This is the full transcript for Episode #276 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Liz Giorgi – Virtual Product Photography, Co-Founder of soona. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Liz Giorgi 0:00
Never underestimate the value of just becoming really consistent in telling your story.
Max Branstetter 0:03
Sweeeeet! Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth god that was wacky. Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth Podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting, and you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is episode 276, and today’s guest that’s a lot of s sounds is Liz Giorgi. Liz is the Co-Founder and CEO of soona, your same day, Photo and Video Studio that is also virtual, you can do it from your couch, really, really cool company, a complete creative studio. And in this episode, we talk the soona story how to figure out what to post into the world on social media when you are a business owner and you’re trying to do like that thought leadership thing, or just be real. But I swear that wasn’t a BeReal pun, it just happened. And stories from Liz’s early days at the very early days of Big Ten Network. It is Liz Giorgi Boy! Enjoyyyyyy the showwwwwww!
Aaaaaalrightyyyyyy we are here with Liz Giorgi, Co-Founder and CEO of soona. Which is just soothing. I mean off the tongue you did really well with the business name there. Well, thank you. Yeah, of course. And that’s really why I wanted you on here. It’s just a compliment and a business name. But now really, really cool business, you know, virtual photo studio production studio, doing really, really cool things in the eCommerce space and beyond. Liz, thank you so much for joining, how’re you doing today?
Liz Giorgi 2:13
I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me. You know, at soona, we definitely want to make everybody feel happy and like their businesses going more easily than it was before. So I’m glad the name is easy to say and easy to absorb.
Max Branstetter 2:27
Perfect, easy to absorb. I mean, that’s something that I think SpongeBob SquarePants would be proud of. So you’re doing it you’re doing the world prep. Before we get to the soothing soona story, we have something in common that you probably did not know, we’re both huge fans of the Big Ten Network. I don’t even know if you’re a huge fan. Now I just know that some of your work has been on the Big Ten Network in the past. So you had an earlier part of your career, you were really focused on the video and video editing side of things. What type of content were you working on that ended up seeing the light of the day at the new Big Ten Network?
Liz Giorgi 3:04
Did you go to B1G school? Is that where you were? Yeah, I went to Indiana. Okay. All right, perfect.
Max Branstetter 3:11
I’m a huge SEC fan. I just love the B1gG. No, we’re not just gonna
Liz Giorgi 3:15
win that big interesting. No, this is a perfect example of how you know, traditional production careers can be really, really kind of a journey. Because, you know, my production career is a perfect example, I worked at a bunch of different shows on a bunch of different programs. And it just so happened that at one point in my early career, I got assigned to work on some Docu series programming that was going to Aaron Big Ten Network. And it was everything from the early history of cheerleading at B1G schools to, you know, stadium history across the B1G. And you know, those kinds of programs. While they’re not necessarily the you know, big Saturday games that everybody tunes into, it is the programming that goes on all the other hours of the day. And so it’s not exactly the thing that everybody gets excited about. But it is a thing that speaks to the importance of being able to tell a story, being able to find interesting nuggets of information that are going to keep people watching. And it really informed a lot of my early parts of my career is working on shows that maybe weren’t the most incredibly important primetime programming but still trying to make the most of whatever that was.
