Savelyev Denis. How would you define content marketing?

Once every two weeks, Internet entrepreneurs and heads of Internet companies come to visit Maxim Spiridonov, co-founder and CEO of the educational company Netology Group, for an hour-long conversation. This is how the Runetology podcast is created. The Secret publishes the most interesting excerpts from these interviews.

39-year-old Denis Savelyev was born in Vorkuta. Graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute, headed Internet marketing departments in the Gulf Stream companies. Security systems" and "ByteErg". In 2007 he founded the Internet marketing agency Texterra. He teaches a special course on content marketing at the Higher School of Business Informatics of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.

An audio version of the interview with Denis Savelyev and Spiridonov’s other guests can be found on the Runetology website.

- Why did you get into content marketing?

In 2004, I came to search engine optimization. I promoted websites with my own hands. In 2005, for example, he brought one site to first place for the request “download mp3.” So I understand how search engines work.

In 2010, I hired my first employees. Even then it was clear that the mechanics used in search engine promotion were dead ends. And business is a cruel thing. If an entrepreneur pays money to an agency, he wants to know what results he will get in what time frame. SEO is currently unable to provide such forecasts with a high degree of accuracy. It was clear: content is actually the only thing a business has to somehow present itself to the audience.

In the late 1990s, everyone believed in design. Then the era of traffic began. And then it turned out that traffic is numbers, and the ability to hold attention and transfer the user from one stage to another is something subtle and difficult to calculate. Some people own it, some don't.

Nobody even remembers who proclaimed: content is the king. But business began to believe in it somewhere in late 2009 - early 2010, and in 2012 and 2013 the phrase became common. The role of content will only increase in the coming years. And the role of the site is weakening.

- What definition would you give to content marketing?

Content marketing is working with a website and a commercial structure according to the principles and patterns of media. We approach the organization and the site, which must earn money for its owners, as a media outlet. This is a set of tools and techniques with content at its core - content that is in demand, interesting to the target audience and, importantly, changes the pattern of its behavior. The task is to engage, retain, convert this or that user.

People are tired of direct action advertising. Content marketing is a mechanism that allows businesses to bypass the barriers that humans erect in their natural desire to filter out the white noise. That is, content marketing is when a business creates additional value of the advertising message.

Typical digital performance marketing is “buy the sneakers” repeated over and over again through different channels. And content marketing is something like: “We did research, and it turns out that these sneakers give these results, and others don’t. In general, running is useful because it affects the heart in such and such a way...”?

Right. Not only that, but you even benefit by being open about how competitive your sneakers are compared to others. This model is good for running, although it is not ours; for tennis, this is our model. With this approach, they begin to believe you. In general, people are very sensitive to identifying the truth, which is important for content marketing. One of its new names is “trust marketing.” You need to create trust, speak honestly, and then the audience expresses loyalty to the brand, including increasing its sales.

- You called Texterra an “internet marketing agency.” Not a content bureau or text factory. Why?

Our task is to explain to the market that content marketing is not just about creating content. If we called ourselves a content bureau or a copywriting agency, it would be inaccurate.

Is this an indirect sign that the time for content marketing as a business has not yet come, or maybe it will never come?

No, it has already arrived. Businesses begin to understand what they want from content marketing and what goals they need to set. It has become easier to work with customers. I think we are at the bottom of the mountain and the market will grow. We ourselves have grown by almost 50% in a year. A year ago we had 30 people on staff, now there are almost 60.

- What services do you offer within content marketing?

We do not offer pure content marketing, but comprehensive Internet marketing with a focus on content marketing. Content is primary, the rest is mechanics.

- How is your team structured?

The content department is not the largest. The priority here is in the accounting or production department, which includes account managers, project managers, and technical specialists: programmers, layout designers, e-mail marketers. The content department is also large: editors, content strategists, and some copywriters work there. For many years we have been collecting a database of external authors whom we attract for one or another project. I don't believe that a copywriter is a universal commercial writer. As in journalism, there must be specialization. To create high-quality material, you need to dive deeply into business topics.

