Andrew Michael: [00:00:00] hey, Sançar. Welcome to the show

Sançar Sahin: [00:00:02] hey, Andrew. Thanks for having me.

Andrew Michael: [00:00:03] It's a pleasure for the listeners Sançar as the cofounder of Oliva, a modern online therapy service for people who care as much about their mental health, as they do their physical health.

He is also the former VP of marketing at Hotjar and Typeform and lead marketing at GetApp. So it's fair to say. He's had his fair share of building and growing top performing marketing teams.

So my first question for you essentially is what are the elements you believe are necessary to build a world class marketing team?

Sançar Sahin: [00:00:32] Yeah it's going to sound like a cliche, But of course it comes down to the people. you definitely need the right people. There's that analogy, Of, getting , the wrong people off the bus. And then, and then deciding where you're going.

And I think that applies to running companies or individual teams as well. And it definitely applies to. to marketing. So just make sure you've got the right people with the right resources, then set those people up for success. down to those processes, as I mentioned down to budgets down to a ownership, [00:01:00] does everybody know what they own, what they're supposed to do, why they're there or that kind of stuff, and then set the right direction so that they can execute on that.

Ultimately. It comes down to making sure the team feels like they have a purpose. and every day they come in and they're executing against something it's because they know why they're doing it essentially.

Andrew Michael: [00:01:19] Yeah. I like the analogy of the bus. And I think like for yourself as well, you've come into companies with the teams, maybe already established the marketing team and needing to improve things and grow from there.

And we also like starting from the ground up. So how do you go about deciding like who is the right people for the best stitch in this journey that you're going on? And what are the like skills that you want in this marketing team? So I think both maybe Hotjar and Typeform had a similar market that they were going after had a similar customer profile that they're going after and a similar, maybe go to market strategy.

So like, how do you go about to signing a care? what are these key roles? What are the profiles that I need to be looking for in this team that I want to be building. what are the criteria that [00:02:00] you based in the soft?

Sançar Sahin: [00:02:02] Yeah, so like you said, Typeform, and Hotjar very similar go to markets, really very similar, types of companies in a way, so different products, but similar, sales motions, let's say so Typeform and Hotjar were very much based on a self serve model.

we had the freemium element of the product, which meant that we cost on that wide. Got a lot of people in. And then, then you can a few, right. You can burn a few to customers, but it means when you have emotion like that, you can't be talking to every single person individually. You talk to people through marketing, right?

Do you talk to people through communication, through messaging, and things like that. And of course, both of those companies did and do have, a sales, like one-to-one element to them, but it wasn't the main part of the go to market, at least in my time. so when you're looking for those skills, essentially, that's an important piece of information because there's a big difference between people who, the bread and butter the day to day is picking [00:03:00] up the phone and having one-to-one conversations with people and leading them through something, explaining a problem and giving them the solution.

Thus is doing that through mass communication through one to many communications, whether that's. Emails, whether that's a website copy or, or design or whatever it might be. So my perspective on that, thinking about the sales motions and the go to market strategies of those two companies is when I look for the right people, for the team, it's people who are amazing communicators, but through the one to many, motions through email, through web marketing, through content, content has always been a big part of.

what I've done in my teams. so yeah. good communicators with the masses rather than the few.

Andrew Michael: [00:03:45] Makes a lot of sense. So really trying to understand the business model, how you acquire customers, the volume of customers you're acquiring, and then that sort of dictating, the skill set that the team needs to have.

so I'm interested now as well. And maybe before we jump into any specific [00:04:00] questions around it is, you've decided to. leave. Hotjar now as well, work there together, and you've decided to start your own business, Oliva. maybe you want to tell us a little bit more about it, like where the inspiration came from.

and then I want to dive into like your thought process now, like going about building this up from scratch and looking at it through the lens now as a founder, versus a VP or executive at a company.

