Sami Fishbein of Betches – Growing a Successful Digital Brand with Friends

Tapping into the mindset of female millennials, building a viral social media and digital humor company that’s become a thriving creative brand (expanding with changing trends and with a huge Instagram following), and why doing it with best friends from middle school has succeeded… Sami Fishbein, Co-Founder and COO of the digital brand Betches and co-author of “When’s Happy Hour”, joins Socialfly founders Stephanie Cartin and Courtney Spritzer in the MouthMedia Network studios for a conversation about her journey to success, a surprise, and a brainstorm. In this episode: Managing people that are same age or younger Going into business with close friends from middle school after going to Cornell with them How Sami uses what she learned in college in the business That moment of co-founding Betches Running a company when no one on the founding team went to business school—how they figured it all out, and how sharing and dividing responsibilities is difficult Finding the right people to hire, how to evaluate people, and how attention to detail important in considering them Launching the first company site BetchesLoveThisSite.com, and how the team just wanted to do for college aged people a like list of things they liked The site was originally envisioned as a dark satire The simple and unassuming start of writing the first five posts in the first night, then asking someone to put on a Facebook wall Staying as an anonymous presence for a few weeks, then how it all went viral fast How it wasn’t long until a TV producer contacted them, then they got an agent, were recommended to write a book Taking three years to monetize, working out of WeWorks, no outside funding First hires, staying small for a while, most hiring in the last year or so That time they considered calling it quits, but stuck with it When hit their stride and kept going Working through disagreements with friends you run a company with, how you have to communicate, becoming better communicators Why Betches is moving into podcasting, building podcasts across several verticals What’s in the works for 2019 The book “Whens Happy Hour”, and writing it in three months A politics bus A TV show in development, like a female South Park If Sami ever felt like she was burning out? And — a 1 Minute Brainstorm on the next big book idea