The Challengers – Fatima Zaidi, Founder & CEO – Quill

As a Challenger Bank, we love the opportunity to peek into the mind of founders, creators, and anyone challenging the status quo. That’s why we launched The Challengers, our monthly series on Instagram.

This month, we sat down with Fatima Zaidi, Founder and CEO of Quill, an award-winning podcast agency specializing in corporate audio production with measurable impact.

Can you give us an idea of what the Quill team does?

The beauty of podcasting is that anybody with an internet connection and a microphone can really do it. I think it’s just a matter of whether you’re looking to invest in a high-quality production. There’s something for everyone – Quill primarily works with enterprise brands like EQ Bank to create high-quality podcasts. I think that when you’re looking to create a high-quality show it is very complex and finding your audience can be even more challenging. Typically, I like to break the podcasting process into five main steps; the pre-production and concepting, the production (which is where the recording, mixing and mastering happens), the analytics, growth and distribution component, and then of course, let’s not forget how important marketing is. In my opinion, that’s half of the scope finding your qualified audience. It is a lot of layers, it’s very complex, but I think when done properly, it’s one of the best strategies for your content medium.

What is the CoHost platform and what makes it so ground-breaking in the podcast industry?

I think the beauty of CoHost is that we essentially built it for our clientele based on the pain points that we experience as a full-service production agency. We have been in this industry for a long time, creating podcasts from the ground up and we’ve noticed one big challenge is the data and analytics in this industry are very fragmented and not consolidated. We create quarterly reports, and we spend hours piecing that information together from Apple’s back end and Spotify’s back end, and we’re looking through the hosting platform really trying to piece together how your show is performing. That’s a big part of our job, is helping brands understand the ROI of their podcast and justify the creation of new production budgets.

CoHost which is really an all in one tech platform that consolidates all of your data, it gives you automatic transcriptions, it gives you benchmarking information so you can see how your show is doing compared to your competition, and most importantly the campaign attribution piece where you can also see where your downloads are coming from, who your audience profile is and just giving us a holistic snapshot of whether or not your show is successful and if you should continue or not.

Do you recall the moment when you realized there was a huge impact to be made on podcasting, and that you were going to take it on?

It’s interesting – like many Canadians I feel like I didn’t really know what a podcast was until I fell in love with a true crime documentary – Serial. Back then, I was leading sales for a marketing agency, and I really liked listening to podcasts, but I thought there was an even bigger opportunity for brand storytelling. Unlike reading a book or watching TV, you can listen to a podcast anywhere; commuting, household chores, riding your bike, and I think because of that, it’s become an attractive medium for brands to reach their audiences. At that point, I decided to take a risk and really productize the services that we were offering at the previous agency and focus exclusively on podcasting. The timing couldn’t be more perfect because it was right before COVID-19, so I feel like this industry was just further compounded with the world moving to digital tactics. I think that now more than ever brands are aggressively moving into this space because every day we interact with such conglomerate brands; banks, Amazon, big insurance companies – but we don’t really have an emotional connection to them. We know they exist, but we don’t really know what’s happening behind the scenes or have a particular loyalty to them. But if you do listen to a podcast, if they do create content, it humanizes the process and allows you to really build that emotional connection with them.

The example I always use is – our household is a big ice cream consumer, but we’ve never been loyal to a particular brand until I watched the How I Built This episode with the Ben & Jerry’s team and fell in love with their concept, their values, social activism, what they stand for. It went from Ben & Jerry’s the ice cream company to Ben & Jerry’s, this brand that I am going to be a die-hard loyal consumer and supporter of. Now, we exclusively buy their product. I think more and more millennials like myself are looking to purchase from brands that we are aligned with in terms of values, and I think podcasting is a really great way to reach that global audience.

What does success look like for you?

It has changed a lot over the last few years. I think COVID-19 has been a catalyst and factor to that. Back in the day, success for me was reaching the ultimate pillar of goals – I had my entire life mapped out and it was almost a race to the finish with all these deliverables, all these milestones that I’d like to hit. I’m proud that I’ve built a successful company, I love my team, and I would say that to me success is so much more than that, so much more than just your career goals. I spent my 20s really hustling and grinding to get to the next level but I would say the stage that I’m in right now, it’s being a well-rounded person, it’s understanding that mental health and work-life balance comes first, and you really need to prioritize the things that make you happy.

For me, at the end of the day, success is if I wake up and I think “am I living a life that’s true to myself, and am I a happy individual? Do I have time for my family and my friends and the things that really spark joy?” That, to me, is success.

What are some ingredients of what you think makes a challenger podcast?

There are three tips I would give to make a scalable and successful podcast. The first is to set aside time and budget to market your show. I think that is extremely important and unless you’re an A-list celebrity or an influencer, creating a high-quality production isn’t enough, you really have to focus on audience growth. Second is to invest in paid digital. I would highly recommend that, outside of just focusing on organic tactics like social media and blog content. The last thing I would recommend is to utilize your analytics and data to tailor your strategy. If you can, use tracking links to see where your downloads are coming from, and double down on what’s working rather than doing all of the tactics. Really, data is king (after cash flow of course). I always encourage people to really know who their audience is, where they live, and where they’re coming from.

Watch the full interview with Fatima and stay tuned to our Instagram for interviews with future Challengers!