Getting Real with Ankur Agarwal — Clarion Technologies

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done. I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent. Talk to Doxatant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatant.com Bill G Again, that's doxatant.com BillG. One more time. Docsatalant.com Bill G Check it out Today there we are live. We are talking all about the intersection of people and process. How people and process. When you start to get some things right, you can actually grow your business. Some of the mistakes along the way Experience Share We're Getting Real today with Ankur Agarwal. Hi everyone, I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. We are live today with Ankur Agarwal and this is another one of our Getting Real episodes where we hear the stories and experience of CEOs and entrepreneurs in growing their businesses. Our Getting Real shows are are sponsored by the Entrepreneurs Organization Chapters of the Bay Area EO is how they're known. Normally our three EO chapters in the Bay Area are part of a member led organization, a peer organization of entrepreneurs around the world. Over 15,000 now, but three chapters in the Bay Area serving the major geographic areas of the Bay Area where entrepreneurs can come together, learn and grow together, develop their businesses, support each other in the very unique challenges that that that you know, they have. So we're very proud to be sponsored by the EO Organization. I've been a member of that organization for over 21 years now. I'm currently the president of one of the Bay Area chapters and we're really glad to have them as a sponsor. If you'd like to know more about EO the EO Entrepreneurs Organization or to get information or to apply for membership, go to eonetwork.org and check it all out there. We'd love to have you. So I'm gonna turn now to Ankar Ankur. Welcome the show.

Thanks Bill. Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

So Ankur is CEO of Clarion Technologies, a company that he co founded in 2000 and has been going on for years now. They've got three state of the art centers, employing over 400 people and working with over a thousand clients. He's also an angel investor, part of a variety of startups, very active in the entrepreneur community, if you would say across India, which is of course massive. He's an alumni of several important organizations there. The Indus Entrepreneurs, Taipun, the Indian Angel Network. He's been a member of EO and ypo, both organizations that we are closely tied to and work with a lot of members around the world. And he's a scaling up success story himself and we're going to hear more about that today. He's been working for years with another of our coaches, a coach in India, Ajay, who has been one of the, I think the first or local coach in, in the area there. And we now have several coaches, one who recently just came to our ranks after his successful entrepreneurship and we have a couple more in the work. So we're really excited to have coaches like Ajay and CEOs like Encore demonstrating the work of scaling up and that. So I'm so happy. Thanks for joining us today.

Sure, thank you.

So tell us about the start of the business. Right, well actually, why don't you describe the business a little bit first give us a picture of what you do and how you work. So Clarion Technologies is a software development company doing work for companies in the US and North America and Europe. Talk about your approach to that, what's unique about it? Give us a little description before we get into the launch of the business.

Sure, sure. So Bill, we are an offshore software development firm based in India. The last two decades we've been working with small and medium enterprises in North America and Europe to help them build their unique software products and platforms. So our offering is called Vemployee or the Virtual Employee. So our clients engage us to help them build a dedicated team of software engineers in India under our supervision and management. So these engineers are dedicated and work full time for our customers just like their own full time employees. And apart from software engineers, the Vemploy model gives our customers access to highly experienced project managers, Scrum masters, software architects, database experts, quality auditors and an area of highly mature software development processes and best practices which have been audited at CMMI level 3 Agile, which is a certification by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. So we were a garage startup in 2002 and today we are 400 people team spread across Bangalore, Pune and Ahmedabad.

Yeah, so you've got this virtual employee team. You put together a small team of dedicated so if I'm working with you, I'm a scaling up company in the US or Europe and I am working with you. I have a dedicated team that I work with regularly. You're employing them and managing them over there and they're using your framework and practice and things like that. So I know the way they're working makes a lot of sense and I develop a relationship with my team there.

Yes, that's right. That's right. Yeah.

So that's a little different, right, than somebody who just says I'll do your project for you and you have no idea who's working on it. There's not clear continuity and that kind of thing.

I think 80% of the companies work on that model. We don't. We build dedicated teams. That's our usp. Yeah.

