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Connecting Real Estate Professionals with Amazon Alexa – Nishant Pant

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Guest: ​​​​​​​​​Nishant Pant
Company / Business name: ​​NEO Local Agent
Business web site​​​ | ​ ​ ​   ​​​Facebook   | Twitter

​Nishant Pant is a serial entrepreneur and his latest venture is NEO local agent, an application that connects real estate agents with customers using platforms like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Prior to NEO local agent, Nishant built Trip Karma, a ‘uber’ like app for local carpools and vans. Nishant is an eternal optimist and passionate about technology.

Show Notes:

Nishant introduces his startup ‘Neo Local Agent’ which puts the real estate agents a voice command away from their clients by establishing a communication channel  via Amazon’s Alexa. With approximately 4,000 real estate agents already on the network, the NEO Local agent is gaining popularity.

Nishant is a serial entrepreneur with his first startup built a knowledge base around local restaurants, parks etc. on iphones early on while the iphone platform was catching on. Even though that startup had 84,000 users and was catching on, Nishant couldn’t monetize it for various reasons. One reason was that competition caught on very quickly.

Even though Nishant has been doing all his ventures as side hustles, he said time was never an issue as he was very passionate about all his ventures. Even though not all of his ventures did not take off, Nishant believes that his optimistic attitude carries him through. Secondly, he believes that success is nothing but a series of failures.

Nishant talked about ideation and vetting initial ideas through some sort of customer adoption filter and secondly working to make sure that there is decent adoption by users. Even if there is no monetary exit, Nishant felt satisfied with user adoption like his app called trip karma which was a uber for local carppols and vans.

Nishant worked extensively with media to get recognition for NEO local agent. He selected relevant real estate media and sent very customized messages to get his app recognized. After one breakthrough, 200 agents signed up for his app and that lifted his platform.

Nishant gives few pieces of advice. (1) Entrepreneurship is hard so be very passionate about it (2) Always tell your story. Don’t think people will discover (3)








​Episode Transcript (Click to expand)

00:02

Ramesh: Hi Nishant welcome to the podcast.

00:06

Nishant: Hi Ramesh. Thank you for having me.

00:09

Ramesh: So Nishant, tell us what this agent Neo voice technology is all about.

00:16

Nishant: Sure. Yeah. So, you might be familiar with Amazon Alexa and Google assistant, right?

00:23

Ramesh: Correct, yes.

00:25

Nishant: Yeah. So, there are like hundred million Amazon echoes in US households right now. And although the capability right now is still evolving, like you can use it for reminders and you know, finding recipes and stuff like that. But more and more companies are getting creative about how you can use these virtual assistants, which are sitting in people's home waiting for the next command. So, what we have done with agent Neo is, if you are a real estate agent, you can sign up with us and then you get your own Alexa app, which you can give out to your clients and leads. And then from that point on, your clients can simply talk to Alexa for all the real estate needs. So, I’ll give you an example. So, let's say a client is looking for a home, they can just say, Alexa, find me a two-bedroom home in Seattle. So now you gave it two pieces of information. You need a two-bedroom home and you need the location in Seattle. So, what it will do is it will engage you in a quick conversation and it will ask like tell me what's your budget, how many bathrooms? So whatever information you give it in a natural language, it'll understand it and then it will ask you the missing pieces and then it will take that information and hand it to your agent and connect you over a phone call. So that's just one example. There are many ways of interacting with it. Like you can find your home value, you can sell your home, you can book a home showing stuff like that. So, it basically, in a nutshell, it's a communication channel between a real estate agent and their client. And our punchline is we put real estate agents voice command away from their clients.

02:09

Ramesh: Okay. So, essentially, you're creating a network of the home buyers and real estate agents using the voice technology so that they're connected and close by while one of the most important transactions in the lives of these people is going on.

02:30

Nishant: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's what the goal is. That's how we are evolving. So, we have around 4,000 agents on our network right now and slowly as the platform is catching on, we are seeing more and more activity. But yeah, you got it. That's what the whole platform is about.

02:49

Ramesh: Okay. So actually, on the side, I was curious like why did you name this agent Neo? Why didn't you just say voice enabled platform for real estate or some boring name like that?

03:02

Nishant: That is an interesting question. I didn't think anyone would ask that, but so I'm a big fan of the movie the matrix. Yeah. I am a big fan of the movie. So, in that movie there is a, the main characters name is Neo. Yeah, the main character is Neo. And then since, this is a platform for real estate and real estate agents. So, I kind of merged agent with Neo, so that's how I came up with the name.

03:35

Ramesh: Excellent. Very good. So, we know that this is not your first startup, so you had multiple startups. If you could trace back, first, let's go with the entrepreneurial story, right? So, it's before, at some point you switched careers, you left a job and then started. So, what was your first startup?

03:58

Nishant: I’ve done so much. I guess part of that, what the significant side. But I’ve done so much that it's hard to trace where my journey started.

04:11

Ramesh: But anything that's significant that you can think of. Not necessarily the first one.

04:15

Nishant: Yeah, so I would say the first, relatively successful startup I heard was, it was called, it was an iPhone app back in 2012 called locally. And at that time iPhone were just you know the smartphone are just catching on. And then what I did with that was, it was, let’s say you move to a new city and you have no idea what to do with, where is a good dentist, you know, where are the good restaurants? You have no idea. So, like who do you, who do you ask? And at that time, they were just like online forums. You can, you know, like unstructured information on all over the internet. So, Yelp wasn't that well integrated into the community. So, what I did was, so we had an app locally and then what you could do is you can open the app and ask a question say, who is a good dentist around here? And then that question would get sent to all the locals in that area and they could start referring businesses to you. So that's one, or if you could just ask the question like, where is a good park for Kids or dogs and then the locals can start answering your questions. Or let's say you just go, you go to a new restaurant and you're like, like 10 dishes here which one you like to try. So, you can ask a question and that question will go to people who frequent that restaurant and they can start answering your questions. So, it's all, it was all about building a knowledge base, a local knowledge base around communities and which people can share with them.

05:54

Ramesh: Yeah. Actually, I was already seeing that . One is you're dabbling with the latest technologies to some extent voice and then you're like a building community on the fly kind of thing.

06:08

Nishant: Yeah, yeah. Right, right. So, yeah, so that look, we had a really good reception from the community. We had like 84,000 active users every day on it. So yeah, that's the first significant startup that I remember.

06:24

Ramesh: So, was that an exit for that? What did you do with it locally or do you still have it?

06:29

Nishant: No, it's not there anymore. So, it was an interesting story. So, we got a lot of traction, a lot of media attention and you know, people using it. But it was kind of a weird situation I was in. I didn't have my green card. I'm an immigrant obviously here. I didn't have my green card at that time. So, when we started getting approached by angel investors and vcs, we always got stuck because we didn't have the green card. So, when you don't have a green card, you can’t quit your job. So, you have to have, have a salary job, otherwise green, your visa gets canceled. So, we couldn't take investment. And because of that, what happened was we couldn't scale in time. And then what happened was within months we got copied by like at least five other competitors, like literally feature to feature got copied and they were able to raise money. And so basically, we just couldn't keep up with them.

07:27

Ramesh: So Nishant this is a great story actually. Lots of you know, ups and downs that you're telling us in this podcast. Excellent. So fine. Then is this, what about the agent Neo right now you're doing? Is it, is this your full-time venture or is it a side hustle?

07:45

Nishant: No, it's a side hustle. So, like I'm always doing multiple things. Like I have a digital marketing company, I have a web design company, I have a company which competes with Uber and Lyft where I live. So, like I'm always doing multiple things. So, this is just one of the things that I do.

08:05

Ramesh: But you don't do not have a salary job or anything. You just, you're an entrepreneur full time.

08:11

Nishant: Yes. Now I have a contract job too. So, like I also, you know, I’ve been doing this for 20 years, so I have acquired so much knowledge by doing things, you know, myself that I also do contract jobs, consulting jobs for companies. Like, let's say a company has the idea and they want to build a start up, then I go in as an expert and then I tell them exactly how to lay things out, how to hire a team, which technology platform to use, stuff like that. So, I do consult too.

08:40

Ramesh: Okay, so Nishant then that raises a really good question, which is because a lot of people number one is they don't know where to start. I mean, they have a job, or they got laid or whatever right? They don't know where to start. And here you are a somebody like you who is, who knows so many things and you're dabbling in so many things. So, the first question in this space, how do you find the time to do multiple things?

09:11

Nishant: Okay. So, yeah, that's a really interesting question. So, one thing about time is if you are doing something you are passionate about, time magically shows up. You don't have to find time. I mean, you are an entrepreneur and you are so passionate about what you're doing. I'm sure you understand what I'm saying. So, it doesn't magically show up, you don't have to find time. Like a simple example, let's say you are into bodybuilding, you will find time to go to the gym. Like no matter how busy you are, you will find that one or two hours every day and just show up at the gym. So, I think it's all about passion. Time is never a problem. It's about passion.

09:49

Ramesh: That’s good. So, second thing is, so the very first one that he talked about the locally thing, so it didn't go anywhere. So obviously that was a not a positive movement for you. I'm sure. I mean, I don't want to call to depress you, but definitely were not happy about that. So how do you pick yourself up from those kinds of situations and say, okay, fine, it's done. I want to do the next one. So how do you do that?

10:17

Nishant: Okay. Yeah, that's a good question. You know, when you are in a situation like that, like I explained to you. Lets be frank it's not fun, right? So, it's not easy, easy to do it. But I think for me what works is that I am just in incorrigible optimist, like I guess for the negative things on my mind. So, if something doesn't work out, I just take all the learnings from that. And then I always think of situations like this. So, this example locally, so I did, I created an app from an idea to conception. I was able to approach investors, investors to interest. So, imagine the amount of learning that I had. We were able to scale up the platform to handle 84,000 active users in a day. So, every single step is a huge learning. So, like I always tell my wife that, you know, success is just the last step of a series of failures. Success is not in like, it doesn't, the first step is not success. You know, like you just buy a lottery and you just win the lottery. It doesn't happen like that. So that's how I perceive life. And that's how I perceive all the ventures that I’ve, I undertake that, you know, every step is going to take me somewhere. So, I don't like, I don't get disappointed really. Like that just doesn't happen to me.

11:39
Ramesh: Excellent Nishant. Actually, there are two key things that came out of the discussion and let me summarize, because I don't want to miss. One is you said incorrigible optimist, like I then definitely your unrepairable. So, you're an optimist matter what. That's the number one, that's a good thing. The second one, I think you said it's a great nugget. Success is nothing but a series of failures. Success is something that comes at the end of a series of failures. That's beautiful. So then how do you pick your projects? Like, the common thread I saw was that there's some voice technology going on, but the way I look at my entrepreneurial journey, just give an example. I want to have something that gets me a cashflow. So that way you know, other things are not struggling. And once I establish that, then I find other areas where I'm experimenting. I'm passionate about, that may have a longer-term success, but they won't immediately do. So how do you go about your multiple ventures? Like are all of them experimentation or any of them are like giving you some cashflow so you have enough confidence to go invest your time and effort into other things. How do you go about it?

12:55

Nishant: Yeah, so when I started my journey, so you know, I'm just really passionate about technology, coding, that kind of stuff. And because I'm so passionate that I'm always reading, you know, online tech magazines, publications and what's coming, what's new, what Google are doing, what's Apple doing? So, since I immerse in that. Anything that new comes up and if I see that, you know, that can solve a problem, then I start thinking of, you know, like how can I leverage this? For example, I tried now augmented reality is big virtual reality is big. I'm already thinking about how we can leverage these technologies to solve a problem or make our lives better. So it is already merged into it. I keep getting ideas, like I’ll come out of the shower and my wife is my partner in crime because like I just bombard her with all my ideas and she's not into technology, but she's a really smart person, she always. She plays the devil's advocate. So, I’ll come out of the shower and I’ll say, you know, an amazing idea and then I’ll tell her this is my idea and then she start poking holes in my theory. And that kind of, I think that really helps me because, you know, I sometimes get really excited about new technology and she kind of helps me bring me back to earth. And so that's how I get my ideas. But then once I have an idea and I do a little bit of brainstorming, research about the idea, the potential. I always, you know, involve my wife, because she is just that person. She's involved in my life that much. But then I’ll go and do some market research. I just don't just jump at it and start working on it. I'll do market research, I’ll talk to people and say, if you had something like this, would you be interested in using it? And if I get a good reception, then I started seriously thinking about how I can do it. And all of my ventures that I’ve done, they are, I would say 80% of them are money making ventures. The target of, because you know, I'm putting in so much of my effort into my ideas. So, when you get a reward for your efforts, that keeps you going. So, the goal always is to generate some kind of income. But I also do community work. For example, I gave you, I mentioned trip karma, a website, which I developed, which competes with Uber and Lyft in the area where I live. So that's purely a community effort. So, all it does is connects riders with drivers. And I don't make any money up from it. But my reward from that is when I meet people and they're using it, I tell them I'm the founder of trip karma. And they recognize me. That's my reward. Reward is always not monetary, but it's important to have some kind of a monetary reward as well.

15:54

Ramesh: Excellent. Actually, so Nishant this is another great segment where, so basically, we talked about ideation. So, you come with the initial ideas of Hey, in all the ways technology and then there is some person who kind of put some structure and then says, Hey, you know, is its realistic idea or not? In your case it's your wife. Right? In the other cases like you need to have some mentor, somebody who kind of a sure, you know, put some structure on. The third thing that you talked about is a market research and market viability. Such an important piece because without that, you know, making sure that particular idea is a viable in the market place. And then the entrepreneurs will not be able to, you know, make too far. So that's another thing that you talked about. So good. I mean, there's lots of things. And then in your case you are looking at monetary for sure. Making sure that you are in business, you can bring home some bacon, otherwise you'll be starving. But in addition to that you also, you know, looking for other things like community services, some you know, goodness that you bring through your technology to the society. Right? Excellent. Very good. Okay, so Nishant I want to go into another area where the way, I mean, the reason we got connected in the first place was I was looking for people you know, how they found their first paying customers. Like what are the different strategies that they have you know started off to get the first paying customers. In your case you have a very interesting story of how you wanted to you know, use the media to get the message out and then get the first paying customers. If you could talk a little bit about how you work that idea. Where you are sending queries to the media companies and that kind of stuff. Yup, go ahead please.

17:50

Nishant: Okay. Okay. So, like I'm trying to think agent Neo is the really the first platform which is generating a decent amount of income for me. In the past I mean, although I mentioned that locally, we have so many active users, but we didn't, we never got to a point where we were able to monetize the platform. So, in my experience that I have tried, like every single thing that you can think of to get the word out. Because only building a product from just an idea in your head is hard enough. But then getting the word out is really hard, at least, at least from my experience. And you know, you can build the best product out there, but if no one heard about it, then there's no point, right? So, you have to get the word out. So, yeah, in my experience, like I’ve tried like all any kind of advertising platforms, Google ads, Facebook ads, LinkedIn, Twitter, reaching out to influencers or Instagram digital marketers. But what really worked for me is organic growth. So, reaching out to publications online, which are in the same niche that you're launching a product in. If you can get them to write about you, then that's what really brings in the most traffic. So, for example, the agent Neo platform, I reached out, I would say at least 200 magazines in real estate. And I just got lucky that one of the premium magazines in the nation, they wrote an article about me that, you know, this is a new platform and they're launching in next month. And they have a beta right now, so the beta is free for a month. So just that one article got me like, I think around 2000 agents in like three days. It was like ridiculous amount of sign up that I got in three days.

19:50

Ramesh: Excellent. I mean, that is I mean, after trying for how long did you have to work on that particular strategy?

20:05

Nishant: So, the first time that I noticed that in organic word of mouth growth are like in this case online publication writing about you is, I learned that from locally. And going back to your original question, when you were asking me how to do you feel about locally not being successful. So, what I learned this from locally because locally I was trying word of mouth, emailing my friends, approaching them on Facebook to like it, share it, nothing was working out. But then we got covered on tech crunch and tech crunch and then I think one more magazine, I can't remember which one. And that got us, I would say 80% of our customers like within a week. So, although like you would label it as failure, but really that one golden nugget that I got from locally, that's how that's the most effective way of getting the word out. So, I use the same learning here in Agent Neo. I started reaching out to magazines in my niche, the real estate, and that's the same thing worked here too.

21:15

Ramesh: Excellent. Hey Nishant, actually when I was talking to you, something came to my mind. You're the guy, you know, I look at it as somebody who plays with the technology a lot. And always you know, okay this is a little bit of personal question. Do people around you, family or friends think, man, this guy's a crazy guy. He's just playing with all kinds of crazy ideas. I mean, do they think of you like that? And then secondly, if anybody even dare to say in front of you or you came to know about that, I mean did that bother you?

21:50

Nishant: Okay, so yeah funny question. Yeah, I like that question. So, if anybody thinks I'm crazy, I think it should be my wife. And if she doesn’t think I am crazy, then I don't really care about anybody else. So that's number one. And second thing is like, When I go out and socialize with friends. I like, I just don't talk about my work at all. Like I never talk about work. I just talk about, you know, what's common between me and my friend and what other kids doing, that kind of stuff. So, I'd never bring up work, so they never know. They just know that I'm a technology guy. That's it.

22:31

Ramesh: Okay. Okay. That's fine. So somehow that came to me. So, towards the end of the stretch here Nishant, so looking back at the journey and I know like for example, the green card thing was out of your control things that you can do much about, but things that were in your control from a journey. Are there any things that you think you could have done differently in your entrepreneurial journey?

23:01

Nishant: Yeah, so since I'm a technology guy, so I started out as a programmer. I still, I take code quite a bit. And by nature, I was an introvert initially and talking to people and, you know, telling them about stuff I'm working on, that was really hard for me. The selling skills weren't there. But then slowly as I grew older and I went along in my journey, I realized that, you know, that's equally important. So, I had to make an extra effort to change my personality so that I don't, like when I see somebody, I tell them, you know, this is what I'm working on. And I don't give them a like the technological, the details, like what platform I am using all that stuff. Because it's irrelevant to them. But since I'm always trying to solve problems that we face, I connect to them at that level. So, you know, for example the trip karma example I gave you, the community service I did. When I tell somebody I build trip karma, then I tell them, you know, how do you get around here? It's really hard to get around and there is no Uber or Lyft and they say, yeah, I know it's impossible. And then I tell them, you know, I just build this platform and if you want to be a driver on it, you can, because it's a community service that I did. So, telling your story that I think that was the thing that took me awhile to learn that you need to tell your story. Otherwise all the effort you're putting into your product is of no use. If you don't tell the story. So, does that answer your question?

24:42

Ramesh: No, it does. But anyway, but that's something that you realized and then you really worked on it. And then so that's great. So last question Nishant, for aspiring entrepreneurs or the entrepreneurs planning to try to grow what advice would you give based on your journey?

25:04

Nishant: I think the only advice I can give is that just do what you're passionate about. Because entrepreneurship is really, really hard. I mean it's a very lonely place because when I was, especially when I was switching from my, you know, being a salary job to entrepreneur, it was like none of our friends would understand why am I doing this? Because I was working at night. I would do all these things, no reward inside. First of all, there was no guarantee of any reward that you will ever get. So, unless you're passionate about something, you will end up burning out. So, passion is the only thing that keeps you going because there are so many things that will come your way. So many failures. And the only thing that keeps it going is passion. So, don't get into something just because it is the next hard thing. Do it only if you're passionate about it. That's my only advice I can give.

26:02

Ramesh: Excellent. Nishant fantastic podcast. I really enjoyed. I can relate to you from many angles. I'm on the other side of you. I'm more on the marketing and sales side. Less so on the coding side. So, I'm your counterpart on this one. So great podcasts, by the way folks, if you're listening, you can find all great episodes like this at www.rameshdantha.com. That's where you go into the podcast section, www.rameshdantha.com. Nishant Thank you very much.

26:32

Nishant: Thank you.

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The post Connecting Real Estate Professionals with Amazon Alexa – Nishant Pant appeared first on RameshDontha.com.

Smashing The Plateau and Going Solo with David Shriner-Cahn

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Guest: ​​​​​​​​David Shriner-Cahn
Company / Business name: ​Smashing The Plateau
Business web site​​​ | ​ ​ ​   ​​​Facebook   | Twitter | ​Linkedin

David Shriner-Cahn is a recognized authority on entrepreneurship, leadership development, and the host of the business podcast Smashing the Plateau. After 28 years as a highly skilled employee, David Shriner-Cahn was told that his job was over. In spite of the immediate trauma and fear, he knew that as his next step, he’d rather work for himself and have more control over his destiny. That was in 2006.

Today, David is a thriving entrepreneur, podcaster and speaker. He is guiding highly skilled professionals who are recovering from a late career job loss and who yearn to impact the world with their knowledge and creativity by becoming successful entrepreneurs.

Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:

Books: Mark Gerstein’s ‘Flirting with Disaster’
Books: Gary Keller’s ‘The One Thing’.

Show Notes:

David Shriner-Cahn opens up about the time when he was let go after a long stint as a successful engineer and how that incident transformed him to start his solo consulting business. After seeing the trauma that other people went through, David wanted to focus on helping people transition into businesses after being let go.

David accidentally stumbled into podcasting after starting a blog where he interviewed other business owners. Gradually, this transformed into ‘Smashing The Plateau’ podcast.

With strengths in finance and operations, David started learning about marketing & promotions to grow his business. As a coach guiding people transition into business owners, David himself learnt about letting go of the fear of uncertainty and started embracing content marketing etc. to expand his reach.

David emphasizes the importance of relationships and mentors. He had John Lee Dumas as a guest on his podcast and of course is a big name in podcasting with Entrepreneurs On Fire podcast. David talks about inspiring books such as Gary Keller’s 80-20 rule and Mark Gerstein’s Flirting with disaster.

Finally, David gives advice to entrepreneurs to network and find mentors. BNI organization helped David a lot for networking. His advice is to have a cushion for first 6 months to one year of transition, choose a particular lane, and keep pursuing in that lane. One way to overcome adversity is to write down the answer to ‘What’s the worst thing that can happen’ and ask yourself what would you do if that worst thing were to happen.








​Episode Transcript (Click to expand)

00:02

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance and possibilities. Today I have a guest who has been in business for quite some time and he's been advising other people who want to start their own business. A very interesting background, so his name is David Schreiner Khan, David, after 28 years as a highly skilled employee, was told that his job was over. In spite of the immediate trauma and fear. He knew that as his next step, he will rather work for himself and have more control over his destiny. That was back in 2006. Today David is a thriving entrepreneur, podcaster and speaker, he has a very successful podcast called the smashing plateau. Smashing the plateau. He is guiding highly skilled professionals who are recovering from a late career job loss and who you want to impact the world with the knowledge and creativity by becoming successful entrepreneurs. So welcome David.

01:23

David: Thanks, so much Ramesh, it’s great to be on.

01:27

Ramesh: Thank you. Thank you. With that introduction, I have to ask you, what were you doing for those 28 years?

01:35

David: Well, I started my career as an engineer in corporate. I did that for a few years and actually and I made a major shift. I went from engineering to work in the not for profit sector in leadership and management roles and actually the trigger that that caused me to go from engineering to a kind of a more community-based kind of work was another job loss. I was my late twenties at the time. And just after I had gotten a really, really great review, it was like a month later month after this great review and a big raise, my boss called me into his office and he said, David, I have good news and bad news. The good news is you're doing a great job. The bad news is you don't have a job. And I'm like, okay. So, and I was totally blindsided by this. I did not expect it. You know, the reality was the company I worked for had lost a lot of business, so I should have seen the handwriting on the wall, but, you know, I was young, I was naive, whatever. And I was really shocked by the whole thing and I thought, and it was also was a time of a lot of transitions going on in the corporate world. And I looked at like big corporations, which is what the model was for engineers. You know, you go to work for one of the big, you know, fortune 500 companies. Especially back in those days, you work for them for like, you know, 30 years you get a pension because in those days, companies had pensions and then they fund your retirement. And I was seeing that in the corporate world. There were a lot of cutbacks going on. My company was relatively small. It was a consulting firm that had about 150 engineers. But the companies that had like tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of employees, they were some major cutbacks. And there were, there were engineers who were for the most part in their 50s or maybe even early sixties, who were a little short of retirement age and also very often short on eligibility for full retirement. They were being laid off. And it caused them tremendous financial hardship. I mean, here I was, I was just married, didn’t have any kids, did have a mortgage. So, you know, so that part was a little painful, but didn't have the kinds of expenses that somebody in his or her 50s or 60s faces. And I was like, you know, maybe I can find something where it's less about the bottom line and more about the impact that you make, which is why I went into the not for profit sector. And then I did that for, Oh, I'm about close to 25 years. And one of the things that I learned in the not for profit sector, and this is also, I think this also shifted to a certain extent during the time that I was working in that sector, that it became much more businesslike. And not for profits. We're having the same kinds of cutbacks periodically. Funding was often tough. And they would have the same kind of cutbacks in the decision-making process that big corporations had, which is it was much more about the bottom line and about the people and you know, I saw that happening around me. There were signs that it was going to happen in the organization where I was working. And again, like what happened to me when I was in my twenties, this wasn't about my capability. It was more about the overall circumstances. And I was at that point, I was really tired of just not having control over my destiny and I decided. Probably it was like about a year before my job was over, even though, even though I wasn't told that it was over I made a decision that my next step would ever, whenever what was going to happen, my next step was going to be self-employment. I just didn't want to be at somebody else's Beck and call the way I was. And I had, you know, I had a great job. I was earning a good living. I had a lot of autonomy in what I did, because I was in an executive position, but still, I like just wanting to have my own business at that point.

06:07

Ramesh: That's excellent. Wow. So, then a little bit of a trauma and all that stuff. So right away did you start the podcast then? What did you switch to?