Max Branstetter 4:22
And it’s exciting. I think any network like that or any job like that is cool that you get to work on a variety of different shows and things that like probably growing up you never would have been like oh, I’m gonna end up working on that but the variety there is is really cool and Victor network has obviously grown a ton since the beginning of it. What was it that you were specifically doing a couple
Liz Giorgi 4:42
things so sometimes I was working on producing so I you know, would get called in to actually help get a story together before it was gonna go to air. So what footage were we going to need? What historical content do we need to pull from archives so you know, calling a university archivist and seeing if they have any footage of the early days of the construction of a stadium or, you know, behind the scenes footage of cheerleading squads from the 1950s, or 60s. And so that would happen. And then I also worked in the post production side of things. So I oftentimes would actually edit programming or be somewhere in the editorial process for programming so that we could get it to air. And now I did that for a bunch of different stations, one of the things about working in television is it’s actually pretty rare to work for a network at the early stages of career, you typically move from gig to gig or from job to job, or even season to season. So, you know, if a season of programming changed, I’d go to another show or with another producer to another place. And so it is an interesting thing, because I think one of the things that is often I think assumed is that people work at stations, but even the anchor is on a lot of like sports stations, it’s like a contract gig that they just do for some amount of time. So I would take contracts, doing a bunch of different things. And another example of a job that I did that was, you know, really instructive to my early career as I worked with PBS on developing content just for their YouTube channel. So I take, you know, cutting room floor footage that didn’t work out for television airtime and prepare it to go on online. And so these are the kinds of jobs that you take early in a television career to try and make ends meet, but also to learn to grow and advance your professional aspirations. And
Max Branstetter 6:18
I think you have the actually, I’m very confident that you have the first reference of the term archivist. And while business growth podcast history, so thank you for expanding our vocabularies, there are glad to be the first. So this disor I, whatever that word is, but that’s awesome. So not only did you work with you know, grant in the grand scheme is a newer channel. You work with PBS, which has been around for who knows more than a few years, I would say,
Liz Giorgi 6:47
PbS is one of the oldest networks and television actually, yeah. How
Max Branstetter 6:52
was that dynamic of being responsible for like, taking some of this content for such like a historic, you know, as some would say, one of the oldest television networks, actually, in turning it into a completely new channel at the time of YouTube? Well,
Liz Giorgi 7:09
there’s two things that are actually quite awesome about that task, but also really difficult about that task. So the awesome thing is, you know, in 2000, though, around the time I was working on that was probably 2008, 2009. So YouTube was relatively new, there was a lot of new exploration of what it was going to mean to you know, put these kinds of content online. And there was this really fascinating question, I think emerging for a lot of people in television of like, is online going to compete with appointment programming? Well, we all know, now that it’s true, like, appointment programming really doesn’t exist for many areas and television outside of sports. But the thing that was exciting about that opportunity to answer your question is that I got to see at kind of the precipice of this question emerging in a really historical organization. And I think the leadership at the time, was doing a good job of saying, we want to try new things we don’t want to be left behind. And actually today, you know, it’s been a really, really long time since I’ve been working in live television programming. But I think today, all of these major networks have apps and have online programming that you can watch, you know, my daughter watches PBS Kids on an app on our television, that isn’t live programming, and it just speaks to, you know, early adoption doesn’t always mean doing everything all at once. It can mean you know, evolving over time. And I, I really did appreciate the opportunity to be part of a legacy organization, trying to be more innovative, it ultimately actually gave me the bug to start my first company, not necessarily that specific gig, but just different jobs that I was doing, and seeing how, you know, the precipice of online media online content creation was going to continue to emerge. I felt like I want to be part of online content creation more than I wanted to be part of legacy content creation. And that insight would have only happened if I hadn’t had seen that upfront and personal. It
Max Branstetter 9:03
just sounds like you were dead wrong. I mean, no one’s online these days. I mean, no one pays any attention to their phone or social media or YouTube or anything. So you really well, of course, the ball there.
Liz Giorgi 9:13
I made a massive mistake. No, I think, I think a lot of people though, at the time, were very scared. I will say that. And I think you know, I remember having conversations with friends who were you know, working on live news programs and local networks, or, you know, we’re working in more traditional programming, I had a friend who worked on a lot of reality television shows. And you know, we would talk about how are these things all going to die, our job is going to disappear. And it’s funny because now I think a lot of conversations that we have in content creation online is the same questions are being asked, but now about AI. Right. And so I think these questions come up over and over and over again. It’s always to me all about this insight of are you going to continue to be the kind of person that leans into innovation, are you going to continue to be the kind of person who’s willing to try new things. Those are the things that I try to focus on so that I can have, you know, the maximally successful career that hopefully, I’ve had so far and that I will continue to have.
Max Branstetter 10:13
So let’s get to that massively successful career, which is actually how it’s gonna describe it. Exactly. I just can’t pronounce it. But we’re gonna get to sooner but as a precursor to that, so I think a company that you alluded to, and the ride you had before, suna was mightier and really, really cool company there, which you since you know, led it to exit and, you know, kind of look past that part of your career with some really, really just an incredible growth story there. What’s the biggest thing you learned as an entrepreneur from your mightier journey?
