Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 6. Why the Plan is Bull - Hands-On Strategy & Marketing that Moves the Needle w/ Neel Singh

Transcript

6. Why the Plan is Bull - Hands-On Strategy & Marketing that Moves the Needle w/ Neel Singh · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:02
  Jack Tompkins: What's going on everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful. It's a show where I sit down with your favorite consultants and we take the comedic route through their life, find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, the CEO of Pineapple Consulting Firm. Fun fact of the day, people used to rent pineapples in the 1700s to show like wealth for specific occasions. Pretty cool today. I mean, for me, they represent data. They also kind of represent swingers if you throw them upside down. public warning for everybody, keep those pineapples right side up. That's neither here nor there though. Today I'm joined by my friend Neel Singh. He's the managing partner and founder of Tropoly He's been chief marketing officer. He's got a founder, a couple of times founder, speaker. He's worked with some like very legitimate household names. Neel, we know you're successful, but the question we have for you. Do you think you fall more on the sophisticated side, more on the scrappy side?
• 1:03
  Neel: Can I say sophisticated scrappiness? Yeah, it's a, I think just cause you know, as you gain more and more experience, just end up becoming more sophisticated in what you do. But you know, the way I work and the way my partners work, we're still very hands on and we work with leaders, founders, you know, that needs stuff done. So we bring that scrappiness to the table.
• 1:06
  Jack Tompkins: Sure. Yeah, I can say a little bit of both. Yeah. Let's dig into it.
• 1:33
  Neel: But we have a lens of sophistication. We have a lens of strategy. So I would say that's almost our differentiation that you just kind of pointed out there. So thanks for that.
• 1:43
  Jack Tompkins: Okay, ability to get your hands dirty, but systems in place and processes in place and a clear strategy and stuff, right?
• 1:50
  Neel: Yeah, we call it heads and hands, spoke. Yeah.
• 1:52
  Jack Tompkins: Okay, very nice. Tell me, so where'd you grow up? Did you have any entrepreneurs in the family?
• 1:58
  Neel: Yeah, so I grew up in Vancouver, BC, on the West Coast. Yeah, my family is a mix of creatives and entrepreneurs. My parents are both. They've been writing for a long time, mostly in Punjabi, but some in English. They're quite accomplished. Also very studious, they're intellectual and then they're also scrappy. So my mom's run a bunch of, you know, kind of entrepreneurial businesses and my dad kind of helps out in that too. And then across my family, had uncles that run factories. I've had singers, writers, poets. So it's a mix. Yeah.
• 2:46
  Jack Tompkins: Whoa, that's that's full creative and full blue collar all mixed into one. Okay, and you take from all of that, like are you kind of the mix of all of that, do feel?
• 2:55
  Neel: I would feel I am, yeah, absolutely.
• 2:57
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah, because you've got the very sophisticated strategy. We're just gonna jump throughout the timeline here. Like, even if we jumped it today, you're significantly into the strategy thing. I know you and I have talked very focused on the marketing only works if it's tied to a business goal, right? But you've also got this creative piece, so you've got it all kind of tied together. Give me some of the scrappy things that are kind of behind the scenes that, you know, the strategy's there, but you gotta pull it off last minute kind of.
• 3:12
  Neel: Yeah.
• 3:26
  Neel: Yeah, mean, I'll give you an example of a current client. So they're launching a SaaS based product in the insurance industry. So they're helping modernize one of the, the sub industries with an insurance. And so we did the sophisticated thing in doing market research. We looked at a lot of data that has come from their other business dealing with the same ICP. We have built sophisticated pricing models. We have projections. We know how to get them to market. And, you know, so it's this well-crafted strategy. It's all in spreadsheets. We've got some models in there. And we presented it to the client and I said, this is all bullshit, just so you know.
• 4:17
  Jack Tompkins: I love it.