06:19

David: So, I opened up really simple one-person consulting business. I'd come out of the not for profit sector. That was my network. And I said, you know what, I’ve been doing this for years. I know how nonprofits need to run. And in particular, a lot of nonprofits are led by people that have a programmatic background, so they may have an education background or a social work background or something else about the program delivery. They tended not to have such great business backward rounds. And actually, in the time that I was in the sector, my specialty was finance and operations. So, I was really good at the business side. And that was actually a great niche to open up as a, you know, to start off as in a consulting business. And I was getting business right away and I was doing pretty well. So that was really what I wanted to focus on. And I didn't know anything about content creation or podcasting and frankly, I knew very little about a lot of what happens in the small business world. I just knew kind of my specialty and one of the things that happened to me once I launched my business is, I started looking around and seeing where my gaps were and what I needed to learn. And I started developing things like networking skills. I'd never done any business networking. I didn't have to when I was an employee. I was good at relationship building, but I just hadn't done business networking. I was never responsible for marketing and sales. Like I was really good at that. As I mentioned, I was really good at the operations. So, in terms of like running my own business, that part was really easy for me. But the marketing and sales piece, I had to learn how to do that, had to learn how to especially in a consulting business, its primarily referral based. I really needed to learn how to build a referral network. And I joined BNI, which is a great source of word of mouth business. Because of my background in leadership. Yes. And also doing a lot of work with teams. I found that within a few months, all of a sudden, I was nominated to be part of the leadership of my chapter. Getting involved in the leadership of BNI. And then you know, started doing other kinds of leadership activities in the entrepreneurial world. And I also, one other gap that I noticed was that a lot of people that ran small thought leadership businesses, whether it's consulting or coaching or training or whatever, a lot of them were out there speaking and they were writing and they were disseminating their ideas as a way of building credibility, building relationships, and getting leads. I thought, you know, I probably should learn how to do this. And the first thing I did was I started the blog, and this was probably about six years into running my business.

09:34

Ramesh: Okay. That is 2012.

09:35

David: Yeah. 2012. You know, a lot of people had blogs in those days, podcasting compared to today it was really in its infancy. And you know, I listened to podcasts, but I hadn't thought that much about it. And the podcasting evolved because we were producing regular blog posts. You know, unlike a lot of content producers that that are not very consistent about it. One of the things we did, and it may not have been so conscious at first, but I'm very methodical and structured. We started producing blog posts on a regular schedule. We started off with two a week and then we actually ramped up to five a week by creating texts-based interviews with people in my network.

10:26

Ramesh: What’s a text-based interview.

10:28

David: When you think about what we're doing now in this podcast. Like you're asking me questions, I'm answering the questions. So, I did the same thing in text format where I sent an email out to, I don't know, probably a couple hundred people that I knew and I said, I'm thinking about creating some interviews in my blog. Would you like to be interviewed? It's a pretty simple process. If you say yes, I’ll send you five questions. All you have to do is answer the questions, we'll post the answers. So, we did that, and it turned out that it made it really easy, it was an easy way to generate five posts a week. And they were good posts. I mean, the people, for each guest, we would modify the question. So, it wasn't always the same questions for each person. So they were, you know, they were interesting posts. The guests all had great answers and we got some feedback that the audience wanted greater depth. And so, we decided to try audio interviews, which again, I didn't know a whole lot about it, but yeah, I had a small team that was helping me with this, and the team suggested that they, David, why don't you try audio interviews? And I'm like, what is that, how do I do it? And that led to the podcast smashing the plateau.

11:50

Ramesh: David, if I can ask you, how did you come up with a smashing the plateau name?

11:55

David: Well, so my focus in my business has always been about how do you create long-term success. So, when I started off, even when I started off, started my business as a nonprofit consultant I wanted my clients to focus on a not a short-term gap. What's the mission of the organization? How do we try to fulfill the mission over the long-term? Okay. And to me, the hardest part of that is not what happens in the short term, but these long-term roadblocks and roadblocks that may come six months in or 12 months in, those are the harder ones because you don't, it's like you don't know what you don't know. It's like in my case with my business, I didn't know that I needed to do content marketing. And so, for me, one of the roadblocks that I faced after I was in business like, you know, six, seven, eight years was trying to learn about content creation and this whole idea dissemination process. So what I want to focus on with clients is when you're faced with these kinds of, of hurdles, whether it's due to a change in your marketplace or it's due to an opportunity that you have come across that you didn't know about before, but you want to pursue that opportunity, how do you do it as successfully as possible. Which means you're getting out of your comfort zone, you're trying something new. There's usually a lot of fear that's involved. It's often very uncomfortable for your team. And how do you overcome these kinds of hurdles because ultimately, what is it we're trying to do as entrepreneurs? Well, for most people, we want to be in business as long as we can, and we want to be as successful as possible for as long as we can. So how do you do that consistently and over the long term? So, the whole theme of the show is I'm looking at what people have done as entrepreneurs, particularly when it is in the latter part of their career.

14:18

Ramesh: Yeah. Okay. So actually, so you organically grew, you started wearing many hats. I want to be on the operations and marketing. And then so you went into marketing and sales and you started creating content. So, and then you kind of grew into the podcasting. Let me ask you a little bit about your business itself. How did the podcasting help you with the business and what's it like? What is the relationship between your business and the podcast, the way you see it?

14:47

David: Yeah, the relationship is actually very close, and you know, as an example of sort of narrowing the focus based on content creation. One of my observations is many of our clients and guests on the podcast and the audience of the podcast are people who have gone like me from employment to entrepreneurship in the second half of their career. And often the trigger that has kind of caused them to make the jump has been jobless like me. So, we've been focusing on helping people that, that are going through that specific transition. When you're faced with job loss, particularly if you're highly skilled and you're well compensated, trying to get another job like that is really challenging. There are all kinds of factors to changes in the marketplace. However, as an entrepreneur, if you have that kind of skill and you have that kind of experience, you're actually more valuable. You just need to figure out how it is that you can kind of reinvent yourself as an entrepreneur rather than as an employee. And the reality is that for many people, there's a strong desire behind this, not just that they're pushed in that direction. They really want to do it. Like in my case, I was planning to do it for a year before I launched my business. And for many people, they have thought about it, but there's a lot of fear. And until they're actually pushed out the door, they don't take the first step to becoming entrepreneurs. So, in my business, we now focus on how do we help people overcome that initial fear, overcome the trauma of the job loss and how do they figure out where they're going to launch their business? What are those they're going to offer, who they want to serve, how they want the business to run, what kind of business model to use, how to make it as profitable and as successful as quickly as possible.

17:06

Ramesh: So, do you limit your coaching, consulting this other entrepreneurs to certain domains or can you talk a little bit about the kinds of entrepreneurs and which industries they are operated?

17:19

David: Yeah, so this is not industry specific. This is really about where you are in your professional life. So yeah, so we've worked with attorneys’ consultants, coaches, trainers, people running a small service business. It’s kind of runs the gambit. The thing that they have in common is that they have a lot of skill in a particular area. And the use of their skill prior to launching their own business that the use of the skill has primarily been dictated by somebody else. And now they have a chance to actually make their own decision about what part of their skill they want to, they want to focus on using the most. So, they've got to kind of understand how to combine their greatest passion for what they love doing and their greatest competence. And also, they get to decide whom they want to serve and how. So, there are a lot of pieces that they have never had control over before or thought about taking control of. So, there are a lot of decisions to be made up front, which impact the way the business is going to start out and is also going to impact how the business pivots as it grows.

18:50

Ramesh: Okay. So excellent. So now I'm looking back at your own personal journey. I think things that helped you, things that inspired you. So, in any particular book or people that are part of your life that you know during the tough times and whatever you fell back on to inspire you and motivate you?

19:12

David: Yes. So, in terms of people, one of the things that I’ve found is having the right relationships is really critical to success. I know when I had, I'm John Lee Dumas is a guest on my podcast. And many people who listen to podcast will know of him because of his show entrepreneur on fire. One of the things he talked about was when he was planning to launch his show, how the people closest to him were the biggest naysayers. And what he did to overcome that was joining a mastermind group with other entrepreneurs that really helped him focus on getting his podcast launched and focus on becoming an entrepreneur. So, for me, what's been most helpful is having mentors who have been successful at building businesses, the kinds of business that I want to be in. Being part of groups, ongoing groups of other entrepreneurs who are focused on the same kinds of challenges that I face day to day, people who can have my back when I'm having a tough time and people who I can support when they're having a tough time. And as far as resources there are some books that I kind of refer back to over and over again. One of my favorites is the one thing by Gary Keller, which talks for people who don't know, it’s all about the 80, 20 rules in business and in life, which is 80% of our success comes from 20% of our activities. So how do you, how do you plan your time and focus your time on every single day on that 20% that will yield 80% output.

20:58

Ramesh: And the challenge actually is identifying what the 20% is first. And then focusing on them.

21:05

David: Exactly, exactly. So that's a great book. I mean there's so many.

21:12

Ramesh: Yeah. I think another one you mentioned is flirting with the disaster. That seems to be a favorite as well by Mark Gerstein.

21:16

David: Mark Gerstein. Yeah. So, my friend Mark Gerstein, who is a brilliant strategist has written several books and this is one he wrote several years ago about, he studied a number of major disasters. One in the space program, Chernobyl etc. And looking at how our intuition can fail us and how decision making often gets skewed by political factors. And it's really, it's a great look at the decision-making process.

21:59

Ramesh: Excellent. So, so David just one question that came to my mind during the first initial years of a few years when you're establishing a business, did you think about, why am I doing this? Should I go back to the life? Or you pretty much committed to doing it no matter what. What was the thought process at that time?

22:20

David: Actually, one of my mentors said to me, you're going to find once you launched your business, you're going to find that when you're partway into building it and it may not be, may not have reached sustainability yet. You may end up getting a job offer and you got to make a decision at that point where your heart lies. You really, do you really want to be an entrepreneur, or would you rather be an employee? And that actually that did happen to me. I was offered the opportunity to consider a job that was pretty prestigious and high paying. And I said to the recruiter, I said, I'm well qualified. I can do this job and I could probably do it very well. And I have to tell you honestly, I recently launched a business and I'm not so sure that I actually want to be an employee. And the recruiter said to me, well, in that case you shouldn't apply. And you know, I had sort of, you know, second thoughts about it, well, did I do the right thing by being so honest about it? And in the end, the answer is yes. And I’ve, you know, I’ve interviewed so many people about this transition. And it's really common that people kind of vacillate between, especially if you're coming out of long-term employment, they vacillate between trying to get another job versus starting a business. And my experience, you really can't pursue boats. You've got to choose a lane and you've got to pursue it. Especially if what you're trying to do is pursue entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is hard work. I think it's way harder than being an employee, but the rewards are so much greater. I think the emotional rewards, the spiritual rewards and the financial rewards can be so much greater than being an employee, but it's way harder and you really have to want to do it. And it can also be really lonely because you're making decisions where you're not going to be talking to a lot of people about those decisions. So, you don't have the same kind of support that you have as an employee and you really got to want to do it.

24:33

Ramesh: Yeah. I mean, you touched upon really so many aspects in that answer. I think I relate to very much the loneliness, you know, you overcome that with the mastermind or other mentor network. I think that you talked about. And then you know, if you're doing a side, I mean if you're trying to do employment and then this one, you would rather do when you are fully employed, not after he got laid off on, you're trying to decide kind of stuff. I think really good stuff there, David. I myself could a ride to many of the things that you are saying while you were saying it. So, the other thing that I wanted to ask you here is one of the, if you were to restart your business today, what would you do differently?

25:20

David: Yeah, differently, I would have focused more time on building relationships. I would have been bolder about asking for the kinds of help that I needed. That's really important. I think I can tell you I often, because of my own fears, I’ve often waited too long to ask people who are perfectly willing to help me for the kind of help that I need. So that's something that I would do differently, and I would probably have started doing content creation sooner.

25:58

Ramesh: But these are the kinds of things you learned as we went along, and I thought you already started building relations with the BNI pretty early on in your business.

26:09

David: I did. That was actually, I joined BNI just about a year after I launched my business. So, you know, if you're asking me what I would do differently, I would join BNI the first day.

26:25

Ramesh: Okay. So basically, what you're saying is trying to get some mentorship, networking right away. Do not hesitate, don't let your fears bog you what people think of you and those kinds of things.

26:35

David: Correct. Correct. The other thing that I would really strongly recommend to anyone, particularly if you're going through the transition where you have suffered a late career job loss and now, you're starting a business, take some time to actually deal with the trauma of the job loss. Don't rush. So, this is like kind of the opposite of the answer I just gave you Ramesh, which is I think you need time to actually process what's happened to you. Like in my case, I processed it ahead of time cause I kind of knew that it was going to happen. But I’ve seen many people where they, like day one, they're like trying to sell something new and they haven't taking the time to process the job loss, I think you actually do need the time to do that. And I’ve seen where people have had the financial space to take like six to 12 months and not worry about how they're going to pay their bills. Because they have enough assets to be able to manage that. And they're not, they're also, they realize they're not letting the fear of spending down their savings for those six or 12 months. Keep them from making the right decision of where they're going to start. So that's an important one. And I’ll tell you, there's one other thing you can do. If you don't have the financial resources, which is you could take an interim job that will just pay the bills for a while where you realize it's short term, it's not career building, it's like you're doing it so you can pay the bills and take time to think.

28:19

Ramesh: Okay. So, while you're processing you know what you're trying to do. So, excellent David. I think this and now I'm really getting how you mentor and coach your customers with the kind of advice that you're giving on this show right here. So, yeah, any last-minute thoughts before we wrap up this podcast?

28:42

David: Yeah, one last thing. Here's a question you can ask yourself. Okay. Which is, what's the worst thing that could happen? And write down the answer and then look at your answer and say, well, if the worst thing comes to fruition, how would I deal with it? And if you keep that in front of you, you will be way less fearful of taking the steps you actually do need to take to try to get what you want.

29:10

Ramesh: I mean, David, I cannot tell you how powerful that is because that is the one thing, I practiced all along. Every change, you know, that's what I said. Hey, you know, yeah, I came from this whatever place you came from, I mean like what's the worst thing that can happen? That is a very, very powerful question that will help us go further. Actually that's, what a way to wrap up the podcast.

29:32

David: Thanks Ramesh.

29:33

Ramesh: Thanks. Thank you, David. I really appreciate you coming onto this podcast and therefore people who are listening, you can find all great episodes like David's on www.rameshdontha.com. There's a podcast tab there. David. Thank you.

29:51

David: Thanks so much, Ramesh.

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The post Smashing The Plateau and Going Solo with David Shriner-Cahn appeared first on RameshDontha.com.

Building a Naturopathic practice from scratch with Dr. Michele Wilkerson Raithel and Justin Raithel

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Guest: ​Dr. Michele Wilkerson Raithel & Justin Raithel
Company / Business name: ​​Revolutions Naturopathic
​Business website URL: ​​​https://Revolutionsdocs.com

​Show Notes:

Dr. Michele Raithel explains what naturopathic practice is all about and how her local community did not have a clue about this method of healing patients in a natural way when she started out.

To overcome the lack of knowledge, Michele collaborated with other businesses such as physical therapists, chiropractors, and also local Chamber Of Commerce to network and educate patients as well as other businesses. To help her with operations and business aspects, her husband Justin joined her full-time as well.

 Justin and Michele talk about the ups and downs of building 2 facilities, hiring the staff to grow in 2 different areas, and the challenges of building a business. They also talk about the decisions they had to make to scale as opposed to staying as a one doctor practice.

The Raithels talk about pricing, decisions on accepting insurance or not, and the process of building pipeline of potential patients starting with one member of the household. They also talk about social media and how they used it effectively to grow along with their extensive community activities.

​Episode Transcript (Click to expand)

00:00

Ramesh: Hi everybody. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is for aspiring entrepreneurs who want to start and build their own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today I'm very excited to have couple of, very interesting and important guests and who happened to be friends of mine, Dr. Michele Wilkinson Rachel CEO of revolutions naturopathic and Justin Ravo, his the operations manager of revolution naturopathic. So, let's get to it. Welcome.

00:35

Michele: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

00:37

Ramesh: So, Michele if you could explain what revolution naturopathic is about.

00:42

Michele: So naturopathic medicine is a system of medicine where we take the approach of trying to get the body to heal itself before we move towards the medication side of things and the invasive therapies side of things. A lot of people that are already on medications that need a doctor that can also help coordinate any sort of supplementation or botanicals they might want to take or they're interested in some of the more advanced regenerative therapies will want somebody who's an expert that can not only do the kind of extensive lab testing that someone with a medical degree can not only order but interpret but they also need someone who can deal with the delicate nuances of the combination of pharmaceuticals surgical procedures, referrals to specialists, botanicals, intravenous infusion therapies and everything from regenerative injection therapies like STEM cells to exosomes and all kinds of other things like that.

01:46

Ramesh: Okay. So, when did you actually start your revolution naturopathic?

01:50
Michele: We started in 2008 in a teeny tiny little room in Cameron park. Realized very quickly that that was not going to be adequate space. So, we started building out 2500 square feet here in Folsom. We quickly outgrew that within five years, and we're stepping on each other's toes and ended up building the space that you see behind us, which is 4500 square feet. And then two years after that we opened a second facility that is actually the mirror image of this facility in Roseville, California.

02:23

Ramesh: So, 10 years. Phenomenal growth. But I’ll be very honest with you, I did not know until I met you what naturopathic medicine was.

Okay.

02:31

: Very common.

02:32

Ramesh: Okay. So, if it's a common in 2009 when you started, did people knew about naturopathic medicine?

02:38

Michele: So, two things were done right. One of them was a complete accident. So, we opened up a space in a retail center that was a very high traffic center right next to a coffee shop. So, people were coming in and out of the coffee shop and would stop in and say, what is this place? Which gave us an opportunity to start a conversation. The second thing that we did is that we moved to an area that doesn't have a lot of naturopathic doctors, but has a high level of education, high level of expendable income and a desperate need for some kind of resource that could help them manage things like taking herbal supplement, the supplement industry is a multibillion-dollar industry. And without the naturopathic doctor in the mix people are relying on pharmacists and there, unless they do extensive training postgraduate, they're not educated to know is it safe to take Hawthorne solid extract with my blood pressure medication. So, people were mixing these things and playing around with them on their own and there were no experts in the area able to help them with it. So, a lot of transplants from Arizona, a lot of transplants from Oregon have a good knowledge of what naturopathic doctors can offer and the word spread extremely quickly.

04:05

Ramesh: But how difficult was it or how easy was it for you to actually educate the people about naturopathic medicine?

04:11

Michele: So, one of the things that we did that we still do is what we call a free 15-minute coordination meeting. Okay. And that was the opportunity for us to sit down with a person and have a conversation about their health care within a limited timeframe. Decide whether or not what we had to offer could actually help them. Get any labs or testing ordered that we needed to help with additional information in order to help them of coordinating these things and explained to them what to expect, what the costs were going to be and what was going to be involved. Once we started, when we started doing that, a lot of times the conversations surrounded what is a naturopathic doctor. Now, 10 years later, I very rarely have to answer that question. Most of the time all I'm answering is this is what labs are going to cost. This is what we need to get from you. I need to get, you know, x-ray imaging or whatever I need from this referral source. Let's gather all your data and you're going to come in and this is, we're going to start treating you.

05:14

Ramesh: Wow. It's a 10 years difference. Justin, you're very much involved in founding the company. So, what was your role?

05:21

Justin: Wow. So, in the early days, I think it was a bit of everything. I remember designing the first office on Excel, you know, using the borders of cells and you kind of laying out the first office and looking at different options.

05:36

Michele: Not recommended

05:39

Justin: But it worked at the time. And it allowed us to grow the company for the first five years. So, but really it was everything from developing some software that we used in house you know, IT management, operational procedures, supporting the doctors in you know, learning about the most efficient way to deliver the care to the patients. Cause a lot of us were, you know, the doctors were learning at the same time the staff was learning because it's not something that's really taught in medical school. And that was the early days was really trying to just figure out how to, how to deliver care in a way that patients were happy with and willing to pay for.

06:23

Michele: I remember just little things like, Oh, if you don't do a patient reminder, call the day before, no one shows up the next day. You know.

06:32

Ramesh: operational aspects of the business.

06:34

Michele: Things like that, you know, and a lot of things that we did have to learn on her own. I remember there was one time when we were trying to figure out how big a 10 by 10 room would be, and we taped it out on our living room floor using masking tape. You remember that did not work out, it was not recommended, definitely use AutoCAD. But yeah, there were a lot of kind of funny ways that we tried to work around things that I wish we had.

06:58

Justin: We had the money to hire an architect for the second building. [07:03 inaudible].

07:06

Ramesh: Actually, when I visited your facility. It's fascinating in terms of how you design is, I’ll get to that in a second. How long did it actually take for you to feel comfortable that you're on the right path? That this business is there for long-term?

07:19

Michele: Well we didn't start paying me a salary for three and a half years, I think. Two and a half? I thought it was longer than that. It felt like longer than that. There was one time and then in about year four you know, it was a lot on our marriage for Justin to be gone for an entire month, every other month and then be back and be working at the business full time. And I missed him, and he missed me. So, at about year four, we looked at the books and we said, you know, I think you can afford to quit your job and come work full time for the clinic. So that would be what I was doing

07:56

Ramesh: What were you doing at that time. What was your job?

07:59

Justin: So, I was a petroleum engineer and I was doing rotational work in Algeria. So, I'd work a 28-day shift and then come home for 28 days and have 28 days off. But I remember many nights when I was over there when I would, I'd work from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM there and then I would go back to my little dorm room that was there after I had dinner. There wasn't a whole lot to do. Other than play soccer or go to the bar. And so literally, you know, a lot of times I'd go back and work on my computer on, you know, operational procedures or other things that were going on or software back in my dorm room in Algeria.

08:34

Ramesh: Wow, that's, must be pretty difficult. So, were you the only doctor in the beginning time or did you have other doctors as well?

08:42

Michele: So very, very early on, part of why we chose this area is I had a classmate that really wanted to start a practice with me. We figured out before that even got off the ground that our visions were completely different. And then I opened up here next to the coffee shop and I was, I was talking to a friend, another friend of mine from school and I was just slammed, and she was twiddling her thumbs and couldn't get anyone to come see her. So, I was just like, you know, please can you just come for three days a week and help me out and share some of the patient load. And then together, after a few years, we start sort of said, you know, Hey, it's really, really hard for most naturopathic doctors to get off the ground. So maybe we can take some of our profit and help support a new doctor, a third doctor. And then when that third doctor was finally supporting themselves and contributing to the profits of the clinic, we had the three of us got together and said, Hey, do you want to bring on another doctor and help give them the opportunity to you know, not have to struggle through this whole operational thing. And we're now, I think at nine doctors right now. So, and there've been some that have stayed and some that have stuck with us for a lot longer. But it's, yeah, we're growing steadily.

10:06

Ramesh: Excellent. So, one of the reasons actually we are doing this interview is because of my book, the 60 minutes startup. So, what I wanted to do was share the experiences of entrepreneurs like you, right along with how to start a business in the shortest time possible. Like 30 days or something like that. Right. So, and then one of the chapters is dedicated to your practice and then I wanted to title the chapter. It takes a village to build a business. And the reason I did that is because when I heard your story right, when your building people did not know the patients did not know what naturopathic medicine was and you are trying to establish, I think there are stories that I heard. If you could tell us like you worked with the chiropractor's, you worked with entrepreneurs, you work with different stake holders to actually establish a business. Can you go through the process? If somebody wants to start a business, there are different ways of doing it. One of the ways is connecting with the community in different ways to build a business. Can you talk about it?

11:01

Michele: Absolutely. Yeah. We've both found that community service, you get back what you give. We were very involved with the chamber of commerce in this area is very supportive and got very involved in the chamber of commerce, very involved in rotary. Justin as is now. It used to be me that would go to all of these things because he would be in Africa and he's now completely taken over that whole role of, of doing community outreach and community service. And now people just know who we are and if they have a problem or their friends or family has a problem and they're not getting what they need from the normal medical model, they trust us, and they know us. So, they recommend, recommended their family and friends come here.

11:47

Ramesh: So, the other aspects of building a business is a customer acquisition, the pipeline. In your case, it's a patience, right? So, what

Are the different strategies that you implement to build your practice from a patient perspective?

12:01

Justin: So, most of our patients and majority of our patients come through word of mouth. And that's, you know, our reputation. So, the traditional medical model or conventional medical model is, you know, if you put somebody on a pharmaceutical that they need to get renewed every six months and you're going to see that patient every six months. We don't go with that approach. We try to educate patients and we try to enable them to handle their own acute illnesses. We try to also help solve their more, their chronic issues. And so, when we solve their issues, hopefully they don't have to be on a pharmaceutical for the rest of their life. But that does create a business issue for us as, as we don't have these recurring patients. So oftentimes when somebody resolves their issues, we won't see them for two to three years. The patient, we won't see them until something else comes up for them and then they'll go, Oh, you know, those doctors solved my problem last time. I'll give them a call and I’ll tell them about my new issue and come in and see them and we'll figure this next issue out together. But that's why word of mouth is so important to us as that person that we solve their problem. What they do is they send us their friends, their family. Oftentimes we see mom come in as the first patient. Women are typically much better at taking care of their health than men. Men, we wait for things to fall apart before we go to the doctor. And so often times we see mom, she doesn't want to put the kids at risk with something new. And the husband may not want to come see us, but mom has the first good experience and then we either see one of the kids or all the kids or the spouse and then we kind of end up seeing the whole family and maybe not the same doctor. Oftentimes our doctors focus on different areas, but that's kind of how we use the friends and family model, you know, the referral model to bring patients into the clinic.

13:51

Ramesh: Okay. So, then the other aspect is the pricing aspect of it. Building. And how did you come up with the pricing? Is it iterative? Are you fixing something? And that's it.

14:03

Michele: Well, so we kind of used several different contributing factors. So, most people don't know that in general MDs, bill Medicare for I think it's like $350 per 15 or 20 minutes.

14:19

Justin: No private insurance. So it was, you know, if you, we looked at statistics in Sacramento early on, it was like $350 an hour was what they were billing.

14:28

Michele: But that's, you know, people are coming in, they're paying their, you know, $25 copay or their $40 copay and they're not seeing those costs. So, when we first started doctors with less experience, we basically looked at that number and kind of cut it in half and said, let's give people a deal. Let's give people something reasonable. And we started right, the beginning of the recession. So expendable income just crashed. So, we wanted to make it affordable for people. We wanted to start off making it reasonable, and reachable as we've gained experience and grown. Those rates have gone up for the doctors with more experience. And then we bring in newer doctors that are still in a mentorship status that are residents and things like that, that we slowly will, as they get trained, they'll slowly increase their rates. But we always have someone that's kind of at a lower cost availability so that, you know, people can have access to this medicine.

15:30

Ramesh: More affordable.

15:32

Michele: Yeah. And oftentimes things like labs are covered by insurance or they're so cheap that, you know, it's people, it's just they don't even want the hassle. They just pay out of pocket.

15:43

Ramesh: Okay. So, the other aspect is the traditional healthcare, right. So, what I hear is that doctors are getting out of the business, the practices because of the insurance, because of other aspects of the managed care. Right. Is that a factor in naturopathic medicine or how is that?

