Latest / Exit Algorithms / Sales Psychology, Hustle Culture Myths & Commercializing Your Idea | Dr. Deepak Bhootra (#46)

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Sales Psychology, Hustle Culture Myths & Commercializing Your Idea | Dr. Deepak Bhootra (#46) · Exit Algorithms

• speaker-0: Welcome to exit algorithms, the podcast where we decode what it really takes to unlock growth, streamline operations, and prepare your business for a high value exit. I'm your host Pete Vera. And today I'm excited to bring on Dr. Deepak Bhutra as our guest. He's a world-class sales expert and founder of multiple ventures, including Jabalani Consulting and Rise Up at Work. Deepak, great to have you on the show. I'm excited to get into this. speaker-1: Pete, I'm ⁓ absolutely excited. I actually managed to listen to some of your episodes before, and I actually realized that there's so much learning that you pack into your episodes that I'm really hoping I can live up to that expectation that you've created from the past episodes, at least that I heard. So really excited, speaker-0: I appreciate it. I'm sure you will. I always do research on my guests and I love your background. Yeah, don't we get into that? You don't mind sharing your whole business journey and what led you to do what your two ventures now. speaker-1: So this is the moment where people regret giving the microphone to me because I will not stop. So Peter, at any point you feel that, well, okay, it's now time to go home or, you know, Starbucks is about to close. We've to go now, Deepak. Peter, born and raised in India, but I consider myself citizen of the world. I carry a South African passport. I'm an overseas citizen of India. I have a US green card. So this confuses a lot of people. And I actually tell people, shouldn't confuse you. It should actually excite you because you're now meeting someone that brings all this stuff, global citizenship to the fore, right? That's what excites me. My journey actually was very interesting because I come from a family of merchants. They had stores. Basically, Walmart wiped out that business. know the business Walmart wiped out? That was my grandfather's business. FYI. Just give context to people listening in. The Mormon pop shop. Working the Mormon pop shop, I realized one thing. We can make the world very complex, but at the end of the day, convincing people to buy from you is a belly to belly, not B2B, belly to belly discussion. People need to trust you. People need to see that you are giving them something that will solve a problem of theirs and you're charging a price that is reasonable and makes sense for the value you add to it. That was my cutting ground. Unfortunately, I decided not to get into my granddad's business because I wanted to do something bigger. And my granddad's approach was you could just take my business and explore it, dude. Like, no, no, I want to work for someone, which was a shock for him. So, sir, I ended up working for 30 years in the corporate world. I ended up maneuvering through a lot of places. I started off in sales. At age 33, 35, I got burnt out twice. I actually exited sales, but there was something that happened. It made me move into sales operations. And I think that's where I found what I really enjoy doing. Helping salespeople become better and efficient at what they do through process, through behavior, through mindset, through technique. That's what I am. RiseUp came along, Peter, a completely obtuse thing because I'm an ISAEF certified coach. And along the way, thanks to my own challenges with mental health around my burnout experience, And the reality that I felt there's something going on with a lot of people who believe that hustle culture is the right way of operating. It's not. Hustle culture on surface looks really cool, right? People, everyone wants to see, you look at the TV ad, people drinking coffee while moving across the road. That's it, right? Anyone sitting drinking coffee is like, ⁓ lazy. It's far from reality. So as I looked at the damage being caused around, and I realized that there's actually a very large segment of people actually don't know how to operate at work. Many people at age 21, excited because they got the first job, but they actually don't know what to do after they get the first job. They don't know how to manage upwards. They don't know how to speak their mind in a meeting. They don't know how to say no when they're getting burdened with too much on their stuff. They don't know how to prioritize time, stuff like that. That's where RiseUp comes in, building a platform to help with career dynamics. 21-year-olds cannot afford executive coaching. There's a massive gap in the market, Pete, and that's where I'm coming in with my idea on RiseUp. speaker-0: Yeah, I love it. It sounds like it's rooted in pain that you experienced when you burned out. speaker-1: Yeah. And the pain that I have heard more than 1,500 people that I've dealt with in my career on a one-on-one basis, mentoring, coaching, people will not stand up and ever tell you, right? There's a stigma attached to people admitting to their weaknesses and particularly coming from a sales background. No salesperson will ever stand up and say that I use AI for writing emails. They may use it, but no one's going to say that because it takes away from that aura. And that aura that they sell allows them to earn 25, 30, 40, a hundred percent more than what a common man earns on the street, right? So therefore you have those things playing around. But when I sit down and talk to them one on one, I can see the pain. I can see what is happening underneath that. Just to give you some statistics quickly, mean, Peter, 35 % of salespeople will exit the sales function by age 35. That's a number. I'm giving it to you. Now just imagine 12 million salespeople in the US and we're losing a third of that. I consider them to be managed as best, right? For me, sales is a noble function. That's a big number. Why is anyone not focused on that? speaker-0: Wow. speaker-1: because what's happening is that it is assumed that sales is a turnstile, people come, people go. So we have taken it for granted. You gotta ask yourself a question. Why? Why do we take things for granted? Why must I always cut chicken in half before I roast it? I don't understand. Why not cut it in fourth? Why not splice it? I don't know. It's one of those things. So back to you. speaker-0: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. It's a issue a lot of people deal with and they don't really, they don't really talk about it for reasons you just said, ego, et cetera. Yeah. So what got you into, into sales as the, you know, as your career path and yeah, I love to hear your, just your psychology around sales. You know, a lot of founders. They of course are doing sales at the beginning and then they love to shove off some of the sales work to the sales team. Cause it's, you know, it's hard. It's hard. hard. It's hard. Yeah. What's your response to that? speaker-1: My response is pretty similar. Let tell you what got me into sales. That was the first question you asked. Complete