Hani Mourra: Founder of Repurpose.IO – Create Once. Publish Everywhere. (#228)

Hani Mourra Founder of Repurpose.IO – Create Once. Publish Everywhere.m4a – Powered by Happy Scribe

Feisworld podcast helps independent creators live their creative and financial freedom. I’m your host, Fei Wu, and I’ll be taking you through a series of interviews with creators from around the world who are living life on their own terms. Each episode is packed with tactics, nuggets you can implement, origin stories to make listening productive and enjoyable. We’re not only focused on the more aspirational stories, but relatable ones as well. We also have non-interview based miniseries releasing throughout the year to help deep dive into topics such as freelancing marketing, even indie filmmaking that will benefit creators like you. Show notes, links and ways to connect with the guests are available on Phaseroll.com. Now onto the show. Hey guys, this is FAW again and thank you so much for listening to the Face World podcast. This is our original creation of Face World, started in October 2014. And guess what? I want to welcome you if you’re new because every single week we find ourselves talking to new people literally every single week and it’s so exciting. So today I want to introduce a very special entrepreneur whose name is Hani Mora and he’s the founder of Repurposed IO, a place our software where you can create once and publish everywhere.

I’m going to tell you in just about a second, but before we dive into Hani and his background, I also want to encourage you to check out Feisworld’s first ever documentary series on both Amazon Prime and also Vimeo. So Amazon Prime right now is open for free streaming for us and UK. And if you are living anywhere else in the world, Vimeo is your goto. And thank you so much for your support by watching the series and telling other people about it and sharing your experience and also your reflections with me or with your friends and family on social media means so much and really helps us independent creators like myself to push our work forward. Let’s go back to today’s episode. Hani is a dad and founder of Repurpose IO. Repurpose is an easy to use automation platform that helps entrepreneurs and coaches and content creators to maximize their exposure without spending hours publishing to multiple platforms. So guess what? Feisworld is one of Repurpose’s clients and we have been using their software religiously since about a month ago. And it’s so helpful to be able to record and edit audio podcasts once and then be able to push it directly to YouTube.

We can create a simple workflow. I don’t even have to go back in to touch anything again because it’s automatic. So whether you are a podcaster where you’re a live streamer, you create videos on YouTube or Facebook Live, doesn’t matter. Repurpose IO will be a great addition to your creative journey. So in this episode, you will learn what Repurposed IO does and how it helps creative entrepreneurs like yourself or someone you know. How Hani discovered the idea and created an MVP and in the tech world for us that is minimal viable product for repurposed IO and how Hani market is product at first hint, it’s about building an email list, presale and all that jazz. Also making a product better and growing with a team. How content marketing and content creation and automation work at a high level and why it’s important to repurpose content. And last but not least, we dive into Hani’s origin stories and what brought him to Toronto, Canada, where he isn’t from originally, but moved to with his family. This is another incredible story of an immigrant family. And you guys know me that, you know, I was born and raised in Beijing, China, and I came to Boston when I was 17 years old and I have been here for nearly 20 years.

And Henny also explains to us and shares with us what it’s like to run a tech startup in Toronto and how he then balances his work and family life. So there’s a lot of really cool hidden gems. I love these stories. They’re just so relatable. Whether you come from a technical background or you learn to be a programmer as an adult, that is super exciting. And it doesn’t matter if you’re 15 years old or you’re 50 trying something out. And guess what? If there’s an audience for it and people are craving for this to be a solution, then you could be in the center of it all. Thanks so much for listening to the Fisir old podcast, and I understand how precious your time is and there’s so much content and everything to choose from these days. I’m thrilled that you’re here with me and I can’t wait to hear your feedback related to the documentary. It was our first filmmaking experience. We probably made a lot of mistakes and regrets along the way, but guess what? It’s out there for people to consume. It’s out there to tell my story. Along with eleven incredible influential guests who appeared on Face World.

A lot of people tell me that they teared up. I know I certainly did, actually, during production, as well as watching the film for the first time. Yeah, that’s it. So without further ado, please welcome Hani Mora to the Phase World podcast. Henry Mora, thanks so much for joining me on Phase World. I’m so thrilled that you made the decision to join us and replied quickly and gives me a lot of joy.

My pleasure, my honor. It’s an honor to be here.

I’m very not only a dedicated user for repurposed IO, I couldn’t believe it. Literally, this is how I stumbled upon this is my story, which I know that as a creator founder, you’re like, how did you discover the podcast? It’s crazy. So as a podcaster for a while, people are debating whether we should push our audio content onto YouTube. And about two months ago, I started taking YouTube very seriously and I said to myself, wow, we really should do this. And how do we do this? And I remember just how to repurpose podcast content for YouTube. And your website showed up and I was very skeptical because I felt like I was very in tune with what’s available. But somehow I didn’t really find one very quickly. And I downloaded that night. I subscribed right away and for the following weeks. And I really started recommending to everyone I know because I also belong. I also lead a fairly sizable podcast for community. The moment I look at somebody using a static image, I’m like, what are you doing? This is what you subscribe to? And check it out.

That’s awesome. It’s always good to know. I’m always curious, how do people find out about it? Word of mouth, google searches. So it’s awesome. Yeah, I know we rank pretty well for podcasts to YouTube. When you search for that, our videos come up, our website comes up, so our SEO part is working really well. Good to know.

Yeah. And I looked on LinkedIn and I thought this was this new thing, but realized that you’ve been running the company since 2016. So could you tell us a bit about the context and history of how repurposed IO came about?

Yeah, so let’s jump back to maybe 2014 really quick. I was just I had this h. I’m a summer software engineers and I’ve been managing projects. That’s kind of what I do for my day job. And then I kind of create something my own. I want to create something. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I love video. I’ve been blogging about video for the past two, three years. Long story short, one day it just hit me. I got to make a tool for software for video people. That’s all I knew. I didn’t know what it was. That’s all I knew. And then kind of let it marinate there and then kind of solve my own problem with my blogging. What was it doing regularly, like automate? So my first software back in probably 2014 or 13 or 14 was to take YouTube videos and put them on your blog. That was my first WordPress plugin that I created. I got some help created, hired a contractor, worked out through the details. But that’s how I got into that kind of entrepreneurial spirit. I think I wanted to solve my own problem. I got it out to a few people through my network, et cetera, and it got some traction.

People are like, I like this, I like this. And then from there, there was a WordPress plugin that came out. We released similar ideas, pushes podcasts to your website because some one of our customers say, hey, you’re doing this for YouTube, can you do for our podcast? So we did that about six months later. And then about six months later they said, hey, can you take Facebook Live and put them on our blog. So customers kept asking, what else can you do from WordPress? So that’s how I get started. But the cool thing is, after around 2016, people were asking, okay, great, you’re pulling all our content, repurposing it as blog posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, Facebook Live. But can you go from one platform to the other? Like, not the blog, send it from YouTube podcasts to YouTube, or Facebook Live to YouTube. And I’m like I like that. I kind of let it marinate. And then more and more people kept asking, and that’s how repurpose was born. It was customer feedback from the existing customers using our WordPress plugins, wanting the extra step to go further and do.

More speaking, which, I just saw a new pop up when I logged into Repurpose. Now, I didn’t pay close attention, but was it Repurposing video content through LinkedIn as well?

Yeah, we just released that maybe three weeks ago. Two, three weeks ago. So now you can publish. Repurpose can upload directly to LinkedIn to your LinkedIn page. It’s kind of the only limitation right now. You got to start a company page. But it’s all good. Eventually we’ll be able to publish to your LinkedIn feed. But the whole idea of Repurpose is to be able to automate the uploading process to different social media platforms and also resizing it, converting it from audio to video to video with Captions or Square. Whatever you want is ideal for the platform you’re trying to publish, too, just.

Based on how you made this happen. What I love about your company and your approach and this partly was my own assumption before reaching out to you because I honestly had no idea how you think. Largely, it was my guest to say, is this person the right fit for the podcast? And there’s something so profound that I love about the way you approach your work, which is I realize you’re someone who ships very often and someone who doesn’t just wait until something is just perfect and you have approval from everyone. I’m a big fan. Not just a big fan, I follow Seth Gon’s work for decades now. And that’s kind of the potential I was seeing. So it sounds to me, and correct me if I’m wrong, that this was an idea where people started asking you and you start putting together prototypes and MVPs, and it worked. And it worked even better. When was that kind of pivotal moment for you to say, wow, I really want to productize this thing, and this is how I’m going to charge? Because a lot of people kind of are struggling. A lot of people I know don’t know where that point happens and how.

Yeah. So to me, when I first launched my First Tool, 2014, I had no idea what I was doing. I built basically a prototype. I had this big vision and I said, I’m going to build this piece. Just the basic what’s the core function? What’s the minimum for the MVP? What’s the most minimal feature? I built that I showed it to, actually, somebody who was helping launch his podcast at the time. Anyway, long story short, was like, I built that piece. I showed it to some people. They loved it. They said, let’s go to market with this. If we just add a few bells and whistles around it. And then we launched a beta group. That was key. I think in the beginning, on a small beta group, 20 people filled up quickly. They used it, which was key, because a lot of beta users just say sign up, but they never use it. So the fact they used it and the fact that they started giving feedback said, okay, we have a product because we have few beta users, and then we got it out. So that process probably months of three weeks, four weeks of beta testing, and then a couple more weeks to get it out.

So very short sprints or very short windows of time where we wanted to get stuff out. And then I had a whole list of things I wanted to do with the WordPress plugin, but it didn’t matter to me. Those are all nice things I wanted. But so once we got it out, we heard from what customers wanted, and we added those first with repurposed. Those were the WordPress plugins, like way back every year, we build more software, we got more experience, we know who are more comfortable. So the thing I learned with repurpose was, I follow the same track. I said, okay, what’s the most basic function that we want? We want to take an audio into a video that’s all repurposed. Actually, there are two features. It did, it did audio to video, and then it did Facebook Live to YouTube. It took a Facebook Live and put on those two things, and that’s it. And we got it out. I launched it to my existing customers first. I didn’t go public with it. I went out to, you guys are already customers of my WordPress plugins. You love it. Here’s some more automation.

And I asked people to prepay. I asked them to prepay. It wasn’t built yet, but from November, it didn’t launch until April, but we sold it in November. If you buy now, in six months, you’ll gain access. You put down $150 or something, you’re getting your money back. If you don’t like it when it comes out, but commit some money now. And that was a way of testing if people are willing to pay for this tool.

So smart.

And it was to our existing customers who already had that no, like, trust factor. So we weren’t trying to pitch it to anybody new. People knew our products. People knew who I was. I did a webinar. We got, I think, 20 people to sign up on that webinar very quickly.

Probably filled very quickly.

I trust you, I bought your software before. It’s a no brainer. And there was a refund if you didn’t like it, and when it got released in April or March, if you didn’t like it, you get that money back. So there was no risk to the people who signed up. But that was my way of saying, hey, are people willing to pay for it and start getting feedback? They started using it on January, February, and giving us some good feedback on what’s broken, what’s not working, what could be better? And then we took that to market. Around April, same thing launched to my list. We had an early notification list as well. So as we were building, I said, hey, if you’re interested in this tool, sign up here, leave your email, we’ll let you know when it’s ready. We kind of built that list, so.

I’m interested in hearing and by the way, this whole kind of pre sell to your customers and like you said, is a great way to validate the product. Plus it’s going to give you some hopefully sufficient funding to really not ever think about finance. One of our other guests, Joey Corman, did the same thing. He pre sold his course, just single online course, to like five people at a sizeable as a significant price tag. People are willing to pay anyway, and now it’s a multimillion dollar online academy, which is really fantastic.

That’s awesome.

Yeah, it’s just so great to hear these stories that people might not have heard of you, we’re the product, but to realize that this is a workable path and a reasonable one too, not just something that you like another overnight success. So between November and when you launch in April or so, how many new emails did you like? How much did you grow your email list? Do you still remember?

We didn’t have a huge email list. I mean, it was kind of an ongoing process. So November is when actually the email list went up before November. So November was around the webinar when I said, okay, now we’re selling this, preselling this in November. But I’ve already started building the list before that through Facebook groups with people who I knew who teach about podcasting and just went through my own network and say, my own list and also my own network. Do you mind promoting this? Nothing. There’s nothing to buy. Something that you’re interested in. I made a little video and I said, hey, just, you know, leave your email, we’ll let you know when it’s ready. I can’t remember we didn’t have a huge list. Maybe it’s a couple of hundred people on there, maybe like close to 500 people. I would say sign up for the early notification list. One mistake, if I were to do it again, is kind of what you’re supposed to do, is keep people in the loop on your progress while you’re developing. But you know how it is. You get caught up in the creation part of it.

I didn’t do a great job keeping people up to date who sign up for that. So people sign up maybe six months before the webinar, and then they forgot when I sent an email about the webinar. And they’re like, oh, what I signed up for, what it’s about? So that’s one thing I would have changed. But overall, the fact that you start getting interest email list was telling me that people are interested. The webinar was to validate that people are going to spend money on this. And then once we went to market, it was nice. So I can forgive. I mean, the pricing is always something I would struggle with. And by the way, I was scared to precharge. I knew these people, a lot of them, almost like my friends. They’ve been buying my stuff for a while. We meet up at conferences, but I was still afraid to ask for money when something wasn’t built. So it’s normal to go through that feeling when you’re nervous, how can I ask for money and it’s not been built yet? It’s normal to be nervous. And as long as you have a guarantee that you’re not there to steal from people, it’s not stealing.

It’s not like you’re ripping people off. You’re just going to get enough for a commitment. They got a discount. And as a bonus, actually, what I ended up doing for those 20 people is say, hey, because you’re early founders, you get lifetime access. So they never had to pay again. They didn’t know. It was a surprise once we lost that said, you guys are awesome. So much great feedback, so helpful in building this thing, and you took a leap of faith on me. And then I give them lifetime access. They never had to pay again. That was my gift back to them. The first 20 people. Yeah, we launched in 2017, I think.

Oh, I wish I was on that list, because I have no doubt. I feel like the pricing structure you have right now is very, very reasonable and there’s no issue with pricing at all. But I also wish I could be part of that group because it just the struggle of even thinking about I mean, at that precise moment. Late 20, 16, 17 is when we spend so much time editing podcasts like this, we feel like and it’s so hard to edit an actual recording. And with someone, there are people that we interview who don’t speak very often on podcasts or public events. So there are certain edits that need to be applied. And we basically just gave up at that point to say, let’s just focus on audio until I saw repurpose. What’s the reason now I have 225 episodes, and we use repurpose and created a workflow within seconds. And I did a video on that for YouTube and single published. And the way I use it just so you know, I keep everything private. And then I work my social media virtual assistant and we create a schedule and updated thumbnail tags. We use TubeBuddy to optimize with tags.

You got it all systemized. That’s awesome. Actually, we’re adding a scheduler, by the way, so that might help in the future. We’re adding a scheduler probably by early next year so that you can schedule directly from Repurposed to any platform. But what you’re doing is perfect. Go to private, schedule it from there. Yeah. So basically, the software itself was very basic. It was podcast to YouTube, Facebook, Life, to just copy a couple of the video from Facebook to YouTube. Those are two problems that most podcasters live creative had. So we only solved those. But since then it’s been, I guess, two years now. Two and a half years. It says evolved. We got caption videos and we got rectangle and square and vertical and clips. Some of them are on my road map, but some of them were not. But by listening to users, like by getting something out, you can’t get feedback on nothing, on an idea. You got to get feedback on something tangible, whether it’s a course, whether it’s a software, whatever it is you’re creating, you got to get people using and experiencing it and then giving you feedback. So I’m happy.

I’m a perfectionist. You saw me earlier, I was adjusting my laptop so that little thing in the corner wasn’t showing. I’m a perfectionist, too, but I knew that if I don’t get anything out to people, I’m not going to get proper feedback. So just kind of said, all right, this is it. This is the scope. We’re building these two features, get it out, and then we’ll start working in the background as people are using it. So I encourage anybody who’s creating anything, core software, whatever it is you’re creating, get it out in its most basic form and at least to a handful of people and start getting feedback on it.

Yeah, wonderful. I completely agree with that. Hey, guys, it’s Fawu, and you’re listening to the Phase World podcast. Today on Phase World. Welcome, honeymora. Who’s the founder of Repurpose IO. It’s a software for coaches, content creators and entrepreneurs. Because when you create your content once, it will help you publish it everywhere. Now back to the show. You know, it could be the smallest thing possible. And you learn so much by talking to people, and you can make tweaks and adjustments as opposed to just like dreaming up in your head and start spinning out of control as a creator, which is the easiest thing to do.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We all go through it, have a huge trello board of like to do is and new features. And I’m like, I know I’m not going to get to them unless customers ask me for it.

Yes.

Because I’m not creating the software for me. I’m creating the software for my users, and it’s creating a course. You’re not creating it for yourself, you’re creating it for your users. So keep that in mind. It’s very valuable. It’s hard to do, but you just have to kind of go against what your natural feeling is and get it out there as quickly as you can.

Yeah, for sure. And I think about what your I feel like I can stop talking about every purpose, but we want to talk about your origin stories as well. Working as a creator, I find that as a developer for a short period of time, and still today technology is still very much part of my consulting endeavor, part of, like, Facebook LLC. As a company, the moment we had to rely on a third party, whether that be YouTube, Facebook, and you have to really play by their rules, and they allow you to go up against a certain point. And it drives me crazy, I got to admit, because I also created a course for C Malia, and the moment I was done with that course, they changed their user interface completely. And I have to really pop myself up to, like, rerecord and think I’m getting better at it. But, like, what are some of the struggles that you have? And, you know, without getting into, like, obviously the nitty gritty technical details, how do you balance that?

While you said about platforms, it’s been very obvious in the past year or so, ever since Facebook issue, where everything leaked out. Like, last April, overnight, they literally shut down. They said, okay, no developer, no third party app can access Facebook groups anymore, like, overnight. And my customers are screaming at me, hey, I want to publish the group. This was working yesterday, why isn’t it working today? Yeah, Facebook just took it away, so they had to force everyone to reapply. So imagine thousands of apps out there reapplying for permissions. We were in the queue for months. But you have to manage that with your customers. You have to explain to them, we put notices in the software. This is something that’s out of our control. You can still do this, this, and this, but we cannot do this because Facebook is not allowing us all good. You just have to work with it and be upfront with the customer. That this is not something we control. Yeah, and then we had people ask us, hey, can you take a video off of YouTube and put it somewhere else? We could, technically, but we’re not allowed to, so we’re not going to.

So we’re always upfront. We’re always played by all the platforms rules because they’re giants. YouTube is Facebook. You don’t want to buy the terms of service with them, you’re done. You can never integrate with their apps anymore. So we’re very careful about that. And now YouTube’s doing a huge audit on all the apps. They made me, like, change because I didn’t use the official logo on my home page for YouTube it was almost the same, but it was like maybe not rounded and we changed that. So everyone’s being strict. Yeah, it’s not a bad thing, we’re just playing by the rules, so we play by the rules very, very carefully. But yeah, it’s a balance because you have to manage your customers and you have to obviously respect the platform so we always stay within the rules. There are hacks that you can do that we don’t do because we don’t want to break the rules. But that’s been the past year. Probably one of the biggest challenges is that everything’s going fine, then you get an email from Facebook saying, oh, we’re going to shut down the permissions you have to reapply, you start freaking out.

Yeah, we’re not afraid because we’re not breaking their terms of service, but you got to go through the process and sometimes it takes time. As of now, everything is good and approved and we’re cross.

We need a purpose to work because if it stops working and I have to start working, let us know when we need to sign petitions and all that.

Yeah, please put repurpose back, we’re not breaking any rules, so we’re not worried about that.

How many employees or contractors do you have working for you at the moment? And also I’m curious like how many users you have at the moment?

Yeah, we’re about close to 6000 people on repurpose between trial and paid. So I don’t know the exact active use at the moment, but people who’ve gone through and signed up for a.

Loan, they’re going to pay, so we’re.

Like it’s almost 6000, which is kind of blows my mind a little bit. I mean, it depends on who you’re looking at. Some people say, well that’s a small number, but to me it’s just been a very, I don’t want to say slow, but very steady progression in a comfortable way because when things, software always things break and you don’t want to be hurting 6000 people. So in the beginning there are a lot of hiccups, but we ironed them out early enough and we had a small number of users so now things are more stable. I’m very happy with the way things are going back to your question, we’re close to 6000 now and we’re five people now on the team between support, developers, me kind of managing for five people, wow.

How many support? Like I said, other than you? Two developers, two support.

We have actually one support and then one developer primarily on the plugins because we still sell three WordPress plugins, so there’s support on that and then there’s repurposes. I have two developers but I jump in between. I have support whenever needed. I try not to touch the code, but if I have to, I get in there and I touch it because I usually break it, so I kind of float. Around, but I’m more and more stepping away and focusing more on doing the marketing side of things and stepping back in the big picture and the road maps and that kind of stuff, which is hard for me. I like doing it, but I like to also get in the code and solve a problem. That’s my instinct. Here’s a problem that’s solved, but now it’s like, okay, let’s focus on growing better and growing. Yeah. Which is obviously important for the business. But I enjoy both sides.

Yeah. I also enjoy the creation as well as marketing because I feel like so many of us still feel like talent alone is enough, or talent in the case of whether that’s your singer, your Broadway actor, that’s the body as an instrument or your talent as in what your software brings. Still, people need to actively market themselves and their products, and you can’t just sit back and let somebody else take control. But at the same time, I’m curious, what was the decision like for you to be the CMO, like team marketing versus hiring someone like a director of marketing to try to assist you with the marketing side of things?

I’m a bit of a control freak. So I built this, the plug. In the first plugin I launched, I launched with a business partner. So I was the technical and he was the marketing, because I didn’t know what I was getting into. And he had the right audience and we worked together and we got it out to a lot of people. The second plugin, I wanted to be more, I want to say the face of the product, but I wanted to be more like the person behind the product. So I just did that one on my own marketing and then the development, I had help with it. So in the beginning, people got I learned a little I don’t want to say a trick, but it’s something that I humanize the software in a sense that I’ve always put my face on the product, that, hey, I’m accessible, you can reach me. I’m part of the Facebook groups. All over the podcast and Facebook groups. I show up at a conference in person to meet people face to face. So I kind of humanize the software. So people got to know me as well as the software, which I think helps as a content creator, software creator, whatever creator will get to know you, especially the software, because you’re not in the face.

There’s no video or anything. Right. It’s software. So anyway. So I humanize. The people got to know me. So I became almost attached to the brand early on, which I think helped me as we went around and grew more and more software in the launch, repurpose people. Oh, you’re the guy from the WordPress plugin that did this one. I like that. I’m going to check this out too.

Oh, yeah.

So I became part of the marketing. So I don’t see it happening too. But at some point when we get big enough, we’ll probably hire more people to help with the marketing. But I still feel like I know the product and I know my customers. I mean, it’s growing. I don’t know every single customer, obviously, but I know the type of customers. But I’m having a hard time letting go and I’m enjoying being kind of the one to market the product. But I will definitely get some help.

Yeah, at some point. And I think $6,000, it’s definitely a sizable base of people. And I think you can learn you’re already learning so much from them. And it’s easier to profile using Facebook look alike. And I’m recently became a big fan of Instream ads and YouTube. Okay, yes.

I haven’t touched the YouTube ads yet. I’ve been kind of looking at the Facebook now, but YouTube not yet on my list.

I’ll send you a quick video because to be honest, I start watching these. I mean, everybody’s looking for information, trying to get past caught through the chaos. And so my producer sent me a video to say, watch this. I want you to rerecord this video with basically, Google Ads is what you use to set up in stream ads for YouTube. It’s always confusing, right? You think you should do it natively in YouTube, but Google bought them. So Google Ads managing all of this once you set it up once what’s incredible about Instream ads is you can place your you talking the video or like a commercial for repurpose onto these specific videos that are already popular, that are already podcast or related. For example, like Pat Flynn, who there are a bunch of other guys like Pat Flynn, right? But he did a video on how to start your podcast in 2019, how to start your podcast in 2020. And these videos are getting and it’s Playlist is getting millions of downloads. And you can place your ad right at the beginning of that video. And if people watch it under 30 seconds, you don’t pay.

That is wow, that sounds awesome.

I know. I will send you the details because it took me some time to create that instruction. I was like, no, no way. This just sounds too good to be true.

Yeah, it sounds way too good to be true.

Exactly. Like if they skip the video, they don’t watch and then you don’t pay and you ended up I think the CPV was under. I pay like four cents per view, and per view is 30 seconds or more. And then you can channel subscribers and the view for either the video or to grow. But obviously you don’t have to just link to your videos, but you can also send people to directly to your website for your services and products.

Yeah, definitely send me details on that. That sounds awesome because we do a lot of education through video and how to use the software, how to kind of strategy. So if you can be in front of the right audience on YouTube, perfect.

Yeah, it’s here. Hey guys, it’s Fawu and you’re listening to the Phase Feisworld podcast. Today on Phase World. Welcome Hani Mora, who is the founder of Repurpose Dot IO. It’s a software for coaches, content creators and entrepreneurs. Because when you create your content once, it will help you publish it everywhere. Now back to the show speaking. I want to put my repurposed videos in front of the right audience as well. Because speaking of which, even though I’m not a marketer for you, I sort of am, because I signed up for affiliate marketing with repurpose and kind of spread the word and I want to see how all that works together. So I want to hear about your journey. As you know, before we started the show, because of who I am, I didn’t really grow up here in Boston. I grew up in Beijing, moved here about 20 years ago and this is my second home. And as a result I’m really proud to have interviewed a lot of immigrants to hear more about immigrant stories and immigrant women as well. What was your journey like? Were you born and raised in Canada and how did you get to where you are?

Actually, I was born in Kuwait, so I grew up in the Middle East. I was born in Kauai. And then when the Gulf floor happened and that’s when we woke up and there was this gunshots and bombs and outside our window we’re like, that’s not good. I was eleven, maybe around eleven or ten, didn’t really know what’s going on. And then basically we just had to stay in our house, in our apartment at the time, and basically two months later we had to just kind of pack everything up in a Jeep. My parents, I got a driver who drove me, my two brothers and my parents just drove out and we left and we crossed the border and then we ended up coming to the US. To stay with my dad’s, brother, my uncle, and then we end up kind of back and forth and we finally settled in Canada a couple of years later. So yeah, it’s an interesting back story. It doesn’t usually come up on podcasts, but it’s kind of fun to share and look back and say, wow, that happened when you’re eleven and you don’t really realize what’s going on when you’re.