15:57
Michele: They're trying to shadow our model?

15:59

Justin: So, they call our model the direct pay. Primary care. And there's actually, there's I think the first direct pay hospital was established in Oklahoma just a couple of years ago because there are so many middlemen in health care to take a cut. And that's why the costs are so high, and the American healthcare system is, your insurance company, somebody has to pay those salaries of all those people and the, and you know, that are working for the insurance company. They also have to pay for the insurance billers that are in every single medical office. So, we get rid of those couple of layers of people that are in the middle of the doctors and the patients. So really, we answer to the person that's paying the bill, that person, the patient, our patient can then go ahead and send that bill into their insurance company for reimbursement. But it means that their insurance company has to negotiate with the patient instead of negotiating with the doctor. So, the insurance company knows they're smart, right? They're running a business, they know that they can push the doctor off, they can pay them late, they can offer to pay them less, to pay them early. They can do all these techniques to get the doctor to spend less time with the patient.

17:06

Ramesh: I see. Okay.

17:08

Justin: We don't have to follow those incentives that they give them, the incentives that they give them to spend less time with patients. Sol all our doctors have to answer to, and our staff has to answer to is this, how much time would the patient like, how much care would you like?

17:24

Michele: And that can be everything from, you know, I want to spend two hours with you and go through my entire regimen through my entire day and exercise and nutrition and all of that stuff to I really can only afford 15 minutes, just tell me what to do. Or I can only afford 15 minutes. Teach me what I need to know to interpret my labs and to help identify, you know, how I'm feeling, what I'm feeling and things like that.

17:51

Ramesh: It's a very flexible model. Okay. So, the other aspect actually it's mind boggling is you're one of the largest naturopathic practitioners in the Western part of US from what I hear. Right? And then the typical professional services practice that I know is like a one person, right? So, a doctor building their own practice and they have that. Right. But here you have built a business which is nine doctors, two facilities in less than 10 years or maybe around 10 years. So, what are the main factors that really drove the growth for you, not just become one doctor professional practice and multi doctor practice. It's a real business.

18:32
Michele: Yeah. So, the biggest thing is that we work as a team. So, the doctors that are brand new and don't have full schedules, we'll oftentimes cover the IV suite, or they'll oftentimes help with doing IM shots and blood draws. So, they'll actually do some of them more procedural medicine. So, you know, if my schedule is completely stacked with just patient after patient where we're doing, this is going to be your recommendation. This is going to be your regimen. This is what you need to do. This is when you need to come in and these are the procedures that you need to do. I have someone doing those procedures on my behalf so I can keep seeing the next person. So those, as those doctors’ schedules fill up, then we bring on someone new or train them in the procedural stuff. And then when you get really good into understanding how the more experienced doctors are prescribing procedures and you're getting the feedback from the patients in the chair getting the IVs or whatever it happens to be, you start to be able to prescribe those better too. And then that practice ends up building up and you move out of the IV suite a little bit more in, into more of the practice care model.

19:38

Ramesh: Wow. It's actually, it's a multiple discipline that you're building. One of the different stepping stone. So, the other aspect just, I got asked you, operations has to be a key part of it, right? To build a business, right. As an operations manager, what are the decisions that you took to really to scale the growth the way you wanted?

19:56

Justin: I think it all comes down to having good systems. So, you have to have a system for answering phone, a system for booking patients, a system for making sure the patient is paying, covering the costs, you know, and, and I'm paying for not only the time but also the materials, you know, that are used for the procedure. So, we spend a lot of time on systems for sure. And we've traditionally used an in-house system. So, I coded a lot of things myself in the early days. And we're kind of going back to that now, but we coded a lot of things early days to make them very specific to our practice in our industry and our business. Cause there's, it's not a huge industry. So, there wasn't a whole lot of commercial software that was out there. We have now moved to a commercial EMR, medical, electronic medical records provider. So, we have the patient portal and we have the ability to integrate with labs and book things online and order things online. So, we have moved to that commercial system. But we're also still finding there's some things that that system lacks that we need that are specific to our industry. So, I'm actually back in front of a computer a lot of days now working on kind of the next phase of, of the revolutions intranet to grow to make sure that we have what we need so the doctors and the staff can do things consistently. So, the patient gets a consistent experience.

21:20

Ramesh: So, Dr Michele [21:20 inaudible], so your credibility is very important for you in this business and from your practice, one thing that you have also done is consult with other practices. Right? So, if you could talk about a, I mean like how you manage time for your practice on top of the other things that conferences and things like that. I mean, is that time management an issue for you or how do you manage that?

21:44

Michele: I'm very much a get it done now type of person. It actually, it sometimes causes some conflicts because he wants to like talk through how we do it. And when I'm motivated, I just need to get it done. I needed to get it out into my brain in one ear, out the other on paper, dump it out, get it started and rolling. So, I mean, I’ve always had a lot of energy even as a little kid. And I just make sure that I'm doing things that are replicable. So, a lot of times when I go to, when I teach at conferences or I lecture, I'm using modified versions of the same lecture materials. When I'm teaching my residents, when I'm teaching the staff, I use standard operating procedures that have, again, it's just like his side, on the operations side, there's a go to form and if you have a question and you don't remember what I told you, it's on that form. So, it's there. And now I'm even doing less of the training of the doctors here because the doctors that I’ve trained are using my standard operating procedures to train the next generation. So, I’ve been able to remove myself a little bit from that and go out even more into the lecture circuit and that type of thing.

23:05

Ramesh: I see. So, let me ask, this goes with the downsides. So, what were the moments, where you said, oh my God, what are we going to do? Are we going to do it? What are the aspects of it? Like you had multiple facilities, multiple doctors. There's a people management, facility management like talk through the downsides of you know, things that you had to overcome.

23:25

Michele: I think we're both big believers in people. So, it took us a long time to let people go when we should have. I would say that was probably one of the biggest downsides is the first time I ever had to fire somebody. It was just, Ugh, it was awful. And it's awful every time. But for the most part when it has to happen, the entire office breathe a sigh of relief. So, getting rid of those people that are dragging the team down is difficult, but it is absolutely essential for the rest of your team to stay healthy and function effectively.

24:03

Ramesh: Very good point. Anything else in the facilities?

24:08
Justin: Yeah, other downsides I'd say so we decided to double overnight. When we opened up Roseville, we went from 4,000 square feet to 8,000 square feet. And the idea behind that was, we spent a lot of time in the first few years juggling facilities expanding, right? And so, we thought, we know this layout is, you know, 98% correct. And we'll make a few tweaks and it's going to last for the long term. And so, we started up down that road of, of basically building the exact same facility cause then we were set, we knew what our lease rate was going to be for the next 20 years. Pretty much, you know, within reason and we can make that very predictable going forward the business. But it was tough on us and it was tough on our staff, they had to go overnight with the significant increase in overhead. And I think if we talked about it a lot, you know, after it was finally done and we talked about abandon a few times throughout the process because we ended up doing ground up construction, took a long time, took a year longer to put a shovel in the ground than we thought. Took longer and construction than we thought.

25:19

Michele: We could have opened three with leases in the time it took to open one more.

25:23

Justin: Yeah. So, I think that would've been our, you know, maybe doing it very similar to how we did Folsom and just start with a smaller facility and have the cashflow from the smaller facility and then expand into your own custom, big, beautiful facility that you're, you know, you've already got the patient flow to handle it. Because we largely ended up meeting our bank predictions, you know. But it felt like it was a huge struggle. Right. It was like on the paper and saying, Oh, you're doing exactly what you said you're going to do and what you're supposed to do. But it felt very, it was very stressful.

25:58

Michele: We're typically overachievers too. We usually under estimate what our budget is going to be and then reaching way above it, it feels good. But in this particular instance we hit, we're hitting our margins almost exactly.

26:12

Justin: So, we're through that end of the tunnel now, you know, we were looking at the light for a long time at the end of the tunnel. We're through that now. But I think if we did it again just from the stress it caused because it wasn't, we thought it would just be on us and that was okay. We were okay with being stressed for a while. But it also, it was, it was a lot of stress on our managers and our docs too because they were looking at it going well, we're going to get a lot bigger, really quick.

26:36

Michele: Yeah. And I would say one other really important thing is we actually at one point had to Institute a dollar jar because, because we would bring issues from work home and taught, basically it would be a word dinner and then you would go to bed and your head would hit the pole and you'd go, Oh, I forgot to tell you this. And now we're both weighing, staring at the ceiling going, well now I can't sleep because I'm stressed out about that tomorrow. So, we decided that we were going to make a jar and I had cash, like dollar bills and he had coins, or maybe it was the other way around. It was, it was just for long enough to, for us to be like, okay, who's the really bad one here? So, if it was worth putting a dollar in the jar, you can say it.

27:25

Ramesh: That's one way to overcome this.

27:26

Michele: It reminded us to just leave it at work.

27:28

Justin: It was the challenge of being married and going home together at the end of the day. And they just basically ended up working 24 seven.

27:35

Ramesh: That's probably as a separate episode by itself. How can you together husband and wife build a business?

27:40

Justin: Four or five episodes probably. So, the 60 minutes startup, the key principles are like many times people wait for the perfect everything, perfect time, perfect days to start a business, right? And by the time the perfect number comes, they give up. Right? So, it's all about make an integrative start now. Right. Make it later. So based on your experience, like what kind of advice could you give to the 60 minutes start up breeders that about to starting businesses?

28:11

Michele: I would say my biggest thing is make sure it's something you're passionate about. Because there's going to be days that you're irritated with it. There's going to be days that you're sick of it, there's going to be days that you're bored with it. But those days can't, it has to be something that you're passionate enough about that that's only a minute or an hour or a day because the next day, if you're feeling the same way and the next day and the next day and the next day, then it wasn't the right thing.

28:38

Speaker 4: Can we cut? Let's because they're in the book. I would love to have her do that thought, what I liked about your book was what you said you don't have to wait for the perfect time. Because they're in the book. Right now, it doesn't feel like they're in the book. You know what I mean like.

28:58

Michele: I can do that.

28:59

Speaker 4: Yeah. So, whatever you just say, yeah, I Lead and then just start with what you said. Okay. Whenever you're ready.

29:04

Michele: So, what I like about what you say in the book is that it really doesn't have to be the perfect time. What is important though, is that you're passionate about whatever you're doing. Because even if somehow the perfect time manifests, which it never does, there are going to be bumps in the road. And if you let those bumps stop you because you're not passionate enough, then don't even bother. But if you care about what you're doing and it means something to you, that bump may slow you down a little bit and you may take a day to just you know, huh you know or a vacation or whatever. But you love it enough to come back to it. And that is what will keep things moving the way that you want it to.

29:49

Ramesh: Justin?

29:55

Justin: Maybe you could segue or two about the book or something, a topic that you hit on. What was the another one?

29:58

Ramesh: Make it iterative.

30:01

Speaker 4: Maybe you could mention the title like...

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The post Building a Naturopathic practice from scratch with Dr. Michele Wilkerson Raithel and Justin Raithel appeared first on RameshDontha.com.

Identifying Technology Trends with Serial Entrepreneur Rob Ross

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Guest: Adrian Blanco
Company / Business name: ​Think Smart Incorporated
​Business website URL: ​​https://ThinkSmartInc.com

Rob Ross is the President of Think Smart Incorporated, an application hosting company in the cloud catering to Optometrists and dentists. Rob started his first company building personal computers from computer parts imported from abroad. After selling his first company before his 20s, Rob started his second company to manage infrastructure and networking for medium sized companies and rode the internet growth. Rob identified Cloud computing as the next big thing and started his current company in the early 2000.

​Show Notes:

Rob talks about starting his company when he was still in his teenage years and how he moved out of his house and lived in the office to get the company going. His company was assembling personal computers from imported parts just when the personal computer was revolution was picking up steam.

After selling his first company, Rob identified the trends towards outsourcing of computer infrastructure and networking and started his second company. In late 1990s, just when the internet craze was at the peak, Rob was able to sell his company and was sitting on multiple millions of $ on paper. As the internet bubble burst, Rob saw all his ‘millions’ vanish but still was sitting on decent profit.

Just when Cloud computing was taking off in early 200s, Rob started his 3rd startup, Think Smart Inc. hosting applications in the cloud for optometrists and dentists and other small businesses.

Rob shares his experience building businesses from scratch and the ups and downs of hiring people, firing people, and dealing with tough customers. Rob also shares his views on the next technology trends (extreme personalization of services) and how to ride the next wave.

​Episode Transcript (Click to expand)

00:00

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host, Ramesh Dontha. This podcast and of course the video cast here is for all entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs to start their own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today I'm very excited to introduce you to a guest, a serial entrepreneur who started very, very young and a very good friend of mine, Rob Ross.

00:31

Rob: Thanks for having me Ramesh.

00:32
Ramesh: Rob Ross is the president of things smart incorporated. Rob. So, think smart and incorporated. What does it do?

00:39

Rob: Well, think Smart is a is a cloud hosting company, which just simply means that we take a software application, we put it into a remote location and we host that and allow people to use the application remotely from all over the world without having to have their own equipment and infrastructure in their office where they're not experienced enough to do so.

01:01

Ramesh: I see. So, if for somebody who doesn't know this stuff, is it like Amazon web services? A very specialized web service.

01:08

Rob: Yeah. It's very similar to that. It's essentially just a, we take an application, in our case, we predominantly work in the optometry industry and dentistry as well. And so, and the optometry industry, we take an application that specifically runs a small optometry office, we move it into the cloud and then we allow that optometry office to have access to that application from anywhere on any device.

01:29

Ramesh: Okay. So, and then having known you, this think smart incorporated is not your first business. So how many businesses did you have?

01:37

Rob: So, I’ve had several, three really businesses that really define who I am and where my journey's begun. And those started back when I was 13 to 15 years old. Really long time ago.

01:53

Ramesh: I can’t imagine. Okay. So, I want to start from there. Okay. So, at 13 to 15-year-old kid, right? Anybody that I know, nobody started a business. So why did you start a business when you are between 13 and 15 years old?

02:06
Rob: I think it had a lot to do with our education system. And the fact that I learned quickly and our education system in schools aren't just set up for, to allow someone who learns quickly. We sort of learn and then we do six weeks of homework. And I learned quickly and then was like, okay, what's the next thing? And I wasn't able to do that. And so, I took my time and chose to not go to school much. And I would end up at usually a local mall or somewhere where they had computer stores. And I started to hang out in there and really got acclimated to technology.

02:46

Ramesh: So, what was your first business?

02:48
Rob: So, my first company was a company called RLR systems plus, and I met a gentleman who later became good friends with me, and he imported computers and computer parts directly from a manufacturer in Taiwan. And so, I started working with him and then eventually bought that business at 15 years old and started doing my own imports from there and started building custom machines. And that really made a big difference.

03:17

Ramesh: So, did you one con of your home or did you have actual office where you're working out of?

03:22

Rob: So, he worked out of his home, which is interesting. And then so when I took over the business, I immediately wanted to take it bigger and wanting to do more things. And so, I leased a space.

03:32
Ramesh: When you were 15 years old?

03:33

Rob: 15 years old, so I leased a space. I found a space in my local city, commercial building where the owner of the building was didn't live in the city. And so, we did it all by the transaction was... He had no idea that I was 15 years old. So not only did I lease that space, but then eventually I decided that I knew more than my parents at the time. And I decided to move into that space as well. So, I slept on a couch and it was a great experience and something I don't regret at all. And then eventually sold that business to someone else.

04:09

Ramesh: So how long did you have the business?

04:10

Rob: I had that business for about two years and then sold it to someone else and then they ran it for a while.

04:18

Ramesh: So, what did you do afterwards?

04:20

Rob: So, my next company was a company called integral networking corporation.

04:25

Ramesh: In between, did you go to college or do you start the company?

04:28

Rob: You know I did a lot of different things. I actually went and tried different industries to see what I wanted to do, and I kept coming back to technology. So, technology has always been my play and the thing that I wanted to do most, but I did take some time out. I went to work for bill Graham presents. I went and I was a lighting director for concerts and traveled all over the US doing that. And just tried various different things, but it always seemed that home was back where Technology was.

04:56

Ramesh: So, your second company how, like, how did you start and how did you get your first paying customers?

05:02

Rob: So, the second company was integral networking corporation, which eventually became the largest systems integrator in my city, which is in, I'm in Northern California. And so, it became one largest integrator there. And we started me, and a partner started the company. We were working for someone else and networking which is so common today was new at that time. And we figured it out. So, we had a good handle on it, and we figured out how to do it. And later we determined that we could do a better job than the company that we were working for. So, we started that company and that company was run for 12 years.

05:41

Ramesh: So, this was the second company even before you were like 20 or something?

05:45

Rob: Yeah, I think I started an interval networking in well it was 1988. So that would have made me about 20, about 19 or 20. Yeah.

05:57

Ramesh: Okay. So then how tough or how easy was it to establish the company and then keep it growing?

06:04

Rob: You know, I think starting a company is not that difficult. But the interesting part about it is that it's just, it's mysterious and there's so many different things that you don't know, and you get worried and caught up in all those mysterious things. Regulations regarding licensing and businesses and type of company you are starting, is it going to be a sole proprietorship or a corporation or general partnership or all the different things and taxes and everything. And I think people lose the fact that they're starting their company and they're starting their passion and they get caught up in the, Oh, it's just too difficult. Or it's just too this, it's not too difficult. It's just another skill that you've got to learn. You know, I don't know how to bake a souffle, but if I learn how to bake a souffle, I can bake a souffle and I'm okay with that.

06:46

Ramesh: So how long did it take for you on your partner to have your feet on the ground and said, we are comfortable, with the second company.

06:54

Rob: I think it took a couple of months. Mostly because we didn't have. Yeah. Just a couple of months. We relied on anyone we could that would listen to us. So, I had done some work for a company at one point when I was previously with the other place that we were at. And that person said, wow, you're really good at what you do, and you should go into business. And so, I called him out of the blue and I just said, Hey, you said you'd helped me. And he gave me a card table, you know, just a small table and a phone and said, you guys can work here. And so, within a couple of weeks of deciding we were going to start, we had a pseudo business plan that we didn't know how to write, but we chose to write it. And we had a commercial location. And so, we opened business and started working really hard to find customers.

07:47

Ramesh: So then initially, so you relied on your network and you call somebody and that's how you got your first paying customers.

07:51

Rob: Yeah. And I called someone that I had met one time.

07:54

Ramesh: Actually, that's what I hear all the time that your network is your strength and then if you rely on it, you'll get it.

08:01

Rob: Absolutely. And to even, you know, go farther into that, you really need to rely on your network and your network can be, you'll be amazed at what your network really is. Most people think their network is their friends and family and business associates, but it's more than that. It's your friends and family and business associates. It can be a neighbor, it can be someone that you meet at the grocery store. It can be anyone who's willing to listen to your passion and then maybe willing to step up and help you in some, even the smallest way.

08:26

Ramesh: So, you had this gig for 12 years.

08:28

Rob: 12 years. Yeah.

08:30

Ramesh: Was it a smooth ride all along?

08:31

Rob: It was a Rocky ride all along.

08:33

Ramesh: So, we talk about those.

08:35
Rob: it was an interesting journey. We started as two young kids in a space that was lent to us, you know, a small table and a phone. So, we were actually the company that lends us the space. It was a heating and air conditioning company. So, we literally started in that. And we worked really hard. We did everything we could to promote our company. So, we went to every local event. We showed up, we went to everything that we could, any way we could promote it. We probably handed out more business cards that year than anything else and we weren't shy about going in and talking to people and telling people that we were the best.

And we went in and told them that. And eventually people started listening. And I would say we started having real paying customers probably within about 90 days. So it was, it would have been better to have them in 60 days, but we had them in 90 to 120 days.

09:36

Ramesh: So then 12 years, but there'll be lots of ups and downs with, so the employee hiring. And so, any things that come to your mind as the, some of the, you know, some of the downsides?

09:49

Rob: Yeah. Well I think a lot of the downsides were a lack of preparation. Lack of having the, having someone tell me, Hey, you really need to plan in this way, or you really need to, here's how a business plan is written, and this is why it's important. Here's type of marketing that would help you out. These are the types of things that you need to do today. And I think that you end up falling in pitfalls or pit holes that you don't really need to fall into, but you don't know where they are. And so, I think that's the amazing part about, about your book is that it gives you the step-by-step of, of exactly what you need to do today. And that's something I wish I would have had because that would've made a big difference.

10:35

Ramesh: So, did you have any mentors during this 12-year period or somebody that you [ 10:38 inaudible].

10:39

Rob: Yeah, I think if you don't have mentors, I think you go insane. You have to have someone you can bounce things off of. My mentor is varied, and they varied because they, each one had different skillsets that I relied on. So, I had a mentor that was like a mother to me. But she was a person, a big executive at AT and T. And really didn't have any entrepreneurial experience but had a tremendous amount of organizational.

11:05

Ramesh: How did you meet her?

11:07

Rob: I’ve known, she's like a mother to me, so I’ve known her forever. So, it's someone that we've known for a long time within my network. And then I met a gentleman who turned out to be a venture capitalist and a serial entrepreneur himself and started talking to him and we became friends. And so, jeez, that was, you know, 30 years ago and we're still friends today and we still talk today, and I still rely on him and he relies on me for certain things as well. And then I think the other thing is, is that I reached out to score, which is the a service Corps of retired executives through the small business administration and reached out to them and you'll find that you know, some of the guys that are just trying give back that they're, they're a gem when they're trying to find things and they're free. So, it's a great resource to go to and talk to people. But really your mentors and the people that you rely on probably are people you don't think would be good in business, but they really will help you. It can be a parent or a friend or anyone.

12:14

Ramesh: I keep hearing the score actually, I think score seems like a very good resource actually for a lot of them.

12:18

Rob: It's a great resource and it's a service that's provided. It's a set of, of executives that have run, sometimes very large companies that don't, you don't even think might apply to you. And they just want to give back. And so that's what they're doing.

12:32

Ramesh: So, Rob so this book he talked about the 60 minutes startup. Yeah, something that I started, I'm very passionate about it. I'm very honored that you are included as one of the 30 entrepreneurs in the book. So, it's a 30-day step-by-step to launch your business and get your first paying customers in 30 days. Okay. So that's out of the way. So, I mean out of the 750 entrepreneurs that we shortlisted, so very honored to be there and that your chapter, it starts with how passionate are you, right? So, and the reason, the way I title that book, how passionate are you is that my belief is that passion is important, but at times passion can carry you in different directions to this type of business. People are so passionate about their business, they forget about the profitability of the business path. So, can you talk about your passion for technology? How did it help or hurt the building the business in a profitable way?

13:30

Rob: So, I think how it hurts is when you have a passion for something, you tend to want to be the best at what you're doing in that world. And you don't realize that when you start a business you suddenly become a multiple, you wear so many different hats and you suddenly become different persons in different roles that you have to play, that you probably never dreamed of. And I think that's highlighted. I don't talk a lot about books, but there's one book that I talk about that is, it was a book written in 1953 called the E myth and it was by Michael Gerber and one of the things that is talked about there is it profiles a Baker. And that's a gentleman that's an amazing Baker. And he opens a bakery and he realizes very quickly that he's no longer a Baker. He is now the salesperson and the accountant and the business owner and the inventory specialist. And on and on and on and on. And those are things that they didn't count on. And I think that his passion as a Baker and my passion in technology that's where it hurts you. In the early days in technology we used to, we used to love to be the first person to touch the latest technology was out there. Well, the problem is we often in order to have that that gift, if you will, we would sell those products at near cost just so we can be first. And you realize that although it made us first, that wasn't a really good business choice. It was a good choice for us as technology people because we really love the gadgets and technology and all the different things that help people. And we learned a lot, but it didn't help us in business. And I think that's because we didn't realize that at that point, we were wearing the hat in the business as an engineer or as a technology specialist that didn't really produce income. And so, we need to be focused on those things. And so, what I’ve learned about passion is you've got to be passionate and not just what you started the company as, or what your passion to get you opening it as. But as all aspects of business. I think that with me specifically, it took me a long time to change the title of my business card from systems engineer to president to a business person and I think it's because I felt it was pretentious or it wasn't me. And no, I'm an engineer. This is what I do. And I realized that if I'm going to do things successfully, I have to embrace all of the hats that I have to wear. And ultimately that's been a good journey for me. And it was a great life lesson.

15:59

Ramesh: Actually, that is fantastic Rob, because many engineers, technologies, I know they pride themselves being such a technologist, when they start a business, they forget about the business aspects of it. And that's a huge mistake.

16:12

Rob: It's a massive mistake, but it's a massive mistake for any business, right? It doesn't, whether you're a Baker or whether you're a technologist or whether you're a consultant or whether you're a hairdresser, I think that your passion for what you do as your craft needs to stay your passion, but you need to make sure that you get passionate about the other aspects of your business journey. And those are things that are really, really important. For me, one of the things that keeps me passionate about the business journey I am not a sales guy. I just, it's not my passion. So, what I learned a long time ago is that I work with the best sales people. I hire the best people to surround me. But I learned to saying a long time ago, and I’ll never forget it as long as I live, the saying is, there's margin in mystery. And so, finding something that's mysterious that other people don't do or don't know how to do, that you can then do well helps you to stay focused on your core passion, but still do things in business. So, it's an interesting way to think about things. For example, I don't know anything about repairing cars, but I know that if I ever was going to start an auto repair business, I would probably do automatic transmissions because nobody knows anything about them. They're the most complex thing in the world. And so, it's mysterious. And so, there's margin in that. There's money to be made in doing something that's specialty. And I think that with me, that's where my passion focuses on. So, I changed my passion to look at the hardest thing to do in technology, the most valuable thing to do. And I don't just go and offer a service that 50 other people are offering. No, I offer something that's very unique and that's what helps me in business.

17:48
Ramesh: Yeah. Actually, that's interesting because you said you started in 1988 and 12 years. That brings us to 2000, the year 2000. So sold your company in the year 2000.

17:58

Rob: Yeah. So, I sold, so I sold my company in 1999 to another company that liked our mix of products and services. And had the ability and the money to finance that. It was right at the time when all the dot com boom was happening. And it was in the middle of all of that. And so, we ended up going through an IPO, a public offering and overnight, it's a, it's a great story and I’ll shorten it. But overnight I went from you know, a pretty young kid to a multi multimillionaire overnight and on paper and on paper. And then about eight months later, the bubble burst of the dot com business and we actually weren't in the dot com that was interesting. But because we were in technology and we got lumped into that and so I watched my stock certificates, which were just, you know, pieces of paper that I laminated. And I watched those go from a value of $24 million to be the value of a place mat.