So it's really great because many of us have need for not just a one time development, but then of course the ongoing development, the maintenance, the support of whatever technology that we bring to bear to our business. Whether we're a really core tech facing company or we are a more traditional company who's added a piece of technology to complement what we do. In both cases, right?

Correct. So most of our customers are long term. I mean, we have some few customers at least who've been with us for more than 10 years. You know, that's the nature of technology. Once you're in it, you keep improving and user expectations keep changing and it keeps going. So yeah.

What I liked about your firm, a couple of things, I mean, one, you're one of us, right? Eoipo member and scaling up a client. So you've been doing the work and applying the process and you're putting the best things. But let's get real now. Talk to us about the development of the business in the beginning. Right. Tell us the story of the creation of the company, how it didn't go well at first, the kinds of things. Take us through some of that. I think that's the useful part.

Sure. We are almost a two decade old company, so. And I'll be honest with you, Bill, so when I started, my first venture, failed. But since your audience is all entrepreneurs, let me share what happened. I'm sure it'll resonate. So I started my first business in 2000. As you rightly pointed out, in the beginning, after quitting well paying job with one of the best tech companies in India, in less than two years, we went bust. Our initial round of funding came from the classic three Fs, the friends, family and fools. Only in this Case, the fools were me and my wife. So when we realized that we were.

I know that one well, having funded some of my own projects, that didn't go well.

So when we realized we were deep in shit, we wound up and started looking for a job. And if you remember 2002, when you.

Started in 2000, was it the same business idea or was the business idea different?

That was a completely different business. We pivoted, and I'll tell you why. So we started looking for a job, and in 2002, there were no jobs in the tech industry, and my wife and I were completely broke. We had no money.

Two tech businesses that we shut down in 2002. Because I'm like, yeah, there's no work right now. Let's just close it for a while.

There was no money. There were no investors. I mean, the investors just ran away.

Yes, yes. 2002, like that.

We were in a bad situation. We didn't even have enough money to buy food every day. I mean, we were. We were as close to becoming homeless as anybody can be. And on top of that, we had loans we had taken from friends and family. So in a desperate attempt to make some money, we started taking small, small gigs here and there, because coding was the only thing we knew professionally at that time. Thankfully, one gig led to another and then another, and soon we had a pipeline of orders that we had to hire people to help us, and then more and then more. And in just five years, by 2007, we were a $5 million revenue company after that.

So here's the thing. Hang on. Let's underscore this. So there you are. You're trying to start some other business, and you and your wife. Right, Correct. And. And you're failing.

Yes.

But you're. But you start taking little jobs from people just to pay some bills to. To pay your rent, to get some. To get some food in your belly, and that actually starts to grow. Doing work for other people.

Yeah. So, yeah, when people say, did you have a grand plan when you started up? I said, no. We were pushed by destiny. And then we were just at the right place at the right time, and things happened.

So. So then you start. That starts to build. Then you start adding people. Right. What, did you have any big breaks at that point, or was it just a steady kind of increase?

It was pretty steady. So we never had one big customer. And we also consciously chose that, having seen failure, we were so scared of failure, we did not want to depend on one big customer. We always made sure that One customer was never more than 20% of our revenue.

Yeah, I know that one. Well, having seen that a few times. Okay, good. And so then you're going along and now where do you start to hit the wall? Where do you start to encounter some difficulties in the growth?

Oh, well, see, we grew extremely well till the Internet wave lasted. That was till 2008 and 2009.

Yeah.

Then after the financial crisis, the whole software industry went down. You know, so our growth used to be 50%, 80%, 100%. Year on year.

2002 to 2008 is just kind of steady growth. Then 2008, it picks up or drops? No, it drops then.

No. So it drops from an average 50% growth to an average 10% growth per annum. And that happened for almost a decade after that. Yeah.

Interesting. Why this business? Why technology? Why tech development? What is it about this that you love? What is your passion or reason for being in this business? Or is it completely accidental?

You know it's accidental, yes. I mean, I never planned to be in tech business because the word I grew in, you know, had no technology. I graduated in 1998 and Internet was, you know, we were just starting to hear about Internet, so. Yeah, and I'm a civil engineer by education, so it just happened. Actually that's a long story. But I, I was pushed in college to join a tech company and that's how I started my tech career. So it was purely coincidental then.

