The Entrepreneur Ethos – Interview with Jarie Bolander and Mihir Shah – Small Business Show 149

The Small business show, episode 149 for Wednesday, December 13, 2017. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co the show by, for and about small business owners. Sponsors for this episode include textexpander and storyblock. We'll talk a little bit more about them later. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, sir?

I'm doing well, man. How about you?

Doing fantastic.

Good.

Enjoying the last few weeks of the year. Trying to get everything done that I've been putting off.

Trying to. Yeah, exactly. Trying to get it all done. That's right. Well, as promised, we have not one, but two guests with us this week.

Shannon.

We have Mihir Shah and Jari Bolender joining us today. Mihir, thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me.

And Jari, thanks for being here.

Be here. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, man. Jari, you guys are an interesting mix because you sort of do things together and then you have your separate lives professionally, too. Jari, you just finished writing a book called the Entrepreneur Ethos, and you and Mehir have been doing some kind of back and forth on promoting that. And Mehir, you. Well, currently you're the CEO of Drobo, correct? Did I get that right? Right.

Yes, sir.

All right, so I'd like to talk a little bit about each of your backgrounds and what got us here, and then we can talk a little bit about the book. So, Mehir, I'll start with you. Your LinkedIn profile, and I think I've got it right, tells the story that you can kind of came to be a CEO/entrepreneur from the VC side of things where, where you started your career. But were there any other, like, smaller businesses that you've been part of kind of before that? How did, how did you get here?

Yeah, you know, it's funny. It's. It's a little bit serendipitous, but I always view careers as a journey. And early on in my career, I was in the financial services sector, both in investment banking as well as private equity, or VC as they call it. But it kind of turns out that during my career, I've always had some type of a turnaround, component or flavor of my job. So as a banker, it was always trying to figure out how to help distressed companies. As a private equity investor, it's always, hey, this company's kind of messed up. We got to go fix it. And then kind of took that into more of a Corporate type environment at both IBM as well as Brocade, where, again, the companies were relatively flat and we needed to come up with strategies to kind of grow the business. And I kind of fell in love with the fact that, hey, I don't always just want to be the guy putting the plan together. I want to be the guy that's also implementing the plan. And that's how I really came. Drobo opportunity came up, right? Drobo.

That makes sense. Yeah. It's fun to strategize, but it's more fun to do and make it happen.

Yeah, you know, exactly. And, you know, I'm sure you guys are familiar with Drobo. I mean, it was a classic, you know, Silicon Valley darling back in the late or second half of the first decade in this. In this century, kind of 2005 to 2010, it kind of lost its way a little bit.

Yeah.

But, you know, I think we, you know, in the last two and a half years, it's been really, okay, I've learned everything. I put it on paper. Now let's go see if we can go implement some of these, you know, some of these things. So that's kind of what brought me to this opportunity at Drobo. So I'm excited to share, you know, my experiences with. With your listeners.

That's awesome. Yeah. No, and I. We do know the story of Drobo. Yeah, we've been, We've been on the sidelines for that ride and, and experienced some of it. Yeah. So it's. It's a turnaround was needed there for sure. Yeah, for sure. Jari, let's. Let's bring you in here. Your story is a little more traditional for this show, where I think I heard once that. Well, I'm paraphrasing using our phrase, that you found yourself to be somewhat unemployable too, and set out on your own. We use the term patently unemployable. It's a good thing, right? It's a good thing.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. No, yeah, totally. I. Yeah, I mean, I'm done six companies. I really found that the entrepreneur way of life is a lot more satisfying than drinking bad corporate coffee and, you know, power death by PowerPoint. So I, you know, found my way into it. And it's one of those things where I just really enjoy solving problems. And, you know, to me, here's point about what he was trying to do, it's that, you know, hey, let's come up with a plan and then let's go execute it and See what happens. And a lot of times in big corporations, you're a part of that, and that's fine. And I actually had a lot of really good experience at big companies, but I kind of wanted to take the reins, and so, yeah, I'm basically unemployable.

That's a good thing, man. Like Shannon said, we relish that quality here. It's who we are. That's right.

Got it.

Jari, you've written this book called the Entrepreneur Ethos, where you talk about the important things about. Well, not being a jerk is one of the themes of this book, and that you can run a company and be successful without being a jerk. Tell us a little bit more about the book.

Yeah, so I started writing this book a couple of years ago, maybe two years ago, and was inspired by a lot of things. The first person that inspired me was my late wife Jane. And that's how I know me here. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later. But she, you know, she's no longer with us. She. She passed away in April of this year from leukemia.

Oh, sorry to hear that.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. And her. Her business was PR and marketing, and she was a Asian woman entrepreneur, and she worked really hard and had a lot of struggles and challenges related to all the things that are going on right now in 2017 with men and the bad behavior in Silicon Valley. And so this is my fourth book, and I was really looking for something to write about that sort of what I felt the entrepreneur lifestyle was about and not from an external point of view. From Zuckerberg's 10 things that are successful, Larry Ellison's five things he does early in the Morning, Larry Page's Single Secret to Success, Those were all externally tactical driven things. I really wanted to explore what it was internally into that. What was the spark? What's the why? Inside people? Because, I mean, if you know anything about math, this job's lunacy. Like, it's crazy to take on this sort of stuff, right? I mean, success is fleeting. The probability is really low. And it's almost like you're almost like. And when Jane, my late wife and I would talk about this, you know, she always encouraged me to speak my truth and to share what I know. And more importantly, she had a lot of great insights. And from a woman's perspective, in a minority, and she was in sports PR before. So, you know, a 5 foot 2 Asian woman in sports PR is like the 1% of the 1%. I mean, it just doesn't exist. So she really inspired me to take a real hard look at what it really means to be an entrepreneur. And she knit and interviewing people. And I've interviewed me here and about 30 other entrepreneurs. It struck me as people that I look up to and the people like me here, who exemplifies the ethos, the way he runs his company and all the people, in all the experiences I've had, I really felt that that story needed to be told, and it needed to be told from people that are doing these. These are the good people, the bad people. And then through that came about this ethos of, in my opinion, the exemplars. Like, if you want to be the best entrepreneur in the world, then you need to aspire to the ethos. And, you know, as I started to write it and it just sort of, you know, in wr, you know, you don't pick the story, the story picks you. It's just the way it is. And I was really pleased with how it came out. And more importantly, I wanted it to be accessible to those that weren't entrepreneurs because, you know, I have a lot of friends that are entrepreneurs. They have spouses, and they're like, this is the craziest job ever. I don't understand why my spouse is obsessive about the one metric that matters, and he hasn't gotten paid in a year and he's still into it. And you're just like, oh, my God. So, yeah, that's sort of the inspiration. That's awesome. Yeah.

And like I mentioned, you know, we talked before show a little bit. I love that in the context of it, you've also kind of created this roadmap for, you know, how to. How to be the good, you know, entrepreneur and the things that you need to do and following through the chapters. So it's really a good read and I'm really enjoying it.

It's great.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

I have a quick question for you. So there's a section in the Entrepreneur Ethos where you talk about timing a lot and importance of when coming to market and that kind of thing. And one of the things that really stuck out to me, you mentioned patience versus procrastination. I think that it probably struck home because I'm always questioning myself. It's like, oh, am I just putting it off or is there a reason why I can't get this thing done or launch? Can you talk about that for a moment with our listeners?