18:59

Ramesh: I am so honored to talk to a multi-millionaire right in front of me.

19:02

Rob: Used to be a multi-millionaire. But it's been a great journey and it's given me the ability to meet a lot of people. And I really used that to parlay my last business, which is been very successful.

19:14

Ramesh: So, it looks like, so you started a networking company solely, now you have a cloud hosting. So, you seem to have a knack of identifying the trends just when they take off because the cloud, if I remember it was taking off in early two thousand kind of stuff. Right. So how did you get into this, the cloud hosting business with think smart?

19:31

Rob: You know, we started off really think smart, started off being a, an extension of our last company. And so, we took what we knew, and we started off doing the networking piece and we started to see that space get crowded. And when we used to go into a company and talk to them, and there was maybe two people that we would competing against, we were now competing against 20. And we felt that that the space was getting commoditized and so we started looking for different ways. And I think that's one of the things that's really important when you're in businesses. The ability to morph, the ability to see trends and the ability to be able to change the business and not be scared about those changes, those changes can be scary, but they're really important. And I think that this again transcends back to what you said about passion. Take that passion of knowing your industry, whether you're a Baker or a hairdresser or whatever the passion is and, that's where you really focus your passion is you have the ability to identify what's going on in your industry as a whole because of your passion. And then use that on how I make sure and ride these trends or move to these trends and be nimble enough to do so. And I think really be accepting enough to know when to change. And that's a tough thing.

20:51

Ramesh: Yeah. I want to get some tips from you. So, what are the trends you're seeing now? So maybe I wanted to go and start that business.

20:57

Rob: Wow. I think the trends now are moving in a lot of different industries to customization and personalization on the individual. So, we're seeing this in the medical industry. For example, one of the things that's happening now is that instead of taking, say if you have a disease like cancer, instead of taking a generic cancer drug that's made for everyone to treat symptoms, they're literally going and saying, what type of cancer do you have? You as an individual and let's go and design a drug or some sort of treatment that is specific to Ramesh. And that's happening and we're seeing that in all different industries. So, we're seeing this hyper customization, if you will. It used to be in the printing industry. If you wanted to print posters, you had to order 5,000 posters because they had to do it. I can now order a poster, I can order a single poster and I can get it in two days. And it doesn't cost, you know, it used to be that they would set up these huge machines and everything to print that poster. And so, if you wanted one, sure you could get one, but it's going to cost you $1,000 and now I can get one for $3 or whatever it is. And the same thing's happening in our industry as well. We're starting to see the customization trend. So, we're starting to see things where we can identify a trend and make custom software or custom services that are detailed specifically to an individual company. Quick example is we have a product that allows one of our clients to enter in service tickets into our, into our system so that they can get help when they need it. We're now doing things where we're custom branding it to their company. So, we're adding their logos and their color schemes, and it feels like they're more connected and it feels to them like they've got something special that they can now be a part of. And so that customization is happening in our industry and we're seeing in the medical industry and we're seeing in other industries as well. And so incredibly custom and hyper focus to an individual or even an individual office.

23:06

Ramesh: Is it because of the barrier to customization personalization has come down.

23:09

Rob: Yes. Yeah. I think technology, when you are in my industry, I think technology has changed so much that in the old days we'll use the printing industry. If you wanted that one poster printed, you know, they would have these huge presses that would be different colors and they would have to run it multiple times. And that's all been consolidated into a digital press or a digital printer where they can literally send a print job and it just comes out. And so, I think that you're starting to see those things and people are starting to ride those trends. And I think the successful companies of the future are going to really go into this hyper customization and being able to tailor things specifically. So, the days of me offering a service, for example, and saying I'm going to offer a cloud hosting service to all of the optometry offices and they're all going to fit into this one box. I don't know if it's gone, but I know that it's limited and I know that it's going in that direction. And to where we're going to have to have a menu of services and let people pick and choose between those menus of services and then further hyper customize that to that individual. And I think those are really where the trends are going. And I think we're seeing that across broad scopes. I mean, we're seeing it in drug companies, which is fantastic because in 10 years you're going to start taking the cancer drug for Ramesh and that's a huge thing and I don't, it's an amazing place that we're going in that world.

24:27

Ramesh: Excellent. So, Rob, just switching gears, looking back at your journey for multiple businesses over there, things that you think you could have done differently through the different areas.

24:37

Rob: I don't think we have the hours that it's going to take to talk about that. I think everyone will have things they could do differently. I think it's one of the things that I could talk about is really to say, surround yourself with people that are better than you. That's a big one. I see so many people that sort of try to hire people or or surround themselves with people that they can control or that they can put into a shoe box, if you will. And I did that. That was a huge mistake that I did. And, and I’ll never forget the day that my three most important people in my company sat down in the conference room and all at the exact same time push their resignations over to me and they didn't want to resign, but I was too controlling. And I was micromanaging every move. And what I found is that if I just let those people go, if I let them do their thing, they were amazing. And that their heart was focused on the business. So, having controls is very important, but letting people explore their own skills and their own passions. And working with you. Ultimately the people that are surrounding me make me look better because they're better and ultimately, they're probably better than I am in a lot of cases and they really help out. So, I think that's one of the things, I think the other thing is stay focused on the numbers but don't sleep with the numbers, you know, stay focused on what needs to be accomplished. I need to get revenue, I need to do this. And make sure that you keep those things in mind so you're not overspending.

26:18

Ramesh: What are the downside of like, why you are saying that don't sleep with the numbers.

26:22
Rob: Don't sleep with the numbers because you don't want to take things home with you. And I did for many years. Business is a passion. It is a lifestyle in a lot of different ways. But it shouldn't be your life.

26:38

Ramesh: As an entrepreneur. You're consumed by the business so much. That is one of the things that you are saying that be careful about that.

26:44

Rob: Yeah. I think you need to be careful of those things. And then I think finally a thing that we talk about around here often is we have two sayings in our business and both of those are absolute core values of our business. One is always do the right thing even if you lose money. And just meaning that the customer's not always right. I know that's the saying that ever says the customer is always right and that doesn't mean the customer is always right. I think what the saying is talking about is you should always do the right thing for the customer, do the best thing for them. There are times when customers are unreasonable. There are times when customers say the wrong things. There's just all kinds of issues with that saying, but it means that you as a company need to take the higher road and always do the right thing for the customer. That has always worked out to us financially to put us in a better position. When I have gone overboard for a customer, I end up making more money even though something happened that caused me to go overboard and the customer because they talk about it. And it's really important for them to do that. And then the other thing that we have here that really, I would encourage everybody to understand is we have a saying called something given for nothing has no value. And essentially what that means is that if I do something for you that's special, but I don't tell you it's special or I don't give you an idea of what you're getting to you, it has no value because to you it was just what I did. So, if I normally charge someone $100 to do a service, and I say to you yeah, so that'll be $50. You don't know that I'm giving you a $50 value. You're not excited about it and you're not charged up about what, wow, this guy is doing some really great stuff for me. And so then maybe later down the road if I double your price, you see it as a doubling of price. But really, I may have tripled other people's prices. So, it just, it's a, it's something that we always say, tell your customers. It doesn't mean to be boastful. It doesn't mean to go in and say, Hey, I'm doing this for you. It's just to say, you know what? We normally do this, but I want to do this special thing for you and make it special. Because once it's special, then people feel connected to you and they feel loyal to you. And those are things that that give your customers and build longevity with your customers.

29:00

Ramesh: So, it basically goes from a sale to a relationship.

29:02

Rob: Yeah, absolutely. And that's exactly what the goal is because relationships don't go away. Exactly. Those numbers are really important, especially if you're in a business that doesn't do things like recurring revenue or doesn't have revenue streams. If you're in a business where a customer ends and another customer begins, just remember that and I don't know, depending on industry, this numbers will change. But traditionally it is, it's two thirds less costs to keep an existing customer than it is to go track a new one. And so, you want to, and you know, I always say, what is it? 74% of statistics are made up on the spot, which just means that, so it could be wrong, but the point is, is that the point is that it costs far less to keep that existing customer. So, figure out how to get recurring business from them. If you're a Baker, find a way to make sure that that person comes in every Tuesday. You know, you need to make sure that you're selling enough jelly donuts to make the payroll and everything else.

29:57

Ramesh: Excellent Rob. So, the final question. So, I'm an aspiring entrepreneur, right? I want to start a business. So, what are the few things that you can tell me, piece of advice based on what you have done?

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The post Identifying Technology Trends with Serial Entrepreneur Rob Ross appeared first on RameshDontha.com.

Video Interview with Adrian Blanco of Adrian Blanco Jewelry

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Guest: Adrian Blanco
Company / Business name: Adrian Blanco Jewelry

​Episode Transcript (Click to expand)

00:00

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is for entrepreneurs who want to start and build their own business with passion, purpose, perseverance, and possibilities. Today I'm very excited to introduce a guest I know quite well and who started very, very young Adrian Blanco. Adrian, welcome.

00:25

Adrian: I liked that. The four PS. That's my jam.

00:28

Ramesh: That's right.

00:29

Adrian: That's what I yell when they wake up in the morning. You know, passion and perseverance. I love it. Thanks for having me.

00:35

Ramesh: Yeah, you're welcome, man. So, what's your business? What's the current business that you have?

00:40

Adrian: I own Adrian Blonc with jewelry. It's located in Folsom, California. And we've been in business for a, heading into three years now. I recently celebrated my 20th year in the industry. I know 20 years. I'm not even 40 yet.

00:56

Ramesh: Yeah, you don't even look 25.

00:57

Adrian: I know it's been an awesome journey, but you know, finally three years ago decided to do it. You know, now's the time. Open up your own business. And here we are.

01:09

Ramesh: So, Adrian so one thing that comes to my mind whenever I look at you, you're a bundle of energy, [01:15 inaudible] if there is a one word. So, tell me a little bit about why you decided to start your own business.

01:22

Adrian: Well, so going into the jewelry business I would say was kind of an accident. So, most people that have been in business as long as I have and as young as I am, they are probably your family members. And in high school I literally was just looking for an afterschool job that was not in the food industry. A typical high school job, delivering paper and all that stuff. And I was very, I’ve always liked the idea of business being in, I don't think I knew that word entrepreneur then, but I was part of a club called the future business leaders of America.

01:54

Ramesh: How young were you at the time? Where we talked about.

01:56

Adrian: We are talking about junior year in high school, 17. So, it's always been in the back of my mind. I liked the idea of going to a job, dressing up, looking good. In my early days I thought maybe I'd go to law school, but my senior year I turned 18. I was wrestling, I got injured and I really, I definitely need to do something to earn some money because you know, as an 18-year-old, you want to have cars, you know, you want everything. And I stumbled upon a job in a jewelry store locally in Davis. That's I would say my third job. But my first I would say real, real job and it was just an afterschool job and I was doing the cleanup, but eventually I grew in it. After graduating high school, I told my boss that this is an industry I want to get into. I want to learn more. So, he took me on as an apprentice. So, I went to school to learn benchwork actually making jewelry. I went the school to learn gemology. Eventually I ended up managing his firm, his business.

03:01

Ramesh: So, you accidentally stumbled into the jewelry business. It's not that something that you worked in it for some time and then just right after high school just tumbled into a jewelry business.

03:11
Adrian: No, so literally made the way through senior year, I applied for a job there. I got the job out of like over 50 applicants. I got the job and I thought, I talked to my boss later on, like, what was it? And he said, it’s the way you carried yourself and I think I was the only one that showed up in the suit. And I didn't show with my girlfriend or a friend with my skateboard, you know, so when I talk to young folks nowadays when I go to a junior highs and high school, I talk about my journey. I tell them that first impression is very important. You put your best foot forward. And I’ve tried to live that you know, till this day.

03:51

Ramesh: So how long did you work for this jeweler?

03:53

Adrian: 15 years. So, I worked for them for 15 years. And, you know, it was a point where I thought maybe there will be a, some kind of a succession, but he wasn't ready to go there yet, to pass the business on. So, I just made the decision that, you know, maybe it's time for me to pursue other things and I went the opposite way of going the corporate side of jewelry, which is night and day between the mom and pop style and with the corporation. Well there's so much more training as you know, and a lot more rules and I came in as a manager. So not only did I have to really learn a new style of being a jeweler, I had to implement it. I had to do the same thing, which I'm happy to say excelled my first year I made their president's club, but my heart wasn't in it. I feel like there's a difference when you, when someone calls you as a jeweler versus a jewelry salesman. As a jeweler you are, it's more than just the transaction. It's a building the relationship, I feel like it's going deeper, caring about why are they there. See the thing with jewelry, and this is I think what drew me into it, it's not just, it's not like go in the grocery store and buying something. You buy food because you have to eat. You don't need jewelry. So, it's, you know, the purchase is all around celebration. And I think that's something special to be in the middle of it, to be that person making that happen for these folks.

05:34

Ramesh: So, you are saying basically it's all about the people in terms of their relationships, their celebrations about...

05:41

Adrian: It is all about that. Cause you know what? That piece of jewelry I'm selling, Guess what? You can buy it in the next jewelry store. The diamond I'm selling you, you can buy it at Costco for crying out loud, but you know what they don't get? This guy. So, I'm all about building the relationship and I think throughout my jewelry career, that's what I’ve learned through develop. That's what it's been instilled in me by all my mentors and not just my, the boss, the boss I worked for, but people in the industry in itself, the jewelry business is a, the industry is very, it's a large, small industry if that makes sense.

06:21

Ramesh: What does that mean?

06:22

Adrian: Well, let's say you're a diamond dealer and you want to work with me, but you don't know me. You can call another diamond dealer and say, Hey Adrian Blanco and fulsome, is he reputable? I mean it could be your relationship with that time dealers ever met you is hanging by what another jeweler; another diamond dealer would say about you.

Because if you do good, if you do well, everyone will spread that and say, yeah, go check out Adrian. He's good, he's solid. If you do something bad, boy...

06:52
Ramesh: it spreads pretty fast.

06:54

Adrian: Yeah. You could end up not having any reputable or good dealers.

06:59

Ramesh: Okay, so you worked for the large jeweler, but you could have continued either there even though you're not happy you could have gone to some other jeweler. So, going from there was the next step was starting your own business.

07:11

Adrian: I think when I worked for corporate, I came to the realization that who am I, what kind of a person or jeweler do I want to be? How do I want to be coming home to my family? I'm realizing, you know, because on the corporate end it's all about numbers. It's all about, you know, it's all about moving product. And if you don't hit the mark, a lot of pressure. You don't make the money. And I just didn't like that feeling. I was a different person. Even my wife told me that, you know, you've changed. You're taking on a lot more stress. And it's not healthy. And I’ve always had, I knew my capabilities. I also know how much resources I have. I opened up the business with no money.

08:03

Ramesh: So, it's a huge jump going, working for somebody for 18 odd years and suddenly wanting to start your own business. How did that transition happen?

08:13

Adrian: Well I’ve always thought, I’ve always thought that I was going to take over the mom and pop that I worked for 15 years and that didn't happen.

08:20

Ramesh: So, you were preparing yourself.

08:21

Adrian: I’ve always prepared myself. So, in my mind, if this doesn't work, I'm going to open up my own business. But my wife told me, and this is how I ended up working for the corporate, on the corporate side, and my wife has her master's in management. So, whenever she says, I listened because she's the smart one in the relationship. And she said, you know, why don't you try working for another family or another business maybe. And I did, I gave it a try. And that's what led me to opening up my own store because I realize through and through, I am a small business. My heart is meant for a small business. Everything about me is all about the community. And giving back. And there are so many restrictions when you work for a big corporation. You know, and my heart just wasn't in it.

09:10

Ramesh: Okay. So, then you suddenly said, I’ll find this location and the brick and mortar. And is that how you started or was there a [09:19 inaudible].

09:19

Adrian: No, you know what it was tough because I didn't know anything about leasing. You know, I’ve owned homes, but on the commercial side I didn't do anything. So, I reached out to people that I know. I did work out of my home for a while for a couple months. And, I think for my wife, that was kind of like my way of, it's funny, my wife would tell me, you know, we'll put together a business plan. And like it's all in here. Somehow, I had a hard time putting it into paper. And I wish I had your book to guide me and, but I did the best I could do between the hours of 12 and four in the morning. And I came up with something, something concrete to get me started to kind of say, what are my goals? What am I envisioning? What am I looking at? How much money do I truly have to make this happen? And that was like the biggest hurdle, the money part. Cause I know am I going to get a personal loan? And you know, the only thing that, it's funny, the only thing that my wife said, I don't care how you do it. You just have to be the mortgage. I'll take care of the rest. Having a good partner like I did with my wife was very important.

10:29

Ramesh: Actually, you know what, I got to tell you one story here. When I was doing my MBA, so we had this CEO who came for keynote speech, the very first sentence she said, right, she was the CEO of the Maxwell coffee, said the most important thing is to marry the right person. So, I mean, she didn't talk about business. You have to do this, find the customer nothing. She said you have to, you know, marry the right person.

10:52

Adrian: I know I married the right person. I don't know if my wife feels she married the right person.

10:56

Ramesh: That's awesome.

10:57

Adrian: That's not true. She did marry the right person.

11:00

Ramesh: So, then you started this...

11:02

Adrian: I was working outside of my house and basically, I just showed the numbers. Yeah. I sort of sole proprietorship. I went down to Sacramento County and filled for a business and the business was coming and I was doing all this through social media. No website, no media.

11:19

Ramesh: Welcome to social media. You are the social media maverick in a second. Because there is going to be a segment on that one.

11:24

Adrian: But that's basically what I did. And I just said, Hey, look at these four deals. And it was double what I was making in the corporate world. Well, because I have no overhead. I have no overhead. So, basically the decision was if I can do this here in our living room, what else can I do Brick and mortar? When I opened up my business in 2017. I didn't know what to expect. I found 800 square foot office space next to, you know, it's kind of like a, it's like a rundown strip mall because it's not even a strip mall or whatever office Plaza and it's kind of an odd place to find a jeweler. But it worked. Because I feel like I set the expectation kind of low, but when they come in it's like, Oh wow. I wowed them. Right.

12:16

Ramesh: So, the location was not that critical for you, but your presence, your social presence and other things were important.

12:21

Adrian: So, in Folsom we have the historic district, which is great. We get a lot of tourists, we have the Bellagio, super expensive. And then you have your shopping, your strip malts with anchored by a grocery store. They're all great, but the rent was just so expensive. I found a place with the rent that I could manage. And I was working alone, so none of those other places were work because I could not handle a walk-in traffic because I was already busy. I'm opening up a business, with an existing clientele that I'm already servicing. And at that time really, I was doing more of a concierge style. I'll go to the house, bring it back to my shop. But within a month or two, I'm realizing, oh boy, like the words out there where you know, we're in town and people are coming in to check us out. So, within a month or two I'm having to hire people and I didn't expect that at all for my business to grow that fast.

13:20

Ramesh: That's awesome. So, the next segment, Adrian, so this is about the book, the 60-minute startup. So, something that...

13:27

Adrian: Congratulations by the way.

13:28

Ramesh: Oh, thank you. So, this book I selected about 30 entrepreneurs from the US right out of 700 plus that be shortlisted. And we are very, I am very honored to have you as one.

13:40

Adrian: I am very honored to be on the short list.

13:42

Ramesh: And then your chapter in the book starts with this title, if Energizer bunny were [13:48 inaudible] because the moment I look at you, it's like Energizer bunny. How does he get the energy right? And then we go into the details are especially about how you acquire customers through social media. So, this is the segment where, I mean, of all the people that I’ve known, you are a Maverick of social media, how you use, but the interesting thing is it doesn't seem like you are really promoting yourself. You're selling yourself. Okay. So, let's talk a little bit about what do you do on the social media first and then how you do it next.

14:16

Adrian: You know, so it's funny, I mean, I follow a few influencers, right? And I am not even close to what an influencer is. I may try to emulate some of them, but I think at the end of the day, so when I opened up the business with no money, I knew I wasn't going to be able to afford the big brands to help me to draw people in. So that's out. I know I can't afford to do big billboards.

14:45

Ramesh: Did you have a following when you started your business, or you built it afterwards?

14:50

Adrian: Well, at this point it's like I'm 17 years in the business. I have people following me from Davis, from Yellow County. And then when I worked for that corporate jewelry store, I developed a clientele there as well. So, the word went out that, you know, Adrian's not here anymore, but he went out on his own.

15:04

Ramesh: But this all like in person, like one-on-one. Social media was not there. But how did the social media happen?

15:10
Adrian: I’ve been doing social media for, whenever Facebook was coming about. At this point I haven't really embraced Instagram quite yet, but I knew in the beginning the brand was not going to be some big-name diamond jewelry brand. It's going to be Adrian Blanco. Who is Adrian Blanco? Everything you say about me, it's like what you see is what you get. And I just have to put it out there in the world you know, and hopefully people will like me enough that or find me interesting enough that they're going to say, I want to see that guy. But truthfully, the business comes from word of mouth. When you come meet, when you come to our store, you're going to get a different feeling, a non-pushy environment, a very, a little bit more, I want to say calm because I am this energetic in the store. And you know, I think it's like a, you know, people have told me you are like a breath of fresh air, you know, it's kind of nice coming in to a place like this, but we're not pushy. I don't have to sell anything. I hate the word sell or being called a salesman. When someone says, Oh, you're such a salesman. I actually took a little bit offense to that. Cause I don't know, I have an idea of what a salesman is and that's not who I am. You know, I like to be, that you were saying about being passionate, you know.

16:27

Ramesh: So, what are the things that you told me, which I still remember when somebody comes to you, you're not talking to them about selling anything. You're talking to them about their family. What are the events that are coming in their life and then that evolves into why they're buying? And so, talk a little bit about that.

16:42

Adrian: And I think it's not just in the jewelry industry, I think, I think in sales in general, whatever it is, it's good to know who you're working with and when you kind of break that barrier, when people come into a store or whatever, they are defensive. People are just naturally like that. And they teach this in sales training. It is true and it works. But I think sometimes we get so caught up in the numbers, making your numbers, make our quota. That's why in the shop I changed that. I'm trying to change the environment of a typical jewelry store where there's quotas where you have to sell something where you have to turn it over. I hate that word. Turnover. In my former job, they were big on that. So, let's say you come to my store. We build a rapport. Okay. These are sales terms I am using. And you say, Adrian, I really appreciate working with you, but I do need to take some time. I just started looking, this is the first shop I started looking at. It should be just a shake hand. Thank you so much. No, I have to turn you over to another salesperson. I have to come up with some saying, Oh, Ramesh, let me introduce you to someone.

17:53

Ramesh: I see. I saw that happened to myself. I did not realize that's what it is happening.

17:57

Adrian: people don't realize it because it's done so smoothly, and we train on this. We train people on this. It felt so unnatural. I literally have to go home and take a cold shower because now I feel like the 30 minutes, I spent getting to know you, I'm thinking gosh, does he think now that's all a fake. And it felt fake. It didn't feel genuine. In my store, the first person tell someone you don't have to buy anything. I want you to know it's about you and what you want. If you go somewhere else, I wish that I just hold that I say something enough to help you decide what you want to buy. At the end of the day, it's about what you want. And that's all I can give.

18:35

Ramesh: You're in a relationship business. You're not in the sales business.

18:38

Adrian: Absolutely, I'm in the relationship business and that's what sales should be. I don't care if you're selling cars and that's what's great. I tried to surround myself with likeminded people that are in the relationship business, you know? And I think business will last longer. Yeah. When that's your focus.

19:00

Ramesh: Yeah. And the second thing you said some time ago, I still remember if you take care of the community, the community will take care of you. I mean, you're very much in the community. So how do you balance how much time you have to spend on your business versus how much time you spend on your community?

19:17

Adrian: Ooh, boy. It's a juggling act. It's a juggling act. Well when I opened up a store in 2017, I kind of, and there's videos out there when I gave a speech, I think it's very you know, a lot of businesses will come into a town, they choose a specific town because they heard that it's a good place to open up a business. But just opening your doors is not enough, reaching out. And that's always been me in nature. I mean, I did this in Davis, my mentor kind of instilled that in me to give back. And also, it has to do with my upbringing too. I grew up, I went through, I received Jesuit education before high school and our motto was being a man for others. By the time I was in high school, I was or after high school I was involved, that's when I got involved in rotary. I was in Rotaract, which is, as you know, our motto is service above self. And I really live by those words and I believe in karma. I feel like the more you give out, the more you get back. Not that that's the reason you should be doing it, but that's just what happens. And I feel so blessed for the abundance of accolades I’ve received in the short tenure of my business that I just, that's where the feeling of like giving back comes from.

20:41

Ramesh: You want to talk about the awards that you got already in the last few years.

20:45

Adrian: So, I opened February 201, by October we were voted best jeweler by style magazine. The following year 2018, 2018 was crazy. We won style magazine again. Our local paper, Folsom demography in Eldorado Hills voted us best jeweler. And then we were voted emerging business of the year by the Folsom greater partnership. And that was just great man.

21:12

Ramesh: So, let me ask you this. These awards, do they translate into business?

21:15

Adrian: Absolutely. Because people, well, if you've never been through an establishment and you look up the wall and you see, you see, you know, pictures or sorry plaques, doesn't that give you a feeling of

21:30

Ramesh: Some authenticity?

21:31

Adrian: Well, tell me this, what would give you confidence in dealing with a business, a picture of that person with famous actors or models or whatever, or a plaque stating this guy's the best jeweler. So, I had those too, but I keep that in my wallet. No. It is, it's funny, I look at my wall sometimes and it's like an embarrassment of riches and I'm very humbled by it. I look at it as really as a humbling tool to remind me that people believed that me, people support me, and people want to see me succeed. That's why when people come in, it's, I make it a one on one thing. I don't care if you're here for a cleaning, a watch battery or buying a $30,000 diamond. I treat you the same and I don't change my demeanor. I'm the same energetic guy you'll see.

22:33

Ramesh: Yeah. So, Adrian on that thing, another thing that comes to my mind when I look at you, not just energetic confidence. I mean you're full of confidence in terms of how you present yourself. And I think you said you went to a high school reunion, then you met with lawyers and doctors and then so tell about, I mean like how do you feel so confident? How do you get there?