chance. I was an operations guy for the first three years of my life, working in transport. At one point in my journey, I had 50 drivers reporting to me. But I always was extremely computer-minded. And at age 23, I had done my MBA as well. So I had too many ideas and a lot of stuff that was going on with me. So I was at a party. where I actually bumped into someone and dropped my beer on his shoes. And he looked at me and he's like, hey man, slow down. And I said to him, Alastair, my gosh, I've been sending my resume to your organization, but no one wants to talk to me. And he's like, He, for some reason, liked what I was, that behavior of mine. And he said, okay, let's go for my quad. What do you want? I said, I would like to get into pre-sales, sales, business development. And I believe you're putting together a team that's going to work on one of the biggest petrochemical projects in South Africa. And said to me, yeah. I said, but I have six rejection letters from you. And they said the good old days, no emails, letters. Dear candidate, thank you, but no thank you. Those type of letters, right? They said to me, you're a persistent little S-H-I-T, aren't you? And I'm like, yes. So he says, okay, you know what, me your number. I promise to call you tomorrow. And he called the next day and I went for my interview. He brought me into sales and then he taught me a lot of tricks and tips and understanding how to deal with customers, how to speak to customers and how to speak to customers at different levels. ⁓ a certain way you talk to a guy who runs a fuel gas station, right? That guy is a franchisee. He's got a different way of talking. Then you talk to the corporate people at the actor. So the company was Petronas that I did some work for. It was really, really, really interesting period. That's how I got into sales. And there's one point that I just want to make in that is that find the best salesperson to work for and watch and observe. You will learn so much. The amount of books that I have behind me, these books simply reflect what I feel some of the guys have already done. Books don't tell you what people haven't done before. It's all been done. It's just that it gives context and puts it together. So for me, that was a big learning. So if anyone's listening in, your sales journey is not going to be, you may have a classically different story. Mine was just bumping into an interesting individual who actually nurtured me, helped me and used to be so brutal that every meeting had to be a jacket. And I had a consistent weight problem, Pete. So my jackets were always like button open, button closed, button open, button closed. And he finally told me, I'm going to buy you two jackets because I'm tired of you looking like a pork sausage all the time. So now Pete, the question that you asked is, when you look at sales today and you look at salespeople, you've got to understand. Salespeople are told conveniently, memorize the script, apply the script, it'll always work. Salespeople are told, go to any Barnes and Noble and go look at the shelves and you're going to find 30 ways to break a pricing objection, a hundred ways to get a yes. so you end up learning sales to sell, whereas you need to learn selling to serve. And there's a huge mind shift required over there. When you are selling, your manager is going to tell you, you're only at 80%, the other 20%, where is it going to come from? And all you're thinking about is, I got to close the Richard's account. If I don't close the Richard's account, I'm not going to make the 20%. Now, Pete, that's like saying kids are obnoxious, kids are costly, therefore I'm not going to have kids, but wait, if I get married, I might have to get kids, so let's not get married also. Wow. That is one hell of a backward extrapolation. Now just imagine what salespeople are doing. They're going into meeting committed to the reality that they need to win this deal because if they lose it, they're going to lose face at back at work. That is not the way to operate. And this is something that's not taught to the guys. Why? Because guess what? Sales leadership is still stuck in the 80s and 90s where you had the stick and the carrot. And guess what, Pete? The carrot, honestly speaking, was just used like a stick. And I'm sorry about the gesture that I'm doing on my screen, but used to always say that, you know, I don't know why that didn't feel like an incentive, but I need to get to the doctor because I seem to have a massive back pain now. Right. That's how I used to feel today. It's still there. Surprising that all the guys that were trained that we are now applying the same principles that have been distributed along the way. Sales is not just about techniques. Sales is also about your behavior and your attitude. And those are two buckets that I would say anyone listening in focus on that. and particularly founders Peter. are the ones that have amazing ideas, but you cannot sell an idea if you don't know how to sell. And that is where founders believe that if I build it, therefore they will come. I guess it was a great movie and I loved it. Field of Dreams, I loved that movie. It motivated me, still motivates me, but that's not how real life works. Your ability to articulate and if you raise funding, you're already selling anyway. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Sorry, long-winded answer. Pete, I'm sure you're wondering, what exactly did I ask this dude? speaker-0: No, it's my mistake for throwing two questions at you at once. My pleasure. I love your origin story though. You know, it's funny. You can point to one specific moment, spilling beer on a guy and yeah, I mean, changed the trajectory of your life ultimately, right? speaker-1: There's at least three or four events that I can tell you about very fondly. And Pete, the one that I will talk about later is that when given the opportunity, people shy away. So as an example, salespeople, right? They're told this is in authority, this is not in authority. So I was sitting at one of South Africa's largest hotel chains doing a discussion on a proposal that we submitted. she said to me, you have three more hours. You're not leaving this building until you convince me why I should buy from you. Then we started, she would sit, I don't like this price. Pete, I got my manager on the call and the finance guy on the call. And we actually live worked it with the customer, banging back and forth, back and forth. The customer told me something later on. She said to me, I could see you're hungry, but I also saw that people respect you because you were convincing them why ⁓ what my ask was, was very powerful. And said, you did it in front of me, which is extremely courageous because it could have backfired. She said that told her a couple of things. And those are the principles I tried to educate my salespeople and the founders on, because I'm also a strategic advisor to six founders right now. those, those guidance is as follows. Number one, if you tell someone you're going to do something, just do it. And if you cannot do it, don't tell them five minutes before the deadline that I cannot do it. Tell them before, let them know that you are smart enough to extrapolate and know that it ain't happening. Two, if something is not happening, at least give something. Tell them what's missing, but deliver something. If you're going to a meeting, try to arrive five minutes earlier. I know it sounds funny, but customers actually appreciate that. Your customer can leave you waiting, but never leave a customer waiting. Every time I've done that, it started off on the wrong foot. Now you could argue, what kind of mathematics is that Deepak? What I'm talking about is an experience of a thousand deals. That's just how it works. And when you can show to your customer that you command the respect of your organization, that gives them faith that when things will go wrong, this man will fight for us. Your ability to extract value from your organization that helps your customer is an ability that a lot of people misunderstand and don't understand. I'm telling you, it's a huge magic power. It's a superpower. Rockstar says people that I work with, they are extremely well versed in how their organizations work, which levers to press and who are they? You said something very interesting earlier, Peter, and I have to want to connect dots for you. You said... Salespeople look for others and they can pass away their burden to them. rockstar salesperson does that, but he does it in a very efficient way. He goes to people who are better at what they do than he is and says, I need your help. I need you to do this for me. And that's the power of a great rockstar salesperson. The second thing you notice over here is that my ability to have a champion sitting across from me and building the relationship. I advise salespeople also that same thing, build champions. Find out. who supports you inside and then build that relationship and find out what's in it for them personally. It could be that a failed project, convince them why this project will not fail and that their name will be Neon, Hair. Connect the dots. That's the message I'm going to give you Peter, but back to you again, sir. speaker-0: motion Yeah, no, thank you for sharing those great nuggets of wisdom there. really appreciate it. Why do you think, so what's the main cause of ⁓ underperforming sales teams ⁓ general? ⁓ there a common root cause? ⁓ speaker-1: Here's the fun part. I wish there was, but there's some generalities, yes, that I could admit to. Let's just look at the maths of the process for some reason. And I've been in sales 30 years and I don't know, maybe you are more smarter than I am, but please help me understand this. I can go to any company and I can throw any number and guess what? 25 % or 30 % of the guys make literally 80 % of the number. And then you have a bottom 25 % that are always... Now here's the funny thing. I even then said to someone, no, no, surely Pareto is going to fail at some point. I have 10 sales reps, I fired half, only five left. Within a year, the same thing happens again. And then you got to ask yourself, wait a minute, so now people tell me with AI, we're going to reduce the number of salespeople we need. I'm saying this is going to be even worse Peter, it's going to be worse because what you have is you have a natural program There's something that's happening, which is systemic, which I could not put my finger down to. It comes down to not just people, it comes down to hiring. It comes down to the environment that you create and it comes down to sales leadership. So the biggest reason why sales teams struggle is because one, there's no method to the madness. Here's the reality. If you bring five salespeople together and you sit them down and you say, what are you trained on? He says, I'm on Sandler. What are you on? I'm on this, I'm on this, I'm on this, I'm on this. Okay, awesome. Now you bring them together and you're talking about what's the compelling event? What's the pain the customer is facing? And everyone is trying to give you their perspective. But it's all the wrong answers because they're all seen. What you need to realize is that sales typically fails because the team is singing off from different pieces of paper. Get them unified. Two, streamline the process of the coefficient of drag is the lowest. And I use this language because I did 20 years in sales operations and I can assure you CRM systems 25 years ago were designed to control the pipeline and forecast from a management point of view. fact, there's a study that I did which will make you fall out of the chair, Peter. beyond 40 minutes to about an hour, the utility curve actually falls for performance. The highest performing salespeople based on quota attainment achieve it at about 40 minutes to 60 minutes per week on a CRM system. But the more time you spend in CRM, the curve starts falling. Now go scratch your head. Why? It makes sense because CRM as a tool set, when it came out, was not designed to actually make you better at your job. It was designed to tell management where you were in your funnel. So it answered a different problem. Now the guys have started moving the differently. Now you have another problem, Peter. The more you bring people into CRM, the more time people are saying that they're just doing CRMs. Whereas what should they be doing? They should be selling. So this what we actually call, there's an inputs model, there's an output model, right? You measure two things. Did you make a quota? You didn't beat him up. There's also an effort model. The problem with effort is that if effort is awesome, ethics is awesome, but outcome is zero. You're going to lose your sales job anyway. And that's why salespeople fail. Salespeople fail because they are living in a thankless job in a system that is designed for the 80s and 90s. And it gets worse. Fickleness. actually am consulting right now to two sales leaders who have got the most weird way of operating. And I'm very careful how I say this, right? Because they might listen in. One that everyone's at 80%. I'm upset. So he actually pushed the target higher. because his argument is that pushing the target higher is going to motivate everyone to least push for 100. I said, it's not 100 anymore. You just made the target higher. So he said to me, yeah, yeah, yeah. But if they make 100, I'll tell them later, I'm happy you made 100. I said, you can't do that because you just simply shifting the goalpost. Behavior cannot be driven by these type of what I call blatant playing games. You don't do it like that. And you lose your reputation once. Salespeople are also very finicky. In a post-COVID world, Pete, things have changed. Today's salesperson, I have a 280k guy who actually called me once and tells me as follows. The reason why I gave you the OTE to show you that this is not Mickey Mouse change. It's a good solid amount. At 93%, he's being challenged by the organization that's going to be put onto PIP. Who puts a 93 % on PIP? Which decade, which era are we talking about? So that's your next problem. Sales leadership has to give clear clarity on the rules and the rules of engagement. And here's something