So patience versus procrastination is something that every Entrepreneur faces. There's things that you have to do in order to move your business forward. And then there's things even if you move your, even if you did them all, nothing's going to happen. And this has a lot to do with the market environment and the timing that you literally have no control over. I mean a great example is blockchain cryptocurrency. Who would have known? Three, four years ago? People were, oh, blockchain is the next biggest thing. And a lot of people, you know, I don't really want to put that in my product. It's not going to happen. But a lot of the people that believed in it had patience. And as that patience wore on, it started to become more and more important. Something that is just one example of, well, that's a timing issue. Like people just weren't ready for it. When it comes to and for an entrepreneur, typically a lot of times it's their ability or desire to want to start something. And so for example, let's just say you're at a big corporate job and you know, you're making whatever you're making and you're like, you know, I've always wanted to run my own business. Would say, you know what, I've got certain things I need to do. I'm going to set myself up, you know, I'm going to, you know, I've got these, I've got a plan and I'm going to be patiently working towards that. I'm going to wait for, you know, my wife to get a job or my husband to get a job or whatever. Like there's just, you know, day to day life. Like there is some things that have to happen, but once those things happen and you're not doing it, donating and most of the time procrastination's fear. Like you're afraid.

Yeah, yeah, fear of. But it's, you know, fear of both success and failure. Right. Because they're both unknowns, so.

Yes, correct. And so once you realize that, it's fear of the unknown. I mean the first part of the ethos, the main, the number one thing is failure is an option, but never the end result. Once you realize that, then you just go off. And if things happen, they happen. And of course you don't always want to fail, but again.

But you can learn things.

Absolutely.

And you know that you can survive it too. Once, once you've been through it at least once. And I mean, I think it's, I was going to call it a rite of passage, but it's it's more than that. It's. It's just part of. It's part of the process. It's learning. It's valuable. It's not just a thing you have to do. It's a thing you almost want to do, even though perhaps living through it in the moment isn't the most fun thing. But, yeah, true.

Not at all.

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From here, as someone that's involved day by day making sure products are going to ship and what's going to happen. Can you speak to that as well? What judgments you're using to. It's like, okay, let's hold this back since it's not ready or whatever, or.

Let'S just get it out.

So we all know the importance of shipping. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Yeah, I mean, look, I always like to characterize it is I'm always stepping on landmines and trying to figure out how to diffuse it. I wish there was a toolkit that some of these professional bomb diffusers had to run a business. Our situation was a little bit different. We came into a business that had a set of products and validated the market, but the products were relatively old. We had to refresh the whole product line. Now, there were absolutely instances where one side of your brain is saying, I need the revenue. I gotta go ship it. And you end up shipping something and maybe it's not fully, you know, QA'd or it's not fully tested, and then you end up paying for it on the backside from support calls. And so there's absolutely kind of a, you know, a fine balance. And I think we've kind of gotten to a point now over the last two and a half years or so, we've kind of figured it out. Look, we will sacrifice revenue and some time to make sure we get the correct has been tested, that has been quality tested, and so we get less blowback. Because the worst thing that could happen in a company our size, as well as in the kind of prosumer space, is if you get a couple of bad reviews and people go out on Twitter and start bashing you, it could severely impact your sales going forward. I've made the mistake of pushing stuff out. I've learned very quickly. And now we make sure that, hey, make sure this thing is kind of 99.9% tested among all the things that could potentially go wrong. So it's a fine balance and everybody's going to come, you're going to get that. What I like to call the trigger finger to ship. Because you want the revenue. You just want the revenue. Absolutely. Sometimes you kind of the art is being able to step back and say, no, I don't want the revenue. Because if I put a quality product out there, the long tail on that revenue will be a lot larger than kind of the short term mentality.

The short term gain. Yeah. And I should raise my hand. This happened before you took over there. But I am definitely one of those people that got out there and had been burned by a prior Drobo product and made sure my audience knew about it to avoid that burnt for themselves. Well, I mean, even for this show, our audience is the most important thing. So it was like, all right, yep, we told you to get this. Then we had problems. So don't get it. But that's not the case with Drobo anymore. Just case that wasn't clear.

Well, that's like an entirely different show that we can do about re establishing that connection with your users. And like Mihir is talking about making sure they know we're only shipping the best product we can, that kind of thing. So that's great.

Yeah.