If that's the case, then clearly you came to love something. So what is it that you came to love about the business? What have you learned to appreciate and where have you, what, what have you, what, why have you discovered?

Well, that's a good question. So when I joined and I joined a company called Infosys, which is a large tech software IT services company in India. When I joined, they put me through a six months training and that was my first real exposure to professional software development. I mean, I'd been using computers before, but not like that. And I really liked because it was all logic, it was all dreaming. It was, you know, you visualize things. If I was a civil engineer and if I became, if I stayed in construction, from visualization to completion is an average five years in software. I can do it in three months, maybe six months. And I love the speed at which things worked here. I think the other thing that worked in my favor was I was a voracious reader. So while I was with Infosys, and Infosys had a great library, my best friend in infi was the librarian and she. I mean, I spent all the time in library. I read up on all the technologies, and actually, that's where my first idea came. Because when I started exploring technology, I hit upon an idea which was unexplored in India, and I quit my job and started a tech company. And I don't know, I mean, I love programming. I still would love to go back to programming after I retire.

Interesting. Yeah. So you saw that you could build that. It made sense, it was logical, and you could build things in a shorter amount of time frame than you could in civil engineering, correct?

Yeah, yeah, a lot of things. Yeah. But I think this would be some of the top ones.

Yeah. I worked briefly in civil engineering and it was really satisfying. You know, if you did a road or a building or something, and then when you finally saw it erected, you're like, oh, I like, I designed that or I worked on that.

Yeah. That's less than satisfaction when you see what you built in the end product in action.

Yeah. It's funny, I went to look at Google Maps, I don't know, sometime last year to look at a project that I worked on many, many years ago, and I'm like, oh, it's gone. They like tore it all up. It's gone. It's been replaced by a housing development.

Oh.

So, okay, so let's talk about some of the experiences along the way. Along the way, you start to discover some problems with process and with people. What should we tackle first?

Both are equally important.

Let's talk about people then, since that follows naturally in our. In our way of thinking and some of our work. What did you discover about the people that you brought in, how you were recruiting people who didn't work out? Tell us some of the experience there and then what you. The mistakes, and then what you began to get. Right.

We are essentially in people business.

Right.

Our business is only as good as the quality of people who work for us.

Yeah.

And as we started to grow, I realized the need of a structured method of consistently hiring a players. In the early years, we tried the traditional methods of tests and interviews, but we quickly realized that a candidate's interviewing skills had no correlation with their performance on the job.

That's a powerful insight. So you hired people who sounded great and then failed miserably in their jobs?

Absolutely. A lot of them, actually, not few, a lot of them. So many people who look great on resume and did extremely well in tests and interviews just could not meet our standard of performance when we hired them. Yes, but fortunately I came across the work of Lou Adler, you might have heard of him who wrote the book called Power Hiring. So he was a very well respected guy in the executive search industry. And his main argument was the biggest indicator of a candidate's performance on the job is their performance in their previous job. So let me rephrase that. If a candidate has been a consistent performer in the past, he will very likely perform well in a similar or equivalent next job. And he gives a method to ascertain the real performance of candidates in the interview. But Lou's method is wonderful and we followed it for many years and with a lot of success. However, it was not scalable. I could not train all our hiring managers in his technique. But thankfully, a few years ago I attended Vern Harnish's workshop in Kathmandu and he introduced us to top grading. It's very similar to power hiring, basically the same concept, but the process is so much simpler, I'd say less academic and more practical. Now all our hiring managers are trained in top grading and we are able to consistently hire and notice the word consistently hire top performers from the market. Our competitors wonder how we manage to grow every single year in the last 19 years. And you know, it's really simple. If you have great people, you don't lose customers. So if you add even a few more, your business can only go up. I highly recommend top grading.

Yeah. I think there's so much emphasis on getting new customers. And getting new customers is nice. It's exciting. I get excited when we start working with a new team. But hanging on to customers, being able to help them and exceed their expectations leads to referrals. Right. Leads to retention is far less expensive than always finding new customers. Right. Beyond your reputation.

Yeah, we get a lot of customers through reference.

Yeah. So you have some very bad experiences initially. Right. With, with hiring of that original team back in the, the early 2000s. How many are still with you.

From our original team? I don't have exact count. Not many. Maybe five or ten.

A handful. Yeah. Yeah. But now over 400 across the company working in things. And you're using top grading concepts to hire and, and, and recruit the people. What, what would you say was your biggest learning in terms of engaging and managing people? I know we're going to come to that right now. Right. Post Covid of how we're working with people. What are you seeing there? What mistakes are you making? What breakthroughs are you having like that?

Oh, that's a lot of questions in one. So from an employee engagement perspective. Well, you know the world before COVID was different and the world now is completely different. And I'll tell you, one of the biggest challenges that we are facing right now is employee engagement in the post Covid world. You know, it seems work from home is here to stay. People want the comfort of staying at home, but humans need interactions with other human beings. We are social animals as an employer. We need to balance between what the employee wants and what she needs. And if you don't do something about it, it's a disaster waiting to happen. People will be depressed and there are already reports about 20% of the workforce being already depressed because of COVID Productivity will go down and all sorts of bad things will start to happen. So we are working on clarin2o as we speak. I mean, today we had a meeting about that. We've been doing those meetings last few weeks, which will significant. The Clarent 2.0 from an employee engagement perspective would be a significantly different company from what it looks today. So our offices will be converted into fun places where employees will want to come and hang out with their peers. Not to work, just to have fun. So they will continue to work from home if they want to, and they can work from office if they want to. But they will have compelling reasons to come to office and meet their colleagues and build bonds, share experiences and have fun together. I think that will also differentiate us from most other companies in the near future because people will be happier, they'll be more engaged, and overall it's a win, win for everybody.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. It's like there's a great deal of convenience in working from home, Right. I am in a home studio now. We used to have a studio in a professional office building. I moved it home. It's really nice just to go across the other side of the house and then have a meeting or do that kind of thing. On the other hand, actually seeing someone, being in person, being a new place is also nice, like getting away. So there's pros and cons to both of them. In reality, our home studio, my home office, is quieter. It's better for focused work. Right. But it lacks that stimulation, that engagement, the thinking, the connection, the brainstorming that we get. But I have a really comfortable chair over on the other side of the office there and I can sit there and work on my laptop or I can sit here and record something, or I've got big, huge monitors here for video editing or whatever we're going to do. Right. So we've got a mixture of. Of options for the different kinds of work that we do. And if you do a variety of things, that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

Yeah, but Bill, you have to understand that you and I are different from the majority of the population in India. You know, people in India live in traditional families, join families. People don't have space of their private space.

Yeah, yeah.

So a lot of other issues, plus when you're at home, you have to forcibly do home chores also, which takes up a lot of your time. So different people have different.

Even in North America and Europe, where I've been working with CEOs and business leaders and. And in the middle of a zoom session or whatever, the kids come and run and jump on them or tug on their shoulder and say, hey, help me with this or that. And they're like, hey, I'm in a meeting right now. Right. We've seen BBC journalists having kids come into the room while they're trying to look like they're in a studio.

So it's so many jokes around.

I have private space. That's not true of everyone.

Not true.

So talk about the evolution then of your processes in the beginning. You try to do everything. Talk, tell us what it was like in the beginning with you trying to cover everything, share some stories from that time.

So, you know, in our initial years when we were riding the Internet wave, our biggest challenge was managing growth. Yeah, we were growing so fast. We were going faster than our experience could handle. We were adding a lot of new customers and as many new employees and so to service those customers. And we were also losing many customers because they were not happy with our service or quality. We were riding the Internet wave and customers came easily. But I realized that the success of our accounts was purely based on the quality of people assigned to those accounts. Now we are in people business. Like I said, while we took all possible care to hire the best talent that there would still be Mrs. Here and there. And that was costing us a lot of money in lost business and missed opportunities. So fortunately I came across another book, I'm a voracious reader, a book called the E. Myth by Michael Gerber. I remember listening to his audiobook on my New York to Mumbai flight sometime in the mid 2000, I think around 2005. And that completely changed the way I looked at business. The book I'm sure you know about, it essentially is about why small businesses fail and how processes can help them scale up. So, you know, after that flight, I stopped all lead generation activities. We paused all our AdWord campaigns. And I spent almost a year crafting out detailed processes for every aspect of our business. I wrote SOPs guidelines and instructions to do things exactly as I would have done them myself. I think that was also one of our biggest breakthroughs as it allowed me to multiply myself, as I would like to say, in the business. And then scaling up was very easy once people knew what to do and everything was in the playbook.

