Shahrzad Rafati, Chairperson and CEO, BBTV Holdings
The 5th episode of Canada Business talks featured Canada’s own Shahrzad Rafati Chairperson and CEO of BBTV hosted by Shiraz Siddique, Media Host and Consulting Editor for Canadian SME Business magazine.
In this up-close & personal interaction, Shahrzad offered insights into how she grew her idea into a multi-million dollar enterprise with a mission to help creators become more successful. She shares how to measure, monitor and manage these four KPIs: financial, people, social, and environmental, allowing them to successfully quadruple their bottom-line business.
About Shahrzad
Shahrzad actively pursues ways to encourage social change and is a champion for equality in all forms, and is passionate about job creation, climate action, education, and advancing opportunities for women and girls. In 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Shahrzad as Co-Chair of G20 EMPOWER, a private sector alliance intended to support the greater recruitment and advancement of women in leadership in the private sector in each of the G20 countries.
Shahrzad is an inspiring leader and champion for equality who supports a number of influential Boards and Associations including as Vice-Chair Invest in Canada, Board Director for Bjarke Ingels Group, and Co-Chair of G20 EMPOWER. She has been broadly recognized for her contributions to the media industry and entrepreneurship.
In October of 2020, Shahrzad also led BBTV’s historic IPO as one of the Top 10 Tech listings of all time on the TSX.
Q&A
Thank you, Shiraz, and Canadian SME, for having this conversation with me. Before we get started, I want to acknowledge that BBTV’s HQ is located on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh. And all of us at BBTV, our prayers and thoughts are with those that are impacted by the floods.
Shiraz Siddique
When you walk into a boardroom, people might be seeing your appearance already formulating opinions, ‘she is too young, ‘Is she in the right room? does she belong? So how have you navigated those moments where you just weren’t sure where you were walking into, and they were the ones that weren’t ready for you?
Shahrzad Rafati
Yeah, that’s a good question. At the end of the day, regardless of your background or gender, people can form an opinion. I feel that you always want to be more prepared in the room to speak about your space to speak about the industry. I always tell my team to be over-prepared. No one can challenge that because everyone wants to learn from each other, and I believe that if you’re going into a room and you’re able to speak to what you do and your landscape better than everyone else, no one can ignore you. It doesn’t matter which corner of the world you’re from and what your background is.
Shiraz Siddique
My name is Shiraz; you can imagine how many times my name has been butchered over the years. And I’ve noticed in many different interviews when they’re mispronouncing your name, and you don’t even flinch! Instead, you’ve been more interested in the competence of your content.
How do you so easily dismiss other people’s basic lack of attention, even for your name? How do you do that?
Shahrzad Rafati
It all comes down to your goal and objective in a meeting. It just comes to the content and knowing what you want to get out of the conversation. I mean, I have a difficult name. So, I don’t get bothered. But I appreciate people who ask you how to say your name before saying it. That’s always nice and thoughtful. But I think we’re all here to have a good constructive conversation to make progress.
Shiraz Siddique
Okay, so what I’m hearing is, don’t let the objection override your objective. We have lived in this hypersensitive world over the last number of years, all walking on eggshells. And well, somebody is going to be offended or bothered? So how do you walk past those moments? Because what I’m seeing and sensing is your focus is tight, you’re not worried about left and right.
Shahrzad Rafati
I feel you can’t get distracted by or sweat over small things. You want to stay focused on your objectives, surround yourself with good people, and focus on that long-term vision you have for your life, your legacy, and your company. Look, I grew up in Iran during the revolution, so, you can imagine opportunities were very limited by the situation where I lived. That teaches you a lot earlier to know what you need to focus on and what matters in life.
Shiraz Siddique
I appreciate what you said earlier about preparation. And so, in my preparation, I dug into your story before you launched your business. Can you speak about your story before that seed or a business idea was planted?
Shahrzad Rafati
It doesn’t matter where you’re from or your background; your past doesn’t define your future. I had more opportunities to fail than succeed. As I said, I grew up in Iran during the war, with so much instability. Content was rationed, inequality was an everyday reality, particularly for me as a young woman. Experiencing that inequality firsthand creates a desire and a passion for being a positive agent for change. And it brings me back to one of my favourite quotes from Gandhi, which is to be the change you wish to see in the world. That’s why I moved to Canada to have access to more inclusive and equal opportunity. Growing up, I always knew that I wanted to build a global business from the time that I was a young teenager. So I often get asked the question, well, how do I start?
I think that if you believe in yourself and you follow your passion, you’ll figure it out, and you’re going to make mistakes along the way, and that’s okay. I’m personally so passionate about a quadruple bottom-line business. You see a lot more of that in this new generation of entrepreneurs, where from the beginning, they think about the impact that they have, not just in terms of innovating and driving financial results, but also looking at how they impact the world socially, environmentally, and also how they look at treating their employees and other stakeholders.
Shiraz Siddique
Now, can you describe that window where you began to flirt with the idea of sinking your teeth into it? Trepidation causes many people to struggle at that moment. Do I jump in the water or stay onshore? Can you describe those days? Those weeks, those moments where you’re like, do I do this? And what finally pushed you in?
Shahrzad Rafati
I was still in school. And just before graduating from UBC, I was studying computer science. I was passionate about mathematics and technology. Seventeen years ago, we were in the early days of the digital space. I saw what happened with Steve Jobs and the invention of the iPod, and I just knew that video was going to be the next thing. Given my background, being so passionate about the democratization of content, and being able to empower all storytellers to tell their story to find the audiences and talk about their passion, that was very important to me. I wanted to play a significant role in all of it, and that’s why I started BBTV. So there was no hesitation. As a fact, I started BBTV before finishing school, and then I went back a year later and took the last four courses to graduate.
When I even moved to Canada, I learned about the culture; I learned about the language by watching my favourite pieces of content. So really, content also played a role as being my teacher, and I learned English watching the news and also The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air! Will Smith. I was an immigrant, and he was in Philly. So he was kind of an outlier, too. All of us feel connected to the content that can help us grow and educate and entertain us. Given how digital can level the playing field, it was an excellent opportunity to democratize content and help content creators become more successful.
Shiraz Siddique
You have mentioned a number of influences that shaped your life. Mentorship is something that most people are always looking for. Can you share some of the experiences and the folks in your life that have acted as mentors that you feel contributed to where you are today? What was your experience as you continue to journey, and what do you glean from different people in your life?
Shahrzad Rafati
Of course, I believe in mentorship. I also like to call it sponsorship because you have skin in the game when you’re sponsoring someone. A few people have inspired me in my life, both male and female. I’ve always been vocal about how important it is for entrepreneurs to surround themselves with amazing people. My first female inspiration was my mom. My parents were both entrepreneurs; my mom ran a textile business, where I supported by doing some accounting work as a young teenager, and my dad ran a real estate business. So they’re both inspirational people who I massively admire. But as far as I would say, outside the family, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a role model for many. She’s an incredible inspiration to me and so many other women. She’s a fierce embodiment of equality and changed so much how we look at things in North America, particularly for men and women. She has made the world a better place, and we could all be so fortunate to do the same.
The other role model for me is Marc Benioff, the CEO and founder of Salesforce. I admire Marc because when you look at his philosophy, I think he’s, if not the best leader; he’s one of the best leaders of our lifetime. I admire his philosophy, which is that the most excellent platform for change is business. I agree with him. He’s impacting his community, from schools to hospitals, impacting the environment, and of course, his employees and all the stakeholders.
Shiraz Siddique
You’ve mentioned leadership, accountability, and these are words and essential traits that we all share. But they mean more to you than the average bear; this isn’t just something that you’re spewing out, right? These words mean something to you.
Shahrzad Rafati
We need to take a moment to look at where we find ourselves today. We’ve had the largest global pandemic in over 100 years, and the world is coming out of a lockdown or maybe going back to a lockdown. Entire industries have slowed, pivoted, and some of them cease to exist. This was closely followed by one of the most important human rights movements we’ve seen in generations. So with all that has happened, there has been a realization of the importance of leadership. We’ve seen vividly contrasting leadership styles by different world leaders who have demonstrated dramatically different results in terms of how they’ve managed through the pandemic, comforting the public through loss upheaval, and we’ve also become painfully aware of an absence of leadership when it has occurred. Empathy is one thing the best leaders have in common. I believe that empathy is key to inclusivity. We need to really listen and do our best as leaders to understand the variety of perspectives that we represent and impact our businesses and know that great leadership really is at the heart of positive change in this world, from accountability to equality to justice. The solutions to the world’s problems still lie in great leadership.
Shiraz Siddique
You can literally feel your passion and your intellect. You’re not just a talking head, there is so much depth to you. And it’s represented in your business. Now, these aren’t things that you’re just saying to sound nice – this really is you and drives you. We can see who you are as an individual being emulated and built out in your business. You’ve mentioned the quadruple bottom line a few times. What is that?
