Why Adaptability Is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage with Richard Jalichandra

In this episode of Success Leaves Clues Podcast, our guest is Richard Jalichandra, accomplished CEO, board advisor, entrepreneur, and technology leader known for driving innovation, digital transformation, and sustainable business growth across multiple industries. With decades of executive leadership experience leading high-growth organizations and navigating complex market shifts, Richard shares valuable insights on scaling businesses, building high-performing teams, fostering a culture of innovation, and making strategic decisions in rapidly changing environments. We explore the leadership principles that enable organizations to adapt and thrive, the role of technology in shaping the future of business, and the mindset required to lead through uncertainty while creating long-term value. Whether you're an entrepreneur, executive, investor, or aspiring leader, this conversation offers practical lessons on growth, resilience, leadership, and staying ahead in an increasingly competitive world.

You can find him on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jalichandra/
https://www.inclinecapital.net/

Transcript

Richard Jalichandra 0:00

One of the interesting things about CEO coaching is most CEOs believe in coaching, but they want to hire a coach for their team and not themselves. So they're willing to spend money on coaching, but not on themselves because they're they're just like, you know, hardwired, you know, to be, you know, cheap and cost effective and I and reinvest in their business.

Davis Nguyen 0:22

So Welcome to Success Leaves Clues, the podcast where we interview business owners on how they built their businesses and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is David Swin, and I'm a business coach and a founder of Purple Circle, where we help business owners achieve their first six-figure, seven-figure, and eight-figure year, all without sacrificing their quality of life. Before becoming a business coach and before founding Purple Circle, I started and scaled several seven and eight-figure coaching businesses and have been a consultant at several businesses doing over $100 million each, including some that are publicly listed and doing over a billion dollars each. In every episode of the podcast, you're going to learn lessons that took our guests years to learn, and you'll be able to learn that in minutes. No matter if you're a new business owner or an established business owner, every episode is going to give you the clues in order to elevate your business.

Pedro Stein 1:07

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues Podcast. I'm Pedro, and today I'm joined by Richard John Lee Chandra, who is a CEO coach, formerly a six-time venture and private equity-backed CEO. And I'm happily and enjoying introducing you to uh Rich RJ as RJ, right? So welcome to the show, man. Happy to have you here.

Richard Jalichandra 1:30

Thanks for having me, Pedro. Appreciate it.

Pedro Stein 1:32

Yeah, I'm excited to record with you from the time we met, right? And RJ, I'm kind of a comic book nerd myself, right? So I love the first editions, the origin story, that type of stuff. Now, I gotta ask you, right? Let's rewind a bit. Because every coach has that moment when they look at their life and say, Yeah, I guess this is what I'm doing now, right? So when was that for you, RJ?

Richard Jalichandra 1:55

Well, the current incarnation is I retired four years ago, and I did nothing for a year. And then uh a neighbor of mine who runs an entrepreneur community, we were having margaritas in my pool one late summer, summer uh afternoon, and he's like, dude, are you just gonna do nothing? Uh there's a lot of there's a lot of people that would love your your experience and uh uh expertise and wisdom, whatever, that are in my community. Would you like to come in and run some masterminds for me? And so that's how I did it. I've done a little bit of coaching for off and on when I was even an operating CEO. I I did a little bit of coaching on the side, but it was definitely more a side hustle and only occasional. But then I started doing some masterminds, and the next thing I know, I'm I start picking up clients. Uh and over the last three years, I worked with over 80 CEOs and founders, uh, helping them figure out how to grow their business towards an exit.

Pedro Stein 2:57

Okay, let's draw a timeline here. I know we were talking uh a while uh before the podcast that was you started coaching 20 years ago, right? And then part-time, right? And then three years ago as a full-time gig, right?

Richard Jalichandra 3:12

Yes, okay that's full-time ish because I am also trying to be a little bit semi-retired.

Pedro Stein 3:19

Okay, trying to be semi-retired. That's funny. Okay, now walk me through. Let me understand the conversation about margaritas, right? When was that?

Richard Jalichandra 3:28

That would have been in 2023.

