Navigating Challenges in PropTech: Sharad Mehta on Building and Scaling REsimpli

Sharad Mehta, the innovative mind behind RESimpli, joins us for an enlightening conversation about his journey in building a bootstrapped SaaS powerhouse, RESimpli, within the PropTech arena. His story of transforming a personal real estate tool into a comprehensive platform for investors is nothing short of inspiring. Together, we unpack the crucial role that AI and automation play in revolutionizing real estate operations and discuss Sharad's strategic decision to maintain 100% ownership of his flourishing business. We also explore the intricate balance between the freedom of bootstrapping and the benefits of raising capital, all while sharing personal anecdotes from our own entrepreneurial paths.

Chapters

• 0:00 Bootstrapped SaaS Growth in PropTech
• 10:58 Navigating Bootstrapping and Building Growth
• 21:17 Founder's Responsibility and Growth Strategy
• 25:29 Lessons Learned in SaaS Growth
• 33:27 Scale With Vision and Mentorship
• 38:19 Navigating Growth Challenges and Rebuilding Profit
• 42:53 Future Tech Trends in Proptech
• 48:00 Data-Driven Growth Strategies in SaaS
• 55:50 Building Impactful SaaS Businesses

Transcript

00:00 - Hope (Announcement)
Are you trying to raise millions for your SaaS startup when this founder built a 10 plus million AR company with zero funding and 100% ownership? Sharad Mehta, founder and CEO of REsimpli sits down with host Jesse Burrell to discuss building and scaling a bootstrapped SaaS company in the PropTech space through product excellence and customer first philosophy. Welcome to the Real SaaS Podcast Real talk with the builders behind the most innovative SaaS companies in prop tech and beyond. We dig into product market fit, team building, funding failures and the playbooks driving growth. No fluff, just raw insights on strategy execution and what's coming next. Now here are your hosts. 

00:43 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
What is going on and welcome to another episode of the Real SaaS Podcast. I'm your host, jesse Burrell, done over $120 million in software sales, and I have on Sharad, who is another SaaS beast that is in the prop tech space. Sharad, before we get started, just tell us a little bit about your journey, just a couple of quick minutes, and how you started and what REIsimpli looks like today. 

01:11 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Yeah, I mean I started about six, seven years ago. I'm an active investor, used to live in Chicago, was investing. Right after Chicago moved to California where I live now, started looking at the software I would need in my business to manage my business. Podio was pretty much what everyone was using. I think I logged into Podio for like two minutes. I'm like, yeah, there's no way I'm going to use this. So I hired a couple of developers to create something for myself and it just kind of like grew from there into what it is now. You know I'm still using, still actively flipping I do about 30, 35 flips a year but majority of my vast majority of my time is spent on running and managing recently. 

01:52 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, so we have very similar stories then, because I was kind of doing the same thing with how we created, you know, batch skip tracing, then batch leads and batch dialers. 

02:02 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
No, Ivo and Anny and I were in the same mastermind. I think that's kind of where we started in sharper leadership with. 

02:09 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Gary. 

02:10 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Harper, yeah, that's kind of where we started, so it's interesting. 

02:13 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, and you know, they know you, I haven't gotten to spend much time talking with you, so I'm excited to actually have you on the podcast today and learn a little bit more about what you do. Have you on the podcast today and learn a little bit more about what you do, because personally, I think you're insane. I don't know how you're running a software company and still doing flips. We gave up on the real estate investing side for the active side, I think, in 2020. 

02:43
So yeah, that was five years ago, talk about a stupid mistake to exit flipping in 2020 when you had two and a half years of a of a bull run there, but it led us to stay singularly focused on, as you know, um, just our softwares. And, you know, lucky enough, we were able to carve out and sell part of it um about a week ago and we got to announce it today. So that was, that was super exciting. But, um, back to you, tell us about your. Your current let's and we're just going to focus on rei. Simply, today is tell us, like your current business, where's it at today? Um, what are you guys doing? What's exciting you about? 

03:17 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
about that company yeah, I mean, we have thousands of investors all over the country using us from people that are just getting started. You know, I'm sure we have a handful of people that are, you know, common customers between us and, I guess, propstream now. So it feels weird to say that, yeah, I'm sure. 

03:38 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I never thought I would be having this hat on my head. I could tell you that much. 

03:42 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
I know, I know that's crazy. It's crazy. I'm the first one doing this interview with you after the announcement, so congrats again, man. That's exciting, thank you. No, I mean, we have investors all over the country, from people that are just starting out all the way up to investors that are doing two, three, 400, 500 deals a year using the platform. It's been absolutely amazing. I mean, honestly, I never thought when I first started the company we would be where we're at now and then just even more excited about the future things that we have coming Like. I get up every day feeling absolutely blessed to be doing what I'm doing and it just kind of grew from what I was doing. I still own 100% of the business, so we never had to raise any money. We're cash flow positive, incredible team of people that we work with. I could not feel more blessed with what I'm doing. Absolutely grateful. 

04:42 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, and I guess for people that don't know you want to explain what, because you have a CRM, but I know it does more than just CRMing. So for people listening to the podcast and just interested in SaaS in general, kind of give a quick overview of just what Ari simply is. 

05:01 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Yeah absolutely so. When I started the company, we had three goals in mind. One it had to be super simple to use. It's the name recently. I come from an accounting background, so it prospecting, managing your marketing, acquisition, disposition and even bookkeeping and accounting. So that's kind of where we're at right now. So everything an investor needs to do from pulling a list all the way up to marketing, calling, texting, emailing, managing leads, disposition and even doing bookkeeping and accounting I don't use even QuickBooks. In my business we have tons of investors that don't use QuickBooks. They manage even their bookkeeping and accounting within recently. But yeah, that was the goal from the beginning just to create something where an investor can log in just once off day and do everything they need to do just for one soft hit. 

06:12 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
That is ambitious, because I know the challenge of having to have all of these things function together and separately to make a user experience that is liked by the customer. So it's pretty incredible to know what you, what you've done, cause I know the challenges that go along with having. You know, batch leads, you know has a lot of robustness to it as well, with being able to do a lot of things and making sure that, um, those workflows make sense and work and and people. I mean there's a lot of times where people which I'm sure you've experienced is they don't even know some of the great features that you have and you're like we already have that 100%. 