- Are there basic principles included in the Texterra “genome”?

First, we have full-time content strategists. This is written down in their employment contracts. I suspect there are not very many such specialists on the market. We raised them all from scratch. What is a content strategist? Often this is an editor or another person of a similar profile. In my opinion, a content strategist can be any specialist on the agency’s side who is able to immerse himself deeply enough in the client’s business and translate its tasks, problems, needs - express them in a strategy, based on which content will be created in the future. The content plan, publication schedule, and style of articles largely depend on the strategy. This is the one from whom all the strings come.

Second: it was difficult and painful to decide on this, but when we take on projects for integrated Internet marketing, we by default create a content strategy for them, now not even for a separate budget. We don’t yet know how long we will be with the client, what kind of person he is, or whether we will be able to work with him normally. But this significantly increases our efficiency.

Third: we have multi-level proofreading. It’s unlikely that any other agency on the market is structured this way. Any modern person produces a large amount of text. We don’t notice all our mistakes - stylistic, spelling, grammatical. And they affect the reputation of a business. In addition, if the business is complex - for example, metal rolling - a copywriter, even being in the know, is still not immune from mistakes. Therefore, multi-level proofreading is needed with the involvement of proofreaders, editors, and technical specialists.

- What does your typical customer look like?

It's hard to generalize. From small businesses to fairly large ones, including even multinational clients. Unfortunately, I have no right to talk about them; lately everything has been under NDA. Companies are very different: there is both e-commerce and B2B. More and more often there are customers from whom we receive carte blanche and who agree to deadlines that allow us to demonstrate high efficiency.

- Often do clients say that content marketing is expensive?

Certainly. But such judgments were more common in the past. In 2016, in my opinion, there was some kind of breakdown. Perhaps the crisis had an effect. But there really are more clients, and they are more adequate. Now, in my opinion, it is obvious to everyone that it is extremely difficult to get quick results on the Internet. Unless with a very high overpayment. Therefore, businesses are ready to invest so that the results may be later, but almost guaranteed. Many companies have their own internal editorial offices. It's really effective. If you have a budget and don’t know how to spend it, I recommend not going straight to buying traffic. It’s better to open an internal editorial office, hire at least one journalist and start working on the site as a media project. Costs are recouped if the content is of high quality and in demand.

- Where to find specialists capable of creating high-quality content?

There is a crisis in the media market like never before. I think that in the next five to ten years this area will greatly transform. The media business is freeing up a huge number of personnel. Great specialists can be hired inexpensively. In my opinion, it is better to hire journalists than copywriters with experience working on stock exchanges. The content that dominated five to seven years ago is not in demand. You don’t just have to put letters and sentences next to each other. You need to get the audience's attention. Content marketing is, in principle, journalism, but with a commercial twist. The difference is small: a journalist works for the media, and a content marketer works for business.

Will it turn out that all online industry media will sooner or later become someone’s content marketing channels?

It's hard to guess, given that the media business model itself is fading. The content becomes free for the audience. Offline subscriptions are dying, circulations are falling. The advertising model of monetization does not justify itself. To publish good online media, you need an editor, you need royalties. Facebook and VKontakte provide disproportionately more content. It is of varying quality, but the audience gets it for free, and social networks don’t pay the authors anything for it. While the business compares itself with glossy magazines and large online platforms and suffers from an inferiority complex: “We are not professional editors, we need to sell insurance policies. What edition should we do, and why?” But in fact, business, unlike the media, is doing well. He has, roughly speaking, an “oil rig” - revenue that allows him to support an editorial office that can increase this very revenue in the future.

- How to evaluate the commercial effectiveness of content and content strategy?

The main part of the word “content marketing” is still “marketing”. Content creation should increase revenue and increase the number of leads. Another thing is the evaluation mechanics. Conventional ROI formulas for content marketing are not directly applicable, especially at the start. Even the best content marketing doesn’t work right away, unlike contextual advertising. But every month, every quarter, your traffic increases, because quality content created once always works.

Businesses are accustomed to operating with shorter evaluation periods. Some people measure their ROI monthly. How much did you spend in a month, how much did you earn in a month. This is not very correct, but this is not a content marketing problem. User behavior on the Internet is changing. There are fewer and fewer quick, emotional purchases. In conditions of excess information, people approach choices differently than before. You need to lead a “warmed-up” client from the first thought of buying a product to the transaction. This applies to a large number of goods and services, and the more complex the product or service, the longer the corresponding interval. Content marketing should touch a potential customer's life path as often as possible. Sometimes we offer him our content on social networks, sometimes we show him contextual advertising, sometimes we reach him with e-mail marketing, sometimes he comes to us through a search.

- Can you name a few successful examples of implementing content marketing on the RuNet?

I will not mention our clients to avoid bias. I'll take what's visible on the market. The first example is an amazing case. Whatever Oleg Tinkov undertakes, he succeeds. So it is with Tinkoff magazine. Having appeared just last year, it is rapidly gaining momentum. You can see how professionally the team works. They may be the first of the major players to stop suffering from an inferiority complex in comparison with the media. This is actually an online magazine on any topic related to money.

Another story. We are developing a Content Marketing group on Facebook. And all the time, under our materials, comments appeared in the spirit: “What are you writing about, what kind of content marketing? I have a brick factory." One day, a person unknown to me entered into a similar discussion and wrote: “Well, I’m that same plant. Not a brick plant, however, but an expanded clay concrete plant, which in three years, thanks to content marketing, became a leader in the CIS.” This is the Cheboksary construction plant, a fairly large business. We contacted them later. They actually spend their entire marketing budget on content marketing. It would seem, what kind of content marketing is there at an expanded clay concrete plant? But, for example, they created a “Blocktour” section: they began to go to their clients and photograph objects that are being built from their expanded clay concrete, communicate with the owners and builders, and post materials on the website. And in three years they built a successful business.

- You once said that digital is dead. What did you mean? And is he being reborn?

We live with the feeling that the Internet is a young field. She's actually not that young. In Internet marketing, some schemes for working with clients, standards, and rules have already become established, which in 2016 seem unshakable to us. I wanted to shake up the market and explain that nothing is immutable, everything is changing very quickly. Up to such niches as website creation. We are used to the fact that web development requires a designer, a usability expert, a programmer, a layout designer, and a front-end developer. In reality - no. The “designers” have arrived, and now the sites that are assembled on them are disproportionately larger than those created by design bureaus. Some will complain about their average quality. But it's a matter of time. In a maximum of three years, the “designers” will have no less, if not more, opportunities than any studio. Such services have accumulated a large amount of data, for example, on audience behavior on sites of a certain type, which can be used to immediately give a conversion forecast for the site with high accuracy.

The revolution continues. All forms of online business that we have become accustomed to over the past 15 years, in my opinion, will change greatly. And by digital I mean the digital that has developed. The question is whether it will be possible to call it that when everything changes.

We are drowning today in a huge amount of texts, videos, audios. This is a burden and stress. Will content marketing fatigue set in?

We, of course, are not able to consume as much content as is created. And its number is growing at an incredible pace. But a person adapts and begins to evaluate the content before reading it: by announcements in the social network feed, by headlines. The attention of the audience is increasingly valuable. I assume that already in 2017 a lot of negativity will be directed towards content marketing. And justified: many companies will take up this direction for the first time and realize that no one needs their content. The audience will not do you any favors just because you are releasing content on behalf of a business. The user today does not care who published the content: Forbes magazine, Vedomosti or an expanded clay concrete plant. If he is the target audience and the content meets his needs, if he needs it here and now, he will definitely check it out. You just need to strive to create the best content on the market.

