"I think that in 2022 it’s more important than ever to understand, learn, and play the game of digital marketing."
Julian Sarafian is a Harvard Law school graduate, CA-licensed attorney who represents digital creators, content creator, entrepreneur, and writer.
Currently Julian is the CEO of startup Nest.Mode – a company on a mission to reinvent shower storage. He is also a viral content creator on Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, and Twitch, where his cumulative following is nearly 300,000. His content focuses on the importance of mental health both in and out of the legal profession. His advocacy work has been covered by the Bloomberg Law & NewsWeek. He is also in the process of launching his own law firm – For Creators, By Creators LLP – with the mission of protecting creators in the digital age.
A lawyer by training, Julian is an active thought leader in the legal industry, providing insight to trends in the profession and consulting with lawyers on wellness. His written work has been published in The American Lawyer and Bloomberg Law.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Julian Sarafian: I’m so thrilled to be here, thank you so much for having me! So the short version of my story is that I’m a lawyer who quit Biglaw to focus on mental health and pivot my career into a whole bunch of different stuff. One of the things I’ve been keen on building since quitting is an e-commerce brand.
So, a small but mighty team of us have been working on Nest.Mode – and we are aiming to reinvent shower storage with our first flagship product, the Nest Wall. The idea of the product came from my fiancee, who has an eye for design and has always lamented our lackluster shower storage options. We are currently pre-launch and building a community – well, more of a team – to take this idea to the next level!
2020 and 2021 threw a lot of curve balls into business on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past couple years, how can businesses thrive in 2022? What lessons have you learned?
Julian Sarafian: I think that in 2022 it’s more important than ever to understand, learn, and play the game of digital marketing. Getting attention and eyeballs can make or break any company, and right now more than ever the process of getting in front of people is easier than ever.
Just as important as your product is the audience and customer base willing to buy it, and being able to reach them – be it through Tiktok, Instagram, or even LinkedIn, is a powerful marketing tool. Businesses should focus on adding value in the content they provide to keep their audience engaged and coming back. The days of shoving advertisements into people’s faces is behind us unless you have money to set on fire. Instead, providing entertainment, fun, or helpful information can be a powerful way to reach your customers.
The pandemic seems to keep on disrupting the economy, what should businesses focus on in 2022? What advice would you share?
Julian Sarafian: Stay flexible, keep paying attention, and act quickly. The world is changing faster now more than ever, and with that change comes a demanding suite of decision points, judgment calls, and an actively changing landscape to conquer.
That means a lot of change and a lot of stress, so leadership should pay close attention to how the economy is shifting, how marketing is changing, how supply chains are being altered, and how their business fits into all of the above. I would focus primarily on marketing and customer acquisition, as the landscapes for both are rapidly changing and show no signs of slowing down. You don’t have a business without customers, and your customers are out there if you are willing to seek them out.
How has the pandemic changed your industry and how have you adapted?
Julian Sarafian: The barriers to e-commerce have only gone up during the pandemic as global shipping costs and supply chain constraints have pushed the costs of production higher and higher. This isn’t great for new companies like ours at Nest.Mode, and we’ve adapted by reducing our marketing budget as much as we could – using leaner tools like Tiktok to organically grow rather than paid avenues like Instagram or Facebook ads. We want our product to be as reasonably priced as possible, so we are doing everything we can to reduce costs on our end so we can offer the Nest Wall at the most competitive price.
What advice do you wish you received when the pandemic started and what do you intend on improving in 2022?
Julian Sarafian: Plan and assume for the best-case scenarios. Even though we are a startup, we were somewhat blindsided by the rapid growth and interest in our product when it went viral on Tiktok. We knew roughly what our next steps were when we on the app advertising it, but seeing the interest build so quickly with such little time to react caught us off guard.
It took us some time – more than we would have liked – to then move to our next steps of manufacturing and prototyping. With unexpected delays happening in that phase, our launch has been postponed multiple times. It’s been unfortunate for us as well as for our community. I would tell myself at the onset of the pandemic to move quicker and plan for success earlier.
Online business surged higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for 2022?