I'll tell you a real funny story. We launched this product called the 5C, which was the first USB C type device on the marketplace. And this was last year. I was so excited to get it out. I was so excited to get it out. We got it out and we had a bunch of blowback because we didn't communicate to our customers that you needed to put that USB C cable a certain way. So it had to be, you know, you had to essentially flip it around. So a lot of people got half the speed that they were, that they were expecting, and all they needed to do was flip it around. So now what we have with that product is we have a little, I think a little yellow flag or something says this goes in this one and this goes in that one. But, you know, again, you know, our bad as a management team to get that out there.

Yeah, right. Yeah. If you'd taken a little more time before you shipped it, a beta tester might have picked up on that for you and you could have avoided it. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah.

So talk a little bit how you two are connected, you know, Jari, and what's your background with Meher?

So, Jane, my late wife's PR firm does PR for Drobo, but before that, me here's wife Amitha and Jane were friends in high school. And so, you know, when, when we started dating, we'd, you know them a couple times and got to know each other. And you know, when, when me here took over at Drobo, you know, he gives Jane a call and he says, hey, I got this PR problem I need you to solve. She's like talking about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And this was a couple years ago. And, and so what, what's been great is that, you know, I mean, I, you know, I really respect what me here's done at Drobo. We, we are kind of cut from the same cloth. You know, we've got the same general attitude about things and kind of upbringing and you know, even though, you know, he's Indian American and I'm, you know, Caucasian American, we just, you know, we could be brothers from another mother kind of thing. And you know, it's been great to, you know, through this really difficult time with, with Jane's illness and Jane's passing, you know, focus on the positive things that she did. And you know, both of us are very committed to putting forth what we feel is the best way to do business. And that was something that we had talked about even before Jane got sick and even before we started actually working more together. When I came out with the book, I wanted someone that you respect, that follows your ethos, that you feel is the incarnation of it. And I immediately thought of me here and, and it was just great that we could, you know, do that and, and you know, wonderful. What he's trying to do at Drobo is wonderful, you know, what I'm trying to do with pushing forward the ethos and, and really I, you know, I truly believe that you can, you can run your business inclusive way. That'll make you more resilient and because there's lots of problems to solve and you can't, you just can't be for close minded about who can be an entrepreneur, who to fund. I mean, this should be open to everyone. Everyone should have equal opportunity, succeed, and entrepreneurship's the ultimate. Like, you know, I mean, it's the epitome of that. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's you. I mean, you know, professional sports maybe, but it's like, it's a meritocracy. You know, it's a lot of luck, obviously, but luckiest are the ones that work the hardest, that adhere to the ethos. And I'm just really happy to see over the last couple months that, you know, People that are running ethical, inclusive, and solid businesses, you know, they're finally the recognition they deserve. And it's because of the other people that aren't doing the right thing. Right. And I'm just appalled, beyond appalled by this. Some of this bad behavior that's just unacceptable on so many levels. And it's just wonderful to see someone like me here stepping up and being like, no, we don't run it that way. We run it this way, because running it this way is the right way to go.

Yeah.

And I mentioned timing earlier, and certainly the timing for this work is excellent right now. Certainly with everything going on and plan that we mentioned. Luck, too, right? I mean, getting things.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. It's true. That's sort of a meta lesson in and of itself. Right. I mean, the book is about this, but the book itself comes out, and you're saying the right thing, you're doing the right thing, you're speaking your truth, and suddenly, you know, you're in the middle of this much larger conversation that you couldn't possibly have started on your own. You know, don't get me wrong. I don't mean to question your PR skills, but holy cow.

I'm a genius pr. It's actually because. It's because Jane was a genius, and I just happened to be lucky enough to marry her, and she taught me all these things, and I'm grateful every day for her short amount of time. She was. But I can tell you in no uncertain terms, 100 luck trying to ride the wave. It's like Mavericks, man. It's just like, hold on, let's see. You know, let's. So let's see how this goes.

It's also preparation, right? I mean, you didn't try to capitalize in a heartbeat upon what's happening here. It just so happened that this thing that you'd put a lot of time and effort into comes out at a time when everybody's now thinking about this luck. Yes. From a timing perspective, but not from the hard work perspective. Right.

Well, thank you for that. And, yeah, I do believe that. I mean, timing is everything, but you also got to put the work in.

Yeah, well. Right. Luck is being ready to take advantage of an opportunity, but you're not just ready for no reason. You got to get there. We always like to talk about. We love mistakes here. And, you know, the fact that you guys were friends before you started working together is sort of like the most classic mistake, except you guys have proven that it works. So you're the exception to the rule. But, Mikhir, I'll bring you in again. Do you have a favorite mistake that you've made throughout, from anywhere in your career that you want to share with our listeners here?

Getting into the hardware business. I mean, you know, I think they call it, you know, hardware because it's hard, you know, coming into this business, you know, thinking, you know, the brand was fairly prevalent in the markets that we served, but, you know, just the amount of capital required in a hardware business, I absolutely underestimated. I have this conversation with our investors all, all the time. It's like, you know what, it sucks up so much cash and for such a long period of time that, you know, I wouldn't say it's necessarily a mistake. It's. It's more or less, hey, it's a mistake that we got into and we got to go figure it out. And so, you know, fortunately we were able to bring on a, you know, a team of folks that, you know, understand supply chain and hardware and those types of things. But look, I make a mistake every day, right? You know, we had, you know, several things from a product standpoint, you know, what products should we prioritize? And again, we took the short term view and, you know, looking back on it, man, we should have done this. And we just had a conversation today, hey, should we have taken this capital that this investor offered and we ended up not taking it? And I'm like, damn, I wish I would have taken it. So it's kind of a. The way that I like to position it is you're always going to make mistakes and there will probably be a mistake every day. It's how do you respond to it and how do you learn from it? Because it's really easy to quit. Be like, you know what, I'm just going to go back to a big company. I was making three times as much money as I am right now, and life was easy. But it's like Jari said, it's a little bit of an adrenaline rush, right. To take the view is someone somewhere in the world has had a similar issue that you have had forms like LinkedIn and Facebook. It's okay to go ask for help and it's okay to say, hey, what did you do in this scenario? That's kind of how I characterize it. You're going to make mistakes. The question is finding that help and figuring it out. That's what this is all about. It's not about anything else. It's about the journey.

Yeah. So that actually brings up a good Question, which I think is something that a lot of entrepreneurs at any stage struggle with, I certainly struggle with it regularly, is you have to believe in yourself at some level. You have to have a little bit of ego, which is sort of a loaded word these days. But I mean it in the positive sense that you have to believe in what it is that you're doing. And that combined with the fact that you're pouring all your time into your business, makes it difficult to find those people that you can look to and say, hey, I'm stuck. Got any advice for me? Do you have any thoughts on how folks can go about finding that board of advisors, mentors, whatever term you want to apply, the people that they can talk to?

Yeah. So first and foremost, I mean, you have to be self aware, you have to know that you need help. Because when you come into a CEO as a company and a company that's been around for 10 or 12 years and they've had their own cultural issues, you have to be like, hey, I'm coming here to go help this company and we're going to go do this together. And the way we're going to do it is become self aware of the problems that exist. So that's kind of the first thing. The second thing, I mean, there are several groups out there, right? And fortunately enough we live in Silicon Valley where, you know, one or two phone calls can get you in front of someone who either has had that experience and also is willing to help. There are parts of the United States that I've kind of lived in before where people are a little bit, you know, they don't want to help you so much. But you know, in Silicon Valley it's probably two phone calls to somebody and say, hey, I need help with this. And it's a warm intro and it's a free call. That's one is using your existing networks or a couple degree separation through your LinkedIn network. The third piece of it is finding a good peer group is again, most often I belong to a CEO peer group. And these are people who manage companies our size and bigger. They've come across that problem. Again, getting the answer is the easy part. The hard part is knowing that you don't have all the answers, which is what team expects when you're a CEO is you think you know everything. But in reality, I think CEOs know very little. It's their ability to connect the dots and connect the people with those dots and get answers answered or questions answered.