22:54

Adrian: Well, I spent a year in city college and that was kind of the turning point that I decided to really go all in this business and pursue it. So, I went a different route. I went to the Gemological Institute of America and I think my confidence comes from experience, comes from the amount of knowledge I know about my product, about my business, about the jewelry industry. And I think so we thought about getting to know someone, having that knowledge of who you're working with, how to adjust yourself. Maybe my energy is too much for someone. Maybe I'm working with someone that's a little bit more chill and I got to tone it down a little bit. So, I mean I guess you call that confidence. It's just, that's who I am. You know, I think when you, I call it passion. When you're passionate about something, it really shows. And I think the client builds a confidence in you when you do that.

23:58

Ramesh: So last couple of questions. One is what are the tips that you can give to aspiring entrepreneurs of the social media? Like based on your experience, what are the things that they should be doing? What are the things that should not be doing?

24:10

Adrian: First, I'm going to say I appreciate the fact that you think I am good at social media. Because I really don't think so. I just [24:16 inaudible] what I want to put up. I don't think about it.

24:18

Ramesh: I look at your posts and they never feels like you're selling something. But I love that is going on there.

24:24

Adrian: I guess in a way selling myself, like I said, you know, if you see me on social media and you think, you know what, that guy's funny enough or whatever, I want to meet him. That's enough. That's cool. I think, I think on social media I took advantage of it because it was free, and It was affordable. I mean, you can put, I mean, I don’t know if you look at the insights, I don't know how true it is that for 100 bucks you can reach, I don’t know, 14,000 people within your area. It's all cool. But I like the fact that actually I embrace Yelp. People hate Yelp. But I'm not going to [24:59 inaudible] fact that if you put jeweler in my area, I rank number one.

25:03

Ramesh: But how do you do it? Like what are the tips that you could give?

25:06

Adrian: Well, I think for Yelp you need to respond right away. I don't know anything about algorithms or anything like that, but if you respond right away to inquiries, I think that increases your chances of being on top. In two and a half years we've reached well over 105-star reviews.

25:29

Ramesh: But tell me something of the time management. It seems too...

25:32

Adrian: Time management.

25:34

Ramesh: How do you manage it?

25:36

Adrian: I have three kids. I recently have an infant, a four-month-old daughter. Thank you. It's tough man. When you're at home, your home, you got to be dad. When you are at work, you got to be that super boss.

You have to, and when you're out in the community, you have to, you can be a salesman, you can be a dad. You have to be that community-oriented person. And its funny people say, yeah, man, you're at all these events. I know, it looks like it. There's a joke in my town, you know, when I arrive at an event, people are you here or is this an Adrian drive by? 5 minute or less you make an impact. You know, and on social media you can make it look like you've been there, or you can even make it look like you started the event. Those are the events.

26:25

Ramesh: Yeah, you know you are there for a few minutes. But it seems as if they'd been there all along, that kind of stuff. Okay. So, the last question for aspiring entrepreneurs, based on your journey, what are the things that you would say?

26:38

Adrian: I think you really have to follow your heart. But you also have to be practical and you have to be realistic. You know, sometimes we get so passionate about something and at some point, you need to have a stopping point, I think. Being true to yourself. And that's what it was for me. I did it step by step by step. I, instead of, I could have gotten a loan if I wanted to and opened up a nice real store. But I said don't want to be in debt when I first opened up a business. So, I think having those conversations with yourself, you have to come into terms of what you're capable of. And I'm all about following your dreams. I did it. But I’ve also been in the business for 20, for almost 20 years. So, I paid my dues.

I was able to do it because people know me in my industry. When I needed product, I was able to get good terms. I was able to get a memo. Meaning I didn't have to pay for it upfront. Not everyone can do that. Nobody can wake up tomorrow. And say I'm going to open up a jewelry store with zero money. Impossible.

27:40

Ramesh: Adrian, thank you very much on being in the 60 minutes startup. You are the energetic bunny that starts companies. Thank you very much.

27:51

Adrian: I appreciate you. Thank you so much. All right.

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The post Video Interview with Adrian Blanco of Adrian Blanco Jewelry appeared first on RameshDontha.com.

Building a Multi-Disciplined Business With Actor, Artist, Entrepreneur Rio Rocket – AEP #37

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Guest: ​​​​​​​Rio Rocket
Company / Business name: RioRocket.Com
Business web site​ ​ ​ | ​ ​   ​ Instagram ​ |  ​ ​ ​Vimeo ​

Rio Rocket is a multi-disciplined performer, voice-actor with exceptional vocal malleability, actor, presenter, motivational speaker and commercial model. Rio is also Official Speaker, Announcer, and VOG (Voice of God) for John Jay College’s Annual Commencement ceremony at Arthur Ashe Stadium. First and only motivational speaker ever hired for a production by Lowe’s Home Improvement. He is also a former competitive athlete, and highly-accomplished graphic artist, illustrator, designer, web developer, online marketer, and entrepreneur.

Show Notes:

Rio starts off with the story how he evolved into a voice-actor and actor and then expanded into other areas like Voice-Of-God etc.

Rio’s entrepreneurial journey started off with a graphic design and Rio talks about how he used elance.com to snag the first paying customers. Rio talks about the importance of price, pitch, portfolio to get first customers.

Rio’s evolution into so many disciplines is gradual and it happened over a period of 20 years. He kept learning all the adjacent areas like SEO, video marketing, and branding.

Rio then goes into the mechanics of coordinating so many different things and how time-slicing is very important. As Rio is involved in many disparate things like acting and graphic design, he needs to make sure that that time management is critical.

As a person, Rio says he can’t stand still. He needs to keep learning, doing many different things. But having clear priorities like making sure that basic necessities are taken care of is key.

Rio’s advice is to learn as much as possible about a topic, absorb everything, ask questions, and find mentors.








​Episode Transcript (Click to expand)

00:03

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today I'm excited to introduce a guest who transcends multiple disciplines. His name is Rio Rocket. Rio Rocket is a full service commercial graphic designer, web developer and branding expert. And needing a bigger mountain to climb Rio entered acting arena as a voice artist and has evolved to become a film and television actor. Hi Rio, welcome.

00:49

Rio: Hi Ramesh, thank you for having me.

00:52

Ramesh: Hey Rio, I have not come across a person yet on my podcast who has evolved so many domains. So, Rio in your own words tell me what you do now and, or where you're putting your focus on.

01:05

Rio: Well, currently I still am a full-service graphic artist, branding expert web developer. I still have you know, my business with digital marketing and online marketing. However, it also had, enables me and gives me the freedom and the time to branch out into becoming a more visual artists, using myself as the tool. So, film and television commercials, I’ve been able to successfully transition into that space without losing a step in my previous business.

01:44
Ramesh: Okay, that's great. So just to give us a glimpse of the breadth of the voice and acting things you have done. Can you give us specific examples of in a way we can see you or hear you?

02:02

Rio: As far as acting well, the best place to see and hear me is my website www.riorocket.com. I'm pretty active on Instagram, primarily Instagram. Vimeo, I do like to upload videos of work I’ve done on Vimeo and you know, I kind of do it all. I'm spread out between film commercials and TV. I've just filmed a pilot for a new streaming series called altar boy, which is now moving forward. And I think we filmed it about a year, year and a half ago, which is now moving forward in production and we're pitching it to a few networks. There's also a cooking show that I have that I just filmed over the summer, and its sort of a revolutionary new type of cooking show. I'm not at Liberty discussing details at the moment, however, that's also in production. But like I said, I do a lot. The VOG, which is voice of God of John Jay colleges commencement ceremony, they hold it every year at [inaudible] flushing, meadow park, Arthur Ashe stadium, a crowd of about 10,000. Not a big deal. But you know, I do some live events. I host the Katra film festival, which is a film festival in downtown Brooklyn. And I just, you know, I just try to keep myself versatile and agile, so I'm able to, you know, take on whatever is presented to me.

03:36

Ramesh: Okay, excellent. So, the agile entrepreneur so you, you embody that spirit there Rio. So, let's start your journey. I mean, you did not start as a singer or actor, a model. You started somewhere else. So, what was your first business and then how you started that?

03:55

Rio: I mean, my very first entrepreneurial act was when I was a child, I think it was five or six and you know, I would draw comic books. Okay. And you know, I drew a comic book and I remember writing 5 cents on the cover and you know, I have a cousin who lived with me and you know I pitched it to her, and she said she looked through and said, okay, I’ll buy it. And I took a pen and I wrote a two in front of the five and it's 25 cents now. She said how did that happen? I said, well, according to the law of supply and demand, now that you want it, it's more valuable.

04:36

Ramesh: So, you were hustling from pretty early on.

04:43

Rio: Right. I didn't even realize what I was doing, but yeah. Yeah. I did understand the concepts pretty well as a child. And as I grew up, I tried several things, but I always seem to settle back into the creative space. So, I did put myself through college. I've got a couple of degrees and we don't want to start a graphic design business, which eventually evolved into a, you know, a lot more than entire umbrella of digital marketing and visual markets.

05:10

Ramesh: So and then I think when I read your story and you have a very interesting story of how you got started, because for many entrepreneurs, I'm not talking about when you want a child, but when you started your graphic design or any business like that, the first challenge is getting your first paying customers. So, I think you, how did you get your first paying customers? What did you do?

05:37

Ramesh: My first hanging customers who weren't related to me or family. I found a site called www.elance.com and basically it was a site for freelancers, and you know, those who provide a digital marketing services, graphic design services, things like that. And I said, you know, this is a pretty good way to kind of build a brand up and start a business. So, I actually did that while I was in school. I did it as I was going to school. Every time I came home with more knowledge, more information, I just simply applied it to the business. So, it just simply fell into place. You know, I would, I would bid on projects and I would just try to undercut the guys who are more experienced. And until someone said, okay, I’ll give you a shot. And that was my first paid client that I didn't know previously.

06:35

Ramesh: Okay. I see. That's where I was getting to. So there seems to be so much competition there, but you already talked about it. You priced it. Right. So, to say, to get your first customers.

06:50

Rio: Right. You have to price it according to the quality of work and service you can offer versus the lack of experience you have in regard to your portfolio, you know, luckily you have to have a great portfolio when you're in a visual marketing business. Luckily, everything I did for either someone I knew or in school, because you know, you're getting projects and when you go to college, I just slipped right into my portfolio. So, I had a portfolio. Yeah. And you know, that worked out for me. Otherwise, if I didn't have a portfolio, I would probably have to work for free until I did.

07:30

Ramesh: Nice. Excellent. So basically, you're talking about the portfolio, having a portfolio pricing it, right. It doesn't have to be pricing it low but pricing it. Right. And then I think that the other thing that you also advocated was having the right pitch to this potential customer like a putting it in the right way. So that they pick over others, right.

07:55

Rio: Right. In your pitch, confidence has to come through. Professionalism has to come through. You have to explain that. If you can conceive it, I can achieve it. There is no boundary that you know, your imagination as a visual artist. There are no boundaries. It's boundless. Whatever's going on in the client's mind. You just have to be able to translate that either on paper or digitally and assure them you're going to get the best service you've ever experienced. I will revise this until you are absolutely satisfied. So, you are guaranteed to be happy at the end of the project. And if the price is right dough and those two things connect in the client's mind, they're going to give you a shot. It's just going to happen.

08:47

Ramesh: Yeah. That's what the price page and the portfolio. And that's a fantastic way to put this together. So now you started and then now you got hooked onto this freelancing and making money through these kinds of projects. So how did your business evolve from there?

09:05

Rio: You know, that's a good question because the internet got more sophisticated and as it did, I just learned more and more about what could be offered. And you know, I guess there was a lull initially, right? You know, I remember sometimes just sitting there and just, you know, projects would just come in and I'd be doing other things while they came in. I wouldn't be as hyper aggressive as I was when I began. Then there came new ways to do things. WordPress for example, which is one of the most popular web developments and a blog publishing platform. When that came around, I realized I had to learn it. I realized I had to learn how to market with video on YouTube, social media marketing, things like that.

09:57

Ramesh: I see. Okay. So, then you started growing your graphics and web developer business. I mean but at some point, you evolved, you went beyond that and how did that switch come?

10:11

Rio: I think it just, it happened over a long period of time. I mean, it evolved very, very slowly.

10:17

Ramesh: I see. Oh, it does not, as a sudden somebody discovered your talent and said he put you on the stage or something like that.

10:22

Rio: No, I mean, everything. This took about 20 years to play out. It was very gradual. The internet evolved very, it evolved rapidly. We say rapidly but evolved very slowly. It's not like you woke up one day and there was something there. It was kind of like you had to hear about it first and then had to become popular first and had to become supported by an online community or the developers just wouldn't have the money to keep it going. So, once I knew something was going to be there, then I got aggressive with learning it. I learned SEO, I learned WordPress, I learned e-commerce, video marketing, so on and so forth. And then I just bundled all these things together and said, okay, now I'm full service. You come to me, now I can brand you from almost from a blank slate, from nothing at all. Just an idea. I can create a company in about six to 12 months in that shorter period of time.

11:22

Ramesh: Excellent. So, with so many things happening, like you're doing, acting, modeling, singing, and then also doing the branding and the website. How do you split your time? Like do you say within this week, 20% is this, and then another 20% is this and the remaining 60% is this. How does it work?

11:45

Rio: So, you know, I fell into acting sort of by mistake. I didn't even realize that I was getting into acting. I just wanted to do a voice acting. I like doing, you know, characters, so on and so forth. And then from suggestions and encouragement from my colleagues, you know, they said, you should go in front of the camera. I said, okay, I’ll give it a shot. I loved it. And it's something I never imagined I could be doing and that was probably against me doing it more than anything else cause it just seemed very complicated and different and just a little bit too different from what I was accustomed to. You know I thought I had some kind of knack for it and I really love doing it. You know, when you do graphic design, when you build websites, you are not on the computer 18 hours a day. When we talk about actual time screen time, you don't need more than four to six hours screen time. Anything more than that, you'll go blind. Absolutely. So, and there has to be days when you no, don't even look at the screen that much. So, you would need things to do with the time that you're not on, you're not physically sitting at the screen. So why not study a script and then go out and audition for a role? It doesn't actually take away from any of your time at all. Your time is really requested. There are no percentages. Your time is based on how much work you have. So, I mean, I know it's, it's easy to say, okay, 40% on your laptop and 60% here. And honestly, it just depends on how much work you have at that moment.

13:35

Ramesh: Okay. So, let’s just to get an idea then, you're an established artist and then designer and then I don't, it doesn't seem like you're struggling for business. So, at this stage of your business and what you're doing, what are the challenges that you're facing?

13:56

Rio: I think the biggest challenge is to stay efficient and stay adaptable to now today, if we were to speak about 2019 things are changing rapidly. You wake up and something has completely changed,

Right? Facebook could be gone tomorrow. Instagram is suddenly more popular than anything else, or Snapchat, tik tok, whatever it is. So being able to adapt on the fly is the biggest challenge. I don't have much of a challenge with time and time management. That's not my challenge. It was in the past. It just isn't today. It's how can I still continue to grow at the same rate and be just as motivated and aggressive as I was 20 years ago. It's finding that why every day when you work, wake up that purpose. Why am I doing this? What is the purpose of today even? Do I have something important to do today or is today just, am I waiting for some? And you can't ever be waiting for things to happen. You have to affect the world and make it occur in response to your actions and your thoughts and beliefs.

15:19

Ramesh: Okay. So, let me talk a little bit about the business side. I mean there's the work side in terms of customers and all it's happening fine, but how do you manage the business-like accounting. Figuring out are you growing year over year, do you rely on some outsource, like outsource some of the work? How does it work? If you could just talk a little bit about the operations of your business. Well, so that's different with every business.

15:45

Rio: Well so that’s different with every business, right? You know, if you have a good relationship with your accountant or your tax attorney, you should already have those things in place.

16:01

Ramesh: Are there any tools or things that you use that I mean the listeners can benefit from and said, okay, I have not heard about that.

Looks like that's a good one.

16:11

Rio: You know what? Among everyone I speak to, I can't seem to find two people to agree on a method or tool. It's just, it's almost like, I don't want to mention anyone's, what anyone does because then it just, there's always other people that it just does not work for them. There are basics such as having like a profit or loss statement, a P and L statement.

16:36

Ramesh: QuickBooks, you know, the Google analytics or you know, things like that.

16:42

Rio: Yes. Things like that. But when, you know, I mean, when you have good profit margin, if you have healthy profit margins, I mean your growth should always be steady. I mean, if your profit margins are narrow, you're going to have problems at some point. I wouldn't even recommend getting involved at anything that doesn't give you some space for a healthy profit. Cause the minute you slow down, that's it. Like you're in a negative, right?

17:11

Ramesh: Yeah, exactly. So, let's talk a little bit of about Rio Rocket as a person. So, I mean you're doing multiple things, so there must be some drive, the motivation and then probably inspiration from something or somewhere. So, what's driving you? I mean, when are you getting the motivation to and try out these things and wanting to go into new spaces?

17:32

Rio: You know, I think it's inherent and innate with certain people. It's very difficult to motivate someone who just generally has a lack of motivation. But if you can find it within, maybe have children, maybe you have something that you need in your life, whether it be a place to live, certain type of car, clothes or some of the situation that you want to be in. I mean, that has to be the thing you think about the most with me, I just don't have a pause button. I don't have slow motion button. I always want to grow. I've always wanted to aggressively grow and learn and move forward. They say people with my personality, they are progressive. You know, they cannot sit still. They cannot, they're not happy with the status quo. It comes from a very, yep. Inner place that's there. It cannot be taken away. I cannot, I don't know what being lazy feels like to be honest. And I think like if you can, whatever you need to find to get in that space, it's very healthy to be there. You know, if making money and having a business and being an entrepreneur is your goal.

18:59

Ramesh: Yeah, exactly. I mean some people they get laid off and said, okay fine, this is it. I don't want to do it anymore. I want to start my own. And people that are, some people are unhappy with you know what they're doing and then they quit and do it. So different kinds of motivations. But yours is in, you know, inherent something that your personality drives what you do.

19:21

Rio: Yeah, I think it's my personality. You know, they used to tell us when I was, when I was younger, go buy something you can't afford and then work like crazy to try to keep it. And use that as motivation. So, I don't recommend that, but at the same time, there is some method to that madness. You know, go buy the car you can't afford and just if you love that car, you'll do whatever you can to keep that car or, and I don't recommend buying cars. I don't recommend, you know, first make sure you have a nice place to live. But there is something about that that don't take on something that's huge and then try to hold onto it.

20:09

Ramesh: Excellent. So, Rio, last couple of questions. When you are looking back on your journey, more for reflection and more as something that too we can get out of things that you think you could have done differently. Are there any, I mean, don't look at it from a regret’s perspective, but more from a learning perspective.

20:30

Rio: That's a tough one because everything I’ve done has led me to where I am now. I think I’ve tried, I think I’ve tried it all you know, within the timeframe that I had, and I don't think I would've done anything different because it might have resulted in an outcome that wouldn't be beneficial to me today.

20:54

Ramesh: Correct. I mean, like for example, some people who I’ve worked for some time and then started the business one of the things that they say is that in a day should have done what they're doing now sooner. Right. Because there's always something holding us back and then say, you know, don't wait, don't hold back, you know, just go and do it. You can evolve and pivot that kind of stuff. Right. So, but for you, you've been doing things organically and one after another. That's great.

21:23

Rio: Yeah. I mean I wish I had the wisdom and the focus that I have now when I was say a teenager, but that's impossible. Because you need to be a teenager. A healthy teenager or you know, it's like, I think like if you immerse yourself in business too young. Although you will appear on the outside, very successful and as a prodigy, something will occur when you get old and you're feel like you missed out on your childhood.

21:54

Ramesh: Right on man, you're right on. I agree with Rio on that one. The last question. So as a piece of advice to other people who either want to start their own business or who want to grow their business things that, that you can offer. Advice. Yeah.

22:16

Rio: Advice, learn as much about the topic or niche that you're focused on as possible. I mean, literally make it, make yourself a sponge and from the time you wake up till the time you go to sleep, master what you do and also have some versatility. Be able to, you know, kind of shift to the left that to the right if need be but being a master mastery of what you do is usually what produces the, the results in the 1% that we were all looking for. There may be some luck involved, but luck is a product of hard work or you know, when preparation meets opportunity. So, it's really knowing as much as you possibly can about what you're doing. So, I would just say absorb everything possible, ask as many questions, find mentors, and find people who are ahead of the game or further down the road than you are and pick their brains. Until you start seeing the results you want to see.

23:28

Ramesh: Excellent piece of advice Rio. I mean that is fantastic. So be a master of, be an expert in what you do and then also have a, you know, the ability to pivot or to shift here and there based on what you see in the market.

23:44

Rio: Exactly.

23:46

Ramesh: Excellent. Hey Rio, thank you very much. So, I'm still live, I'm looking at a website and there’s so much that I could see their voice of God, it clearly comes across as Rio. Thank you very much.

23:58

Rio: Okay. Thank you for having me.

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The post Building a Multi-Disciplined Business With Actor, Artist, Entrepreneur Rio Rocket – AEP #37 appeared first on RameshDontha.com.

How To Grow Any Business with Collaborator, Podcaster, and Entrepreneur Tanya Fox – AEP # 36

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Guest: ​​​​​​Tanya Fox
​Company / Business name: ​​Fox Talks Business
Business web site​ ​ ​ | ​ LinkedIn ​ ​   | Facebook ​ |  ​Instagram ​ | ​ Twitter​​ |  ​Youtube ​

​Speaker, Collaborator, Podcaster and Serial Entrepreneur, Tanya Fox has owned businesses from retail to service to franchise. She now spends her days helping others to discover the fun in business and how to retrain how they think about failures.

Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:

​Tools: ​None

Show Notes:

Tanya’s entrepreneurial journey started at a young age of 11 with a lemonade stand and apart from a 2.5 year stint in the corporate world, it restarted with an accounting firm after college.

Tanya talks about her specialization which is to look beyond the numbers. As an example, her keynote speeches focus on ‘firing  a bookkeeper who doesn’t ask business questions.”.

Tanya expands on her journey with stints in a bread making company (along with her husband), a Taekwondo studio etc. At one point, they had 5 simultaneous businesses but they made sure that they never start 2 businesses at the same time.

Tanya talks about one of her popular keynote speeches ‘I am Tanya, and I am a failure’. The genesis for this was her conversations with other business owners who focused on failure a lot and not enough on the learnings from these failures.

Tanya talks about people who inspired her starting with her mom who started her own business in her sixties. Her social media coach for 10+ years, Ashley inspires her as well. Tanya also talked about the 5:00 AM club.

Tanya talks about 3 major attributes of successful people she has seen over the years coaching. (1) They embrace their fears (2) They are willing to reach out to others with expertise (3) They have inner confidence in themselves.

Tanya’s advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is to collaborate (and look at that as competition) a lot and reach out for people with expertise that you don’t have.








​Episode Transcript (Click to expand)

00:02

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. So today I have a guest who has a broad spectrum of experience. Her name is Tanya Fox. She is a

Speaker, collaborator, podcaster and serial entrepreneur, a lot of things. Tanya Fox has owned businesses from retail to service to franchise. She now spends her days helping others to discover the fun in business and how to retrain, how they think about failures. Tanya, welcome.

00:51

Tanya: Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be on your show.

00:56

Ramesh: Thank you. And then I liked the way I mean I introduced you and then you want to be introduced to discover the fun in business. That is very, very true.

01:06

Tanya: It is. And I think it's one thing that as you get going in business, you know, after you're about a year in, you kind of sometimes get stuck in the day to day tasks and we forget that it's, this is supposed to be a fun experience. It's not supposed to feel like, you know, quote unquote work.

01:25

Ramesh: That's right. So when it gets started though, it doesn't seem like a fun at that time, but so please tell us your story. How did you get into the entrepreneurship? How did you become an entrepreneur?

01:36

Tanya: I think it probably started when I was really young when I didn't realize what was, what was happening, but I was about 11 and I started a lemonade stand in my neighborhood, which most kids do. And I had some other younger kids who kind of looked up to me because I was the oldest one in the neighborhood and they said they wanted to help. So I ended up opening like five more lemonade stands. And I didn't realize at the time that I was franchising my little lemonade stand of course, because I was just like, Ooh, free money, free labor. But I think that's kind of what started it. And when I got out of university I just discovered, like I did go into the corporate world for a little bit, but I found that I was really restricted and I wanted to have the opportunity to be able to really spread my wings as wide as I wanted to. So I started my own business and have just kind of went from there and just tried to experience all different aspects of business, which is hence the such diverse things that I’ve done in my life.

02:46

Ramesh: So you are not one of those people who worked in the corporate world for quite some time and then got fed up or you know, got laid off and then started the business?

02:56

Tanya: No, I think I lasted probably about two and a half years before I really just sort of realized, you know what, this is not, I don't want to do this. I saw sort of the droning that was happening with people and I come from a family that are not entrepreneurs, that were nine to five. So I sort of saw, you know, I sort of was paying more attention when I was a teenager to sort of how they were feeling and it, it always seemed like, okay, I got to go to work. And it was just sort of a means to an end kind of, and I didn't want that for my life. I wanted something that excited me and thrilled me, and I just didn't feel like I would be able to find that working for someone else.

03:38
Ramesh: Yeah. So what was your first business, Tanya?

03:42

Tanya: The first one I did, I went to university for and got my accounting degree. So I opened up an accounting and bookkeeping company was my first one. And I still have that company today. I just can't, that's the only one that I can't let go of. But that was really kind of where my passion was. And I wanted to not only just do the books for people and do taxes for people, but I really wanted to help those businesses understand what the numbers meant and understand that although financing can be boring, it's also the most crucial thing. So I really wanted to dive in a little bit deeper and to be able to help them to grow when they wanted to grow.

04:26

Ramesh: Okay. So you're doing more than bookkeeping, you're consulting, coaching them as well.

04:31

Tanya: Right, yeah.

04:32

Ramesh: Okay. So by the way, so I checked on your website, www.Foxstocksbusiness.ca, and then I found this interesting keynote or workshop, it's titled five reasons to fire your bookkeeper. What is that about?

