A Failed Idea Built the Business He Quit Corporate For.

I loved every job I've had. I've loved every team that I've worked with. I still remember some of the initial feedback was really fascinating, but obviously where it fell down was in proving that it could live on its own steam, which it quite didn't make it.

And I know that you and I at the time gave up with regret, but feeling like one day this isn't over. One day we're gonna come back to this because it was It was so hard to give up on.

For some reason, I never felt it as a failure, even till to this day, because I genuinely so enjoyed working with you and the Deque team and so enjoyed evolving this idea from where it was. Oh, I learned so much. Entrepreneurship is not all about just going to do things. It's all about managing risks too, in a way that makes sense for everyone involved. Would I have been able to manage my risks in a way that would have still left me intact if that did not work out.

Hi, I'm James Green, co-founder of DQ Ventures. If you're an experienced professional thinking about starting your own business, then please listen to this before you quit. Hello, I'm James from DQ Ventures, and welcome back to the podcast. Today I'm speaking with founder who we work with through DQ Ventures, who's become a good friend of mine, Anup Chaudhary. Uh, Anup came to us with a, a B2B idea selling an HR tech platform into HR teams around the world. He, among many other things that he's done, he has operated at a very senior level within HR. And we took a very different approach to his idea than we would normally take. Anoop, as you hopefully will see, is a very engaging, very spiritual person who takes quite a different stance on everyday life and thinks very deeply about what's important in entrepreneurship, but also in what you want out of your career and out of your life. And I hope you enjoy listening to Anoop as much as I enjoyed talking to him. He's Never one to have a dull conversation with. And if you do get a chance to engage with him after this, then I can't recommend him highly enough. Okay, so that's enough from me. Let's hear more from Anup himself.

Most people think great leadership is about turning up and learning on the job. What I have learned through my 35 years of working in very complex environments is bringing a systems thinking approach to looking at the whole problem and the whole system. The second I would say is looking at clarity. How do we translate business vision into deliverables at every level? And the third one is commercial performance. Every business exists to make money and we have to make it a thriving business. How do we make sure we protect for that? If you do one or the other, it doesn't quite lead to success. But time and time again, I've seen when people do all 3, it leads to a successful outcome for everyone. Hi, I'm Anoop. I work with senior leaders, executives, and C-suite leaders to solve complex problems in organizations that are scaling up. If you're scaling your business and growing beyond where you have been before, and you need a trusted advisor by your side who's been in the journey, then I'd love to work with you. And you can find me at Anoop Chaudhuri. That's A-N-O-O-P C-H-A-U-D-H-U-R-I.

Let's start with a bit of background because I love your story. You are someone who has had a career probably unlike anyone else on earth, the way that you've grown your career to where you are now. I'm sure you've told this story many times, but can you give us, for the sake of the listeners, can you give us a potted history of how you got to where you are now?

Yeah, I'd love to. I'd love to, James. And I look back and think, oh my God, how did that happen? I left home. I left India when I was quite young in my early 20s and came on a one-way ticket to Australia because I loved cars. And I loved growing up tearing cars apart and putting them back together. So, I always had this dream of going and working in a car company. And cut a long story short, that dream brought me to the factory floor of Ford Motor Company in Australia, which is where I started my career and loved every minute and every moment of it, just interacting with people from 30 different nationalities, would you believe? That's how many people. It was a melting pot. It was kind of the world reflected in the environment of a factory environment. And I loved all of it. And I soon realized that I had aspirations and dreams of doing a lot more different things. And that took me to then becoming an engineer. So, I did my master's in engineering at the same time while I was working full-time. I did it at night. And then started working as an engineer. And would you believe it or not, there was a topic, there was a subject in my master's program called entrepreneurship.

Was there?

And I don't know if I've said this to you before, that really opened my eyes to this notion of how an individual can create value from nothing. And that took me on to go and do a postgraduate certificate in entrepreneurship and innovation, which further got me interested about how value is created, how value is made. And whilst I was doing all of this, you know, I was doing— I finished my engineering career. Then I said, you know what, I'm going to work in human resources. So, I did it some time over there. Did a sidestep into tech. I worked in the e-business area. We did a lot of cool stuff. This is like the dawn of the internet era. Did all that. Then I thought, you know, I've got to go do something else. Went back into a commercial role in purchasing, did a little bit of procurement work. With the e-business team. And then I left Australia on a 12-year back-to-back journey of international service assignments with Ford, 5 years in Thailand, 4 years in India, finishing up in the head office in our Detroit facility or Dearborn in the world headquarters office there, setting up the entire analytics division for the company globally for people analytics and strategic workforce planning. I loved, you know, in between all of that, I loved every job I've had. I've loved every team that I've worked with. And one thing that stands out for me has been very much a diverse range of experiences from tech to engineering to people and culture to analytics. Came back to Australia about 10 years back and then finished off my role on the board of the company and also the Chief People Officer of the company. And if I look back, I think a few things stand out. One is, one of the red threads is this love of working with people. I absolutely thrived on developing others and growing individuals and teams across 4 continents. That's what I did in my 35-year career at Ford. And the second thing I really enjoyed and I kind of thrive is looking at how the world is changing around us and looking at the macro trends, but bringing that to the here and now, getting organizations and people future fit and future ready today. So, it's very much relevant around how do we get teams and individuals and organizations ready for what's coming. And obviously, we know there's a huge change coming on us. It's already upon us with tech and AI and et cetera, things like that. And then the third thing is bringing all that together in a very holistic way. So, whenever I work, whatever work I do, whether it be my corporate career or kind of in my own consulting practice right now, I just naturally and intuitively bring a very holistic approach, a very systems approach to understanding and solving problems. And that's very much a very similar approach, you know, when you and I worked together on My Hero and Me, that I kind of brought in, understood there was a need, then we started working and the rest is history.

So when we met, I know you had a logo that you love, but you had a lot more than that, didn't you? You had a business idea. Can you tell Tell us how far you've come and where you thought you were.

I feel I was already teasing and evolving that idea for about 4 years, 3 or 4 years before we met. I, as you know, I've always had a love of entrepreneurship. I've always done things on my side, brought in ideas into Ford, etc. So it started off by thinking about there is a gap in the market around supporting small and medium-sized businesses with their people and capability and people and culture kind of challenges. That's how it started. And then, as I evolved the business, I realized that there were a lot of players in the market in that space. And breaking in and with a point of difference was going to be challenging. And then, kind of, I went into a bit more of a within, you know, what is it that I was looking for? And I leaned into this idea that and based on my own experience of working across all of these things, places that I was sharing with you before, and working with individuals particularly, that most people get up in the morning and come to work and want to do a good day's worth of work, the vast majority of us. What impedes them and what is a barrier is the processes, the systems, the support or lack of in the environment that they work in, whether it be from the leader, whether it be from the team, or whether it be just the company culture. Most individuals go through phases in their career from very early days, you know, as an individual contributor learning the trade, to then perhaps excelling in the trade, starting to work as a team leader, then moving on to management positions, middle management, senior management, and C-suite positions. So there's a— there is definitely, uh, If you look at it from a career development perspective and you map it out, career on the y-axis and time on the x-axis, people grow their career over time. But there are interventions that happen. And the right interventions like mentoring and coaching and getting the right guidance and getting the right assignments either are accelerators or they are brakes in someone's development. So, this concept of we all have our inner hero and it needs us to bring that out. We can all bring that out with the right support systems in place and unleash or unlock the hero within. That's where the concept of My Hero in Me was born. I still love the logo.

Yeah.

And that's when we met, James. This is like going back quite a few years.

Yeah, I remember. I mean, you know that I love the My Hero and Me concept as well. I believe that a lot of people don't manage to be the best version of themselves, not necessarily through their own lack of appetite to become that, but because they get thwarted by the systems and processes around them, and they end up just settling and saying, well, this will do. At least I'm bringing home the bacon. And And then whatever it is, 40 years later, retire and look back and think, God, if only I'd approached that slightly differently or had better luck or whatever it might be. And so I know your concept was to help people recognize and realize what their superpowers were and lean into those superpowers and try to find the support around them to bring those to life.

Yeah.

And I love that concept. And unusually, because as you know, at DQ Ventures, we love B2B and we really don't like B2C because it's so expensive and so difficult to do and so hard to identify and reach a target audience. But we, in this case, we actually went the opposite way because I know you'd actually got a clickable prototype of a B2B SaaS platform that you wanted to sell to HR teams. But then working together, we basically came to the conclusion that HR teams are not going to buy this. They don't have the power to, even if they want it, they don't have the power to bring it in and make that much change in the way that people go about their, or that specifically HR teams go about their business. So we thought, well, is there another way to do this? Is there a bottom-up to do a Slack where you get things in the hands of the people and then they bring that to their employers, which is generally not a strategy we would recommend. But we felt that maybe people care enough about themselves that they will adopt this. What do people care about more than their own success and their own ability to progress? So, we decided we were going to try and build a viral app of sorts, didn't we? I mean, this was pre-Claude and pre- Replit, so we didn't have any AI tools, but we manually tried to build something. Can you tell us a bit more about that process?

