48 Questions on Careers, AI, and Entrepreneurship—Answered Without the Fluff

Welcome to episode number 100 of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. What is new in the world of entrepreneurship? Let me start with this. Most of you are preparing for a job market that no longer exists. Entry-level roles are shrinking. AI is taking over a lot of the routine work. And the people who get ahead early are not the ones who wait for direction. They're the ones who take ownership. I've collected a long list of questions, 48 of them, from graduating seniors. I recently spoke to a group of about 100 of them, also from recent grads, and also from early professionals and early entrepreneurs across entrepreneurship, careers, AI, and personal growth. Now, if you graduated recently or you're about to graduate, or if you're already feeling the impact of AI on your career or your business, your own venture, this session today, in this session today, I'll give you clear direction on what to focus on next. It won't be a workshop style. It'll be Q&A. So I'll be going through 48 questions across 6 themes, and I also will be answering questions we get from the community through this, uh, live livestream. This livestream, or if you are listening or watching later, leave me a comment. I'll be more than happy to address. So those 6 themes are: 1, entrepreneurship and business strategy. 2, success factors and common mistakes. 3, personal journey and motivation. A lot of personal stories there. Then number 4 is career advice and skill development. And number 5 is lifestyle and time management. And then number 6, resilience and pivoting. So those are the themes. I gave it a good shot in terms of categorizing the 48 questions into these themes. There's probably a bit of overlap, but you get the gesture. You get what— what we will be covering today. And then for those of you who are new to the channel, welcome. My name is Feras Alhlou. I've been in Silicon Valley for nearly 30 years and have gone through all the tech waves, survived some, survived some, and learned how to thrive in some. And I got into entrepreneurship after a very painful layoff. And I had a young family at the time I had to support. I could not land one interview. That was back in 2003, a very dry job market. And I had zero, literally no background in sales to small businesses. So, or for any business, in just, I was exposed to marketing and sales being part of a bigger company, but I never did it myself. So my business partner and I struggled a lot. We ended up tapping into our savings. I depleted my 401 plan, not something that you should do lightly, a decision you make lightly. And then over the first couple of years were really difficult, but then we figured things out and went on to build 7 businesses, mostly in consulting. A couple reached 7 figures and one reached— we grew it to 8 figures that I sold later to global media giant Dentsu. So in today's session, it's all from experience, it's all from personal stories, is the scars, the sweat, the blood and tears that I've gone through, and also from the 250+ founders and entrepreneurs that I've advised and coached over the years. So all what you hear today will be applicable to, to you if you want to grow and stand out in your career, and a lot of it also will be applicable to you if you want to start a business, or if you started and you are struggling. And a reminder here that I have these live streams weekly on Tuesdays at 12 noon— at noon Pacific, 3 PM Eastern. So join, subscribe to the channel, get the notification, come and ask your question. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear from you. not just the challenges and the issues you're facing, which I'm here to help you address and hopefully provide you with some ideas on how to navigate through these challenges, but I also want to hear from you about your wins, small wins, big wins, things you overcame, and love to share that with the community. So let me know. And if it's something very— I always say this, a lot of us are thinking about entrepreneurship, We might have a job already. We might not have told our friends and family about this idea that's been brewing in our mind. So if you don't want to put this out publicly, that question about entrepreneurship, feel free to just email me directly. You can email me at info@startupwithferas.com. Feras, like my first name, F-E-R-A-S. And I review all these emails. I answer them all personally, and I will make sure if I don't have a specific tip for you or a strategy or advice, I can point you in the right direction. So don't hesitate to reach out. I'm here to help. Let's jump into it. Let's step on the mat. So theme number 1, entrepreneurship and business strategy. As I said, we have 48 questions, so I'm going to go through all of them plus any questions we get from the community throughout This session. So number one question, what is one strategic action you can apply to every scenario? I don't think there's just one strategic action you can apply in every scenario. Every scenario is different, of course, but I think there are— there's a mode of operation. You as a founder, you as an entrepreneur, you as a student who is looking to start your own business or start a career, Think of the way you make decisions. I like to build consensus, even though I'm the boss, I'm the CEO, I can make the call, but I like to engage my team, especially my senior team members. When we had a company, we had folks in the US, we had folks overseas, we had teams that focused on the Fortune 100, and we had teams that were focusing on smaller clients. So different functions. We had marketing, we had sales, we had delivery, operations, you know, people ops. So I had a team of 7 in the last startup, and those were the senior team members, and we— I engaged them in every decision, every decision, major decision, not sort of day-to-day stuff. So for me, the mode of operation is to involve the team, involve the stakeholders early. I think you get better decisions that way. You get people— people feel that they're part of that decision-making process, and you get more buy-in from the team, and I think you're more likely to get to to implement whatever decision that you made. So the one thing that worked really well for me is to involve stakeholders, and then you have to balance this. You can't be in this consensus-building mode forever, because as an entrepreneur, as a founder, you have to make a decision, and you have to move, and you have to act, and you'll learn from that decision, but on major decisions, if you're a solo entrepreneur, if you're, again, a graduating student, who want to start a business, you might, you don't have a co-founder yet, you don't have a team yet, talk to people in the industry, talk to peers, talk to advisors, get input from people before you make a big decision. So that's, I think that works really well in every scenario. If it's sort of do or die scenario, you have to make a call, you know, your instinct, ChatGPT, you can ask ChatGPT for input, But at the end of the day, in most cases, they're not do or die. You have time to think, and then you can involve others. The second question, what are the pitfalls that derail new businesses? Now, there are a whole lot of things that derail businesses, but I'll talk about 3 important ones. One is, and that's quoted by different research, different reports, including one from from Harvard on the top reasons why startups fail, no real market demand. That is, you have an idea, you think it's going to just blow up and you're going to sell a whole lot of this product or the service. The idea might be sound, but as I always say, there are no willing wallets. Nobody wants to buy. So validating that there is demand for what you want to offer, and I have this 10+5 rule. It's a spreadsheet. I'll include that in— I'll make a note of it to include it in the description. 10+5, basically talk to 10 people who are your potential clients and research 5 competitors, and with that research, you should have a very good idea about what the pain points are, what people are looking to solve, what issues they have with the incumbents, and then when you research the competitors, you understand pricing strategy, how they position themselves, So that research, again, it could be 20 plus 10. I think 10 plus 5 for service businesses is good, and then you formulate, you validate your idea better that way. So that's the number one issue, number one pitfall, no real market demand. Second is you run out of runway. Basically, you run out of money. So as a founder, as an entrepreneur, you have to have some financial stability, Now, if you have a family and young kids and expenses, make sure— and I have a full livestream on how to build a 6-month financial runway, check that out. I'll put that in the description as well. If you're single, sleeping on the couch with 3 other roommates, you have very little expenses, that's great. Still, you have to build that runway that I can focus on the business, rent is taken care of, my basic, most basic expenses are taken care of, and now I can focus 120% of my time and energy and mental capacity on this venture, right? So running out of money, running out of runway, and the fear of running out of runway is an issue. So if you have, if you build a 3-month or a 6-month runway, that gives you just some, it gives you peace of mind, to focus on the task at hand. So that was number 2. Number 3, and it's a big one, big pitfall that derails businesses, partners, partner misalignments. So choosing your business partner is the most consequential decision you make when you start a business. And according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS, or according to the IRS, I forgot what the source is, but it's a governmental entity that produced that data. 40, around 40% of businesses that start in the US, they start with more than one person. So you have partners, you have business partners. So choosing someone where you have aligned on values, where you have expectations, the expectations are very clear on who's doing what, what money they're putting in, what effort they're putting in, and also what are their long-term plan for the business? Do you want to retire in the business and they want to sell it or get investors in and leave at the next opportunity? So aligning with your partner, your business partner on these key areas, values, expectations, the complementary skills that you bring to the table, and then the efforts, the money you put in, and how you want to— the culture that you want to create. Aligning on all of that should not be taken lightly. So choose your partner very, very carefully. And typically, typically, these partners come from your network— ex-colleagues, ex-roommates, ex-classmates, people you've worked with, people that you know and trust, and they reciprocate. So So 3 pitfalls, no real market demand, running out of runway, running out of money, and then partner misalignment. So that is the second question. Moving on, question number 3, how much time does it take for a business to see revenue or profit? Well, it's going to depend. It depends on, is it a service business or is it a product business? And then let's say within the service business, sphere? Are you selling to businesses, B2B, or are you selling to consumers? A lot of factors. If I'm selling a digital transformation project or an IT audit, cybersecurity audit for the Fortune 1000, if that's my offer, it takes weeks, takes according to data anywhere from 3 to 9 months to close a B2B deal, especially if you're selling to the large enterprise. If you're selling to small businesses, typically it's 2 to 8 weeks plus or minus. So, so your ability to generate revenue and later profit depends on the service that you offer, depending also— there, there's also— it's also a function of outreach, iterating, iterating on things and learning from mistakes, persistence, follow-ups. So a lot of factors, but I would say plan, when you're planning, when you're putting together your business plan, you're putting together your spending plan, your sales plan, be conservative in terms of when to expect money to come in. So if you think it'll take you 2 months, put, put 3 months in that plan. Put on that hat of CFO, Chief Financial Officer. So there's multiple hat-wearing exercises here. So first put on your chief financial officer hat and put a very conservative plan on what to expect cash, and then as a VP of sales, put on that hat and put a very aggressive program to generate leads, to market, to close deals, and I think it's that reality will sort of be somewhere in between, but I would say, I gave you some numbers in terms of weeks and months based on BTC or B2B, B2B or B2C, whether it's small or large business, but it's a function also of outreach, marketing, iterating, follow-up persistence. So that is the answer there. Question number 4, what was your most successful business and your least successful one and why? It looks like we have a comment here. Let me see. This is from Ahmed. Can't agree more on the partner part, unfortunately, from a firsthand bad experience. So Ahmed, thank you so much for joining. First of all, thank you for your comment. I mean, in terms of partnerships, let me just— I'll add to what you say. Don't feel bad. The divorce rate in business partnerships is higher than that in the society, unfortunately. And I think the main reason is, it's sort of— there's this honeymoon period. I have an idea I like, I want to get it done, this person is excited about it, and we jump right into the thick end of it without defining a lot of the details. So my quick advice there is, first, don't feel bad. It happens to all of us. And then for the next time around, engage an attorney— some one attorney, not you bring an attorney and then your partner brings an attorney. That's too costly, not needed in my mind. Agree on one attorney who is also a good business advisor, someone who's been doing this for a while, a business attorney, and have them walk you through all the things that are needed in a business partnership. and all the types of decisions you have to agree how to handle in the future. So, and I always say this, my co-founder here, Eric, he's a best friend, and he and I have been working together for over a decade now, and I trust him with my life, and he trusts me with his life, I know that. We still have a 37-page partnership agreement. That is the prudent thing to do. And we hired a lawyer, our friend Jeff, and he walked us through all these questions, and when I joked with Jeff, I said, Jeff, why? Why 37 pages? And he said, Feras, which section do you want me to remove? I agree with him. So I just— a lot of people, a lot of people from my experience, and I speak with 2 to 3 founders every week, people take this business very lightly, very casually, partnership that is, People give equity, give out equity. They say, yeah, yeah, join with me. I'll pay you later. They borrow money from friends and family. They don't know if this is— the lender doesn't know if this is an investment or it's a loan. So things get really messy when things are done casually. When it comes to money, when it comes to partnerships, make sure everything is in writing. All right. Thank you. Thank you for the comment. So the question was about the most successful business and the least successful and why. Well, the most successful was the digital analytics company Enoor that we grew literally from scratch to— and we pivoted. We started web design, then we did online marketing, then we focused on analytics, then we became a Google Analytics partner, and then we became one of the top partners globally. And we grew that business over, over, over— it took us about 7 or so years to get to 7 figures, and then it took us another 4 years or so to get to 8 figures. So we grew that and then we sold it to Dentsu. That was the plan to sell. It wasn't a forced event, something we planned for. So that was a very successful company, and also the friendships and the experiences are very memorable, and these lifelong friends that were with us to build that business are still amazing friends and people we stay in touch with. So that was very successful. The least successful, I remember a specific venture where we wanted to offer online training. We were actually doing all the vetting, all the proper vetting, but I think we missed one thing that we were a bit late to the game. So we saw a lot of our competitors investing in online training. So we had a business partner focused on that venture. We hired a salesperson, a marketing person. We dedicated 6 figures. We were very cash flow positive by that time, so we were able to tap into our own pockets, not into our own cash flow. We didn't have to borrow for that, but unfortunately, we built the entire infrastructure. We built the curriculum. Did marketing campaigns, we had almost zero traction. And what ended up happening is that we were very late coming to this, to this online training. This is 10+ years ago, and, and the market was saturated. And then the technology partner that we were partnering with, they also introduced their own online training, and all— and that was free. So everybody in the industry who was interested in this technology and this content was going to the manufacturer, to the main company that was developing that product. So you learn from that. The good thing is that we pivoted very quickly after we gave it 6 months. We gave it our best budget, people, attention, all of that. The good thing is that the people who were part of this, we did not ask them to leave because they were top talent. We just reoriented their attention to other initiatives, and they ended up doing really well in these other initiatives. So sometimes you're passionate about an idea, and we had all the spreadsheets, we had all the financial plans, and once we have online, it's more sort of like a SaaS model. People come and buy and consume the content, like $99, and once we sell $10,000, you know, that's awesome. Oh, look how much money we'll be making. So none of that materialized, unfortunately, and we learned a lot from it. More vetting, more validation, and then iterating. Can we sell before we build the entire thing? Can we have a pilot and sell it? I think that's a big lesson there. All right. Again, for those of you who are just joining, thank you for being part of this livestream, or if you're listening later, we are covering questions. I'm on question number 5 out of 48, so we're talking about entrepreneurship resilience, we're talking about AI. We're talking about things that are relevant to today's job market, whether you are a student who are about to graduate or you just graduated or you are struggling as a professional or as an entrepreneur. I'm covering all these questions to help you, to help you get, um, get better at what you're doing and also to achieve that dream that you have in terms of advancing in your career or starting and scaling your own startup. So question number 5, what strategies helped build an 8-figure business? So what strategies helped build an 8-figure business? A lot of them. And of course, despite what you see on YouTube and on LinkedIn, it didn't happen overnight. It took many years. But if I were to focus on a few things, I would say people. It always comes down to people. So I had an amazing co-founder. He actually passed in 2016, and that was something very difficult for me personally because he's a friend and his family, you know, they're friends of our family. So that was a difficult time, but from 2003 to 2016 in that venture, he just helped a lot in so many different ways. We complemented each other really well, but also not just the founders, but also a team of A-players that we made a lot of bad decisions in terms of hiring initially, and I wouldn't blame the people. Sometimes you just, as a founder, you don't know how, you don't know any better, you hire the wrong person. They're a great person, some were not, but a lot of them were good people, but not a good fit for our team size, for the amount of money we were willing to pay, the sacrifice that was required, so— But over time, we learned how to spot and hire A-players. So I used to think of people to hire in every networking event I went to, and just like I tracked my leads, I tracked potential people that we could hire, and you would establish a relationship with them, you reach out, you stay connected with them, right? So the team was really key, without that team, I mean, as founders, you have the passion, you have the grit, you work hard, you have the vision, but to scale, you need different skill sets. To scale, you need different functions that you can't be everywhere all the time, so you need a senior team around you with a founder-like mentality, go-getter, you know, they have that go-getterness, or they're disciplined in certain ways. They can build, help you build processes to scale. So a lot of that was really important. So I would put, obviously there are external factors, taking opportunities of market shifts, market shifts, taking opportunities of, you know, we pivoted from doing web design to doing digital marketing, to doing analytics. That was cutting edge back in 2009, 2010. So all of those factors are important, but focus on the internal. I'd like to always look at the internal aspects of a business. You can easily blame something external, blame the outside, but look at what's going on. If you don't have a solid engine, you can't go places, no matter whether there's a storm or there's no storm. You can weather the storm better If you have a solid, you have a good engine, a good car, you have new brakes, you have new tires, so if the more you invest in the system and the people and the processes, the better you are to scale and scale with less gray hair and with less pain and blood and tears. All right, so that is number 5. Number 6, are there common strategic decisions you use across businesses? So what I just mentioned earlier, people is really important. The people aspect of the business is really important, but since I just talked about it, other strategic decisions, I think peace at home. So just like it's very important to have the right business partner, it's also having a very supportive life partner at home for me was essential, was critical, was something I don't think I would've gone places in business without that support at home. And my wife wasn't involved in the business. I've kept her involved and engaged, and I've consulted with her on big decisions, especially when we were borrowing money or depleting, when I was depleting my 401. plan. I had to get her support on that, of course, and she believed in it, and she saw how hard I was working, and I think she felt bad for me, so she was very supportive. She's been— she has been for all these years and still very supportive, but I think peace at home is really important, and for those of you who are not married or don't have a life partner, you want to make sure there are not a whole lot of distractions outside of work, because especially in the early stages of entrepreneurship. You're building, and you're building the foundation is difficult. You're doing something novel, something new, something that you haven't done before in most cases, and you don't have all the resources that you need. You might have access to capital, but you don't have the marketing skills or the sales skills or the delivery skills, or you don't have the ops skills, so it is difficult. So if you have a lot of distractions outside of business, it will make life really difficult during it, because you just need to focus, you need to put the energy, the time, the effort, you want to have the mental space to brainstorm and to think creatively about how to solve problems, how to grow, so I think the common strategic decision across businesses is make sure life outside of business is— there's peace in that. There's, you know, you have time to take care of yourself, take care of your emotional, spiritual, physical needs, maybe less leisure, but having a solid life outside of work is really important. And of course, it's all about No one, no one makes it on their own. No one. Again, despite what you see on social media, a lot of, a lot of people help us. A lot of, a lot of systems, you know, we leverage to help us grow. So, so this strong support system around us is, is key. Moving on to the next question. Let's see. Uh, just talking about number 6. Question number 7. How did you keep— hold on. How did you keep your companies successful during COVID So during a pandemic, during economic uncertainties. It wasn't easy for sure. It was hard. It was new to every one of us, but what we did as a management team, and I was involved with the company that bought us at that time, Dentsu and Cardinal Path, and I was part of the management team, It was a very difficult time, and I think the best thing we did at the time was to— this rapid planning and rapid contingency planning. So we came up with a 10 or a 12-step plan on the things that we will be doing as a company, and we shared that immediately with the entire— we had about 200 people within the combined entity by that time. And Dentsu had 600— no, 63,000 people, but we were focused on our brand within Dentsu. Um, and, and we— so we were overseeing the operation and, and of this unit of 200 people. So rapid planning and then sharing the plan with your team, the contingency planning, what will happen if certain things happen, because it was unknown. We don't— we didn't know how long we will be work staying at home, how long travel will be banned, how much— like, we had no idea that we were struggling to get toilet paper, for those of you who remember at the time. So people, there could be a whole lot of doom and gloom, so we came up with a, not a timeline, but a milestone-based or a plan based on certain actions. If we lose more customers, if certain sectors are hit harder and we don't have clients to serve in that sector because they canceled their contracts. All of that actually was part of the plan and we shared it with the people, and the best thing we did as an executive team was we said, as the saying goes, Alex, the CEO, used to say, leaders eat last. So we took a cut. we decided that the senior team will take a cut first, and then if things got really, really bad, then we said everyone else would get a 10% cut, and then I think the next step was we'd get a 20% cut, and then later, in terms of like layoffs and downsizing, that was the last action, and we were very open with the team about it, and I think people really, really appreciated that. So it's difficult sometimes, You don't know what happens during— it could be if you happen to be living in certain parts of the world, it could be a war, it could be new regulations like the tariffs, it could be supply chain issues, it could be if your business is very local and there's a storm or there's a natural disaster, so things happen outside of your control, that's just the nature of life. of life, nature of business, so the more of a— if you have a solid business and you have solid metrics in terms of revenue, profitability, cash flow, the more solid you are in these key essential metrics, the better you will be in weathering the storm, but you have to come up with a contingency plan when things happen, outside of your control, and you have to lead with confidence. We don't know. There's ambiguity. There's uncertainty. But I'm here for you. I'll do my best to protect the business, to protect you, and I want your input. We're in this together. That is really, really important. And also, one last thing here. In downturns, in bad times, while some industries might decline, others will grow. So if there's an issue like the pandemic, hospitality will be hit hard, but other things that in terms around addressing people's basic needs, those things typically grow. Government, education, typically they do well when there's an economic downturn. So one thing to also look into if you're serving a specific vertical, or a specific segment of the market, potentially pivot and look at other sectors that are not just surviving but thriving during the downturn. All right, I'm going to go faster, we still have a whole lot of questions. What is the one thing successful founders do early on that others overlook? What is it that successful founders do early on? I think if you ask a lot of the folks who made it to build figures, you know, 7— if you speak with people or read books about people who've made it to 7 figures, 8 figures, 9 figures, I think early on, early on, and maybe for always, early on, they outworked most other people. They outworked most other people. So this high volume of reps is really, really important. So if you want to get into entrepreneurship, just keep that in mind. And you have— you don't have to work 80 hours a week for the rest of your life, but early on to build a solid foundation, you need to outwork everyone else. And I think a follow-up item here is that, that speed of learning matters more than perfection, so learn, and learning is education plus application, so learn something from a networking event, from researching a competitor, or maybe reading a book, attending, listening to a podcast, learn, apply to the business right away, and then learn from that application, iterate on that, and move on, so I would say working harder is definitely a differentiator for successful founders, and then also learning, that mindset of learning, you know, learn, educate yourself, and apply, educate yourself, and apply. All right, number 9, what is the biggest mistake companies make when using data? So we were in the data business for a long time, co-authored a book on data with Wiley back in 2016, Data, we need data, but you don't treat data as absolute truth, whether it's marketing data, well, financial data is maybe different, but there's always different ways to interpret that data, like as they say, like the story behind the data. If you were making a lot of money one month or one quarter, and then the next quarter, you don't have a whole lot of profitability, From the look of it, like from the sort of from a macro perspective, wait a second, this company lost money. They were making $100,000 last quarter and they made only $10,000 this quarter. So you don't know the whole story. Well, potentially one story is that, yeah, they were not operating efficiently or effectively and they lost money. They lost clients. That's one explanation. That's one interpretation. Potentially that the founders decided to invest a lot of that money in hiring people to maybe conquer a new market or start a new service line. So just the data by itself without context doesn't tell the story, so always look, understand, use data as a signal and get more context around that data, whether it's employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, The more you understand about, the more context you have about the data, the better insights you'll derive and the better decisions you'll make. But the idea here is to build a culture that is data-informed, that we look at data, whether it's marketing data, Instagram, YouTube followers, engagement, where leads are coming from, where customers are coming from, Again, employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, all the key strategic areas of the business. You want to have that part of the DNA of the company where I weekly or monthly or quarterly, I'm looking at that data and understand what happened and what is it that I can learn from it. All right. Number 10, have you ever advised someone to exit a business and then why? Yes, I have. In business, there are 3 options. You double down, you pivot, or you quit, and double down and sell. So at times, people are sick and tired of a business that's not doing well, and they've tried everything, and just entrepreneurship is not for them. So yeah, sometimes just the best thing is to cut your losses, move on. Other times, you help them maybe pivot and then find other services, other markets, do something different. And at times it's time to exit. Like in our case, when we plan ahead 2, 3 years ahead, we want to exit the business, we want to sell, and, and you start planning towards that. So the important thing is to decide what you want to get out of the business. In a book I'm reading now, and it's called Founder's Dilemmas, he says, do you want to be rich or king? So That's a topic for another time, but do you want to have a whole lot of control, king, and stay, have all the equity, and all— you make all the calls, and you'll be the king? Or do you want to potentially bring investors, bring partners? You can scale, you can grow, you can do a lot of things with other resources from other people for equity you share, and then, you know, you become rich. Again, there's a lot of nuance to this, but I think in terms of exiting, depending on your goals of this business. There's no right or wrong answer. Some people want to retire in their business, others, they just want to reach a certain point and then move on to do other things. All right, what did you get— or sorry, where did you get funds to start a business, and what advice for limited people that have limited funds? Well, Start very lean. Don't borrow money. Don't get investors if you can do without. At certain times, there are certain inflection points in the business where you need additional capital to grow, whether it's a product company. Of course, in a product company, you'd need that more than in a services company, but even a services company, sometimes you scale and you see a huge opportunity in a different market and you got to hire there ahead of the curve, ahead of having revenue. So in my— the very first business, my business partner and I, we put— I took very little money, like in terms of salary, to pay the basic expenses. He put more. I put more time, less money. He put more money, less time. That was our formula. And that worked for a couple of years. And then later, we needed to inject more cash in the business to scale. And then he brought in more. And then— We had, you know, we brought in more money into the business to grow to that next level. So you can borrow, you can have, and I have a whole, I think I have a livestream on funding sources, so I'll link to that in the description, but there are a lot of options. Just be aware when you bring investors in, you're giving away some equity. Which could be very, very valuable in the future. When you borrow money, you have obligations to pay. There are other ways you can do, you can get grants, you can do other things, but typically my advice is to bootstrap, just wait till the— don't wait till the last minute when you need money, you're about to go broke or close the business, and then ask for money. You can ask for money ahead of time, but wait, wait, Don't just get a whole lot of money up front and give away equity easily. That's just something most— in most cases does not pan out well for people. Okay, the next one is, what should you consider when starting or operating internationally? Well, we can have a whole episode on this, but understanding the local market, there's obviously cultural awareness that is needed, but people buy and sell differently in different countries. We have a business, an analytics business out of Dubai, eSense, and my business partner there, they sell and send contracts on WhatsApp. I mean, you don't do that in the US, but over there it works fine, but although just the way you sell, the way you approach leads, the way you have to connect with them, it really varies from one culture to the other, so my recommendation is If you don't know that, you might be from that culture, or you know that culture, but you haven't done business in that culture, so you have to either have that experience of having done business in that environment, or bring a business partner, or maybe a country manager, if you're bigger and you can hire, who knows that domain really well. In our case, when we started the business in Dubai, We did a joint venture. There are 2 of us from here, 2 from local folks who've been in that region for a long time. So we brought in the technical expertise, analytics, and marketing, and they knew how to set up a business, how to get leads, how to sell. That was really important. Also, when we built a company out of Cairo, Egypt, we had a team in India. So working with local people who know the business was really important. In the case of Cairo, we had one of the business partners actually decided to go and live there for a year. It worked out for him and his young family, and he actually was in charge of hiring, onboarding, setting up the business culture that is in line with what we do things here. I mean, there were local differences, of course, but in terms of the way we worked, the DNA, we had to have a business founder there to create that with the local team, so those things that worked well for us. Alright, what strategic mistakes do founders make when scaling, and what pivots did you make? Well, I made a lot of pivots. Strategic mistakes, I think, I mean, there are many, but I'll mention a couple of things. One is sometimes scaling too early, sometimes, well, 2 things, one is you just, You're starting to make money, you have some profit, and you have this growth mindset, and you start to hire ahead of the curve, and you have this vision of having 3 different services, and you have 3 different people managing these 3 different services, and then the revenue doesn't come in, and then you have to lay people off or do something drastic, so especially in a services business, you want to— don't want to be too far ahead of the curve, Um, you hire people even if you're cash flow positive, you have to pay salaries. So that, that's really important. The other thing is, I would say, not waiting to hire. So, so staying doing everything yourself, I mean, that's good. I want you to do that initially, but after you have some clients and after you've done— you have some sales under your belt, you've delivered many projects, it's time to also examine what is it that I can delegate to. If you don't want to hire yet, you can have contractors, you can have part-timers, But at one point, if you want to scale in a services business, no escape. You have to hire people. So, so you don't want to— it's, it's a balance. You don't want to hire too quickly, too early. You don't want to wait too long before you hire because you have to learn the art of delegation. All right, next. What is a commonly held belief in consulting or business that is wrong? Commonly held belief. Okay. Well, one, if you're good, if you're great at what you do, clients will come. That is a false assumption. You have to— they used to say in the old days, build it and they'll come. It doesn't work anymore. So you have to still learn sales and marketing and all that good stuff, no matter how great you are at your service. The second thing is We some some founders they think this person is a great sales guy. They're they're a natural salesperson. They're they're just born. They're great born with a great sales sales skills. My friend, some of us might be a few I would say, but sales is a skill and just like anything else, like in martial arts, you got to step on the mat. You got to in Aikido. You have to learn how to roll roll. Backward, forward, all of that. So it's a muscle you have to build, it's a skill that you have to actively build, and you build by doing the reps. So those are the things that I hear that are common, commonly held belief that are wrong. All right, next, and we're moving on to the second theme. This is about success factors and common mistakes. So what is the biggest mistake Companies make when starting? And there's so many, there's just so many things that could happen, but I would say cash is king. So losing focus on profitability and sustainability, especially when you have access to resources, whether you just got some funding or your partner put in some money or you borrowed money from the SBA, whatever the case might be, founders with that growth mindset, at times, we get a bit too anxious to grow and too eager, and we sort of want to expedite that growth, so when we have access to resources, we become less frugal, as Eric Schmidt said, the ex-CEO of Google. Frugal partners— no, frugal founders are great founders, so you want to be frugal even when you have access to resources. And you want to build, you want to have cash flow, just like you had a personal financial runway, you also want to have the more of a, I can cover all my expenses for the next 3 months. If you're in that position as a company, that's great, but if you're living month to month, and if you're living in business, if you're barely having cash to pay payroll, you're not going to make these decisions about about hiring and growing super fast because you don't have the cash, but when you have access to resources, that's when founders make those mistakes, so keep that in mind when you're starting, like once you start to have access to resources, use these resources diligently. And the other one here, the other point here is that, you know, positive thinking is great, You know, being passionate about growing the business is great, but reality— there will be this dispassionate reality you have to be aware of, and you have to look at things. You have to kind of step away from, from the business and the idea that you love and assess it objectively and assess what's going well, what's not going well, and act accordingly. All right, next. What crucial point is least considered in starting a business? What crucial point? I think most founders underestimate what it takes to start and scale and grow a business, so most people underestimate how difficult it actually is. Add to that the ambiguity, the loneliness, especially if you don't have a co-founder, the pressure, reputation, financial, all of that, all of that pressure actually plays a key role, so you need You need to be aware of what you're getting yourself into and the ability to— and you learn these, you learn these by reps, by doing it, by going out there, by trying things that will not succeed the first time around. So just be aware that it's difficult. I'm not discouraging you from this. I'm just letting you know what to expect so that you are better prepared for that. The next question. What is the biggest mistake first-time entrepreneurs make? Choosing the wrong business partner, the most consequential business decision. So choose a partner with shared values, people who complement your skills, complement your personality, and also have some— have in terms of expectations of the business and how do you want to run it, when you want to exit and all that, and have all that in writing. So that is, that's really important. Misaligned values and also misaligned expectations create short-term and long-term issues. The next question, what is the best thing to do when starting out? The best thing to do when you're starting out is do the hard work, whatever is difficult. If it's difficult for you to go out to a networking event, schedule a networking event this week and go out. You have to do the difficult things. If it's difficult for you to follow up on sales, on leads, it takes anywhere from 5 to 7 to 8 to 10 follow-ups to close a business-to-business deal. So if it's difficult for you to do something that is strategic, you have to overcome that difficult thing. You have to do it and start. If you're afraid, if you have a— if you have anxiety about meeting people and your business relies— in most services business, you have to— businesses, you have to be out there. I'm a big proponent of being out there and networking. You have to be out there. So if it's that difficult for you, start working or interacting with maybe a couple people and then go to a team that go to an event with and speak with 5 people. Next time, you get— it gets easier over time. So, so doing the difficult, the hard work is really, really important, and learning from what you're doing. The next question, what are the most useful skills for entrepreneurs? The most useful skills for entrepreneurs. We talked about hard work for sure. That's, that's just a mindset and doing the work. And then I think that sense of curiosity and continuous learning is really important. When you learn, when you read, when you talk to mentors, advisors, other people, your peers, your clients, you just have that open mind of absorbing what you're hearing. You don't have to apply everything that you learn. Not everything that you learn from others is applicable to your business at this stage, but having that open mind and that curiosity is really, really important. The next question, with AI growing, yes, what industries should young entrepreneurs focus on, and how will jobs shift? I mean, depending on what you studied, and there are some stats actually I read, 8% of college students are now considering changing their major just because of all the changes in AI, so this is a real thing. AI is here, is real. Um, so, so I would say AI is not about replacing us. It will replace certain things, routine work, yes. But can you work with AI? Whatever field you're— if you're applying to for a job or you're starting your own business in, let's say, in, let's say, HR consulting. So before that interview, or if you're preparing to have your own venture, like, study all the AI applications. Let's call them applied AI. Study applied AI, all the applications in that space, so you are better equipped. So when you go to present yourself, say, I, I have— I've studied this in college. Or if you have some experience, I have X number of years in, in this, in this field, and I also— I'm up to speed. I have the certification on, on using, uh, AI in this environment. So you are equipped. You are better equipped when when you're presenting yourself or when— to your potential employer, the person who's going to hire you, or when you're presenting yourself to a client. So think of AI as a copilot with you. Of course, that will help you do things more efficiently, and it's what people are looking for. So that's one thing. And then also, as you're hearing, as from what I'm seeing from my own business, from reading. There are other skills that are going to be in need, things to do with judgment, things to do with decision-making, things to do with sort of— there's the brain, the heart, and then motor skills, right? So all of these will be in demand because AI can't do certain things, at least in the foreseeable future. So that is the question on AI. Use it, learn it, learn that applied AI. You don't have to be technical to do that. A question on remote work, return to office. A lot of mandates, especially with bigger companies, they want everybody to, to come to the office. Is this a mistake? I cannot talk for big companies. They must have done their own analysis and their own evaluation, and they decided to make this a thing. You have to be in a lot of the companies— I know big companies in the Valley, you have to be in the office 3 out of the 5 business days. Some require you 5 times, you know, 5 5 days of the week to be in the office. So I can't talk for big companies, but for smaller companies, I would say it really depends on the company culture and roles, and you want to, you cannot micromanage people, even in the office, let alone remote. So look at performance, look at outcomes, look at hiring the right people. You know, if you're hiring junior people, they need more support, more handholding, more coaching, that is more, more have them shadow people initially for the first maybe several weeks. If you're hiring senior people who've worked remotely all of their life, you know, all of their career, that's not an issue. So, so I would say it depends on, on the company, but regardless, look for just people tracking their hours, but look at performance and outcomes more than maybe the location. All right, the next is, How many business? How was business during COVID What should business do when profit fails? So if you have when profit sorry when profits fall during external conditions that that you don't have control over whether it's a pandemic or it is regulations or natural disasters, so you have to. Immediately have a contingency plan and preserve cash. Cash is king, especially when you have these external, difficult external scenarios you have to deal with. So cut costs strategically, potentially change if the business or the vertical you're after is impacted heavily, you might want to switch to another vertical. That's sort of what you can do externally, but internally, have a contingency plan and then share that plan with your team, with your stakeholders, get their input, finalize the plan, and then execute the plan. And then as a leader, lead by example, lead with confidence. You can tell people, I'm uncertain about— there are uncertainties and I'm uncertain about how things will develop, but we will give it our best. We have a solid business. Here's what we'll do if these things