Yeah. You started working on identifying the processes and things like that. What does that look like, your process identification refinement today? What do you do now?

Of course, it's an ongoing process and we are a CMMI Level 3 company, so it's improving processes is part of the process. Right. So regularly you look at processes, you know, so we have this classic start, stop, continue process, which we do. Which one talks about. Yep, yep.

We do it all the time with people. They're like, why are we doing this again? I'm like, you're going to be doing this till you die.

Exactly. It's an ongoing process. And so of course, once those processes were laid out, then of course, what we have now is completely different from what we had in 2005. But it evolved. But because we had the base, it was easier to evolve.

Interesting. So you start working with your wife in the beginning. Right. How did that go? Talk about that working relationship. Many of us work with our spouses. I did for many years. How did that go? How's that evolved? What are you guys doing today?

You know, a lot of people ask me that question and they are intrigued and surprised and even shocked that I have spent practically 24 by 7 last 20 years with my wife, you know, at home and in business. Well, you know, so I'm grateful, let me say this tactfully. I'm grateful to have an excellent partner who helped me build this business. I'm pretty sure that I could not have done it without her. She happened to be my wife, but she was not just my wife. We were both classmates in engineering college and we were friends and both of us had passion to become entrepreneurs. That's actually the thread that connected us. In the beginning we were friends and then we got married. And the reason I'm emphasizing that is I'm not promoting your spouse to be your business partner. What I'm saying is a good business partner can really increase your chances of success. Two minds are better than one. And when two minds think very differently, it works wonders. It helps you see every problem, every challenge, every decision. With a 360 degrees view and you end up making fewer mistakes, plus you have more bandwidth to try more things.

I love that. I particularly hear and appreciate the respecting differences of perspective. Different opinion. You look at the world from slightly different places. Even if you have some very similar points of view, you will see and emphasize different things. And if you can embrace, appreciate that other perspective, wow, there's a lot of value in that. Too often we end up arguing for support, supremacy on something rather than appreciating the perspective.

Another thing I've realized is we all have different personality types. Nobody can have all the personality types, right? So there's always a dominant. For example, I am, I am a thinker. I'm a creative kind of person. While my wife, Swati, she is very analytical, she's very critical.

Right.

I was to run the business alone, I would probably have failed because, you know, I'm an ideas guy. I only think ideas. She's the one who questions me on all those ideas. And then we come to the middle path, which is practical. And when I invest in businesses, this is one of my biggest concerns. If you don't have a co founder, that's number one criteria, I will not invest. If your co founder is like you, that's another criteria. I will not invest. You can be friends, but you cannot be like each other. You have to be opposite each other.

Yeah, yeah. What is your superpower? What are you great at then?

So my superpower is to create, to manifest. You know, I believe that's the superpower of all entrepreneurs. Healers heal. Dr. Strange has the power of levitation. Loki can change shape at will. Spider man can shoot webs out of his hands. We entrepreneurs envision the future and manifest it. Being an entrepreneur was my deepest desire and that was my plan and I manifested that. And for as long as I can remember, even as a kid in primary school, I always wanted to do something and I did not know the word entrepreneur. Later I found out that all I wanted to be was an entrepreneur. And entrepreneurs manifest every day, every month, every year. That's our greatest superpower. Which differentiates us from the vast majority of people in the world who I'm sure they have their own superpowers. I mean, I'm not saying in that way, but that's my superpower. And I believe that's the superpower of every entrepreneur. They may have more.

So what's the danger? What's the Achilles heel, the kryptonite of creating, manifesting stuff all the time? What, what problem does that give rise to?