Liz Giorgi 10:51
Well, that business was a really interesting experience, because I started that business. I’m not joking, simply because I was working on some projects that I kept being asked over and over again, you know, could you help us prepare these ads that we were, you know, ad agencies or big brands were doing for television, they say, you know, we’re doing this ad for television, we’re gonna spend $600,000 on it. And then, you know, we want to put it online, we want people to be able to watch it online. And at the time, you know, this was 2009, there, there really wasn’t a way to easily prepare content for going online, you could upload it to YouTube, but even at that time, you know, we couldn’t upload a video to Facebook. At that time, you couldn’t upload a video, Vimeo was still nascent, relatively new. And so I kind of kept looking at and hearing this question being asked over and over again, and it took a few years. But by 2013, I finally got brave enough to say, Okay, I think there’s a way that I could actually do this, that I could start a company that focused on converting content and specializing in content that would go online for advertising purposes. And so that’s what we did, we were a production company that focus on professional productions for online commercial use. And so, you know, we made ads for some of the biggest brands in the world. And the six years that I ran that company, we worked with brands like Wells Fargo, and United Healthcare, and Facebook. And I really learned so much about first of all, it was my business school, I didn’t know anything about a p&l, I didn’t know anything about a balance sheet, I didn’t know how to run payroll, I didn’t know any of those things. Prior to starting my first company, I learned all of those things on the job. On top of that, I felt so fortunate and so lucky to be able to really learn what it takes to earn customers, and to continue to have customers respect and use your business in a repeat way so that your business can grow and sustain. You know, I was a bootstrap founder the first time around, and then being a bootstrap founder means you live and die on whether or not your customers are interested in buying the next thing from you. And so I really had a crash course in customer satisfaction. And it’s interesting because that company, you know, we grew that company to few million in annual revenue by the time I sold it, and I was really ready to, you know, try something different by the time that I started preparing it for sale. But the thing that I always tell people is that, you know, bootstrap founders are some of the most hardworking founders in this country. They are the backbone of American small businesses. And I think they don’t get enough credit for you know, how much it really comes down to being able to do it all, you know, be the boss, be the head of HR, be the customer support line, be the salesperson, I truly think that, you know, when I look at what I might do in my next chapter of my career, or what I might do in retirement, who knows, 20 years from now, I really do think I want to eventually get back to the small businesses because I do think that small businesses are so difficult to start and run. But once you figure out how to make it work, they can truly be an economic engine for an individual or family.
Max Branstetter 13:53
It’s so true, like I think the like for example, like I’m somebody who you know, interviews entrepreneurs every week and it’s like you don’t truly understand entrepreneurship like that how many different hats you have to wear how many different roles you have to have those just saying the same thing until you do it yourself and like finance is something that like for me was a big aha moment as well. It’s like oh my god like there’s so you know, even if you how much does matter how much you study in school and you study business like nothing prepares you for like, like all the financial tracking all the like tax and like estimated payments and like things in that regard. It’s like you think Crash Course is a fantastic word. Because you kind of crash and burn as you’re figuring stuff out. And I think that’s an awesome part daunting but awesome part of any entrepreneurial journey, especially a first one. So you alluded to the fact that at some point, this idea for soona or what would become soona started to rear its beautiful head. How did that come about?