Julian Sarafian: We don’t see this pattern changing anytime soon. With Western nations becoming increasingly interested in group-shopping and influencer-based marketing, the transition of purchasing power living online will only continue. Even the eldest group among us – the Baby Boomer generation – has been growing as an online purchasing presence. The world is going digital and nothing can slow that down.
How many hours a day do you spend in front of a screen?
Julian Sarafian: Too many. On a given day I’m probably on a screen close to 12 hours per day – and that includes my time editing content, emailing, working with folks in our company, and recreational time. Getting off the screen is something I’m keen on working on.
The majority of executives use stories to persuade and communicate in the workplace. Can you share with our readers examples of how you implement that in your business to communicate effectively with your team?
Julian Sarafian: As an early-stage startup it’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling lost, demotivated, and defused. After all, we are stumbling around in the dark, hoping for our product and our passion therefore to take off. To be frank, it can be pretty demoralizing.
That’s why I like to remind our team as often as I can where we started: just a group of friends talking excitedly about an idea with nothing else on our plate. Now, we have a community in the tens of thousands interested in our product and hoping to see it launch. It’s important for our perspective on success that we ground ourselves and remember the big picture: taking a product from nothing to launch is no small feat, and every little action in between is something to be proud of.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as the real challenge right now?
Julian Sarafian: Honestly, it’s keeping the supply chain and shipping costs under control and predictable. It’s incredibly tough (acutally, impossible) to predict such things with accuracy, but it’s all the more important for us and our product that we forecast and keep things consistent and predictable. We know that there are thousands of people out there who want our product, the only question is whether the folks on the supply side can deliver for us. I’ll say, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not made this any simpler.
In 2022, what are you most interested in learning about? Crypto, NFTs, online marketing, or any other skill sets? Please share your motivations.
Julian Sarafian: For me it’s marketing. Marketing is everything for a business – it’s the brand, it’s attention, it’s sales, and it’s power. Tiktok has changed the game for virality and the ability of anyone to reach others with a message – and we are now squarely in the era of short-form video marketing. It’s only a matter of time until that paradigm shifts again, and when it does we are prepared to be ready. I, for one, as a part-time content creator, am constantly iterating and thinking about how I can better cater my messages for the audience of 2022.
If we stay on top and in the lead of the digital marketing game, we think anything is possible.
A record 4.4 million Americans left their jobs in September in 2021, accelerating a trend that has become known as the Great Resignation. 47% of people plan to leave their job during 2022. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. Do you think leaders see the data and think “that’s not me – I’m not that boss they don’t want to work for? What changes do you think need to happen?
Julian Sarafian: We think leadership across the board needs to do a better job of connecting and listening to their people. Folks want to feel like they are part of something bigger when they come into the office every day. That feeling – that sense of community – comes from leadership, not happenstance. This means a lot of things.
First, leaders should acknowledge when their people need a break and are burnt out (which I think many today currently are). Second, leaderships needs to take a more proactive approach in helping their folks stay connected and communicative. A lot of friction arises when communication breaks down, be it at the junior or managerial level, and the way you prevent that is by making sure leadership is actively engaged with how their teams are communicating with each other.
This means many actionable things: holding poor leadership accountable by stripping their authority over time, rewarding folks who display sound judgment, and punishing toxicity when it is spotted.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Julian Sarafian: Production of hard goods! I’m not sure if that counts as a business superpower but I can tell you as an e-commerce CEO it certainly would come in handy. Our team has a slew of ideas that we think can revolutionize home goods but the thing holding us back is the scaleability of tackling multiple projects at once (along with the uncertainty in the supply chain’s ability to execute on these ideas). So, if I could snap my fingers and create hard goods in an instant, I 100% would!!!
What does “success” in 2022 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Julian Sarafian: For us, it means living life without regret. In our company, this means doing everything we can and in our power to take our product to the next level – to launch it on Kickstarter and bring it to life for the loyal community members out there. It also means taking advantage of gaps in the market that we see, and focusing on controlling what we can control. So much in the world isn’t in our control right now and is affecting our company, but we remain committed and persistent in working hard to bring the Nest Wall to life. So, success for us really means giving this our best shot!
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Julian Sarafian for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Julian Sarafian or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