Oh, when? When? So it really depends on your state of mind. So, okay, I'm an optimist. My wife is a pessimist. So when things don't happen, I say, okay, let's try again. She's like, oh, no, we failed. So I think if, if you're not an optimist, there is a danger because you're always conquering new mountains. You're always going after new goals, right? And so to manifest, you think of something which has not been achieved. So you're always running after something. And the other aspect of it, which probably at a later age people realize is that you've been running, running, running. You never realize that you have already achieved where you wanted to, where you wanted to be. And there is a time to stop.

Interesting. So what do you do when you're, when you stop? What are you doing to take care of yourself? What is your recharge, recreation? What's your hobby? Or like that? What do you do for fun?

So it's interesting you ask that because for so many years I thought my business was my hobby. And if you asked me a few years ago, I would say, yes, my business. And I really enjoy my. Enjoy my business. I really love solving the problems. I really love the challenges in the business. So. But, you know, but not, not many people know that, that I'm a motorcycling enthusiast. I've been riding a motorcycle since I was 9 years old. I've done trips in the Himalayas during college days. I owned a Royal Enfield in the past. And recently I got myself the beautiful Triumph Rocket 3. So, you know, Bill, I've realized the importance of having a passion outside of work. And I realized it a little late, but I have thankfully realized there was a gap in my motorcycling for many years. During that period, I just focused on my business. My business was my life. And that's all I thought about all the time. And I loved it. But whenever I passed by a Harley Davidson showroom, my pulse, my heart rate increased. I would go inside and admire all the beautiful steel and chrome. And then I would come back home knowing that it wasn't practical for me to buy a bike. I just didn't have the time to ride it. Now I realize that was a mistake. I should have made that time sooner. Bike has filled my life with joy. I had forgotten about.

I have many, many interests. One of them, I've had many motorcycles over the years, and I don't currently. Lately I've been surfing, but I find that going and playing and having these kinds of things Is like critically important too. Balance, perspective. I've been a runner, I've been a triathlete, I'm a sailor, I surf. Lately I've been doing this hydrofoil surfing. I had motorcycles. Like having lots of interests I think is really important to me. Having some interest, some other thing that gives you some balance and lets you recharge and play I think is critical. You don't have to have as many.

I don't know, as many. I spend an hour every day, every morning I go out on my motorcycle, I do some speed trips. I get my adrenaline rush. My mind is clear and I'm full of joy. I think that's good enough for me for now. Yeah.

The company needs an insurance policy on you though, right?

I wear the full armor. I have the best helmet I could find.

What's your bhag or what's your big goal? What are you working on now?

So I wouldn't call it a BHAG because BHAG is typically 15 to 20 years. And I don't think in the tech industry we can think that far ahead. I don't think in any industry today you can think that far ahead unless you are really a top visionary like Elon Musk or somebody like that. Chef Bezos. So our long term goal is to develop an AI engine for augmented programming. I believe we can significantly cut down the software development costs with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning. It will help us cut down on our manual efforts and programming and testing and deployment. We are already using elements of that in our virtual employee model. But a lot more can be done in that space as part of this year's plan. This is our focus for next three to five years, that in next three to five years, 80% of what we do manually should be done by machines.

Interesting. So you're working right now on AI augmentation for the development process and that's your big focus. Interesting. And what do you feel like is your gap? What's your weakness? Where are you adding support? Coaching consultants like what's the gap for you and your business now?

I like to fix things. If I, if I knew of a gap so clearly like you're asking, I would have fixed it. I would have been working on fixing it. So let me think, what is a gap in the business right now?

Well, what kind of people or things are you hiring? What resources are you gathering? You maybe have already identified it, you're.

Working on it, but nothing much really. I mean we are clear about what we are doing. We are clear about what we do for next five years, how you will achieve there. We have a plan in place. So I don't have an obvious big gap right now that comes to my mind.

