Women With Impact #45 - Erifili Gounari
Welcome to Women With Impact, a newsletter all about the journeys of mission-driven women and how they have a positive impact in our world.
I’m Clara Richter and this is the 45th edition of Women With Impact. If you enjoy this issue, please share it with a friend and like it above.
For this edition, I interviewed Erifili Gounari, Founder of The Z Link, a Gen Z-led social media agency that helps brands connect with our generation. Based in London, the social media marketer worked on social media strategies of global organisations, such as Deloitte and IKEA. She is a writer, author of “Design your life: Your career, Your way”, and travel photographer. Erifili is a Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe lister and regularly shares Gen Z insights and research to publications around the world.
Wishing you a pleasant read!
Best,
Clara
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The Journey
Who are you and how do you most like to spend your time?
I am Erifili and the Founder and CEO of The Z Link, which I founded in 2020. I am also a writer, and travel photographer. I most like to spend my time very intentionally – I don't think I spend most of my time working but doing things that directly make me feel present. This is usually either spending time with other people or doing something creative, such as writing or expressing myself in some way - things that force me to slow down, like creative hands-on hobbies. Overall, I want to spend most of my time as present as possible.
What’s the story behind founding The Z Link?
Four years ago, I was working in social media and saw that a big pain point for brands was that they didn't know how to communicate with Gen Z. Consequently, they wanted to hire social media strategists and experts that were from Gen Z to help them reach this generation. At the time, there was no social media agency specialising solely on Gen Z, so that’s where I saw the opportunity.
With The Z Link, we essentially bridge the growing gap between brands and Gen Z. We help clients grow on social media by making marketing more human and community driven. What we focus on is making brands engage with this generation and sharing impactful messages. We grew to 25 people who are located around 12 countries across the globe. We work on social media strategies, content creation and management, as well as market research. By now, we do have a global market network of 20’000 Gen-Zers in over 40 countries, with whom we create yearly reports on understanding generational preferences.
What’s your favourite part of building and leading The Z Link?
There are two favourite parts: On the one hand, I do love to craft social media strategies myself or execute creative elements of it. In essence, the creative direction. On the other hand, it’s my team! Working with great people every day is what I value, especially when it feels natural – something I enjoy it massively.
What recent success are you most proud of?
There are many milestones which I am proud of. We're currently working with a very interesting beauty brand; the campaign has not launched yet so I can’t say more at the present time. What I can say is that it’s an influencer campaign with 25 different creators. It has been a journey coordinating all stakeholders and all moving elements of the campaign, to make it synchronise together. I am so proud that we’ve managed to bring this together with the team – it’s a big win for me.
The Lessons
What challenge have you encountered when building The Z Link?
As a Gen Z agency, our unique selling point is that, as we are ourselves from that generation, we know what’s important to us and live these values. In some situations, potential clients do reach out, however they don't feel ready to trust someone that's younger than them. They think they are ready, but they are not. There was an instance where a prospect tried to micromanage our team because they tended to believe that due to our age, we would not know how to do certain things. There was a lack of trust; it just did not work out so we did not follow the project.
How would you build trust with mentioned prospects?
The most important thing is that clients need to be ready to trust us. When you're paying someone for a service, you need to trust them. It works best when we put our energy into those brands that give us the trust and creative freedom to do what they're hiring us to do. We try to do a lot more of that rather than trying to convert brands that might not be ready to start with us in the first place.
You shared that your first book will come out this summer, could you share a little more what it’s all about?
The book is my favourite thing ever to do. Before starting my writing journey, it was not quite clear to me how I could best help people through my journey. The process for me means putting everything that I’ve learned about one specific topic into one piece of work. And beyond that, trying to make it as useful as possible to anyone who might read it – I think it’s so rewarding.
The title of the book is “Design your life: Your career, Your way”. What I want to bring across to those that might be just at the very start of their careers – such as students and young ambitious people – is how to get clear on building careers that contribute to their happiness. Essentially, crafting a career that is flexible and fulfilling early in life by using digital tools and resources that are available to us.
The Inspiration
What resource do you think people should make most use of, other than of course your book and your services at The Z Link?
This is going to sound probably controversial but genuinely, social media. Obviously, most individuals are using social media, but I don't think people realise how they can use it to shoot their shot and create very different lives than they are currently living. Social media is a tool that you can you use in so many ways: to make connections, to network and access opportunities, as well as to build a brand and a community. And of course, also to sell products and services. Most of the channels you are probably already using, but changing your mindset to a growth and opportunity mindset in the context of social media can be a game changer.
What situation in your life have you most grown from?
While building the company, I've grown a lot: it forced me to learn so much in such a short time. Looking back, I had to answer some big questions (to myself and to my team): How do I want my life to look like? What does success mean to me? How do I structure my career around building an everyday life that feels aligned with who I am?
Overall, I’d say that I've grown most through relationships with other people. I think connections in life can have a huge impact on your life, on who you are and essentially, who you become. From my perspective, nothing can really match that.
Who inspires you most on your journey?
I don't have a singular role model – my friends inspire me most. For me, it’s easiest to be inspired by people you truly know: knowing what it takes for them to do certain things in life, and seeing them do the right thing for themselves. I get to see what their journey really means and how they're being strong and courageous in difficult situations.
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