Systems, Operations, and the Business 360 System With Rushab Kamdar (Systems Mini-Series (1/3) | TNE073

Is your business working for you or are you still working for your business? We all know that it takes a lot of hard work and persistent effort to get an entrepreneurial venture off the ground so that we can reach that point where we can afford to have the freedom to choose what we want to do with our time. Some entrepreneurs are fortunate enough to figure out what can catapult them to success and others need a little more guidance on the matter. It is for this reason that I invited Rushab Kamdar to join us for the first of our two-part Systems Mini Series.

Rushab Kamdar is the founder of ThinkBusiness360. He is a battle-tested entrepreneur who now utilizes the lessons he learned from his entrepreneurial journey to help entrepreneurs and business owners figure out how to grow their business and increase their profitability. In this episode, Rushad sits down with me to talk about what makes a business model viable. We also go into detail about his Business 360 approach. Then, we also diagnose my own business as a case study. This episode offers plenty of valuable takeaways not only for anyone looking to improve their business system, operation, and overall set-up.

Time Stamps:

[4:40]What is Think Business 360’s framework?

[6:16]What makes a viable business.

[7:55]What makes a good entrepreneur?

[15:04]Rushab shares a timeless lead generation tactic

[24:38]Why entrepreneurs shouldn’t be afraid of giving away too much

[31:19]New businesses and systems

Rushab's Links:
LinkedIn: Rushab Kamdar
Instagram: @rushabkamdar
Website: https://www.thinkbusiness360.com/

Omar's (Host) Social Media:

Instagram - @nomadables

TikTok - @nomadables

Facebook Group - NOMADABLES - Accountability & Growth Community for Remote Workers- Perfect to meet fellow online entrepreneurs, remote workers, and digital nomads.

YouTube - Omar Mo

LinkedIn - Omar Mo Nomads Cast

Twitter - @nomadables

Pintrest - @nomadables

Clubhouse - @pods

WEBSITE: https://www.nomadables.com/

Transcript

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TNE 73: Systems, Operations, and the Business 360 System with Rushab Kamdar (Systems Mini-Series ½) 

Omar  

On this podcast, we've spoken a lot about successful business models and practical advice on executing them. Over the next two weeks, however, I want to turn the conversation towards a topic that is just as important. If you don't want to be a slave to your business for the rest of your life. 

We're talking about systems and scaling. to some of you. This may be your life and blood and others listening to this episode are probably thinking, what the heck am I talking about? Well, I want to paint a picture for you that is happening for me as I speak this very intro. 

Right now I have nine employees all fulfilling the work of my clients. From video editing, to graphic design, to answering emails and editing podcasts. All of that is happening at this very moment. It allows me to travel, take days off, choose my own schedule and so much more so that I can focus on working on my business instead of working in my business. This is what systems can do for you. 

We're joined by Rushab, a master at systems and building businesses. We sit down with Rushad as he speaks about his business 360 approach and helps diagnose my business lifetime at its current stage. You can learn more about this approach in depth at think business 360 dot com. 

All right, Rushab, man, welcome to the Nomadic Executive. Super stoked to have you on. We met originally on Clubhouse man, welcome to the show.

Rushab Kamdar

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, man. And you know you are a guest on my podcast, and I'm so happy to be one on yours.

Omar  

Be sure to check that episode out. But also his podcast as a whole. Rushab is a business genius. And his programs really dive deep into, like the structure of your business the way your business works. 

And he's kind of like a doctor that comes in and fixes up your business or or diagnosis what's wrong with it. So really, be sure to listen to his podcast. Now, tell me, well give my audience a little elevator pitch about what you do in the first place.

Rushab Kamdar

Yeah, absolutely. So the easiest way to tell you is that I run a business strategy, consulting, and accelerator practice. So I have three clientele. Businesses, I go in and help them basically grow and improve their operations. I also do workshops at business schools. 

So I speak to master's students and teach them how to think business and talk business. That helps them get land jobs, actually, because if you can think business and talk business, you can network better in interviews, and also let a company know why you're a good fit for them. 

And my third one is helping entrepreneurs, those that have startups or those that are even experienced entrepreneurs, and that are looking to either launch or grow their business. And so those are the three areas that I help. And that's mainly because I have 17 years of entrepreneurial experience. And I've owned seven companies during that time.

Omar  

Right. So what made you want to go to the teaching side of things instead of… or the consultation side of things instead of owning another business?

Rushab Kamdar

Yeah, so it's funny, you know, I like to call myself the battle tested entrepreneur. That's because I've seen success - massive success early on. I've also had businesses that failed. And I've had to dig myself back out of that failure and come back to success. And I've done this in, you know, it's happened to me in several businesses, and it's happened in different industries. 

So I have this, this thing that I call the business 360 framework. It's a very organized way of looking at business, doesn't matter what your background is, it can help anybody understand business. And so I realized that, look, I've done this enough, I've made a lot of money, I've lost money, I've made money. 

AndI've enjoyed the entrepreneurial world. Why not help these entrepreneurs in something that I've already seen the pain points on, and maybe I can help them avoid that. And then at the same time, show them where they can find passion in entrepreneurship.

Omar  

Right. So explain this 360 framework a little bit more to me, like, from my head, like first thought, I guess is that you're looking at business from every single angle, both inwards and outwards. But that's still a bit too vague for me, like, what exactly is the framework? What are you doing there?

Rushab Kamdar 

Exactly. So I take if you can imagine in your mind, right now, a brick with the word business written on it. Now divide that brick into six equal parts. And that's essentially the components of business. 

These components, basically what I teach is to create them into virtual buckets or shelves in your mind. And that helps you now organize information in those buckets. Those six, I call them the six board members of business. Okay, so those six pieces, six board members. If the best way I show people how to think business, the first thing I show is how to think like a shark. So think about Shark Tank.

What are they? What are the investors doing when they're sitting in front of those entrepreneurs? They're asking them, you know, systematically questions on the product, on how they came about it. The numbers behind the product, what their operations look like, you know, where if they raise capital, how they raise capital, you know, what's their market look like and who their customers are. 

And what I just did right now is the framework is the six board members of business, and I said it to you in 15 seconds. And, and that's, that's a 360 degree view of business that they do. And they, in that process, they're validating whether your business is a viable business, and they're analyzing it, they should invest in it. And so that's how everyone's mind should think you should think like a shark.

Omar  

Right. So when thinking like a shark, then what makes a viable business in your eyes?

Rushab Kamdar

Yeah, so you know, a couple things. A lot of times people sit on numbers. But as we all know, there's a lot of companies that have gone public, and I’ve had - they've been in the red, right? Because they had scalability. So that's, you know, definitely a key word there, right? 

Like, if you have a business that can grow, because if once you hit a ceiling, you know, there's going to be a huge issue there. The second thing is recurring revenue, right? So you want to make sure you have a business that has a financial model behind it. 

One of the biggest things is that there is a customer base for it. A lot of times entrepreneurs have this mentality of if they build it, people will come. But that's not always the case, right? And it doesn't also mean that you stick up to stay on analysis paralysis. You shouldn't just stick around and go like, “Ah, you know what? I'm going to keep figuring out if this is the right business.” 

So there's a middle ground there, right? Like, don't just think you have immediate buyers. But also don't just keep second guessing yourself. So validating that idea. And when you go and find out that, okay…

Even if there's competition there, as long as there is a demand, as long as you have a scalable, scalable product, as long as you can afford to build that, and you have a customer base, there's always viability in a business.

Omar  

I say, so really, any idea that fits those four criteria can be turned into a viable business model.

Rushab Kamdar 

And, you know, I would say that, you know, one large piece is you, the entrepreneur, right? You know, if you had like, sometimes it takes a certain person to build something that maybe another person cannot, right? So that is a huge piece to also viability of a business. And that's what the sharks are looking into.

Omar  

How good the entrepreneur is. 

Rushab Kamdar

Yeah. 

Omar  

So in your eyes, then, I mean, to me so far, it seems like you do think like a shark. What is a good entrepreneur? What makes a good entrepreneur?

Rushab Kamdar

So it's funny, a lot of times you'll hear the answer is that a good entrepreneur is someone that is determined, has confidence, has drive, motivation, grit, all that stuff. And it's not, that's not wrong, but that you can say that for anybody, you don't have to be an entrepreneur for that. You can say that for an athlete, you can say that for an executive at a Fortune 500 company. 

But what I've learned is what makes a good entrepreneur? A couple things. The first thing is they have to like what they do. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. And you know, you won't know until you try it. So if there's anybody that's interested, definitely give it a shot. 

But then soon enough, you'll realize if you're made for it or not, because the grass is not always greener on the other side. So one is knowing that you like it, right? That's not to have that, why. Why do you want to do this, right? And if your answer is gonna be, I want to be my own boss, and I want to work less hours, that's not always the case, right? 

So you got to understand that there's those types of nuances there. So one, it makes a good entrepreneur. The second thing that I would say is someone that basically is looking to add value in some form, right? 