• 4:19
  Neel: And he's like, he's like, okay, what do you mean? Like we just gave you all the parameters on what to consider all the assumptions, what could go right, what could go wrong. But we don't know what it's going to look like. You know, we have a three stage plan for adoption. For example, getting the pilot out there, getting the pricing and valuation, the value proposition validated, getting enterprise value validated. said, you know, we lined it out in these beautiful steps and we know what to consider. We know how to get an ROI from this, but it's not gonna look like that once we're in market. And so... Given that, we end up designing a dashboard and developing a dashboard which allows him to play with the parameters we set in there. So hey, if our pilot fails and we have to go back to market, well, here's the parameters to play with that. If they don't adopt our pricing, we have to reduce it by 50%. Here's how the projections look. You're not gonna be able to hire as quick. So it's now, it's turned from a sophisticated solid strategy to a playground and a scenario planning tool. Right. And today with the artifacts you can build in Claude, you can whip things up way quicker than you could before. So all the deep work is there. And then you innovate on top of that to like allow them to be scrappy. Right. So it's the first time he's going to market. He has to be scrappy. So we've given him all the parameters. We give them all the vision, all the things to consider. But as we're making decisions, now we've got a tool that allows us to flex with us. So that's a little bit of scrappiness, a little bit of sophistication.
• 5:53
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah, I mean, talk about getting the client's attention right away saying here's this big, beautiful thing and it's complete bullshit. Let's talk through it. That's so genius though. mean, so many times a client gets a thing and they're like, okay, cool. I'm going to do this. This all sounds good. It's perfect on paper. And then something happens. What do you mean we didn't expect this to happen? Well, like we can't see into the future. Of course you've got the snares in there. Okay. This is really cool. So let's go back to the beginning.
• 5:59
  Neel: You
• 6:23
  Jack Tompkins: This is obviously a refined process, right? You've got strategic focus, you've got all these different things, you've got a way to deliver it to clients that really impacts it. Tell me, like, what's the first, first, first business? Like, did you have a lemonade stand or anything?
• 6:41
  Neel: graphic designer. So I think if I had to consider what I was as a business, like my own proprietary business, I was a graphic designer. Yeah, I think before that, I mean, I did a lot of odd jobs and, you know, did a paper route with my friend when we were like seven years old. But again, heavily
• 6:42
  Jack Tompkins: Okay.
• 7:03
  Jack Tompkins: based.
• 7:10
  Neel: very heavy in the creative fields when I was younger. I drew a lot. You know, did some courses in animation. I took photos. I made music. I wrote a lot. I wrote or wrote. I created comic books when I was really young. You know, so I have this very broad creative expression. And after taking courses in animation, I'm like this industry sucks because I have to follow somebody else's vision. And so there's going to be this lead animator and I'm going to have to clean up his work.
• 7:38
  Jack Tompkins: you
• 7:46
  Neel: or her work and so to me that wasn't appealing so that allowed me to branch off into design work and I learned a little bit about entrepreneurship through one of most brilliant teachers I've ever had and I didn't do much schooling so I was thankful to get this one teacher that taught us how to turn a design skill into a business and so I started yeah graphic design I was creating business cards logos brochures back then, printed stuff back then, a lot of vehicle wraps, signage, you name it. So that's my first foray into like true entrepreneurship.
• 8:16
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah. yeah. That was hot back then.
• 8:27
  Jack Tompkins: Okay, do ever go back and like sell one of the early comics that you built or anything like that?
• 8:32
  Neel: They're sitting in my parents basement in a crawl space. So they're all hand drawn. I even drew, when I was very young and I was making these, I was even drawing commercials in there. It adds because yeah, I don't know if it was from.
• 8:44
  Jack Tompkins: Really?
• 8:48
  Neel: Marvel comics or PC gamer or something some old magazines they used to read and comics they used to read and I think the commercials I noticed that they were a thing so I drew them into my own comics, which is like maybe that's why I got into marketing I don't know is it so it's so funny because like 20 30 years later I looked I looked at those I'm like what why was I drawing commercials in here? How did I even come up with those? Alright, so that was funny. But yeah There's a bunch of them sitting somewhere. I used to draw those and then because I like the storytelling aspect, I created all these characters and then they're like superheroes and stuff like that. And then I also used to draw video games and I would lay out papers end to end like across the living room or my basement and just draw all the You know, obviously I was influenced by 8-bit side-scrolling Nintendo games back then. You know, the Ninja Gaidans and those games. So I would draw out all the levels, each level, you know, and draw it out. And then all the bad guys and then the final boss. And then the character, I'd have them kind of drawn throughout the whole thing. You know, so that was something I did a lot of. I didn't think about that until you brought this up. So that's kind of funny. That's funny I used to do that. Yeah, so I was because of the big game burn when I
• 9:43
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah.
• 10:03
  Jack Tompkins: You
• 10:09
  Neel: as a kid, right? absolutely loved it. And so I just kind of mixed my love for drawing and creativity with that.
• 10:15
  Jack Tompkins: There's a difference of being a gamer and drawing the game on paper. I mean That's pretty cool. Did you ever go into that field? Like do you ever have a video game client or go into that industry at all?
• 10:19
  Neel: Hahaha
• 10:28
  Neel: no, I didn't because I think when I when I hit When I became I think I stopped playing video games late teens early 20s So, you know, used to used to play a little bit with my buddies smoke a few joints and you know, whatever and have some fun
• 10:39
  Jack Tompkins: Okay. Yeah, you gotta have some fun.
• 10:44
  Neel: But other than that, I didn't own a console. So it kind of like pulled me out of that. One of the firms, companies I was working for, gaming was a big vertical. did some work in it, but from a actual product standpoint, no, haven't really gotten into that.
• 11:05
  Jack Tompkins: Those were the days though, man. mean, a couple of beers or a couple, a little bit of weed or whatever and just hanging out with your buddies. Like my friends and I will still play beer cart to this day.
• 11:15
  Neel: It's the best. So many memories from that.
• 11:20
  Jack Tompkins: It's It's great. What was the name of the video game? Do you remember any of like the names that you created?
• 11:25
  Neel: Jeez, no, I don't remember the names at all. I'd have to look, I'd have to go find those and kind of see what they were. But you know what, I'll find them and I'll send them to you.
• 11:31
  Jack Tompkins: you Perfect, there we go, there we go. Right now they're just gaining interest, right? Nobody knows about them, they're hit the scene, they're gonna be huge. You mentioned you didn't have much schooling. How were the grades in high school?
• 11:40
  Neel: Yeah.
• 11:47
  Neel: Terrible. Well, let me rephrase that.
• 11:48
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah.
• 11:55
  Neel: When I enjoyed the subject, I killed it. So I did really good in early like grade 10 science. I did really well. I did good in French and learning languages now. So I kind of see a parallel there. But...
• 11:59
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah.
• 12:13
  Neel: I would get bored and I would fall off. I'd stop doing my homework and it would affect my grades. Not every teacher, because some of them are assholes, but a lot of teachers told me that I had a lot of potential. I'm smart. Why aren't I doing my work? And I'm like, I don't know how this affects real life. just couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't create that connection. I was young, underdeveloped, where were a teenager, teenage boys, our brains are like scattered. But to me, I just couldn't connect with the work.
• 12:23
  Jack Tompkins: you
• 12:31
  Jack Tompkins: Right.
• 12:43
  Neel: that was high school, was rote learning, memorization. It just didn't work for someone like me that had this expansive mind in the sense that I was hungry to learn and do things, but I couldn't learn in that way. So my grades did suffer. I did graduate high school. I did go into college and I dropped out almost immediately for the same reasons. I just couldn't find a path. And then it was my sister that pointed out, it's called Vancouver Film School, it's quite large here now. And she pointed that out to me because she like, you're highly creative and this is a... Animation course my dad was like what's wrong with you? You know your sister's got a she's going towards a masters and PhD like my dad had a masters My mom has four of them. So like what's what's? Yeah, I mean, this is the family I'm coming from right and they're like I could just borrow those when I need to right yeah, so I mean that so I didn't I didn't do the best in high school, but
• 13:32
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah.