Cover photo: Texterra Press Service

– One of the most interesting questions for me personally is the alma mater of entrepreneurs. And graduates of humanitarian and creative specialties are always of particular interest. Denis, I know that you once graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute. How did you get there?

– I got in like everyone else, not on commercial terms. I passed the exams - there was a creative competition at that time. You can say that I followed my interests. Studied at the department of fiction, workshop of Sergei Yesin. He wrote prose and published in various almanacs and magazines. To be honest, I don’t remember much, it was a long time ago.

– Actually, I’m interested because the Literary Institute seems to be a direction very far from marketing and business...

- Why? This is where I disagree. If we remember the cult book for modern advertisers, “Generation P” by Viktor Pelevin, then who is the main character? Graduate of the Literary Institute! In fact, many of my fellow students went into marketing and advertising. The experience I gained at the Literary Institute helped me to some extent, and to some extent hindered me, but still there were some overlaps.

– What about the iconic phrase from the same« Generation P» : « We don't need creators here, we need creators» ?

- Well, everything is correct here. Literary creativity is also, in many ways, a technological work. It is impossible to teach creativity - it is all inside each person. But the sequence of actions, algorithms for creating works - this is something that can be studied. And it's the same in advertising.

– By the time Texterra was fully launched, you had already accumulated experience in promotion and Internet marketing. How difficult was the transition to entrepreneurship? Still, this is a solution to many problems of a completely different type...

– It’s hard to say here, because by the time I started working on Texterra, I had actually been an entrepreneur for 3 years. I had business competence, or rather, as I had it... It was formed in the process. This is a very long way to rethink yourself, your role in business processes. I can’t say that in 2010 I was already a ready-made entrepreneur. Even when I already had 15-20 people working for me at Texterra, I did not identify myself with an entrepreneur, I even avoided it a little.

– In the sense that you tried not to break away from the team?

– I can’t say what exactly I tried. There is a fundamental division now, but it did not come immediately. This is again a long and gradual journey. I never woke up and realized that I had become an entrepreneur. But there is another point. I used to underestimate some things in terms of importance for business. In 2010, it seemed to me that the main thing was the idea. Many people who want to become entrepreneurs believe in the idea. But then it becomes clear that you can work with any idea if you manage to establish business processes. This is the next stage, and I remember that turning point when we went through this evolution and we began to set up business processes at some serious level. And after about three years, the understanding came that even business processes are not the most important thing. The most important thing is people. That is, I had already been in business for 7-8 years, 4-5 of them at Texterra, and only then did it come.

– And another question about personnel: now team building is a very fashionable thing, many companies are introducing some of its elements into their work. I see from your interviews that this is also used - the same weekly “chatters”, as you call it. How can we strike a balance here so that it doesn’t turn into some kind of “obligation”? Do you have any problems with this?

– Our “chat rooms” are called that only conventionally. In fact, their format is constantly changing. This could be trainings, games, something else. There is no recipe for whether you need to use it or not. On the one hand, it is clear that there should be team building in some form. I wouldn’t like to say any big words, but corporate culture plays an important role. But at the same time, all our employees are adults, and I absolutely do not believe that an adult can somehow be re-educated. The only way out is to initially hire those who come to you with some other goals other than material ones. Not only to provide for yourself, your family, but also something else. This is more important. I can’t say that we succeed in this 100% of the time, but we try. Moreover, with us all these events are not mandatory, but optional.

– Let’s talk a little about your field of activity. Your previous interviews were in 2016, and you said that content marketing and integrated Internet marketing are developing and demand is growing. Has anything changed over time, for the better or for the worse?