Pedro Stein 3:33

Okay. Now, why would you come from retirement to impact more people? I don't understand the why behind it.

Richard Jalichandra 3:43

Well, uh uh that's a great question. And I'll tell you what, uh, after a year of doing nothing, I was totally miserable. Um, you know, and that's one of the things, uh, another one of my side hustles these days is I also YouTube about retirement. And one of the most common things that people realize when they retire, you work, you know, 30, 40 years always thinking that I can't wait to do nothing. And then when you get to nothing, it's like, well, wait a second, I'm gonna live another 20, 30 years. I can't just sit around doing nothing, and my brain is gonna be fried and you know, whatever. And you can't sit around your pool just drinking margaritas all the time. So uh it was a it was the right time. I I really needed to find something um to do in retirement. And I can't think of a better way to do it because one of the things that you get in retirement is you have a loss of identity and a loss of purpose. But being able to actually kind of put my CEO hat on and help uh other younger entrepreneurs, I can't even tell you just how energizing and how much that you know keeps my brain fresh and gives me that intention and purpose. Uh, and it also feels great to just help young entrepreneurs, uh, not always young entrepreneurs. I've actually had one client that was older than me, but most of the time they're younger. And uh it really helped, you know, feels great to be able to help somebody see see things in their business that can give them you know daylight and and uh new ideas and stuff.

Pedro Stein 5:08

No, I I feel the need to dig in a little deeper, okay, about the retirement stuff. Um here's the catch, right? Uh a lot of coaches out there pivot or eventually move to retirement and treat coaching as a hobby, even just to keep fresh. Let me ask you this is this uh back to the game venture three years ago, right? Is this more of a hobby for you? Are you or are you definitely inclined to impact more people, help the younger generation? How does that look like for you, Jay? RJ?

Richard Jalichandra 5:41

Well, when my neighbor asked me to do a couple of masterminds for him, it was literally just like, I hey, I'm gonna try this out. And I really enjoyed it. The first time I was like, oh my God, these people are just eating up everything I say, and you know, just and I could see it because I was in their their their chair, you know, 20 years before or 30 years before in some cases, where I remember my first CEO gig, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. And so uh just being able to like feel useful uh was really intoxicating. I did not jump into it full time though, um, probably for another year. I kind of just did it part-time and and but I was starting to feel good. And then after a while, I was like, hey, maybe I should actually go out and try and get some clients versus just all the referrals I was getting. And so that happened after about a year, and I've been doing it pretty seriously for two years. Uh as I said, I've worked with over 80 CEOs and founders, uh, so that's quite a few if if you add it all up and even stretch it across three years. And sometimes it's a quick engagement, sometimes it's a long engagement. I've got a couple clients I've been working with for over two years. So uh it really depends on kind of what they the CEO or founder needs and all that. But yeah, I kind of like, you know, it's funny when I retired, this is you'll appreciate this too. When I retired, I paid myself a salary, you know, I'd put all my retirement money, you know, money, I had a nice trust set up, and I had paychecks coming every two weeks like I was still working. And in January of 25, I stopped paying myself because I was like, I was making enough in coaching where I didn't need it, but I also wanted to treat myself like a startup. So I stopped paying myself and I said I'm gonna make coaching kind of be the thing that uh lets me go for a while until I want to pull it back again and and uh you know maybe take some more time off. So I'm enjoying it, totally love it.

Pedro Stein 7:35

Nice. Okay, so it sounds like to me that you're serving in a way past RJ, right? Past self. Like you're helping CEOs that um when are going through the same stuff you went some time ago, and now you're just uh helping them to avoid a pitfall. Something like that.

Richard Jalichandra 7:53

Yeah, yeah. Well, and sometimes, you know, the way to think about coaching though is you think about any top performer in anything, whether it's sports, the arts, um, you know, literally anything, even academics and stuff, everybody's got a coach. You know, and if you really think about it, like somebody like LeBron James, you know, people say he's the best basketball player of all time. Do you know how many private coaches he has beyond the team coaches? He has six private coaches in addition to the team coaches. So everybody can use a little bit of you know help. And I certainly enjoyed it when I was a CEO as well, having somebody that could just literally kind of you know help you uh point out your your blind spots or work on your weaknesses, or you know, sometimes a lot of times you just even you know stuff, but you kind of forget the fundamentals because you start, you know, it's very common, like in sports in particular, um, people know how to do something and then they start shortcutting it. They start going straight to the answer instead of like doing the process. And so that's what a lot of times as a CEO coach, sometimes I'm really, you know, uh giving advice, and a lot of times I'm just fine-tuning kind of like what they already know.

Pedro Stein 9:10

Okay. I mean, I was born in '86, right? So Michael Jordan is the GOAT, by the way, in my opinion, right? I can accept a challenge about Libron, but okay. Now moving forward, if you had to define, right, who do you serve right now? Who would you say? I'm not sure if there's a demographic. I know we establish with CEOs and startups and all that, but who would you say? Like, I serve these type of people. Who are they?

Richard Jalichandra 9:38

Uh as I said, they're all entrepreneurs. Occasionally I work with co-founders, you know, so I'll help people get aligned, you know, in their their partnerships. It's funny enough, I've actually, uh, of the of all my engagements, I've done nine, what I'll call co-founder marriage counseling, where they're actually having problems almost like, you know, uh, and they're they're basically like trying to get either aligned, or in in two of those cases, they were actually looking for a way to actually divorce in in a productive way that didn't kill the company. So, but that's that's that that that's not the norm. The norm is usually just a CEO founder or co-founder is that they're legitimately just trying to grow their business and they want to get better at the job they're doing. And the way to grow the business is to help the CEO founder or or other leaders on the team just get better at what they do and raise their ceiling. So that's most of what I do.

Pedro Stein 10:34

Okay. Now let's pretend, RJ, I am your ICP or ideal client profile in this scenario. Okay. So, first of all, how would I be able to find you like marketing-wise?

Richard Jalichandra 10:46

Uh I'm terrible at marketing. Um, I've I've built my business completely word of mouth and and referral. Um, I do a little bit in the past, I've done a little bit of LinkedIn outreach, and I probably start that back up again at some point. Uh, but I've been terrible at doing outreach simply because I've had enough business come to me. Um, but now I'm kind of wanting to ramp it up a little bit more. Um, you know, just get some bigger and better clients and all that. Um, but uh yeah, that's it's so far I've been very fortunate. Let's put it that way.

Pedro Stein 11:22

Okay. I'm still that guy, okay, in this scenario. I'm still your potential client. Let's say I was referred to you, right? People told me, hey, you gotta talk to RJ, he's pretty cool. Um, I reach out, okay. So I'm an inbound lead. Let's put it like that. Like, hey man, how does it look like to work with you, right? We go through the sales process, however, that looks like. I understand there has to be alignment. We can speed up that a little bit. You understand you can help me. I understand you can help me too. Um, how does it look like to work with you, RJ? And what are the potential outcomes I can expect out of it?

Richard Jalichandra 11:57

Well, what before we even get to that, let me tell you what I do the first time I talk to somebody. I tell somebody what my philosophy is about being a CEO and and and growing as a CEO and being a great CEO. And it's a simple thing, and I give it away for free. Uh, happily give it away for free the first time we meet. So you can kind of like taste it, test it, and try it, you know, see what the flavor is, all that. Um, and if you didn't get enough there, I also have a two and a half hour video on online uh on YouTube that basically goes into a lot more detail. But the simple message is this a CEO really their number one objective should be to become a do-no-work CEO. And that basically means that you've gotten yourself completely out of the day-to-day and you've got the people, systems, and processes in place where your um vast majority of your time is totally free to just focus on the growth of the company and mentoring and leading and coaching your own team. Um, so vast majority of people I work with, they are far from a do-no-work CEO. Um, and so that's the first framework that I do. Everybody needs something different, but that's one of the core tenants of what I do is I work with CEOs and co-founders and founders and whatever, where I map out a plan for them to become, if it's not 100% do no work, we're trying to get to at least a 50% percentage of do no work because a company will not grow at its optimal rate unless you're at least a 50% do no work CEO, um, where you're out of the day-to-day and you're you're basically thinking about how do I grow this beyond the incremental growth and looking for the transformational growth. And that could be like new products, new markets, uh, acquisitions, you know, big ideas versus just like, oh, we're going to increase our sales 10%, you know, uh a year or something like that. Um, so that's the that's the core of what I what I do. Then this the next thing I do is every engagement is totally bespoke. Everybody needs something different. Um, literally every CEO needs something completely different. So then I I basically work with a CEO and and just kind of map out what is it they want to work on outside of that one thing that I do as the foundation of everything we're gonna do together, and that's become a do-no-work CEO.

Pedro Stein 14:25

Do no work CEO, interesting. So they can sleep on margaritas and then become a coach the other day. Just like you did, right? I'm fine, I'm just I'm just messing with you.

Richard Jalichandra 14:35

Well, it's pretty easy for me because as I as you said in the introduction, I was a six-time venture and private equity back CEO. And I would get hired by investors to come in and basically figure out a company and and sell it within two to three years. So you had to get very good at the process of being a CEO. And a big tenant of that was you're not really doing a good job as a CEO until you become a certain percentage of do-know work, which basically means the company can scale and grow without you.

Pedro Stein 15:03

Perfect. No, makes perfect sense. Now I'm curious about one thing, the structure, right? Is it mainly one-on-one? Do we have a one-to-many component? You mentioned a video, so there's some framework, some online processes. How does that look like?

Richard Jalichandra 15:16

Well, I I used to do group coaching. I don't do group coaching anymore. I I strongly prefer working one-on-one with somebody. I I definitely love group coaching too, but but the core of my practice is really one-on-one coaching. Sometimes, as I said, I work with co-founders, so I'll meet with two co-founders and sometimes occasionally three co-founders, and we'll have sessions, you know, as a group, and then sometimes we'll break off into one-on-ones. But most of my work is done one-on-one with people. And occasionally I will have a client uh ask me to coach one of their executives on their team as well.

Pedro Stein 15:55

Okay. Now let's pretend I'm still that guy. Okay. Yeah. And I am a co-founder. We're having trouble, right? Like you mentioned, the marriage counseling stuff and how you navigate that. So, how would you navigate that type of situation? I'm curious about how you you you step in and you kind of help them solve or understand where we're at and uh what this could potentially damage the business, and how can we solve that?

Richard Jalichandra 16:24

Well, there's a couple things you do. The first thing you want to do is find out what are you trying to achieve with the business? Um, if you can kind of get everybody focused back on on you know the business itself, sometimes you can get past the personality things. And then, of course, you get into where are we butting heads, where are we not agreeing? A lot of times it's on strategic direction or whatever, and then we can talk through that and all that. But and this is not just with co-founders, this is with anybody. After you know, you they've got my pitch and they know that I'm gonna try and train them to be a do-no-work CEO. What we really get at is what are you trying to achieve? Um, you know, and most people are saying, hey, I want to grow and eventually get to an exit, even if they have an exit that's 20 years off, it's still out there. And what you're trying to do is, okay, well, how do we plan to get from here to there? Uh so a lot of a lot of what I do too is uh I get um do a lot of work in strategic planning and teach people how to how to strategic plan. That's one thing that you get working with institutional investors, is they demand a strategic plan, which is a combination of things. They want to see a verbal articulation of it in some sort of slide deck, and then they want to see a numerical or quantitative expression of that strategy in a financial model. So I do work a lot with you know um CEOs, individual founders, co-founders. That's always the tenant of it. It's like, what are you trying to achieve? And do we actually have a plan to get from point A to point B? And the vast majority of people, when you sit down with them, uh and you say, What's your three-year plan? They go, Oh, well, we just want to grow by 20% a year, 30%. And I'm like, Well, how are you gonna do it? Where's your plan? Um, so that's another part of what I'll do is I'll sit down with them. I'll actually make them map things out and do homework, so to speak, as a kind of like a school mom uh, you know, cracking the whip and saying, you got to have a plan because how are you gonna get your whole team on that team on that if they don't know what the plan is?

Pedro Stein 18:32

Does the conversation sometimes uh move to a different direction rather than just revenue, like impact or trying to create something meaningful, or is it just mainly revenue-wise to talk?

Richard Jalichandra 18:45

Well, look, I said every every engagement is different. Everybody has different needs and and whatnot, but generally the most common thing is around the business itself and and how do you grow it? There's lots of reasons that people hire me. Um, I get you know, one of the most common things is somebody's kind of like got some a little bit of escape velocity, but they're they're kind of at their natural ceiling of where not just themselves, but their whole team. And so I a lot of people are like, well, how do I hire an executive team? Um, because you know, especially if you bootstrapped a business and you could even be doing, you know, seven, eight figures, but you bootstrapped it, you you've done everything on your own. The time it comes to hire a you know, an expensive multiple six-figure executive, they basically want to cough up a lung when they understand how much it's gonna cost and they get nervous about like how do I actually build an exec team. So I get involved a lot in helping people map out kind of what their people needs are gonna be as well. Because if you ask me, like, I mean, I've grown a lot of businesses and you ask me how did I grow the businesses, I'm like, I hired really good people and that's it. I mean, hired and managed great people and then get the heck out of their way, which goes right back to the do no work CEO. It's like, how do you how do you, you know, I've taken two companies from zero to eight figures in really short periods of time, and everybody said, Well, how do you do that? Well, I hired executive teams that already had done it, and so that's a a lot of what I'll end up doing with clients is uh not just working on their strategy, but part of the strategy is like, okay, well, then who's who's my executive leadership team? Who's gonna make that plan happen? Because you know, the bigger you get, you can't do it on your own.

Pedro Stein 20:30

Okay, interesting. Um, I gotta ask you something. You're the uh you mentioned multiple times a do no work CEO, right? And when we're looking at your current stage, you're you're getting out of retirement, right? And doing this almost sounds like a passion project too. But do you see yourself trying to not be so involved in the operations? Sort of a do-no-work CEO in this coaching practice, like you're involved heavily in the one-on-ones, right? Uh the one-to-many, the group coaching, something you distance yourself from. Do you see yourself training a coach, licensing, you know, trying to step out a little bit off the weeds and actually run as a do-no-work CEO?

Richard Jalichandra 21:13

Um, uh well, I I absolutely can see some of my clients when they get a little bit further along and they sell their businesses, I can see some of them becoming uh coaches as well, because the the do-no-work CEO paradigm works so well, you know, because basically to get to any percentage of do know work, like I said, it gets back to you, it means you're putting people uh systems and processes in place. And and uh so it's just a super helpful framework. And I a lot of people love that. So I 100% could uh teach people to to to work with people on that, but that's not necessarily part of my plan right now. I just am enjoying working with people and helping them grow their their businesses and in and in some cases achieve you know their their dreams.

Pedro Stein 22:00

It just so happens it's yours too, right? To help them. That's your true intention, it sounds like. Now, I'm curious about future shifting gears for a second, right? Where are you taking all this? Looking ahead, where do you see the business going, RJ?

Richard Jalichandra 22:13

I'm just gonna keep coaching. And um, but I I I've now I've enjoyed it so much that I think I can um handle a lot more. Uh as when I started this, I was thinking about doing it part-time, and then it kind of turned into a little bit more of a part-time than part-time. And so now it's I'm kind of running it like its own business, and which is why I said now it's time to probably start doing some outreach again and and uh do some networking beyond uh just what comes to me.

Pedro Stein 22:43

Okay, and of course, whenever we're aiming towards the next chapter, always something we're refining the present, right? And you mentioned Mark and you mentioned some stuff, but what are you currently trying to improve or tighten up in your business right now?

Richard Jalichandra 22:57

Probably the most important things I can do is just get in in front of more people, and that could be done via online methods of just being introduced to people. But really, I I I also plan to do a lot more just in-person networking. One of the interesting things about CEO coaching is most CEOs believe in coaching, but they want to hire a coach for their team and not themselves. So they're willing to spend money on coaching, but not on themselves because they're they're just like you know, hardwired, you know, to be you know cheap and cost effective and I and reinvest in their business. So the in-person or just even live conversation is really important to get somebody to basically spend the money on themselves. And you know, I'm not cheap. You know, I'll say that right up front. Um, I'm not cheap. So so like for somebody to get them to invest in themselves, you almost have to have that personal live conversation. And like I said, it could be done like this on a on a Zoom call, or it could be done going to a conference or you know, the local chamber of commerce business lunch or you know, whatever it is. Um, and I kind of realized that I just need to kind of get out there a little bit more and network. One of the things that, you know, at the end of a career, and I'll also point out my career, I started off in sales and business development and marketing. So I was always out there. And when I stopped working, I was like, the last thing I want to do is more outreach. I don't I don't care if I ever sell another thing as long as I live, um, or you know, do another sales pitch. And of course, the the reality is if I want to do what I have to do here, you have to get out and meet people and all that. And so I kind of come out of my shell after literally turning it off and then kind of getting into it begrudgingly because people were asking me for help. Now I'm uh you know wanting to be outward again and get out there and and uh you know make a little bit of a name for myself again in this new career.

Pedro Stein 24:57

Interesting. You you you sparked my curiosity about one thing. You mentioned the CEOs, sometimes they don't hire coaches for themselves, but for the team, then you know that uh friction that can exist. So I'm curious about one thing, right? Um, have you ever been to a company that the CEO brings you in and tells you something like this? You know what? My team is a problem, uh, they're not performing, they're underperforming, whatever. Then you hop on and you realize leadership is the problem. That CEO is the problem, right? The guy who is also a paying customer. So if that happened, not sure if it did, but how would you navigate that conversation?

Richard Jalichandra 25:40

Well, one of the great things about being semi-retired is um you maybe heard the expression I have no F's left to give. Um F being short for a French word. Um I don't care. Uh, I don't need to do this. Um, I like doing it. And if somebody wants my help, great. If they don't, that's no problem either. You know, have a great life. I want everybody to be happy, myself included. And and trust me, I I get to the point where uh at least twice in the last three years I've fired clients because I was like, you're not listening, and you're not getting any value out of my thing. And if you're not getting value, then I'm not getting value. So what are we doing? And they were happy to keep paying me. And I was just like, I don't want your money, uh, because it's not enjoyable for you, it's not enjoyable for me. So most of the time, I have no problem telling somebody like you're the problem. Um, and here's how we're gonna work on that. Um, and invariably, I will say this even the most elite CEOs I work with, the best CEOs, they're usually the best clients because they they want you to tell them like, dude, you suck, or you or that was a bad decision, or you know, uh, or try something else, or you know, it usually where you have problems is people when they're insecure um and they don't want that feedback. Um, and then I'll give them that feedback.

Pedro Stein 27:06

Right. I love it. Okay. Now I want to tap into your experience for a second because people listening can really benefit from this. We we will have CEOs and not just that, we have the coaches who are also CEOs, right? And you've been in the game long enough to hear all kinds of business advice. Some are good, some are terrible, right? So what's one piece of business advice, RJ, you hear all the time that you think eh, that's overrated or misunderstood, even.

Richard Jalichandra 27:34

Probably I'll be careful with my words here. I was gonna uh say please do it. I think one of the the silliest things I hear people say, selling being silly being a more friendly term, is that when I hear a leader say we only hire a players here. And I'm like, oh really? You only hire a players. And when you look at the the uh you know the normal curve of distribution in society, only six percent of people are a players, 58% are c players, and so basically one of the things I coach is do not think you have a players. You will have the your your company's success is going to be based on B and C players. And how do you build the systems and processes around that make C players really successful? Remember, C C is not bad. C means you're passing, you're doing the job, and and and um, and so you have very few A players in an organization. So it's really important to just have that recognition that your company's success is going to be on how well you manage B and C players. A players don't they don't need your help. The B and C players need your help. And then how do you take a C minus player to a C plus? And how do you take a C plus to a B minus? That's developing your people, that's also developing the the systems around them so that there's less chance for them to um make mistakes and more chances for them to succeed. And so that's probably like the one thing I always love, like, you know, I immediately like you know, slap somebody and say, stop saying that, stop saying that. Because there are a few companies, like there's a few companies like you know, Google or or something like that, where they can literally afford to go out and take, give people IQ tests and hire nothing but A players. Most most organizations they succeed on C players uh with a smattering of B's, and then you might have one or two hero A players, and you can have an incredibly successful business, you know, working with nothing but C players. I mean, if you want to just just think of some of the most successful fast food restaurants, there's nothing, you know, the people working on you know behind the griddle and and the counter, they're they're C players at that point in their life or whatever, and yet you have these very successful large-scale restaurant organizations. That's the best example I can give you of why how you how you can make c players make a great business.

Pedro Stein 30:11

Yeah, like it brings me back to McDonald's, right? Great system. So they can get a C player to work there like you know, like that. So it's not just about the the the people, the individual, it's also about the systems in place, right? And how you you can control that anyway.

Richard Jalichandra 30:28

All all the things, yeah.

Pedro Stein 30:31

Okay.

Richard Jalichandra 30:31

No, and so and and the reason it's so important for people to understand that is they they just assume that they're gonna be able to go out and find a players. And I'm like, when I talk to people, like they give me their budget for a position and they say I want an A player, I'm like, wait, that's not an A-player budget. Because the A players, they get paid really well. And if you want an A player, I'm like, I'm just telling you, you can't afford it. So what are you gonna do? Um, and so that's when you got to go down and say, All right, let's stack rank these people and say, all right, this is a really solid B player that can do the job if I give them these things in place. And it could be coaching, it could be training, it could be you know, the right software program, or you know, whatever it is that makes that person successful.

Pedro Stein 31:15

There's another classic one, right? Which is nobody wants to work. Yeah, at that salary range, maybe no, right? And they they always talk about sometimes about the external factor, not about the stuff they can actually solve it, right? So there's that too. Now, I'm curious on the other side, what's a piece of advice you wish more people actually took seriously? You know, a boring one.

Richard Jalichandra 31:39

Um well, it's related again to people because organizations are you know they grow and succeed based on the people you you you bring in, and uh and I constantly find people that are unwilling to invest um what they need in in the having the right people. And I'll give you a great example. So this comes up all the time. I've got uh I'll be approached by some entrepreneur, he's doing great, you know, maybe got a business to five million dollars on his own or her own, uh, goes both ways. Um, and they're going, hey, I want to get to $10 million. Can you help you know help me get to $10 million? And I'll ask a really simple question. How many people on your team have ever worked in a $10 million company? And they're like, uh nobody. And I'm like, well, who's the highest paid person on your staff? And they're like, okay, they'll they'll put out a number and it's really low. And I'm like, well, that was good enough to get you to 5 million. But if you're gonna go to 10 or 25, you need people who you don't have to have a whole team, but you have to have a handful of people, one or two people, particularly on your leadership team, who've actually been at a bigger company and know the systems and processes and the just the things that have to happen to be at that scale. And so that's a super common one. And and again, it goes all the way up to you know, same thing. I work with a $25 million company and they want to get to 100. It's like, do you have anybody at your company? One person, just one person on your leadership team that worked at a hundred million dollar company. If not, you probably need to go get one. And then then they're kind of like, and by the way, I've made all these same mistakes. So let me be really clear about that. I was a six times you know, I made a lot of the same mistakes that I'm that I'm calling out here. And it's like, uh, I'll give you an up uh, you know, uh, an example from my thing. I'd like I wanted to hire a chief revenue officer, and I just had it in my mind that this there was a certain price tag, and I was like, you know, I need to do that. And my CFO finally tapped me on the shoulder. He's like, dude, that ain't enough. You're not gonna get the person you wanted that price. Reset your budget. And you kind of like, you know, it goes to the old saying, you get what you pay for. And sometimes in key positions, you need to overinvest in people with compensation.

Pedro Stein 33:58

Would you say they have to be in the same industry?

Richard Jalichandra 34:02

Um, it depends on what industry you're in and what role they're they're doing. So I think this gets asked to me all the time, like at the CEO level, do you need somebody with industry experience? You can make a really strong argument that somebody needs to be from that industry, but I can tell you I took over from founders and I ran the businesses better than they did, and I had no experience in any of the industries. But I was also kind of a professional executive. So I didn't know about the industry, but I knew about how to run a company, how to grow a company. So that works at a senior level. I think sometimes you do have to have people that are you know industry specific, have a domain expertise. But again, when you do find the proverbial a player, you can take an A player out of any industry and drop them into another industry and they're gonna do fine. Just because they have a uh a high sense of achievement. And one of the ways they get the high sense of achievement is they learn stuff, they know how to learn. They learn, they know how to learn, they know how to pick things up quick, they know how to work hard and all that. And you can achieve the same thing with a lot of B players as well.

Pedro Stein 35:14

Okay, love that. Interesting. Now, if someone listening wants to connect with your follow your work, RJ, and we're gonna have all the links in the description here, but what's the best way for people to find you and connect with you?

Richard Jalichandra 35:26

Really easy. Um, LinkedIn, uh, there's only one Jolly Chandra family on the planet, and I'm the one on LinkedIn. So if you want to get me on LinkedIn, you can get me there. You can also go to my website, which is inclinecapital.net. That's kind of my personal website. But people reach out to me from from both, and I'm not that hard to find.

Pedro Stein 35:47

Okay. You know, a few moments from this chat today that really stood out to me. Let's start with the origin story, right? You're with your buddy, and you're like, Are you just gonna do nothing? And the and to to sipping margaritas, and and later down, yeah, I kind of had to dig in a little bit. You told me you're feeling totally miserable for not doing anything. And I I can resonate with that partially, right? Um, had been in my 20s when I left banking and I had like a huge sum of money, and I was like doing nothing for a year, and I felt miserable. I had to do something about my life, you know? It's that sense of achievement. I don't know what it is actually, but uh to a point, I always remember this uh Jim Carrey quote, which is something like I wish I'm gonna butcher it, but it's something like I wish people experienced what it is to reach to a certain level that they will understand that that's not the answer, you know.

Richard Jalichandra 36:44

Some like that it's not about I saw that him give that interview, and that's uh 100% right. And you paraphrased it, and it's like when you finally get there, it's not about I mean you it's one of the cliches, you know. The other way to say it is it's not the the end point, it's the process to get there. Um, and that's kind of like what I'm enjoying now about coaching. You asked me where am I taking it? It's like, well, I don't really need to take it anywhere because I am retired, whatever, but I'm enjoying the whole process of doing it. I love the human connection and and the ability to help somebody and and and just get better. It's super fulfilling to me.

Pedro Stein 37:24

Yeah. And also, uh I think about the the honesty part. You're you're blood honest, right? Um, you're telling me you're terrible at marketing, you're telling me you don't care, you just call people out. Um you're super honest about where you want to take this, right? You're not trying to place someone you're not. Um at the end of the day, man, I think everyone should be like that, like in a day-to-day basis, not just because you're kind of you know settled, but because I can't I can't be dead tomorrow, right? I don't know, right? I I'm just gonna do my thing, man, and uh hope for the best and keep being me. I mean, at least this is my way of doing things. Now, this is just my long-winded way of saying, RJ. I appreciate what you do, man. I appreciate you being here and sharing so openly today, okay? It was great having you on.

Richard Jalichandra 38:12

Awesome. Well, I I enjoyed being here, and it's great to connect and uh and hopefully somebody gets some value out of it.

Davis Nguyen 38:19

That's it for this episode. This episode, as well as this podcast, was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help business owners elevate their business through six, seven, and eight-figured years, all without burning out. If you're looking to grow your business as well as get the time freedom that you are looking for, visit us at join purplecircle.com and see what we can do to help you and your business.