What a good business partnership looks like
Most people don’t argue with someone, then decide to start a business together.
But that’s what Devesh and I did.
While it seems funny in hindsight, it’s the opposite perspectives that challenge each other to be our better selves.
In 2015, we happened to show up at a marketing dinner, and the conversation started something like:
What do you do?
Me: I run marketing at a startup, my speciality is in content marketing.
Devesh: Oh interesting, I run a conversion optimization agency, I’ve been writing a lot of content, but haven’t been getting any business from it. I don’t think VPs read content online.
Me: Of course VPs read. You just have to know the content that they’ll be interested in.
Long story short…
This ended up being the topic of conversation for an hour. At the time, I hated the job I was in, and was thinking about leaving to do my own thing.
I told Devesh, “I think I’m going to go to Asia because it’s cheap to live, and then I’m going to write a book on content marketing.”
He replied, “That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. If you know content marketing so well, then why don’t you just start a blog, and grow it, to show people that you actually know content.”
I said, “That’s a great idea! Why don’t you do it with me?”
And that’s how Grow and Convert was born.
The reason that I wanted Devesh to start Grow and Convert with me is because he had the skills that I lacked.
Devesh has a PhD in Material Sciences, specializes in conversion optimization, is super process oriented, can do weird things in excel that I don’t even know about, he creates growth models, he’s good at presenting on camera, he’s an extremely good editor, a great interviewer, he hates promoting content, he hates going to events, he likes doing contracts, accounting, he likes sitting in his office and working, he’s married, he has a dog, he’s never worked a W2 job in his life…
Then myself, I have a bachelor's degree in integrated marketing communications, I only build process when it breaks, my superpower is driving quality traffic and awareness to sites, I hate excel and everything about it, I don’t like getting in the weeds in analytics, I’m bad at presenting on camera (don’t let Devesh make impressions of me), I don’t like editing, I’m good at promoting content, I’m a big extrovert and love networking, I hate contracts, legal, accounting, I’m single, I don’t have any animals, my whole career has been in W2 jobs besides one failed startup…
Essentially we’re complete opposites, but that’s what makes the partnership work.
My first startup failed because my business partner and I were so similar. We couldn’t divide and conquer. We always wanted to do the same work.
This startup works because we think differently, like doing opposite tasks, and we make each other better at our jobs by approaching things from different perspectives.
Our responsibilities at Grow and Convert
I once saw in a Reddit thread someone comment that someone didn’t know what Devesh did for Grow and Convert. Largely, that’s likely because my name is the one that’s on most of our posts, I’m usually the one responding to comments, promoting content from our social accounts, networking with people, doing interviews, etc.
But I want to share all of the stuff that Devesh does behind the scenes that you may not see.
First of all, we wouldn’t have this business without Devesh — because one of the first things he said was:
“So what’s your process around content marketing?”
I said, “I don’t know, I don’t have one…”
Since we’ve worked together, we’ve come up with a repeatable process around content marketing. That wouldn’t have happened without him forcing us to figure out a process.
When it comes to writing content, oftentimes what will happen is that I’ll write an outline of an article and send it to Devesh. He tells me my post is horrible, then gives me really good feedback, then the post becomes good, and then we publish. Just because his name isn’t on an article, doesn’t mean he didn’t put just as much effort if not more than me into every piece.
In terms of our site, he’s led all of the direction in design (his business used to be called Devesh Design). He has designer that works in his other agency GrowthRock that we use for projects and freelance developers that we get to code any assets that we need.
Devesh handles all of our contractual and legal paperwork (for both G&C and Wordable), as well as manages our finances and account.
Devesh handles all of the copywriting, CTA placement and creates all of the sales pages on our site.
Devesh is our Head of Sales. Any lead that comes in, Devesh follows up with them and usually can predict when it’s someone we’ll close.
Devesh is our project manager, he somehow got me to start using Trello, and as of recently I’m actually updating it.
Pretty much without him, nothing would get done. He’s great at coming up with a process and executing on it.
On my side of things, I handle a lot of the strategy work for our site and for our clients. So when we’re on a sales call and someone asks something related to strategy, I usually step in and explain how we’d do content strategy specific to their company.
I developed the user research process (and it got much improved by Devesh’s analytical skills).
I do a lot of the content ideation.
I do a lot of the outreach to influencers for stories.
I hire and manage our team writers.
As of recently, I write all of the emails for Grow and Convert. Devesh used to write them and they were sent from my name (but as of 5 or so months ago, I started trying to write more).
Once an article is published on our site, I’m the one who’s promoting it, pitching it to journalists, contributing in roundup posts, engaging in slack communities, and networking with people I think could add value to our business, etc.
Essentially, you’ll see I’m responsible for all of the growth activities and Devesh is responsible for conversion related activities.
Hence why the Grow and Convert partnership works.