04:47

Tanya: So that one sort of came to be because in, I'm in Canada

And there's not really, like really anybody can say that they're a bookkeeper. There really isn't, it's not like accounting where they're sort of like governing boards and stuff that you can check on. And so a lot of my, what was happening was a lot of my clients were coming to me after they had a bookkeeper that, you know, they felt really messed up or cost them a lot of money and, but they weren't understanding the reasons why. And when I sort of stopped and realized that the majority of my clients never interviewed me, like they literally would just be like, Oh, you're a bookkeeper. Okay, you're hired. And I thought, you know, this is something that people need to learn about. What are the things that you should be asking when you're looking for a bookkeeper? What are some of the signs to look out for such as, you know, are you paying attention to say your petty caches? Are you signing blank checks? And just allowing them full control out of all of your money? These were common things that I was seeing. Now among my clients, I was grateful that they had enough trust in me to say, know, hey, we trust you, here's our life. You know, here's our last cent and you deal with it. But I was seeing more and more that people were being taken advantage of, or they were just getting somebody who was inexperienced, they were getting somebody who maybe work in accounts payable or receivable at a company and then decided to start their own business and then just went, Oh, well I’ll be a bookkeeper. And there's a lot more to bookkeeping than just data entry. So that's really what that keynote sort of came in, was giving some of these points of what to look out for, the questions to ask, like, you know, have they worked in your industry before? Are they familiar with your product or your service? Because that's, you know, that can be really important. And also their references, who are their clients and how long have they worked with them? These are things that it's okay to ask, but it's almost like a, like a doctor. No one ever goes in and asks, well what are your credentials? They just kind of go, well, he's got the coat on.

07:03

Ramesh: Yeah. That's good. I mean just yesterday, I read this article somewhere I think LinkedIn or somewhere that her husband is a bookkeeper and he was stealing from the business, it's the wife started a case, I think yeah, it's very good advice there.

07:21

Tanya: Yeah. And sometimes it's not even, it's not even theft. Sometimes it's just inexperience that they're not coming to you and saying, Hey, you know, something as simple as, hey, I’ve noticed that your, you know, your phone bill went way up this month. Is there a reason for that? These are questions that your bookkeeper should be bringing up to you. And sometimes that doesn't happen. They just go, Oh, I get the bill, I put it in. So you have to decide what it is that you need for your business and then really make sure that whoever it is that you're hiring is doing that for you and always check up on them. And that biggest thing I always say is, if they're not willing to answer your questions, it's time to look for someone else.

08:05

Ramesh: Yeah. That makes a lot of.

Tanya: And ask if you don't know what a profit and loss statement is or you don't understand what cost of good soul is, they should be able to tell you that, they should be willing to sit down and talk with you about that.

08:17

Ramesh: Excellent. Yeah. I am I 100% with you. So then you got this business going, then how did you diversify and why did you want to diversify?

08:28

Tanya: Well, I think for me it was just opportunities that came to me and I’ve always sort of been one that if something comes my way, I'm kind of willing to always give it a try and see you know, what comes out of it. So when I met my husband, we decided that he wanted to buy a part of the business that he was working for. He sort of had a corporate job with a commercial bread company and they were looking at franchising. And so we kind of got in on the ground level of doing a franchised route. And so I got into the commercial bread and dealing with franchising and corporate offices. And you know, all the stuff that that entails. And I really sort of dove into that one, because I didn't have any experience in commercial bread. And it really educated me a lot also for my bookkeeping clients, because I was then able to open up my doors a little bit more and say, you know what, I have experience with the food industry now. And so I was able to sort of broaden my horizons in my other businesses. At the time too, he also owned a taekwondo studio, which he taught in the evenings and I got my hands stuck in that and then we grew that to be a full-time business. Cause I was like, part time is so boring.

09:52

Ramesh: So you had this multiple things going on. As an entrepreneur, I know you had your husband's health because both of you are doing it. So how did you guys manage these multiple businesses?

10:04

Tanya: When we first started, it was just us. We didn't have any kids at the time, so our time was a little bit more freeing. One thing I do have to say is I never opened two businesses at the same time. Always made sure that when we opened something that previous businesses that were already running were well established and were kind of running on a good schedule. So because it takes so much time, when you first start a business. Like you, you know, it just consumes you. But yeah, we've had up to, five businesses running at the same time. The biggest thing for us is we have an amazing team of people that have sort of come with us for the last, you know, 15 years and sort of gathered this group. So it really wasn't just me. You know, I had my virtual assistant, I have my, you know, my secretary that comes with me. We have a controller that comes and helps me you know, get the startup and get everybody working. And then I have a social media coach who has also helped us with all of it. So it was really building that team. And once I had that really solid team, the other businesses became really easy, because I had the team to take with me to all of them to start off with.

11:21

Ramesh: Excellent. So let me ask you a tough question here. So did you have any failures in any of your businesses that you could talk about?

11:33

Tanya: Sure. Oh yeah. I mean many. A lot of the times I would probably say the biggest one, the hardest one was probably the franchise because you're so restricted and you have to follow so many rules. And we went through growing the route and the biggest failure that we had is we grew it too, too fast. And you know, a lot of people think, well, wouldn't it be good, like really fast growth? And it wasn't because it became really, really hard because we didn't stop to really assess how big we needed that growth to be, to be able to afford to bring more employees on. So we got this route so big, but it was kind of that in between that little Kuspit where it wasn't quite big enough to be able to fully pay somebody what we needed to, to have good work. So we were kind of stuck working, you know, 14-hour days trying to get to get this done. And so we really rushed into that too much. I think we should have really just enjoyed a slower growth. And it just ended up resulting in a lot of stress. And, and a lot of hurt feelings because of course my husband was out driving the route most of the time. And of course I was like, well, you're never home, you know, but totally our fault. But so that was probably the biggest eyeopener of realizing I really needed to sometimes scale back a little bit on my growth and go, is this, is this the right time for us to grow and do I have what it takes? Do I have the time? Do I have the mental capacity to grow right now? And really learning that it's okay to go, you know what, we're just not ready yet. Which is, can sometimes be a hard thing because people think, well that opportunity is never going to come again. I have to take it right now. But we sacrificed a lot in those, you know, first few years. And then especially with having our son around then there was, you know, times where we didn't spend as much quality time as what we wanted with him because we're always at the office or we were always on the road. And so that probably is the one that sticks in my mind the most.

13:52

Ramesh: Thank you for sharing that. I know many times people think the growth is good. You know, but you hear so many other businesses that because of fast growth, the cash flow management and then people hiring and all that stuff, they go under precisely because of that reason.

14:09

Tanya: Yeah. And sometimes you're fine just the way you are and that's okay. You know, and it's okay to let go too. I had a retail craft store was something I always wanted to do. I love the crafting industry. I'm a crafter myself. And I did that for about five years and then I was just, I was kind of done. Like I just, it wasn't, I loved the people, but the day to day stuff, putting stuff on the shelf and the merchandising, I was kind of like, like it just wasn't bringing me joy anymore. And so I sat down and really thought about it and thought, you know, I started this because I never wanted to have any regrets as saying, Oh, I wish I would have tried. And I said, and I tried, and it was successful. It was doing really well, but it just wasn't where I wanted to be. So I let it go and I closed the doors and I had a lot of people that said, you know, you're crazy. Why would you do this? It made me question myself quite a bit, but I realized it's okay to do that. Like it's okay to go undone. I just don't want to do this anymore and I don't want to have to go through selling it. And I was at a good point, so I was just like, I'm done. Like move on to something else. So that was probably the other biggest thing was, I'm glad I made the decision to do it. Yeah. But I think sometimes people are too scared of, you know, especially if you live in a smaller community, you know, what are people going to say or what are people going to think? And you can't stop that. And you know, my mom always says to me, what other people think of you is none of your business. And I’ve tried to live by that because people are going to say whatever they're going to say, you're never going to be able to stop that. But at the end of the day, you have to do what's right for you. And if that's closing your business, then that's a good decision.

15:54

Ramesh: Excellent. I mean, that way it frees up a lot of stuff. You know, the cashflow, time and then losses and all that stuff. Yeah. So Tanya, so let me go back to your keynotes and workshops and then I came across this other interesting one. My name is Tanya and I'm a failure. That is the title of your keynote and workshop. What is that about?

16:18

Tanya: So that came to be, I took a really great trip and I was talking to people about just their lives and sort of what they had gone through. And I was realizing sort of that there was a consistent thing of people talking about stuff that they had done, and they say, Oh, this, I failed at this and it was so miserable and all of this other stuff. But then they would continue on with their story of what they did. And I thought, that's not, that's a good thing. Like that failure was good. Look how it taught you. Yeah and I really was starting to realize it in myself too, when I really sat and thought about what I felt my own failures were and I realized that I had the choice of whether I wanted to make my failures a mistake because I feel like I could have done better. And you know, you sit in that, you know, why me? Why is this happening to me? Why can't I ever be better? Or I could turn around and learn a lesson. And as soon as I looked at what I thought were failures and tried to, you know, figure out what the universe was trying to show me, I found that they became successes because I learned something from it. So I find that failure is the one word in the English language that never remains the same. And we have a choice whether we take a failure and leave it as a mistake or whether we turn it into a success by learning from it. And that's really what that workshop is about is sitting down and just retraining our brains to understand that the word failure is, it's not a bad word, it's not a swear word, it's actually a word of growth. Because in our failures is where we learn the most. That's where we get our inspiration. That's where we're like, I'm not going to stay down in this hole. I'm going to fight for this. You know, this is not going to get me down. That's where we really discover our true passions and our true strengths. But sometimes it can be hard to see that. So that workshop is really to help people understand and really rethink about how they look at their failures.

18:25

Ramesh: Yeah, so in the technology industry, there's this concept called fail fast. I'm a 100% believer in that one. If you fail fast, of course as I said, there are lots of learnings that come out of it, but don't many that would be entrepreneurs aspiring entrepreneurs, they take too much time thinking about it and then even when they start, they take too long to fail. You know, trying to get the perfect everything right. So the too long to fail is a problem because if you, if you fail, for example, from your own experience when your business was not doing well, you got rid of it. Because then you learned from it, you failed fast and learned and then you moved on.

19:06

Tanya: Yeah, and I think it's true. I think people, you know, just think of how many times, I think any one of your listeners think of how many times you an invention came up and you were like, I totally thought about that three years ago and I could've, I could have done that. Like that was my invention, you know. That was my word. And you know, we need to do that. We need, because I think waiting and causing ourselves to procrastinate because we think, you know, who are we to do this? Or who am I to think that I can do this, or I can offer this, that that in and of itself is a failure that turns into a mistake. I think just jump and try. Like what's the worst that's going to happen? It's not going to work you move onto something else. You know, you need to be smart along the way and make sure you're not, you know, losing everything, but you know, what are you going to regret more? Are you going to, you know, regret trying and saying, Oh, I tried that. It didn't work very well, or are you going to say, you know, I wonder, I wonder what could have happened if I would've just trusted myself.

20:10

Ramesh: That's true. So I'm switching back to the business side. So you did a corporate bread franchise and, and then then what happened afterwards? How did you end up in the current role of advising other people and then coaching them about the business?

20:29

Tanya: It really sort of came to me; I'd always been a speaker. I had done it even like way back when I started in the corporate world and it just sort of always came with me. I love getting together with people. I love, you know, talking with other business owners and it was a lot easier to do it in sort of group settings. And you know, since I was like three years old, I’ve always been told I was a chatterbox. So it was just natural for me to go into sort of the speaking profession. And I just find that that is where my passion has always been. That's where my excitement has always been, was helping other people to spark that flame again or to realize their passion again. And I really, really enjoyed that. So I decided that I wanted to really make the move to start that again on a fulltime basis. Because we're seeing such a surgence of entrepreneurship starting, whether it's, you know, just you know, what they call now a side hustle or if it's people that are working full time that are, you know, waiting to try to make this work you know, to make the transition. But I think that people are looking for somebody to help them along the way. Somebody that they can say, Hey, you know, is this right? Am I doing this right? And that kind of advice. So that's where all of most of my workshops come from is just from other clients that I’ve had that have said, you know, this is what I struggle with.

21:59
Ramesh: So looking back your journey, are there any people who have inspired you, motivated you, pushed you along?

22:10

Tanya: Oh, so many. So many. Probably the biggest one would be my mom. And I know that sort of sounds cliché to say, but she was always there, you know, when I would talk to her and say, you know, I'm thinking of doing this, but I don't know. And you know, she would always throw my own advice back at me, you know, and say you always tell other people to just jump. But when she was in her early sixties, she decided to start her own business. And that was really inspiring to me. And that's kind of when I decided that I really wanted to go and do the speaking and the workshops as my full-time job because helping her was so invigorating for me. It just inspired me so much and just her story of her entire life. And I thought people need to share their stories more. We need to get out there and we need to share our experiences. And that's how the podcast started for me as I wanted an Avenue for people to be able to share their stories and their experiences, so that we could learn from them and not have to make the mistakes that others have made. So she probably was the one that always pushes me and reminds me to, you know, to listen to what I tell other people. Sometimes it's easy to give advice. It's not always easy to take your own. And then my social media coach, Ashley Medol is such an inspiration to me. She always is the one that will push me. Always the one that doesn't accept the, I don't know if I can do that right now. And so she's been with me for about 10 years now. And she just, I just watch her, and her career and you know, it's just so great to have someone else who's, you know, in the same type of industry. And we go to a lot of conferences together and we traveled together, and we do a lot of speaking together. So it's really nice to have somebody who is like, you know, you got this, I got your back, you can do it. And I'm just really fortunate to be surrounded by, you know, those people that was a working relationship but now have really become friendships. And then of course there's, you know, all of the big ones, you know, the big people. I love the 5:00 AM club book. And you know, there's a lot of authors and stuff like that that I read on a regular basis that always inspire me and, you know, and the big names, I mean, I follow them all.

24:51

Ramesh: Yeah. We've got to keep ourselves motivated all the time. Yeah. So looking back at your journey, there are multiple businesses who have done that. Right? And then you're also coaching a lot of people right now. So you come across a lots of customers, lots of plans. And so what are some of the characteristics that you have noticed in the people that are successful? And what are the things that, who are not successful, things that are dragging them not to be successful. I mean, anything that comes to your mind?

25:25

Tanya: I think probably in the, for all the clients that I’ve had over the years is the ones that I see that have the most success are the ones that embrace their fears. So are the ones that go, you know, this scares me, but they pushed past that. And they just have that drive to go, you know, this scares me, but okay, let's go. You know, you're at the top of that roller coaster and you're like, okay, give her like, I'm going to be scared and I'm going to scream my head off, but I'm going to get down that Hill, you know? And so I think those that have that drive to constantly go, you know, okay, that didn't work. Why didn't it work? Let's move on. You know and can keep that sort of motivation going. Those are the ones that I see that have the most success and the ones that are willing to ask for help. That's a hard thing, because people think they have to do it by themselves. So the ones that are willing to step out and say, you know what, I don't know about social media or I don't know about bookkeeping or I don't know about, you know, how to franchise, I need to find somebody who can teach me about this. Those are the ones that I find go farther and, and, and are happier and more successful in their businesses. Probably the, on the other side of that you know, the ones that I see that struggle are the ones that lack confidence in themselves. So the ones that always think this isn't going to work for me and have that negative talk and aren’t willing to learn tips to get out of that. I find they really get stuck in that and it can really be hard for them to, because I think you have to have confidence in yourself regardless of what business it is that you have, whether it's a service or whether it's a product you're selling you, you're selling yourself.

So you need to have confidence in yourself and you need to have confidence in whatever it is that you're selling. And I’ve seen a lot of people start businesses because it's the new thing or it's the up and coming, but they don't really use the product, or they don't really believe in it. It's not in their heart. It's just, you know, get quick or a get rich quick kind of thing. So those ones that don't truly have like a soul biting passion for what it is that they're doing, I think that it just really drags them down because I find that that passion and that spark is what brings you through those low times.

27:53

Ramesh: Wow. Tanya, so we have covered a lot of ground and some excellent conversation discussions we've been having. Any things that we have not covered, you really want to share with the audience. They are either aspiring entrepreneurs or you know, businesspeople who've started but they want to go to the next level.

28:15

Tanya: I think the biggest tip that I usually give businesses is to really look into collaboration with other businesses. It's not all about competition. And that could be something as simple as maybe sharing an ad space in a newspaper with another business that's in your town or you know, really giving referrals. If you have, say, a retail store and you don't sell an item, really shop in your town and find those other stores that have that. Because it just sets you up really good, not only in the business community but with your customers as well. You kind of become the expert of everything. And by doing collaborations and working with other businesses, you sort of expand your reach really easily. And it's a lot more fun to go through business when you can share stuff. So as an example, when I had my retail store, we had it was a craft store and then right next to us we had a pottery place where you could go and paint pottery and stuff and we would do collaborations of like gift cards or we would do events together where people could come and buy some crafts and then they could paint with her. And doing those was less money for each of us. Cause of course now we're only paying half, but I got access to her customers and she got access to my customers. And it was really an easy way to sort of lighten load, especially when you're the owner and operator of a business. So just look for those other people that you like or that you enjoy going into their stores and seeing how you guys can maybe work together to create either a new product or to create sort of a combined service for each other.

29:57

Ramesh: Wow. So Tanya, that's excellent, excellent device. And you're probably the first guest on my show who has such a breadth of experience traversing from retail to franchising, to online coaching, and you know, the bookkeeping that's business being there all along. Thank you very much.

30:18

Tanya: Thank you so much. It was such an honor.

30:21

Ramesh: Thank you.

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The post How To Grow Any Business with Collaborator, Podcaster, and Entrepreneur Tanya Fox – AEP # 36 appeared first on RameshDontha.com.

Building a Podcast Consultancy Business In the Growing Podcast Industry with Millette Jones – AEP # 35

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Guest: ​​​​​Millette Jones
​Company / Business name: ​Cast Global Media
Business web site​ ​ ​  | ​ LinkedIn ​ ​   | Facebook ​  | ​Instagram

Millette Jones is a podcaster, speaker, contributor at major publications, frequent podcast guest and the founder and CEO of Cast Global Media. Cast Global is a podcast consultancy helping organizations reduce customer acquisition costs and increase employee retention rates through strategic podcast marketing. Cast helps corporations utilize podcasting to support firm initiatives, transform employee downtime, build executive and corporate thought leadership and drive brand loyalty through podcast advertising, interview marketing, internal podcasting, and custom podcasts.

Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:

​Tools: ​None

Show Notes:

Millette starts off by talking about the need for corporations, the brick and mortar type, to understand the importance of podcasts for their business and how Cast Global Media fills this need.

Millette talks about how she got into this specialty business after starting as a career coach. As her partnership with another coach fell through, Millette got the opportunity to explore podcasting and selling it to entrepreneur and businesses.

Millette got her first paying customers by working with entrepreneurs she had in her coaching business and she explains how she is trying to engage with large corporations and businesses as well.

Millette’s focus is on helping businesses connect with their customer via podcasting, connect with their own employees as well, and connect with their stakeholders.

Millette traces her personal journey where she started in route sales where she travelled extensively, started entrepreneurship with affiliate marketing, then extended into coaching.  She now extended her business into podcast marketing connecting her online expertise with brick and mortar businesses.

Millette talks about one thing she could have done is instead of starting her entrepreneurship as a full blown affair, she should have started it as a side gig while still having a job.

Her advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is to figure out what you are good at, where your talents lie, and exploit them. Whether you like writing or speaking or just hustling, just find them and start with those talents.








​Episode Transcript (Click to expand)

00:03

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Agile Entrepreneur podcast. This is your host, Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance on possibilities. Today I have a guest who he's also in the same business that we are doing right here, which is the podcasting, so Millette Jones. Millette Jones is the founder and CEO of cast global media. She's a podcaster, a speaker and contributor at major publications and she's been a frequent podcast guest, the cast global media, it’s a podcast consultancy helping organizations reduce customer acquisition costs and increase employee retention rates through strategic podcast marketing. Hi Millette, welcome.

00:57

Millette: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

00:59

Ramesh: Wow, so case global media seems to be a very interesting space as a podcast themselves are growing in popularity, so you are working with companies to market themselves both internally and externally with podcasting. So if you could, in your own words, tell us what casts global media is about.

01:18

Millette: Really, we're just about helping corporations understand what podcasting is and what it can do for their business. It seems like most entrepreneurs, they kind of already get it, especially online entrepreneurs, but corporations really haven't jumped on the podcast bandwagon yet. And there's a lot of space for corporations to build their business, to gain customers, to really connect with millennial employees by jumping on the podcast bandwagon.

01:51

Ramesh: So when you say corporations, do you mean medium sized businesses or the large corporations? You know, really

01:56

Millette: Really more like just brick and mortar businesses. It just seems like, if a company has a really strong online presence, they know about podcasting, you know, it's just seems like that's kind of the space. If you're in the online space, you get it. If you're more brick and mortar or you're more of a local business, you do, you know, you have a location that you really focus on. You really just don't think about podcasting the same way that online marketers think about podcasting.

02:29

Ramesh: Correct. So one thing, I don't know, it's just me. You know, it's like this, right, when you have a certain brand car, when you go on the road, you see the same car that you're driving all over the place. So like why is that? Since I started doing podcasting, I'm seeing everybody trying to jump on the podcast. As an example LinkedIn started promoting their podcast more recently. Is that what you're seeing?

02:56

Millette: That's one thing that I find really interesting is when I talk to people in the online space, they're like, oh my gosh, everybody's got a podcast. Everyone has a podcast. But I was just at a meeting the other day with a nonprofit and the first thing out of the founder's mouth was, I know what they are, but that's it. Yeah. She had no idea what a podcast could do for her business. You know, how she could use it, how it would help grow, you know, her little nonprofit, you know, she was so interested in it, but she never really thought of it in that way. Whereas if you go to a networking event where it's all online folks, they're just like, everybody's got one.

03:42

Ramesh: Yeah. And then, some of the statistics are staggering because it seems 54% of the US population, adult population, they have heard at least one podcast. That's half of us. Yeah.

03:54

Millette: Yeah. And the interesting thing is, it is only about 18 to 19% of businesses are podcasting. And I have a feeling that that 18 to 19% are people that have that online presence that are aware of them.

04:09

Ramesh: So let's talk a little bit about your company, cast global media. When did you start it?

04:16

Millette: I really got started last year. Probably in January of last year is when I started to make that shift from, I was really working solely with other online entrepreneurs, more in the coaching side of things. And I started to see that there was this very slow trend of businesses starting to jump on the podcasting bandwagon. And I thought that, that would, that was really the direction I wanted to go. It seemed like there was a lot of folks in the online side of things and I wanted to go a little bit more offline.

04:56

Ramesh: So how did you get this idea? Is it that you are a business coach and then he wanted to niche down a little bit more and then you pick the podcast? Or how did this idea come about?

05:03

Millette: Really, I had started as a career coach, so I had a partner, we started a business and we were doing career coaching, the whole online thing. And there came a point where she suddenly decided that she didn't want to be an entrepreneur. And unfortunately that quick departure caused that business to go under. But it really gave me the space to explore podcasting, which was something that we had talked about in our business for about six months, but never really jumped on. So when I got that chance to start over from scratch, while it wasn't, you know the way that I would've chosen to do it, it really let me jump into podcasting with both feet. And once I started podcasting, I was like, this is just, you know, I really enjoy this medium and I'm an introvert. So it really to the way that I communicate much easier than being in a group of people or even, you know, face to face with a small group. I'm just, I'm much happier being behind the Mike and that was kind of like, that was the niche for me.

06:15

Ramesh: So if I understand correctly the paying customers for your business or the corporations?

06:21

Millette: I'm shifting to corporations. I still work with entrepreneurs, with individuals, more helping them to get onto podcasts, helping them to use the interview marketing in their business. And also, I help people start podcasts. So I have a couple of courses that, you know that are geared a little bit more towards your individual entrepreneur or business owner. But yeah, the shift is I'm starting a slow shift to less of the coaching and more of the consulting.

06:52

Ramesh: So if I had known about your business before I started my podcast, I probably could have come to you.

07:00

Millette: Exactly. You know, it's like one of those things where, you know, everybody says, you know, you only have to be a few steps ahead of your ideal client. And once you get into podcasting and you kind of know the tricks, it's really easy and it's really fun to help other people get their podcast started.

07:17

Ramesh: Yeah. So let me ask you this question. As you are shifting your focus, so you are in the career coach business also, you are working with, I'm assuming individuals and then entrepreneurs and then maybe small businesses, but now suddenly you're shifting your focus to corporations, but corporations have a different way of buying purchasing, right? So it's not the same as a solopreneurs or entrepreneurs or you know, how individuals or small businesses buy. So how are you adjusting to that shift?

07:49

Millette: Interestingly, it's, it's much more, it feels better for me, because it is more of a professional, you know, it's not nearly as familiar or, you know, it's almost like comparing, you know, Facebook to LinkedIn. You know, I fit better over on LinkedIn. I fit better with the corporations and that whole, you know a bit of structure, I guess.

08:15

Ramesh: Good. So yeah, let's trace the history here. So you started last year and then how long did it take for you to get your first paying customer?

08:25

Millette: It really only took, I mean, of course I’ve been working with entrepreneurs all along, but it probably only took a few months because I had a lot of people that I knew that I was doing the individual coaching. So I was able to connect with some of those people that had small businesses. So, you know, it really wasn't a huge stretch to go from working with some executives to being able to transition into some smaller corporations.

08:56

Ramesh: I don't if you could share, but what are you able to crack the large corporation yet or are I still working on it?

09:01

Millette: Yeah, I'm still working on that. That's the next step in the business.

09:06

Ramesh: Okay. So what's your pitch like if you don't mind me asking like sorry, not even pitch, let's talk about where are you trying to meet these large corporations. Like what's your plan to promote your business and then be able to connect with them so you could make your pitch.

09:23

Millette: Sure. Really what I'm focusing on right now is getting into LinkedIn and just connecting with, you know, business owners, CEOs, CMOs that are in my local area and just really sharing a lot of content and tracking to get out and speak locally at different networking events and just, you know, really letting people know that, podcasting is available and how it can help their business. I think that's sort of the learning curve right now is a lot of companies just don't really understand how they can integrate podcasting.

09:59

Ramesh: Excellent. So actually it's very interesting to me and I am definitely assuming for the audience because we are really learning from you how a business is evolving, right? It's step by step. So then you have, the way I understand is you have a bread and butter of the entrepreneurs and individuals in a where the current money is coming, but you are investing as you, you get that the revenue coming in into shifting into large corporations.

10:32

Millette: Exactly.

10:34

Ramesh: Okay, excellent. That's good. So, and then for the small, medium businesses or the entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, how do they find you? Is it organic or you do some promotions or how does it work?

