that are really active in creating content, sharing content. And that's really I think one of the things we're going to see more of in the next decade is is like you're saying the ability and the opportunity. For people to focus in on what's important, because there's so much noise out there that it's really important for us to find platforms like yourself and a solution like yourself is the opportunity to say, Okay, here's what is really coming to the top. Here's the information that is really relevant today for me right now. And as you get connected with the people that you know, like and trust for their content, and then that builds, that builds your authority in the market because you're, you're sharing quality content that people are resonating with as well. So I want to I want to come back into your backstory though. And you know, when we first had a conversation, this was like just getting started and you're building a community around it and and talking one to one. It's like, What do you need? How do you need to receive information? So walk us through that process that you because I thought was fascinating. I always admired the process that you went through. And it's like talking to regular people like myself and saying, Hey, what do you what's going to be important to you and in going forward?

Yam Regev
I think that that's exactly. This is the Core probably DNA of itself and I try to kill my own answer from from two directions. But one of them is that we are going back to basics. And as far as we are concerned more solutions, like us the built on on the network effect, you know, the more users that are, the better the product get for everyone, not just for the owners of the Company we see ourselves as facilitators of the platform or the solution but the product belongs to the tribe of users. Today we have a 150,000 users and 50,000 monthly active users. And eventually, you know, it's theirs. They can do whatever they want with it. We you know, we have also use it advisory boards and contributed to Board and we understood from early days that it's the brain power and not only just the money power or you know, a funds power that we should have in order to nail it. And I'll give you a simple example and also why I said it, we are going back to basics, because it's hard to relate to professional solutions and in our case professional in you know, content matching and it's all about how we prioritize content, or what content we should consume, as individuals and that will give me and you as an example, if you will share content with me on whatever let's say LinkedIn messenger over there. And you know, I appreciate you as a professional because I follow you on social media, I see your activity and then the other end, you also we also spoke once or twice, you also have you know, we are talking or mentioning each other, even though so I also build some sort of personal appreciation with you know, just professional appreciation. Those Two accesses of professional and personal kind of appreciation, the higher that you get, right? So the way we privatize the content that you've shared with me or whatever on social media, the higher we prioritize it because again, I appreciate you both professionally and personally. So if you wish your content Oh, right, Russ knows what he's doing. He also shared it with me so he knows what I what I should consume, what will help me to be, you know, to will reach my milestones better in a better in a better way. And also what will make me a better professional for say, right? I'm going to consume this content, whether it's video or yo like podcast or textual content on the spot. And that's what zest does, in a huge a scale. Users. You know, we're not aggregating the web, we don't use RSS feeds. We don't do that. The first filter touch points for content that gets distilled into the distillation process of this you know, with the screening and There were people or professionals like you and me, the way that created the content or just found it, you know, on the web or something like that. And then they suggested on zest

Russ Johns
Yeah, I love that model and it happens. And that's what I call that's what I kind of consider as being relationship marketing. You know, if I can add value to somebody else's day by sharing , some content that is relevant to their industry, or their interest, then that increases over time and and the more you do it, and the more you you provide value in the network, then it just everybody wins. That's, the way I see it and I, I suspect that you also see it that way because of the fact that you have zest