– There is growth, but it also has a downside. There is some devaluation of the term. It is inevitable because when some new direction appears, it exists in some unstable, uncertain environment. Many people have the feeling that this is some kind of blue ocean where they need to quickly dive in, and everything will immediately be fine. In reality, without expertise, without well-developed work technologies, it is very difficult to drop in somewhere. There are many attempts to do something, offer it as content marketing and sell it. But the client doesn’t need marketing in itself, he needs results. For us, marketing is not a service that we sell. This is a technique for obtaining a certain result. Therefore, our clients and I negotiate only for comprehensive Internet marketing, and content marketing is a form of work that we ourselves use.

– Does devaluation affect the supply market specifically? Is dumping happening?

- Yes, yes. Content marketing is now very often understood as copywriting, something from this opera. Many content studios and even individual copywriters began to sell content marketing because it is fashionable, it is in trend, and the demand is high. In reality, the main thing in this term is still marketing, and the creation of text content is far from the most important part of what we do. And there are very few companies that now do real content marketing. To list them, the fingers of one hand are enough. And the demand is much higher, which is why offers arise that imitate content marketing.

– You yourself said that, in principle, there are not so many professionals. After all, content marketing is not taught almost anywhere; there is a well-known course “ Netologies» , maybe something else. But there is no training in content marketing at the system level.

– When I said so, it really was so, but now the picture is changing somewhat. The same “Netology” has already graduated a certain number of specialists, and this is one of its most successful and expensive courses. The market understands that there is interest in this topic. Nowadays, vacancies periodically appear on many sites like Headhunter. But education has certain difficulties because the market changes very quickly. The terminology is unsettled. Often a business that understands what it wants to get out of it cannot formulate it correctly. Therefore, for some companies, a content marketer is a person who is looking for some information; for others it is the same as a journalist or copywriter; for others, they are really marketers.

Let's just say that there are problems with education, but I see a positive movement in this direction.

– Question about the cost of content marketing. This is also a well-known myth, or even a horror story,–content marketing is expensive. We recently did material on this topic, and Vladimir Lantsov from« Skobeev and partners» , why this happens and why such work, in principle, cannot cost less than 40 thousand rubles.

– For example, we don’t work with this specific budget at all. Our average cost for a complex is from 150 thousand rubles. But let me clarify, to make it clear, this is the price of the complex. We also have clients for specific jobs: making a landing page, building a “sales funnel.” I think Volodya indicated such a figure so as not to make people too sad. This is a really expensive story, but again, it depends on what you compare it to. The situation when it was possible to get some results cheaply on the Internet ended with the advent of many channels and promotion tools. By inertia, business remembers that at the start, 7-10 years ago, the Internet - as a promotion channel - was quite cheap. But then the law of life came into play. It cannot be that there is one effective promotion channel that is significantly cheaper than others. Budgets and cost of services increased, and gradually the cost of attracting a client through each channel - both online and offline - became equal.

– And if we talk about small business? We have many readers who, after paying taxes, paying suppliers, and some other expenses, are left with 50-60 thousand rubles, and they need to think about where to distribute them. Is this market closed for low-income earners?

– The situation of some new companies, when advertising is not yet working for business, but business is working for advertising, is found everywhere even without content marketing. Don’t we know of cases where a person earns the same 50-60 thousand rubles and at the same time spends 350-400 thousand on contextual advertising? It's such a vicious circle that it's hard to get out of. I believe that with content marketing everything is even a little better. I am personally convinced that the best content marketer is not the one who knows how to write good texts, edit videos, or otherwise present information. First of all, he is an expert in his field. We forgive experts everything: spelling and punctuation errors, some problems with the design on the site. A person who asks a question on the Internet and receives a comprehensive answer will forgive any mistakes. Any entrepreneur either becomes such an expert in a very short time, or he simply will not sustain his business for more than 3 years. If a business has existed longer, it means there is some kind of unique expertise, otherwise it simply would not exist. Therefore, the owners themselves need to spend their time in this direction: extracting this expertise and giving it to the audience. And this will also be content marketing.