happen. Here's Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, and be there for the team. And as I said earlier, Alex, the CEO of Carlin Path, he used to say, leaders eat last. So you got to sacrifice for the team. Do what you can so that they can support their families. And if you're loyal to them, during difficult times, they will be loyal to you during good times. All right, theme number 3, personal journey and motivation. So this is— here were some personal stories here. What led you to entrepreneurship? Very simple, I was forced into it in a way. I was laid off, it was a painful layoff, I couldn't find a job, 7 weeks no interview, I had a young family, so a friend of mine was in a very similar boat, We decided to join hands and then started this business called Enoor at the time, and we were selling websites to small businesses. So it was a mix of responsibility, necessity, we had to be creative, we knew we had to learn new things, it was really difficult, but we managed to go through it, and after the first couple of years of real struggle and difficult time, things got better, and then we learned from that, and we grew, obviously, to 7 figures and then 8 figures and then built other businesses. So, so yeah, it was, it was a layoff. Um, and I, I don't— I tell people that's one scenario. A lot of people start a business after a layoff, but if you want to start your own business, don't wait to be laid off. Do that, do a lot of the planning, a lot of the vetting while you're employed, and this way you can leave on your own terms once, once you have a lot of that in place, and I have I have the video that I mentioned earlier on on the six building your six month runway. If you follow that, then you can have a bit more control on when you sign on when you send your resignation letter. All right, moving on. If you could go back, what would you do differently? Well, if this was from a student, I would say I would study harder. I'm going to sound like your professor or your your your parent. Yeah, study harder, of course. And then I think learning skills, especially at a younger age, or if you're getting into entrepreneurship, learning new skills. Even if you're 55, if you're 60 and you want to start, you just left corporate and you want to start your own business, learning new skills is really key. If you want to change the trajectory, you got to learn new skills, hard skills, some technical skills, learning about AI, applied AI, things that apply, can do in your sector, in your vertical, and also soft skills, judgment, critical thinking, presentation, communication, empathy. These things are really, really important. And, uh, of course, of course, having— have a stronger network, um, because your assets are not just what money you have and what skills you have, but also your network is a great asset. The next one is what decision had the biggest impact on your career? It is— this one, I don't have to think about it— is when I walked into the CEO's office. This is in my first job in engineering. And I said— and this was after a major layoff that the company had, and I was not impacted by that layoff— but I said, hey, Russ, what I'm doing is okay, and I'm contributing to the company, but it's not something I like, and I'm not really excelling at it, and it took a lot of courage for me. I had to muster all that courage to walk into that office. I was just a young guy at the time, and he took a chance on me, and he gave me this opportunity to move from engineering to account management, and then everything, you know, then it was history. Started to really, really enjoy what I was doing and did much better at it, and then Promotions followed, and and then moved to the Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley and and moved to Silicon Valley followed. All that created a whole lot of momentum. But it was that during a difficult time, sometimes you just have to to to muster courage and go and and ask someone to take a bet on you. And he did, and I I was able to. To do the work and prove that, that, um, um, he made the right decision. And, you know, again, grateful to, to what he did at the time. The next question is, uh, what was your first job that influenced your path? The first job was in college washing dishes, man. I worked at that steakhouse, and especially on, on the weekends, Friday nights, Saturday nights, my goodness, all these waiters waitresses that come in and pile these large steak plates, and I'd have to catch up with them. They need the clean plates. It was a very busy, very famous steakhouse in Tulsa at the time. So working under pressure, working really hard from like 4:00 PM till like 10:30 PM, we did not stop. So working really hard, it was one, and working under pressure, even though it was very manual, But that was something I think impacted me a lot. Like if you want to, and then I ended up getting promoted to a busboy and then to a waiter. So working on salad, dishwasher, salad boy, busboy, then a waiter. So hard work paid off. Any regrets after selling a business? For me personally, no, because we planned for that. And again, depending on what you want to do with the business, if you want to keep a whole lot of control, and you want to retire in that business, so yeah, selling the business will be maybe a negative move, although you might benefit financially from it, but if you want to have this life-changing event in a way, and you want to do other things in your life, then exiting is a good thing, right? So it depends on what is important to you, what you want to do after you sell the business, you want to stay with the acquirer, you want to go and You want to just go and have fun for a week or two or a month or two? Yeah, but after a while, what is it that you're going to do? It'll be boring if you're just sitting at the beach all day. You have to, you know, at least in my mind, I have to be contributing something to the society. I want to be building some things. I want to help nonprofits, right? Spend a little bit more time with the family, of course. So that is really important. It's what you want to do after you sell the business that should drive that decision. The next question, should you work— and we're going to go really fast with the next 15 or so— should you work at a large company or at a startup first? How to enter, you know, how to choose? You know, if you're just starting out, don't be very picky, okay? Get a job. The job market could be very difficult at times, and it is now. So get in, learn as much as you can. If you have, if you have 2 options, it doesn't have to be a big company or a smaller company. I would say, look, the brand is important on your resume. Yes, if you work for a known brand, it's good. But I would say I'd have a more— I favor skills. If you have 2 opportunities and you can learn a whole lot more in one of them, I would definitely recommend you go after that. So over time, once you have a couple years of experience and you've proven yourself and you've built some skills, then you can choose, you know, I really don't like the small companies, I want some more process, more systems, then you can move to a larger company. All right, next question, what skills should students focus on? Analytics, marketing, entrepreneurship? There are a variety of skills. You've learned a lot in college if you're a student, so any way you can get some practical knowledge, even if it's for free, and you have to, again, this will help you how to pitch, how to sell yourself, how to land an internship. It's not easy. A lot of people are competing for that internship. So understanding the business, understanding the real-world context, any experience you— even if you're helping, let's say you go and help, you have someone in your family, they have a booth at an exhibit, or they have something at the flea market, or they have a retail shop or whatever the case might be, or they have a business you can go but offer your help. Go and learn, absorb that real-life experience. It's really, really important. Of course, learn what I say applied AI, the applications in AI, AI applications that are relevant to your, to your area of, of study or your areas of the business you want to get into. All right. What challenges do graduates face entering the workforce? Lack of experience, lack of real-life experience. So the more— and it's a very important factor in landing jobs. If you have, you've done more internships than others, you're going to stand out. So, so to the extent that you can have real-life experience, have that on your— have it, have that experience acquired, and then show it on your resume, on, on your LinkedIn profile. Because that will make you stand out from that sea of resumes that the hiring manager is getting. Then next, what should you build or how should you build connections and how do you network? Well, take action today. Unless you live in a very small town and there's not a whole lot of people around you, business people that is, I mean, you might have to do that virtually. But go to a networking event this week, even if you're a student, if you're in San Jose State or in Stanford or in Berkeley or in Santa Clara University, wherever you are today, this week, I'm talking about local here, find an event where non-students are there. You can go to the Chamber of Commerce and just go and see how people interact. You'll be probably the youngest person there, but you'll get the attention. You'll stand out. And many people want to help the young generation. So you tell them, hey, I'm finishing college in this major and I have this experience and I'm looking for an internship, or I'm looking for a job. Practicing that pitch is really important. So the best thing is to start it. Go and do it. Find opportunities for you to go and speak with strangers. That is really— that's a good skill to have, okay? Because everybody is now Talking to AI, so talk to real people. Talking to real people is going to be an important skill to have. Has been, is, and will be. All right. Now theme number four: career advice and skill development. What skill do you wish you developed earlier in college? Practical experience is is really important in college. You study hard, you learn a lot depending on what college you go to. But find opportunities, find opportunities to get practical experience, even if it's unrelated to your field. A lot of the soft skills, if you volunteered, you're part of the— you played sports, or you volunteered, or you've done other things where you've interacted with people, you've organized things, those are good skills to have, of course, in addition to learning experience in your field. And if you can find an internship in your field, that would be obviously a plus plus, but just acquiring skills is the theme here, especially at a younger age. If you were graduating today, what would you pursue? Yeah, I mean, in terms of passion and all that good stuff, you know, maybe don't give it a whole lot of weight initially. It's about building skills, it's about experience in the real world, it's about Learning, as I said earlier, applied AI, and then don't keep getting— landing a job is not the only option. 