Mariya Leona Illarionova
Shawna Ohm, the founding father of Content 151, helps monetary companies create customized content material affordably.
Content 151 works with companies to develop a technique primarily based of their enterprise. Content advertising and marketing should not simply be a field to examine—it ought to get you extra shoppers, higher engagement, and enhance the standard of the enterprise general.
Shawna spent 5 years in broadcast, print, and digital journalism, with a deal with monetary information. From there, she switched to content material advertising and marketing and used her writing and viewers expertise to create distinctive, impactful content material for monetary shoppers. During her six years in advertising and marketing, she has seen and labored on all kinds of tasks, together with viewers analysis, content material audits, storyline era, video shoots, web site redesigns, and rather more.
We requested Shawna in regards to the story behind her firm, what units her method aside from others, and the recommendation she would give her youthful self.
Q: Tell us the story behind your organization’s founding: How and why did you begin engaged on Content 151?
A: I spent years creating content material for large monetary companies—suppose large banks and brokerages. No matter how completely different or progressive these companies wished to be, the core of their content material was nearly at all times the identical. It jogged my memory of my time writing for the Associated Press, the place our baseline content material would get packaged otherwise relying on the place it was printed. This gave me the thought to flip the change on content material creation. Instead of beginning with customized concepts and spending some huge cash to mainly find yourself in an analogous place, I may begin with a template and add the customization. Doing it this fashion permits me to convey the value level down, which makes customized content material doable for smaller companies. Often, these are the companies that want this sort of advertising and marketing probably the most.
Q: What drawback does your online business clear up?
A: I assist Main Street monetary companies present their worth by way of content material advertising and marketing. Many Americans lump all monetary companies collectively as “Wall Street.” But there’s a world of distinction between a prop buying and selling desk engaged in arbitrage and a suburban Certified Financial Planner®. Content advertising and marketing helps smaller companies present how they’re completely different. Our content material helps these companies inform their very own story, separate from the Wall Street narrative.
Mariya Leona Illarionova
Q: What are among the most significant impacts your online business has had to date?
A: I at all times have the common American—my shoppers’ shoppers—in thoughts. We have a giant drawback with monetary literacy on this nation, however I’m not satisfied that educating folks is sufficient. There are so many components to monetary planning, and a DIY technique doesn’t at all times make sense. Good recommendation could make a distinction. I assist small companies illustrate what that distinction is. The significant influence comes when common Americans get a greater deal with on their cash.
Q: What makes your organization completely different from others?
A: A Catch-22 of entrepreneurship is that this: making a completely distinctive product is nice as a result of you don’t have any rivals, however having no rivals makes it a lot tougher to get traction for a product. To shut a sale, you possibly can’t simply say why you’re higher. You have to elucidate the issue you’re fixing and the way your product works to unravel it.
Most small monetary companies have three choices: write content material themselves (many don’t have the time or ability), pay a author (many don’t have the price range), or purchase cookie cutter content material (this hardly ever achieves the meant objective). Content 151 gives one thing that didn’t exist earlier than we entered the market: a template-based system to create content material that appears and feels distinctive however doesn’t require the time or cash of actually one-of-a-kind content material.
Q: In what methods has your upbringing or previous experiences contributed to how you use as an entrepreneur/chief?
Mariya Leona Illarionova
A: For the primary 21 years of my life, I had no curiosity in any respect in finance or markets. I utterly ignored the enterprise journalism programs in graduate college. But in the summertime of 2009, when jobs for brand spanking new grads had been briefly provide, I obtained a proposal from Bloomberg TV. It was solely after I mentioned sure that I sought out the enterprise journalism professor and requested her to elucidate the monetary disaster to me. I needed to cease her mid-explanation to ask what a “safety” was.
That turned out to be a essential life lesson for 2 causes. One: I by no means forgot what it felt prefer to know completely nothing in regards to the monetary trade, which is why I’m good at explaining it. Two: I discovered to belief my mind. I’ve spent greater than a decade working in a subject that when confused the hell out of me. I now imagine every thing is figure-outable.
Q: What’s been probably the most surprising a part of your entrepreneurial journey? What’s the largest false impression that others have round entrepreneurship?
A: Success is commonly scarier than failure. We know what failure seems to be like—it’s simple to check. Success typically takes us into uncharted territory. Succeed as soon as and there’s strain to maintain succeeding. Enact your imaginative and prescient and also you’re rewarded with a brand new activity: determine what’s subsequent. Succeed once more. Being an entrepreneur is about deciding to lean into that concern every single day.
Q: Have you struggled with self doubt as an entrepreneur? How do you navigate this?
A: Some of probably the most highly effective phrases I discovered rising up had been: “I don’t know” or “I made a mistake.” Early in my profession, this stuff had been an asset. People appreciated the honesty, they usually turned these admissions into alternatives to assist me study. As I progressed, nonetheless, admitting errors grew to become a weak point. It’s by no means a superb factor to be the one particular person on a group keen to confess a mistake.
As an entrepreneur, I’ve as soon as once more discovered energy in “I don’t know.” Being the boss provides me again the possession to personal my errors and study from them. Now, the folks I work with get (and hopefully count on) that honesty—and it’s an asset as soon as extra.
Q: We dare you to brag: What achievements are you most happy with? How do you have a good time successes alongside the way in which?
A: I went to the Junior Olympics in ice skating after I was 11. It was in figures, which is simply tracing shapes on ice, and to be sincere, I wasn’t excellent. I didn’t prefer it as a lot as spinning and leaping, however that was the place I certified. My coach inspired me to deal with the success: “You’ll at all times be capable to say you went to Junior Olympics.”
I didn’t notice it on the time, however studying to understand wins with out an asterisk was big. Do I actually need to brag to different entrepreneurs about one thing I did after I was 11? No. But that win is the rationale I can declare the small success I’ve constructing an organization. And that’s a key half required to construct an organization.
Q: What assets or folks have contributed probably the most to your successes?
Mariya Leona Illarionova
A: In 2020, Twitter was concurrently the most effective and worst place on the web. There had been so many instances I attempted to stop the positioning, principally on account of unending politics main as much as the election. But there was one factor that saved me coming again: the ladies of #FinTwit (finance Twitter). It’s no secret that finance is a male-dominated trade. So having this tribe of ladies, after which males who visibly help them, offered the inspiration I wanted to make it by way of a yr of lockdown. Staying lively on #FinTwit by way of lockdown additionally put me in contact with shoppers and helped me maintain the enterprise transferring regardless of an absence of trade occasions.
Q: How have you ever grown as a pacesetter since beginning your organization? What experiences have contributed to this progress?
A: For years, folks informed me I’d achieve success if _____. The “if” at all times required me to alter some elementary factor of my character. Half the rationale I grew to become an entrepreneur was as a result of I wished to achieve success as I’m. (There’s a distinction between working to be higher and altering who you might be.)
So I method management that approach, too. I need to play to folks’s strengths, and assist them study and develop, with out telling them to alter. I feel it’s additionally necessary to provide your self that very same grace as a pacesetter.
Q: What would you inform your youthful self for those who had been to start out your entrepreneurial journey another time?
A: There’s no such factor as “too good on your personal good.” Don’t wait to lean into who you might be.
Shawna is a member of Dreamers & Doers, a non-public collective that amplifies the entrepreneurial pursuits of extraordinary girls by way of thought management alternatives, genuine connection, and entry. Learn extra about Dreamers & Doers and subscribe to their month-to-month The Digest for prime entrepreneurial and profession assets.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the writer and don’t essentially mirror these of Nasdaq, Inc.