Sançar Sahin: [00:04:23] Yeah, definitely. yeah. So the idea itself wasn't mine. the idea was, had already been born, let's say in my head of, of my cofounder of a hobby.

and I just loved it. I loved it because the concept comes from the idea that the industry around accessing therapy, and managing your therapy experience is very outdated. it's very clinical and just lacks any kind of, experienced, designed into it. And I'll give you an example. So I've been through, through a therapy experience myself, dealt with a bit of burnout and things like that, professional burnout.

and I went to this therapist office. The therapist self was [00:05:00] great. Nothing really broken there is fine, but nothing around. That therapy service was designed for therapy. So the location was basically just an apartment with bedrooms that was converted into a therapy office. This is very typical where I live in Barcelona.

there was no insulation between the therapists. Session rooms. So you can literally hear conversations from room to room, which, already put you on the back foot and just made you feel like it wasn't completely your space. You had to deal with payment every time after you finished a session.

And then you'd have to sync your calendars for the next session. You can do that online. So an unsung, quite a niche problem. especially from where I'm living at the moment, but actually when you go online, Those kinds of problems are, amplified, not necessarily in the same way.

Exactly. But often what you see online is that the therapy, offerings are over-engineered just so that technology can be used. So I think what we're forgetting is that [00:06:00] therapy itself works very well and technology should support the experience, but not replaced. The experience and that's what we believe or lever, we believe that it should be powered by people and supported by technology.

So it's very simple. We make sure that we have high quality therapists. So they go through a very stringent recruitment process. They have to have a minimum of seven years experience. we offer a match guarantee. So that's one of the biggest pain points of stepping into therapy, the kind of anxiety around actually being matched with the right person and the expense of doing that.

So we take on a lot of that burden. And then we just made the whole thing, very simple with, technology. So booking management, cancellation, or that kind of stuff is just very easy. so yeah, the idea wasn't mine, but it was definitely something. That I connected with straightaway

Andrew Michael: [00:06:44] and you're resonating.

Yeah, it definitely, I think we talked a little bit about before the show. I also last year, sometime as well, I decided like I wanted to chat to somebody, went on to an online service and just gave up halfway through. Cause I found that the. Like the amount of effort that was required to [00:07:00] go and get something set up felt extremely difficult.

And then also, like you say, trying to put too many substitutions in the way, like setting up chat messages and forms and forgetting the human elements of it is I think it was like one of the biggest pain points I felt at least then, and just decided not to go through with it, but

Sançar Sahin: [00:07:17] which is a shame, right?

It's a shame because it should be made easy. you shouldn't be put off by just the process itself. it was so easy to fix. so yeah, it's a shame that happens, but that's, that's what we're trying to fix.

Andrew Michael: [00:07:28] And a lot of the time as well. Like I think this goes to any good product building, any good marketing or any, like understanding your user and understanding the pain points that they're going through and realizing like at that point in time person who wants to go to speak to somebody, is typically like to get to the point to do that.

They also take a lot of effort to actually do that. So making that step and that as easy as possible, that makes total sense to me what you're doing in which building, and really trying to create that experience around this. Really cool. so now I'm interested from your [00:08:00] side as well. Like I mentioned for your getting started again.

you're starting to build now something for yourself. obviously marketing is a component of this and I think like when we think about the context of churn and retention, positioning com becomes extremely important, like understanding who your customer is like building out your, go to market strategy to make sure that you bring in the right people through the door and that you've got the right business model, for them like.

It's a very broad question, but maybe do you want to talk us through, what is your thought process now around all of this? Like, how are you approaching this as Sançar and a cofounder? I'm not sure how big the team is now, but obviously it means to be a little bit more scrappy, a little bit less resources. Like where are you focusing first? what do you think is the most critical component to get started with?

Sançar Sahin: [00:08:45] Yeah, it's funny you actually, because, I gone full circle. So when I think back to the different marketing teams, that I've been a part of. the first proper one let's say was, a very small marketing is essentially myself and, one other person or two other people we got to, cause we used to operate.

This [00:09:00] was in Trav. It's where we used to operate as, managers of different country websites. So we'd have to do the whole kind of end to end process of marketing and sales and everything. and then I moved into a more, And so a company where I built a more, a medium sized team, let's say, but more focused on a particular function within marketing content and then Typeform built out an even bigger function.

We had, I think, 23 people, at its height, in my time in the marketing team. And we had, all of the different marketing function functions you could think of almost. And then a Hotjar, it was a slightly scaled down version of that, but in a remote environment. So I've come back full circle because I'm back to that very scrappy stage.

where the first option I have isn't to hire people. The first option I have is just to really make sure that the next two steps I take are the most critical steps. And I actually can't plan too much for them next. Two or three steps off to that by hiring people now, for example. So in some of my previous roles, that's part of the job coming into a company that already has product market fit, the, [00:10:00] where you have the luxury of budget.

you plan for the future. You come in and you say, what needs to happen? When does it need to happen? And how do we. Put the right building blocks in place now to make that happen. And that's usually hiring them, setting up team structures and things like that. now it's obviously a lot scrappier.

So essentially the marketing team is myself. We're working with a few people like the core team here, on the project and we're working with a lot of freelancers. So it's basically managing freelancers and trying to get everybody to buy into the vision when they're not necessarily fully part of the team yet, which is a challenge.

in itself. so what I've learned and what I'm bringing to this next, Germany let's say is the basics really, truly understand your customer, truly understand what pain points they have. And then build everything around that and then keep iterating through feedback loops. And I've made mistakes in the past where I haven't done this so much, quite honestly, at Typeform, we were very much a, like a vision led [00:11:00] company.

innovation led and that led to a lot of the success we had at Typeform, but actually we forgot sometimes to talk to the customer, as much as we should have. and it meant we didn't iterate quickly enough on. on certain parts of the product and our marketing. and we got a little bit further away from the customer than we should have Hotjar is, is very good at being close to the customer.

and constantly talking to the customer and getting feedback and iterating based on that. So coming into this role, I've got the kind of perspective of being a different ends of the spectrum and seeing. where that balance needs to be and hopefully applying that learning, to there. So the very first thing I'm doing is just talking to as many people as possible, but one-to-one, so I'm not, I'm not thinking right.

What's the advertising campaign we can put out in front of a couple of thousand people to get awareness of Oliva. that's not really how I'm thinking. I'm thinking, how can I speak to five to 10 people, and get some really deep insights and [00:12:00] feedback from them. And then when I have that. Go to, into the marketing and into the product and then go back to them and go to another 10 people as well and say, okay, now what now?

What do you think? And literally keep doing that. And as you do that, you're building out this kind of core group of not, I wouldn't call them beats users, but essentially your extended founding team that just, are giving you so much incredible information. And these are the people that ultimately, will help get the Brown brand off the ground.

I think rather than just putting a fancy ad in front of as many people as possible, there'll be time for that later on.

Andrew Michael: [00:12:31] Absolutely. Yeah. I think obviously as as well, like myself,  started again with something and new now and very similar approach, really just like constantly speaking to people now, interviews really trying to understand who the is for like the.

Like the comment that you made as well about a Todd form being like really innovation led and then Hotjar being very customer led and getting a balance in between, because I think it's a tough one to know which end of the balance you want to take at some point you [00:13:00] want to be able to be innovative enough to.

Deliver something that wows people and that can separate you from the rest of the pack. But then at the same time, you also want to make sure that you, innovating in the right way. And that's the way you are going to be delivering at the end of the day is not just going to be a surprise and months of work that nobody ends up using.

It's cool that you have that experience now, and you're trying to gauge it, but let's talk a little bit more about these interviews that you're having. Cause I think this for me as well, like you say, it's all about starting from the who and the what and what are their pain points, who are these people?

that's just solves everything. I think when it comes to general attention, knowing who your customer is and knowing what their problem is like really knowing deeply inside an art is. Probably the best way that you can go about preventing it. And ultimately I think prevention is better than cure prevention is better than churn.

so in your case now, like what is your process for these interviews? Have you got anything structured in place where you're going into them now and how are you conducting them?

Sançar Sahin: [00:13:59] Yeah, I'm [00:14:00] not going to pretend that I've got like the most, the fanciest process or, and following the latest playbook or anything.

But I will, I'll take you through what I've done and it's been extremely useful for me. So the first thing we did was we got a, like a V one version of our website out, which acts like a baseline for us. It's important. So we actually had a version before that V a V 0.9, I suppose you could call it.

but I didn't want to get feedback on that version because I knew that I wanted to make many changes to that website simply because, it was just a way to quickly get something up, serve the purpose at the time to collect a few email addresses, et cetera. But it wasn't the baseline that I wanted to be getting feedback on.

I wanted something that I thought, okay, this is something I believe in and I can build. On there. So there needs to be almost from my perspective, there needs to be a little bit of, me first perspective, just so that you're happy that's the right baseline to be starting from once you have that baseline, which for us was the second version of the website.

[00:15:00] We put it live. And then I just put a request to my network and said, look, if you're happy to give some feedback on something you are working on, I'd really appreciate it. And I had a really good response to that going amazing network, in this space everybody's, out to help each other, which is fantastic.

so I've got a really good response. I set up a simple type form survey where I asked people to look at that website and then I answered, ask them some questions. And it was roughly based around the super Q a usability, survey. So just a few kinds of questions where you score them. And then there's like an NPS question at the end.

So we ask how you'd likely to recommend this. to somebody else. And then we have some, I put some qualitative questions in that. what do you think we're trying to, what problem are we trying to solve? what, do you think we're explaining X, Y, and Z, enough, et cetera.

So we just ask some questions like that. From that survey, I've got an amazing response and. on the LinkedIn post, where I put the request for the feedback in the first place, I got an even [00:16:00] better response loads of like really kind people just willing to give feedback. And I set up probably 15, 20 phone calls with people.

Plus I had 65 70 responses through the Typeform. So I had this flood of amazing information. And what I realized was you get to a point where you reach a kind of, A point where you get diminishing returns, right? So you get enough feedback that you've got clear themes from that feedback and whatever feedback comes in on top of that, it's great to have it, but you're not really sure  you knew themes.

You're getting edge cases and I'm hearing more of the same. So actually I found, in my previous roles you can get quite far with just 10 interviews, 10 is a relatively good number to get a good idea of what's going on. But in this case, having 60. 60, 70 responses to type one was definitely very useful.

So from that, there were three, I would say key themes, that needed to be worked on from the communication point of view on the website and then a few kind of design related [00:17:00] themes. And then we took that. We made a decision. Do we agree with these? Do we think people would miss the Mark and actually, no, we agreed with everything or made sense.

And then we took those themes and then tried to solve for them in the next version. And the next version will go live soon and I'll do the whole process all over again. I'll go back to that group of people and say, now, what do you think? And basically just keep doing this. And so our message is super clear.

Our value proposition is super clear. and I think if we can do that for a couple of feedback rounds, I'm going to be pretty confident that the website that we created from a communication point of view is going to be ready to. To share and, then we can set up the ads, then we can send people to it.

But if I think back to that first version of the website, which quite honestly, I thought I was happy with it, I was like, this is great. we're explaining the problem in a really clear way. What I realized was the problem that I was explaining was not the problem people cared about. so the feedback was super useful.

[00:18:00] so this just helps add a certain level of confidence to the way you communicate. and this. This just permeates through everything else you do in terms of any branding project, you project to do all of the copy you do, and actually the product you built as well.

Andrew Michael: [00:18:15] Yeah. It's like a copywriting and positioning master plus doing customer interviews.

Sançar Sahin: [00:18:20] it's just the best.

Andrew Michael: [00:18:21] so it's very interesting as well. Cause I think like exactly, that's what the press is.

I've been following almost. I think similarly, really started out just with that website. Cause it also, for myself, it helped me put my ideas down and like really understand, okay, is this the problem that I'm trying to solve? Is this a solution? Like before starting to build any product or to build any sort of UI or design or anything like that.

It was really first say, okay, Can I get what's in my head out onto some form of communication that people can understand and then do people get it and does it resonate? I think that was like the first thing I wanted to do on set and like the process that you're saying now, just going through these interviews, hearing the different pain points, hearing the messaging that people come back with and [00:19:00] like the way you described the problem is maybe.

One out of 10 people, two out of 10 people, but then you find different ways that people are talking about it and then it resonates with you as well. And then that copy and those words that people use is gold. I think at the end of that, like you said, that. I don't start with the ads, like the copies coming from your customers, coming from the interviews that you have and, it all starts from there.

So have you seen the product itself change in your mind, like since going through these interviews or has that not like how much has the product evolved from that first version that you put out there versus what you're putting out today?

Sançar Sahin: [00:19:36] Yeah, so it has, just to give you a couple of examples, so one thing we.

put a lot of emphasis on our first version of the website was the quality of the different technology interactions when taking, when receiving, therapy. So for example, we put a lot of emphasis on the fact that we will promise higher quality audio and video, video quality. Cause it was very [00:20:00] much from our perspective, from a technology perspective, that was really important.

Like it really annoys us when. When you do video therapy and the video is really bad quality or the audio is very echoey or a very tinny, or even things like when your therapist is working from home and their background is super messy. you you don't really want to see those things, but that was very much from our perspective and yes, it annoys some other people and yes.

We can fix those little things and we will put some effort into fixing those things, but we learned that it's not, it's ultimately not the thing that people care about the most. So we took a lot of emphasis away from that and put it much more on the ultimate value that we bring to people. So it came down to those three things, right?

So one, a very high quality therapist to a very high quality matching and a match guarantee. And then three is making everything easy. and that's where, things like good quality audio, good quality video come in. But it's just one of three USBs. Let's say it's not the [00:21:00] thing that defines the product.

So that was a good learning. One other one we had a great conversation with, actually not our, not a, let's say a classic customer interview that he was our copywriter. he was starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable because. Because, he saw that we were potentially becoming a brand for the wealthy because of the way that we positioning like high quality, our prices, maybe a little bit higher than, some other places you can access it.

And this kind of hit this kind of goddess to the heart, because that was definitely not what we were setting out to do to create this kind of elitist. products and brand, but at the same time when we sat down and really talked about this, we knew that we had a belief that the way to make therapy accessible is not, to squeeze your, the margins every way you can, pay your therapist less, use technology to replace the core experience of therapy.

Just so it's [00:22:00] cheaper. We knew that wasn't the best way to be able to make therapy more accessible. so we didn't believe that what we should be doing is just getting the price down to a lower amount by squeezing all of those different parts of the contributed margin. Instead that led to a conversation where we said, how can we make therapy truly accessible to those who can't afford it, not just those who can't afford it, but want it to hurt a little bit less when they pay for it.

we were talking about this before the, before we started recording, right? If you can pay, If you pay a hundred euros an hour or $50 an hour, that both, I suppose that's a lot of money. It doesn't matter who you are. That's a lot of money, 50 years or a hundred dollars an hour. It's just one hurts a little bit less than the other, but by making your service 50 euros by squeezing all of those contributors to the margin, you're not really making it more accessible.

you're just offering a cheaper product to those who can afford it anyway. So we want to build something into the model where we can stay true to the high quality. Promise of the brand and the [00:23:00] product, which does demand, set up some price, but then to use, our success to, find a way to truly make therapy accessible to those who can't afford it.

That's all. off the top of my head, homeless people, for example, cause it doesn't matter if you charge a hundred or 50, if you're living on the streets, it's very unlikely. You can afford either end of that range. So it's that kind of conversation that led to some great, Product conversations, let's say, and business model conversations,

Andrew Michael: [00:23:26] very cool insights as well.

And it's definitely, like we mentioned, it's a very valid point as well. The 50 versus a hundred is like the, this notion of trying to make things more accessible to people. I think often you just forget about what accessibility really means. And most of the time it's coming from a point of privilege where you thinking about this and not really understanding a kid like that's 50 years is not going to make the difference.

It's really about how do you actually. Give the service away for free potentially. That's really what tricks disability is. And not trying to squeeze different angles to cut the prices when you just, [00:24:00] making the bites a little bit. Yeah. Less for people that can already afford it. But yeah, interesting, challenge as well.

And I think also one thing we talked about as well as this has really helped dictate the copy, but then I think another thing and correct me if I'm, this is probably dictated now a lot of your areas of focus for the initial product and where maybe in the past, you would have spent a lot more time on the video quality and that's, which is probably still going to be important to you.

But, it has a shift focus now in terms of the accessibility, the therapists that you bring on board, Would you say that's more of a priority now for you to get those things right first?

Sançar Sahin: [00:24:33] Yeah, absolutely. So just as you said, whereas at the beginning, maybe we would be looking for those little details that we could focus on that improves the, the online experience.

Now they've become more of just an expectation. you should expect your video to work. You should expect the audio to be of a good quality, et cetera, but it's no longer the thing where we're thinking, right? All of those tiny little details where we can make the difference. It's simply we expect there to be a decent [00:25:00] quality, for anybody using our service.