So you're not going in to build something just because you think it's going to make money, but you truly feel like there is a value add to it. And that's what people buy these days. It's value add, right? Something that gives the buyer to consumer, whether it's an online business, it's a product, it's a tangible product, it's a restaurant and you're buying food, you have to ensure the value and the quality of the values there. 

And so those two areas, I think if you merge it, one, liking the lifestyle, and then two, you know, providing the value, that's what makes a good entrepreneur.

Omar  

Makes sense. And that value really stems down to the product or the service that that person is selling, right? 

Rushab Kamdar

Correct. 

Omar

So, and this is a recent realization of myself, and maybe it hasn't been tested enough to be a full like 100% fact yet, but I've sold multiple different services in my life. And I have found services that bring a ton of value to the end consumer versus services that bring enough value, but potential value quite a bit, but not a front value to the customer. 

So like if I was to put them on a scale, the first product service might be a 9 out of 10 in value, the second service might be a six out of 10 and value. Yet, I've had the same difficulty trying to sell both of those as in like, it's been the same amount of work to try to sell both of those equally, right? Have you seen that to be the case in what you've done as well?

Rushab Kamdar

So yeah, it comes down to there's something that I like to say. It's like what you're saying is perceived value, right? So like, there's value in each product, but the consumer has a different perception on that value. Correct? Is that what they've seen with the two service offerings you're talking about? 

Omar  

You know, now that I think about it, I think they both had the same perceived value, because I framed them that way. But on my end, I saw one having more value than the other. So that might be the case. You know, that kind of just made me think… 

Rushab Kamdar 

You know what I would say is, a lot of times it comes down to the understanding that the consumer has on what it is right? And I'm not trying to say that at all that the service offerings you had the consumers maybe misunderstood it, but there there's an art to that, that articulated that message right? 

So there's a great book that I read, it's called The Nuclear Effect by... the author's name is Scott Oldford. And you know, he talks in there about when you're, when you have. when you're positioning yourself and when you're talking about what your product is. 

So for example, if it's an online marketing course right there you can say that this is a sales and marketing funnel academy. Or you can say that this is a scale your biggest business from six figures to seven figures academy, right? 

When you give it that positioning that okay, there's a dime a dozen funnel, business courses out there. But this one specifically saying go for six to seven figures, you know, you're gonna, you're going to that's going to pique your interest more, right? So that's where then the value hits, because you've given it that positioning. And so maybe that may help with, with how you know the value is is received by the consumer or even how you deliver it.

Omar  

Definitely. And something that I've heard recently as well from someone that I follow quite extensively, is that the mechanism itself doesn't matter, but rather the way that… rather the benefit that it's actually going to bring the consumer, right. 

So it doesn't, they don't care if you're running Facebook ads or doing organic social media marketing, or hell, if you're passing out flyers door to door, right. All they care about is the business that they're going to get from it or the sales that they're going to get from it. 

So that yeah, that really comes down to I think they're two separate offers. But we'll talk about that more later. What I'm more curious about is your actual 360 business framework. So you've covered what makes a good entrepreneur. What about on this? 

Let's go down the pipeline here, like the beginning of the pipeline, how do you go about getting leads? And you've done this in many different businesses? How do you go about getting leads?

Rushab Kamdar

Yeah, absolutely. So what's funny, in my seven companies, they were always B2B, there were businesses, right. So, you know, there's my new venture that is, on the entrepreneur, the entrepreneur academy, I was telling you about, which is providing an online course for entrepreneurs. 

That one is my first time going into the consumer side. So my lead generation is essentially following what many people before me have done that have worked, right, you know, understanding that online game and, you know, diving myself into that, when it came to the B2B side, there are different ways of doing lead generation. 

It's not to say social media is, you know, doesn't work. But that was not my primary source of lead gen. Mine was referral basis, huge in the business, the business world. So whatever you are doing in any business, even in the consumer facing thing, you want to make sure you provide high quality, high value because others will talk about you. 

And then there were conferences, there were, you know, networking events, there, those are the ways in the business prospecting, there's, you know, there are cold leads where you essentially are reaching out, which I did a lot. And one of my businesses I would call and I'm talking about this was international, so you're calling different countries. 

I've gotten to the point where I was calling, doing cold calls to companies, for lead generation where I hired interpreters, or translators, and so that, you know, I would give them I would write up a script, so that they would call and let them know that this person is visiting this country. And I would set up meetings that way.

Omar  

How long were you doing cold calls?

Rushab Kamdar  

So this was 2004 to 2008. You know, this was about, you talking about 17 years ago to, you know, you know, early, the furthest back was 17 years ago.

Omar  

Did cold email exist back then?

Rushab Kamdar

Yeah, cold emails worked. I did a lot of that as well, when I knew the companies or knew of the companies, I would say. And I would just reach out there. So emails… emails worked then. You know, LinkedIn was, I think around but wasn't that big. Of course, businesses weren't that much on social media on Facebook, or any of those places. 

And there weren't any cool tools that we have today, you know, like hunter.io, that can be an extension on your browser. And then you can type in a company's name, and it'll pull all the email addresses for that company from its search algorithm, right? 

Omar

Right.

Rushab Kamdar

So none of that stuff is there, you know. But that being said, that, you know, the concept is not different, right? It's, it's when you get in front of these people, or when you send a message or a script, you write a script, or whatever it might be, you want to make sure that when you're reaching out to them, it's not just “Hey, this is you know, I have this business, you need my service, right?”

You, the lead generation, and their outreach has to be very value add, ensure that it's about them and not about yourself. And then eventually, when you pique their interest, then they can learn more about you.

Omar  

Absolutely. Hence why I'm such a strong proponent of using podcasts as lead generation, right? Because especially for B2B, right? That kind of knocks in check marks all those boxes, right there value, conversation, you know, like and trust and then at the end, providing more value after you figured out their pain points, essentially from from the conversation itself. 

So I've always spoken about that on this podcast itself. I think a podcast is something that every B2B business in the world should have as an asset. But that's good that you came from the B2B space because we like talking a lot about B2B business on this podcast. 

I think a majority of the conversations that we have with an honest business aren't in the B2B space, and occasionally we'll bring someone in B2C that sells info products or something else. So there's a lot of knowledge that you can add in there. Going further into the next step in the pipeline from lead generation. Let's say you have them on a call in terms of sales. What are some ideas that you can bring to the table?

Rushab Kamdar

Yeah, absolutely. So you know, the one thing I will always tell any entrepreneur is its relationships. And you know, people hear that. But there's another huge importance I think that makes up a characteristic of an entrepreneur, which is patience. 

And what that what I mean by that is sometimes people get someone on a call, or they're in front of them. And one they're not unless you're building a relationship. Or they go right into a sale mode. And there's desperation in the voice, right? Or there's a, you know, a lack of patience and that voice, it's just like, hey, I want to get this deal done, you know?

And that's where I think a lot of mistakes happen. So, you know, one of the key things that I always learned in sales, and this hopefully helps anyone, is that when you have someone on a call, listen, and ask questions. 

And when someone responds and answer, repeat that answer, and then go on to the next question, right? So if it's, if you're, if you're selling a business service to someone. Let's say it's, you know, IT consulting, and you're saying they need a new cloud based server system, something like that, right? 

You know, they may say that, oh, you know, “One of my challenges is redundancy.” Then you may say, “Okay, well, so I hear redundancy is a big challenge, what else?” And then they'll say something else, you'll say, okay, so we got redundancy, and we got, you know, whatever it might be. And then they'll say, third thing. So you'll say redundancy, the second thing, that third thing, and then eventually, you can then move it on to the next another question. 

So I know you've got these three pain points, let me ask you this question. And as you start asking this, you're, you're actually getting all the feedback from your prospect. 

Omar

Right.

Rushab Kamdar

They feel like you're really listening, you know? And, and as you're and that's, that's actually building a business report, that's a form of relationship. And, and you have to do a little bit of mirroring, you know, if you don't know, Mary is, you know, what, some of Tony Robbins videos about how the person is reacting, and you try to react to them, because that gives them the safety and comfort. So there are some techniques involved there. 

It takes practice, definitely, you know, if you can, you know, that's where there are things called sales, training, and things like that. But I would say that's the best thing, you ask questions, you repeat what they're saying. And when it's time, that's when you say, look, you know, I've heard that these are the five areas that you have pain in, in your business. And I'm sure you mentioned that you've tried, you know, these four things, and they didn't work. 

And you know, here's what I think will work. And you say, what do you think is gonna work? And then after you see their response, like, Well, you know, listen, you know, my business has this, we can offer this. 

So you're not even saying, you know, hey, my business can help you with this, you first just basically give them a solution, you know, this is what I think you need to do, you need to do X, Y, and Z, you know? Is that something that would be interesting to you? And then you say, Hey, you know what, Look, my business does this. And that's how you come in, you come into that soft landing.

Omar  

I see exactly what you're saying. And if I were to even give a bigger picture there for a second, I realized a lot of these “sales tactics”are just the characteristics of being a good conversationalist or someone with social skills. They can read the room and understand how to interact with other people, right mirroring and all these different things and, and framing it in a way where you're not coming off salesy, but rather you're just in it, to help them if you really are in it to just help them so we should be coming out right, or coming off. 

That desperation in the voice. I mean, I've definitely seen that back in the day. And myself, I have seen that in other people. And all of that is true. I think if someone were to actually level up their social skills, then the sales skills would follow suit, you'd be able to sell as at least would be to be you know, like, it might not matter so much for B2C when you have funnels and stuff running. 

But for B2B definitely, you know? So it's interesting that you mentioned all that, and especially the soft landing part, because I was just seeing myself in some sales calls this past two weeks. And I can think of one that I had yesterday where I was just focused on giving value and value. And there was one point where I realized my service might not even be the best for him. So I'm like, “Look, it's probably not the best for you right now.” 

And then he goes back and turns around and says, “You know what, this thing you said, though, might be a lot of value for me.” While I'm like, “Okay, let's break it down. This is your pain point. That's your pain point. Oh, you know what, maybe I could see some value for this.” And you went ahead and bought. So it really comes down to like you giving value and not being desperate, right? 

Rushab Kamdar

And I think something that you just said was a great thing, which is you don't need to make every sale. And what happened was the person that you were speaking to your prospect essentially came back and said no, no, no, wait, wait, wait - you did say something that I think can help me and a sale was born out of that, right?

So what you did is you showed the person - you never made the person feel like they were obligated. Right and when you don't make your prospect feel like there's an obligation and that it's really just a conversation. Nine out of 10 times a sale happens. I'm telling you a lot about 99 Don't know the statistics, but you know, just speaking 9 out of 10 times.

Omar  

All different industries, 9 out of 10. And anyone if we can make that across the board, I mean, like...

Rushab Kamdar

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So more often than not, I'll correct myself more often than not, you'll make a sale. And that's mainly because you're showing you're letting the other person know that, look, I'm valuing you and your time, I'm valuing your wallet. And I'm valuing what you're trying to build in your business. 

Omar

Yeah.

Rushab Kamdar

You know? And that is… Today we're in the age of consciousness, and more and more people. And there's, we’re also in the age of empathy. And so there are more and more people who are recognizing that and they are using those qualities, and then sales are getting better because of those qualities.

Omar  

100% and less buyer's remorse too, at the end of the day. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think if it doesn't just apply to B2B, or even conversations, like Gary Vee always talks about the one two punch strategy, right? And he's always like, give value, give value, give value, and then ask for something in return. 

I mean, that giving value goes across the board, no matter if it's social media, no matter if it's B2B sales, no matter if it’s conversation or social settings, whatever, right? It’s lead with value, lead with value, that's... and the older that I get, the more connections I see with so many different things. You know, it's interesting, I think entrepreneurship is like one of those things that just kind of teaches you about life, interestingly enough.

Rushab Kamdar

Absolutely. You know, you asked early on a question, that your first question was like, you know, what makes a good entrepreneur? You know, I probably left this part out, but it's probably the most important piece, which is, a good entrepreneur is a problem solver. 

If you are a problem solver, and you like being you know, like, for example, if there are pieces of puzzle in front of you, would you want to put them together? Would you be like, No, I'm not doing that, right. Like, you start to learn more about who you are. And if you're someone that enjoys helping and finding, you know, solving someone's problem or a problem, I should say, a business problem. 

Entrepreneurship is definitely up your alley. And that goes to adding value to Gary Vee one two punch value value value is essentially solution solution solution, right? 

Omar

Right.

Rushab Kamdar

In some form. And you're giving someone something to give them some type of information that can help them solve that problem. And then you can ask in return, like, “Hey, look, I know all this, you've been taking all this information for free from me. But you know, what, if you hire me, I can do it 10 times better because I know it's so well. And someone’s gonna go like, “You know what? You’re right.”

Omar  

That is very true. It's about also beating that scarcity mentality of like giving away too much. Yeah, it's also a common problem that I think entrepreneurs fear giving up front, and then they're thinking that they'll bring it in house or something, or take...

Rushab Kamdar

I'll give you a great example. Any entrepreneur out there, that feels like I'm going to give away too much. Let me tell you something very simple. Read a book, right? Read one of those business books that are out there. 

You know, I just mentioned The Nuclear Effect, I just bought the go giver, I heard some great things about it, right? So read one of these books. And when you're done, give yourself 24 to 48 hours, and tell me how much do you remember? Right? And what's gonna happen, and that's why we highlight, right? And that's why we take notes and that, and it's because that's a that's the human mind.

You're not gonna remember everything. So when you're giving value to someone, you know, that doesn't mean that that retention is there, and they're now they've taken all the information they're running with it. And you know, that's why they say the best way to learn is repetition, right? So don't worry about it, you got to give value, no one's gonna steal something and take it away, and they don't need you anymore. 

You know, time is one of the most valuable assets. And businesses also know that. So if they like what you have to say, and they like what you have to offer, they may just say, “You know what, we're gonna save time and have Omar do this for us. So we don't have to.” Right?

Omar  

Very interesting, right. Cool. So let's go to the next step of the pipeline here then. So we've got sales. We've got the leads, we've got the sales. From there, we're talking about service delivery instructions, systems, right? 

So at least from my understanding, this is a lot of your bread and butter here. What are some key things that you think can apply to any entrepreneur at this stage where they've got a product that sells or a service that sells and they're getting good feedback from it in case studies, but they want to scale their business now?

Rushab Kamdar

So one of the the biggest mistakes... Let's start with the mistakes right, is that an entrepreneur has a product that sells and they want to scale? Now, what they have to understand is that what is their product, price point or rent or profit margin or revenue? We have to look at the product first before anything. 

And the reason why is as you scale… do you scale to a part point where your profit margins can increase and not decrease? So as your and the reason why is and that comes sometimes your price points Right, if you're selling something for five bucks, and now you need to grow it, or scale it, there are parameters that come in, right? 

You're increasing your marketing, right to get more people, you're increasing potentially your workforce to build that product. If this is a tangible product, right? Even if it's not a tangible, it's a digital product, there's still a build out that needs to be done, right? So you're building an operation side. You're trying to expand a market base, right?  A customer base. 

And so as you do all these things, there's these costs that come into play, then plus, you're making more of that product, right? So there's a cost element of that. And so what happens is, a lot of times not everything is an equal scale, like just because it caught you know, sometimes people's costs go higher as they grow more. And so you want to know that there's your product, hit those price points. 

And so when you're looking at building systems and structures in place, before you do that, it's a great exercise to kind of understand what is your cost projection? And your revenue projection? If you were to build this out? And that's when you start putting in, okay, well, this is why marketing is now and if I, if I increase my marketing by 20%, does that necessarily mean that I'm going to grow my or my sales by 30%? 

Because if you're going to grow your sales by 30%, then yeah, throw in 20%? on increase in marketing, right? Right. If your sales only gonna grow by 10%, guess what? Now you're going on that? That downside, maybe you got to bring the second product out there at a higher price point, right? So there's those little things and I know, I went on product strategy, but that's a key before you get into operational implementation for scaling.

Omar  

Right. I'm also relating this back in my head to service based businesses, but it's pretty much the same concept here, right?

Rushab Kandar

Yeah, if you have like an info product, right, and you're selling it for $99, right, you know, let's say it's an online course for summer for $9. And you're like, oh, man, you know, I just made $10,000. This month, I want to go to 20,000. 

And now all of a sudden, you start increasing your marketing, you bring on a virtual assistant, you bring on someone, a salesperson, whatever it might be, and all of a sudden, you just increase your costs to get an extra 10k more, but that cost may eat out your entire profit margin, even if you hit the 20k.

Omar  

You can be making 20K and still making the same profit.

Rushab Kamdar

Or less, right? So you would have to look and say, Okay, I may need to come up with $1,000 product in order to make this worthwhile when I scale and grow. 

Omar  

Very interesting. Yeah. So talk about the systems or the operations now a little bit more.

Rushab Kamdar

Right, so, you know, a lot of times I've heard entrepreneurs say, well, when they hear systems, it's a very subjective term. Because it could mean different things for different people. And when I just basically say system... Systems are essentially lm elements you put in your business to make it easier, right? 

So a system could essentially be a funnel, right? A marketing funnel, so you create a funnel, and you put it out there and great. It's out there. Another system, for example, could be if you're doing social media posting, you get like Hootsuite, right? 

Omar

Right.

Rushab Kandar

And essentially, it's posting it for you on a schedule on various different platforms, right? So a system could be in my side, I recently got into this consulting platform called HoneyBook, where I create proposals on that, and it goes through an entire, I would say, an entire engagement process, there's, you know, from email, to discovery, to pre consultation to whatever, right and then finally, to booking to closing, right. And there's templates built in and all that stuff. So that's a system because templates are built in. 

And those such a great system on a digital world is called Zapier or Zapier, you know, it's pronounced differently. Essentially, it helps to automate various different service platforms that you use, and it connects it all together. And you know, one action is done, think about an email sequence to like, if you use any of these big email providers, the moment someone subscribes, it automatically will send them a thank you email, and then I'll send them something three days, five days, seven days. And that's what a system really comes down to. 

So systems could also be creating SOPs, right, that's the standard operating procedures. So you're hiring a virtual assistant to make life easy. First thing you do is you're going to record everything on a video and you send it out to your virtual assistant and your virtual assistant now knows what needs to be done. And now, they don't need to bother you on teaching them how to do it, because you created that it's out there.

Omar  

In the beginning, when someone's starting a business, their systems are so constantly shifting, you know, like writing SOPs and all this stuff like why write one when the business system might change, or the platform might change or the automation might change within like the next month? 

What point in the business’ lifetime or I guess after they started selling their product and service that's been proven? Should they actually start focusing a lot on putting those systems in place for operations to go smoothly?

Rushab Kamdar

That's a great question. You know, what I would say is that business is always ever changing. And the systems you use will always change no matter where you are in the lifecycle of your business. So when you first start, don't complicate it with yourself, don't go subscription, heavy, don't buy 20 million different things, I would say, get things as you need it. 

You’ll know when you need it, you'll get to a point where like, okay, you know, there's an exercise you should do at least once a week, which is, you know, what is my biggest pain point that I'm feeling right now, in my operations, right? I'm not talking about your business as a whole, but in my operations, right? 

So you know, if you're a content creator, and there's various different contents, it might be editing, right? It might be, you know, and so you may say, you know what, this is a big pain point, because it's taking a lot of my time away. So let me look into getting help on that, right?

And then that's now you found help, and then you could create a system within that person. And that system could be whatever you create with it, I know, someone that they do a podcast interview, their own podcast, I should say, they interview someone, and they just take the raw file, and they upload it to their Google Drive. 

They have Zapier embedded, it automatically notifies once it's on a Google Drive to two or three different people, the different virtual assistants. One takes it in order to edit it, one takes it to, like, you know, basically formulate and put it into their podcast thing. And one creates thumbnails and marketing materials out of it, right.

And so what they've done is all they do is they just drop it, and they're done. They walk away, and then it's ready for them. And you know, so that's a system, right. And so you know, you know, you'll know when you get there.

Omar  

Makes a lot of sense. So I guess I'm going to put myself in the shoes of like, someone who'd be your student, then here for a minute, right. And then we can close it off after that. I think this is a would be a good case study for this. Because I think that 30 to 40% of my audience is right around my shoes, like probably making right around the same revenue point that I am. 

And my, I guess putting myself in that person's shoes. I'm at a point in my business where I've got a lot of - I got a team. And I've been delegating a lot. So I'm not really doing any of the service delivery at all. 

My biggest point is being in the center of client communication, and delegating to my team like this needs to be done, that needs to be done, and this needs to be done, right? So I've been looking at different ways to assign tasks like assign and things like that. That's probably going to be my next move of finding a system there to start delegating tasks in a way where I have to converse with people. 

But also, the tasks are pretty much the same each week, they just repeat. So once I've already inaugurated my team member on “Hey, this the way this client works, they just repeat it over and over again.” 

So I guess for my point, or my question, what would be a good way for me to scale that. And I have two businesses, and I'm thinking about only one of them. The current business model that I have, seeing as I've got about 50 to 60% profit margins. But I've also got eight team members serving nine clients or eight client, right? 

So that's pretty much one team member full time per client, right? So it's not that scalable in my head that that first business model that I have. But if I were to save it, or move or advanced it in some way, what would you do in that case?

Rushab Kamdar  

Well, if you want to scale that specific one, and right now you're seeing one team member to one client, right? I would, you know, without knowing specifically what that business is, right?

Omar  

It’s content creation, essentially.

Rushab Kamdar

Okay, correct. Our content creation, and they're essentially being full time, right?

Omar  

Yep. About 40 man hours per client a week.

Rushab Kamdar 

And if you're talking about scaling, are you looking to find…? Are you looking to see how you can reduce the number of team members per client? Are you trying to make maybe one per two client?

Omar  

That's probably the biggest thing, maybe even one per three, if that's possible. And I've lowered my services to offer the services that I offered in the beginning. I probably do half those services now for the same clients. Yeah. So I was able to do that a little bit, but it still wasn't enough. 

And it's subjective, right? Creativity is subjective. So every client has revisions to throw in and things like that. So there's just a lot of unpredictable bottlenecks in the business that I can't seem to pinpoint.

Rushab Kamdar

So there's, there's two things I'll say to you. The first thing, and I don't and this is a ticking assumption, but you know, and you may have done this, but there's a lot of a lot of service based businesses are now getting into this, which is qualifying their prospects. And that means that okay, you have a client that needs your service. But are they worth your service, right? 

And I don't mean to sound condescending when I say that, but it's essential you have to look at and say you say to yourself, there's creatives and you know, someone may need 20 revisions, some any two revisions, some may give you exact view of what they want on their content creation, it's created and they say, you know what, I don't like this, and now they want more, right? 

And so I would definitely say that to find clientele that are aligned with your core principles in your business, right? So there's that to that other side, the flip of it, right? You don't need to take every customer, you don't need every client, you have to, you know, and how you qualify them is up to you and you know, your own process there. But it is something that's very important. 

It's something that I'm, I'm looking at doing as well, on some high ticket service offerings that I'm building, right, creating an intake form, and really vetting it out and ensuring that if I'm going to spend time on someone, that they're the right client. But coming back to scaling, right, you did you study or you're tinkering with product, right? 

So you said you took some of your service offerings down, you simplified it. What I would also say is that maybe there should be some streamlined protocols around your service offering. Right. So it's like, we give you two revisions. And you know, or three, whatever it is, and like, I don't know, five phone calls in a month, at this price. I'm just throwing it out there. I don't know exactly right. 

Anything above that. This is what the charge is, right? So you can bring it on the revenue side. And if you're trying to do one per three, on content creation, it depends on what type of content, how much content, what are they doing, where they're creating. And the last piece I would say is that potentially, if there is a platform out there that can help you with this, that can save the time for your, your team members, look to see if that's there. 

And if it's not there, you may have a business opportunity in your hand to create one that can help not only your own self, but numerous agencies out there that do this and say, “Omar, you just built something that we need.” And it's it's it's helped us out, right, whatever that bottleneck is in content creation, you know, and again, I'm just, that's the entrepreneur me, that's always saying that, hey, there's always a business somewhere to build. 

But yeah, I would say it's those three, like qualify the clientele so that the time is being wasted. See if you can streamline further your product offering and, and see if there's a platform out there that can save the time and help for your customers, or for your team members. And the last thing is, maybe there's a business opportunity there for you.

Omar  

Makes a ton of sense. And that just gave me an idea as well. So I appreciate that. There might actually be a business opportunity. And there's someone with a SAS company, maybe down the road, but

Rushab Kamdar 

Yeah, I mean, outside of that, you know, you hire a team of virtual assistants, you know, like a 15 people think tank of content creators. You know, one other thing is streamlining your content creation in a consistent format. 

So what that means is that, you know, you have the same coral, like it's, it's basically a foundation and you just keep replicating, and you build on that same foundation. So you're not doing a company, you're not building a bicycle for this person, and a car for that person, an aeroplane for the other person. Everything is a car. It's just different colors, you know, maybe different sizes, but it's still a car.

Omar  

Like a cluster model in a way, correct? 

Rushab Kamdar

Yeah, correct.

Omar

Makes sense? Well, cool, man. Let's wrap this podcast up with one final question here. And this is a question that asked pretty much everybody that comes on my podcast, right? You may have heard it, you may have not. But pretty much everyone from multimillionaire down to like the rugged backpacker, right? 

And that question is if you had a billboard in space, and on that billboard, you could write whatever you wanted. And every time the sun rose every single day, everyone on planet Earth could read it. And every time that sunset went away, it was in some universal language that everyone could read. What would you write?

Rushab Kamdar

This is one that I created myself. I'm actually in the process of trademarking it, because I put it on like t-shirt merchandise: “Compete with yourself, help everyone else.”

And that if we live in a world like that, where you're basically anything you want to do, and you want to succeed, be your own competition. But anybody else that's out there, even if you’re same field, if you help them out, you're going to get that in return. This is what the business model is today, right? 

If you look at it back from the early days, and Microsoft's taking everyone out all their competitors, they suffered. And because of that everyone went after them, antitrust, etc, etc. That's how Google and Apple took them over.

Omar

Right. 

Rushab Kamdar

And today, if you look at them, Microsoft is basically teaming up with everyone and partnering with everyone. It is it's compete with yourself. Help everyone else.

Omar  

I love it. Thank you so much for coming on today. We have lots of valuable advice here both for me and my audience. So thank you. 

Rushab Kamdar

Absolutely. Omar, thank you for having me. I look forward to and, you know, anytime you want to come back on my podcast, you're more than welcome.

Omar  

Awesome. 

Thanks for coming on today Rushab. Rushab is one of those people that just has such a good understanding of what business is all about. So if you're curious to learn more about what he does, what his systems are or what he can even do for your business, be sure to check out his website at ThinkBusiness360.com.