Yam Regev
Yeah, exactly. I think it's so important what you just said Russ because I think many marketers and a lot of public product managers, you know, in the tech world, they go for the approach, or that's what, you know, we understand we go for the approach of user centered, approach, right? We took this approach, and we say that it's not the way that we want to build Zest with, it's not the kind of the methodology we want to use. And we created something new and we call it users first approach. Now, it's not just all to try to create a demo, something like that if you if you have a user centered approach, as far as we concern. So you are surrounding your users with a lot of automation of kind of things that to make sure that they will convert better, they will engage better than the cold we do. I don't know deeper and better. But that's not the kind of approach if you use user centered first approach, it means that first of all your users come and they should test in a try your new features. So what we create and that's our product development methodology is it doesn't fulfill you know, coming up with the A writer that was suggested by the community of the trust we said that we want to add to Zest then we are conducting a few Zesters like users, then we can give us some sort of feedback for the feature. They get out, you know, they are bullshitting us with feedback. Integrating a lot to make sure that we are getting we call it feature users feet. Right. That's a few users. That's it. The next thing once we when we call it the feet, you know, when we get hit the KPI and what we call a success for this given feature, then we are bringing in a few other hundreds of users to try it out. We call it feature tribe feed. And again, they are, you know, bullshitting us with machetes and everything that we really loved, we all the better, and the good feedback, and then we're interacting a lot with them. And the marketing aspect of where the value of this methodology is that the users and as you said it said, that No, just what you know, that's the relationship marketing at its best. Because they feel that they own the feature, they feel that the power of the whole someone is listening to them there is there are real humans who hear their thoughts iterating changing microcopy changing features changing UI according to the, to the thoughts. And it's we call it the that we know that we understand. People want to see the walls of our hands on their shoulders, and again, not in a creepy manner. But someone as professionals want to feel that there are really real humans over built product that we all can use, and can help us to be better versions of ourselves. And eventually this product development methodology onboarded makes you feel on board with everything that the company does, and that's part of our tone of voice is part of how we mess you know, communicate things that we do. So we are communicating, you know, mess ups that we do, which is totally fine because you as well, and we're communicating successes, and most of our communication is just to empower our own users. So if you would see content market That we do appear or stuff like that you will definitely see systems were mentioned over the enterprise to do what we do. And eventually, you know, it's it's our, it's our product, it's our users products, product. Ours, right. So that's why it makes so much sense eventually. It's all about being human and the iconic in my keynote, I have a slide that they call it being a nice human, because being human in many cases, it's not enough.

Russ Johns
Well, and I think you You nailed it, because you know, the community takes on ownership when they're involved in the discussion, right? They feel like there's an ownership in because they were part of the conversation. And that's what, that's what we do when we first connected. It's like, oh, you're asking my opinion about something and your company. It's like, that's pretty cool. I thought that was very innovative in and it was really refreshing to have somebody call up and say hey, I wanted to get your thoughts on this. And, and I've been a beta tester for a lot of, you know, different software's and, you know, technology over the years. And it's really nice to be part of the equation, because then you have ownership. You know, there's like this little piece of, Hey, I hope I helped craft this thought process, you know, that relationship builds and grows on everything that you do. And then you have advocates, you know, you have people that are out there shouting, hey, I love this product. I love what you're doing. And eventually you get to the pirate broadcast. So

Yam Regev
we call it this kind of club. It's not really collaboration, because it's so authentic and real. And we didn't push it to happen. Right. But I'm sort of mutual back scratching

Russ Johns
Oh absolutely. Oh, yeah You know, one of the things that I wanted to talk about that we were talking about before the show, and I want to, and I want to give a shout out to some of the individuals that are joining us here this morning, Vicki O'Neil she's a great content marketer and and i want Vicki. I want you to learn more about zest.is and some of the things that are content centric over there. Chrissy is here Good morning Gabriel. He starting to get involved in a video and some of the activity around that. Brenda Miller she's an awesome LinkedIn trainer. She's just an amazing individual that you should probably meet share Jones a yes. Thank you so much share for being here. Sherry Lally and Kenyatta Turner, Wendy these are all individuals. Michelle, thank you so much for being here. II just really, Yam is a rock star individual and he's just 100% human and you need to know what he's doing, and I appreciate the fact that you're here, Yam, and I know that you're busy. And so thank you for taking time out of your day all the gratitude in the world. So, so I want to talk a little bit about focus because I know you're a very focused individual and and I want to talk about practicing focus and attention. You know, busy being busy isn't necessarily productive, right? And so, as you're growing a company and you're, you're building a community and everything else, what are some things that you can share with us that might inspire us to be more focused on our goals and how you map that out in your mind?

Yam Regev
Right? I think that it's some sort of combination of strategic planning even if it for our, you know, day to day kind of life. Combined with especially two companies, you know, our culture, and of course, the people that say that you work with, and I think that for us, what really helped us is Because we're two co founders, and also so involved with what we do, what we do and how we do things, I think it is really important to define your KPIs. Now I think everything that I'm saying Will you know, it will lead to grain of salt, a grain of salt for that, but I'm one of them is that it's, it's good only for it's methodology. Oh, it works for us, so it will work for everybody else. And I think that it's really important to define what is the KPI you know, of the company for a past quarter and a half, something like that. We're really focused on generating revenues and out of revenues to generate to increase our model, right? So model carrying revenues. Now, when you define those kind of things, in this specific manner, you know, dollars of revenues, is your KPI. You can see the whole company Shift all this kind of effort and then you ask yourself each time they'll give you a another metaphor in a second but you ask us fulfill yourself each time whenever whether or not what I'm currently doing is supporting the company KPI or not. And that's so crucial and I'll give an example in from the entrepreneur entrepreneurship world and we know that its rightful zest is valid for any kind any kind of follow capital startup is that eventually it's a game of time. Right? use the metaphor for that is that we have I know you know one other shots, we can say, to try and nail the nail you know, with, with with our hammer or visual hammer in to nail it, you know, to the wood individually after shots, the game we will be over. I don't know it can be you know, you can take it as analogy for time for money or funds So you can take his analogy for I know, if something will happen in the industry, we should have, you know, things can can just switch over.