I'm going to give you on a t-shirt and you can sell the t-shirt on your program. say Deepak came and he gave us this. And I'm actually going to just make simplify for you. Clarity beats talent every single time. You can have the best talent, but if you do not give them clarity, if you do not give them guidance, if you do not have the discipline of the systems, you know, I'm so sorry to say this, but Peter Drucker was wrong when he said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Here's my response to that. Clarity and structure eat both culture and strategy for breakfast. speaker-0: Mmm. speaker-1: You can have the strategy, you can have the culture, but if you do not have the structure that allows you to do your work and everyone knows their role in it, scale comes from structure. Taking an organization for a founder, taking an organization to half a million or a million dollars requires a different set of skills. Taking the organization from a million to four or five requires a totally different set of skills and your brain. At the end of the day though, the good news is you don't need to expand your brain. You just need to shift the way you think by a couple of inches. And I know it sounds weird when I do that, especially on a bald head, it looks like a big scar, but Peter, I'm so sorry, but that was a question that gets me hyper excited about, why are salespeople struggling? It's a tankless job. We are struggling because every question is, oh, you didn't make your quota. Question should be, Roger, I saw your performance and the conversation that you had on the discovery with that company, that organization. I felt the discovery you did for that organization was far better. What changed your approach? Why did you do it this way? That is more insightful. And that is when typically, and I only say this to sales leaders, you will be shocked to learn how many salespeople simply want the manager to walk up and say, Hey buddy, put their hand on his head or his shoulder and say, what's up? I think you're off. Sales managers avoid that conversation because guess what? It's too taxing. It is. You're not trained for therapy. You don't want to go give people advice on how to live their lives. But the reality is that in sales, There's so much trauma being inflicted by practices. People tell me, this is people are paid deeper. I'm like, yeah, but Peter, can you imagine a society because you pay someone so much, therefore they must take your abuse? That makes no sense. Humanity still exists, right? So that's my point. Back to you, sir. speaker-0: Yeah, no, thank you. Well said. I appreciate the level of detail also. Yeah, you mentioned a psychological shift in sales from like the eighties to modern day. What do you think is the cause of that? yeah, what is your philosophy? I know you're a Sandler, you're Sandler certified. Maybe our guests aren't familiar with that, if you don't mind sharing. speaker-1: Absolutely. this is one of those things, I guess, like religion. When you look at it, you get confused. So many trees, so many branches, right? But when you start moving back, you actually find three or four common things to them all. So Sandler is a sales methodology. It's actually a complete life cycle. Many people on the call would have heard Miller-Hyman. They may have heard Korn Ferry. They may have heard of other techniques, challenges, spins, so on, so on, right? Now here's the fun thing. Most Sandler people that you will talk to, are with Sandler because we got introduced to Sandler very early in our careers. Sandler's approach is around three priorities, behavior, attitude, and technique. I fell in love with Sandler in 1997. Most of your listeners, one even maybe working in 1997, they're like, what the hell, old man? Pete, you need to stop getting this old time with the geriatrics on your calls. But Pete, why I appreciate Sandler? And I think, first of all, I just said to you a few minutes back, method. or a system always helps. the question is, do we have a diesel engine, do we have a petrol engine, are we doing combustion, are we doing something different? That can differ. Sandler's approach I prefer and I like, but it does very simple thing. What it does, it says every buying, selling situation is psychological. There's a neuroscience to it. But instead of looking at big words like I'm going to freeze and then my, know, this and my hippocampus was screaming, help, help. No, no, no, that's not what we're talking about. What we're saying is that You need to approach everything with certain principles in mind. And that's where Sandler talks about equal stature. Salespeople walk into a room thinking that they're there to sell. If you're there to serve, then you're an equal. Change your mindset. Sellers walk in expecting that the buyer is going to set the tone and the agenda because of course, their buying is their agenda, is their budget, right? No. You have equal authority to also qualify out from a deal. And this is a shock for many salespeople. And the problem with culture is that speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: If you remember Toyota took the world by storm because they had this simple philosophy. If a lowly paid guy at the plant on the floor saw a defect, he had the ability to shut the entire production line down. salespeople can't operate like that because they are not. If he goes and meets a customer and sees that my product is not a good fit and if he qualifies out, I can assure you the amount of nonsense and military boots on his neck that's going to come down on him hard explains his logic. There are people in this day and age still setting metrics as follows. I need you to do five demos per week. don't Getting people to jump straight to demo is the biggest waste of time. How do you get to demo? It's like saying to you, Pete, would you like to take a spin in my Mercedes Benz? And no one's even asked you, are you even on the market for a car? Are you looking for a comfortable car? What's your budget? Where do you, why are you jumping straight to demo? And that's what most of your founder crowd does. And I want to call this out to everyone on this call. All the founders I work with, statistics, their maths is all wrong. They focus on count of demos. They hire salespeople and they tell them go do so many demos because they have this old philosophy. If you chuck it on the wall, something will stick. And you got to watch out guys, the amount of effort that you need to throw on the wall. It's like email. 