There is a good analogy: accounting. At the same time, the business owner does not have to be an accountant, but he must devote some part of his time to it. How much exactly depends on the specifics. Somewhere an hour a day, somewhere an hour a week, somewhere an hour a month. The same thing works in content marketing. You can devote some time to this according to a certain schedule, and it will be much more effective than resorting to the services of an agency, freelancer, or someone else. In our agency, the main people are not copywriters, but content strategists. These are people who literally sit on the phone, communicate with the client and extract expertise. Our contracts stipulate that the customer is obliged to provide us with these experts. Based on this expertise, we draw up content plans, technical specifications for copywriters and everything else.

– Is some kind of advisory help possible? Let's say a person decides to take care of the content component of, let's say, his business, but at some point he stumbles upon some problem. Doesn’t know how to make a publication plan or how to find a blog or media outlet where you can attach an article. What to do in such a situation?

– Now the problem is that there is a lot of information on any issue and it is easily accessible. On the one side. On the other hand, you need to develop the skill of critically evaluating this information. This skill is generally useful to people in general, and it develops regardless of interest in content marketing.

– Are there any projects in small business that have really taken off lately? you highlighted« Tinkoff magazine" Many, in principle, single him out. It is clear that this is a large project with serious investments, first of all, in the professionals who create it. It is the format of small and medium-sized businesses that is of interest.

– Now is the time that it is difficult to single out anyone. There are a lot of such projects. Look at the projects that companies are launching in almost any field of business, and this will be visible. People, in principle, are beginning to consume much more information than 15-20 years ago. There are such people in every niche. Take construction, for example. Good Wood comes to mind, look at what they do in content marketing, how they do it, what their role is in the market. But we must understand that such a result is not a quick story, it is a path that must be followed.

– Since we’re talking about construction, you’re still working on wood concrete blocks...

– Yes, there is such a project, it was launched about a year ago.

- How did this happen? It is clear that advertising specialists can launch any project, but why blocks?

– As they say, one thing caught on to the other, and off we went. Of course, we haven’t reached the breakeven point yet; it’s difficult. But in terms of traffic and leads, we are doing well. We received a large project using content marketing. In general, we have more leads from this direction in this area than anyone else.

– That is, proven methods were used in promotion? Did you use any new products?

– No, no new products yet. Only proven methods. Everything we did for clients was used on this project. I can’t say that everything here is absolutely perfect, there are problems. People often overestimate the importance of marketing in business. A successful business is the sum of many parts. Marketing, of course, is important, but it does not solve all problems.

– We have practically begun to answer the following question: production and agency– these are completely different areas of work, and experience in one helps little in the other. Have you encountered any nuances of production this year?

- Naturally, we collided. Completely different clientele, completely different employees. In general, production in our country is very difficult. Internet marketing standards are such that it is constantly at the forefront, looking for some new techniques and technologies. If we are still behind the West here, it is very slightly, by some 2-3 years. And in working professions, we are actually generations behind in mentality. In our country it is still considered normal if an employee, such a hard worker, drinks and does not come to work. This is a fact of life (bitter smile). I don't know how to deal with this. Let's study.

– And you also said a few years ago that you are used to being deeply immersed in the business you are involved in, and it is difficult for you to give up. Since you launched another parallel business, it turns out that something has changed?

- No, nothing has changed here, everything remains the same as I said. It’s just that throughout the history of Texterra’s existence, we have been carrying out some other projects in parallel, but none of them received serious development. I don’t want to say so, but this is such a “graveyard” of projects. Success in business is not always about doing everything right. Something else is needed, a confluence of some factors, luck, if you like, although I don’t particularly believe in it.

– We are approaching the end, a slightly abstract question: what do you like more – a blank sheet of paper or a finished manuscript? Create something new or work with something already ready?

– It’s difficult to answer. Let’s just say that I won’t be able to go through the same path again that I already went through with Texterra or with my first business. I just can’t find that much moral strength within myself. If we assume a “leave and start something new” situation, a lot depends on whether this idea lights me up or not, whether there is any personal interest in the topic or not. I'm not sure that you can do any business without some kind of personal immersion of the creator, full dedication of all efforts. So far, apart from Texterra, I have never had such a project.

– And the last question–if there is such a thing as« thirst for business» , then what is this?

– There is such a concept. This is a thirst for discovery and a thirst for changing oneself. This is a very important quality, I think. In general, if we talk about business development, it is impossible without the entrepreneur changing himself. All the problems that arise in business are problems of the founder personally, his own “bugs”. Accordingly, in order to develop, you need to eradicate them in yourself.

Our dossier

Denis Savelyev, 39 years old, Orekhovo-Zuevo (Moscow region)

– Internet marketing agency “Texterra”, No. 1 in terms of traffic among digital agencies on the Runet.

– Production company “Russian wood concrete”.

Briefly

Business is...

...in short, the way.

Money is...

...a generally accepted method of measuring effectiveness, and for me personally - the equivalent of freedom.

Main character trait

Insolence.

Source of inspiration

Creation.

If travel, then...

...I have a long-term “romance” with India, I have already been there twice and, apparently, I will go there for the third time. Not even exactly India, but precisely its northern and northeastern parts, the Himalayas.

If the vehicle is...

...in different ways, on foot, by transport - it all depends on the direction.

How do you see yourself in 10 years?

It's difficult. Everything is changing very quickly. Denis Savelyev of 2010 and the current one are two different people, somewhat similar, but somehow different. I think in 10 years it will be the same: partly I will be the same as now, partly I will be different. I hope I will retain my best qualities and get rid of the negative ones.

My first day at FIRM was May 9th last year. Before that, I worked as a hairdresser for two and a half years, but here I realized that this is really mine. In general, I came to the industry from the administrators of a beauty salon - an ordinary salon in Balashikha, with a female team, eternal gossip and an appropriate atmosphere. I ended up there by accident - my friends invited me. But gradually my friends left, and at some point I found myself alone among the aunties. It was very sad.

My girlfriend advised me to study to become a hairdresser, although I wanted to become a designer. But this whole story with men's hairdressing salons always attracted me; it was something new and interesting, especially for a beauty salon administrator. Another world.

FIRM appeared in my life like this: a colleague from a previous job - it was a fairly well-known hairdressing salon - once mentioned that a former employee had left for FIRM after a couple of weeks of work. For some reason I was interested in why this happened - it turned out that he was dissatisfied with exactly the same things that I didn’t like. Well, I thought - maybe I’ll try too? I called FIRM, and one of the bosses answered the phone, who happened to be next to the phone at the reception. We both decided it was a sign.

I was completely confident in myself, but I looked at how the guys worked and realized that I would have to learn a little bit. I was immediately captivated by the attitude - not “teacher-student”, but on equal terms, without secrets. Before this, I had a completely different learning experience - you know, when a famous master says: study for a couple of months, and maybe I’ll show you something else.

And there are no rules adopted in some other places, when the hairdresser should not be in the waiting area, or sit in the hall when the client arrives. No one looks at who is sitting in your chair, how much he left you as a tip, or what your salary is. At FIRM there is one rule: for the person who comes for a haircut to feel comfortable. And it is important that the client here is not considered an inviolable person, because he pays money. We are equal. Therefore, it’s definitely easier to breathe here – both for me and for the clients.

At first I treat the client with caution - I don’t really like familiarity. But in the process, as a rule, he opens up, and we can communicate about anything. It is interesting to work with any clients. It’s easier, of course, with good hair, but it’s interesting with any kind of hair.

Our colleagues inspire us - we always share new haircuts and new techniques. I myself am looking for new moves, I follow the Instagrams of famous hairdressers, I try to develop. I think it’s more interesting to work in many styles at once, not to do everything strictly old school, for example. And, of course, each haircut turns out different, this is a moment of creativity.