16 or 17% of graduates, seniors, they have some sort of side hustle going on already, right? So, and 32% of them they want to be their own bosses in a couple of years. So this, there is another option, starting a business, landing a job is one option, starting your own business is another. Of course, you have to prepare for it, you have to learn a lot of new skills, you have to develop all these things that are needed for entrepreneurship, including having some sort of runway, but you have a lot of time typically, Younger people have more time, so if you put all your energy into it, you can get a whole lot of traction. All right, the next one is, what should entrepreneurial students focus on? You know, the whole passion thing, like I have an idea, I love this idea, that's what I want to do. I mean, you can follow your passion, you can follow your passion in a hobby, you can do it later in life, but starting a business, whether it's something you like or not, Like, once you're into the thick of things and you have to hire and fire and build systems and processes, the idea itself becomes less of a thing as it relates to passion. The passion is about helping others, about growing a business, about hiring people and building that culture, so I think in terms of focus, like, don't just be very, like, sort of don't fall in love with your idea, Like, yeah, I'm passionate about this, and I want to conquer the world with this. Look at skills, look at things that you have skills for, you know, that discipline, the discipline to execute on ideas, that's really what's important, not just having these ideas. All right, next, how would you build connections and network effectively? Be proactive, if you have a guest speaker who comes to your college, Network with them, connect with them on LinkedIn, send them a thank you message, attend events on campus, outside of campus. Relationships compound over time, so go beyond. The more you might have a circle of friends at the gym, sports, volunteer, you know, students, your classmates, your roommates, so the more of these circles you have, the better, because again, with these relationships, they compound over time. People go places. You might be wanting to pitch a service into a company and your ex-roommate happens to be a manager there. They will make an introduction. So the larger the network is, the better chances you have in getting places. You still have to be good at what you do, but the The network will help you, at least will help you open the door for you. How do you become a respected manager, not a doormat or disliked? Oh my goodness, we can have a whole session on this, but I would say you have to balance between empathy and authority. So I mentioned earlier about consensus building, I'm big on getting input from everyone, especially my senior team, and then it's If it's a bigger thing, I want to get input from a lot of people, including partners and vendors and customers, but at one point, you have to make a decision, and that decision might not be liked by everyone, so I think have that passion, have that empathy, have that sort of, I don't want to say the soft skills, but have that, and also at times, you have to decide as a leader, as a founder, as a manager, you have to decide, and then communication. There's a sender, a receiver, and a medium, so everything has to be clear. What you're saying sometimes does not land where you want it, so make sure you're very clear, you talk to people, you write the email, you follow up, whatever is important, and then always ask for feedback. Asking for feedback from teams, from your team, from clients, from suppliers will help you improve. Okay, so we have here from a comment, let me see, thank you for being here, it says, I want to start my consultant— my consultancy agency. I have results on my niche. What would you recommend to start with? By the way, thank you for the valuable content. Thank you so much for being here, Coach Yuri Costa. Yeah, thank you so much. I want to start because I have results on my niche. I think so. So you have to make sure you have an offer, you have something that people are willing to pay for. So I would say, and I don't know what your niche is, but talk to 10 potential buyers in your industry and research 5 competitors. That, because when you speak with people who are likely to buy from you, you'll understand the problems that they have, and then do you have solutions for those problems? And then that's what you will validate when you speak with people who are likely buyers, and then When you research the competitors, you'll address, you'll understand how these competitors are addressing these problems, and that combination will help you identify how you can stand out. You could stand out being the most economical, you can have the highest quality, you can deliver faster, so validating with people, so you can do some online research, you can ask ChatGPT, All that is great for sure, but it's not a substitute from talking to people, real people about the problems that they have. So that would be my advice, and again, thank you for your comment and thank you for being here. All right, next question, what challenges arise when communicating across organizations? So a lot of times leaders, founders, we're not clear, like we have a vision, we know what we want, but we're not very clear in what we are communicating. And then people read, you know, it's late at night, I send a quick email, say I want this report tomorrow, and people might drop off everything they're doing in the morning and get you that report in the morning. And, you know, you did not mean for them to drop everything they're working on to get you that report. So you have to be very clear in communicating, and you have to repeat that communication multiple times, especially when you're There's change management in place when people are— maybe you're pivoting or there's a big shift in the business or there's something that's really important, so overcommunicating is really important. Next one, what characteristics lead to success a lot? And again, it's really not a personality thing. I've seen partners and founders, sorry, entrepreneurs from all kinds of different personalities. from different backgrounds, but things that are needed, working hard, as always, work hard, work hard, play hard, give back, my motto in life, but discipline, adaptability, that owner mindset, that founder mindset of that wanting to get stuff done, that bias toward action, those are really, really important, and then outside of work, You know, peace at home is peace at work. Peace at home allows you to be more successful at work, so less distractions outside, I think, is going to be really important. If you're distracted by many things, including a lot of leisure time and a lot of hobbies and a lot of commitments, it's really hard to focus on starting and scaling a business. Later, you can have a lot of that, but initially, you got to focus on the business, right? We have, I think, 9 more, and then we'll be done. How do you manage multiple roles and responsibilities? So this is in the lifestyle and time management. So you have to— time management is not about being distracted, it's not about multitasking, but you have to focus on the business, as I always say, you also have to focus on key relationships in your life. So I'm big on working hard, on working 60, 70, if needed, 80 hours a week for a period of time, not your entire life. But you don't do that at the expense of the relationships you have at home, whether it's a spouse or children or siblings or parents or other commitments you have to maybe to things that are important to you in your life. So at times, money is important. Money is needed for a lot of things. Money will help you do other things in the future. But even during the— when there's a huge opportunity, at times you have to sacrifice that opportunity to at least maintain a relationship. Sometimes you have to— a lot of times you want to nurture that relationship at home, but at times you sort of get your partner on board that, hey, I'm really busy for the next several weeks. We have this new initiative. Bear with me. I won't be able to help as much at home, but I'll make it up for you later, right? And make sure you make it up. So you have to put a lot of focus and energy at work, but also do not ignore important relationships. What is the most important foundation for success? I think now this theme, you know, with my martial arts