10:50

Millette: I'm doing Podcast interviews like this one, I do get quite a few people that find me through the interviews that I do. Also, like you mentioned in my bio, I write for different publications. So I'm getting people that will find me from one of my articles and then come and check out the website and or find me through LinkedIn, my LinkedIn articles and content. So it's really just sort of laying that foundation of different, different pieces of content and then it sort of builds over time.

11:22

Ramesh: Excellent. So one thing that was interesting to me while I was on your website, because it says cast global media helps corporations utilize podcasting to support form initiatives, transform employee downtime and build executive and corporate park leadership and drive brand loyalty. So can you just like, let's say if I'm a corporation, a purchasing manager how will you drive your message about these four things that you mentioned? My initiatives and my employee downtime and brand loyalty and things like that.

12:01

Millette: Right. Well, it really just depends on who approaches me because that's sort of the difference is that if you're talking to someone in marketing, they're going to understand the idea of the B2B podcasting or if you're talking to an executive, it's going to be more like, this is how you can grow your thought leadership or even the CEO. This is how you grow, you know, the brand awareness with the thought leadership of your organization as a whole. And then with the internal podcast that's really geared more towards, you know like human resources department, you know, people working with the internal you know, employee engagement, you know, keeping that group of employees connected and happy.

12:51

Ramesh: Okay. That's good. Actually. Another thought on this one, because you've been studying this industry for quite some time, at least a year and a half or so. Is there a situation where you have too many podcasts and too much noise and too few listeners kind of situation, did we reach that or not yet?

13:08

Millette: You know what's interesting is I was reading an article a little while back that I thought it explained it really well and it was, you don't even necessarily as a corporation, you don't even need to have an audience per se. You could be interviewing the type of person that you want to do business with. You could be closing deals just by interviewing the type of person that you want to have as your client. So if you're using your interviews as a way to really strategically connect with other businesses, other business owners that you want to do business with. Now obviously we're not talking about jumping in for a hard sell, but you're building that relationship. You're giving them an outlet to come and speak about what they're really interested in. You continue that relationship and then you know, strategically you're able to, you know close deals. And that's to me, that's sort of the future in a sense. You know, it doesn't have to be, I'm a huge name in the podcasting business. It can just be, I'm using this as a way to get an introduction that maybe I wouldn't normally be able to get.

14:24

Ramesh: That is an excellent insight there. So actually me as a podcast host what I noticed, the benefit of podcasts is, apart from the, you know, listeners and all that stuff is twofold. One is, it generates automatic content, right? So because there's so much inside knowledge that comes from these discussions, the content is there really valuable content. That's number one. Number two is networking. I think I know you talked about the corporate to the customer kind of networking, but for me, networking with other people like you and in the industry, right. So I think those are the two you know benefits I am seeing from hosting a podcast.

15:05

Millette: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it just, when you think about the different ways that you could take this audio recording and turn around and make just dozens and dozens of pieces of content, it's a great, it's a great way for companies or small businesses to create one thing and then be able to just, you know, branch off of that and have multiple pieces that they can share in a lot of different places.

15:34

Ramesh: Excellent. Now let me switch gears here a little bit and then we talked about your company, what it does. Now I want to talk about Millette Jones as a person. So you said prior to cast global, you are a career coach. So that tells me is that you're a serial entrepreneur. You've been into this business for quite some time. So if you could trace your journey as a person in different things that you've done.

16:01

Millette: Sure. Well when I studied recording industry in college, I did a short amount of time at Sony Music and decided that my personality just really wasn't suited at that age in my twenties. I didn't want to be, you know in a spotlight. I didn't want to; I didn't want to have to go and network and talk to a lot of people. So I shifted into sales and I did route sales for I don't know, 15 years maybe.

16:33

Ramesh: What are route sales?

16:34

Millette: So like I would travel around the state of Tennessee and I had different businesses that I would promote or different companies and I worked mainly in like big box retailers and I would make sure that they had the products that they were supposed to have, you know, just selling different promotions to the different big box retailers. But what was, what I enjoyed about that was I was driving, so I was able to listen to the radio. And when podcasts did come out, I started listening to podcasts, driving all over the state of Tennessee. And you know I went through a lot of different variations, I guess. Not really, not really iterations, but a lot of different things. I tried a lot of different things. So I wrote a travel guide. I started a business that focused on homeschoolers. I had a travel website for a little while, and just gradually I started finding the things that I really liked, and I started figuring out what I didn't like. So when I finally got laid off from my job, I really jumped into online and my first business online was affiliate marketing. So I had quite a few little review sites, I was on review sites and, and I really enjoyed that. But then I realized that, you know you're sort of at the mercy of the search engines with sites like that, that really focus a lot on the SEO. So I just kept honing down. It was like I would find one thing that really spoke to me and then another that didn't, and I would make a small shift. So I shifted from the review sites into, you know, the online coaching course creation, which really spoke to me. And now just shifting a little bit more from everything being online to bringing in more of the face to face, you know and working with businesses one-on-one.

18:38

Ramesh: Yeah. It looks like you're connecting your intermediate online experience to the original corporate, the brick and mortar companies that you had. So it's an interesting intersection that you have here with this new thing that you're doing.

18:54

Millette: Well, I think that it's, it takes the best of everything because at this point, what I'm really focusing on with the corporations is just going in and doing, you know, training them, helping them to, you know, whether that's a, you know, a two hour, four hour, an all-day training, it's training them to understand what podcasts can do and, you know, so that's really like, to, to me, that's the best of both worlds. I love to talk; I love to go in and help people learn. So being able to sort of connect those dots is just, I don’t know, it just seems like that's, that has been the way things have gone. It's been the best path for me.

19:32

Ramesh: Excellent. So I want to understand the motivation here. When you were doing affiliate marketing and those things, was it more for passive income or was it that at some point you wanted to quit what you were doing and wanted to experiment with is businesses or what was your motivation at the time?

19:50

Millette: You know, I think the motivation really was finding something I was interested in, because I never really enjoyed doing sales as far as, you know, having to go in and speak to someone and convince them. And I don't think it was really the sales. I think it was the product that I wasn't really interested in. It was, you know, grocery and nonfood type products and then it wasn't exciting. So when you can kind of shift and figure out what it is that you can get excited about, then it doesn't feel like selling. It just feels like helping someone else understand.

20:26

Ramesh: So I mean, your transformation into an entrepreneur was somebody coaching you, guiding you? What was the inspiration? I mean, is it books, movies or some family members?

20:39

Millette: I think it's really just getting, you know, honestly it goes back to the podcasts. I mean, you know, I started way back listening to Pat Flynn and smart passive income. And I’ve never really wanted to be completely passive. I've always wanted to do something. So there were elements, but just listening to the different people that he interviewed and just really having my eyes open to the possibilities.

21:06

Ramesh: So that's excellent. So I'm in this entrepreneurial journey then everybody has ups and downs. So I mean up when things are going up and you don't think of anything else, but when you're going down, so then lots of thoughts come. So what was the, what were the downtimes like and what did you think and how you pull yourself up?

21:32

Millette: Well, I would say definitely there were a lot of ups and downs. I would say that two big downs were when I had, I had maybe four affiliate sites that were running really well and then I got hit with a Google update and everything tanked, and I went from thousands to zero overnight. So that was a huge shift as far as me realizing you can't have all your eggs in one basket so to speak, and just being able to diversify a little bit more and, but I really hadn't been working on it that long. I'd only been doing that for about eight months. So it was like I was going to diversify. It just hadn't happened. But then you know, to get hit with an update and lose all your rankings overnight, it was like, okay, I’ve really got to take a step back and try to regroup. And that's what led me into working with other people, with entrepreneurs because I felt like, well, I can control that a little bit better. I can't control Google, but I can at least control how many people I talk to and I can control, you know, the content I put out in the articles that I publish, you know, so I felt like I had a little more control there. And then I guess another huge down was when my partner decided that she didn't want to be in business anymore. And that was a, it was a blind side. It was a huge surprise. So, and I just wasn't passionate enough because it was a business idea that we came up with together. I wasn't passionate enough about it to try to continue it on my own.

23:08

Ramesh: You switched gears and then got into the podcast. Excellent. So just the last two questions. First one is looking at your own journey, anything's that, it's not like a regret, but things that you could have done as a source of learning for us.

23:27

Millette: Definitely. I would say when I got laid off, I tried to just do everything, you know, on my own. Like instead of going back and getting another job, I just, I tried to rely on, you know, investments and savings and I went through all of that and then ended up having to do some side hustles and looking back on it, it was more of a struggle than it needed to be. It would have been better to go ahead and get another job and try to grow the business slowly instead of jumping in and not knowing a thing about starting an online business, but trying to do it from, you know, from zero.

24:09

Ramesh: Okay. So I mean like keep your job as long as you can and then keep the side hustle going until you feel comfortable kind of thing. Okay. And then the last question is as a piece of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs or people who have started businesses are struggling to grow or finding ways to grow, what kind of advice would you give?

24:31

Millette: I would say that you need to figure out what you're good at, where you are, where you feel you're really talented, and then exploit that as much as you can. So if you feel really confident as a writer, write, try to get into different publications, you know, do that. And if you feel good speaking and talking, get speaking engagements, get on podcast. But whatever you feel really comfortable doing, do that as much as you possibly can.

25:04

Ramesh: Excellent. So actually it's interesting that I'm working on a book and then the very first chapter of my book is, start with what you bring to the party. Say exactly the things that you're saying, by the way, so we've been trying to connect with each other, so I'm glad we connected. So a lot of excellent advice here. A good luck as you are focusing on large corporations with your business.

25:30

Millette: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.









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The post Building a Podcast Consultancy Business In the Growing Podcast Industry with Millette Jones – AEP # 35 appeared first on RameshDontha.com.

Growing A Niche Men’s Skincare Business – Bare & Beards – With Rin Gamache – AEP # 34

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Guest: ​​​​Rin Gamache
​Company / Business name: ​Bare and Beards – Skincare services & products for Men
Business web site​ ​ ​  | ​ LinkedIn ​ ​  | Facebook ​  | ​Instagram

Rin Gamache, a licensed Skincare Hacker (Esthetician), is the founder of Bare and Beards. Rin chose to concentrate on the male demographic, and create a clinic and products specifically targeting men. The beauty industry is associated with femininity since everything is geared towards women. Rin believes men don't have the skincare conversation because they aren't included enough; therefore, the conversation isn't happening. Rin's desire is to help change the industry standards, and jump start that conversation among men, because men want nice skin too!

​Rin has lived in Brooklyn, New York and Teaneck, New Jersey for a total of six years. She also lived abroad in Barcelona, Spain and Tianshui, China for a combined three years teaching English as a foreign language. Her interests include playing basketball, running, watching the Seattle Seahawks play, learning about different cultures, practicing her Spanish, traveling, and spending time with family and friends.

Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:

​Tools: ​None

Show Notes:

Rin talks about why she chose to focus on male skincare and how she got motivated.

Rin talks about the operations of her business and how she has a multipronged approach of her own clinic, barber schools education, and direct reach.

Rin talks about her i=unique approach to get first paid customers by approaching men at malls to try out her product for free and tracking their progress over multiple weeks over social media.

How to price your products and service? Rin goes into specific details on bundling products, free education to help increase customers’ revenues, and determining the profit margins.

Rin talks about her own personal journey from journalism to media marketing to entrepreneurship. She goes into details on finding niches and defining customer personas.

Rin’s advice to business owners: 1. Talk to other owners and signup mentors 2. Learn by trial and error 3. Be consistent and persistent 4. Keep building credibility.

​Episode Transcript (Click to expand)

00:02

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today we have a guest and her business definitely interests me. So I would like to know a little bit more about, her name is Rin Gamache. Rin Gamache is the founder, an esthetician of Baden beards, men's skin and wellness clinic located in San Diego. Hi, Rin, welcome.

00:41

Rin: Hi Ramesh. Thank you for having me.

00:45

Ramesh: All right. My very first question, what is aesthetician?

00:49

Rin: So an esthetician is a skin care specialist. So yes. So we provide preventative treatments to people who are trying to correct or maintain their skin. So I'm like dermatologist who prescribe. Diagnose and prescribe. We actually provide the maintenance to help present skin issues.

01:19

Ramesh: Okay, excellent. All right so now let's get into the business itself. So really, if you could tell us a little bit about your business. When did you start it? How did you start? Just your story.

01:31

Rin: So barren beards men's skin and wellness clinic, as well as Skin care products, we are a product line as well. So I started it back in 2018. I got the idea, obviously I’ve always had a love for skin care cause I had my own skin care issues growing up at the middle school and it was just through trial and error, I found out how to pretty much target an acne and to keep your skin in good shape and looking good in our products. I had gone through many dermatologists, prescriptions, bingo peroxide, salicylic acid, different jokes, you name it. I just didn't do Accutane. So I got on the natural journey and that's what actually led ultimately to my skin just becoming better and better over time. And my skin got immune to it, but in a good way not to where it got immune to stuff like the chemicals and then it stops working. So I decided to go to school to become an esthetician to really study skincare. And for me my angle was men, because the thing I noticed is that men don't know where to go. They don't think about things to do or what to try. They can just see somebody pick it up and not realize that there is a method to it and they're not educated. It's just not a conversation that was had in the household. You know that of association with femininity? Women had the products, the masks, the cleansers, the different steps. Whereas men, that's nothing that they discussed or even really learned about.

03:17

Ramesh: But I keep reading recently that there, that is changing. I don't know if it's changing because of education or whatever, but the men also supposedly are taking care of the grooming and all that stuff. Is that what you see?

03:32

Rin: Yes. So right now that's becoming, currently it is becoming more prominent because of the metrosexuals, the gay men. But it's still a stigma among that guys, guy, right? The athlete, the construction worker, the mechanic, so those are the men that I'm like, okay, the metro-sexual and the gays, they get it and they're willing to purchase and Invest in grooming products. But like the barber, those people, the guy guys, those are the ones that aren't going to take the time. They don't have that time. And that's why I knew one, what I wanted to come out with a product line that was simple enough for a guy to be able to embrace and use. And I want it to provide that education to barbers because men, that guy guy and everybody goes to a barber and I felt like they need to be equipped with the knowledge and start bringing in skincare services into their business model as well as me having a clinic myself, a place where men could come and address their skincare issues. So it's not a spa, it is the clinic because I'm actually helping manage, achieve a specific goal.

04:54

Ramesh: Interesting. So for the training the barber's, so you go to their place or you have a facility where they come?

04:58

Rin: So, well, what I started doing and this past year is going to barber schools, because I find that the future barbers are the ones where I can make the most impression. So I go there, I do a demo, I talk to them about, you know how to set themselves apart from the other barbers and how men's grooming and skin care is starting to become more popular and that they can actually build their business, make more money and be more profitable if they add this into their piece. I do give demos to barbers who are out there in the world today, but it's a little bit harder, cause most barbers are stuck in their own way, you know, so they're not adding that service. But then you get those barbers that get it. And I target those. Yes, I will go to their place of business and give a skincare demo.

05:49

Ramesh: Got it. Okay. So let's talk about the business itself a little bit. Okay. So in 2018 so started your business, how long did it take for you to actually start the business?

06:05

Rin: So basically, I opened up my clinic in June, but I didn't open up my clinic to the public until August. So what I did, my goal and my strategy was I am going to get my clinic and I'm going to go out and find some men who have issues. I want someone with acne. I want somebody with some scarring. I want somebody, I just want three different types of models to bring them in, offer them the service for free. All I want is a before and after pictures and a testimonial. That way I can see what works, how long it takes for them to see results and how to price my services once I opened up to the clinic. And then too, I would have those pictures, the progress pictures. So I went out, you know, I was at a grocery store. I'm paying attention like if it's a cashier, the guy or if I see someone at the gym or I mean if I go stop at a gas station, the clerk there, whoever I ran into, I would give out my business card, introducing myself, letting them know I had a clinic in the area for men and I would love to have them as a model.

07:11

Ramesh: So how successful were you in recruiting these models?

07:16

Rin: Well, I was pretty good. I mean it was depending on, so kind of like when the guys that had the issues, those are the ones that kind of were a little bit turned off by my approach. So it's very sensitive, very sensitive situation. But I was able to find, like I had a clerk that I had at my local grocery store. I knew for years just by saying hi, bye, how you doing? Basic casual, you know, converse small talk when I am going into the grocery store. So I noticed he had some razor bumps, so I just, I didn't bring up the fact that he had it. I just invited him. So because of that, we knew each other just based off of me shopping there he came. Another guy, actually, he worked at a gas station and I just said you know, it was, there was no one else in the store. And I was like, you know, hi, my name is, you know Rin. I have a skin and wellness clinic for men in mission Valley. I was like, I feel like, you know, I'm looking for some models, you know to help my business. And I was like, I think I can help you. And he had very bad red postural on his face and he said, you know, I’ve tried everything. My skin has never been better than this. And I was like, give me a chance. And he came. So that was a good one. He was willing to come. And then there was another guy when I was in school and I was promoting on social media. He had saw my promotion for school and he came in to see me at school and stayed in contact. So I was, and he had those acne pockmarks, those indents from old acne. So I asked him to come in since I knew him since he had came to me when I was in school and was one of my clients at school.

08:56

Ramesh: So let me ask you, yeah. So this strategy is interesting, so it could be seen as pushy or aggressive work, so were there any people put off or did you get any rude comments from anybody? Was there any negative side of this particular strategy?

09:13

Rin: No, it's just, you can sense it. So you know, when you walk up to someone and you're like, hi, you know, my name is Rin, here's a card. I want to give you my card. I just really want you to be a model for me. I do skincare and I think I can help you. If they had, like I said, if it was visible and they knew and I knew, you can just tell that. Or like they would take my card, but you could just tell they didn't want to have the conversation like they knew, or they'd be like, Oh yeah, okay. And I see them again and Hey did you, when are you going to come in? I'm really looking forward to it. Oh yeah, yeah, I’ll call you. So it wasn't that they would feel rude, but I can just tell by the energy, their expression that they're embarrassed by it.

09:58

Ramesh: Yeah. Yeah. So got it. So you recruited the models and then you got the before and after and then, yeah then what did you do afterwards?

10:07

Rin: So I mean basically with that, I was able to use that to build my website, to do my social media marketing, to think of marketing strategies to get people to come in. So now what I had was at the same time that I was opening up my clinic and doing this, well, I had a chemist working on formulating my first product on my skin care line, which is a bear and beard four in one day cleanser. Cleansers, it exfoliates, it moisturizes, and you can shave with it. It's for all skin types and it targets a razor bumps, ingrown hair and acne. So I want, again like I told you earlier, I wanted to be able to come out with a skin care product in line that's going to simplify that man man's skin care routine and give them something that they would target what they would be dealing with, but at the same time not cause a lot of time, otherwise they're going to not do it. So with that, while I was doing my demo, my models was using my product too. So by the time it launched in October, my clinic has already been up and running on for two months I was advertising on Groupon for my pre shave me show, which I called it. I made sure I had a facial for men. And yes. So I was doing that and then I have my products and then I started going to barber trade show. So barbers, they have trade shows where they go and they do contest, haircutting contests and you know, they have vendors that sell things like products for hair care. That's the one thing that was missing was skincare. I networked within the Barbara community and was just like, listen, I want to be a vendor. You know, skincare should be something that you guys should be doing. And again, one of the people that threw one of the trade shows called mow down in Carson, Cal cornea, her name is Louie. She got the idea and she was like, yes, I want you to be a vendor, but I also what you to do a quick workshop on something that the barbers that come in to the tent, will be able to get good information and take something from it. So she gave me a platform to be able to be that skincare guru, that person of knowledge to be introduced to the Barber community in Southern California.

12:41

Ramesh: Excellent. So basically, you're not only marketing and promoting to the customers directly, but you're also helping barbers who also reach to your customers, expand their business by offering in addition to hair care, something like a skincare.

12:58

Rin: Exactly. And I'm teaching them, well, I started just this when going to schools and this is what I'm doing, but I'm teaching them how to sell products. Because one thing barbers don't know how to do, they don't know how to sell products. And they have, if you've ever been into a barbershop, you see they have a section where there's products on display that collects dust. They don't understand that, that is another profit for them. They get a percentage, or they can buy wholesale, bring products. And so I'm teaching barbers, you guys need to be learning and studying about ingredients that deal with or target things that your customers are going to be experiencing with their scalp, their face. Because that's going to be not only are you helping people, you're knowledgeable about something that they can benefit from. You're solving a problem and you're going to, you know, make more money. And you're not going to just be that $20 barber and you're going to have to sit in the barbershop for 14 hours. So for me, I went to the barbers because I'm like, okay the men come to you guys, my product, I wanted to, I wholesale my products to the barbers as well as sell directly from my website and to clients who come to my, to come to my shop. So I had to network with the barbers.

14:18

Ramesh: Yeah, very good. Very good Rin. So good. So a little bit more into the business aspect itself, which is pricing and the pricing is a very important element of a business. So how did you go through the process of figuring out how to price number one, your products? Number two, your services?

14:38

Rin: Well, when it came to my services again, what did I need my services to do? It was either to clear up acne, razor bumps, help with hyperpigmentation. Help with under eye puffiness, wrinkle. So basically and I'm using natural organic ingredients, chemical free products. So based off bad, natural, organic, chemical free is expensive. And then I wanted to know how long is it going to take four them to see results because that's what people, it's all results driven and then I'm going to send them home with something. So one is the new model. Two, at the same time I know my value, but I still had a price it and be competitive and so I went and looked at, see what other surrounding estheticians were charging in their businesses companies and I found a middle ground for me, what will be comfortable, especially it being such a niche demographic, like just solely going after men. I mean women are welcome too, but men, just my marketing, my visibility, everything is for men. That's what I’ve looked into. Again, just those models help me gauge how I'm going to price and then the products that I was using and what it could do and then getting that feedback from the model. So the serums that I would send them home with, that type of thing. Now for my product the funny thing is, when I first started because it was a four-ounce bottle and that was the thing. The chemist was like, you know, and she has her own skin light skin care line as well too, but she said, you know you're probably a cleanser. You can only probably sell it for like $12 to $16 and I said, well the product that I'm doing because it's going to be four in one and I believe it's going to last three months, it should, I think I can sell it for $30, she was like, that's a high price point. She was like serums? Yes. Most people invest in price for serums because you can sell them for a lot, but for me, my idea was I'm offering four products that targets different things. It's natural, organic. I think I can sell at a higher price point. But once I got the product being a new brand, I brought it down to $18. I was like, I'm just going to sell it for $18 and I’ll wholesale it to barbers 10 bottles for $130 at the trade shows. So I was doing that for a while, was doing, being successful, fast forward six months because and I was telling Barbara is your market price could be $25 or $30, because $80 on my website plus shipping came to about $23, $24. Well, one thing, a barber, a student came to me after I did a presentation and he bought five of my bottles and he was like, you know, it's going to be hard for us to sell your product for $25 $30 when on your website it is $18 and he was just like, the product does four things. That's four products in one. And he was like, it is all natural and organic. He was like, I think that you're selling it for way less than you should. So I was like, he's absolutely right. I knew that. But I kind of was using it as a test or just see. So now I changed it. I said, you're right. So I changed it to $25 a bottle and I wholesale them for 10 for $150. And so it was kind of like I did a couple other trade shows and it's for new clients. I sold it for $25 a bottle and people were buying it just the same.

18:24

Ramesh: Because you're delivering more value and four in a way, sometimes this four in ones, it's difficult to convey the value. But I think once you're established, it looks like you're able to do it.

18:37

Rin: Right. Yeah. But the customers who had been buying and, and repeat customers, I charged them what I charged them in the beginning. I didn't change the price on them because, you know, and I see this first year of me launching my product, my first product as a testing period.

18:55

Ramesh: Yeah. Yeah. You're iterating. You're tweaking trying to find the right you know, business model as well as the right pricing model. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. That's good. So Rin now I think we covered a lot of ground on your business. I think we have a really good idea of how you're operating. Let's talk about you a little bit. So you had healthcare, sorry skincare issues and then you said, fine, I want to get into this one. Like why start a business? Did you think about going and working for somewhere? Were you're thinking about a business for all your life? Tell us about Rins’ dreams and aspirations.

19:34

Rin: Well, my background actually is in journalism and journalism, sorry, and media marketing. So I did write a lot of articles on health care issues, diseases. I did some skincare as well. And I also have just experienced in marketing and sales. And the thing I did was I worked for a small startup. It was an ice cream company. It was my first sales job not too long ago. And first it was a niche product because they targeted, it was ice cream for diabetics. And I had to sell this product into stores and I just, that was a passion for me to be able to, it was a cause that I was interested in, had to do with health. Natural, organic and I'm marketing it, you know, selling it. So and I’ve always a lot of being in business for myself, but I never knew what I was good at. I never knew what I would do. I always thought I could help other businesses grow. But when my position was eliminated and they downsize completely, I decided, I was like, okay, what am I going to do? Like what do I really want to do right now? And I knew I wanted to start my own business and I was like, what am I feel passionate about? And it dawned on me, I'm like, skincare. You mastered it for yourself. I love, I can spend hours in vitamin Shops just looking and reading at all their skincare ingredients. I love reading and researching ingredients. I just, I'm very much into natural organic products. I said, I should come out with a skincare line. I know I can make; you know, I know I could or something like that, team up with someone. I was like, I know I can help people with their skin, let me go to aesthetics school. And I went to an aesthetic school and I loved it. I loved the science behind it. I loved working with people. So I just kind of, I just kind of said, I want a niche. I like niche markets. It gives me that challenge, because I'm not going to sell to women. I can, I can do, I'm pretty sure I would be super successful and rich right now if I targeted women. But it's so easy. I need a challenge. So I wanted to target men because I felt like I can actually help them. And there, that's an untapped market, like really, and I was like wondering why isn't there an aesthetics clinic directly geared to men? I was learning that, there are products for men, but I felt like another thing, there's not one that I feel represent or show images of men of color. And that's all men of color, all Brown people. I feel like all the ads for men's skincare products as a whole, all just feature Caucasian people. So I just wanted to find something that would, that I can do and target the minority races out there.

22:42

Ramesh: I see. Okay. That's interesting. So I think you really wanted to identify your ideal set of customers at the same time, you niche down to the men that is for sure. But within that also your sub niched and identified where the areas of opportunity are there. That is very good. So then, yeah, so let me talk about this journey, right? I mean this journey is not smooth. So you went to school and then it takes some time to establish yourself. So did you take any external financing and you finance it yourself.