So I would do my day's work at Ford and come back and then do this in the evening. And we did that for a while. I have to acknowledge you and Deque for being open to doing something different because you're absolutely spot on. You know, you're kind of B2B, but this was a B2C concept. And I think there was a lot of power in it. And where we took it, we kind of took the whole thing. You're right. We had a clickable prototype of the whole idea at that point in time, which was still in its early stage. And we kind of refined it. And then, we took a portion of it, just a very small portion of it around the superpowers that you mentioned because you're spot on. And I still talk to people about, what are your superpowers? And let's go through and find that out because Once we know what they are, once we can identify it, it actually brings people to life. That's what gives us energy. That's what lifts us up and gets us to do what we have to do. So, the idea that you and I worked on with the DQ team was to take that and see if we could do it in a way that would get it in the hands of more people. than perhaps we started with. And to see if we could actually exponentially grow the reach of that small idea, very small portion of the big idea, to test out the viability of the virality of the idea. And I remember we played around with Airtables. You did a lot of work, James, yourself, along with the team on Airtables and lots of different things to build a bit of a—

Typeform, Airtable, Caspio, Mailchimp. We had it all talking to each other, which is kind of way of doing things, just take what's already out there and build an app with it if we can.

That's right.

I mean, I remember that very clearly. It was fun. But I think that at the heart of that is what we see in all of our portfolio companies, is the ones that are successful are doing something that people care about deeply. And the ones that are struggling to break through are solving a problem that they care about more than anyone else. It's the founder that cares rather than the target audience. And so, what we tried to do with you is identify where is that pull? Where are we getting people saying, I want this, as opposed to people saying, I don't really want this, but I'll listen to your sales pitch anyway.

Yeah.

And I think that was the big difference in your case. And to be honest, in nearly every case of where we decided to niche down, was in talking to HR people and having— you and I both knew that space pretty well, me as an HR tech investor in the past and you as a person who'd been looking at those pitch decks from the company side, the buyer side, that the HR people really didn't want another system. I mean, it was like pulling teeth. And even if they had, they didn't really have the budget or power to buy it, like we said.

Yeah.

Whereas, talking to the individuals about, you know, what's your superpower? Do you care about XYZ in your own career and your path to your future? People really cared about that. And so, we said, right, can we niche down into that to generate some viral growth? Where— well, how do we do it? The whole idea was to get— for every user we could get, we wanted to get at least one more user. Wasn't it?

That was the test.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was a test, correct.

We built this pretty clunky app. I mean, we built it twice actually, didn't we? Because first time we built it, I think we got about a 0.25 R rate, this referral rate, which if you're a virus, you don't last very long. You don't make many people sick if you've only got an R rate of 0.25. So we needed to get more than 1 to create something that grew on its own and didn't need us to be spending marketing budget and advertising budget to get people. And eventually we got it up to 0.5. So every one person who used our app, they referred half a person, which was super encouraging and fun because I know you seeded that app out in your network, didn't you? That's how we got it out there.

Yes, we built out, if you remember, we had some prefilled responses to the questions, which then based on the questions or the responses they gave would give them more questions. And obviously with AI today, it's so much more easy to do it. But in those days, you know, we had to have a logic table and everything behind it. And I still remember some of the initial feedback was really fascinating, but obviously where we— where it fell down was in proving that it could live on its own steam, which it quite didn't make it.

Yeah. I mean, I know that we spent a long time and we both put a lot of resources into it because we cared about it, but this was one of those ideas that we just We ran out of all options, really, didn't we?

We did.

And I know that you and I at the time gave up with regret, but feeling like one day this isn't over. One day we're going to come back to this, which I mean, we talked last week off camera and we were saying the same thing. And now we've got so many more tools available that I think this could still live to see the light of another day. But for the purposes of this and the people that are listening, what was that like for you? Did you see that as a failure or did you see that as a learning experience or as a fun thing to do or none of the above? What was the experience like for you?

That's a great question. And I'll share with you, it's not one answer, it's a combination of a few answers. First of all, I felt a bit sad, to be honest. I did feel sad that given the amount of work you and I in particular had put into this, I know there were other people also involved, but we worked together over 2 years, almost 2 years, I think, on and off, pretty much most days, most weeks, at least 2 or 3 calls. There was a lot of work involved in fleshing it out and spending it. So, Anytime anyone has time, energy, resources invested in something and it doesn't work, there is a level of maybe not regret, but sadness. So I genuinely felt sad that it didn't work. And many founders will probably feel that way. And it's a very normal, natural human emotion to have. And that's okay. The second thing, for some reason, I never felt it as a failure, you know, even till even till this day, because I genuinely so enjoyed working with you and the DQ team and so enjoyed evolving this idea from where it was, you know, 4 or 5 years ago to where it went to. It was just a whole heap of experiments.

Yeah.

And I feel the fact that we enjoyed each other's time and company and the journey More so, oh my God, why isn't it giving a return? Why am I not making money? Blah, blah, blah, right? Which are the typical things in someone's head. That because the pressure wasn't there, because we enjoyed it so much, I think it never felt as a failure to me. That's the second thing I would say. The third thing I would say is, oh, I learned so much. You know, I learned a ton. about by doing, not by reading. I'd read a lot and I had met a lot of entrepreneurs, but doing and learning and reading is totally different. And you and I talked a lot about it from day one, even before we started and even till now. The fact that the safety was there and the mechanisms were there, the guardrails were there and the support systems were there. It was a lot of learning about what to do, what not to do, what to do differently.

Yeah, because you stayed employed throughout that whole time while we were working on that. And like you say, you were working at 8, 9 o'clock at night. We had at least one call a week for—

We did, yeah.

I would guess for 2 years, which is not what we try to do. And I like to think we've got a bit quicker than we were because that was pretty much at the start. But like you said, we were both very passionate about it. And because it was almost working, That's right. It was so hard to give up on. It was like, there must be a way to just shift the needle a little bit. But I think looking back, I remember when we met, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed like when you came to us, I think you thought that what you needed was to raise some money. And you had the clickable demo of this B2B SaaS platform, and you were like, right, my option is, If I want to bring this to life, I've got to go and raise some money, build the platform, and then launch it. But you actually have now gone on and set up your own business. And do you feel like going through what we went through together gave you a different view on what your options are as a working professional who wants to go and work for themselves and have their own company? Do you feel like you think of that differently now?

Oh, absolutely. I feel that the whole Deque approach, Not only does it demystify what it means to take an idea, build a prototype, try it out and see, you know, if this commercially, if it's viable or not, right? It's gotta make commercial sense. So I think not only does the whole process demystify that, but it does it in a way that enables a pathway that perhaps is either not well known or not talked about enough or not seen as an alternative, you know, in terms of go all in, full out, give everything up and spend everything you have in proving something and then hoping it's going to work. And by that time, you know, you've— you have used up your money, your resources, your time, you know, burnt relationships, etc., etc., etc., right? So this whole concept, and I think this is where you and the DQ team have an edge is that there is a different way. It doesn't have to result in, you know, it's you're on the moon or you're burnt out.

Yeah, right. But what I would like to pick up there is what if we hadn't met and you'd met someone, you'd met this wealthy person who just said, you know what, look, Anoop, I like you, here's half a million dollars, which I can completely see happening, by the way. And that happens to founders all the time.

Yeah.

What do you think would have happened if you got that money? How do you think that would have gone?

I feel, you know, I'm very much a pragmatist and I definitely have my feet planted in the ground and I would have really looked at all those options very carefully before jumping in. I knew that, and this is, I think, another differentiator My career stage and age and phase of life is very different to a 20-year-old entrepreneur. You know, I had kids in school and, you know, I was a single dad of 2 girls and, you know, bringing them up, etc. At the same time, holding down a really important C-suite role and increasing complexity and demand, you know, as time went on, which is another reason why I had to give up.

I remember.

the idea because, you know, you just have only so much amount of hours a day and then you're, you know, you don't have anything left. I think answering your question, it is very appealing and it would have appealed to me a lot saying, you know, here's $1 million and go try it out. And I don't know what I would have done, to be honest with you, but I can see how something like that would have been very, very appealing to me or into anyone because Fine, go try it out. But, but, and it's a big but, I think where you and the team helped me is think through, and I had to do some thinking of my own too, and we talked about this in the very first meeting, is what are the risks that we are going in? Because entrepreneurship is not all about just go and do things. It's all about managing risks too in a way that makes sense for everyone involved. I think That's a big question in my mind is, you know, would I have really, if I'd done that, would I have been able to manage my risks in a way that would have still left me intact if that did not work out?

Yeah. Well, as you know, you're talking to somebody who did get the million dollars to go and build something and built it and no one wanted it. And when you raise the money or when you're raising the money, you feel like that is the validation. The fact that someone writes you the check, you've won. But actually, you haven't. All you've done is effectively acquired $1 million of debt to someone who expects that money back, and then you've got to deliver on it. And so, all those questions that you then go and ask, like, do people want it? Can I sell this? They still have to be asked. And the fact that you're steadily burning through someone else's $1 million while you're asking those questions— becomes more and more uncomfortable as you realize that actually, no, nobody does want this, and nobody did want this platform that I've now spent half a million dollars building, or probably not that these days, but still, probably over $100K to get a proper working tool, no matter what the Claudites will tell you. In a way, I think that early-stage investment from people who really don't know what they're investing in, is a poisoned chalice because it creates, it creates a lot more risk actually, and a lot more personal risk. And I mean, it doesn't create necessarily financial risk for anyone other than the investor, but if you're an honorable person like I know you are, you want to pay that money back. You expect to pay that money back. And if you can't, then it can lead to all sorts of horrible emotions and experiences. I can, I can tell you. What about, um, On this journey that you've been on, what has surprised you in it? Or what have you learned about yourself maybe that surprised you?

With the whole DQ journey and the entrepreneurship?

Nothing to do with DQ, but like for you with My Hero and Me and now taking that leap and becoming employed, what have you learned that you maybe weren't expecting?

Yeah, I've learned so much. I think one big learning is When you have an idea that resonates with you, it's very natural to get excited about it, which I got excited and I still remain excited. However, and we touched on this a little bit earlier, that excitement needs to be validated by what clients or customers who will be paying for it think. I think that was a, that was a very, very important learning for me. The second thing is it's important to go into whatever you want, whatever it is, you know, one does and people listening to this are doing. It's important to go into it with your full heart and mind and be committed to it. Don't do it halfheartedly because And you might be like me, you might be, you know, you might be in a full-time role and still doing something with the number of hours, whatever number of hours you have left in the week. But, but whatever it is you're doing, do it, you know, give it your full attention and time and energy and heart and soul, which is what, you know, both you and I did. Because through that, something beautiful happens, which is you realize that you are almost bringing to life something that doesn't exist or didn't exist, right?

Mm-hmm.

And it's a very special journey of doing that because you're creating something, hopefully, and if it ends up of value to someone and clients pay for it, you're creating something that ends up serving, solving a problem and serving someone's needs. And that's a great way to do that. And then the third thing I would say is the journey can be lonely. And it is important to surround yourself with people who believe in you and the idea and, and this is a very important qualifier, and are supporting you in that process. And it's important to have a team, an individual or a team of people that you're working with, whatever capacity in the relationship may be, because it's important to do that as a collective. It's harder to do it on your own.

I think a big thing that we hear a lot is the value of having a thought partner. As much as the practical stuff of getting a website built or building the MVP or the workflows is actually questioning, asking the important questions so you don't spend 6 months just going down off in the wrong direction. Having someone who's been there and done it a bit before can make a massive difference. Because when it's just you, you're never wrong. I've said this before, but you're— You know, you have— you make a decision, you're like, yeah, that sounds right to me, let's do that. And, and it's all too easy, especially if you're in a full-time job and you're doing something on the side. It's kind of secretive and no one knows about it. It's very easy to go and spend a load of time and money doing the wrong thing. So then what happened? Because we decided to, to park My Hero and Me, and I know that at the time you've been working crazy hours doing some big negotiations on behalf of Ford. And yeah, but you stayed for the time being, but not— but you're not there now. So talk us through that. What happened there?

Yeah, so we parked, or we— I think we said it was time to say goodbye to My Hero and Me. And we did that probably, I think, 2 years before I left Ford. My role was getting more and more challenging and busy and demanding because I was in that role for 4 years and 2 years of COVID 1.5 years of very challenging union negotiations, and then year of transformation of the business footprint. So, as time went by, the demands on my time from a corporate perspective kept on increasing and quite rightly so. It was a demanding role. And I felt that I had to do the right thing and I had to honor that and give that the time that it needed. That was another reason we decided to say goodbye to My Hero and Me. And then by the time I finished, 4 years was up, I felt it was important to go do something else.

Yeah.

And I have, like I was saying at the very beginning, I've done so many things in my life and career when there is an inner calling about let's go and change and let's go do something else and let's explore the world out there. I decided to lean into it. And James, taking risks is not a new thing for me. I've taken many, many, many, many risks in my life. And looking back, pretty much all of them have paid off. So as uncomfortable as it was and perhaps sometimes still is, you know, going out on my own and setting up my own practice and establishing it and growing it and learning the new game, so to speak. It's a very different game to working in a company. It takes time and patience, and why not give it a shot and see what happens?

Is that what you would say if you, if you met the equivalent of you, a senior exec in a company? It sounds like you would say give it a shot, but at the same time, you've also said that it's important to mitigate your risk and be aware of your responsibility. So what would be the actual advice you would give?

Plan, prepare, Look at your numbers, look at how you're going to sustain yourself, look at the runway of, you know, where your cash flow is, where it's coming, where it's going, and make some decisions about how whatever you might be doing, if you're giving up the comfort of a stable environment, a stable corporate career, and moving into something else, whether it be entrepreneurship, taking your idea and scaling it, or, you know, in the seed stage and then scaling it, whatever that may be, Look at everything. And I actually did that. I looked at— excuse me— looked at it very holistically in terms of the different aspects of my life, my career, work, finances, relationships, health, well-being, the spirit, mindset. So you look at that as a whole and then you can decide, you know. And I'm not saying what I have done is for everyone. Or I would recommend it to everyone. Everyone's situation is different depending on where they are in their age and career and work-life stage. I've always been a big believer that try something out and see, but go into it with your eyes wide open and be open and appreciative and understanding of the risks and how you're going to manage it. And if you can do it, give it a shot. Because if you don't, then you won't know You'll never know whether it was going to work or not going to work, right?

Yeah. Or if you would enjoy that road. And one thing Rob said when we spoke to him was that it's easy just to see the risk of jumping into entrepreneurship. You obviously, when you're having your finer moments, you're thinking about all the good things, but actually when it comes time to make that decision, to hand in that resignation, He said his hand was shaking when he handed his resignation in. You're really just thinking about the risks. But the other thing he did say was that as an experienced professional, hopefully by then you have built some serious knowledge and expertise that you can transfer back into another job if you have to. So, worst case, hopefully, is you go off, you try and be an entrepreneur for a couple of years, doesn't work out, you've given yourself enough runway financially, You can take care of your responsibilities, and then you've got the 6 months or whatever it is that takes a senior person to get back into their job. Yeah, you've burned some money in the meantime, but at least you tried. Do you see it like that? Do you think he's right?

Absolutely. I went into this knowing full well that if I wanted to, I could very quickly reverse and go back into a different organization in a different role or a different capacity and Knowing what I've done in my career and all the things I've done, I wouldn't have trouble finding a job.

Has anyone come knocking since you since you left Ford? Just out of interest. No one has.

Have they? It's it's very funny. I did I did a LinkedIn post last year doing my one-year performance review in public.

Oh, did you?

You know rate me because you know you know how it happens in any company. You got to rate. your leader rates you, right? Rating 1, rating 2, rating 3, rating 4, kick the guy out, right? So I said, 1, you know, early shoots, 2, you know, doing really well or something like that, 3, you know, going gangbusters, 4, and then go get a job.

And how did you perform on your performance review?

I have, it's been a challenge, but it's also been an amazing journey of learning and experimentation and the work that I've done with Some of the most amazing clients in Australia and overseas. It's given me a great opportunity to build deeper connections and relationships, show them the value of my work, and they've loved it. I've loved it. Yeah, I just want more of it.

Okay, let's take a quick break and hear from one of our portfolio companies.

Hi, I'm Rob. I'm the founder of We Network. We're a recruitment company based in Asia. Hoping to support people that are growing their organizations and companies across the continent. We are now operating in 7 countries, including Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Australia. We want to work with founders, want to work with people who are in-country to help them on their talent demands, talent challenges, and talent growth opportunities. I founded the business in 2020. So we're now nearly 6 years old and most proud, I think, of honestly the leadership team that we have now. The country leaders are better than I am, really, and they really know their stuff. They know their countries pretty well. So we're very excited about where we've been over the last 5 years, but frankly, we're just getting started. I'm super excited about the next 5 years. I think the opportunity in Asia is enormous. And if you can get the balance right between technology and humanity, then this region is going to absolutely explode. And I'm super excited about connecting talent with opportunity because I think that will be brilliant for the whole of Asia and very exciting for us as a business.

When we talk to budding entrepreneurs, for them, I think they often think that the difficult part is going to be the tech or the product. It's the bits that they don't really understand. And so they feel that that's the blocker. As long as I can sort the tech out, just give me the platform and everything else will work. What has actually been the hard part? Okay, now your consulting business doesn't have any tech, but what's been the difficult part? I bet I can guess, but tell me what's the hardest part.

In my current business?

Yeah.

Yeah, I feel when you're working in an organization, you turn up and the work is there. The work sits in your inbox.

Yeah.

When you're running your own practice, your inbox is empty. You got to go look for the work. So business development and getting yourself known and getting yourself known for who you are, what you do and who you serve and the type of problems you solve. That is the biggest challenge I feel, because I don't think there is any problem of anyone going and doing the work, but you got to go find the work. Now, this is a bit like the network effect we were talking about before with My Hero and Me, right? You get to a stage where there's a lot of climbing, climbing, climbing because you're building relationships, you're building your contacts, you're expanding your network. Then you get to a point in time on that curve when enough people know you and they're referring more and more business to you. So your business development effort kind of goes down a little bit, right? I haven't got to that stage as yet. I want to get there. But yeah, I would say that's the key thing.

Brilliant, brilliant answer. And there's a few threads that I want to try and remember to pick on there. So the first one is, you didn't mention this specifically, but When you are in a job and you are commanding a big salary, like I know you were, you kind of have a pretty clear sense of your worth and your value. But when you are running your own business and you convert that value into a daily rate or a weekly rate that somebody has to pay for your service, do you find that you think about your value quite differently?

The biggest person you're making the sale to is yourself first.

Yeah, so true.

You're selling it to yourself first, whatever it is you're selling, right? And the moment I was able to get across that line of not just selling to myself, but saying, you know what, I'm bringing 35 years of lived experience in multi-billion-dollar environments of delivering with my back to the wall in these situations. So I know what it is. And this is how much I would expect you to pay me in return for the service I'm giving you. And I can say that very confidently today, but it's taken me a while to get there.

I love that. I'd never heard that. The first person you sell to is yourself. That is a really cool insight and it is spot on. Okay. So that takes me to the second thread I wanted to pull on. I'll jump to the third first because the second one's longer. The third one is, and we see this in our portfolio, that the secret to building a successful growing business is repeat. It's repeatability. And so we have companies who do something for a customer and then it's gone, it's done. And, you know, well done, let's get the next one. The problem with a business like that is you're constantly after the next customer. So your marketing effort is through the roof. You need to generate leads and opportunities. But if you're building a business based on value, which you are, I think anyone in consulting is, where it's about reputation and giving somebody value that lasts a long time, then the companies that we have that do that, they have this horrible dip at the beginning because no one knows them. They're doing something new. They're in a new field. Yeah. And they're literally thinking, where am I going to get my customer from? Where's my next customer coming from? But as they deliver value and they grow that reputation, they start to generate referrals. And we're actually really big on supporting referrals, building case studies, asking for referrals. We have specific workflows that we help our founders do those things with because it's so much easier to get a referral business from one referral from an existing customer than to go out and try and find Speak to 100 new people. And yeah, so what, and what we see with those companies that do well is that over time, those referrals compound to the point where we literally have one company in Singapore that they don't do any sales and marketing ever. They just field inquiries from referrals. And it's just the most beautiful business to see growing. It grows 10, 20% every month.

Yeah.

Because they're just managing that flow and and distributing that work and thinking about systems for delivery. Whereas, as you're finding now, at the fairly early stages of a business, you don't have time to build systems and scale deliverability because you're chasing that next gig. So, I think that repeatability is really interesting. I'm sure you're going to find that, that in 2 or 3 years' time, you will never have to look for another customer.

Yeah.

Yeah. Now, what was the third thread that I wanted to put on there? Oh, that was it. So, this is actually key to the bit that I think you're in now, and that we really focus on. I think anyone building a new business needs to think about, is that when you have an idea for a business, it's really easy to be generic and to think in quite broad terms that this product is so cool, it's going to work. Who's your customer? Oh, it could be anyone. It works for anyone, is the worst possible answer. Because you've got a limited marketing budget, whether that be your time or actual money, and you've got to target that at anyone is impossible. Have you experienced this in your consulting? Because this is the bit you were saying about selling to yourself that you've learned over time. Have you found that you've gone more and more niche to become more and more of a specialist, to become the obvious person for this thing? Or have you found the opposite? Have you gone more broad?

I feel it's one of those questions that feels like a tug of war, right? One is pulling the other way, one's pulling the other way, and then you're wondering where are you going to meet. I have, and I continue to wrestle with that.

Yeah.

My first year and a bit in my own business, and it's almost counterintuitive. Right now I'm in the process of going through the thinking myself is how do I take that and niche further down? And I say it's counterintuitive because you almost feel like, why should one risk losing clients? I can do anything for anyone. And then, well, no one is paying attention to you.

Yeah.

If you're doing anything for anyone, for anyone anywhere, no one's paying attention. But if you want to pay those people, you know, you want them to pay attention to what you're saying, who is really the niche customer? So, that is work for me to do. That's work that is cut out for me. And I can tell you in the next 6 months, I will be niching down even more.

Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, we think of it like a wedge that you need the thing to be known for, which isn't your value, but it's the way you get in and that's its purpose. So I don't think you need to think of it as kind of limiting yourself. It's the way to identify the way that you get the work the easiest and getting in that way and then spreading out. Because the way that it's worked for our portfolio companies that have kind of got beyond that is that now they are generalists. They're much more generalists than they were because the referrals are coming and they just deal with it and they can expand. They can move to adjacent sectors.

Yeah.

They don't really need to be known for that thing anymore. Whereas when you're at the very early stage, you meet someone at a party, you need them to walk away remembering When I meet this person, I have to refer Anoop because he's the perfect person for that problem. Let's kind of wrap this up by just digging into what you want to be found for. Hopefully it comes across that I recommend you extremely highly, but how should they think of you? Give it a little pitch.

Look, I work with leaders and founders who are scaling their businesses in complex industrial environments. And I'm a big believer that leaders turn up and they think they can learn on the job. But there are 3 things. One is clarity. What is the business going to do and how are they going to go about doing it and turning a vision into actionable results for everyone? The second one is care. You've got to care for people and each other in the business. And the third one is commercial performance. We all exist to make money. Let's not forget that. And to me, those 3 things, when they come in in a beautiful balance, that's when leaders, organizations, and teams really flourish. So, my work is all about that. And I love working with founders and individuals who are scaling their businesses and finding that systems are falling short. or decision-making is falling short or governance is falling short and particularly struggling with problems that are at the intersection of multiple disciplines.

That's interesting.

The second thing I would add, given you've asked me, is that the work is at a very systems level because I find that when we do at an individual, one of the levels, either individual team or organization, it's not sustainable. So, my 35 years of working in very complex businesses has taught me that Whatever work we do, it has to be at a systems level, and that helps us solve systemically and for the long run.

So, improving existing systems or introducing new systems. And was that what you were doing at Ford ultimately? Were you a systems person or systems thinker?

Systems as in from a systems lens perspective.

No, no, I'm not talking like technical systems, but You know, it's interesting you say that.

When I look back at my work, a lot of my large-scale transformation projects, whether they be at a regional or global level, has been about solving at a systemic level. Looking at how do we bring about change so that not only is the change manageable and it can be executed, but the change is sustainable once the change transformation initiative is over. And a lot of organizations, as they're growing, what I have found is that when you don't work at a systems level, we do bits and pieces here, we put a band-aid solution here, we do something there. Before we know it, it's again fallen apart because we've not addressed the systemic issues over there.

Makes sense to me. I mean, even as a team of 5 at DQ Ventures, we're We're constantly building systems. That's a lot down to certain individuals who think systems more than us kind of scrappy zero-to-one people. But like you say, the problem with not having those systems is that you get so dependent on individuals that if that person leaves, then suddenly there's no system, there's no documentation, you're starting from scratch. I love talking to you, and I love the way you think and describe your experiences. Thank you for being part of this.

And I just want to say I love the conversation. It brings back wonderful memories of our time working together, and maybe we'll work again together. I don't know. We'll see what the universe holds for us.

Thank you. If you enjoyed today's chat with Anoop, then follow us on YouTube at DQ Ventures Official or look for us wherever you get your podcasts.