Episode 2: Conversations with Raj Mashruwala: Insightful Journeys of Biz Growth

In this episode of Mentor Conversations at Score Houston, host PV Bala interviews seasoned mentor Raj Mashruwala. Raj shares his extensive experience in strategic planning, marketing, and financial management, built over three decades in the chemical and refining industries. He discusses his journey into mentoring since joining SCORE in 2003 and highlights his unique approach to helping entrepreneurs from various sectors, including coffee shops, bakeries, and medical startups. Key takeaways from the conversation include Raj's strategies for nurturing mentoring skills, the importance of execution in a business plan, and the value of building strong relationships in business. This episode also covers practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs on testing business ideas, seeking mentorship, and navigating the complexities of starting and scaling a business.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Mentor Conversations at Score Houston, where we bring you insights and stories from our mentors. You'll hear from senior executives, entrepreneurs, and professionals who volunteer their time to guide small businesses. SCORE is America's largest network of volunteer business mentors and is supported by the U.S. Small Business Administration. In Houston, we provide free, confidential mentoring and education to help entrepreneurs start, grow, and succeed. Now, let's dive into today's mentor conversation.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Hello and welcome to Mentor Conversations at Score Houston. I'm your host, Pivi Bala. Today I'm delighted to introduce one of our most seasoned mentors, Raj Mashwala. Raj holds a chemical engineering degree and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin and is also a chartered financial analyst, a rare blend of technical and financial expertise. Raj brings a lifetime of experience in strategic planning, marketing, and financial management, built over more than three decades in the chemical and refining industries and at leadership positions. Since joining SCORE in 2003, Raj has helped countless entrepreneurs from coffee shops and bakeries to medical spas and assisted living startups to develop business plans, test ideas, and scale successfully. He brings deep expertise in digital strategy, nonprofit creation growth, and even business process redesign with global ERP systems like SAP. Today we are about to dive into a conversation where Raj will share how his corporate strategy background translates into mentorship and how he helps clients turn business ideas into reality. Yeah, Raj, welcome to Score. One of the early podcasts that we are having. Raj, as the intro said, your experience in mentoring has been so famous in Score. When I joined SCORE early, I remember Matt Heath saying, you just go and sit with Raj. He will teach you how to do mentoring. Raj, you know, mentoring is something pretty unique. One can have a lot of knowledge, a lot of experience. But mentoring is not like a consulting thing. But mentoring is, I don't know, it's more of an art that you learn the skill to do a mentoring. And in score, you are known to be one of the most experienced and successful mentors. So tell me about that, Raj, how this so-called mentoring skill came to you, how you could nurture it. And you have been a mentor for 22 years. I'm very curious really to know about how it came through.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Well, yeah, before they had those uh formalized mentoring program and all that stuff where you had to get certified. So I I joined right after I retired. I don't have too many hobbies and I didn't know what I was going to do with my time. And this turned out to be something I enjoyed tremendously. I met some of my colleagues at that time at the starting and running your own business seminar. And the enthusiasm in their voices and all that stuff said that maybe this is something I'd like to do. So I joined. At that time, the training was very little. You sat with somebody for a few days and then they said, okay, this is your day. So I started on Wednesday as my day to start mentoring. And at that time, mostly the clients were walk-in, so you had really no idea what type of help they needed. And at that time also, SBA had a very big presence in Houston. A lot of people would come there looking for money and free money at that time. So, anyways, I got started on a Wednesday, and for a while, we used to do solo mentoring, uh, which I didn't like because I was enjoying it much.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

I had background in petrochemicals and refining all our problems for large. And people were bringing all these mundane problems like how do I start lawn mowing service, things like that. Exactly. So I started, I used my time to maybe just pull together the resources my senior colleagues were using because I've been one place. How do you get, you know, how do you get your DBA? Where do you go? We used to have a carousel of all these little handouts.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

So people would come in and we would put together a handout kit and give it to them, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

So I started put it trying to put that stuff into Microsoft Word. Yeah, we could have that kind of stuff. But I was getting fairly quickly disappointed by the type of mentor the clients that were coming in. I didn't think I was being particularly helpful. Uh-huh. So one of my colleagues said, Well, why don't you get involved with education? Maybe you'll enjoy that more. Okay. And so I did. We had a call colleague who had developed an outline of workshop, three workshops. Okay. So I got involved in it and started improving and you know, making them a little more modern. And for teaching, I needed to have examples of that would be my would relate to. Correct. So that's when some of my senior colleagues who actually built their own businesses.

SPEAKER_04 5:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Their stories, I mean, Irvin Miller was my at that time, and my goodness, he had stories.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

He was the funniest guy I know. So what happened was that I started using his stories till I had enough of my own clients to finally have my own, I could actually talk upon different topics.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

And the other thing I learned from him, which I still practice, is that when a client comes in, you really need to let them talk a little bit. Even sometimes their ideas are not properly formed and all that stuff. But at least you want to find out what it is that they want to do, what their background is. A judgment before that just by the way they speak and the way they articulate their ideas is not the best way to do mentoring. We really need to respect their ideas. But then I learned over time to become more of an active listener. Okay. Guide conversation. Otherwise, people just go off on tangents and all that stuff. That's yeah, yeah. True. So we started doing it, and I finally figured out that the thing that worked best for me was to focus these people into a financial test of their idea.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

I said, all I need are five numbers from you. Uh-huh. Do you know your startup costs? They would I would explain what that meant. Yeah. Do you know your monthly operating costs? Do you know your unit price? Do you know your unit margin?

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

I would walk them to a break-even point. How many customers would they need for the idea to be feasible? Right? Okay. And then we would go into the marketing plan, the target market, the benefits of the product, the value proposition, things like that. But if they couldn't come up with these basic numbers, I would send them off and say, hey, my background is if you want to build a chemical plant, I can help you with direct knowledge. But the stuff you want to do, I don't have any direct knowledge. So I want you to call, either work on this business for six months or start calling people in other cities who have similar businesses.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

20 people, maybe two of them would talk to you.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

And that's how you try and get actual data about your own business. Right, right. Because talking about marketing strategies when they don't even know exactly what to start a business.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

You know, there are some clients who walk in, like I had someone walking in last week saying that I want just want to discuss on various many ideas that you have. So now when they have so varied ideas, yeah, because they learn from others, look, this may be good, and you're right now out of job, also. Yes. Now, this is a dilemma I have. Now they don't have any background to justify getting into an idea. But still they have these four ideas. That's right. How do you lead them?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Yeah, so we at that time we would send them to the workshop, and the front part of it was are you ready to be an entrepreneur? And then what type of business should you open? And we used to say there were three tests. It had to be a business you knew something about or were trained in, or had a relative who could come and help you with. Okay. Correct. Second one was whether you had you liked that thing because you'd be spending a lot of times, people would say, I'm tired of my job. I want to relax. So I want to start my business. Nobody says it nowadays, but you're going to be working really, really hard. Exactly. So you have to like what you're going to do. And the third one we used to say is that find out how much it costs to start a business and be prepared to at least come up with a third of the money, if not more. Okay. So that was I used to use that as a screening criteria. Okay. And then tell them to at that time, now with AI, you can actually generate very quickly lots of ideas. But in those days, hunterpreneur.com used to uh publish lists. Uh-huh. Top 20 low-cost franchises, top 20 fastest growing businesses, top 20 less risky businesses, things like that. And so I would tell them to go in there, and I said, go to our seminars and we'll teach you how to test the feasibility of the idea. That's right. And like I told you, with those five numbers, if you didn't know answers to those, most likely you wouldn't know. Because a lot of time these people wouldn't even know whether they needed a drink and moss or they could do work from home.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

And you know, many when the clients walk in or when the clients approach score, see, mostly when they do it, number one, they want either they want some help in funding or they want some clarification. Hey, I need to do this or that, and some information from score or SBA, they come to score now. But Raj mentoring, like I have seen in your case, it has been a journey with a client.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

So it is never a one-time knock on the door, got the information, okay, bye-bye. But you have been able to convert them seriously into a journey. So a mentor is associated with you, and you're able to take that through, you know. Taken from the first client coming in and then making on the journey.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

That's something Jerry and I, Jerry is my co-mentor marketing expert. We sort of develop this thing, and actually now score is even teaching that stuff that says when a person comes, you as you are rapping somewhere in the conversation, you have to tell them the room wasn't built in a day. And so there's no point in spending this month 45 minutes, an hour to give you too much information. So let's start with pieces. Then give you homework because you know you have to really research some of your stuff. And then let's meet again in a month. In between, you could reach us by email if you have any questions. And to our surprise, a lot of people, even with simpler ideas, kind of light accountability that this created for them.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

And because we don't let the client go till we make the next appointment.

unknown 13:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

So it's possible that sometimes they may decide that forget it, we don't want to.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

It's okay. But this was also one of the very interesting things. When Squad did the survey of our clients, they found out that the cloud target client is a micro-entrepreneur with not a properly formed idea most times. So a client like that, if you tried to give too much information, they would just enough, and they just drop the idea. Or they get mad at you for just talking down to them or things like that. Very clear. So what Score said was that we should actually not overload people as you see that you're giving too much information, slow down, but ask them for an order. So ask them for the next meeting. Because they might say, Oh God, I know nothing about this. Look at what this, I can't answer any of my mentors' question. I don't want to waste his time.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

You ask for an order, they say, okay, maybe this is part of the process.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

So at the beginning of Sevraj, when you meet different types of clients, you have met, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of thousands, I would say. Are you able to read that this mentor is serious about what he or she is saying? It'll lead to further, or this man is just hunting, really speaking for money, and he doesn't know what there is a there's a difference. There are very serious clients who come in and they are not so serious, but just that they want to be do some fishing. Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Fish the to me, our vision is that anybody who wants a mentor should have one. Okay. So I never ever thought that I'm too good for a particular client. I see that some mentors want to specialize and want only specific clients, serious clients, in their own discipline that they would mentor. I'm a generalist, so I take anybody who comes in, and that's how it started because it was a walk-in model, right? Anybody walked in, and the first available mentor had to handle it, right? The client. So you never had a particular choice. It's how you handle the client was a bit of a challenge for us. Why I started when I was chapter chair, I required co-mentoring. Because what I found was some of our not-so-good mentors would spend more than half, or sometimes almost all the time, talking about themselves. All the great things they've done, poor client couldn't get a burden edge wise. Or they would be rude to the client because the client might have said something wrong or didn't understand something. And we said that that is not acceptable. We have to treat everybody with respect. And when you have two people, the complimentary nature of sometimes clients do make you angry because they're not listening, keep repeating the same thing, go off on different tangents, don't take notes when you're telling them something. It's kind of nice to step back and let the other person talk a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

But uh tell me, Raj, you have seen many businesses come to you in the beginning and over the journey turn them into success. Yeah. You know the same kind of business idea. There is another client coming in, you are given the same mentoring, but has in succeeded, or he has in progress. Now, what differentiates a client who comes with an idea? What could be the factor that leads one to a success, another to a failure, though the mentoring that he's getting is the same?

SPEAKER_01 17:06

There are certain people born to be entrepreneurs. They are not afraid of failures, they're not afraid of hard work, they're willing to take chances. I've seen people who yes, like the coffee shop we talk about, that lady had her heart set on opening her own coffee shop. And we actually discouraged her from starting at the first couple of her choices till she got to the third one. And she listened, okay? We said, that's no good, that's not gonna work for you. And then even at the location that was so good in terms of traffic, she struggled and experimented. She was working so hard, and she would sometimes just cry because of the amount of work, because she couldn't afford to hire people. And generally on a brick and mortar, we've seen these are low-paying jobs, so the staff turnover is very high. So a lot of these things, but she never gave up. And when she started running out of money, we we have tried to help her a little bit through some micro lenders, but her family came in, you know, kicked in. So these people have family support sometimes. They are self-starters, there are a whole lot of things that make them successful. So the other people, the ones I know they're not gonna succeed is the ones who keep asking you to help them. Give me this. How do I find a startup with? Can you tell me how to do it? How do I get this license? Can you help me do that? You know, this is a when they ask that type of stuff, all of a sudden you realize that they're not really serious.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

Yeah, true, yeah. The present uh environment, you have you come from an industrial background, like I am also from industrial background, but the kind of clients who come the possibilities of business around in consumer space, mostly service, but still on service sector. And don't you think that this sector is never going to be oversaturated unless it could be location-centric, possibly. Yeah. So this now the question is when so you can never say no, there is no scope for a business. There is always a scope for business. It's all a question of how you execute it, how you predict it, how you go about doing it. Isn't it what's your view? What has been the experience? That is very true.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Because these are these businesses don't have any unique products or service. So there are enough businesses of that type. And so the way I started looking at it is that our clients actually had fairly modest ambitions, replacing their salary, let's just say the starting point. So they weren't looking to become next Apple or next Amazon. So their so the vision was relatively modest, therefore achievable. So the only thing we did is that because the technology has changed so much, we try to discourage people from opening a brick and mortar facility till they have proven their concept by going online, going to farmers markets, going to pop-up shops thing, or using consignment through existing shops, things like that. That's right. But we want them to test that concept. And until they get steady clientele, we strongly discourage them from opening a brick and mortar facility.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

Oh, that's interesting. In fact, some of the things that I learned from Jerry also when we did co-mentoring, is he said you also mentioned if you want to start a business which you are unfamiliar, you are not worked in the industry, go and experience that in working for somewhere else. Because the ultimate motive to start rather than gain salary or do that. That's a wonderful concept which I am also trying to practice when we are mentoring clients. Now tell me, when the client comes in and says, Look, you have any ideas to suggest? Is there anything like at this point of time in 2025, Houston offers these possibilities? Is there anything like that in mind?

SPEAKER_01 21:45

I am really bad at it and I tell them that because I've seen people succeed. I said, I come from India. Those guys start any and odd. whole trends of businesses and succeed by just learning how to count money and then working extremely hard. So I think that anything is doable. The question is whether you have the staying part, do it. If I see that the client has some resources, so I tell them to talk to one of our alliance partners, Framnet. Framnet is a franchising company. So the parent company has a limited number like 100 franchises that the vetted and score created an alliance because these are more balanced things too. True. It's not one-sided the franchise or and takes advantage exploits the franchisee. They also have a really good matchmaking algorithm. So they ask a whole lot of questions. I tell these my clients who are not sure I said why don't you go talk to these ladies that doesn't cost anything.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah at least you would get an idea because they've got only about 100 franchises to look at yeah to give you an idea whether you like something. True true and so some of them go there I tell them that based on statistics now at one time we used to think the franchises were low risk way to get into business. That's not true. The current data shows they're just as risky as starting a business from scratch. But if you've got for certain people people with more that like process like engineers, accountants, military people, this is not a bad way to go because you get all that stuff handed to you.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

You don't have to rebuild that concept so tell me what's what gets you going? How mentoring has helped your life and how you has helped Raj as a person 20 years of mentoring.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

It's been I end up spending more time than I ever thought I would on this because this actually gives me not just pleasure but purpose for starting a day. Wow wonderful and after retirement all of a sudden you there's just so much traveling and all that stuff you can do. So and and because the score clients are they they're not surprisingly they're much less demanding than a consulting out but you have to be constantly engaged with the client right this one you could actually pace yourself.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

That's right there are times when the client is at a critical phase in the business decision they might may need your help more often otherwise once a week once a month occasional emails seem to be enough which makes it very easy for me to incorporate in my daily life I mean that's that gives you the immense satisfaction personal your life also gets infringed when you're seeing different types of people also right when you see a client successfully in business you they they reach out to you periodically you go and visit their facility and have coffee and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Yeah we've got some clients we sort of match clients so if a coffee shop client comes we say okay we've got this pastry client you might be able to work together we've got this bookkeepers that's this one bookkeeper he's a mechanical engineer who got into bookkeeping because he loved that thing okay he is so good at management consulting so he doesn't just give you numbers he tells you what the numbers are telling you is how to improve your business. So from your own journey you should be able to put put together the steps for success for a client based on pure experience I think even it really comes down to I tell them that it's the execution that's critical I know you gotta do the planning just to be sure that you've looked at all the aspects of business but then if you just keep procrastinating keep procrastinating waiting for that golden moment it'll never come okay so the ones that succeed are willing to take the next step and we actually spend a lot of time on the execution so while the engineers you would know and and you ran a big business too but any business you run unless you set some goals oh yeah and then objectives to achieve those goals you could be wandering forever right but instead of using those words we just said let's just do milestones just give me three things you're gonna do between now and next week and so we start a break down the problem into pieces.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

Precisely precisely as simple as that and as difficult as that yeah instead of using words strategy business plan oh yeah goals and objectives overarching goals use simpler words I also tell my my family youngsters who ask for I say look it's predominantly common sense yeah but I also say look what succeeds is excellent relationship that you're going to have interpersonal relationship with all that whom you meet in the business without which nothing can however brilliant you are nothing is going to work.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Yes see that that's an excellent advice you know this is I normally don't advise people to buy books but the one that made the deepest impact the seven habits of highly effective people and it says that if you don't begin with the end in mind any path would take you the bit and it also says that yes once you have the goal at least the vision where you want to be yeah you really have to have specific steps and be willing to wander because true straight line is going to get you there.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

Absolutely but unless you take the first step to start the journey you're not gonna get there thank you so much for the very extremely interesting and engaging conversation I'm sure the listeners will benefit a lot by listening to questions very good beautiful thanks for listening to mentor conversations at Score Houston if you're an entrepreneur or small business owner we'd love to support your journey you can reach us at 713 4876565 or visit us at 8701 South Gessner suite 1200 Houston Texas 77074 our office is open Monday through Friday 10 a.m to 2 p.m except for federal holidays walk-ins are always welcome to learn more to request free mentoring or to register for workshops visit us online at score.org slash houston until next time keep learning keep growing and remember at SCORE we're here to help you thrive thanks for listening to mentor conversations at SCOREHTOR we'd love to support your journey you can reach us at 713 4876565 or visit us at 8701 SouthGestner suite 1200 Houston Texas 77074 our office is open Monday through Friday 10 a.m to 2 p.m except for federal holidays walk-ins are always welcome to learn more to request free mentoring or to register for workshops visit us online at score.org slashhouston until next time keep learning keep growing and remember at score we're here to help you thrive