background, I talk about this balanced warrior where you want to work hard. You want to be the master of your domain as a consultant, as a business owner, So that requires commitment, but also you don't want to ignore your personal health. So you want to look at things around emotional stability, about relationships, about physical health, spirituality, mindfulness. Those are really important. So it's hard to be highly, super highly spiritual. It's hard to do all of these things at the same time. But in general, managing this imbalance, you know, while you have to work hard and build a business and at the same time maintain a level of sanity around you is really important. So I think taking care of yourself emotionally, spiritually, physically, all of that will give you, will help you, and will enable sustained performance. What trade-offs are required? Trade-offs are part of life. You can't have everything at the same time. It doesn't happen. So time, health, money, you know, choose 2 of the 3 in general, right? So I would say along the same lines of maintaining key relationships in your life, That's really important and getting people on board with your vision, but also reducing distractions, whether it's what you consume online, whether it's where you spend your time offline, whether it's social media, whether it's leisure activities, all of that, some of it, most of it has to take a hit while you're focusing on building, so be very intentional with time. Okay, the last few questions here. What does your daily routine look like? Okay, so I start early, and I don't have— I like to check email and messages very quickly, maybe for the first 30 minutes, make sure if someone is waiting on an answer from me, and then I focus on whatever is important for that day. If I'm writing a script, if I'm working on helping my co-founders with something, so I like to do that, and then leave the— the sort of administrative boring stuff that we have to do as founders, as business people, leave it to later in the day. That's just sort of one thing I do. So when most of us, I think most people, and there's a book on this as well, I think it was called When by Daniel Pink, he talks about for most of us, the mornings are where we can have more energy, more, our mind is free and we can be more productive, and some portion of the population, they're better actually in the afternoon. So, but, but in general, really having that discipline where in the morning I don't check my, my phone for the first hour or hour and 15 minutes or so. Spiritual time, reflection time, starting the day on, on a good foot. And then, and then I get into it and I focus on that. So, so, and then also no time, no phone 30 minutes before I go to bed. That has worked well for me. All right, next, the last theme, resilience and pivoting. How do you know when to pivot? This is really hard, really, really hard. In business, you double down, you pivot, or you quit, right? So you don't have all the data, but you look for signals from competition, from the market. Obviously, you're reading about your industry, talking to people in your industry, to clients is really important. So always, if you have like layers as you grow your business between you and your clients, make sure you're listening to the frontline people, your own people, and listening to clients, those are good, good indicators. And then also, I think dabbling with a few things, like some in terms of like, okay, business is doing well, I want to do new things. So if you're dabbling with 2, 3 things on the side, you're spending like an hour a week on this and that and the other, then it might, one, or if you're dabbling like over a quarter, especially as you grow, this is more for a growth thing. If you have team members who are looking into other things, maybe markets or services or products to develop. So if you make it part of the culture to look into new things, and then out of maybe 10 things, 1 or 2 are likely to have traction, so that will help you kind of be ready to pivot or maybe leverage or focus on this one thing that you have been dabbling with. But it is a function of preparation and also intuition and again, signals from the market. How do you keep going when things get hard? I think that's called resilience. That's called the mindset of pressure builds strength. You cannot get strong in the gym. If you go to the gym without pressure, without hard work, you're not going to get stronger. Same thing in Aikido. If you're not taking these falls and doing the reps, so when things get hard, you want to have again that solid foundation and that solid foundation is is built on dealing with pressure, and then it takes time. You can't— if you just start a business and expect sales and marketing and things to land in your laps and, you know, in your lap, and then you'll have clients and the cash flow, just I think having clarity about what's ahead and being persistent about it and doing the day. If you do If you show up every day, your lucky day will be there. You just have to show up every day. So it's really more of a mindset and understanding that it's a challenging journey. If we think everything is going to be a piece of cake, then we'll be disappointed, and then we might not have the— we might have the will, but we won't have the ability to continue. Alright, 3 more questions, or 4, 3. What were the hardest challenges in your industry? This is, we were in the data industry. Sorry, yeah, what were the hardest challenges in your industry? So back in, I think, 2016, around that timeframe, the whole, we were in the business of collecting data and analyzing data and making sense of the data, so there were a whole lot of new set of regulations and laws around data privacy and data collection, GDPR was one of them, and we thought, if there's no data, if we can't collect data, there's no business, so that was a big, big, big thing that we had to deal with, and then really investing time to learning about the new laws and regulations, the impact on the industries in Europe and in the US, and actually, we started to do workshops on this, and meet with the clients, and listen to their concerns, so we ended up actually leveraging that to be a thought leader on this data privacy concern that companies had, and we turned that into something very positive for the business. How do you deal with burnout, mental blocks, or plateaus? Well, similar to what I said earlier, being aware and mindful of the journey ahead of time is really important, and keep in mind, nothing worthwhile in life is worth pursuing, and nothing worthwhile in life is acquired, achieved easily. So if you want to run a marathon, you're going to prepare for it, you're going to train, you're going to read about it, you're going to do maybe run, you know, 3 miles and then 5 miles and then do, you know, half a marathon, all that, that's part of the same thing in business. So being mindful and aware of what's ahead, is really important, and then it's lonely, especially if you don't have a co-founder, so talking to peers, talking to people who've been to where you want to go, to advisors, I think will help. Peace at home is important, and then again, that nurturing, having a balance in terms of physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual needs are met, at least at a minimum, during like very, very difficult, during very, very busy time. So not neglecting oneself, not overindulging with things we don't need with money we don't have, surrounding yourself with people who share, have similar values and similar ambition. All of these are good things to deal, to help you deal with burnouts and mental blocks. All right. 2 more. How do you overcome fear of risk and instability? That comes with time. You have to accept uncertainty as part of the path, take action, learn from the action. You will make mistakes, so don't go and bet the whole farm, as they say. Start with something small. Start with a small pitch before you go and pitch a Fortune 100, if you have the opportunity, right? Learn through taking smaller risks. If you want to run a marketing campaign, don't spend $10,000 on it if you haven't done anything in that, in that space. Maybe do a pilot. So to take small calculated risks initially, I think you build that muscle. And the last question, what are the biggest lessons from your journey? That's an episode or maybe a book which we are working on, uh, but I think the, the most important factors are the people that you surround yourself with, are key to your success, both in your personal life and also in business. And I think the second part would be that learning, that learning mindset, that continuous learning. And last, third but not— third and last but not least is you can't control what happens to you, but you can control your reaction. And we can't control outcomes. Success is never guaranteed, but you control how you react to things. So, so if you have that mindset of that growth mindset, as Phil Knight said, the founder of Nike, said life is about growth. You grow or you die. If you have that mindset, if you have the mindset that I'm going to give it my best, I want to— I have this vision, I'm going to go through a lot of struggle, but I'll get somewhere, and if it's not success for this business, it will enable me to have success in another venture, so that positive thinking, that working hard mindset, that learning from the mistakes mindset, surrounding yourself with people, all of these have been critical factors and lessons that I learned during my journey, so thank you all so much for being here, and if you have a question, I know I just answered 48 questions, but you have something else that I haven't covered, let me know in the comments or send me an email at info@startupwithferas.com, and I'll be more than happy to answer, and see you next time.