Paul: 0:29

Hello and welcome back for another episode of MarketPulse's Pros and Pioneers podcast. I'm Paul, the host of the show from Javelin Content Management and we're here to bring you every week some different marketing strategies, views, opinions and showcasing some fantastic businesses. We hear from marketing experts who've been there and done it all and business owners who are in the process of learning it themselves, figuring out new ways of doing things and sharing that knowledge and expertise. Today, I have the pleasure of bringing on to the show, Devrim Celikay, who's a 16 year old from Gateshead. Up the road from me, you might hear my accent come out a bit more today when I'm not doing my posh foreign voice, which will cause me absolute problems later on when I try to transcribe this down with technology, but never mind. And Devrim is the founder, already, of his own business, Cognaite. Which is a company that specializes in helping other agencies with AI automation. So Devrim's just finished his GCSEs. We got talking on LinkedIn. He interacted in some of my posts and I cannot help but be impressed with his business acumen. Devrim's already been a growth specialist with with one business, started his own business up and has a couple of clients under his belt already. Devrim, welcome to the show, mate. How are you?

Devrim: 1:45

I'm glad to be on. I think I'm excited to get on a podcast. This is my first one, so it's going to be very good. And yeah, I've been, I started a business about a year ago and I've just been learning bit by bit. I've got some experience doing like appointment set and growth specialist, as Paul mentioned. And yeah, I've been, I've It's just a good journey to be on, I'm learning a lot, I'm meeting good people like Paul, and it's good to start getting some video content out, so I'm excited to be here, thanks for having me.

Paul: 2:13

No problem at all, no problem at all. It has to be asked, Devrin, it has to be asked. It's a pretty short journey in terms of months and years, right? But how did you get to be starting your own business? Why, why would a 15 year old choose or 16 year old as you now are, choose to be running your own business rather than having lie ins and getting drunk?

Devrim: 2:33

I think it's just all, loads of people see the content on YouTube, get financial freedom, all of that, and I I saw some of it, started to think about it, and then I realised, It's a lot easier than it seems. You've just got to put a little bit of work in and there's not much competition when you look at it because everyone's doing the same thing. Everyone's watching Netflix every night. They're going out, um, having fun, but then I enjoy sitting on a laptop making money. It's something to do. I think it's not. of the ordinary when you think about it. It's just putting a bit of a, doing a bit of work when you're at home by yourself. You instead of sitting around doing nothing, I'm just doing a bit on me laptop. And it was really just getting a bit bored of doing normal things. I got fed up with me Xbox. I thought, what can I do? I started looking around, saw LinkedIn, saw all these YouTube videos of dropshipping whatever. And I found AI automation. And I thought, let's give this a go. And it's worked out quite well.

Paul: 3:29

That's fantastic. I love that idea that you just everybody, a lot of people see it, right? Not many people get to do it. is hitting on that thing that you enjoy doing as a job. And when you do that, it's just like being paid to do your hobby. I thoroughly enjoy my job. Or I can, it's took me a long time to find something that I wanted to do. And I would never have a million years set out to work in video repurposing. I never considered that at a young age. I think I was told at school, I would probably be a zookeeper or something bizarre like that. that's obviously been supported by your school as well. You take economics and you've been educated, around the values of being active on LinkedIn as well, right?

Devrim: 4:12

Yeah. So my economics teacher is a big advocate for getting on LinkedIn. He's always telling us students you need to grow your network and you get on there, start connecting with people. That's how I got in contact with Paul on LinkedIn networking. And I think teachers like that and people who get you started and things are so important. I've been on LinkedIn, then you start to see more and more opportunities. I think my first few clients have come through LinkedIn from just reaching out to people and being a real person and being authentic and getting started at such a young age. I think it makes people realize that you need to be less afraid to take risks. You need to just go for it. So a lot of people look at content and think, Oh yeah, you worried about Other people find out what you do, you're worried about getting made a mug of it, but I think it's a signal to just get started. So when you've got some good people in the background spurring you on, it's really good and it's really valuable to have that kickstart. And then once you start, it gets a lot easier. The first bit's always the hardest part.

Paul: 5:13

And I think that's what really blew me away is I see, So many people failing on LinkedIn because they're buying these digital marketing courses that are out there on how to find leads on LinkedIn, how to kill it in the messages, how to call outreach to people. And 99 out of 999 out of a thousand even are absolute garbage. I know a few people who do it really well. And then when we got talking, it just blew me away that a 16 year old who's, Got no real business experience behind him in terms of sum of years compared to all the people that I get reached out to by. Could just be so nailing it by just being yourself. By just being a bit curious, by being a bit interesting and interested. Which I think really makes the difference, like you genuinely want to connect with people. Is that fair?

Devrim: 6:07

I see that a lot obviously I'm new to it, I've only been a year, but even now I see a lot of people posting on LinkedIn, it's they're trying to use all these script dead set scripts oh, the secret to LinkedIn and all that, and I think it just feels a bit Disingenuous, it's a bit unauth, like not authentic, it's just, jump on and be yourself, and start a post a bit, speak to people like real people, and, I've, obviously I said I've been on business for about a year, but I've already seen so many posts of everyone just saying the secret of business is being a human, you've got to speak to someone like they're human and be yourself. I think people are refreshed to see someone who's actually going to be realistic with them and face to face, not face to face, but transparent with them and actually be the person they are. So yeah, it's always good to get on LinkedIn and just connect with people. And then once you do it a bit, you start to learn more and you think, oh yeah, it's not as hard as it is, and then even from. Jumping on with Paul and realizing how much he valued authenticity. I've got loads of referrals from that and it just shows how initially being authentic has so many knock on effects. It's very good to just learn as we're going as well and realize that a small thing leads to bigger things.

Paul: 7:17

That's it, right? People miss out on this in terms of networking. They're always so worried about that sale and the money. And if you can, and I know it's not easy to do, but if you can get past all of that and really connect with people on a human level. So sharing some of your personal stuff as well as some of your business stuff, but being honest and open and all of those, all these buzzwords that fly around, but genuinely taking them to heart. It becomes easy for people to refer you because they get you and you will naturally connect with people who are aligned with how you think, how you work, your values. And the end goal for all of us is to find more people like that. One of the things that I find quite ironic is that you're a big champion of being yourself and being organic and the human behind the keyboard. And yet you're in an automation business. That's a big irony, but like Why? Why automation?

Devrim: 8:15

Automation is just, it's inevitable that it's going to become big. You see everything about AI and everyone knows AI is huge. The question is where will AI fit in? It's got to fit in somewhere, but figuring out where is the hard part. So I'm trying to help businesses implement it in the correct places and help them improve their bottom lines. Get things more automated on the back end and really automation. It started from just, as I mentioned earlier, just seeing the YouTube videos on it and seeing everyone rave about how to make a thousand pounds a day with AI. They never worked, but the whole concept of using AI worked. And then once I got chatting to business owners, I realized that this is something people really value. This is something that has a future in it and that. People are looking into, but don't actually realize the power of. So if I can start to use it for my own benefit and help business owners with it as well, then it's a very lucrative opportunity. So it was just a continuous journey. It wasn't just a moment where I thought AI is it. It was learn a little bit about it, then learn a bit more, then speak to someone. Realize a new thing that they're using AI for, and then learn a bit more, speak to some more people, and it's continuously growing. There's things I don't know now that I'll know in six months time that people will pay me for, and that people will want help with, that I'm still learning about. It's just continuous, getting more and more, and I think, as far as automation goes, it's just It's always going to be improving as well. So it's not as if I can get capped out, it's going to be continuously evolving. So it's good as I'm evolving as a business person, the field that I'm in is going as well. So it's we're going together and it'll keep getting better and better, hopefully.

Paul: 9:52

And I think that's a big theme that's reflected by a lot of our guests that we've had on the show, whether they're marketers or business owners, if they've been successful at doing what they do, it's that path of continuous learning. It's not a case of, I'm now an expert and I can sit back, that will get you caught out eventually. It might be nice to be able to sit back at that point, but you keep yourself on your toes and keep learning, you will keep ahead of the pack. If I can bring it back a little bit then, so we mentioned that you work with agencies and you do automation, can you, Bring that to life a little bit for the audience out there. Like what kind of agencies are your ideal clients? And what do you mean by an automation? Some simple examples, if you could.

Devrim: 10:32

so I think the main thing is like agencies that are digital obviously and got a lot of things going on So I'll just run a couple examples of automations and you can see whether they resonate with you So first off you've got client on board and that's one that I always get asked to do so when you Sign on a new client, you want to create a Google folders, add them to spreadsheets and send over documents invoices. We all make that whole process to save your employees a lot of time. Another one is meeting bookancy online. Now you always on zoom calls like this. We can automate notifications on the back of the zoom call bookends. And, Some other ones are just little ins and outs within the business. So when a deal gets moved in HubSpot or in Pipedrive, we're then going to send a notification or we're going to update Trello. Just little movements within the business. So it's more for the agencies where they're trying to expand. They've got a lot of things going on, but you're not at the stage where you want to hire another employee yet, but you're at the stage where you start to lose control of operations. You're thinking there's a lot going on. We need to dial things in. And. That's the main people that I go for, which is as you're starting to expand, you realize you need more time and automation frees that time up for you.

Paul: 11:43

Yeah, I think when we were, we, when we were chatting before, you summarized yourself as. The Outsourced Automation Department, and I love that. I love that because I think it just helps people see that, we often talk about outsourced marketing and outsourced sales teams or outsourced creatives and all those sorts of things, and we're now entering an era where outsourced automation, it's really important. Lots of business owners are my age and a bit older, and I'll be honest, like a lot of business owners who are my age struggle with the idea and concept of automation and what can and can't be automated. So it's fascinating to see like a young guy like yourself just getting out there and being active. One of the things that we touched on when we very first interacted on that post on LinkedIn actually was I was talking around the anxiety of being a business owner and how it's really stressful for me because like I've got bills to pay, I've got the mortgage and kind of lots of things resting on my shoulders at home and I can't afford to take many gambles and I've got to make sure that the gambles I take are right. And you were commenting that you don't really feel that pressure on. I can't imagine that must be really exciting for you, that you can just take those risks and not worry.

Devrim: 12:53

I think with the nature of being so young, I'm still living under my parents roof. I haven't got any fixed overheads yet, yet, until I start paying boards, I've got just, I've got the freedom to experiment. So loads of business owners there as you said, you've got risks that you need to balance out with your priorities and your responsibilities. Whereas I think initially it's just throw mud at a wall, seeing what sticks and that kind of works for a lot of it because. As automation is such an expansive space, AI keeps evolving, things keep getting better and better. I've just got the opportunity to just keep throwing things at the wall, seeing what works, see what doesn't. And then when it does work, keep going at that and figuring out, okay, this part of the business model worked. Let's look at the next part and just think around that as well. So it's very exciting to not have any. responsibilities in it. Also, I think clients really value it as well. So when I'm, I've got a lot of free time now, I'm on school holidays, so I've just finished my exams. As Paul mentioned earlier on, I've got loads of free time, so jealous. Yeah, but still I'm working full days, pretty much. So I think clients really value the fact that I'll just go away and I'll experiment with loads of things. They'll say, we've got this workflow in, And I'll just go away and experiment with a bunch of things and do the nitty gritty parts of technical bits that would take them loads of time to learn. I already know it, and it's just a case of solving the puzzle. And that's another thing that's really exciting about business, just solving things like you have an issue, you've got a problem, you just keep working to solve. And then when you do When it does click, you realize, oh, it wasn't as hard as it was. And yeah, I've got the freedom to do that, which is really promising. So I'm just going to make the most of it. Make sure I don't waste time while I've got no response, no responsibilities of financial responsibilities and make sure that I make the most of the freedom. Yeah.

Paul: 15:10

It's there's such an amazing future for you out there to be, I'm sure anybody who's listened to this podcast will be sat there in a bit of disbelief that you talk so fluently the business language. at the age that you are. We've spent the weekend miserable after, the Lamine Yamal Spanish team, and but seeing such a raw talent at such a young age come in I can't help feel, there's parallels there for me with what you're

Devrim: 15:38

Yeah. If only I'm the Le Mignon Mall of business, I'll take it. Definitely.

Paul: 15:44

Grant Cardone, are you watching? Are you watching Grant Cardone? So I think the thing that, that, that really fascinates me in terms of where we're going with this podcast is you've mirrored a lot of my own Strategy for running your business and you've been completely organic so far. There's no paid media, there's no SEO, there's none of that sort of things. So walk us through, if you would, like some of the key elements of how you've gotten out there and attracted the clients that you have so far and what you're going to, what's next on your strategy for your marketing.

Devrim: 16:15

Yeah. So as I mentioned, I've got most of them initially from LinkedIn. So my first, I think, let me just plan out. So I started about a year ago, July of 2023. I think I went about say five months of trying to do cold email. I was working off of a gmail. com, nothing was getting delivered and I was doing every single email personalized. I think it did about 400 emails over five months, very inefficient, sending almost no volume out. And it was just, I was thinking, oh it's got to work eventually, but I realized it wasn't, so I got on LinkedIn. I think January 1st this year, I realized I'm gonna post every day. I started to go serious about business more and I've started to post on LinkedIn. I got my first client in February of this year through LinkedIn. We were just talking back and forth. And he said, you know what, we're both don't know what we're going to do in AI automation. Let's just go for it. He just paid me a hundred quid and we just said, let's just do something and we just got started. So that's the first client I got organically. And then working from there, it's been, that first client was a lead general. Agency. So he's been doing cold emails for me, which kind of works hand in hand, gets me some outbound and I do automations for him. And then, so obviously I get, I've got some clients from that cold email and then LinkedIn as well as being really good for getting clients because I just reach out to people, get some referrals. I've got. Like three clients through referrals at this point. And it's just reaching out to people and the best part is the trust. So say you reach out over the phone, you've got to build the trust on the phone. You reach out through email, you've got to build the trust on the email. If someone refers you, which I found out quick, pretty quickly, which is, I think, very valuable to learn this quickly is just, if someone refers you, that whole trust is already there. So now that they already believe that you can solve the problem, all you've got to do is actually solve it, which is the easy part, the hard parts making the sale. So. Referrals are very valuable for me, business wise, getting clients and things like this will only make it better because people like Paul are pretty reputable, they've got big audiences on LinkedIn, and he's got a lot of connections as well, they'll see me jumping on a call with people like this and they'll think, oh, he must be serious about his business, so getting the trust there, getting Reputation there is very valuable to me getting clients. I think, who was it? Warren Buffett said it takes a lifetime to build a reputation. So I think building this reputation is definitely going to benefit me. And that's the main way I get clients just LinkedIn, social trust, that area.

Paul: 18:40

And I think, there's a lot of people out there that hear that story. A lot of the time from other people and really doubt it because, they see so many people who fall by the wayside who don't manage to achieve that and don't quite pull it off or they try for months and months and don't see any fruit from it. I think it's just fascinating to see somebody who's completely fresh into the business world to be able to take that and run with it. And you've not got, in my eyes, I think a lot of people have bad habits and bad Strategies and a bad way of thinking about business because they've come out too late or they've learned the wrong things from the wrong people. And for me, this is just indication and proof that what I've said from the beginning is my whole business is set up to help people create trust at scale through video, right? And it's about the video turning your personal. Passions, your motivations, your experience, your problems you solve, your business and talking about it from a human perspective. Being able to look people in the eyes and say this is me, this is who I am, this is what I represent and why I want to do it. And to see somebody take that to the, almost to the next level, like you've got no preconceptions, you've just gone out there and heard the advice and you've put it into practice and you've made a success of it. It proves that it is a valid marketing strategy. If you're genuine with it, you've got to, if you're kidding yourself that this is a genuine approach, but actually it's all about the money, it's not going to work because it

Devrim: 20:14

Yeah. It's got to be genuine. think that's definitely come in. I think with my first client, as I mentioned, it was just a hundred quid. I realized I was still enjoying it. For seven months, I'd got no money in and I was, some people would think, oh, that sack it off. It's not worth it. But I was just, I was enjoying it because I'm sending out emails. I'm learning more about emails. I'm doing a little bit of work on the backend, building some projects out, even though the word sell it, and I'm just learning and learning. And I thought it's, The experience is the best part. Obviously money comes as a by product and money's important, obviously, but I think the best part is getting the reps in. So I know a lot more about sales than some other people my age, because I've been sending messages on LinkedIn for six, seven months, I've been sending emails. I've been jumping on sales calls and getting the experiences is really exciting. And just. Learning bit by bit and get better and better each time is definitely a huge thing that I like to do and Just build and trust obviously and learn the different strategies so you mentioned in video a lot and then there's also Code email outbound phone and I've tried all of them and it's just Learning what works learning what doesn't and the continuous journey is the most exciting part even if you're not making Money comes as a by product and that's a genuineness inside. It's I want to get more experience. I want to become better. It's not all about the money, which I think makes it a lot easier. Cause when times gets hard and you're not making the sales, you think some people might just suck it off and get disheartened over the money not coming in, but I just keep going because I value the experience.

Paul: 21:46

So to move on then to the questions I ask every guest and I'm very interested to hear your thoughts on these two questions.

Devrim: 21:52

Yeah.

Paul: 21:53

What is one thing that you wish small business owners or medium sized business owners? Would do more of with their marketing? What do you think is the right way for them to go about their marketing that they're probably not doing at the moment? Where are they falling down?

Devrim: 22:09

think, honestly, it's been direct. You see a lot of. Huge companies like Coca Cola and that, they do advertisements and they've got no words on them. And then you see a small business trying to replicate that. And you're thinking they've got billions in the bank. That's why they're doing that. But you haven't got billions. You're running, maybe not paycheck to paycheck, but you're running fine margins. You need to be able to be direct. So I think with automation, it being direct is very good. And just marketing as a whole in a smaller business, you need to tell people exactly who you're going for. You need to. Tell people what you're going to give them. Drive with value. I did a LinkedIn post about this the other day. Drive them with value and make sure that you're not telling people about the product you're selling. You're telling people about what the product is going to do for them and what the benefits are going to be. And that's one thing I want to see a lot more people do. And I'm not a marketer, so to speak. I'm more of a a techie guy, which implements some sales into it. But when you see marketing, it's a lot of it's trying to be too vague, trying to be too fancy, trying to be too corporate and that just put an advert out, tell people who you are, tell them what you do and tell them how they need to get in contact with you. And once you've got those three things, it can't go wrong, can it? Cause you're going to get exactly who you want to go for you.

Paul: 23:19

Awesome. And then flip that on its head. What's one thing that you wish small business owners would stop doing right now with their market and what do you see that everybody tries to do that just doesn't work or doesn't have the results that you, that they think it does?

Devrim: 23:35

I'm not too sure, I think all marketing works that's the reason it's stuck around for so long, because everything works if you go at it in the right direction. I think, obviously coming out from an automation perspective, I'm going to be a bit biased, I'd say stop doing it all manually, start to implement AI into parts of it, so let's say Every single day, you're developing a new blog or you're writing a new article, or something like that, or you're writing a new advert, why not just have AI create a summary and give you key bullet points to cover in the blog, so start to be able to pump it out lots and lots more. I think sticking with one idea, that's one thing business owners need to stop doing, sticking with one idea. Get funnels going and keep pumping out loads of ideas and keep iterating. So stop sticking with one idea, get AI involved and just go at it from a much more, just throw things at the wall, see what sticks and keep trying new things.

Paul: 24:26

It's interesting you mention that cause I've literally spent the morning building a chatGPT prompt that helps me repurpose my newsletter for my website and it's Trying to keep the same tone, but maybe adding in a little bit more details. It's slightly different. So you're getting slightly different blog, but more at the point giving me all the excerpt that needs to go into the WordPress background and the tags that need to go into the background that I have to sit and think about, and maybe a different title, cause I maybe want to change the title up and all those sorts of things. So I think the key for me, what I took away from what you just said was was bring automation in. But don't be lazy and just automate everything, because it's got to have that human element over the top, right?

Devrim: 25:05

You've got to add the human element. I think a lot of, everyone thinks automation is here to take jobs and automate things. It's not that good yet. When it is that good, my job will be 10 times easier because I can just build something and give it to them. And that means I've got to, I can let the AI prompt itself. And then it's scary when the AI can prompt itself, but I think humans are definitely using every workflow because otherwise you're you're just ignoring the fact that business is humans and communication between one another. you lose the genuine, genuineness that you're trying to have because you're making robots do the work and it doesn't come off right, yeah, make sure to implement automation, but not too much. Make sure I have the human elements, make sure I get a proof check before it goes out. Make sure to add the right tones, and yeah, just stay genuine even if you are using AI. AI is there to save you time, not to make you lazy.

Paul: 25:56

Devrim, if anybody's listening to this, and I I try to keep this show quite unbiased, I've had a few clients and business partners and stuff on, but I really can't recommend you enough to my audience and to my network. I appreciate it If people are listening to this and they're blown away by what's possible, how can they reach out to you? How can they find out more? So

Devrim: 26:15

either drop me a message on LinkedIn. I think some of these clips I got on LinkedIn, so if you find it on there, message me on LinkedIn or you can find my find a contact us form a kindly booking on my website. So it's cognate.co co uk, C-G-N-A-I t.co uk and you can find me there on that website and you can find me on LinkedIn. Just drop me a message, reach out there and I'll give you a free. Consultation. I'll look at your business. What we're doing now is we're doing like a feasibility plan. So we'll look at your whole business and think, okay, where can AI be implemented? And we do that for free. So we'll look over your whole business and we'll give you ideas of where it can be implemented. And then it's up to you, whether you want to choose us to implement it or implement it yourself, but get in touch. I'll let you know all the ideas I have for your business for free. And. We'll see where that goes.

Paul: 27:05

Fantastic. And I'll make sure all those links are in the the podcast notes as well. Devrim, thank you very much for coming along to the show. It's been a genuine pleasure Appreciate you having

Devrim: 27:12

me. It's been good to get on a podcast. I think this has gone quite well. So thank you to everyone listening. Make sure I get in touch with me if you need any automations work and don't hesitate to get in touch with Paul as well. I've got to say thank you him for letting me on this podcast and also thank you for, he's done a video project for me and it's been amazing. So if you think about. Getting video done and I think what you like to see is you have all these doubts in your mind about getting video done Then reach out to him and realize the video is for you. But so get in touch with Paul at Javelin He's the guy for LinkedIn video, YouTube video, everything.

Paul: 27:50

I've always said you can't hire a doer because we're already too busy doing things ourselves. And you're absolutely one of those doers. Fantastic to have you on the show. Thank you very much for coming along. Huge thank you. indeed, you stole my thunder at the end there. but Thank you for listening and watching. And we'll see you next week for another MarketPulse Pros and Pioneers. Thank you. Bye bye.