• 13:38
  Jack Tompkins: my four masters? my goodness. Well she's got enough for you then. She already took care of you. She's got plenty. Right.
• 13:56
  Neel: I just learned differently. And I think I believe probably at least half of the students learn like how I do. So I think a lot of students struggle, right? So, but I love learning, right? So.
• 14:09
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah, dude, this is my favorite part, because most entrepreneurs aren't the 4.0 student who got straight A's through everything. Most entrepreneurs, at least that I've talked to, they're in class and they're saying, I can do this if you want me to, but I don't care about it and it doesn't matter, so I'm not gonna do it.
• 14:27
  Neel: Yeah, it's context, right? So, you know, beyond high school, I'm a physics nerd, man. I watch, I read so much on astrophysics. I listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos. My YouTube algorithm is so nerdy, you know, and I'm absolutely fascinated by science and
• 14:31
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah.
• 14:53
  Neel: And it was because I was very young when my dad introduced me to these books, these Charlie Brown books on science. And I was just, I was drawn in. was, so my parents thought I was going to be an astronaut or something in science. And then you, then you put me in school where they've, they've, they've killed the imagination and they've killed like,
• 15:07
  Jack Tompkins: you
• 15:18
  Neel: If you look at what science does to our reality, it is so fascinating. And they remove all that in high school. And they're teaching us equations. And they're doing it in such a micro way. So I couldn't connect to it. So it's not that I wasn't passionate about it. I just couldn't connect to the way they were teaching it.
• 15:36
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah, I'm in a very similar way. I was a pretty good student in school, but like I liked the physics. Like I took whatever the higher level physics class and I took it. was actually my first major in college too, just cause it was tangible. Like I could, I could see like, you know, easy example, like something fall into a glass of water. The water gets dispersed. like, I can explain that right now. Like that shit's easy. Like, and it's real life. It doesn't matter, but it's, it's at least tangible and there's something to it there. I've always liked. Okay. So you go into the film school. Do you graduate from the film school?
• 16:08
  Neel: Yeah, I mean it was a certification course. yeah, was a year. Yeah, it was a year, very intensive. It was great because now we've got some teachers that are not your traditional teachers there, right? They're from the animation industry. And I guess at that time they're probably in their 30s or some in their 40s. Yeah, they didn't use... proper language, they were rough around the edges, they were swearing, they didn't care, but they taught some really cool stuff. And that's where I learned about storytelling. And that's where I learned about, we watched a lot of films, right? Just to kind of understand how film theory works. And then we, I couldn't watch a movie properly for a couple years after that, because I noticed all the camera angles and the lighting and how it's staged. And like, it became very technical to me. But...
• 16:59
  Jack Tompkins: you
• 17:03
  Jack Tompkins: And you get to predict it too. If you know what the story is gonna be, cause it's almost like you can just predict what happens. Kind of boring.
• 17:06
  Neel: Yes. Yeah, because you see the whole character arc playing out and the whole hero's journey playing out and stuff, right, if it's done well. So, you know, those skills are still prevalent in what I do today, right, and being able to communicate those. And I'm working with my partners that are very good at the storytelling, the messaging, the creative and design, you know. So it's these kind of building blocks through my...
• 17:15
  Jack Tompkins: Exactly.
• 17:35
  Neel: skill set. A lot of them were defined there. We had to do a final film, which is a couple minutes long. This is classical animation. We're hand drawing everything. There's this program called US Animation and a very early version of Photoshop. That's where we would upload our drawings and get them colored and paint them. The US Animation would help I was kind of kind of see how a scene would play out and Photoshop We used it for painting back then and I picked up Photoshop like this I was so intuitive It was just like it called out to me and I was like, whoa, I can use this I can do some really cool stuff with this, you know, and so after I I got that I graduated from there I did back then it was a 3d animation was like such a new technology So I did six months of that, but then that's why I didn't pursue anything in animation. I went straight into
• 18:10
  Jack Tompkins: cool, okay.
