In this booming era of content creation and entrepreneurship, the Gulf region has emerged as a hub for social media marketing. Boasting high levels of digital media consumption and prominent influencers, the Gulf market is attractive for businesses looking to reach wider Arab audiences. The growing demand for personalized content has generated a creative and innovative space where young entrepreneurs can adapt short reels over Instagram and TikTok into potent advertising.

Launched during the coronavirus pandemic, the Khosh Fkra podcast was the first in Bahrain to discuss business ideas and challenges in a simple manner. Khosh Fkra co-founders Bader Almadaifa, Abdulla Ahmadi, and Wasan Yousif developed interactive and fun business content on social media, ending each post with their infamous cat meme. The topics ranged from inflation, debt, and loan management to interesting facts about local Bahraini businesses.

AGSIW spoke to Bader Almadaifa, the CEO of Khosh Fkra Media, to learn more about his experience, motivation, and journey with Khosh Fkra as it transitioned from a business podcast to marketing agency serving clients in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

AGSIW: Tell us about yourself and the story behind Khosh Fkra.

Bader: I studied law with business as a double major at the University of Brighton in the United Kingdom. For a long time, my main ambition was to become a commercial lawyer at a multinational firm in the GCC. But I also had a passion for business. I was always starting ventures from clothing brands to card games, you name it.

The breakthrough came when I was on a team conducting interviews of young Bahraini business owners to learn their stories as part of a social experiment that’s going to be written about in a book. During these interviews, I met many young, passionate, and ambitious Bahrainis from different fields and expanded my network. Among them were two lovely individuals called Abdullah and Wasan. Together, we decided to start a business podcast, the first of its kind in Bahrain at the time. It was fresh and exciting, launched amid the pandemic.

As a group of university kids, we started Khosh Fkra, which means “amazing idea” in Bahraini slang, initially as a podcast sharing the stories of Bahraini entrepreneurs and leading figures in business. We created business content to market the podcast, mainly on Instagram, and eventually this content gained popularity over our podcast! We realized that this intrigued our audience, so we shifted our focus and effort to enhancing its quality.

AGSIW: What type of content were you producing? How did this lead to other business opportunities?

Bader: From an account largely supported by friends and family, today our content reaches over 50 million views on a monthly basis with over 500,000 followers across all platforms. We initially presented business and financial content in a fun and engaging way, accompanied by our infamous cat meme at the end. Our posts started “going viral” in Bahrain, and this led to several marketing agencies, influencers, and professionals following and engaging with our content. Our media outreach and audience base caught the attention of businesses in Bahrain as an innovative way to promote their products and services.

Through this we saw a window of opportunity to monetize this platform to provide corporate content creation and social media development, especially as our audience became valuable for many advertisers. We started receiving offers for small-sized collaborations with businesses over social media, then we slowly received promotion deals aiding in our transition into a media agency. Today our agency offers content creation services and advertising videos, and we manage social media accounts for banks, malls, restaurants, cafes, and startups in Bahrain. We expanded to Qatar and just recently to Riyadh.

We turned that small initiative to educate young people about business into what is now a company that’s operating in three different cities and has a team of around 44 young Bahrainis. I’m the one managing the operations – yes, very different from commercial law! But I’m really grateful for that Khosh (amazing) idea that came to my mind a few years ago as a student and to be here telling my story.

AGSIW: What was your target audience when you started?

Bader: Honestly, starting out, we weren’t very sophisticated in terms of really drilling down on a target audience. We wanted to benefit people like ourselves who were looking for valuable content around business, as we had our own aspirations of starting a business but couldn’t find any tailored or localized content for inspiration.

AGSIW: How did students writing advice for students draw attention from businesses?

Bader: Our information on businesses drew attention from influencers, marketing agencies, and professionals who supported our content through reposts and engagements. We researched ways to monetize our platform, focusing on our competitive advantage as we made short, viral content in a market thriving on viral media content driven by consumer preferences. We opted for a business-to-business, or B2B, service aimed at promotion and brand services.

A big breakthrough that showed us we were on the right path was when one of our first clients, Ramez, reached out expressing their interest in our content. Several others followed. We began to establish credibility in the market and started pitching social media management strategies to businesses, creating new content to advertise them on our social media platforms. Our goal to create enjoyable content is constant even with our vision of the brand evolving. Our focus was the podcast when we started, but today it’s bigger.

AGSIW: Have there been any big challenges as Khosh Fkra evolved into an agency?

Bader: I can think of two main challenges. The first one was taking that leap of faith and committing to the vision entirely. Starting something as a student on the side is very different than accepting that this is my life, my career. I have no plan B. That was the big step that every startup founder has to take at one point. Successful startups are not built on the side. They’re built with the leader in the forefront fighting every single day. But if you go through law school, you do your masters, you complete your Legal Practice Course – you have a very lucrative, high paying career in front of you that’s stable and comfortable. You let go of that to follow the dream that could work out or not depending on variables outside your control. It takes a lot of guts. That decision to burn the boats was one of the most important I’ve ever had to face.

The second challenge would be in transitioning into an agency managing 44 people straight out of university, especially as I had never worked a full-time job. There is a level of social intelligence you need to have in dealing with people, how to have that balance between being strict and friendly. There is a reason high-level managerial roles come at a certain age. It takes a lot of character and experience to discipline and lead people. It requires knowing how to manage yourself. If you can’t inspire yourself, you can’t inspire anyone else.

AGSIW: Are all your 44 team members content creators?

Bader: I was the only founder starting full-time in January 2023. Around April 2023, my co-founder, Wasan, joined the team as the chief content officer. The rest of the team members are mostly content marketing executives, charged with creating content: videography and short reels that our video editor finalizes. A small part of the team are media executives working on business development, project managers, and creative directors. In addition, we have core staff in accounting and human resources.

AGSIW: Who are your biggest clients?

Bader: One of our biggest clients is Jasmis, a leading fast-food chain in Bahrain. When we started working with them it was extremely meaningful for us. The marketing post we created for Jasmis garnered our first 1,000 likes and became our first popular post. Back then, 1,000 likes to us was amazing, even though now it’s considerably below our average reach.

National Bank of Bahrain, or NBB, is another one of our top clients. West Walk of Qatar is significant as our first sole commitment client. Other interesting clients we work with are CrediMax, Benefit, and Gulf Air.

AGSIW: How are emerging agencies like Khosh Fkra changing the landscape of advertising?

Bader: Attention is the new currency. Platforms like ours know how to capture and retain it. Converting it will be the future of media.

For instance, a short video/reel we made for Junaid marketing a new perfume imitates a relative’s advice when it comes to what you should spend your money on. In 11 seconds a TikTok reel tells viewers in Bahraini dialect “Don’t buy this oud, but this oud (from Junaid Perfumes)” giving a comparison between purchasing a sports car versus buying a house. It earned 3.8 million views. Yet, the payout at the time was only 100 Bahraini dinars, about $265. Companies that pay high fees for billboards cannot match this outreach. Each video generates at least 50,000 views. This speaks to the effectiveness of the shift in media and how, with short content and key elements, you can reach a wide set of people anywhere in the world.

AGSIW: Do you have any takeaways for someone starting out or any advice you would give to your old self?

Bader: Have the courage to start. Because without that courage, without believing in yourself, you’ll never give yourself the opportunity to see what would happen.

Be brave. Don’t push it until tomorrow, the best time to start is always now.

But once you start, have the discipline to commit, continue, and keep doing it. If it’s running, keep running. If it’s building your business, keep building it. If it’s painting, keep painting. If it’s writing, keep writing. Just keep doing it!

That repetition allows you to get to the next part, which is refinement. Even if it’s just 1% every day, all of a sudden, those incremental improvements will produce an almost unrecognizable transformation. That’s a principle that can be applied to everything, whether we’re talking fitness, writing, or building a business.

When it comes to business, all you need to do is have the courage to start and the discipline to keep going.