Liz Giorgi 14:57
It was a really an evolution. I was finding. So to get a time machine and go back to 2018, I was having this really interesting chapter in our business where we were seeing a lot of folks who were starting direct to consumer ecommerce stores specifically on Shopify at the time coming to my businesses saying, hey, we want to run online ads, can you make an ad for us? And we would say, Okay, well, you know, our starting price point is $50,000, can you afford that, and almost none of them could. And I had this aha moment of wow, we were turning away customers almost every single day simply because they can’t afford the price point. And I started talking to my head of animation in my first company, her name is Hayley. And I kept saying, you know, there’s got to be a way to use technology to make content creation more affordable. You know, we’re using technology to, to edit in the cloud to, you know, create drafts and revisions to allow our teams to give comments wherever they are. But there has to be a way to make this even more integrated so that we could drive down the cost even more. And she and I really kind of became obsessed with that idea of you know, how could we help more small businesses, as much as I love working with big clients, I think there came a point where we said the future is going to be all these smaller businesses and maybe helping them grow and helping them be successful online. And so started preparing the first business to sell it and started planting the foundation of could we develop a software platform that would make it really easy to have a photoshoot entirely online. And that would reduce a couple things, it would reduce the need to rent a space that all the clients could come to, it would allow us to run multiple photoshoots at one time in one location, it would allow us to reduce the cost of talent because we could use things like marketplaces and do like Uber for models. Or we could just book people for the amount of time that we needed them instead of the whole day. And then we started looking at could we put the photoshoot online in real time so that people could participate in real time and make decisions about what they wanted in real time versus clients all having to take the whole day off and, and show up on set. And so very quickly, you know, over the course of 2019, we started making progress on our software platform, and got really bullish about the idea. And so finally, when an opportunity came up to you really move forward with the business because we got accepted into techstars, which is a technology accelerator, we decided to lean in and go for it. And so at that point, I asked Haley to officially step down as my head of animation at one company and step up as my co founder of Siena. And, you know, the insight that we had then I still think maintains today, every single thing that we buy online, we buy because of a visual, whether that’s the photos we see on Amazon or the videos that we watch on TikTok shopping is a visual experience. And yet the creation of those visuals is really slow, really difficult and oftentimes very expensive for brands. And so sooner am saying that easy, really affordable and entirely online so that brands can scale and grow and change and evolve as their business does.
Max Branstetter 17:56
How did that conversation go with Haley when you’re like, you’re fired? Also your hire?
Liz Giorgi 18:02
Oh, it wasn’t. So it wasn’t so much that you’re fired. It’s hard. It was like, look, we’ve got accepted into this techstars program. I think this is real. I think if a Technology Accelerator thinks that this is interesting enough to make a small investment in the business, we should take it seriously too. And so it wasn’t something that I think she ever imagined for herself. I think she’d say that she’s not the kind of person who is an entrepreneur first and a creative second. I think she’s a creative first, and an entrepreneur kind of by accident, but has become very entrepreneurial through our collaboration and our work together. I would also say, you know, never underestimate the ability for somebody to surprise themselves, I think when she saw the power of what we were doing and how we could help so many more brands. I mean, if you think about mid year at most, we had 40 customers at one time sooner today has 19,000 brands on the platform, the ability to help 19,000 people versus 40 is it’s a really fun opportunity. And I think it’s something that she’s really motivated by as well. So, I don’t know, I always think of it as I’m one I’m really convincing. And two, I think she always saw the opportunity to help more people.
Max Branstetter 19:13
I’m a big fan of that term entrepreneur by accident. I think some of the best entrepreneur or co founder journeys are that way where it’s like not necessarily someone looking to start a business it’s it’s someone who keeps going back to the solution to a problem that they just can’t stop thinking about. And it’s like, you know, let’s let’s try this and then you know what, this before you know it Wait, this this is my 24/7 Pretty much.
Liz Giorgi 19:36
Yeah, I mean, and it happens sometimes faster than you ever imagined it would. So you know, I always remind people to be open to opportunities. You never know when the right opportunity is gonna show up for you. You
Max Branstetter 19:48
mentioned it took a bit of time to build the software for soona.What was the biggest like moment as you were building it that you kind of got over a hurdle on the tech side in your life? Like, Oh, all right, this is like we’re starting to get towards the vision that I had.