That's good, that's good advice. It, yeah, it, it.

The.

But I think a good takeaway for anyone is when you're running your own business, you don't have to be the one that has all the answers. You just need to be willing to find the people that can find them with you.

Yep, that's great. Jerry.

I have one more question for you.

I was curious.

Any surprises about how the entrepreneur ethos has been received by the entrepreneurial and business community? Anything that, that you weren't prepared for about feedback or anything like that?

Not really. I mean, it's been well received to the people that have been reading it. I will say again, the timing on all of this is pretty spectacular. And I'm starting to get more inquiries from colleges and accelerator programs because a lot of the time, and I know this because I've been through, through two accelerators, 500 Startups and Launchpad Digital Health. Those types of places don't teach you the internal mechanics, they don't teach you the internal skills. They're worried about growth, hacking and 10% per week and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and marketing and the external stuff, how to grow your business, but they don't focus on how to grow you as an entrepreneur. Surely seen this with women and minority entrepreneurs. And I've been getting a lot of positive feedback from women and minority entrepreneurs about, well, you know, what's the operating system of an entrepreneur? Because traditionally they've been left out of the game. And you know, my goal and my commitment to Jane is, and in her living in her memory is to change that. I don't think that there should ever be a. What's the word I'm looking for? Captive an entrepreneur. I don't think that this job requires any special skills than what I put forth in the ethos. And so for me to champion that and to get the feedback I've been getting is really wonderful. And I especially have been surprised with the minority female entrepreneurs because again, I think they're the ones that are least represented. They're the ones that don't get funded as much. They don't have that peer group, as Mihir mentioned. But for me, for my peer group, I actually belong to a group called Founders Network, which has got a lot of great entrepreneurs all over the country. Women, minorities, all sorts of different businesses. And that's a real powerful. And I have this problem. And that's the thing is me here mentioned, he's spot on. Like, you have to realize that you will not know everything. And the second you realize that is the second you have been set Free. Because this is the hardest job in the world. The hardest job because you are creating something from nothing and you are battling the status quo. So the universe is on its merry way. And you, right, you're some knucklehead that says, hey, look at me, look at me. And you got to move the universe. And this sounds like that's a little too flamboyant, but it's 100% true. You got to move the world to.

Your point of view, some segment of the world. Otherwise you don't have customers. No, it's true.

And people love the status quo.

Oh, change. Resistance is such a force. Yeah, man.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I mean and so yeah, so I, you know, it's game. You really need to have self awareness. A why? To realize when you don't know what you don't know. And you need to have some cases to ask for help because no one does it alone.

No, you can't do it alone. It's true. It's true. Well, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing these lessons with our listeners and just sharing them with us, frankly. Jari, why don't you tell folks where they can find you and find find the book which of course we'll put a link to in the show notes too.

Thanks. So yeah, so I'm at the the daily mba.com. that's my blog where I talk about ways to be a better entrepreneur. You can get the book at Amazon, you know, both ebook and print.

Cool.

I mean I would just love it for people to get the book. Tell me what you think and let's just make a better entrepreneur culture. I think that's my main goal.

There you go. That's a. Yeah, it's a good goal. Go ahead.

Yeah. And we are offer, yeah, we are offering all your listeners a discount if you go to our Drobo store, www.drobostore.com and enter Small Biz Biz 10 all Drobo products.

That's awesome.

That is the sign of an on the spot CEO right there. Taking advantage of every marketing opportunity. I love it. I love it.

Good stuff.

If there always be closing.

Always be closing. That's right. There's coffee at the door. That's right.

Somebody's entering that coupon code right now.

Exactly. Exactly.

Oh, good. You got it. Thank you.

Thanks so much for listening. Make sure to check everything out. We'll put all this stuff in the show. Notes, of course, me here and Jari, thanks so much for joining us. This week was a blast.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Thank you, folks. Keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next week.