Russ Johns
You have a window of opportunity.

Yam Regev
Exactly. then you ask yourself, all right, if I only have 100 times to like that, you know, he's my visual hammer, am I going to waste if you have these kind of shots or not. And once you see this is, you know, a game that can be over, if you will not be too focused. So that's why why this is how we are eventually building our own schedule. And this is our kickoff meetings, weekly kickoff meetings look like we are starting with safe we are trying to understand what if each of one of the team members and the team leaders Did you know to achieve these or that KPI it can be customer success, it can be support can be marketing, all of them can do things that will generate more revenues and in our case. So without a thing of a less important and we Know, also as entrepreneurs that we are going that we are so focused on, you know, 10% of things we are that we, we believe that being focused on those 10% of things will help us to, we call it to make the sunrise, right because the kind of people in the entrepreneurs we will not wait for the sun to rise we go that and you know, make it rise. This is our thought process as well. So we know that we need to start with these and we know that we are might be losing 90% of the opportunities of marketing opportunities, I know biz dev strategic partnerships and all that, because we so focused and so deep on this given 10% that they will bring us you know, again, the sunrise and the way that we call it I can give one more example for that, another thing on sales and less about marketing, although I'm managing the marketing efforts of the company. I'm saying so many a so many times I'm saying no thank you for people who say that can you can Can you send me something to add to this or that article? And I'm just thinking, oh, gosh, you know, I need to build my personal brand I need to build Zest brand. It might help us to generate few more leads and traction, it might help us to build, you know, backlinks and all that. But I'm just asking myself, is it right to do that and to stop for I know, 25 minutes to write a quote, will it help me to generate more revenues today, today or this month, so I know that I'm losing a lot of opportunities on one end, on the other end, I nailing it with my virtual armor, each each time and apparently this kind of methodology works, because we are hitting over a month Mr. KPIs on a monthly basis almost for four months already. And we know how important a young for you up to do that because we are now on the way to start with seed fundraising. So that's so important to show, you know, some sort of revenue growth trend that's crucial Even then, even if The amount of mentions that the amount of a registered users or leads will decrease in this time. And we know what is the state of can, what the state of can bring us.

Russ Johns
Well, and I, and that's why I appreciate the fact that you're here and sharing your story, because I think it's important for a lot of people that, you know, especially in my community in the pirate broadcast community, and, and I call them pirates, you know, we're all pirates, you know, because we were kind of doing things out of the box, we're, we're moving the needle in some area of our life, we're, you know, making changes, and we don't need permission anymore. You went out and started this company, nobody, you know, didn't wake up and say, hey, Yam, start this company. You know, you decided with your co founder, and you said, Hey, this is a great idea. And I think we should go move forward. And there's a decision process that you may if you decided, You created this from nothing, you know, and right now we're in a point in time where people are going out creating things innovating, you know bringing communities together. And it's really about what we can do. As as, you know, adding value to the community, adding value to the world, you know, making sure the sun comes up making sure that we're moving the needle and the KPIs we're looking to improve. We're focusing in on and I think that's, that's an important message to share. Because not everybody understands or believes at times where it's like, and I'm sure you felt this sometimes, like, why am I doing this? It's like, as an entrepreneur, we always feel alone because, you know, it's feels hard and it feels personal. And it's not always the case. We all share this same kind of journey. It's like one day you're, you're like, Oh, this is great. We're winning. The next day. It's like, Oh, I didn't expect that

Yam Regev
Russ. It's on an hourly basis. You said they say oh, I wish it would happen each day. You know each other. hour

Russ Johns
Yeah, every hour, it's a roller coaster. Right?

Yam Regev
Definitely, most definitely.

