On every episode of the Rebel Instinct, our team sits down with rebels from across the marketing landscape to share stories about bold moves they’ve taken as marketers. Subscribe for more.
Galen Ettlin:
You are listening to the Rebel Instinct Podcast by Acton Software for all the marketing innovators living outside the box.
Hey everybody, I’m Galen Ettlin with Act-On Software. I’m here again with my VP of marketing, Casey Munck, on the Rebel Instinct Podcast. And Casey today is full circle. Our guests today are Arzuv Nurgeldiyeva and Mannan Shaikh with HERS, a B2B demand generation firm based in India that works to empower women and boost access to careers in tech while providing amazing marketing services. And Casey, I know you were on their podcast called Her Story and you talked about a great rebellious cause. I just think it’s so cool to have this come around again and get to exchange podcast genius.
Casey Munck:
Yes, it was such a delight and I was so honored that y’all asked me to be on the podcast with such an amazing organization and effort that y’all are doing. So Mannan – marketing and empowering women are two of my favorite subjects. How in the world were you able to combine them with the work that you’re doing?
Mannan Shaikh:
Well, when I was in my college, I was studying, and marketing was one field that really intrigued me and I always wanted to be there. I always wanted to explore the world. I always wanted to put my head in the right place and help companies. First of all, help myself because I knew that I’m good at it cause I can think out of the box. And then as in when my career started, I was in marketing and sales and I was just running back and forth and I was good at it. And only after March that I started around in 2016 and last year at my daughter’s birthday, she asked me, so I have a daughter and I’m a single parent and I always teach her about how good the world is and how good people are. The world is a better place to live in and she should not be about that.
And women are the strong agenda. Women are the wise agenda as a matter of fact be it emotionally, mentally, in every aspect. And one day just out of the blue she said you so she calls me Abuji, which in Arabic means father, my beloved father. And she said that, Abuji, why don’t you do something for women in your own field and why don’t you just hire women and not just hire women from the team there, the women who are in distress. So she told me there are women who are widows and there are red light areas and there’s a lot of human trafficking in this world. We live in a bad world. And she also had her questions and that’s when I decided, oh okay, actually I have to do something for my daughter. And that’s when HERS started. And HERS, the name comes from hers – that was her idea. So that’s it. That was HERS.
Casey Munck:
What an awesome origin story and I would love to meet your daughter. She sounds like a really amazing young lady. So Arzuv, when we spoke on the podcast, you mentioned that culturally Indian women are meant to be submissive in all facets. So how do you encourage the women of HERS to take risks and be aggressive when necessary at work?
Arzuv Nurgeldiyeva:
The basic concept of HERS is of course women empowerment. And then speaking from my experience, I have been living in India for the last six years and I’ve been in different kind of situations where women have to face many different situations where they have to be submissive in some areas of their life. And then taking them, talking about the risk is for us advising women to talk about empowerment or to join our organization regardless of their experience, personal, professional experience. It’s already a huge risk for them. So what we here are trying to do is create a platform where they can grow professionally without any pressurizing, without putting labels onto them. “She does not have a background experience. I don’t think she will sit in this responsibility or in this position.” Rather, we take anyone who needs help, who wants to have to build this career.
And then we start giving them training education because I know they already have their mindsets. And the one thing which is always difficult is to unlearn many things that you have been learning while growing up. And then for us, that’s the one thing is giving them as much space as they want and then taking things slowly, not putting any deadlines or targets to them so that they can see that there’s another way as well. And this was one of the purposes why we reach out to marketing leaders like yourself to show them, for them to get inspired. That there is another way too. She could do itm so you can do as well.
Casey Munck:
That’s wonderful. It sounds like for many of these women you need to be gentle with them because need that sort of safe space to feel like I don’t have to be perfect at this. And that sort of naturally builds that confidence when they’re able to grow in a safe place like that. That’s great.
Mannan Shaikh:
Well Absolutely
Arzuv Nurgeldiyeva:
Yeah.
Galen Ettlin:
Along those lines, especially when you’re working with people who are coming from a place of oppression and the culture around it doesn’t always accept that effort on your part. What sort of pushback, if any, have you received and how do you handle that? Mannan, maybe we’ll start with you with that one.
Mannan Shaikh:
Well to be honest, there’s a lot of pressure from identifying such women and talking to them, especially the first batch when I went to a camp where women were rescued and did not have shelter, they did not have home just pitching the idea of working and having a career for them, they were really scared and they were like, we have never done this. We do not have the confidence. So it just starts right there. The first barrier is meeting them and trying to convince them to come and work and to have a steady life and to have a good life. Cause they go by their past experiences as to what the world has done to them and has and how the world has been to them. So our first battle starts right there, like meeting them and talking to them and convincing them to have a better life.
So after that it’s quite smooth. And then sometimes you get a lot of pressure from the world and people who have gone back to them, they see, they call us up, they try to put roadblocks, but I mean you just got to be strong. It’s a cause. And God is always with the good and they could always win. So yeah, we are not scared. We are not going to worry about it and we’re still going to do what we got to do, and we are going to try and make this world a better place.
Galen Ettlin:
Arzuv – turning to you with that one. We have some questions that we do like to ask everyone on the Rebel Instinct Podcast. And it may be related to what we were just talking about there, but would you say one of the most rebellious or out of the box things that you’ve tried and how did it perform?
Arzuv Nurgeldiyeva:
The HERS initiative that we started, this was a huge thing for me. And then taking the interviews, talking to the great women and then learning about their stories and their struggles, sharing it to the public, to our target audience. And this was the huge thing for me. And this, I guess this was one of the big out of the box things for me.
