If you’ve known me enough you know I’m not a person who likes to hide information about money. I’m so much inspired by capital markets, public companies, that sometimes I think of putting in all financial transactions that I make as a single person business in a publicly visible place.(i will write a detailed peice on single person business, the 2 sides of life, explaining the revenue making and revenue spending human in a few days).
If you’ve read up the annual, quarterly reports including balance sheets, P&L of a company you would be able to understand a lot about where money is generated and where money acts as input fuel. A business creates money by producing something of value.
On the same lines if I start to question myself, what value do I bring in professionally? Basis on that value capital markets set a price. Its like the price of 1 single piece of stock.
Stock price is a direct reflection of the public perception. Likewise as an individual if you’ve got to create a public perception.
[I am taking the strategy of producing quarterly/annual reports. Industry publications. Through the different experiements I am doing, I would be doing so over here on this website.]
Coming to the actual nuances of business I do for 14 hours. That’s my wake time. I have written a detailed documentation. Rest of the time goes into sleeping, and other activities. My wife describes me as a workaholic. That’s the most I will disclose about my personal life.
I work in a product company serving the martech category with CMS and AI Visibility Products. I lead the India operations for the largest partnership account our organisation has, which contributes to more than 10% of the ARR for the company I work in.
As part of my job, I manage 2 kinds of partnerships. One partnership with 2500+ accounts and the others as small 15-20 accounts, having potential to grow past 100s.
There’s a simple way I work with any of my clients (be it now, or during my time doing business for 10 years). If I can become the trusted advisor with whom any client is having transactions of trust, I would not need to worry about revenue flowing in. It would be a bi-product.
With that philosophy I scaled my business from 0 to 1.2CR under 3 years, in the process building a team of 7+ people.
The crazy business development story I always share – how we could manage to upsell a client from 5LPA billing to 22+LPA in billing. The only strategy we followed value based selling. Transactions of Trust. It was media back then.
Now it is a digital product, a platform which helps businesses find strategy to capture more AI search demand.
To work with a varied customer base, I employ my learning from the last few businesses. Video, as a means of communication. Basic, laptop camera and screen recording videos showing how the product is able to help solve the users problems. Some examples show efficiency gains, while others show new ways of using the digital products (a.k.a tools)
Apart from the fact that I am extremely confident in front of the camera, knowing photography/videography, travelling across the nation on my motorcycle, I love data.
Data has always fascinated me and I learn various tools necessary, to show data in a desired visualisation which helps paint a clearer picture in front of the client.
My previous experience of having run a business has taught me one crucial element about work. Your job is to eliminate your job. That is the whole aim of a business. Automation. A money printing machine. With that perspective, I look at operations as a function of optimisation. During my thesis in my final year in graduation, I worked on how water droplets have an intelligence quotient that help them navigate from source to delta in the most optimum path. Nature based algorithms solving combinatorial problems. later recommendations systems is what I worked on during my Masters in Computer Engineering.
Sorry, if I got too nerdy. Yes, that’s also a quality I bring to the table. Research. Deep deep deep reseacrh. Presently I’m researching on how many hotels in big cities 4*/5* hotels utilize 360 virtual tours, events calendar and itenararies as an inbound demand capture tool. I love to study industries, how it works, why it works. Like I describe myself on LinkedIn, observer.
Yes, I’m an observer. I truly believe that. and that is why I have a coaching programme where I teach 3 skills. Photography for everyday documentation, positioning and observations.
I love to conduct these sessions called Souls Beyond Screens on my YouTube channel. On my Instagram I am a different entity. Sharing things related to business.
I love to write, as you can possibly understand. Very vocal about what I see in and around me. Passionate.
I cannot and do not see the bad side of people/things. I always try to look at partnerships as the only way of sustainable growth. Both in real world and in the business world.
Oh I forgot to answer. Why is it easy to work with me? I may not be having the exact answer, but you can ask more than 100+ individuals whom I have worked with previously, they can reason out why I am great to work with. In corporate jargon, it is called “cross functional”.
That also helps me when i’m in countless product meetings negotiating with PMs and Engineering, why a particular enhancement is necessary and should be prioritized. I am getting real time feedback from clients. That’s the voice I try to portray when I’m in these meetings.
Having the background of a teaching in a school and subsequently in a college I try to coach and mentor every single person I interact with. be it clients or colleagues.
Lastly, its important to showcase how I make my manager look good in front of his? By enabling him with ideas that may have a larger business impact. That’s what I have bee doing for the past so many days and years.
Let me end this with a question. What do you feel my market value is? Ask this question to yourself. Or better still try to give an interview and judge where the market prices you at. Just like a single piece of stock is priced at some value. Everything has a value. How much is yours?