Russ Johns
Yeah. It's so I just really appreciate the fact that we can have these conversations because a lot of people, you know, even very successful businesses go through the same thing. And it's, it's just amazing to me that it's not being talked about more often more frequently. So, you know, and and where you're talking about how I spend my time, you know, yes, you could be writing some, you know, recommendations or a piece of content or, you know, doing other things. However, there are times where we really need to focus our attention, understand what the primary goal is, and make sure that we're focused on executing

Yam Regev
Can I speak to that Russ, if I may.

Russ Johns
Yeah, please.

Yam Regev
I truly believe that. sharing your thoughts, feelings. You know, the way that we call it exists, we call it the Vax a metadata It means to be involved, vulnerable, authentic and transparent. You know whether whether it's your brand, or whether it's you that speaks is your personal branding effort and stuff like that. Share your stories. I totally agree with you that we need to speak with each other. That's for sure that's given. But I see that a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of marketers, they don't share their own story. And we all have those personal stories that can help us can help out even if we are just egocentric, right? If I know that I'm writing for LinkedIn, or Facebook, for instance, and in posting, I feel like I'm speaking with my with my shrink. Right? I'm writing my thoughts and feelings I sometimes I'm tearing, sometimes I'm laughing. Sometimes I feel it, I'm offloading something, whether it's a good feeling or bad feeling or whatever. It's some sort of something that I'm carrying that I'm carrying with me. Then by writing and my sharing my thoughts. I can see the top I know just being able to offload Stop for me because again, we are just you know, with 10 fingers on the other keyboard of the week. And it's so helpful to do that. And to offload your thoughts, feelings and thought processes to the keyboard to share it with the world, you will not be sound as you know, I know it's full or something like that. People will appreciate the fact that you share your thoughts and feelings, something they are not doing it. So one TV they can give to everyone who watch us is that just share your thoughts and feelings on social media. It will be good for you and it would be great for people to follow you.

Russ Johns
I love that. That acronym is VAT Vulnerability, Authenticity, and Transparency, right? Yep. Yep. I love that. I love that. Well, Yam, I just wanted to bring up I just want to share this really quick. If I may, you don't add to the stream here. So you know, the thing that is fascinating about zesi.s is the fact that it's really a place that people can actually go and join in. And so is and it's a Chrome plugin as well. So when people have an opportunity, go, go Go there and connect for content creators, for marketers, people that are actually moving and shaking in the the whole community of marketing. This is an amazing platform and community. So I know you have I know, I've been connected with the Slack channel, you know, and being in there and in a few things like that. Are there any thing anything else that you got coming up in the, in the near future that we, we can take a look at and understand,

Yam Regev
Oh, definitely, I can show you a few a few great things that we that we kicked off with Few weeks ago, I'm one of them is called zestful teams, and zestful teams is zests. But four teams, as you know, of course, but it means that we have been able to close the skill gap and the knowledge gap was in each team, I guess it feels rational that teams a running by the pace of the slowest member and the slowest member, a lot more junior or people who are senior, but they just joined the team. But in each team, you have each marketing or growth or product of sales team, you have some sort of knowledge and skill gap. And we've been able to match content to team in a much more contextual manner. So you really like to own what they walk on. And the team leader can also define team wide skills that they want the team to be improved in. So it's like a professional development tool. For teams. It's not just to be aligned but also once you're there, so You're get your estimable, you're getting to develop your own talent, but it's all towards a given team wide goal or milestone that you have. And we're also integrating it with Google Calendar. So we can scan that later stage, of course, but we can scan the Google Calendar and then the contextual, a content matching would be much better. And we have connections and integration with slack and all that Atlassian products. So over, then we can scan the team's roadmap, you know, for the future. Yeah, then we can actively match content to each each individual without them going to Google or stuff like that, to be based on their own preferences, the way that they consume content, I can tell you that we use zest for teams, of course were zest. And it's really good, cool example, because the algorithm detects the time is slow reader benchmark speaking. Of course, I'm not an in a native English speaker, and some of our team members up but I think I'm the slowest, you know, well, he didn't you know, with team We see it, we see it at the platform surface, both audio and video content for me, because again, I as a modern professional, I cannot stop learning, right? But the reader doesn't mean it they should consume, or the day should develop my talent slower. So that's a cool thing that's happening right now. If someone want to join the pilot, of course, just you know, email me or connect with me on LinkedIn, my email is Yam@zest.is as I can give you my phone number as well you know, I'm you know, me I'm you know, yeah,

Russ Johns
you're you're, you're available.

