Episode 531: #1 Value is “Listen to Learn” with Ashik Ahmed

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 and I'm curious, Ashik, what do you think is your biggest strength that you bring to deputy? You know, what were you doing so well over the years that your co founder said, I've got to have this guy and bring him up to where he can run equal with me, you know, because that's a big, that's a big thing. I mean, you guys were doing well and then he, he must have saw something that he just couldn't live without, you know.

Well, not that I have ever asked that question to myself, Larry, so thank you for that. It really. But I mean, one thing that I, Well, I, I'm good with technology. That's one thing. I'm a software engineer at heart. But the other thing that I think I have grown, I've always had an act for is really understanding people and seeing how technology can help people. Okay. Like, you know, I mean, some people try to create technology and then tries to like, you know, kind of shoehorn it into people's life. I rather looked at, hey, who are the people? What are their dreams and aspirations? What are their pains? How can technology can totally augment them to be really be great at what they're doing? And, and especially for shift workers. Okay, especially for shift workers. So the understanding of the employer, the employee is what has been truly transformational for me. I mean, there's a saying, Jeff Bezos says this is that you don't choose your passion, your passion chooses you. I suppose the universe had chosen me to solve this problem for humanity that hasn't been solved for 5,000 years of employment in this world. So, yeah, I see that as my ikigai, my reason for being.

Now what do you. When did this start coming clear to you that this was a direction that you wanted to go in your life to? It's just you wind up, your choices start to send you in that direction. Or did you, you know, when did the start. When did you start realizing this is probably what I'm going to be doing long term?

No, I mean, you know, I would like to say that this is my billboard. That validation in life comes from managing other people's lives. I wasn't looking at starting a company. I mean, I did that for my co founder and I left his business probably and worked for Google or Apple. But he said that, hey, I've been able to create all this wealth and all my friends who are still running that one restaurant or that one pub or one hairdresser, they're gonna, how are you able to scale your wealth so much? And we're still struggling. And they all said that nobody had someone like you to help with all the business challenges and systems. Would you consider. And he was going to set up another company. I was going to work in there. I said, now we only do this if we're 50, 50 this time. But I. And what I was going through, my mind is that if I have been able to make so much difference in one business owner's life, what if I'm able to make that difference in every entrepreneur's life? Okay. Every entrepreneur that will. And that was, that was the reason. That was my why I, why I started in there. I actually didn't know much about workforce management, to be honest. I just knew that presented with a challenge or problem, yeah, I will run to the world to make that happen, to solve it. Okay. Giving up is not just in my nature. If it's important to get done, we'll get it done.

Well, your impact appears to be unlimited in the fact that where you can pull companies in at such an early stage and standardize a lot of the things with their shift workers. And it seems like taking that pain out, that static, that friction that people holds them back, really unleashes a whole lot of force, you know? You know, expanding from, you know, a couple of gelato shots to 40 all over Australia. You know, that's not going to happen if you're stumbling and fumbling with your personnel, don't you think?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean.

I think, you know, like people, oh, man, ups, They've just solved my shipping problems. Yeah. How about your people problems?

You know.

That might be a little bit bigger problem than your shipping problem, you know, and post boxes and everything, you know?

Yeah. I mean, no one's going to solve your people problem other than you yourself wanting to do this. Because everybody you hire is an extension of you.

Yeah.

A business owner, everybody you are hiring, everyone here is an extension of you. If you've started a cafe, for example, you might be a great barista yourself, but everyone you're hiring, when you're not there, they need to serve the customer exactly the way you would have served them, with the same smile, with the same level of gratitude and compassion. And that's why the first few hires always works really great. But then as you Start hiring more and more people. You make somebody a manager and then they hire people. Okay. There's a generational dilution that happens because of that. It gets really, really challenging. All right. And so how do you ensure that you have, you know, you don't have the scaling problems of people. You have that by, you do that by having a very strong culture and you have that by having really good systems, you ensure that life doesn't get in the way.

Now, when you work with a company, do you find that just getting acquainted with the organizational strategies Deputy has and installs in the business, that the leaders themselves wind up being changed in how they think and how they go about their business has. Do you think it has a little bit of a transformative effect on how the leader goes about the rest of the business?

Oh, easily, easily. Like, I mean, it depends on who they are, right?

Yeah.

As I am seeing right now, I mean, what has the biggest change over here has been over the last 10 years is that 10 years ago I actually had to come and like, you know, customers that were coming in in the early days, we had to convince them. I remember even our first customer just like, what my information is not going to be in a computer, is going to be in the cloud. That was the level of conversation. Okay. Right now the conversation is that how come it's not on my phone? Okay, yeah, we're a mobile first company. So it has significantly changed. The world has significantly changed. I mean, what has happened with Uber, what has happened with Netflix is that we are in the world of instant gratification economy. Okay? We want what we want, where we want, okay? It just happens. And that's just how people think these days. And if your software or if your business model is not that or isn't catering towards that, it's dead in the water. It's dead in the water.

And do you, you know, because you're obviously really in tune with the street, with your clients, with your people, the reaction and the real world, how do you stay so dialed into the real world and where your instincts are? Right on. How do you keep your instincts fine tuned to the real world? It's probably related to data, but go ahead. Well, what works and what doesn't work, what people are thinking, what they're not thinking?

Well, I mean, one of our values in Deputy is listen to learn. That's the number one value of Deputy is listen to learn. And one thing I do, Larry, I mean there are things that I listen in terms of what's happening in the industry and where the puck is going so that I get to where it's going to be. And the other thing is that listening to your customers and your users, one thing I do do is that I read every support ticket, I read every negative NPS feedback about Deputy all the time. Okay? I if I'm going to go out and dine, I'm going to go to a customer of Deputy as opposed to not, you know, somebody who's not a customer. Okay. And while I'm there, I'll talk to the people who are serving me. I'll talk to our customers. Yeah, it's you got to be at the front line. Okay? You really yourself, the leader, the CEO, you yourself have to be at the front line. If you are not, if you are going to be in an ivory tower at the corner office, you are destined for failure.

Now when you what do the five, you know, the five or six guys who work with you generally? How have you segmented their responsibilities to where you could run this stay in tune with this massive expanding juggernaut. For those of you who are sick and tired of fooling around and are dead serious about wanting to move up fast, I've got something especially for you. I've combined the best insights from over 40 years in business and making $70 million in income and compressed them into a free webinar. That's right. It's a free resource if you want to find find out exactly what the concepts are that I use in coaching million dollar earners. Register now@wearlyllonwinning.com you'll discover the five part framework used by so many to reach their financial, personal and professional goals. You can find that link in this episode's show Notes.

The way I look at it. For example, one of my direct reports is the Chief Product Officer of the company. Now all of technology, product management, engineering, design reports up through to him. So his job is to build the product and maintain and continuously make it better. And I work in very close partnership with him and his team directly. One of my other direct reports is the CFO of the company. The CFO's job is to make sure the company itself is the best it can be financially and metric wise. The CFO's job is probably one of the hardest job in the company and unsung hero for many companies in there. So yeah, work very closely with her. My other report is the Chief People Officer. Okay, the culture. Who do we hire? Who do we not keep in the company? How we are scaling the people working with CTO is also something really really something that I very, very passionate about. And also I have somebody who is leading all of global go to market, all of sales, marketing, customer success. And also working with her is super important. And just temporarily, actually, I have the brand and PR reporting to me as well. It's a temporary thing at the moment.

Why is that?

Well, no, I mean, we are going through some org structure in the, in the marketing side of the. We're hiring a marketing leader or if anybody's hearing this podcast and would like to be VP of marketing at Deputy, please reach out. Okay, sorry, Larry. I'm just going to do a pitch right there, but yeah, that's great.

Yeah, hopefully we'll ring that bell for you. But talk about now, why, when you're tweaking your brand and your pr, what goal, what end result do you want to have there? Like temporarily? You've got your eye on that. Did you see that? They was off from where you wanted it to be and you're making adjustments.

Making adjustments. It's not about making adjustments or not. It's more about like, hey, we have been very fortunate, Larry, because we have built such a great product that our customers, our users sell Deputy on our behalf. I'll back it up with a story soon. But I mean, one thing we have to do, the number one focus for me at the moment is to increase our brand awareness in the United States. Okay? We, as I said, in the United States, in the United States of America, increase our brand awareness. Is that something that I am very, very focused? Very, very focused on. But I'll tell you a story. I'll tell you a story. And this is a couple of years ago, this is actually 2016, in the twilight year of Deputy. I was at Gelato Messina on a Wednesday night at 10 o', clock, okay, buying gelato. I was wearing my Deputy T shirt. The guy behind the counter, the gentleman behind the counter asked, do I work for Deputy? I said, yep, I work for Deputy. My wife was there and corrected who I am. This thing I'm actually getting, you know, stock discount on gelato. And I'm like, all right, that's great. Didn't know that little hack. But I'm like, hey, any feedback about Deputy? What can Deputy do better? And I was looking at, it's been the biggest change in my working career. I'm like, wow, that's a big statement. Deputy has been the biggest change in your working career. I'm like, tell me more why? He's like, you know, in my past life, if I didn't want to come to come to shift. Because I want to go to a concert, for example, this Saturday. I'll call the manager saying that, Adam, can I not come? Manager, go find your own coverage. So I will have to go and call 10 different. 10 different people. I'm trading kidneys and I find a cover. And then I come in saying that, hey, can, you know, Johnny do my shift? And the manager goes, johnny cost more than you know. And I'm like, oh, I'm down two kidneys already. Okay. With Deputy, you know, I can just, you know, see, I can go to my Saturday shift, trade with somebody on Monday or Sunday or do I like working with the people on Saturday? No, I don't. I'm going to go next day. It has given me complete control of my life without having to worry my manager.

Yeah.

And he goes like, he told me something, Larry, that was probably one of the most transformational things that ever happened to me. He was like, I don't think I'll ever work for a business that doesn't have Deputy.

Wow.

I mean like, Larry, I mean, at the point, okay, I started this business to help the business owner, like, you know, my co founder, right. But there you are. There you are my biggest fan. And like, I mean, that has been like, you know, the shift workers, every nine months they change jobs. As they change up, they go to different business, they take deputy with them. That's how, that's how we had our first Irish customer. We didn't have anybody in Ireland. Okay. We didn't even have a UK office. But a backpacker from Sydney went back home to Ireland, opened up his own cafe, went to our website, signed up for deputy, never spoke to anybody. And even after all these years, have over 200 people working in his business using Deputy since 2014. And when I met to Ireland one day, I definitely want to go say thank you to him because that's how it has happened.

Wow, you guys have reached viral status here. I mean, you're spreading like a virus around the world.

Let's not say that. Okay? That was a good thing before pandemic. It's not a good thing after that, a good virus.

But I mean, that's really the thing is that's what every business should aspire to. You know what I'm saying? To add that much value that spontaneously. You know what we would, you know, I used to run sales forces as she and we would try, you know, you can't make commission salespeople do anything, you know, because they're on commission. You know, they're their own boss. But what we try and do is get them so excited with so many success stories and so many facts and figures that their heads would be spinning and they would be so excited they could not get help but talk to people spontaneously, pass on this information. If you could get that level, then you didn't have to worry about monitoring their activity and things like that. Because, you know, they were so excited. You know, because people love to spread exciting news. You know what I'm saying? And when you reach that level, the there's no endorsement like friend to friend to friend is the best endorsement of the world. That's how the world runs. And very few though businesses have the opportunity, have the reach that yours has. I mean, you're in a unique opportunity to get that going from country to country. Not just company to company, region to region, but country to country. Have explained, you know, like that.

Yeah, look, I mean, Larry, I mean a lot of people come to me about, you know, as they're starting their business, you know, and like, hey, what wisdom do you have? And, and what I always share is that building a great business is actually not hard because it's a very simple formula. It's A times B times C. A is solving a unique problem. Okay. You know, like, you know something that's it's a problem or it's an improvement in life, whatever it is like solving a unique problem that no one has solved. Okay. Or they have solved it, or you're solving it better. B is people that you've solved it for, they love you for it. And the way I would like to define love is. And you don't realize you love something until such time you take it away. If you were to take it away, aren't they going to beg and cry to get it back? Okay, so that's B, you know, ensuring that the people love you for it. And C is finding more B's. Who has A. A times B times C is a great business. Any great business you see in the world, be it the Amazon, be it Netflix, be it Uber, be it Apple, be it Google. That's what it is. They created something that people love, okay? And they don't. Even if they don't use the word love. If you were to take it away, you'll beg and cry to get it back. If Google was to disappear, would you beg and cry to get Google back?

Yeah.

Okay, that's what I mean. It's the same thing for deputy. And C is just more. Finding more.

I find myself Ashik. I'LL tell you this. I find myself, you know, I can see the flaws in Jeff Bezos, okay? You know, with, you know, the second wife and, you know, the extravagant. I can see his flaws. But if I hear anybody really criticize him, I start to get defensive to. I feel like I need to protect Jeff Bezos. You know, it's like, don't criticize him too much because Amazon has saved me a whole lot of time and really improved my life. You know, it's like, don't be criticizing Jeff Bezos too much around me, even though I see he's not perfect, you know, but it's just like you, you feel protective of these people that have gone and you, you, you give them the benefit of the doubt when they've done so much to help you or their company has done so much to help you. Does that resonate with you?

No, no, absolutely. Like, I mean, think about Jeff Bezos. You know, he has given, you know, 1 million because of Jay business. A million people gets to put food on the table for their family because of JV. There's so many super funds, sorry, Super Nation Fund, 401k fund, have done so well in creating wealth for all the other people that are involved over here. Entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is somebody who has jumped off a cliff without a parachute or a plane or a business plan, and they have figured it out. Surely they're going to get few things wrong. Surely they're going to cause some bruises. And they are not necessarily ordinary people. Okay. As they said, like, you know, you got to be half crazy. You're going to be half crazy if you start a business, okay, Full crazy Ornamental institute or if you're completely sane, you won't start, okay, in there. I have a lot of flaws myself, Larry. Okay. I'm half crazy. But that's what makes a business owner or an entrepreneur who they are. Yeah. It's a blessing in life to be able to give it. To give. I mean, I mean, I wasn't even born in Australia. English wasn't in my first language. I didn't even see a computer till the age of 16. I consider myself to be extremely fortunate for the ticket in life I have been given. Coming from a country called Bangladesh, which has about 160 million people, and there's only one guy, Kokashi government, who got the ticket in life to be who he is. So I find that an extreme fortunate. And so is every, every entrepreneur in the world, okay? We're taking this chance. We're going to have a lot of flaws but you know, it's really easy to cast a rock from the grandstand, but when you're playing the game in the field, I can tell you it's a lot out. But we do it because we love it and we are prepping for it.

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