Liz Giorgi 20:05
One of the biggest things that came up for me was whether or not we could process the images in real time from camera to a browser. And so, so one of the things that is foundational to the soona experience is not all that different from joining a virtual room like this one, when you join a virtual photoshoot on the sooner platform, instead of looking at each other, you actually look at your photoshoot, and you as the customer see every single photo and video within five seconds of when we shutter on camera. And that’s kind of the KPI that we use of like, can we get it to you within about five seconds, so that it always feels really interactive, it feels like you’re right there, it feels like you’re part of the shoot, we didn’t know if we were going to be able to compress the image fast enough, convert it fast enough, and then deliver it into a gallery fast enough that it can be something that our customers can interact with that quickly. But after a lot of work with a few different engineers, and then eventually our who’s now our CTO cow, we discovered that it was there was a multitude of ways to do that, mostly through how we were handling the handle handling of the asset and how it gets compressed and then delivered to the browser. That was like a thing that we really did have to overcome and honestly is like one of the core innovations that sits inside sooner that we think of as one of our pieces of IP. I think another major thing, though, that we had to overcome, and we got helped by accident was you know, our product requires that our customers willing to sell send us their product for the photoshoot. And you know, one of the things that would come up very often for people is like, oh, my gosh, I really have to like pack it up in a box and send it to you and whatever. And we will say, Well, yeah, if you want a photo shoot, you have to do that. But then COVID happened. And all of a sudden, everybody was very much more open to online work. You know, think about it, we started working on this product in 2019 went through techatars Boulder and 2019 launched our beta in the fall of 2019 and then officially launched our product to the public in January of 2020. Well, those first three months, we weren’t really sure was this business going to go? Is it going to be successful. And then march 2020, rolls around and COVID actually accidentally helped us because it kind of changed people’s expectations of work, it changed how people thought about the business. And suddenly, this was one of the only ways that you could get a photoshoot accomplished safely. And so we really were benefited by accident as that innovation now supported something that was going on in the real world
Max Branstetter 22:29
is a wild ride. And that differentiator you mentioned about you know, the goal of five seconds or less in terms of your customers seeing their shoot, like that’s incredible. I mean, you took what, you know, Domino’s promises or used to promise I don’t know, with the 30 Minutes or Less delivery and kind of put that into hyperspeed or as baseball says you’ve gone plaid. But that’s an incredible experience. And like you can just envision it as a brand or as a customer like how much of a game changer that is. When you look across your brands and people that you’re working with today, how much of it is kind of the like, initial idea of that photoshoot aspect versus, you know, trying out, you know, teaming with you for for video production as well or access to, you know, models and talent like is it do you have a split at this time?
Liz Giorgi 23:23
You know, it’s interesting our business is has really evolved, but it’s like a kind of a perfect pie in certain sense of the word. So I’m a big fan of pie. Yeah, 33% of our business is, is our marketplace. So it’s going to be people booking models, stylists, other professional services that have to do with supporting their content, about 40% of our business is going to be the content itself. So you know, the photos and videos that are created for our merchants. And then the rest is kind of a mix of other things. So it’s our user generated content providers. It’s some of the subscription services that we’re now offering. So, you know, Siena just launched a subscription program that allows our merchants to actually access analytics on their content creation. And so that’s growing really rapidly. So the business has evolved and changed. But today, you know, we’re kind of an even split between those three wedges, the content itself, our professional services marketplace, and then the platform that we provide to brands in order to be more effective with their content creation. And
Max Branstetter 24:24
is there a particular area of that that like you and the team spent the most effort behind the scenes like making sure it’s, you know, shipshape?
Liz Giorgi 24:34
I would say I have I’ve different general managers or sort of business unit heads for every single part of the business. I would say where I’m spending a lot of my time right now focusing and spending a lot of my energy is getting really, really clear on what the next generation of sunnah is actually going to be. How can we add new things to the platform? How can we constantly be adding value? How can we help our brands be even smarter about the content that they’re creating? And then also So on the integration side, how do we integrate their content more effectively with where they sell their products? So, today, soona already has apps for Amazon, Shopify, and Canva. So you know, our merchants are able to use their content, publish it seamlessly get measurement. But also, then, you know, I think one of the things that you never want to discount is the importance of being able to use their content in other contexts. So, you know, being able to put together a presentation in Canva, or put together a business card in Canva, all those kinds of things to really help extend the value of their content beyond that one moment in time. That’s where I tend to be spending a lot of my time right now.
