Today we’re talking with Yam Regev, the founder of Zest.is, a content distillery focused on providing actionable content to its users. Yam shares how combining a human touch with automation became essential to Zest’s rapid growth.

Zest has gone from 0 to almost 18,000 weekly active users in just a year, and a lot of that growth is thanks to the fact that Yam personally responded to every single content submission when Zest first started.

That human touch created a powerful WOW moment for Zest’s users, which created a positive feedback cycle that brought them back over and over.

So listen to how Yam was able to achieve this super-human feat by being smart about when to automate & when to be human, and how his commitment to the unscalable led to Zest’s success.

(And make sure to tune in next week, where Louis and I are going share what the next phase of this show is going to look like.)

Enjoy!

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• [00:01:23] What Zest is, and what led Yam to found it
• [00:04:22] How Zest works
• [00:07:55] How Zest created a human buffer for content
• [00:10:12] The difference between content and knowledge
• [00:12:18] Yam’s user-first and human-centric approach to growing Zest
• [00:17:18] How Yam responded individually to all of the content submitted to Zest
• [00:22:01] How Yam scaled the process of individually answering each submission
• [00:25:11] The kind of responses that Yam got from his personalized emails
• [00:32:53] Zest’s user success methodology
• [00:35:49] How success is defined at Zest
• [00:40:57] How Yam would help people understand that people-first is the most sustainable way to grow
• [00:44:42] Resources that Yam recommends

Today we’re talking with Josh Braaten, a marketing consultant and founder of Brandish Insights, about the lessons he learned when he formed his own Super PAC to take on the US government and fight for net neutrality.

He shares the backstory of what led him to create a Super PAC in the first place, and then deep-dives into the practical insights he gained while crafting a message to resonate with his target audience, such as:

• How to focus on helping people with the issues they are facing without needing to sensationalize
• How leading with common principles can open the door for people to listen to your message
• How to start taking action in the face of an overwhelming amount of things to do.

Josh was a pleasure to speak with and someone I look forward to staying in touch with outside of the podcast, so I hope you find some value here as well.

Enjoy!

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• [00:01:43] Josh’s background and work
• [00:03:01] How Josh got interested in net neutrality
• [00:04:14] The process of forming a super PAC
• [00:13:22] Why Josh decided that a super PAC was the best way to fight for net neutrality
• [00:14:49] Josh’s next steps after forming America’s Internet
• [00:17:20] What Josh realized about running a successful campaign with a super PAC
• [00:19:49] Driving leads that lead to conversions
• [00:23:59] Why it’s important to avoid sensationalism
• [00:29:17] How you can persuade people by finding principles that you have in common with them
• [00:32:39] What a principles-based discussion looks like
• [00:35:13] What it was that allowed Josh to think he could make a difference with a big issue like net neutrality
• [00:45:20] Resources that Josh recommends