06:49 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a, that's a challenge or that that's a, you know, creativity challenge that we deal with. I'm I'm, you know, I'm the CEO, but my true passion is on the product development side. That's the stuff that I absolutely love. You know, we're working on a major update to come out at the end of the year with everything we've built, you know, just to streamline the entire UI UX experience. It's absolutely a challenge because, you know, when you have so many things in one platform, it's not just about adding things, it's about okay, how do we naturally add them? So it just makes sense, it just seems like a natural part of the product, not something that's been forced or, you know, unnecessarily laid over. So we're working on an update just to, you know, kind of bring everything together. But so far it's been good. 

07:39
I mean, but yeah, we run into that issue all the time that we get feedback. Hey, I wish you guys did that. I'm like, yeah, we run into that issue all the time, but we get feedback. Hey, I wish you guys did that. I'm like, yeah, we already have that, We've had it for a couple of years You're preaching to the choir. 

07:53 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
They're like I'll have a friend call me. It's so nice if you had that. I'm like that's been in there for two years, dude. And then it makes me feel like what are we? 

08:09
doing wrong to where you didn't know that. Where, where in our customer journey did did we fail you? And a lot of the times it's people just not digging or even watching any of the videos we send or the tutorials. We're asking them to kind of walk through to really show them the power of our softwares, because I know so many of our tools now are so powerful for for real estate investors. It's just, you know, like, please take the time to to see all the stuff that we've worked on and we've done, because there's a lot of thoughtfulness that goes into. You know the product roadmaps that I worked on. I know you know that you worked on as well. So it's just it's interesting figuring out how to really let your customer know all of the benefits that they have when they're paying this monthly subscription all of the benefits that they have when they're paying this monthly subscription in Because you know if someone sees the value in it. 

08:46
you know the name of the game is how do you keep people there for longer? It costs a lot more money to you know, acquire a new customer than to keep a happy one. So just making sure that they're seeing that value in what we have, because I know you've been. When did you get into real estate investing? 

09:03 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Investing I personally started in about 15 years ago. 

09:06 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
August 2010 is when I was like 14 ish and like for what we charge to. The value that we bring is incredible. To when we started, I mean there was nothing. I mean nothing was automated. 

09:20
Everything was fragmented it was. It's crazy how I guess it made it that much harder to kind of get in and learn it. Um, now it's like everything's at your fingertips. You know we have. We have batch rank on batch leads. Now to where someone clicks a button. We're going to tell you the most likely to sell properties in a given area. And hey, go talk, just go do the work like here, um, yeah it has. 

09:42 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
The technology has changed so much and I I mean it's like with AI. Now, you know, people sometimes would ask me hey, what's your goal for five years? I'm like five years. I mean I'm lucky if I can nail the next six months properly with how fast the technology is changing. It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. 

10:02 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, evo's. Evo said he's like with AI and how fast it's advancing. It's even tough to have a product roadmap a year out now because there's just like the scalability of how some of these things are coming out is. It's pretty incredible. But okay, let's go on to the next question. How has your business changed over the last three years? How differently does it look than three years ago? Talk about that a little bit. 

10:34 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
I would say it's changed a lot in last year with AI, even the AI products that we have. Now, you know, we have AI products built in where you can have AI answer the call, make outgoing call, have a conversation with someone like this is honestly something we didn't even have on our roadmap a year ago. And I'm like to Ivo's point yeah, like the couple of years before that it was about okay, what additional features can be add, what additional pain points can be solved. Now it's about ai and automation. So, like last 9 to 12 months has been super focused on ai stuff. Like what can we do? That's gonna another challenge that we have to keep in mind, another thing that we have to keep in mind and, like this, the things that we're working. It should not be gimmicky, it should not be for namesake. Oh, we added something ai, you know. Yes, it's ai feature. No, it is like is it actually adding value? Is it actually making? Is it actually helping investors close more deals? 

11:42 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
You know like we have AI. It's shiny objects and it's just. It's AI that's impactful for workflows and it sounds like that's kind of where your focus is at oh, 100%. 

11:53 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Yeah, Like what is actually going to move the needle for people? Like having AI answer the call 24 seven and have a conversation with the seller. To me that's impactful. Like we've had 80 yearyear-old sellers call in, talk to AI for like 10, 12 minutes straight, you know, and previously this call would have gone to a voicemail. We've had AI make outgoing calls. We've had AI have text message conversation, booked appointments, you know, booked meetings with the seller. Like that is actually moving the needle for investors versus having, hey, AI can write emails or text messages, which is great, but is it really moving the needle? Is it really helping you close more deals? And that's kind of what the lens that we're looking through is. What can we do with AI that's actually gonna help people make more money? At the end of the day? 

12:43 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
So you kind of alluded to this or you did allude to it just real quickly and I want to touch on it is you know me, annie Nevo, bootstrap the whole batch product line you bootstrapped Ari, simply let's talk about I want to hear your opinions on the benefits of being bootstrapped and doing that, but I also want to talk about some of the drawbacks of. Like you know, maybe you wish you could have raised some money or had some growth equity come in, because there's there's benefits and drawbacks to both. I'd love to get your opinion on. You know, do you enjoy being bootstrapped? Do you wish you would have maybe raised a little bit or had some strategic relationship to help you grow faster? I have some opinions on it, but I'll give it after I hear what you have to say. So I'd love to hear kind of your opinions on bootstrap versus raising some money. 

13:37 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
I mean honestly, I never considered raising money. I had a profitable real estate investing business. I own rental properties. I was using the money from that to invest in the company. Looking back, I don't think I would change anything. It gives me the flexibility of making the decisions that I want to make. It helps me not give a shit about what anyone's like has to. I do have a coach or a mentor that I work with. I am considering giving him equity in the company, but he's not putting in any money. But that's something I feel like our goals are aligned in the long term. So I'm bringing him on as an advisor. 

14:21
I do miss the. I wish the. The only benefit I would see is having a quarterly board of advisors that I can go to. That can hold me accountable. You know, when, like, I don't even have any co-founders, I can. In hindsight I wish I had a co-founder and I kind of you know I look at you, eva and Annie I feel envious about that. 