30 years ago, if you sent an email to someone, Pete, you might get 20, 30 % responses, right? speaker-0: ⁓ yeah. speaker-1: Today you're lucky if you get 0.03, 0.05 response if you're going do a mass email because the systems are cluttered in automation. Automation scales stupidity. And just because you can do slick demos and you can actually set up cases in five minutes. I've seen people showing me, here's my SaaS setup that I'm going to show. It's a financial company, so he's actually got a script. Every name changes, everything changes into this, that, bond rates, arbitrage, blah, blah, blah, and then he's ready for a demo. And I'm like, that's fine, I get it. But the reality is, In the lifecycle of the deal, you're not where you need to be to do a demo. And the top and I had some numbers actually calculated. Founders do three X more demos than other mature enterprise sales organizations. So hint out to all the founders out there. If demos is your metric or measurement, then ask yourself, what else are you missing out? You have to build an ecosystem of greatness, not just only demos. Demos to me is there's a certain stage for it, but it ain't the first thing to start with. And most founders start with a demo. Let me show you what the system looks like. Okay, and I still don't know what the problem is that you're to solve for me. Discovery, that's why we call it discovery. And discovery is a disco. And in disco, the hands flail everywhere. So sometimes people get hurt. So you need to be very graceful when you do that dance. Or spell beer in people's shoes. Expensive shoes, by the way. He reminded me multiple times. Tan Brown. Sir, back to you. speaker-0: Bearing people. Yeah, okay, got it. Yeah, I appreciate that. Your perspective is really good. Yeah, think a lot of people go wrong with just the psychology of sales and we're still adjusting, ⁓ bouncing from the ⁓ 80s a lot of ways. speaker-1: The post-COVID reality is that if you ask anyone of your friends, Pete, let's go you speak to someone and he says, I worked for IBM for 15 years. Pete, I'm going to write on a piece of paper right now. It's not about IBM. Any person joining our organization today, if you ask him, do you see yourself working for the next 15, 20 years, he's going to look at you lost and confused because he doesn't understand the question. There used to be this favorite question that people used to ask you and me, Pete, about 10 years ago. Where do you see yourself in five years, Mr. Bhutra? and I would wax lyrical. So I looked at your org chart and I would like to do this, this, and then maybe look at that all over there. Then I actually sat down and I looked at all my customers and their trajectories and I actually realized there is zero probability that you can predict what's going to happen to you in five years. Why are we asking that question? And now finally HR has stopped asking that question because the question is meaningless. Here's the fun part. If the question is meaningless, then why is our behavior still the wrong way? We are assuming that if you, keep people to work for you for 50, 20 years, It's a different mindset. And if you start your journey with that mindset, it's not going to work. a different era. People today leave because of a value system. And ⁓ reality of that is you just look at how divided we are just in politics. ⁓ you imagine walking into a work where you have been watching media chaos and you believe that you are prejudiced or because you are, how do you say, on the back foot? You will carry that behavior into work also. So that's another problem that's happening. speaker-0: No speaker-1: You actually now have got this insidious little thing that's come in, which is social media. Everyone's, we say in India, even a small puppy, if he's on, ⁓ we have tons of strays in India, right, dogs, take him outside of his territory and he's like, whimpering, But when he's in his road, right outside someone's house, he's barking, puppy's going to bark, chaos, he's going to scream at everyone because he's the king of the jungle. It's his territory, he's marked it. It's the same thing. Same thing. BMB will come through all over the place as well. Sorry, I got carried away there a bit. Sorry about that. Sorry about the doggy sounds as well. That was funny. speaker-0: Fuck me at least. No, I love your flow. Yeah, it's good to go on those tangents. It comes down to just psychology a lot. I love that. I've also seen you write about commercialization a bit. Do you mind sharing with audience your perspective? How do you define commercialization in practical business terms? speaker-1: Very simple. I have an idea. I need to make money from it. Making money part is commercialization. Simple. Because ideas, there's this saying in, again, I'm gonna go back to India. sorry you're have to edit this out. But in India, going to the toilet is called. speaker-0: short. speaker-1: Sure. Thinking is called. speaker-0: search. speaker-1: And the joke is so and shoch can happen anytime. speaker-0: Pooch. Hmm speaker-1: Now, why do we always laugh at the ancients? What did they know? What did they know? But they have a thought process, right? They came up with certain rules and something. So this expression always used to confuse me. What does that even mean? And what that simply means is that thinking of an idea is something that human beings are given by God's grace, the ability to do. like saying, I'm going to have a child. And my mom actually told my friend, well, that's easy, right? Getting pregnant, but The fun part is raising the child and giving it its values. You being a role model, that's a difficult journey, right? And I think this is where people get confused. I have an idea and if I have an idea, therefore I am going to become a founder. Yes, awesome. No issue. Now you've got to commercialize that. Commercialization simply means building a predictable, repeatable organizational structure, a way to position, figuring out how do you position, what is your price point, and then making mistakes, learning from those mistakes and correcting. Rapidly, rapid. The old days are gone. Do you know, of the reasons ⁓ AI came out four years ago, I thought it was a joke. Generative AI made me laugh. It was so crappy, so bad. ⁓ you ask a question, they'll give you some weird answers from all over the place. I started shuddering about three years ago when I started seeing some really insights, powerful insights. And I was like, whoa, I wouldn't have thought of that at all. Right. Then I started prompting better. And I can tell you right now, If salespeople or founders today want to get commercialized faster, they need to learn how to iterate faster. I can tell you, wipe coding, stuff like that. never coded much in my life. Today, when I go design documents and true story, I'm working on a website for my new RiseUp ⁓ And all I did was I went to Claude and I told Claude my vision, my color, my brand, my template. I told him, here are some documents, spin up something and show me. Next morning, the website developer had a document. What would have cost me $1,200 to do was done about $200 because that guy didn't know what to do anymore because I literally gave him most of the custom code ready to go as well. That shift is what I want to call out to people. If you don't see that shift, you're in bigger trouble than it is. So commercialization today also means being fast to understand that whatever idea you have, if you do not get in first, do not bury down fast, other people are going to pick up your idea. And if I just look at some of the crazy ideas I've seen, I've seen at least 17 ideas around using AI for voice coaching. Why pay $200 for an hour when for 20 bucks a month, you can get a coach that