Max Branstetter 25:36
Oh, yeah, it makes perfect sense that it perfect sense to go with the perfect pie. You have a not the case study you, but you have an incredible case study of a business. And part of the reason why I’m so interested in speaking with you, like you’ve just seen incredible growth, you know, great story with your previous company. And now Asuna, like, you set yourself going from, you know, zero branch or working with to 19,000, and then working with, you know, multiple GMs. And building a team out from that way. Like that’s an incredible journey in the grand scheme of things like a very short time in the business world. How? I just want to say, I’m just gonna know, how, what do you think like, in hindsight is like the single biggest driver that has allowed you to scale at, you know, such a great level so far? Well,
Liz Giorgi 26:27
I think one thing that we really honed in on was, from the very beginning, simple to understand pricing, and I don’t think enough people companies leaders, spend time really contemplating is your pricing clear. From the beginning sooner has said we sell a $39 photo. And then if you want to add a hand model, it’s 99 bucks, right? Like we don’t over engineer or overcomplicate some of the things that maybe in the industry generally has made it quite tough. I remember one of my very first customer interviews before we launched the product, someone saying, you know, I got a quote from a photographer for $10,000. And I have no idea what’s included, and what’s excluded, and so sooner tries to make it perfectly clear what’s included, what’s excluded. And I think pricing was a big, a big driver of our initial growth. I guess you can’t discount timing with the market either, though. I mean, we could not have as much as COVID was not great for the country or the world. COVID was great for our business. And instead of kind of looking at that moment and saying, How is it going to negatively impact us? I think we’ve always had a mindset here as soon as how’s it going to positively impact us? How can we take this thing that’s happening in the market? And how can we use it to our advantage, and that created a growth accelerant for our business. And then I think the third thing that we really focus on is we’re constantly trying to add value to the platform for free. Because if we add more value to what you’re already paying for, then the next product that we introduce, you may want to spend more money on, I got a customer who complimented me the other day and says I feel like every time I log on to the sooner platform, something new and awesome is there. And I don’t ever have to ask for it. And I think that’s a product lifecycle and a product philosophy that we’ve embraced that sooner that allows us to be constantly adding something new so that people want to come back, they want to learn, they want to see what else student has to offer. If you kind of come at the approach of just saying like, Oh, we’re gonna do one product release a year, or we’re only going to innovate, you know, once a quarter, you’re never surprising and delighting your customer. And I think that has a negative impact on brands, then the last thing I’ll say is never underestimate the value of just becoming really consistent in telling your story. I like to say that as much as my job title is Chief Executive Officer, what my job really is, is Chief storytelling officer, I go out and I talked about seeing it every single day I did two sales calls. Today. I am on LinkedIn almost every single day I’m on on Instagram and on TikTok and on Twitter and I really think it is a huge part of my job and a requirement of my job to be telling the story of sunnah, why we are valuable and how we can help. And if you’re not finding half an hour in your day, every day to do that, you may actually be artificially stalling your growth. So just never underestimate the power of that storytelling.