Galen Ettlin:
Certainly against the grain for what you’re facing.
Arzuv Nurgeldiyeva:
Yeah.
Casey Munck:
So Mannan, what advice do you give to the women that work at HERS or your clients to be more rebellious in their careers?
Mannan Shaikh:
Well one thing that I teach my daughter, my kids and all my employees and all my colleagues is that smart work might make it successful, but hard work in the right direction does make it successful. And identifying that begins from identifying the job that you want to do, the field that you want to go into and the vendors on the client side. The vendors that you choose and how they promote and how much feedback we as vendors give to our clients. So which asset is working? Identifying and being at the right place in the right time and just working hard along with working smart on it. Working hard is really, really, really necessary. Cause it does give you success. You go at it, you go at it, you go at it. My father has always taught me that discipline never fails. Luck might, but the discipline will always keep you going in your you will be successful somebody. Yeah.
Casey Munck:
Absolutely. I’m a big fan of discipline too and structure and putting in the work as you mentioned. And it does pay off. It really does. You don’t have to have an Ivy League degree. If you work really hard and you do the right thing, the universe rewards you. I’ve spent time and time again.
So Arzuv, I know you said that you’re pretty straight lace, but as you know Galen mentioned, just the whole place that you work at is pretty dang rebellious. But how would you say you’re a rebel in your non-work life in any way? Is there any ounce of that?
Arzuv Nurgeldiyeva:
I mean it makes me think a lot actually. But I mean what I would call out to be a rebel in my non-work life would be like whenever I tend to go out and all this stuff, I can easily jam in whatever the vibes they have because for people have always this idea that I’m a very composed and the calm person. But then if I’m outside, if I’m in a public place, if I hear a good music, I can go ahead and then you’re going to start wing into the music and then create that atmosphere and go along with whatever they have.
Casey Munck:
You can be a dancing queen or dancing machine if you want to. I love it.
Galen Ettlin:
All right. Well Mannan, we love asking this question because we get so many interesting answers – from movie characters to authors, to politicians – whoever inspires our guests. For you, what rebel do you feel needs to be celebrated and why?
Mannan Shaikh:
I get inspired very easily and there’s this human being that I’m really inspired by. So he is actually a rebel. And me being a Muslim, I’d be very open and honest about it. I get a lot of things, I get a lot of comments and a lot of statements, especially about HERS, about religious aspects, about being a man, hiring only women and working towards that cause. And I think rather than rather being critical about it, it should be celebrated more. And me being a rebel is just like, I just do not put my ears over there. I do not put my mind over there and do not put my heart with that. I’m pretty focused on, I know what I’m got to do. And for me that is being rebellious and I’m really happy about it.
And the person who I really admire, Shah Rukh Khan, I don’t know if y’all have heard about him. He an Indian actor and I take inspiration in my life from him cause he came from nothing. I came from nothing. I came from slums. I have really followed him, I’ve really followed his words. I’ve really, I’ve read his books, I’ve followed his life and I really knew that he has to, I have to make it. Also, he has a foundation called the Meer Foundation where he supports women and women empowerment. They support acid attack survivors. Cause in India acid attack was a big thing back in the days and women still struggle with that. They’ve had 30, 40 surgeries. I’ve met such women and hired such women. And yeah, that’s an inspiration, and I think that needs to be celebrated.
Casey Munck:
And now we’re going to have a little bit more fun and we’re going to do ladies first. It’s time for our “honey, I don’t think so” Segment talking about what’s been annoying you lately that needs to stop now in marketing or MarTech, you’ve got 60 seconds to make your case. Are you ready Arzuv for your “honey, I don’t think so?”
Arzuv Nurgeldiyeva:
Would be I guess copy pasting a lot of stuff and information – content. I would love to have more customized and a personalized content towards your target audience so that it’ll cast their attention with some fun. Maybe no need to be so professional. Maybe something more personalized [with research] about your audience, who he or she is doing, what she would be interested in. And then maybe according to those details, to create a content and then work on that.
Casey Munck:
Okay. Mannan, are you ready for your honey? I don’t think so. You’ve got 60 seconds.
Mannan Shaikh:
Absolutely. Yes I am. So think that’s really annoying me lately in the MarTech and the marketing industry is that people really prefer quantity over quality nowadays, be it in lead generation, be it programmatic, cause they just want impression, they just want leads. We are not looking for quality leads. They just want to fill their numbers in. They just want to deliver numbers. They do not want to deliver quality. Whereas the whole the marketing industry is about sales pipeline. You cannot just fill in indeed. You not just fill in information, you can just not run through a call or just put emailers and downloads. Whereas, so where we concentrate is if anybody has downloaded an asset from our client, we do not use that particular contact in the next four to five months. Cause that’s a warm lead to another company. And what today MarTech companies and IT companies will outsource their lead generation to other vendors. They just want quantity. And that’s what the vendors are doing also. The clients are pressuring them about quantity and not quality.
Casey Munck:
Preach. Preach to the people. I’m with you. Well, thank you so both so much for being on the Rebel Instinct today. Y’all are both an inspiration to me and I’m sure the listeners, so keep fighting the good goodbye and let’s stay in touch.
Galen Ettlin:
Thanks everyone for listening to the Rebel Instinct Podcast. Be sure to follow Act-On Software for updates and upcoming episodes and remember to always act on your rebel instinct.
Check out episode 11, featuring Nancy Poznoff. When a man falsely made viral claims that Starbucks was anti-Christmas, the former VP of marketing took quick action to flip the narrative. Poznoff helped lead the charge during the so-called “Red Cup” incident.