Eleven and you still remember.

Yeah, I remember like waking up and there was just jet fighters outside the window, windows rattling, there’ll be bombs every couple of days and the windows would rattle and we’re like, okay, we’re just going to stay in here and not get close to the windows. And yeah, looking back I was like, wow, it’s weird that happened, but when you’re there you didn’t really appreciate what was happening which was probably good, almost like a protection mechanism. But we all left. My cousins, we all lived in Kauai and we all left, and now we’re all here in Canada, so all worked out. And now we all have kids, and our kids are growing up here together. Yeah, together, within an hour drive of each other. But it’s just cool that we all grew up together and then we all left and we all ended up in the same place now and our kids are growing up together.

Wow. Where were you in the US when you first got here?

We were in Florida. We stay with my uncle for a bit, and then we came back to Canada. We kind of bounced around for a couple of years, finally settled in Canada. Maybe next I forget my date took her off. But like, every year we’d be moving back and forth in US. And Canada. US. And Canada. And we settled here, and then my cousins were also here, and we went to university here, and our life started here when we’re kind of like mid teenagers.

Do you still remember? You remember because you’re pre teen at that point? A lot of people don’t when they were super young. But do you remember the first couple of years where when you try to learn English, was it challenging trying to learn the language and make friends and be immersed in the culture?

Yeah, actually, we were very fortunate in Kuwait, we were in a private school, so we were learning English there, like English and Arabic, so language was not an issue. Like, we learned English growing up, ever since I went to school. So very fortunate for that. But we came to us, the culture was different. The US. Canada culture is a lot of things that we didn’t get it right, but you’re pretty young and you just adapt and yeah, it’s hard because every year for four years, we’re in one school. The next year we moved to a different country, a different school, and back to the US. For a year and then back to Canada for a year. It’s around early high schoolish, so it’s like a hard time to be moving around. But yeah, it kind of worked out.

It worked out. You’re young. I mean, I moved here when I was 17. I was so pumped. I love the American culture. I was a skater and a hockey player. Yeah, it will fit in. It’s like this is I really was loving it. But in retrospect, now in my 30s, I’m like, oh, that was really hard. Oh, wow. How did I deal with that moment? And like you said, it’s like a protective mechanism, I got to say. Do you remember the food transition? Because I really like Arabic food, like Middle Eastern food is something I just I don’t know, it will make me really fat. I just eat it every day. But was it hard for you or, like, parents cooked for you?

Yeah, like our parents always cooked. And when we came to Canada, and lots continued the same tradition, my grandparents moved here, and so the cooking stayed the same. Especially we live in Toronto area, so now it’s very easy to get Middle Eastern food or any kind of food. Any kind of food. Everything is around us now. We live in a world where you can just order any kind of food you want. I mean, this is we’re lucky that in Toronto area, it’s very multicultural here. We get all kinds of food. I never noticed a transition in food. I don’t remember specifics, but the culture was just the way people were a little bit different. Yeah, I was used to growing up, and then you kind of like, adopt and you kind of figure out but, you know, it’s obviously hard making friends in the beginning, but at least the language was there.

Was it normal? Was it common for kids to grow up in Kuwait and being able to learn English? Because I will preface by saying that, for example, in mainland China, there are fewer way fewer private schools. There are more today, but when I was growing up, there’s, like, two of them in Beijing, and very wealthy kids can go, where is it in the US. It’s a little more balanced. Was it very special for you guys to be educated?

Yeah, it was very expensive. But we were very fortunate that my mom and my aunt, my cousins and I all went to private school. So my mom and my aunt, they worked at the school. So when you work at the school, your kids go for free or for heavy discounts. We were fortunate. Otherwise it’s way too expensive. You can’t afford a private school. So yeah, there were maybe two, I want to say two private schools. There wasn’t a lot of options. But again, things kind of happened, and we’re fortunate that my mom and aunt worked there, so we were able to get a discount for free. I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. We were fortunate enough to be able to go to private school because it kind of helped us adopt a lot quicker when we moved to Canada.

Isn’t it crazy, though? Like, think about I just feel like our life and when the dots connect. Think about when your mom and your aunt apply for different jobs. Like, then they ended up at the school. They might like it very much, but they could also have ended up somewhere else. But ten years later, it prepared both of their kids to make that transition very differently than if you attend a regular school.

Oh, yeah. Like one small not small, but one thing happens here that, like, the impact ten years later or 20 years later is just amazing. You can’t imagine not having that first step that our parents took. Yeah, it’s mind boggling. How that everything kind of lines up and works out.

Yeah, for sure. Wow, this is super cool. Well, thanks so much for your time. Are there any questions that you’ve been I know you’ve probably appeared on other interviews as well, but conferences where you speak at, what are some of the questions and things I haven’t asked that you want to close on or want to discuss?

I can’t think of anything, but I mean, just kind of like in closing, I would say whatever you’re excited about now, just take imperfect action. I’ve heard this expression before, imperfect action. I didn’t know I was going to create repurpose when I launched a WordPress plugin five years ago. If I didn’t launch it, I didn’t take the risk and do it and struggle through it and figure out all that stuff. I wouldn’t have created this bigger software cause repurpose. So you don’t know what there are small steps that you’re taking now where that would lead you down the road, but you have to take action. And if it works, great. If it doesn’t work, at least you learn something that you can adjust your path. I want to summarize my experience so far in this entrepreneurial world, just take small steps and even though you don’t know the big plan yet, it’s part of a bigger puzzle.

Yeah, like this whole cosmic impact, like you said. And same thing 2014 when I recorded my first episode. Some of my friends are like, come on, what a cheesy thing to do. And that really help prepared me less than two years, I think a year and a half to leave my fulltime job, which was something I always wanted to do, and then to start my own company and to see it grow in so many different areas. So I love the message and thank you so much for your time. I know you’re super busy and we’re in a time zone, at least.

Sure, yeah, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for having it. It’s been fun. It’s been a lot of fun and I appreciate the opportunity.

For sure. So awesome. So what are you going to do for the rest of the day? Oh, there we go. I think the rest of the day is happening right now.

Yeah, please let me just hang that up. Okay.

So funny. Perfect timing.

Yeah.

I forgot to ask you one thing. Sorry. How many hours? It’s a silly question. Do you work on your company? What is your work week like?

It varies when it’s close to a release. We try to do a release every month, really close to a month and a half. Near the end, it’s just like in the pieces to go to the testing team and everybody coordinated and stuff. I’m picky, so I go in there and I make sure I test a lot of things, especially new features. I want to make sure smooth. I spend a lot more time during that time but I don’t know. During the average week, I’m at it every day. So doing something every day before the kids come home around 03:00, I try to go for a walk in the morning, about an hour or so. Say around between ten and three.

Yeah, every day. I’m sure.

You’re sure?

When the kids go to sleep, you’re going to tweak this thing, do that thing.

Yeah, I used to do that more, but now I’m to the point where the products mature enough and I got to just reprioritize. In the beginning, I was burning myself out. I got to go, I got to keep going. But now it’s like I can’t think clear if I’m forcing myself. So if we’re making a new feature, a new something or ten to solve, how we’re going to do this problem, just kind of let it go for a bit. Tomorrow morning, wake up, go for my walk. Maybe during my walk, I’ll think about it. I’m trying to time manage better and spend more time with my wife afterwards and just hang, just disconnect a little bit. Because I love it. The problem is I love it too much. I’m sure you’re the same way you love it. You can do it all day and then you can go at night and go all night. But I know at least it’s not healthy to do that. I need that break. I forced myself to take a break. But it’s actually funny because lately I’ve been struggling. This kind of sounds really weird. Struggling to find a hobby.

What do I do when I’m not doing this at night? I don’t like to watch TV too much. I watch with my wife. We have our shows, but I don’t enjoy watching TV. I don’t enjoy reading a lot either. What do I do?

Yeah, I know what you mean.

So then my instinct has got the laptop. Okay, what else can we build? Or maybe I should just test this feature so that’s trying to find a hobby sounds really weird. I tell my friends, hey, I’m trying to find a hobby. What do you guys think I should do? They’re like, what’s wrong with you?

This episode of the Face World Podcast is brought to you by Phase World LLC, our marketing service agency created for independent creators and businesses. We offer website development, video production, marketing, mentorship to people who want to tell better stories, level up, and create a profitable brand. Face War podcast team, our chief editor and producer, Herman Sevillos. Associate producer, Adam Leffert. Social media and content manager. Rose De Leon Transcript editor, Alina Afmidova. And lastly, myself, the creator and host of Phase World. Thank you so much for listening.