This is the thing that I'm asking our clients all the time and I certainly am thinking about myself like against my long term, against my bhag, against my five year vision. There are certain things I don't yet know how to do and I'm looking for resources in that. I'm looking for people in media, in branding, in IP development and things like that. So I've been working with folks and finding better and better resources to do things like that because that's the gap for us. And I'm always working with our client. Like what is it against this BHAG or vivid vision that you have? What is the skill that you've got to develop to go from here to there that you don't have currently? And I think you spoke to it a little bit like it's developing AI work and probably having AI resources and you know, so AI is dependent on, on, often on large data sets, on specific capabilities and skills in working with them. It produces weird outcomes until you get it worked out right, like you know, so there's work to do in, in that I'm sure for you.

If you ask me the obvious things that are there, the gaps, for example, one of the things that we're working on, I would like to solve that problem is how do you reduce the dependency of people interviews? Can we build some kind of automated mechanism to filter out people so that we don't end up doing top grading interviews for too many people? That's a problem we've already identified, we are working on. So in the business there are things, but nothing significant I can think of.

Yeah. If you were going to give your younger self some advice, what would you say?

Okay, yeah, I could give some advice for sure. So you know Bill, I never used to hire people older than me in my business. I don't know what my fear was. Maybe I was, maybe it was a self confidence issue or maybe I was afraid that they will come and try to teach me or maybe they will not listen to me. But what I have realized over the years, older people bring knowledge, experience and maturity. And that doesn't mean they don't listen to you. On the contrary, I found that employees, irrespective of their age, really respect and admire entrepreneurs who have taken the risk to follow their passion. Our strength as entrepreneurs is our risk taking ability and that no amount of Knowledge or experience can bring. So you either have it or you don't. So if I had to give advice to my younger self, I would give him this Go out and hire the best people you can find, surround yourself with them and have a good mix of older and younger population. Don't be afraid of people who are older than you. They will respect you for who you are and won't look down upon you in any way. And they will contribute significantly to your business because of their experiences.

Yeah, I think that's a common thing. Right in the beginning we hire people that are easy to manage, people that don't challenge us, people that look up to us. Right. Having a more diverse group can make a real difference in that. In that over time, hey run out of time. I want to acknowledge our Getting Real episode sponsor, the Bay Area Entrepreneurs Organizations. It's a member led organization where you can connect with peers, other entrepreneurs like yourself, at all different stages of growth and learn and grow and develop your company. We have three chapters in the Bay Area where I live, but we have chapters all over the world. Over 15,000 members now. So there's probably someone near you as well if you're not in the Bay Area area where San Francisco area where I happen to be. And it's just the best place to go and connect and work with and meet and talk to other entrepreneurs. It's a super, super high value. I've been a member for, you know, I joined 21, 22 years ago and I'm currently president of one of the chapters in the Bay Area. So I highly recommend you check it out. Eonetwork.org and of course it'll be in the show notes, that kind of thing. Eonetwork.org I want to encourage folks to check out if you're looking for some support. If you're curious to learn more about Clarion Technologies, we've got a link for you. Bit ly Clariantechnology, bit ly Clarion Technology and there's a link and info page there. They'll get in touch with you, send you whatever you want to know, tell you more about the company and so on. Of course you can find them direct to their URL as well, but that special link will let them know that you came from the show and that you've got some questions, that kind of thing, that you're from the world of scaling up. And some shout outs here are in order of course to Lucy working behind the scenes to get our shows ready, produce them, get them out the door, promoted all that kind of thing. Lucy Summers. And to your coach Ajay in the area who's been your scaling up coach, who's great and our coaches are super collaborative. I love being part of our coaching community and the things that, and the clients and the, you know, the ideas and things that we share with each other, all of the stories. So shout out to him, shout out to the creator of our whole framework and so on. Vern Harnish, who created initially the Rockefeller habits that then has grown into scaling up. My mentor, Vern Harnish. And then to the folks at Pop Fly Productions who get our show out the door every week. Alby Burge, who edits all the audio. I'm Kadina who writes up our show notes. And Tim McGowan who proofreads everything. I want to thank everyone for watching, watching for listening. We'll talk to you again next time. In the meantime, keep scaling up. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our scoreboard software powered by Align. It's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software. It's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard via line. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G. Check it out and try it now.