Shahrzad Rafati
Quadruple bottom line means you measure success, not just based on financial results, but you’re looking at social, you’re looking at people and environmental KPIs – that’s building a quadruple bottom-line business. It comes down to setting goals, measuring them, and reporting on them, so you also need to make sure that you have the right processes and the right pipelines and incentives across the whole organization. And, of course, you need to have the systems in place to make those goals become a reality. We need to have both short-term and long-term plans for our KPIs. So the same way you think about a budgeting exercise for your financial KPIs, your revenue, your top line, your gross profit, your EBITDA, you also want to budget for all the other bottom lines. Apply that same attention to detail that you do with your financial goals to the other bottom lines because that’s how you build a healthier and more successful organization. And very similar to your financial KPIs, we’ve done the same thing in building that quadruple bottom-line business. It’s also the willingness and the desire to be accountable for progress. And as you said, it’s not about just having conversations around them. It’s actually setting goals and tracking them to make sure you’re making progress and getting your team to be part of that. So that’s what we’ve done at BBTV and how we truly treat all of our corporate bottom lines.
Shiraz Siddique
You sound like you’re just as passionate today as you were when you launched this many years ago. What maintains and what feeds that passion, that desire that drives you towards your goals and maintains your focus?
Shahrzad Rafati
My passion has increased from day one, and every day it grows because I believe that true success is how we can impact the world, and a business can be the biggest platform for positive change. This is an incredible motivator for me. As a media-tech company, we’re helping content creators become more successful, and we’re helping them to connect to their audiences. We are home to some of the largest influencers and content creators in the world that define today and tomorrow’s culture. With that, they can make a significant impact in the world. And for us to be able to build a business that is empowering that creator economy is something that I’m very passionate about. Doing that and being a quadruple bottom line business is very important to me, and it inspires me. We have had a 0% pay gap for nearly more than five years, and we practice equality and all its forms. So we’ve implemented policies and programs to ensure that we’re a very responsible business, for example from an environmental perspective as a carbon-neutral business. That also attracts the best talent who cares about making an impact and making a positive impact.
Shiraz Siddique
You know, it’s clear that you’re not creating a business or building a business; you’re creating a category that didn’t exist in the framework with which you’ve brought it to the market. One of my favourites is Donald Miller, who has a whole program built around building a better brand story. Can you touch on simplifying your message for a quick moment because that’s important to almost everybody listening? How was that creative process for you when you were distilling it down to the core of your message?
Shahrzad Rafati
Yeah, we have an incredible marketing team. But I would say; it’s always good to have an outsider because many times, you live it, and even though to you it may sound so simple, it may not be that way to others. You’ve heard this many times: if you can explain the business to your grandma, your mom, then it probably makes sense, but I feel like it’s always excellent to have an outsider. It’s an evolution, trying to simplify your message and your narrative and whom it may or may not resonate with. You also need to be able to test it and to see if it really works or doesn’t work, because you can have the best brains in the room, and you can come up with the best narrative, and still, you’re going to go and test it, and it may not really sit well.
Shiraz Siddique
What we’re hearing today is don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be scared to experiment, and you’re never going to know unless you try. There’s disruption, but then there is creation, when what you do never existed before. Now that you’ve created a category, you will see copycats. Other people will try to come in over the next little while and maybe replicate. What are your thoughts on competition?
Shahrzad Rafati
Yeah, one of the greatest joys as an entrepreneur is constantly disrupting yourself. But, unfortunately, entrepreneurs often fall in love with the idea, the product, everything they build and become too defensive. This is a recipe for disaster; you need to be open-minded and think about how you can disrupt yourself. I think it’s probably one of my better traits as an entrepreneur. I always also tried to listen to younger employees and younger generations because how we interact with content changes so rapidly.
Having everyone involved in the decision-making process when you’re launching new products is important. And also, consider trends if you need to change your strategy, and that’s what we’ve done really well at BBTTV.
Shiraz Siddique
Wow. Don’t wait to be disrupted; disrupt yourself. Don’t settle in; continue to push the envelope, challenge yourself and solve larger problems. You stress and emphasize the leadership factor and the impact that has on our ability not only to take our business forward but when we first began to chat, you spoke about preparation, well over-prepared, so you’re never going to be caught off guard,
And finally, your objective should always override the objection. And this way, it doesn’t matter what people throw at you or how they treat you because you’re so laser-focused on your objective.
Thank you for taking the time to be with us on Small Business Talks, brought to you by Canadian SME Business Magazine.