23:17

Rin: Yes, I have probably invested so far over like almost 20,000 on the way up, but I had money to invest and I was like, when am I going to do with this money? I want to invest it and I invested it in myself and I'm going to tell you, no, it's not easy and I did not quit. You know, I am working side hustle to keep everything going and continue to fund. I'm looking for partner but want the partnership to be right. And that would be great. But in the meantime, no, I am funding it because right now it is fundable and it's not, I'm not at that stage for an investor just yet. I don't, you know, but I know as I continue to build this brand, I know I'm going to start attracting. So I'm just learning all areas of the business right now. I've learned so much on this journey and I think had I did this 10,15 years ago, I wouldn't be that successful but successful. But because I had my background in journalism, because I had my background in research because I had a background in marketing and sales. I have this experience and I'm able to, I took a business class, I took an accounting class. So I am rounded in this way. So I'm just really just enjoying the journey of learning of how to build this business model and branding, because I know how to brand and I'm just doing the branding. And I'm still working on it. So the wellness side. And that's another part. So I'm actually going to be going to medical school because I'm going to add that, I'm going to start working on men's health. So infertility, right, PTSD., erectile dysfunction. So I want to be that bear and beards, men's skin and wellness clinic that's going to be that hub for men, so they have a place.

25:21

Ramesh: Yeah. It looks like you are focusing on areas that are, like people don't talk about naturally, PTSD.

25:28
Rin: Exactly. Exactly. Yes.

25:30

Ramesh: So they're not comfortable bringing them out, but you are identifying those things and you're touching them. That's very good.

25:39

Rin: Yes. Because guess what, it is something that men care and want to do. But guess what? There's no one that's, I feel like if they don't, I want to make it comfortable. I'm trying to make build that comfort. And if you go and check out my social media, I'm covering certain topics. During the month of June for Father’s Day. I talked about, I touched on sensitive issues, like what does it mean to be a father. Right now I see by latest posts, did you know men get yeast infections too? So I am trying to definitely, I am toying with it that side. And touching on those nerves and I'm definitely doing that because I'm like, listen you guys need to get your checkups. You guys need to be, there's things you guys should be doing. Don't avoid the doctor. Don't wait until it's too late. So I am pulling in, not only is it skin health, but it is health, health.

26:34

Ramesh: Yeah. Yeah. So basically, you're specializing the sensitive areas kind of stuff. That's very neat Rin. And I think I like it. As we wind down the podcast and you said you learned a lot and then you couldn't have done this business before because you're well-rounded in all the areas in all these things came to a point where naturally it led you to get into the business. So what are the key learnings that you could explain to us?

27:03

Rin: Well, talk to other business owners. Number one, talk to other business owners. Make them your mentors, even if they don't know that your mentors learn, you're always going to be learning. Trial and error. Don't be scared to try something. Yes, it might not work, but that's okay. You can try. I've done some small failures, but, calculate things, calculate every move you're going to make before you make it. Think about the pros and cons because especially depending on where you're starting, I'm starting, I feel like a little later in the game, I don't really have enough room for too many big mistakes to want to start all over again. So it has to be very calculated and definitely, yeah just stay true to what it is you're trying to do. Everyone's always going to be doing the same thing and you're going to be like, dang it if I'm not doing that, I'm going to miss out because it seems like that’s what’s working, no, go left sometimes because guess what, it might seem like it's going to be slow, but you're going to see those little wins along the way. So I feel like when it comes to that and then just stay consistent and persistent, like you have to stay consistent, persistent. Cause guess what? You're building confidence, not only your own confidence, but you're building the confidence for those people watching you into you. Like that's important.

28:29

Ramesh: That's very true. That is very important. I mean, that is the purpose of this podcast as well, that, you know, people listening to us and people listening to you, you know yeah, they become confident. Okay. So Rin Gamache, she did it, she went this route and then she picked on these areas. She just being successful. So that's I think very neat Rin. And the other thing that I'm also noticing that you're not, you're educating yourself, like you said, to get in the wellness you are going to medical school, to get into the skincare you went to an aesthetician school, right? So all those things, you're investing in yourself

29:02

Rin: I am building credibility because I didn't want to just be a brand with no substance and a person who's just selling it. No. I'm passionate. I'm showing the people who I'm targeting that listen, I care. I've learned, I’ve done it and I know what I'm talking about. But yeah, I will hope to hire other people, but when I hire other people, I want to be able to know what they're doing too and be able to step in where I can when that time comes. But no, yes exactly. I'm educating myself and I want to build credibility behind the brand because a lot of other, that's what separates myself from the other brands out there. There are people with money to market and to put into it, to just go out there and they probably don't know much about skin care. They got somebody else feeding that information to them. Whereas me the brand owner, I know I did my work, my research, I did the trials and the errors. So that's what makes my brand different from the other men's skin care brands.

30:00

Ramesh: I can't agree with you more. I mean, this is phenomenal. So it's a very fascinating journey Rin. So good luck to you as you keep expanding and then so into different areas. Thank you very much for your time. It's been a good podcast.

30:14

Rin: Yes. Thanks so much, Ramesh. Thanks for reaching out to me and choosing me to go on this journey with you, I like you and your book and your podcast.

30:24

Ramesh: Thank you. Thank you.









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The post Growing A Niche Men’s Skincare Business – Bare & Beards – With Rin Gamache – AEP # 34 appeared first on RameshDontha.com.

Building A B2B Software As A Service Company To Help Retain Employees with Vivek Kumar – AEP #33

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Guest: ​​​Vivek Kumar
​Company / Business name: ​​​​​​​​Qlicket
Business web site​ ​ ​  | ​ LinkedIn ​ ​  | Facebook ​  | ​ Youtube

Vivek is the founder of Qlicket, an application platform that diagnoses the drivers of avoidable employee turnover and gets employees bought in to the best solutions to reduce the turnover. Vivek Kumar completed his MBA from University Of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and worked for couple of years in Management Consulting and couple more years in private equity. After 4 years in NY, Vivek had a calling that he has to make an impact in this world and decided that high tech industry is where he is going to make an impact. He moved to silicon valley and worked with a company that sold advertisements for free wireless in public places before his current venture.

Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:

​Tools: ​None

Show Notes:

Why talent retention is a big problem and employee turnover is expensive for businesses and how Qlicket is helping solve that problem.

Qlicket captures first-line feedback from employees about their concerns and addresses them as soon as possible to resolve issues.

Vivek goes into details on how Qlicket pivoted and iterated many times before it found its current growth model. Key finding was that you don’t need a fully developed product but need working prototypes to drive customer discovery conversations.

Vivek talks about the importance of resilience and how being resilient helped him from keeping the company afloat since 2011 before actually driving the growth they looked for in 2018.

Vivek talks about his own journey from a business school to investment banking to consulting to silicon valley to India and back to the US. His key findings through all these churns are to fail fast, learn from stumbles in a non-emotional way, and relying on supporters & collaborators.

Vivek goes into details on how he got first paying customers by targeting conference attendees, sending cold emails, following up with face-to-face meetings in a very targeted way. A combination of multiple strategies but in a targeted way.

Vivek’s advice to entrepreneurs is to focus on customers want and not what you find interesting, assess failures objectively and learn, and keep focusing on growth.

​Episode Transcript (Click to expand)

00:02

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today I have the CEO of Qlicket Vivek Kumar. So the Qlicket is an enterprise software service company that caters to companies that are experiencing high worker turnover environment. And Vivek himself has gone through many pivots in his life as a career and for his own company that he will talk about a very interesting background. And he has an MBA from the Wharton school as well. Vivek welcome.

00:52

Vivek: Thank you Ramesh.

00:54

Ramesh: Alright, Vivek I know I introduced Qlicket in my own way, so but why don't you explain what Qlicket does in your own words.

01:03

Vivek: Great. Qlicket is an enterprise SAS company that does talent retention for very high worker turnover environments.

01:13
Ramesh: Okay. So a talent retention means what?

01:16

Vivek: Talent retention means that we help organizations, particularly large enterprises in fortune five hundreds keep more of their workforce, particularly those on the frontline in their job, than they may be, are currently able to do. So When we think about HR, there is the talent acquisition side, which is focused on nowadays technologies that do everything from having AI to help you find the most ideal candidates to improving scheduling options for maybe those more on the front line. But the area that may be often gets a little bit more overlooked is on the talent retention side, particularly those in the frontline workforce or in high turnover environments. And so what we do is we help keep more of these traditionally high turnover workers in their jobs, who otherwise might have turned over. And it's usually due to avoidable turnover reasons. So areas that can actually be improved upon and, and fix and rectify. And that's what we help identify and help improve.

02:16

Ramesh: Okay. So now I'm intrigued. I know to retain the talent and to keep the workers management and leadership does lots of things like, you know free food, cafeteria, lots of other things, work life balance and other things. But how does your software help with the talent? Attention?

02:33

Vivek: Yeah, so what we do is we set up a physical kiosks, think tablets that are mounted on a wall or simply placed on a stand that are placed near the time clock, the break room or the restroom in a given distribution center, fulfillment center, warehouse, etc. And workers throughout the day, whether at the beginning, during the middle of the day at the end of their shift can go up to these tablets and sort of observe what's on the screen. Periodically we'll have questions on the screen, usually one or two questions anything from maybe a set of smiley faces or qualitative response options where they can provide commentary about whatever's effecting them inside and outside of the workplace. That software then feeds into a cloud based dashboard that an administrator, somebody at the organization can log into and see what factors workers are talking about that they want to see improved or rectified in the workplace.

So yeah, that's in a nutshell how it works. We obviously do benchmarking, solution analysis, content generation and more. But in a nutshell, we are able to capture feedback and illuminate problematic areas where more traditional solutions like desktop based solutions or maybe mobile based apps are not able to capture because for whatever reason, this workforce is not sitting in front of a desk or they're not able to use their mobile phones in the job or they don't want to use their mobile phones because they feel it's personally identifying. They have to download another app. So we do a great job of capturing this feedback and then analyzing the trends that are occurring and recommending solutions to improve the working.

04:17

Ramesh: That's great. So I'm assuming that you did not just sit somewhere and then write the software and made the product and then started selling out. So I mean, how did you come up with this idea? How did your business you know, come to focus in this

Area?

04:33

Vivek: Yeah, great question. We actually launched a new website and under the about tab, we actually discussed this a little bit now. So I will admit we were guilty of some of the things most entrepreneurs fall into as pitfalls. We can have a patent to our name. And we initially in previous versions of Qlicket had developed a product that we thought was awesome and then tried to sell it to people in, although it had interesting technology, we found maybe the market or customers weren't as receptive as we thought that they would be. This time around for this version of Qlicket what we talked about just now, a customer actually told us they had this huge pain. They saw a previous version of a solution we had built for people in the hospitality industry where we were collecting feedback naturally through Wi-Fi hotspots. When you were logging on, you could provide commentary about your stay and that would go to someone on staff who could resolve the issue in real time rather than being posted online on TripAdvisor, Google reviews, booking.com etc. And we saw that work really, really well, but we weren't maybe as excited about the large market potential that we had. In fact, we were growing a little bit each month, month on month. But we weren't getting this kind of hyper-growth that we were looking for. And so we were exploring different verticals where we could expand what we were doing really well, which was collecting feedback in a natural way that kind of real time resolution to these issues that people were having. And we had a meeting with someone out of a fortune 100 in the Pittsburgh area where our headquarters are based and this person said to us, my number one pain is retaining my talent, specifically package handlers. I hire a 150,000 a year. Can you help me keep more of them in the jobs? And he saw what we had built in the hospitality industry. He saw a desktop solution we'd built in HR and he said, figure out a way to solve this problem for me, for my deskless workforce. And if you can solve this for me, there is a large enough market where other people have this pain that you'll be able to do this for them too. And he was absolutely right. And so that's actually got our wheels turning. And the takeaway from that is, it was less about us having a fully built product, and more of us doing customer discovery conversations in a large customer saying, this is a pain that I have, can you solve this, even if it's kind of an MVP today, or take what you've built for another industry and customize it for this one. And you know, that's so much more powerful than us having built the widget and then having gone out to the market and trying to get them excited about it.

07:08

Ramesh: So you need market validation. So Vivek when did you start Qlicket?

07:14

Vivek: Qlicket was officially incorporated in December of 2011. We sort of had an initial version of Qlicket and as early back as in 2012 this version that we're talking about now was launched April of 2018. So it's about 18 months from launch to where we are today.

07:33

Vivek: So what was happening to Qlicket? And by the way, it's a Qlicket right? Qlicket .

07:40

Vivek: That's correct.

07:41

Ramesh: Okay. So what was happening to Qlicket from 2011 to 2017, early 2018.

07:48
Vivek: so we had about two different versions. The first version was we had this initial thesis that more people in India wanted to come online for free and they would be willing to trade 30 seconds of their time for 30 minutes of free internet. So we initially set up an ads for access model where when you were logging into WIFI at a public hotspot, say at a cafe, a restaurant or hotel and airport, you would watch an ad for about 30 seconds or interact with an ad on your computer or your phone. And you get 30 minutes of free intranet. And that was partially successful in the sense that we did campaigns with some large brand advertisers. Google, Javan, Cadbury, HDFC bank, Cisco, snap deal and others. And we did them at large airports in India, including Indira Gandhi international airport, T2, Bombay’s airport or sorry, IGIT3, Bombay AT2 and in other venues. These are pretty marquee venues in India. But it was never going to be a big business for a host of problematic areas in India. I think the overall challenge is, what we didn't think about where the macro conditions, so starting a B2B business in India that’s software based is quite challenging. I'm not sure if there are any successful players today. There's a lot of B2C success stories. People might recognize there's a lot of B2B selling global stories. But we were just sort of in the wrong place at the wrong time. And maybe having some initial traction, maybe kept us doing it for longer than we would have, longer than what probably would make sense. So we did that from about 2012 to 2014. In 2014 we launched sort of in 2015 we launched what we were doing with which was, which was setting up WIFI hotspots, mostly in hotels and we kind of moved back to the U S market. So we were serving one to two are hotels in the United States primarily EconoLodge, Wkinda, independent hotels, Motel six these kinds of hotels were often owned by Indian Americans who were looking for a value for money solution who want better WIFI for their customers. And as we were doing that, one of our customers said to us, you know, you have this WIFI login page. I like how it's really customizable. You can put a different picture there. Have you thought about collecting feedback from these hotel guests? And that would be really powerful for me if you did that. And so that was the beginning of a customer sort of telling us, Hey, this is interesting you build this for me. And that got our wheels turning, so we started doing that. We incorporated that feature set and customers loved it. They thought it was really powerful. They were saying, you literally are helping me improve my reviews and delighting customers and creating more loyalty. So we had an our peak of 125 paying customers, 80 of them were in the United States across 26 US States, 97% lifetime customer retention. And we're saying, okay, this is great, we're able to set up these customers, but how do we kind of build a bigger business around this? So we thought about going to, you know, we went to Marriott, we went to choose hotels and we sort of said to them, Hey we have the solution, are you guys interested? Cause our customers love it. Independent franchisee hotel owners. This is interesting, great, We have our own mobile app or we're focused more on our loyalty programs or we have our own vendor program, which you can, you know, pay some fees and apply to beyond, but we're not as excited maybe as you guys are about this. And even the individual franchisees. So that was in 2017 and so we sort of came to this realization, okay, we have this great small business that you know, may be considered a mini lifestyle business but was not going to be kind of this scalable venture type business that maybe we were hoping to build.

11:35

Ramesh: Hyper growth you're looking for.

11:36

Vivek: Exactly, exactly. And that's the point we were growing consistently every month, but we were not going to have this hyper-growth that we were looking for, this tight product market fit feeling where you just kind of have this pull from customers. And so that's when in 2017 we said, okay, let's pivoting again or see where we can extend this idea of what we were doing with national feedback collection now and then in 2018 we launched what we're doing now for the HR space. You know, in the span of 18 months, at that time we've gone from nonprofits to fortune five hundred, including seven paying customers. The total account value on a fully rolled out basis for all of these accounts is over $2 million of which we've already captured you know, six figures worth of that figure. The median signup time from intro to paying has been two months. And the number one source of customer acquisition has been a cold email. Warm intro is number two. And then we talked a little bit about trade shows as well. And how we sort of position these emails to line up things ahead of time. So there's been a huge difference in terms of customer interest and demand. Part of it's probably due to better market timing, heading on a market that's really feeling this pain and now executing on that. So yeah, it's been many years in the making for what hopefully will eventually be an overnight success.

12:58

Ramesh: It’s a very fascinating journey Vivek. I mean, I think one thing that's coming through my mind, I was listening to your story is the resilience, right? I mean it took you seven years to get to the growth that you're looking for a multiple pivot. So let's talk a little bit about you, Vivek Kumar as a person, your journey. So did you start your Qlicket right after your business school from Martin?

13:24

Vivek: I did not. I went in the working world for about four and a half years. Worked in consulting at a management consulting at the time was called Katzenbach partners. Now owned by PWC strategy end. And also worked at the Blackstone group for about two years, that's a large private equity firm. So both of these were in New York. So about four years in New York, was out in the Bay area for a few months at a company that was doing ads for access at the time called cloud nine wireless. It's now Wingo big public WIFI operator. And during my time there had an interest in sort of saying, could we take this idea of ads for access and take it to the developing world? And that got me moving to India. Spent a couple years there, met Dipender Tawari who heads up our technology, one of other cofounders and then eventually moved back to the U S and met John Goldschmidt, our third co cofounder. And so that whole journey kept me pretty occupied for many years longer than I ever thought this startup journey would last. I guess there's a funny saying, which is like, you think you're starting a business, but if you actually become successful with these things, you realize the business sort of picks you. And so the name Qlicket. This whole idea was you're going to click on something and get something in return, Qlicket. We want you to click. And that evolution is still true today. You know, today it's clicking on a kiosk, whether it's on the smiley face or check boxes or writing, but you're still clicking on some action. And so, you know, the evolution of this whole thing has been quite an experience. But I think if you, there's this whole debate around fail fast and just you mentioned the word resilience. I think a lot of people don't take value and maybe how much they've been learning and really trying to optimize on this journey. And I think that's maybe one thing. We really appreciate that, if you really like get to the learnings of these things, hopefully you can introspectively say, here's why maybe it didn't work. Maybe some of it's you, but maybe some of it's a lot of other factors that need to go right. And if you can be honest about that and not let your emotions get the best of you, hopefully you can find something that leads to that tighter product, market fit and growth.

15:43

Ramesh: Yup. Exactly. So I think of these, right? So like entrepreneurs, like in you and me, we go through these journeys and there are lots of times we think because you had a pretty comfortable four and a half years working for somebody else. And then as I started Qlicket and then as you're going through the pivots, you must have realized, you must have talked to yourself, like is it worth it? Do I want to do this journey? Did you go through those things and then how did you manage to answer to yourself?

16:11

Vivek: Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of low moments. There were moments where I had to liquidate my IRA to make sure the company stayed alive for us to have another chance at this. There were moments where we missed three months of payroll and we thought the whole thing was going to collapse. And fortunately everybody that we, that we sort of wanted to have stay on board stayed with us during that time and eventually we paid everyone back and more. There were moments when we were pivoting where we weren't sure. You know, we had some of our investors who immediately questioned why we were pivoting from something that was growing slowly but still growing and on a decent path to profitability. So there were a lot of those tough moments and those are the most difficult moments. And it's easy to not actually go down those routes because there's so much pressure from you as you take on more stake holders, whether they're, you know, coworkers and or they are investors or they are mentors or whoever they may be a, you face these challenges of having to really think through what the right decision is and not knowing in that moment if it is the right decision. But the thing I think to keep in mind is everyone who's working with you, if you're running these companies, is making a bet on you to figure out, to do the right thing. Its not always the easy thing, but by them being involved in some way, they've said, I trust your judgment. And we try during those difficult times and be really transparent with people to explain our rationale and continue to execute. And fortunately today we are in a better spot than we've ever been in, obviously we still have a lot to do and to execute on. But ideally it'd be great to learn these things earlier in advance and not have to spend as many years as we have to get to these points. But what I would say to people to remind them that a lot of these success stories you hear are not actually overnight successes. What often happens is people incorporate the company later on again, or they change the founding date and they make it look like things are overnight successes. But you don't see the backstory of everything that happened that led them to where they are and they often don't like talking about it. So, there's no shame in, in taking a while to get there. Hopefully you're learning, hopefully you're enjoying the journey. But it's better to hopefully get there than not get there ever, which most people sadly never even get to that point, so hopefully they find value in a lot of the work you're doing Ramesh with providing these levels of guidance and insights and actually executing on those rather than hopefully making some of the mistakes that we made.

18:54

Ramesh: Yeah. I actually, you're so right. I mean I personally, I learned a lot. And then as a matter of fact, as we are recording today, we just published that 25th episode of this podcast within less than four months. The reception has been tremendous. Like it's very positive, very encouraging of the sharing of the stories. Yeah. So Vivek now let me go onto the another segment. The reason we got connected early on because I was very intrigued by your method of acquiring your customers, how you are building the pipeline. Right. So you mentioned a little bit about that trade shows, cold emails. So if you could tell the listeners what are the different strategies that you used to get your paying customers?

19:41

Vivek: Oh boy, I should be a little careful cause if I started doing this, it might not be as effective. Yeah. Actually out of these seven paying customers, including some of our largest customers. When I say cold email, that's true. But what it's really about is exactly what you just mentioned. What were you would do is have someone in a list of the email addresses of the speakers and attendees who are attending trade shows and conferences that are relevant to the offering that we're selling. And we would reach out to them in advance of these events to try and gauge their interest in setting up a meeting or a demo. And then based on that level of interest, we would take a call on whether even one makes sense to attend the event. And if so, whether it even makes sense to get a ticket to actually enter into the event or merely to just be present at that location and to have those meetings. And I’ll tell you for any company that's just getting started, maybe the notion is often we need to buy a booth, we need to be a sponsor, we need to get our name and our brand. Of course those are all nice things. But the reality is if there is a real customer interest when you craft these great cold emails and you know, maybe you have to send a few of them, it's maybe not the very first email they respond to. You offer something of relevance to the people that are attending that event. You could get away with being able to spend so little money to acquire customers at these trade shows and conferences. And that's been super effective for us in our early days. And so something we would highly recommend people to do when they're just getting their businesses off the ground.

21:21

Ramesh: Excellent. I mean, like basically you combine many strategies and to essentially vet before even you go there and to see if it's worth your time. And I found it to be a very powerful strategy. That's really good. So yeah, it's good. I'm glad it worked out for you on then. So I think people will hear more about these things in the next few months as a matter of fact. So Vivek towards the last segment or so. First let me ask you a little bit about your own inspiration and motivation. People, or books, or movies or things that inspired you, motivated you, and then they keep in motivating you. Anything that comes to your mind?

22:03

Vivek: I recently got married and my wife's abroad and, and she'll be moving to the U S so I, I hope to be able to spend more time with her, first of all and have a balance. In terms of inspiration. You know, probably Elon Musk a couple of years ago maybe before some of the kinds of things that we see nowadays. But this idea of think about fundamental problems you want to solve and what kind of impact you want to leave on the world. About reading about him, Jeff Bezos saying the reason he partially started Amazon, I believe, is he imagined being on his deathbed at 80 years old and saying was he happy with the life that he lived? And I think for me there was this notion that there was a safe path of staying in a corporate job and continuing to do what would have been considered success on paper, but maybe didn't fulfill me personally. I think if you can find what kind of passion you have and merge that with this idea of hopefully building something that can be sustainable in some way to you. Again, maybe it's a scalable venture back type business, but maybe it's just something that's merely sustainable and provides you a level of joy. That's something that I hope everyone has a chance to aim for and, and achieve in some way in their lifetime. So you know, in terms of inspirational things, it's you know, maybe then those people. Then probably more recently I would recommend the Netflix. There's the David Letterman series with my next guest needs no introduction. And some of the speakers he gets on there you know, Barack Obama and Melinda Gates, Malala and others, it's inspiring and exciting to hear all of their stories in this new format that he's done. So that's been pretty inspiring more recently for me.

23:56
Ramesh: Excellent. So as we come towards the end of the podcast, so Vivek you talked about the learnings that you got personally and then you wish you know, you had known earlier. So any, a couple of things that are top of your mind, things that come to your mind that you could have done sooner or in a different way kind of stuff as an advice to the listeners.

24:21

Vivek: Yeah. Make something people want, not maybe just what you find interesting. Hopefully it's the intersection of both. Ideally it is. I would say growth is probably the only thing that matters if you're using that as a compass to identify if you're on to something for a scalable type business, try to remove the emotion of what you're doing. And assess it as objectively as you can. So one of the things I often like to ask entrepreneurs is if you could invest in any business right now, including your own, and you could remove yourself from the situation emotionally, would you invest in what you're making? Are you really on to something? Are you just trying to sell something to me to tell me, you know, is it more than smoking mirrors? Is there really something here? If you had the money, would you invest in your own business? I think, you know, oftentimes entrepreneurs don't have a ton of cash, but I think that's one of those tests to say if they can't say yes with conviction and look you in the eye and actually put their own money into it, then I think that's sometimes something that you maybe want to be thinking a little bit more about. So it's really hard to do that because everyone loves what they're often doing ,if they're building it, you know, as entrepreneurs. But yeah, I'd say those are some of the quick learnings that I’ve had a. Think about the macro environment. So we talked about, you know, have people been able to build successful businesses in the types of categories that you're talking about when you're thinking about being a success in a category, there's two ways that I think companies traditionally, when are you either first to market or have you built a 10X better product, you kind of can't fit in either of those buckets. You know, maybe historically in the past, cause like it had a two or three X better product. They have a 10 X better product. And so we weren't going to win. Maybe this time we're at the right place in history at the right time and we don't have a 10 X better or even a one X, we have a good product. Maybe we'll just hit the right place at the right time and were first to market and executing really well and learning from our customers. So I mean, I try to think a lot about building these businesses, these high growth tech type businesses. Yeah. But yeah, I'd say those are some of the things that immediately come to mind. Obviously we could go in a lot more detail and things, but yeah, those are the ones that come up.

26:38

Ramesh: This is great. Vivek, I mean, I think I admire you for your resilient. It almost feels like that's the right time, especially when unemployment is so low and people want to retain the talent so much. So it looks like you're the right time. Vivek Good luck to you. Good luck to Qlicket. Wish you continued success.

26:59

Vivek: Hey, thank you Ramesh. This is awesome. What you're doing for entrepreneurs and an honor to be on your podcast. I thank you.

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The post Building A B2B Software As A Service Company To Help Retain Employees with Vivek Kumar – AEP #33 appeared first on RameshDontha.com.