Yam Regev
Yep. The other thing is that we are developing right now you already have a few doesn't have a members over there. We call it premium investors. And that's that so relate what you said at the beginning of the conversation that it's all about humans and the people you know, we feel that zest should be decentralized, not blockchain wise, of course, but getting tweets users, those premium members, the base time, some sort of subscribtions. monthly fee, they get all the all the content approved by on zests. They are part of the content advisor a contributed advisory board. And their goal is to help zesting to steal the platform to success has translate to content distribution, and content promotion and content sharing. And all of them and that's cool, you know, all of these good people, that most of them are influencers and super professionals from the market. They get equity from zest just been by being part of the, you know, the whole of this belief system.

Russ Johns
Yep. You know, I and I love getting engaged and I have to tell you, Yam, you've motivated me to up my game in my email because I loved your you send out your newsletter. The one I received from you is and you have a couple of pieces of content that are relevant, you know, that you put out there and so my Anybody that signs up to get notified for the new next episode of Pirate broadcast is I send out a notification. But what I want to include in that notification is, is a couple of pieces of good content. So I'm going to start including that in future notifications and pieces of information that, you know, I can actually contribute to the community. Because I think it's, it's valuable and it's useful. So I want to continue to use that and as a, and I want to say that you've inspired me to do that. So also, the whole community idea of the the pirate broadcast and also the pirate syndicate, you know, the larger piece of the puzzle that I'm that I'm building out, is due in fact, to models like what you're putting out in the world, you know, because I really believe in community I really believe in helping others and putting tools out there that others can use and leverage to increase and improve their life. So it's really, I just wanted to share that with you so you could take it along your day and let you know that I appreciate you. You're appreciated. I really, thank you for the opportunity.

Yam Regev
Beautiful, thank you so much for that trust. That's that was amazing to hear and I must share it with this the Zest Team. So by the way, get us get us subscribe to your way to the newsletter and if not, just send me the link so we get subscribe because it's going to be part probably beautiful newsletter and of course I'd love to see.

Russ Johns
Yeah, and and I know you're busy. Any last words you want to leave with the world today and last thoughts that we can share with the community today?

Yam Regev
I think that eventually, I know I just see myself, you know, and I don't give tips for better life or something like that. I can just tell you what works for for me or for us. I think that we talked about a few no actionable things already. But I think it's something that works really good for me personally and professionally, is that and that's part of my weekly KPIs, you know, as a professional look, as a business owner or something like that is to meet to a meet to know what to call it, but like, why it's kind of a like minded kind of professional. So I'm trying to meet, you know, founders already that are already already been there. So I can just extract, you know, their their thought processes, their experiences and all that. So each week, I'm trying to meet two individuals that already been there. As far as I'm concerned, it puts it to my own path. Yeah. And I'm trying to learn from them. And I think that that's true for everything, you know, it can be, it can be the US as professionals or as but also, you know, human beings. So, yes, those two people each week, set up a meeting with them. Go and learn. expand your knowledge, expand your experience, and especially don't feel This is a great way to feel it. You're not alone because they've been there and they can tell you how it feels like and how you're going to feel like you know, later on.

Russ Johns
Exactly. they've they've beat the trail down a little bit more. So I got some introductions that I'll share with you. Yeah, on that note, and I just thanks again for being here. I know thank you, everyone for Jordan Arcot. Angie, thank you so much, Gabriel, Shari, Wendy, Michelle, Kenyatta, all of the people who supported the pirate broadcast and all those supporters out there. I'm humbled by your activity and your, your support and everything that we're doing here. And I just want to let you know that Yam is an awesome resource. And if you're not connected, go ahead and connect with Yam and check out Zest.is. In fact, I was so excited about your stuff. I didn't put that out there but but you can find zest over here. Zest.is check out this is and find out what's happening over there. Yeah, always a pleasure to talk to you. I'm always inspired when I want to have a conversation with us, though. Thank you so much and look forward to exchanging some information after fact, and getting you involved in the pirate broadcast now that you're officially a pirate.

Yam Regev
Oh, yes. Thank you so much for that. And thank you so much for having me. Russ. It's always a fun and great to meet you. Yep. And they have a great day everyone over there.

Russ Johns
All right. Take care.

Yam Regev
Thank you, Baba.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai