717: Why Moving Her Team to Brazil Was Genius

Emília Chagas. She's the CEO of Contentools.com, a company that helps over 700 companies plan, create, distribute and analyze content. As a content manager for over 8 years, she has led video, book and web-based strategies at both enterprises and SMBs. She's a 500 Startups entrepreneur and part of the Endeavor Promises Program.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Hooked and The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Eric Santos of Resultados Digitais/RD Station
• Favorite online tool? — ProfitWell and ChartMogul
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4-5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "How great life was"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:20 – Nathan introduces Emília to the show
• 01:58 – Emília is currently in Florianópolis, Brazil
• 02:21 – Emília's average salary
• 02:54 – Emília currently has 30 people
• 03:03 – Average headcount expenses
• 03:24 – Contentools is a SaaS model
• 03:31 – Contentools offers a content marketing platform for companies with marketing teams
• 04:04 – Everything that a marketing team needs are converged into 1 software
• 04:13 – Average customer pay per month varies
• 04:46 – Contentools does scheduling and the processes of the content workflow
• 05:08 – Contentools has 300 customers, 700 companies are using the platform
  • 05:21 – Some pay through their agencies
• 05:35 – Average MRR
  • 05:48 – Around $70K per month
• 05:58 – Contentools has raised an Angel round and will raise a seed round next year
  • 06:08 – Total funds raised was $500K
• 06:19 – Contentools was launched in 2015
• 06:30 – Emília has been working with startups and enterprises and they have the same problem dealing with content
• 06:53 – Contentools went beta in July 2015
• 07:11 – Emília has a big dream for Contentools
• 07:24 – SMBs need content solutions but no one is offering them one
• 07:39 – "Content is the beginning of marketing"
• 07:55 – The 4 founders still own 80% of the company
• 08:43 – All of Emília's ideas are currently focused on Contentools
• 08:55 – Contentools wants to create more business intelligence features and content that are targeted more to the customers' needs
• 09:42 – Emília won't sell the company at the moment
• 10:01 – Contentools is growing 10-20%, month over month in revenue
• 10:13 – Churn is usually around 2% and last month was net negative churn
• 10:49 – 3% gross churn
• 11:12 – Contentools is up selling their number of users and projects
• 11:58 – CAC
  • 12:35 – 4 people on the team are focused on inbound marketing and there are also remote people
  • 13:08 – Contentools doesn't have paid acquisition
  • 13:47 – Contentools is adding 20-30 new customers a month
• 14:07 – The Angel round was in May 2017
• 14:24 – Contentools is updating their leads for their fundraising next year
• 14:40 – Valuation won't be out of the market
• 16:04 – If you fail updating one status, it'll all be gone
• 17:13 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Content solutions are often offered to enterprises, but SMBs need them too.
2. One of the cheapest forms of marketing is your content.
3. It's not easy for a content manager to handle the processes and workflow, so a good content management tool is necessary.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives