Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Faiz Imran. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Faiz, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, let’s start with trends – what are some of the largest or more impactful trends you are seeing in the industry?

Community is becoming the new follower count for creators….

We’ve seen a massive shift in how creators monetize, engage, and interact with their audiences over the last few years and now we’re seeing creators’ community sizes become more relevant than their follower and view counts in some cases.

Communities provide a safer place to learn and. grow with like-minded individuals that often have the same interests. The experience is very collaborative and discussion-based compared to the one-way experience many users get on traditional social media platforms.

For creators, the community provides a way to engage with their audience on a deeper level, monetize, and position content in a more targeted and effective way, All without having to collect data from their users.

As a result, we’ve seen creators and users flocking to platforms like discord, telegram, backspace, and a variety of other community platforms in hopes of more engaged and meaningful conversations online.

Faiz, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m Faiz, The Founder of Backspace,

I’ve spent the last few years building companies in the media, marketing, and creator space

A few notable companies I’ve built and founded are

“Fismma Digital Agency” Which was the top-rated full-service marketing agency in Atlanta, before we got acquired in 2020.

and

“Businessblurb” which was the fastest growing Gen-Z media company of 2020 and amassed well over 1 billion views across the platform. Which I also exited in 2020.

In addition to a handful of other companies in the space, all of which have allowed me to spend a lot of time with hundreds of amazing creators from many different walks of life.

While all of these creators had a unique story, audience, and style,

they all seemed to have one thing in common

They wanted the ability to:

– Reach people organically
– Connect and engage with their audience on a deeper level
– Monetize on their own terms

without having to use an overwhelming stack of tools and platforms.

So 15 months ago we set out to solve that problem and created Backspace.

We wanted to focus on a few key things

– allowing discovery like platforms like TikTok which allow you to organically build an audience from scratch
– allowing the ability for everyone to chat and converse with the community like on Discord and Telegram so it’s not just a one-way street
– allowing the monetization and revenue ability of OnlyFans and Patreon and Substack

and combining those simply and elegantly.

We also wanted to make it possible for anyone to start using the platform by ensuring the platform didn’t require an upfront commitment and allowed anyone to get started for free.

(we support the platform via transaction fees )

And over the last 15 months, as we set out to accomplish this feat.

We’ve built many versions and talked with a variety of creators and community builders.

With Backspace, community builders & creators can natively build, monetize, and run online communities in one place!

Here are a few of our users’ favorite features,

Ad free: It’s important to us that we content on backspace is meaningful

Profiles: Allowing them transparency and a central place for users to find content

Feeds: Allowing for your content to be discovered and for users to keep up to date

Room Gateways: Allowing them to control access to rooms with things like monthly reoccurring subscriptions

And the ability to have Free and paid groups within one community

You can find more information on backspace at backspacethat.com

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I’ve had to unlearn the belief that success meant having a comfortable and safe life.

Over the last few years building and selling a few of my companies, a lesson and principle I’ve learned about entrepreneurship are that the core of being a great entrepreneur is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.

That is what entrepreneurship is about…

When I first started out and started building businesses and hustling the goal was to always have and provide a comfortable life for myself and my family. I understood there were going to be sacrifices and risks I had to take but the goal in my mind was a comfortable life.

Over the last few years, I’ve really adjusted the goal to now focusing on ensuring that I am a better, smarter, and more knowledgeable individual today than I was yesterday.

That requires being uncomfortable daily, whether it’s trying something new, doing something I really don’t feel like doing, taking a leap of faith, or building for years knowing and having the faith that after some time it’ll pay off.

It has also required me to adjust my own measurement of success,

In the past, I gauged success based on how comfortable and secure I felt.

Now I gauge success by evaluating how much of a better human being am I today compared to yesterday.

and while that does mean being uncomfortable and pushing myself daily, I am comfortable with that as long as it means I am improving daily and able to also improve the lives of the people around me daily.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Always focusing on adding more value to someone than I am being paid for.

there is a saying I really like,
“If you always do more work than you are paid for then eventually you’ll be paid to do more than you do”

I think operating my businesses with that quote in my mind has allowed us to always deliver MORE than promised, allowing us to climb the ranks and grow at an incredible rate.

Another thing I’ve put emphasis on is, that as soon as I meet someone I put my focus immediately on how I can add value to that person.

Over the years, that has blossomed into a variety of amazing friendships, partnerships, and deals and allowed me to create a reputation for myself as someone who over-delivers and adds immense value to the people in my network.

Contact Info:

• Website: Faizimran.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/faizimran
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/faizimran/
• Other: Company website – Backspacethat.com