Max Branstetter 29:18
There’s so much artificial intelligence these days that that people forget about artificial stalling. So important flag you raise there. There you go. You know, the part about all that you just said that, like, speaks to me so much to the core is continuing to create value for customers and continuing to offer you know, continuing to create fun and awesome things as you said. And your point about surprising delighting your customers is it’s so spot on because that if anyone were to just you know, take a few moments to think about the brands that they love the most and have like loved and use for a long time. More likely than not. They’re a brand that continues to offer products or features or services. Over time that like continually gets better and continually enhances your connection with the brand and also makes this makes it easier to use. That’s just fantastic that that’s such a big proponent, proponent, it doesn’t matter word of a big, you know, value prop for you guys. You mentioned the chief storyteller role, which, you know, I would say archivist but but I think that’s a something so many entrepreneurs strive to do is like, you know, that you have to spend a lot of time, you know, on the marketing side and on the business, but also, especially in the early years, it can be hard to, to not be so much of like the doer and be so much in the weeds every single day and even have time to do that stuff. Sure. In your journey, what has been helpful for you to like, you know, change your leadership or change your founder, your founder style, your entrepreneurial style, to the point that you can be a little bit less hands on and be a little bit more marketing and in storytelling,
Liz Giorgi 31:02
I think it’s about understanding how to right size it at the right time, you know, in the early days, actually, when I had more to do more of my job was storytelling, believe it or not than it is right now. Which is kind of a kind of a funny inversion of the fact. But if you think about it, you know, we didn’t have a lot of money to do advertising, we didn’t have a lot of money to hire a publicity firm. So I was the one reaching out to reporters late at night, I was the one that was posting and editing every single video that we came up with. And now I have people who can help me with those things. So in a strange kind of way, it’s to me about right sizing it and putting in the right efforts at the right time. So right now today, I have a 30 minute block on my calendar every single day. That’s just for content. And that might be you know, one LinkedIn posts on one tweet today. And then tomorrow, it might be that I write my monthly newsletter. And then the next day, it might be that I created TikTok video and an Instagram video, right, but I have that 30 minutes. And I’m really intentional about using that 30 minutes. The other thing I would say is I think a lot of people get really hung up on what am I going to talk about today. And so they’ll spend the whole 30 minutes just trying to come up with an idea. Don’t do that you’ll stress yourself out. Instead, what you should just do is write down a framework, put it on a post it note, put it on your computer, put it on your desk that just says the three things I feel comfortable talking about always. And for me, it’s about creativity, I always feel comfortable talking about creativity, hot tips on creativity, or trends and creativity. And you know, others that I can often talk about will be business strategy, and then another that I like to talk about as new products. And so I’ll just sort of say like, what do I want to talk about today? I think today I’ll talk about new products. And then next day, maybe I want to talk about, you know, creativity again, do that same thing for yourself, instead of trying to come up with a new idea every day just right. What are three things you always feel comfortable talking about, you can have a conversation about at any moment in time, write it down, put it on your desk, because the thing is, is then when you sit down to write a LinkedIn post, you’re not trying to dream something up, you can just say, Cool. Today, I’m going to do something on, you know, business strategy for small businesses. Great, what’s the strategy going to be today. And that really reduces the pressure reduces the expectation and makes it more of an automation for your brain as opposed to something you have to invent every time. And then the other thing too, is follow what works. You know, I found out really, really early on my Twitter account, for example, that people just loved hearing the kinds of questions that I would approach in my pitches, how do I structure a pitch? What were the things that I like to hit on? What did I like to delete those tweets would go super viral. And so I would do more of them follow what works on a platform, Don’t always try to be novel, every time it’s okay to repeat things, it’s okay to follow something that’s working and do it again and again. And again.
Max Branstetter 33:50
I can totally get behind that it is so hard to just stare at a blank screen, whether literally or figuratively and just be like, alright, like, think of something like I really like your approach of just focusing on a few things focusing on the main topics there and sometimes like you know, we’ve had a lot of guests say this as well like just like using your notes app on your phone of just like whenever you think of an idea, you know, add it to the list there you know, it works for posting notes as well obviously. But if you can have some ideas or just some started really fleshed out ideas as the I’m sure the term goes in advance, it just makes everything way easier.
Liz Giorgi 34:29
Yeah, reduce the brain strain is what I like to say.
Max Branstetter 34:35
What a rhyme and here’s something that doesn’t rhyme, but is still just as enjoyable as a good rhyme. The Wild Business Growth Podcast is on YouTube now. We’ve been on YouTube for a while at the time of this recording, but we are finally releasing full video releasing slip ups like that. We’re releasing full video in review’s never before seen videos with wild entrepreneurs like Liz, you can check it out. And make sure to hit Subscribe on YouTube @MaxBranstetter. I’m just going to mess with you. You have to google how to spell Branstetter. But, or you could YouTube. But YouTube @MaxBranstetter. Now, let’s continue this incredible streak of rhymes. Well, let’s rhyme our way into Rapid-Fire Q&A. You ready for it?
Liz Giorgi 35:32
Ready for it? Let’s do it.
Max Branstetter 35:34
All right, let’s get wild. And we’ll try not to strain our brains too much. What was the biggest thing that surprised you about the whole techstars experience,
Liz Giorgi 35:45
the other co founders and just how much I enjoyed being around other early stage CEOs.
