This is a transcript of Episode 530 of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast (YouTube) in which host Larry Weidel interviews Ashik Ahmed, CEO and co-founder of Deputy. The conversation focuses on managing hourly/shift workers and how Deputy’s scheduling and shift-cover features reduce friction for managers and employees. Ashik emphasizes mission-driven purpose—enriching workers’ lives—shares operational anecdotes (manual shift-calling replaced by app-based offers), and cites specific adoption thresholds and business-growth outcomes to show impact.
Welcome to this edition of the million dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.
I'm talking with Ashik Ahmed. He is the fortunately very energized CEO and co founder of deputy and a project work management company is a big general term and they work. Is it fair to say you're primarily working with shift workers? Right, Managing.
Yep, yep. That's a single single. Yeah. Shift workers. That's right.
You know, I was curious with Ashik about how, how many people, how do you manage all these countries and all of these companies and all of these things? And like you say, you know, we're only at 2%. You know, we, you know, we're, we're.
Driven to double and triple point two percent. Point two percent.
Zero point two.
Good lord, I've got a long way to go.
Now we're talking, now we're talking about COVID statistics.
0.2%. Wow.
So you're grow. You know, it's like keeping up with all the grains of sand on the oceans of all the beaches in the world, you know. How do you, how many people do you have direct to you?
Oh, I only have five, actually. I usually have four. I only have. I only have five. Six or six right now. Six right now. Yeah. But no, I mean, usually I operate with only four direct reports myself now. But I mean, Larry, I mean, when you, when you love what you do, it's not work, it's passion.
Yeah.
And the game is never easy. The more growth you have, the more things you have, the more chances of things that will fail. And they do fail. And you know, they come with. So yeah, the game is never easy. It's like climbing a mountain. The higher you go, the tougher it gets. The, you know, the oxygen gets lower. Okay. The risk gets even higher if you fall. But I mean, there's a great show on Netflix called 14 Peaks. I would highly recommend anybody watching it. Okay? Somebody who decided to climb all the 14 peaks of the world, from Everest to others, in seven months. And I think. And everybody said it's impossible, but he's like, not. The fact that somebody said it's impossible energizes me even more. To go and achieve it, you kind of just have to, you just have to have that mindset. Okay. And the only way you can have that mindset, the only way one can have that mindset is when you know that every single Day. What I do, what we do is making people's life better. Validation in life comes from enriching other people's lives. Okay. And when you have that as a mission and a purpose.
Say that again. Valid validation.
Validation in life comes from enriching others lives. Validation in life. When you're at your deathbed and you look back, what I have achieved in my life, it's not about how much wealth do I have or other things and stuff like that. You look around the people that, hey, who are the people who are appreciating me? Who are the people who are going to mourn me when I left? And I mean, however, when you look at it and professionally or personally or not, that the fact that you have been able to enrich all these people's lives in there is what makes your life totally worthy and validated. Okay? That's what, that's what entrepreneurship is about.
And now how does workforce management explain how you see how workforce management enriches people's lives? And I noticed what the third part of us where you're taking. I can see how you simplify keeping up with the hours and when people should show up and all of that to make sure the labor laws and all that. But is that primarily in the third circle you were talking about that that is usually most ignored. You know, the what's going on in the desires and wants of the shift workers or, or is it overall talk about where you see that.
Well, it's all three parts. All three parts where it enters people's life. Look, I mean the workforce management term is something that, you know, industry analysts and other things that uses. But I mean, I'm not, I'm not really fast about that. I'll tell you a story. I'll tell you a story that will really simplify the whole narration of how it enriches people's life.
Yeah.
And the story is story of my co founder over here. Before I came in into the business, in his business, if somebody called in sick at any moment, like you know, up to 10 to 20% of the employee base will call in sick. Okay. Right. And I'm talking even before the world of COVID Right?
Yeah.
And when somebody calls and see usually have three options. Number one, if it's a role that doesn't necessarily matter that much, you can say, okay, well, you know, nothing to worry about, go get better. Okay. And I will cover. Okay. We have enough coverage to get the job done. Or it can be done tomorrow, whatever. Okay. The second option is you the manager or the business owner, stop doing what you are doing and jump in to go do their job. Okay. That employee has done a notion and I'm going to go. And by doing so, I did not do my job that I was supposed to do for the day. I probably had a family commitment or something like that. I'm not going to go to all sorts of other kind of domino effects of them.
Right.
The third option I have, and this is what my co founder is to do. He'll take out his Nokia 8820D, go to the address book, call everyone to see who is going to come in and cover that shift that day. And there is always that one person who says, yes, I'll come in and say that like an outcome in. And they're the savior who's picking up the shift. And one week they end up working 100 hours and has an injury at work. Okay. And then everything the hell breath loose after that. Okay, True story. Okay. All of these three things happen in Deputy. Literally you can just go, huh? Larry has called in sick. Tap on Larry, find cover. Oh, there's five other people over here who is as qualified as Larry. They're not doing anything right now. They're not going to be fatigued for coming in a 7am shift because they did not finish working at 1am I'll send my offer. One of them will pick up their shift and come in and do that shift. Or you know what? Larry can go on the phone himself and find his own cupboard. Larry doesn't even have to call the manager. Ah, everyone's happy. Okay. I mean, like, you know, this is, I mean, when I came into that business, it took about 10 years to grow the business from two people to 200 people. And over next three years, 10 years.
To grow from two people to 200. Is that what you said?
Yeah. Over the next three years, the business grew from 200 to 1400 people. Okay. The level of scale, like the amount of wealth that got created, the number of people that found jobs in the industry, it was quite a transformational thing for many, many people's lives in there. And I see that so many times even in Deputy. I mean, if you go to our website, there's a case study of this business called Gelato Messina. If you ever come to Sydney, Larry, Australia's number one, number one Gelato, you got to try them. But when they started with Deputy, there was only one store and 10 employees. Back in 2013 or 2012, when they started with Deputy, over the years they have grown to dozens of stores, I think up to 40 stores at the time, before COVID had close to 1,000 people working there. All these people that have found employment, okay. All these people who got to put food on the table for their family. All these people who got to, you know, have their first job. The business owner who has been able to create so much wealth for himself, for his family, all his managers. Okay, Right. Come on. I cannot get out of bed every morning to repeat that story millions and millions of times over.
Yeah. And so, you know, it seems like you're taking. So the way I'm seeing this is you're really enabling leaders to focus on growing their business because you're taking the confusion out of so many pieces of the personnel issue, which are just crushing to figure out individually, you know? You know.
Exactly. Business is easy. Business is easy. People are hard. Life is hard. Life happens, Larry. Life happens. I don't think anybody wakes up to do a bad job. I don't think anybody wakes up to not come to work that day. But something will happen in life for which they can do what they need to do. I mean, this is why the average tenure of a shift worker at a job is only nine months. Okay. Every nine months they're changing job. Not only that right now, you know.
A chief worker changes jobs every nine months.
That's right.
Good.
That's the average tenure.
Really?
Yeah. Yep. I mean, I mean, what are chief workers over here? I mean, in some places might be a little bit.
Right.
You know, industries like, you know, restaurants. I mean, go to the. Your favorite restaurant. I'd like you to observe like, you know, in a six month time or 12 months time. Those of you new 12 months ago, are they still there on that?
Yeah, Let me. Okay, well, let me ask you this. At what point have you found that it's really ideal for people to bring deputy into their business? When they, when they start getting X number of shift workers.
Yeah. Usually when you're coming up to 10, that's when it's going to be chaos. When you're about four or five people, I think you can just cruise by. I mean, you know, in life you're either selling a vitamin or a painkiller or a vaccine or a drug. Right. Social media is all selling drugs. But I mean, at the. When you're less than five, it's probably. Deputy would be a vitamin. But when you're at the 5 to 10 mark, it definitely starts seeing the pain. But when you're over, you know, 20, I would say that, oh, you gotta have something like Deputy. Otherwise you're just suffering.
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