will tell you everything. That's awesome up to a certain point. But it's like chat GPT telling you that, you have a headache. Pete, here's what I recommend. Take a cucumber and hit yourself on the head three times because somewhere it worked. Or take a slice of cucumber and rub it on your head because someone in China pulled it off. Chat GPT is going to pull all that information in and you will have to figure out what is true, what is not true. That of judgment is where humans, that's where the coach actually comes in handy. He will tell you, do not dare take a cucumber hit on your head three times. You're going to get trauma or a concussion. So yes, I'm not saying that ChatGP is stupid. I'm saying it will get very smart very soon, which brings me to the next point. Commercialization also then is about survival of the future. Because whatever you do now, you're going to be building it on shifting sands. So commercialization previously used to be a very simple thing. Take an idea and how to monetize it. Now it's how to monetize and sustain. That's the definition of commercialization for me, So, and founders have got a lot of problems, but just make your systems processes predictable and flexible. And not just only eat your own dog food, but also be willing to say that this dog food is stale or there's a better brand out there. Let's change change It's exhausting, I must be honest with you. ⁓ In fact, I'm going be very careful how I say this. I don't want to disappoint founders, but one of my founders attempted to commit ⁓ and I have in that organization. I am now licking wounds because we're going to write it all off. speaker-0: Mm. speaker-1: because that individual is not capable of coming back to work anymore. was a massive learning for me. So my message to the guys actually is that if you want to get to commercialization, understand that commercialization is not just about the idea, but it's also about your mental state, your mental health, and your ability to manage the ecosystem. And if you do not commercialize, here's my last warning, it will impact your cash flow. And 90 % of founders are going to run out of cash. You're going to run out of cash guys. At some point you're going to think you've collected enough, but it's never enough. It's just never enough. to you, Sarpy. Sorry. speaker-0: Yeah, no, great answer. You know, there's so much that goes into it. I appreciate you trying to summarize it in a few minutes here. speaker-1: banging away as hard as I can. forte actually is typically, I would actually ask people a simple question. How do you make your product commercially viable? And that's what I typically spend a lot of time. And here's really interesting what's changed in the last, I would say three years, ⁓ year and a half that I've at least been a consultant. In the year and a half ago, if you told someone that, hey, guys, product roadmap, here are the 17 epics and here are the 80 user stories. Thank you Deepak for your effort guys. We're gonna go and put this and we're gonna publish this in six months. Today, when I do that same work for companies, I actually give them three pathways. I pathway number one is the product roadmap that goes this way. Here's pathway number two, if convergence occurs and if as an example, Fathom were to say that they are entering into the sales coaching domain, then what impact would that have? So figure that out. Now you've got to think about all. these tangential things that previously were difficult for people to do, but because of a generative AI, the boundaries are going to bleed into each other so badly that today's products that are AI native are going to start giving the big boys a huge problem. Huge problem, Pete. I I just look at what Claude, Claude work and so these things are doing and I haven't even gone into Claude and all that other stuff, right? Claude. I don't want to get into that because I don't want to give control away. But... I am watching some of those and I'm telling you at least at a small medium business level, for me as a coach and as a trainer, I've been able to improve my business rate and my value to my customers. If I was charging $100 an hour, the work I give them is worth $300 minimum, 3X because of AI being integrated into my business, because it allows me to recall better what my conversations with my customers were. It allows me to go get more insights and the amount of competitive analysis I can do. It's amazing. So my value is increasing with the use of AI, which brings me to the last and final point about AI is that you need to watch out in sales what AI is going to do in the sales domain. AI is going to rock the sales domain. But here's the good news. Whatever happens, Pete, selling is a judgment in the moment, cold face. Numbers of salespeople will decrease. Yes. But the value of salespeople that understand relationships will actually allow them to still earn a lot of money. You can automate the heck out of a lot of things, but there certain things you just cannot. You will improve what I call survivability of deals. Deals will get shorter in length and stuff. But there's still going to be an element of human intervention required. So if any salesperson is listening, my guidance to them would be as follows. Don't be threatened by AI. Use it to your advantage. Because if you don't use it to your advantage, here's be to my prediction. Your colleague sitting next to you is going to use it and he will take your job. It's not AI taking a job. It's going to be your colleague. He's sharpening his knife. He doesn't know that he's sharpening his knife to cut your throat. You just happen to be the guy whose throat got cut. And he'll regret it. He'll regret it, but he won't regret it also because he survived. And in a dog eat dog world, your survival is what matters at the end of the day. Very morose, but sorry about that. speaker-0: for you. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's important to talk about, you you have to, you have to ride the wave of this new technology AI now, but it's, you know, the internet was the same way. A lot of people are resistant to it at first. And then it became ubiquitous. You have to do that. speaker-1: Absolutely. Now, in fact, what I tell people is that people playing with AI, Pete, waste a lot of time, Pete, on creating the Sora videos, action figures and stuff like that. And I keep telling them, I don't. So as an example, I did a fellowship in AI and we had apparently the smartest people that program. Of those 300 people, each person on the first day said that we all gonna do startups. Only seven did. Only seven did. that goes to show you that others were very active, very loud, but what they were doing was getting excited with glass, not gold. They, shiny object, fear of missing out. They were screaming and shouting, telling people, wait, you're teaching us replete, but I just learned that lovable has another feature. Why aren't we doing that? I'm like, learn understand how that operates. You learn the rest ⁓ anyway. that's the, and I think that's something that people have to stop doing. Commercialization is exactly the point, right? You want to build a business, you're learning AI and you're getting lost with all these distractions. You need to get to it fast, build prototypes, play with the prototypes, break the prototype, build it again, and then build the prototype to scale, which no AI can do for you. That's going to still be hard coding. Someone very smart, someone very specialized, someone who's done it before. You're not going to be able to pull that off by sitting at home with a $60 subscription. speaker-0: Yeah, right. speaker-1: Just a question to people. You want to build a startup, ideate, build it, prototype it. That's exactly what I did. I prototype all my ideas myself. And I'm not even technical. Pete, I'm not technical. But what I realized was that at age 50, let's say 52, oh my gosh, I've always been a smart guy in terms of mathematics. And I've got four degrees from four continents and write a lot and stuff. But Pete, I never got into hardcore coding because I don't like software coding. I have zeros and ones. I don't want to get into that. Now I don't need to get into that. I mean, it is so cool right now that I can go and I can change a website on the fly. Previously, I used get stuck. bowl, how do put a bowl in HTML? This the B in it, I can't remember. I just do it in one shot. just could tell Gemini on the top, hey Gemini, could you fix the bowl on this? Could you make all the bullets right, left, It does it for me. I don't care anymore. That is power. That is power. speaker-0: Definitely. Yeah, and we're only maybe people are guessing about halfway through the maturity of AI. You know, there's a lot more to come. speaker-1: And that is the scary part. You and I had breathing space with the internet for maybe, let's say, five years before it exploded. TV was maybe 20 years before it exploded. This thing, this is crazy. And it's not just exploding, it's exploding exponentially. It is redefining the way I'm operating. That scares me because it's exciting. But at end of the day, I'm human. I cannot absorb this much knowledge. I just cannot. And people laugh at me. Look at all the hot shots. I don't care about the hot shots. I'm telling you as a user, I am overwhelmed. So I now focus my energies on things that are in my control and what I don't want to learn, I go find an expert who knows it already, rather pay him to do it than you try to learn it and you mess up. That's another message I'm going to give to founders. Here's what founders do all the time, I'm hands on Deepak. I built my company by doing this. I built my company by doing that. I code myself. My question is, you're the CEO of the organization. What do mean you're still coding 16 hours a day? You've just raised $1.4 million. Are you telling me that we're 1.4 million? That's the commercialization problem right there for you, he is doing with his funding is still doing what he used to be good at. What you need to do as CEO is to understand where do you take this company to the next level? And that's not coding. That's definitely not coding. We think it is because that's what the world has told us. Your product, if you build it, they will come. No one comes because someone else is building the same product. You don't know it yet. And timing is huge. Just today on LinkedIn, Arun Puri, think he's the yearly CEO. He just simply stated that timing guys, Chewy is rocking. you also had, there was another pet company that came out in 2014. They got wiped out, right? Because wrong timing. People did not know. It's like when shoes came out online, right? I didn't know. Why would I buy shoes online now? I don't remember going last. I just ordered from Amazon. Hey, send me six pairs. I'll check it out. I'll return it back to you. problem. Zappos, Zappos, bingo. You recalled perfect Zappos. speaker-0: Zappos. Yeah. speaker-1: Tony Tse or something. Tony, think I can't remember the name now. It's Tony Tse or something. Those are war stories, amazing stories. I mean, I just go back and I'm like thinking, wow. Sorry, back to you, boss. speaker-0: Yeah, I know we're coming up on time here. We could talk all day Deepak. We could, could. I want to give you the chance. I'm really excited about your new book. If could share a little bit and then yeah, just close out any last advice you would give to business owners. speaker-1: Yeah, what I would say. Founders, you are living a hustle culture. I respect that. You have ambition, more into your sails. No issue. Use them a tail wind. But also that you require frameworks. You need to understand yourself better. Now founders and other people are typically extremely ambitious. My book was written specifically because of the work I had done and because of my own personal experience of how people are so focused on getting the first job or when they're in the job, they don't know what to do. and the company says 1-800-WELLBEING, just call that number and they'll tell you what to do. And you call the number and you say, my boss is a toxic manager. He screams and shouts at me. What do I do with him? You know what they tell you to do? File a complaint. But why an employee want to file a complaint unless something really vicious has happened with them, right? That's it. Now you have a problem. When you have a setup like that, no one wants to. So people then go to their friend, hey, Roger, can I speak to you over coffee man? I got this problem. My boss talks down to me in meetings. I don't know how to handle him. Ah, ignore him. Ignore him. He's an idiot. He does that with everyone. Now that a great advice? Because you still have to tolerate him, work with him, right? So what I said to myself was there are so many things that we could offer to these kids to understand. And I call it kids because I asked myself, what advice Deepak would you have given to yourself at age 21? So I wrote this book on that basis. The book is 30 chapters. It actually follows a group of individuals working on a project. This project goes through ups and downs and managers throwing tantrums and the team gossiping. I use those scenarios to explain a concept. Then I use frameworks. So as an example, lot of people say imposter syndrome, burnout. They throw words, they don't know what they mean. And it's difficult. Self-doubt. Is it same as imposter syndrome? Well, no, they're actually two separate things, but they're on the same continuum. So my book's goal was Create a self-reflection ability for people at age 21 to kind of slow down. Figure out how to manage your time better. Understand the difference between time management versus prioritization. Most issues that we face on time are not time management. It's actually prioritization. You do the wrong stuff at the right time. all the right stuff is never done or you just don't... Because you cannot understand the utility function of life. And you need to understand that. What do I need to do, when and how? And here's the fun part. People tell me, ⁓ my God, Deepak, that's so difficult to solve, isn't it? I'm like, no, there's like tons of tools. I use a simple tool when I was young called the Eisenhower Matrix. it or not, Pete, you don't really need to. It's like ⁓ once told me the best way to lose weight is to sew your lips shut. And I'm like, what? It's the most ⁓ thing to hear, but guess what? ⁓ sense, right? If you can't open your mouth to eat, what you're going to do? Because through a drip, you can't take more than what the body can absorb anyway. This is the fun part of life. So, and this was supposed to be my closing, right? The book is committed to that, Rise Up. From the book, I then created a business. I'm now right now building out a platform. I'm in the business working on Static Alliances. I have a fundraiser running on WeFund right now. Peter, I like to use this opportunity to just give people a shout out. A lot of people are always looking for proof. I want people to forget proof. I want people to look at what problem am I solving? I think there's a genuine problem. People tell me LinkedIn is there, right? Yeah, Pete, tell me last when you went to LinkedIn to get to understand how to manage burnout. Unless you like reading those billboards. My boss is toxic. Seven ways to handle a toxic manager and those billboards are there because the person that is there is just simply sucking you into a LinkedIn course or something or impressions. At the end of the day, and I've made those mistakes, I've done those mistakes myself as well. I've spent thousands of dollars to learn LinkedIn from LinkedIn experts, right? And everything they taught me is only to get more clicks. Then you step back and actually realize the clicks is not the point. It's not the point. That's one of the reasons why I tell people look at the most attractive men on the planet. They tend to be bachelors in old age. Why? Because when they had the opportunity to they were too busy with all this is one of those things. I think we had great analogy. Ignore that comment. But that's what I would say. The book is designed in such a way that you can do it at your pace. I'm not building a business out of it. WeFunder.com forward slash rise up at work is the landing page. Have a look. We've raised 101K. My goal is 250K. At 250K, Pete, I think we're going to move very fast on the platform. I want to start and people tell me platform, is this another app? The reality is no, it's actually a community enabled by a platform. The community will set you free. 21 year olds like to socialize. 21 year olds like to socialize in a cheap economical way. They want to hang around with like-minded people. They want to know. which companies are hiring when and what their experience is. Now Reddit does that, other people do it. But what we are saying over here is that we're going to keep the focus at career progression, not finding a job, but staying alive in the job. And if you get that right, and if you just were to put the curve down, you make bad choices, you leave early, you take a salary reduction, take someone tells you, I love your work, 10%, you get a job offer from outside and you get 25 % increase, but the guys match it and tell you, we'll give you 10%, you take it. You just lost 15%. speaker-0: Mmm. speaker-1: Delta, who would have guided you at that station? So when I actually did look at them data, here's what I can tell you. If you take an average of five infliction points over a 30 year career, just figuring out the five infliction points will deliver to 37 % better net worth outcomes at the end of 30 years. That's an awesome number guys. If you tell me that I'm going to retire with three million bucks, I'm telling you to potentially retire with four million bucks. Yeah. And of course I use a million moniker. You can make it a hundred K. You can retire it for 100k, but the match changes. So you can actually double whatever it is that you're aiming for if you do it the right way. Back to you, sir. That's my closing message in terms of the book and why I wrote the speaker-0: Great answer. Yeah, thank you. And this whole conversation has just been filled with good wisdom and nuggets for business owners and people. really worked anyone really, but no, I appreciate it Deepak. Where can listeners find you? speaker-1: on shows like yours, Pete, I'm really grateful for you having me here. But honestly, Pete, as my wife says, just go on LinkedIn and holler, Deepak Bhutra, ta, ta, ta. And I reply, here, here, here, here. I am the only Deepak Bhutra because the other guys, I took it first, can read my age. Being old is fun. All my email addresses are deepak.bhutra.yahoo.com. I got all of them. I've controlled them all because I got them early. Now poor guys are getting Deepak Boutra 666, Deepak Boutra 999 and so on. So Pete, find me on LinkedIn. I'm a DM guy. Drop me a DM. My DMs are drowning, but I will find you. You can send me an email as well. Deepak at riseupatwork.com. That's about it. And then honestly speaking, I've done some work on cleaning up my profile because that's one of the first things they told me to do. So if you go type my name, you'll hopefully see podcasts like yours, Pete popping up my books. and positive messages about me and no more about the blog I wrote 25 years ago, which I criticize myself and that thing keeps popping up again and again. Deepak, you wrote so bad 25 years ago. Yep, my first blog from 25 years ago, actually when I read it, I had to go lie down. It was so bad. all learned, but I was also happy. Whatever I did in that blog post, if I look at what I do today, that 25-year journey shows me that Deepak, stop, pack yourself and say, yes, you did well, boy. Where you went, wrote that blog and where you write today that shows this 25 year journey has not gone to waste. All that effort has delivered a better understanding of the world. And I hope to deliver that same understanding back to people through your channel as well, Pete. And I hope I can motivate people to really think about looking at Foundership in a different context. Understanding that the role as a founder is very complex, very difficult. You are always going to be burdened. People are asking you for very personal things, right? When you work for someone, Pete, you never own the product. But when you work for yourself, you own the product and just that little mind shift gives you ownership, gives you pride. And those can lead to a massive fall in your emotional absorption of what happens for you. When I was told, no, I will not buy an HP product, I didn't have a problem. I had a problem, but I didn't have to do it. But now when I go and rise up and I've had investors telling me, there's no chance that my daughter would ever use your product. I'm not even investing a hundred dollars in this deeper. Thank you very much. Okay. I don't argue, I move on. Because the reality is that you burn your energy trying to convince people for 100 bucks, it's not worth it. It's not worth it. Just move on. You gotta figure out what to focus on and where to burn your energy and what to fight for. That's the biggest message I'll give to founders. Choose your battles, choose them wisely. speaker-0: Well said Deepak. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. It's been a great conversation. speaker-1: My pleasure, Peter. Thank you for having