Max Branstetter 35:51
So that’s very nice. That’s sweet. And we should end right there. But unfortunately, I have a few more questions. You’ve been pretty in tune or in tube with YouTube since the early days, what is the biggest thing that has changed? Since you first discovered YouTube about just the way the platform operates?
Liz Giorgi 36:09
The platform much more is much more interested and much more supportive of individual celebrity like creators than brand style creators.
Max Branstetter 36:22
Hmm, that’s interesting. And that when that wasn’t like, like, was it all brand focus at the start? No,
Liz Giorgi 36:27
in the very early days of YouTube, they were very interested in attracting brands or recognizable entities to the platform to try and promote their content I can think about les worked really hard to get a lot of Red Bull content, for example, on the platform in the early days of YouTube. Today, you almost never see like a Red Bull video and your algorithm instead, you’re probably gonna see a MrBeast video, right? So there’s a lot more of a movement towards individual personalities on the platform.
Max Branstetter 36:55
And then so you’ve spent time in a few different places, but I know you know full circle with B1G and know you did undergrad at Minnesota. I feel like every time I have a guest on from Minnesota, I end up asking about the cold because I’m so fascinated how cold it gets there. So I won’t do that. I’ll switch it up for you. What was the absolute most fun part of of being on campus and going to school there with all those gophers being
Liz Giorgi 37:20
a Golden Gopher, the University of Minnesota is a really special collegiate environment because it is literally smack dab in the center of a big metropolitan city. And so you get to experience city life and collegiate life at the same time. Which means that the bars are more fun, the music is more fun, the restaurants are more interesting. It isn’t just like the slimy collegiate pizza place. It’s the really cool, there’s a bar in Dinkytown, which is a neighborhood near the University
Max Branstetter 37:51
I thought you were making up dinky town. I’m sorry.
Liz Giorgi 37:54
No, Dinkytown is a real place. You know, if you think about I mean, even just thinking about the history of a place like that the bars or just the bar, there’s a bar called the Kitty Cat Klub, you should go if you ever find yourself on campus.
Max Branstetter 38:05
Sounds great. And then you can eat KitKats in the Kitty Cat Klub. And Dinkytown just the way everybody drew it up. All right. And then last one, what is the biggest thing that’s changed about your approach to business since you became a mother,
Liz Giorgi 38:20
I am much more in tune today with whether or not I’m doing things that I will be proud of when I’m 80 than I was before.
Max Branstetter 38:34
And unfortunately, you’ve spent your time over the last 40 minutes or so was something you’re very not proud of. So sorry about that. But now Liz, thank you so much. Thank you appreciate that. But really, really appreciate you coming on and all you’re doing and just the awesome awesome success story of soona which is still writing itself. I guess you have a hand in writing that as well. But thank you so much for coming on. Where’s the best place for people to try out soona as well as if they want to connect with you at all?
Liz Giorgi 39:04
Yeah, I would love if people would first go to soona.co. And if you want to follow me if you want to learn more about me you can follow me on any social media platform @LizGiorgi
Max Branstetter 39:20
which your last name if if there were enough letters would be an excellent Wordle word. So it’d be really tricky but awesome. Last thing, Final Thoughts, stage is yours. It could be a quote, words to live by, just you know, you could sing if you want and you don’t have to but whatever you want send us home here.
Liz Giorgi 39:38
I would love for to thank you first of all for letting me be on the show. And second of all, I just want to encourage every single person listening to remember that entrepreneurship is supposed to be a roller coaster ride. It’s gonna have ups it’s gonna have downs. The key thing is that when you get off the ride, you feel proud of yourself for finishing it. So thank you for having me. I hope people will check out soona and appreciate everything we got to talk about on this episode.
Max Branstetter 40:06
Rollercoaster of labor of love you keep going with that. Liz, thank you so much for coming on the podcast sharing your Wildly cool, soona story. And thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this a soona story, god I love alliteration, make sure to Follow the Wild Business Growth Podcast on your favorite app and tell a friend about the podcast. You can also find us on Goodpods and YouTube @MaxBranstetter. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That is at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!