14:40
I mean there's pros and cons of that, but yeah, I feel envious about that. Like just having someone to talk to, like I own a hundred percent of the business, which is great, but then at the same time. I don't have anyone that's going to challenge me on the things that you know my opinions or my you know view about where the business should be going. So I'm bringing on someone giving planning to give him equity, just almost like as a co-founder in the company that someone can challenge me, hold me accountable, hold our leadership team accountable. So that's the one part that I miss. But I don't see the net positive of raising money would be there for me. I'm very happy to be in the position that I'm in to be able to make the decisions that I'm able to make. 

15:23
Curious to hear what your thoughts are. 

15:25 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, so having I guess I'd never came out it from not having partners. But, to your point, it's nice to have two partners that are very intelligent, very business savvy. To be told no, and that's not a good idea. And you haven't thought that through. At the same time, the other thing I really like too is like I can't just go fuck off for four weeks and go travel and just be like I'm just gonna go do whatever I want while my partners are here grinding, like we're obviously able to take our vacations and do our stuff and we'll kind of, you know, take over some responsibilities for each other, for us to do those things, but it's just I can't do what I want whenever I want and I actually like it that way. To where I am held accountable, I have other people that are grinding next to me and, to your point, having good and bad ideas to bounce off of each other and really be thoughtful through. So you can't make as quick of a decision. I think is is actually pretty important. But at the same time, on the raising money, I've always kind of been like you. It's like get the product market fit, get profitable and then go scale. 

16:32
The only advantages I see for raising money is one we were both in a position to where we had successful companies that could fund these companies, but that's not always the case. So we were both kind of fortunate on that side of things. But I think to your point is having a board of advisors. It's not as much the money, it's getting that right strategic people to maybe fund your company to grow it faster. But at the same time I don't have relationships to get into, you know, big MLSs with our data or this or that, to where it could have just opened some doors to get there faster and get there with some big deals that could really be profitable for you. And then when you go to sell, you know we didn't really meet any nevo didn't, because, you know, as we, as you know, we just sold to prop stream and stewart but we didn't have anyone in our corner to help with some of those strategic relationships. 

17:28
Luckily it happened organically and it was just truly a win-win scenario. But I feel like if I were to go to sell again and if I had partners, they would be able to help maybe maximize the sale, or maybe someone that was on the fence of maybe acquiring us being like, well, you already have these board of advisors, like, okay, we could trust this team, we're willing to go put an LOI in those. Those are really the only benefits I could see. But between me and you I wouldn't change the way that I did it. Um, and I got to keep more. You know what I mean. At the end of the day. 

17:55
So yeah, that's kind of my thoughts on it. 

17:58 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
No, it definitely gives you a lot more flexibility. I mean just my, my like three to five years is the same version that eventually, you know want to exit the company. So I'm thinking, okay, who do I need on my team right now to have the the most profit? Yeah, let's talk about it. You have the most profitable exit. So where it adds the value at the end of the day to you know, brings the most value. So that's why I'm bringing on a business coach that I'm working with. He sold his company for nine figures, so I'm bringing him on. And then he's working with several other clients you know that are doing very high volume. So it's good to have someone on like that on the team who's guiding me, who's saying, okay, these are the things that need to happen right now to make sure that three next three to five years, you get the highest ROI on the things that you're doing. 

18:52 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, I, I couldn't agree more. So your ultimate goal is to have some type of exit eventually, right, right. 

19:01 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Uh, I mean yes, no, I mean I'm really enjoying what I'm doing, I really feel excited about what I'm doing, but I would like to have exit, not so much for myself but for the team that I have, just so that they can get a pretty nice chunk of. You know, I have I own 100% of the company, but I have, we have these agreements yeah, exactly, agreement with the team, like not stock option, like honestly it's a single member LLC that I own the company in. But I have, you know, I don't even know what. 

19:32
Yeah, Is it called like we had phantom shares, so it's like they have shares but they're only On the exit basically yes, when we exit the company, based on how much we exit, the more we exit, for the higher percentage they get. Yeah, that's exactly what we have. 

19:48 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Exactly and that was kind of a big thing for me was especially partnering and having PropStream acquire us, like our team gets to go build this super app with like the technologies that both of us have and they get to combine and grow and get opportunities to further their career. 

20:05
So when this came by us, it was just it was a no-brainer for me being able to keep batch data. 

20:13
So batch data is now powering prop stream and batch lead. So we have like a nice agreement and contract and relationship on that side and then letting the the, the team, have an opportunity to go grow like crazy again with this acquisition and what this is going to mean. That's what means the most to me and, honestly, going through the process, learning it, selling to a publicly traded company not a lot of people have done that and it's something I'm very proud of. We work very hard for it and it was a great learning lesson to where there's definitely some advice I could give to you when that day comes of you know kind of where to focus, what to focus on Sounds like you have good mentors anyways, but just being specifically in this space and making a sale, there's a lot of things that I got to learn during this transaction of what's important to someone buying you and what's not as important maybe as you thought it would be, if that makes sense, right. 

21:07 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely man. Yeah, I mean, you guys have already gone through that journey. Any feedback, advice that you're able to share would be of immense value. You know one thing that, looking back, I didn't realize when I started the company was like how much impact you have on the team that working for you. And when you, when you start the guy at least for me, I should say when I started the company it was very transactional for me. Hey, I'm paying you this much money, you're going to do this thing, and then you see these people that are part of the company get married, you know, have kids, grow their, and they become more and more dependent on what you are doing. It adds a lot of sense of responsibility, a little bit of pressure on you, at least for me, that, like the decisions that I'm making, it's not just impacting me and I have a successful flipping business. I own rental property, so it's not like money is not a driving factor for me. 

22:04
but just being able to see the decision that you're making, how it's impacting other people on the team, I honestly I had no idea about that. No idea whatsoever. I didn't think you know this would ever be a factor in the decision that I'm making. But as you go along, you're like man, that's such an important part of the decision that you're making on how what I am doing is going to impact all these people that are part of the company. So, yeah, that was something I absolutely no idea. No way I was prepared for that. 

22:31 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, like you're charade, you're going to be good financially for the rest of your life. Now how do you take care of the people that help you build this and make sure that they could be put in a good place? That that that was a big part of my why. You know these last couple of years and going through the sales like how could I put them in a position? And for the people that don't have equity, how could I put them in a position to grow their careers and further their careers in prop stream, stuart was a no better. 

22:58
Better choice in my eyes is like you don't get very many cake and eat it two moments. This is truly like transaction had some stress to it. All of them do and they get a little wild. But at the end of the day, I knew we were partnering with a great company that had a similar culture to us and I couldn't be more excited to. And now the hard work to start like it was a bitch to get this done. And then, like I was like, oh, we're done. And then I'm like, oh my gosh, I have so much more work to do. I have a hundred employees that don't that had no idea that this was coming, which I knew was coming for a long time, and kind of vision casting them and telling them. 

23:35
What I'm telling you right now is like hey, this is a great opportunity, not just for us, but for everyone, and we got you to where we could get to as as founders. Now it's time to go to an even bigger, badder company that is backed by, you know, Stuart title, and just go absolutely dominate, you know part of the industry. 

23:57
Um, I couldn't be more excited to be honest with you. All right. Next topic Um, since you are a bootstrap, how do you balance, you know? Next topic, since you are bootstrapped, how do you balance growth or, what's more important, balancing growth profitability? How do you? Because this is your baby, you'll own 100% of it and it's bootstrapped and I guess it may have changed over time, but you know we got to a place to where we would. We were willing to not make a lot of profits, to grow user base and top line and get to scale. Before we focused on profitability. How did your journey go? How did you balance, you know, growth and profitability, and you know a big part of that growth and profitability is you have to invest so much into your product to get it to a place to people like, oh, this is awesome, and then and then you scale it because you've built something special. So I'd love to hear kind of your story on that. 

24:49 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, I think initially the goal was just to get it to the point where it was self-sustaining, that I didn't have to put more money into it. That was honestly the goal for the first couple of years and once it got profitable after that, the goal was I don't need this money. What else can we invest this money in that's going to help us grow? So definitely, the goal is to grow, keep growing, without me needing to put any money into it. That's the goal. So any excess profit cashflow that we have, we're looking to grow into. Whatever we can put into it, that's going to help us grow this company. Yeah. 

25:29 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, the one of the big rules when going to sell is is the rule of 40 is there needs to be at least, I would say, 25% growth is what we wanted to see in EBITDA of 15. So that's kind of that rule of thumb If both are better, that's always a good thing. 

25:50 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
So we're above those numbers. Our growth this year would be 50, 60% minimum, yeah, and then our EBITDA is about 25, 30%, so we'll get to like close to 100%. But we're looking at more opportunities to kind of okay, where can we put more money in? 

26:17 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Right, that sounds like a very good problem to have my friend. 

26:22 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Yeah, I'm happy to have my share of problems that I'm dealing with, you know. Yeah, I'm happy with my set of problems. 

26:29 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, like our batch data side now that that's my baby now, and we've had, you know, a lot of growth over the last couple of years. We invested a lot of time, money and effort into that product and still working on getting you to become a long-term customer. So that's something we're we're working through, but that's been really fun for us and that for me cause we I feel like I really got a good grasp on, you know, the wholesale investor market being one and then serving them, this B2B side and and fueling, you know, other prop tech companies and fueling other bigger B to B operations with their go to markets has been it's been really fun. It's a very different motion. It's a very different cycle sale cycle, very different term profile, very different, I guess, metrics and KPIs that really need to be focused on. It's been really fun spending the last couple of years spending time on this side too, and for me personally, I'm very excited to be able to be a little bit more singularly focused, because it's so hard having all these different product lines and having all these different, you know, sets of employees or pods you want to call them, and making sure it's just I don't know how many any of them did it. 

27:41
It was. It was crazy with all the stuff that we had to do and all the different teams that we had and and, as I said back to you know the the deal with PropStream. It just made sense for everyone in every way and couldn't be more excited. So let's talk about a moment Is there any moments? I guess. Let's talk about the SaaS journey that you you felt like a failure or you did something wrong, but ultimately it pushed your business in a better direction. 

28:11 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
I don't know, man, I have my share of doubts, honestly, on a regular basis. Looking back, when I started the company, I didn't think it would be where it's at now. I didn't think you know we would be. You know we would have like thousands of customers using us. You know the team that we have. Sometimes I feel like maybe, honestly, I'm not the right fit for this. It's and after my team what was that. 

28:46 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Your numbers say differently, my friend, I know, but I mean, it's honestly. 

28:49 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
it's a team that we have been, it's the team that we have we're only as good as the team that we built and absolutely incredible people Like our head of marketing. I kid you not, I hired him from Upwork, paying him three bucks an hour. He's leading our marketing now wow that's incredible he's. 

29:08
He's grown into that role and, yeah, we we hired a fractional cmo service and they tried to hire him because of how awesome he was. Yeah, uh, but he's super loyal, super committed, so I'm very blessed to have him, like my cto same thing hired him from upwork. I think he was doing some graphic designing for me six bucks an hour, some php work, and now he's the cto of our company. So I mean, I I have honestly my doubts on like I have all these people that are counting on me. That's why I like working with a coach. That's that's been absolutely incredible. 

29:49
But yeah, I mean it's like dealing with self doubt all the time, which I think it's, it's healthy, in a way, just to kind of. You know, I mean I have a tattoo on my arm that says ego is the enemy, so that kind of keeps me in check of never, never forgetting, kind of where we come from, the mistakes that we've made. You know I mean all sorts of like hiding the wrong person, you know, not vetting them enough, not qualifying the candidate that we're hiding, giving them too much responsibility, and that makes you go back and look at all the processes that you have. Ok, what, what can we do so it never happens again? Responsibility, and that makes you go back and look at all the processes that you have. Okay, what, what can we do so it never happens again? 

30:32
You know, when we first started out this is like early in the day, so we didn't even have any QA people on our team the developers created something and I thought, okay, I mean they created, it must be good. We rolled it out and like holy shit, like we need qa people also on our team. So you know you just you learn from those mistakes and I mean sometimes I feel like you have to make those mistakes to learn from it. But if you can learn from other people's mistakes, I mean in hindsight, I wish I joined some masterminds a little bit sooner. Work with the coach a little earlier in my journey. I think that would have definitely helped us a lot more. That's that's the thing. If I could go back, I would change it like start working with a coach or join some sort of a mastermind a little bit from the beginning of the journey. 

31:10 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, like Dan Martell five years ago would have done one for you, I'm sure. Exactly when he had his SaaS masterminds going or whatever. 

31:21
Luckily I had Andy Nevo. We had a little bit of help I I wish we we got some real good help, um, probably like three, four years ago, with with some people advising us and helping and consultants that really helped us get us to to the next level. But yeah, the, the imposter syndrome I. I got over that a while ago, to be honest with you, and I could promise you you shouldn't have it. You're incredible, you've built something incredible and you know be proud of it and I'm proud of. 

31:50
you built the team too. You found them. You identified talent where people didn't and you elevated them, and that's you as a leader that did that honestly. So you know it's a huge thank you no-transcript incredible of enterprise value. 

32:34
and I I got to do the same thing and to me it was just weird. You know, at first you're like how the hell did I figure out how to do this? So, you know's, let's go back and talk about, like those earlier versions of of us when we just started this and let's kind of give advice to people who who are just getting started. And and what would you give to someone that was you five years ago or whenever you started already, simply and like, is it dream big, is it? You know, I always said, you know, build the plane as you're flying it, like you'll figure it out, just go big and scale, and when you break things, that's good problems, because that means there's a bunch of money coming in the door, kind of what? Some advice would you give to someone you know starting a SaaS product? Or advice to earlier Sharad on what he could have done differently? 

33:19 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Yeah, I mean same thing, dude, like what you said, like dream big. Like when you, when I started out, I I think I had a little bit of a limiting belief on what I could do like I was setting, you know, my, my aim wasn't too high. I was thinking, okay, if I could just get to this stage, it would be amazing. It would be like that, that's it. Like, uh, you know, like it was initially, man, if I could just get you a million in ARR, how incredible would that be. And when you get there, like, oh, there's so much more room that we have to grow, I would say, like, definitely, aim high. And then like, for me personally, work with a coach who has been there, done that and can be an advisor, can be a guide for you. You know, yes, you want to. 

34:05
I mean, I'm 100% of the same mindset. Just like, figure out things as you're doing it. You know you don't have to have everything planned, just go ahead. I mean, as long as it's not going to break the company, just go ahead. You know, if you have the luxury of like testing some things out, some are going to work, some are not going to work, but the only way to know is if you try. So that's the mindset that we take here, and let's just go in and try these things. If they work, great. If not, at least we would have the answer that they worked or not. Yeah, so definitely aiming, setting bigger goals and then working with a coach would be the two things that I would go back and change. 

34:42 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, I would say. I'd say finding the right mastermind, mentor, you know, plug in whatever to help solve problems before you have them or give you advice on problems that they know are going to come up as revenue grows. But I remember, you know, going into Evo's office when, especially like those texting days, we went ballistic, like our revenue went from zero to almost we aren't doing quite that revenue now, like 21 to. We went zero to like $40 million in sales and 30 months or something like that it went absolutely nuts. And I remember every day, literally every day, I would go into Evo's office and I look at him and I'd say why not us? Why not? Why can't we grow this to some crazy number? Why not? Someone built Salesforce, someone built Zillow, like? Why not us? Like? 

35:37
what makes them so much better than us Like figure it out find the right people, hire the right people much better than us like figure it out, find the right people, hire the right people. Dream so big. That's always been like you know. You know Annie and Evo's personality and now you maybe know why I'm their partner is like I am that forever optimistic and just hyping them up and because operationally they run circles around me like that is not my strength whatsoever see, I I would have. 

36:00 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
I would have like, if I had a co-founder like you, you know, or someone like you on the team, we would be much, much farther along. Because I'm kind of the same way like with Ivo and Annie, like I'm really good at operational side of it, like that is the stuff that I get excited about on the operation side, on the product development side, but then you also have to make decisions on growing the company. But if I had someone that I could say, hey, just like, come with a big vision, come with a big vision and I can just operationalize that, like that would be absolutely incredible. Yeah, that was just-. That's the best part is balancing. 

36:35 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, and I actually, weirdly enough, one of my favorite things is definitely as well as the product roadmap. 

36:43
That's something I've always been heavily involved in, me and Ivo specifically but surprisingly enough, I'm probably just as much and more involved in the product roadmap not the details of whatever we decide to do, but I was very heavily involved on what's next, what are we building, why are we building it and how we're building it. 

37:03
He would fundamentally work with the team on how to execute it right, but me and him probably shared, I'd say, equal responsibility of what that looked like, because I thought I've always thought the product's everything and how do the customers feel it play with it, how does it make sense, how the workflows do, because sometimes, when these engineers are building it, and sometimes evo is almost too smart for his own good, I'm like no, it needs to be simpler than this, like this is too robust, like simplify the process. 

37:33
Um, we could be complicated on the back end, but on the front end, how, how can we have less clicks to get to the result faster, and so on and so forth. So that's always been something I was very much a part of, and then I oversaw, like the sales and marketing and, especially at the beginning, the best thing I ever did was, you know, bring in we were pretty early on the affiliate side and paying people and that we're using our products to promote it. I mean, that's really how we went from that zero to that crazy number in such a short amount of time and I was like, yeah, at the same time, pace got huge, jameel got huge, brent got huge and they're all using our product. 

38:10
They're all texting and it was just I mean, we couldn't even hire enough people to keep up with demand at that time. 

38:17
That was definitely a wild ride. 

38:19
And then but we climbed that mountain so fast the crash when the text regulations changed and the real estate market pulled back and the interest rates, like we had a combination of just like avalanche of unfortunate events that happened in the same time and me and nico evo had to really figure out how to keep this company afloat, keep it profitable, because there's one point we had over 200 people in our organization, cause we were growing so quickly and we had to figure out a way and everything was going backwards and we just hired all these people and I was like, oh shit. 

38:53
So like we had to absolutely battle to get to a good place and we took us about a year and a half to dig ourselves out and get profitable again. Um, because we didn't want to have the product suffer, we didn't want to lay off, we had to do some, but like we kept as many people as we could, as long as we could, we didn't take a salary for over a year to make sure that we could, the product would be in a good place and we were profitable. 

39:16
but like we have such a big org, we have to keep a ton of money in the company and annie's like until we see it going up consistently every month again, like we're not taking a dollar because we have to make sure that it's our people first, like we're already in a good place, like, and the products have to be in a good place and the people have to be in a stable environment. So we had to kind of burden some of that for a while, and that's that's the side that people don't know. They saw oh, you sold the prop stream today. 

39:42
That's the side that people don't know. They saw, oh, you sold the prop stream today. They don't know what last year and a half looked like for us to have to have this big revenue drop. Grow it back. Show growth again. Show growth on the data side, cause that company was doing nothing three years ago and, absolutely like you know, we had that rise but that fall sucked dude, and I don't even think I knew about that no, I had no idea about that dude. 

40:04 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
That sucks, man, like it just goes to show that the team that you guys are built, you know, and then the relations are that you, even any, have to get to the point that where you guys are at, yeah, you 100 deserve every all the success you guys have gotten. Man, it it is. It is hard, man, it is hard. Um, I feel absolutely blessed, grateful to be doing what I'm doing, but sometimes you have to go through those, uh, through those tough days to appreciate the good days if you always have a good yeah, uh, yeah, I, I wouldn't either, man, and I give that's. 

40:39
When you appreciate the good days of every day that you have, you know you're just like an amazing day. You don't you lose perspective of what it means to have, you know, to have a good day in your life. Yeah, it just like being grateful for everything you've done. It's yeah, it keeps at least it keeps me grounded on. Hey, it's never, never, take anything for granted, never. 

41:01 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, yeah, it was just a learning lesson. We, we were trying to go to the moon. I don't regret scaling and doing things. I didn't know tax regulations were going to change and, um, interest rates were going to be like record highs and some of it was in our control, some of it was out of our control. 

41:16
I think we hired probably too many positions that weren't revenue impacting to where, like, we just didn't need the roles, to be completely honest with you. But learning a bull market and then, quickly after, a market that pulls back is a good learning lesson for in the future. And what I really learned from that is like like how great we were during that come up Wasn't as great as we thought it was. A lot of it was market conditions and just everyone like real estate going ballistic. And then when it pulled back, we actually did really good for what happened and how it happened. 

41:50
But at the time, all you see is revenue dropping and having to figure out how to you know how to, how to fix, how to fix it and how to stay profitable and but at the same time, making sure that you're building a product that's still first in class in the industry that you're in and at the end of the day, if you decide to neglect that, I mean it's all going to unravel. 

42:15
So we just had to. We had to stick through it and battle our way back and continue to have a great product and as we made some of these shifts with our pricing and packaging and some of our LLM models and our AI. I could tell you today, batch Leads is the best it's ever been, and I'm really excited to see how PropStream integrates all those technologies and wants to do a bunch of crazy stuff, because they have three very powerful platforms and I think that they're a very smart group and they're going to figure out how to how to really, at the end of the day, help real estate investors make more money, just like what you do. 

42:50 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely yeah. 

42:53 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
So I guess let's not just talk AI on this next next question but you know, what tech trends do you think will disrupt the industry in the next three to five years? And if you're going to talk about AI a little specifically, but what trends do you think are really going to help proctech or going to change proctech Besides? I'd say just AI, because that's also very much so a given. But maybe on what? Maybe you think AI could look like? 

43:20
It's hard to say three to five years, so let's say one to two years to be to be honest with you, cause I also think that it's shifted. Like the affiliate model and trends have shifted from like almost having companies have to be I guess the word I'm looking for is like having almost your own brand, your own social, and having your own presence Like I'm actually working on my own. That's why, and and having your own presence like I'm actually working on my own. That's why I have a podcast now. It's like you know, I need to kind of be the brand to some degree, like you can't just lean on affiliates, as I feel like you once did. 

43:51
Three, four five years ago because they want to own their own products or they're going to want to white label your product because they understand the the pull that they have, especially those big ones like you know the eyes that they could get um, you know it's tough for a company, you know, to get that. So, on, like the marketing, sales side, I think it's really going to be driven by like your own curated content and being able to like how do you interact and how do you grab that audience and and then see the value and what you're, not just what your business is doing, but what you're doing and why your business is great I mean honestly, like maybe maybe I'm very naive in that I don't have, I'm not active on any social media. 

44:31 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
I just have one bookmark on my browser that takes me to facebook group of recently and that's it. I'm not on instagram. I'm not on tiktok. My team has tried to do that. I'm like, honestly, that's not something I believe. Not on Instagram, I'm not on TikTok. My team has tried to do that. I'm like, honestly, that's not something I believe I can add the most value in. I mean it's again, maybe it sounds very naive. I have one canvas in my office that just says be so good, you can't be ignored. I mean, that's the mindset we've taken as a company that hey, if everyone in the company is just so good at what they're doing that you can't be ignored, everything else will be taken care of. Like if the marketing is just doing whatever they need to do and they're like just so freaking good, that right, our content can't be ignored, everything else gets taken out. Same thing with our customer support. Same thing with that. 

45:16 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
That's what I need to be you, but like your brand story, what you guys are about, and like really curating um, why you guys are different, why, why are you guys, how do you operate ethically? And and like the people care about that stuff a lot more now. I feel like then right, than they did in the past and, um, you know, I don't mind doing social stuff. I feel like I have some type of flair for it. I'm I'm obviously not the best in the world either, but it's. It's something I want to know. 

45:48
I want to be able to impact more people on that, want to start a business or a product and um that's kind of what I'm transitioning to a little bit more and find strategic relationships and reach out to some of our big customers. That I've done on our podcast, Some of our future customers. Matt's like interview Sherrod, I want him to be a customer, but like just to get to know you and like if we're a fit, you know great, but I kind of want you to know more about us and I know, you know Annie and Nevo. 

46:17
But like, what batch data is really trying to do and trying to do and what we're really trying to do is give you guys the best not just data, but best other proprietary stuff that we're creating to help you and your customers be more successful. Like that's my mission now is Batch Data needs to be that. It's what Batch Data is, what Batch Leads was to the investors. Like I want Batch Data to be that to the prop tech. You know companies that are servicing you know that industry? Yeah, I mean no. 

46:45 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
I think the biggest trend, like going back to the question, like, besides AI, would be like how are you using data in your business? 

46:55
How are you helping investors add value from the data that you have? I think that's where the money is For us. I mean, we've always been about it needs to be an all-in-one software, so that, like for us, our vision is like what we're doing, how can we just make it like a truly, truly all-in-one software, like with every single feature that we have? It just adds so much value that people would just want to use us just for that part of it, even if they're not doing anything else. So that's kind of what we're looking at. But, yes, I mean it really comes down to data, like having the best quality data, the most timely data, and then how you are utilizing that data to actually help your investors make better or help your customers make better decisions based on the data that you have. That is what is the exciting part for us. Those are things we're working on over the next six months to a year, and then going into some other couple of different industries and that's kind of what we see where we can add the most value. 

48:00 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
And for people that are watching this podcast, that are customers of you, I want you to know that Sherrod cares very much about where he gets his data, because he has absolutely ripped ours apart. He's dug into it. You want to make sure you're getting the best. You have questions. Why is this that? Why is this this? 

48:21
You truly care about the data side of things because, to be quite honest, you've and and you've been like hey, like there's something missing here, and it's helped us make our data better, as well as like right um, you, you're very, very much so data-driven uh business, which is great because we have a lot of people that go through and, you know, assess and look at our data and I could say, without a doubt, you're in like the top three of how much due diligence you've done and how far you've dug in. So it's a kudos to you saying you know, I want to make sure I'm getting the best, I want to make sure that my customers are getting the best, and I just I think it's important people know, like the type of research that you do to make sure that you're putting the most accurate and best data you know in front of your customers that are using RE. Simply Thank you, man. 

49:12 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean it goes back to like if we are just adding the most value to our customers, to me, honestly, everything else gets taken care of. Yes, I mean having the amazing contact will attract people, but at the end of the day, if we have the best product out there, our customers are going to speak for our product like majority of. Uh. You know, we of course have some of the big affiliates that we work with, but majority of our new customers come from word of mouth or referral. Like that's absolutely amazing place to be in, where you know our customers are promoting us to their network. But that only happens if we truly put a good product out there and then people just start, you know, speaking about what we're doing. But yeah, I mean having like kind of just you know, working with batch data, having the best quality data and just making sure it fits our need and then how that data is actually going to add value to our end customer. Like that's kind of where it gets started with. 

50:07 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, and sometimes the sales guys are like why does he care so much? I'm like why shouldn't he care so much? And you know they're just like our data is really good, tell him to use it. And I I'm like my job is, your job is to make sure that it is, and, and me and evo's job is to make sure our data is good. So that's something we do. Um, last question before we, one of the last questions before we wrap up, though. 

50:29
I guess, like kpis or you know what are the most important kpis you know of running a sas business, what? What do you really look at? You know, daily, weekly, monthly, what's what's really important to you, because I can let you know what's really important to us. I'm just curious, on what do you really look like? Is it churn? Is it growth? Is it, I guess, net growth? Because you're going to have customers churn, you're going to have customers coming in, is it? You know what's always. That's one of the things important. But the other thing that's also really important to me having a robust product and we kind of had our own version of all-in-one as well is we had a lot of data that we built around where are people using the software and where are people not to see if our product launches are being adopted and work properly or not? Because that gives us signals and cues of are we hitting the mark or are we not? So that's like outside of, like the generalized stuff. That's something that we've worked really hard on to make sure that we're doing. 

51:28 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Yeah, I mean like. I mean, obviously, some of the key metrics, like weekly trials, try to pay, conversion, then our retention, like those are some of the like the numbers that we look at on a on a weekly basis and the revenue number, the churn number, but I mean I mean honestly, like one one thing we didn't even do. It's like we're not even using Stripe subscription. So, like a lot of the data that we track, we track it manually, which has just been an absolute pain we are going to be moving over to. I mean, we use Stripe for payment processing, but you know how. They have a subscription model that you can use, plug into you know these like chat, mobile or other platforms like that. We don't even have that. So a lot of the data that we track, we track on a on a manual basis. So that's something I'm excited about, like just this quarter rolling into a Stripe subscription, plugging into that. 

52:23
But yeah, I mean those. I would say the important numbers are. I mean then there's other stuff that you're looking at like, okay, how many people are signing up for your trial every week? How many of those are actually neck trials? You know, people are not even verifying their email or phone number, like you know, do we count them as a trial or not? Did you sign up? And then how many people are booking and onboarding, how many people are actually showing up, how many people are attending, you know, and then we have, yeah, the churn number. Like honestly, the churn number is the one that I've now started just accepting it in our industry. 

53:00 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
You have to. You're going to beat your head against the wall. It's a problem you will never solve. It is. That is the real like it's. I've always said it's a double-edged sword, especially for, like the real estate investor or wholesaling community. You always have a ton of people coming in and trying it, but you also have a ton of people coming out, so it's like we typically have a lot more people getting into something. So that means a lot of trials, but it also means they're trying it. 

53:26
They're trying to get their first, second, third deal, um, they may not get that. And then you know they're going to churn it and it's not necessarily a product problem, it's uh, are they going to take this as like a full-time or the career path that they want to go down? And and it took me a while to get that to get it's just me and our, our CGO that we have in our company. We took it so personally for so long and then I think we finally got to the point where it's like this is where we want to manage it and just be OK with it. And how do we grow our customer base from there? We know the trend of what this is going to look like base from there. We know the trend of what this is going to look like. 

54:02
How do we get more customers and then over time, you know um, expand um inside that customer base. How do we give them more products? To spend more money is like how do we grow our lifetime value is more important, like the churn is just going to be the churn. Like grow the lifetime value of the customer. Um, how do you do that? And that was kind of on the b2b side. It's so weird. Like that I'm not going to think about that forever anymore because it's not my company anymore, but that's where my head has been the last seven years and um yeah, luckily I get to stay on and help consult with prop stream for for the next year and and do that. 

54:37
But holy shit, I'm still wrapping my head around like that I don't own batch leads or batch dialer anymore. 

54:43 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
It's I know yeah, now you're right, man like just, uh, the people that are actually using your, loving your product, how do we get that set of customers to spend more money with you? Like that, that's a big uh. You know some products that we're rolling out this year. That's, that's a big push towards okay. How do we get people to spend more money with us, people that are already using us, that have been using us for you know years? How do we get these people to, like, start spending more money with us? So that's something we're doing with the product development is like we're going to say what else are they spending their money on? How can we get them to spend that money with us, rather than to another service provider or their software that they're using? 

55:23 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, and to clarify to our customers watching we don't want you to spend more money, we want to add more value. 

55:28 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
That helps make you more money and in turn it costs you a little bit more money. 

55:33 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
We're always looking the value, but it costs us a ton of money to build these products and features and there is a cost to them cost for us and there should be a cost for you, because we're going to help streamline your business, your operations, and have you guys. You know our job is to both of our jobs. You know these. Since we started these businesses is like what I love about the business that we've been in for so long is we get to help change people's lives with softwares that we give them that are instrumental to their business. 

56:02
I remember because I didn't make any money until I got into real estate investing I never made more than $30,000 in a year and that that was such a life-changing moment when I got to get my first big wholesale deal and like my fifth wholesale deal was a quarter million dollar deal like talk about life changing. It was. I went from six months prior how do I fill up my gas tank and pay rent? To be like, oh, my goodness or no? I think I just bought my first house, but it was like an eighty thousand dollar condo in scottsdale at the time, in 2013, and luckily I had like a $500 payment, but it's like, oh my goodness, it was such a mind shift and not having to worry about those day-to-day bills it just absolutely changed my life. I remember going out to a nice dinner with friends for a birthday. I'm like man I hope the chicken isn't more than 25 bucks, because I don't know how I'm gonna pay for this. 

57:00 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
I know, man, it's crazy to just look back at those days and then kind of look at what you're at now and compare it to that. 

57:08 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
It's real. Yeah, we get to build these great software for these people to go do that for themselves. That's what always excited me is really that story of someone being like hey, I got my first two deals because of batch and now, right now, I built this real estate company and I'm living like this great life and I got the financial freedom that I want, and you know, so on and so forth. I always say wholesaling gives you financial freedom, but man, it is a. It's a high paying job because you can never like it, doesn't run itself Like if you're a 

57:40
good at it. The hardest thing I always thought in wholesaling was keeping and maintaining talent. I don't think the marketing was that hard. I don't think getting the deals was that hard or selling the deals was that hard. If someone's really good, it's not that hard for them to go do it on their own. It actually is, because the marketing is tougher than I think. 

58:04
If you're really great at sales, how do you keep a really good sales guy there to make sure that they make really good money? But it's not really great sales guys and wholesale don't always equate to really good business owners and wholesale. And sometimes it's like you know before they leave and you're like you're going to come back because like it's a marketing business, it's a KPI and process driven business. Because like it's a marketing business, it's a kpi and process driven business if a lot of those guys aren't good at that, but it's um, it's an interesting business. That I mean the first time I made a million bucks in a year um, it was like three years removed of not making a lot of money and it was like pinch myself moments and my parents like what the fuck do you do? Like you do what. Like how do you make all this money and then you know, two years later, I'm retiring them and they're just like I don't know what happened like. 

58:45 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
This is crazy yeah, I know, but you deserve everything you've gotten. Man should be very proud. 

58:50 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Parents should be very proud of you they, they are, which is good before we go. Um, I guess you don't say you have much socials, but like, how would someone get a hold of you if they wanted to reach out or ask more about your product or just maybe have questions for you specifically on? You know how you've built a very impressive product and I'm sure people want to pick your brain on occasion as well, I mean the best would be to email. 

59:16 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
It's sharadrecentlycom. I checked. I mean, I have an assistant, but yeah, anything that's for me, I'll reply to those emails. Personally, I'm not super active on social media so yeah, that would be the best way to share that resimplycom. 

59:31 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
So to some of you people that want to grow a SaaS product, maybe just grind and don't do all the social content, because this dude's built a company that's worth lots of figures. So remember that too. But and I guess, um, I kind of switched up the very last question but what? What, like one or two books has been most impactful for to you on the business aspect of that, really changed your perspective or changed your thought process or just really, um, impacted you to to get your business to where it is today? 

01:00:05 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
The one that comes to mind is Michael Gerber E-Myth Revisited. That was an important one and the one thing those two are good books. Yeah, yeah, those are the ones I would go back to. 

01:00:25 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I always go back. 

01:00:26 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
It kind of changes. I mean, you feel like you have a need for different books depending on what stage of your career you're in. But just looking back, the two that made the biggest impact back when I really needed them was E-Myth Revisited and the One Thing. I don't read as many business books anymore, but those two were good books. 

01:00:52 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
The one that I always Extreme Ownership was always just a great book for me. That just you know, if someone in your business fucks up like, look at yourself first or your process first, or where, where did you go wrong? Where was the miscommunication? And if there wasn't one, how do you properly go to them to where they could hold themselves accountable for the mistake that they made and how can they get there? Um, and then the one at the beginning that I just I rere it once a year and it's like the dumb, not dumbest book, but it's just. 

01:01:24
The go giver has always been a book that stuck with me, because I always try to build new relationships and then my thought always goes to who do I know that can maybe help this person, or who do I know of a person that they could help? And I've always just been that networking person that connects people and attracts people together and does that and I truly try not to ever have. I want something in return. I've never been a tit for tat type of guy. I just want to give value and it's gonna reciprocate back to me in some way, shape or form If it's from you, indirectly or directly. Is I've really learned? 

01:02:03
And it sounds so dumb. But if you truly do good for people, good things come back to you. And I try not to be transactional, and I think there's too many people in this world that are truly transactional now and everything is okay. Well, if I do this for you, what do I get back? Or how can you compensate me? And I still don't work that way. I don't think I ever want to work that way, because then it then I'm doing something for for me. Um, I'm not doing something for them, and I I've always thought that's just a poor way to do business, and I feel like too many people have kind of went down that route now. 

01:02:37 - Sharad Mehta (Guest)
Um, I don't know your thoughts on that, though. No, it you're absolutely right. Um it, you know, I mean, it makes it, because we live in a world that we live in. It makes it easy for you to stand out when you actually care about people. You know it. It does. I mean, like I, I take it very seriously. Like, again, I have another tattoo. 

01:03:00
That's a gratitude, impact and faith For me. Like one of the things that I want to do is make an impact, and then the people that I can directly make an impact are the team members that we have on Breeze, simply, and then our customers. Like, if I can do that, everything else will take care of itself. Like I don't have any goals of taking care of world hunger. I feel like this is my role in the world, is to just take care of these set of people that I feel like I can somehow directly impact, and if I do that, I feel like I've done my part, my responsibility, and then, you know, hopefully people see that and it just spreads across, creates a ripple effect. 

01:03:38 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, I kind of agree. I think that's a great, great way to end the Real SaaS Podcast Sharad. I appreciate you coming on today and everyone. Thank you for joining and until next time let's get it. 

01:03:53 - Hope (Announcement)
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