But the shift of focus is definitely, gone much more onto the quality of the therapists we bring in. so we put certain. Criteria in place. So for example, we only hire people who have, at least seven years practicing experience, giving therapy. and of course, people who are accredited and qualified that's a given, but also they go through a six stage recruitment process.

So we put a lot of focus into defining what those six stages are, which includes the natural therapy sessions, or if our therapists give one of us, the team, a therapist session so we can get a taste for it. so our focus definitely went a lot more on to that and then on to the way that we can match people.

so when somebody. Tells us about that goals and their concerns, the questions, how do we find them the best match therapist and how do we reduce some of the anxiety around that part of the process, which when we talk to customers, they tell us this [00:26:00] is one of the most painful things, because you essentially have to date therapists.

You have to try a few of them before you find it. And it makes sense, right? It's like normal dating. It's very unlikely. You're going to hit the nail on the head the first time you try it. Yeah. But that's time consuming. And more importantly for a lot of people is expensive. so we take it away, a lot of that burden and we take on.

The expense, if we don't match you with the right therapist last time,

Andrew Michael: [00:26:25] speed dating sessions set up.

Sançar Sahin: [00:26:28] Yeah. Not quite like that, but yeah, I quite like that. Actually. we should think about how to build bangs are

Andrew Michael: [00:26:32] Nice. Cool. So yeah, I see we're running up on time and I want to make sure I had saved the question that asked everybody on the show is let's imagine a hypothetical scenario now, you arrive at in your company and churn and retention is not doing great. and you head up marketing and, the they've come to you this year said we want to try and turn things around. we want to get some results, but we want them fast. We want them in the first 90 days, what would you want to be doing with your time in those first [00:27:00] 90 days to try and move the needle and make a dent in general retention for the company?

Sançar Sahin: [00:27:06] So I would do three things. I would one talk to the people who aren't churning. I would to talk to the people who are churning and ask why on both accounts. So why you're still here and why, it's the way I am. And three look at your, your systems and your processes. So literally, is there anything that.

You're doing this a bit silly, in terms of, maybe you're inviting people to churn, you're putting people off a certain stage of the journey, whatever it might be. So literally your email flows, your product experience, is it hard to upgrade all of that kind of stuff?

So those three things, so basically find out why people aren't shining plastic, sticking around, why people who are churning are leaving and three, are you doing anything silly in terms of what you actually have in place? Now I think with those three things, that's going to give you a pretty good idea of where to focus your attention.

[00:28:00] straight away, again, thinking about themes. I think from doing those things, you will come out. you're not going to come out with 10 or 15 themes to work on. You'll come out with two or three things that can be action pretty quickly,

Andrew Michael: [00:28:11] some low hanging fruit as well. cool. And then the last question, maybe to ask on this as well is what's one thing that you know today about churn and retention that you wish you knew getting started in your career.

Sançar Sahin: [00:28:25] That's a great question. If I'm honest, when I first started my career, I probably didn't even know what Shawn meant. if we're thinking back far enough, I think the biggest learning for me has been just not assuming. and I've definitely made a lot of assumptions throughout my career. even I'm talking up into relative relatively recently, it's very easy to think that, you know what people need.

What problems they want solved and how to communicate it. But unless you're constantly in touch with those people, it's very [00:29:00] unlikely. You've actually got it. So the biggest learning for me around churn is to just talk to people and truly understand what it is they need, because if you give it to them, why would they turn.

Andrew Michael: [00:29:11] Yep. So simple. So simply it's so difficult.

cool. Sanchez has been a pleasure chatting to you today. Is there any final thoughts you want to leave the audience with anything that should be aware of or keep up to speed with the work and what you're working on?

Sançar Sahin: [00:29:27] I've got nothing too profound to say I'm afraid, but yeah. I'd love people to, to follow the journey, oliva.house. and we have some Instagram accounts and things like that. and I'm serious about the feedback. So if anyone listening to this has anything to say. I would love to, I would love to hear it. you can contact us through the usual channels.

Andrew Michael: [00:29:45] Awesome. thanks a lot for joining today. It's been a pleasure chatting as always, and I wish you best of luck now, going further in this journey and like many more customer interviews and success.

Sançar Sahin: [00:29:56] Thanks Andrew. Appreciate it. Cheers.

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