• 18:35
  Neel: graphic design because I'm like I could create for myself using I didn't know what Photoshop was at that time and when I got exposed to it I can I can have I know how to draw I can create concepts and then I can digitize them right and that got me into the design world essentially
• 18:52
  Jack Tompkins: That must have felt like cheating, because you're used to hand drawing all this stuff and you're like, oh shit, I can just click a button and it's done? That's awesome. So you make a business out of this, right?
• 19:00
  Neel: Yeah Yeah, exactly Yeah, it just it just opened up a lot of possibilities. I didn't know I had right until it until I got introduced to the tool
• 19:10
  Jack Tompkins: And so that's the first, is that your first job after certification? It's building your own graphic design company?
• 19:17
  Neel: Yeah, so I started freelancing. But then, you know, my best friend worked in a bank here and he had a summer program that opened as a paid internship. He's like, you should just join this. He's like, one of the people running it. So I joined it. It was paid. And his His boss was also on the program and he's like, you're good at this. Would you want to work in a branch? I'm like, sure. And so I got a job in the branch as a teller. And then I went from teller to business teller to a lender over the course of two and a half, three years. And then I quit and bought a restaurant.
• 20:07
  Jack Tompkins: Wow, that's pretty quick.
• 20:11
  Jack Tompkins: What? You're finally got on the straight and there you've got a typical job you're doing the thing and you say screw that. Tell me about the restaurant.
• 20:22
  Neel: Yes, yeah. so during my time at the bank, I was still, I was freelancing as a designer still. So was taking on projects. I would, when I got, when I became a business teller, I would, I would take, so I'd have my, my
• 20:24
  Jack Tompkins: You
• 20:42
  Neel: my business cards from the company, you know, I'd give them out to the businesses that would come in, but I had my own stack of my own business cards for graphic design hidden underneath that stack. So I'd be like, so I'd give them, hey, call me anytime or whatever. And when they've come in a few times, I'd give them my card. like, hey, by the way, I also do this, you know, and you're a business. And so I started picking up clients that way. And I got in so much shit. So because when my manager found out, she's like, why are you giving these out? You're not allowed to do that. Like you got to concentrate on our sales. You got to sell visas. You got to sell loans. You know, like I got a lot of shit for that, but I would still give them out. So that's kind of like how I built my side business. I guess a side hustle is what they call it now. As I was in the bank and the reason I quit the bank is just it was way too bureaucratic. When I was lending, there's people that deserve the loans, but just because their credit was a little shoddy for circumstances that are out of their control, like the bank would just keep rejecting it. And no matter what case I put together, they just wouldn't do it. So to me, I'm like, this is is bullshit. I have no control over this. there's a mismatch between what this person needs and what can be offered. So quit and you know end up buying a restaurant with two of my friends. The same friend that got me the job at the bank, he quit too. So me and him were the ones operating it and then had a silent partner and we ran that for two years and that's my MBA. That's why I always say that's where I got my MBA.
• 22:14
  Jack Tompkins: Okay.
• 22:18
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah!
• 22:22
  Neel: you know, learning to do inventory, banking, your cash flows, how do you price dishes, products, your ingredients, sourcing all of that, dealing with government, dealing with, you know, the policy, sales and marketing. did a whole, we rebranded the whole restaurant and kind of made it into a tapas bar. was like a Italian restaurant or a cafe before that. dealing with the volatile staff, dealing with a drunk chef that went to fight me every time he got drunk. you know, there's, there's a, there was a lot of that. So I always say like, I learned so much in those two years, but I was like, imagine we just had a camera in the place. It would be like our version of the office, but like R rated even more, a little bit more volatile. But yeah, it was, it was quite, quite a,
• 23:14
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah, right.
• 23:22
  Neel: thing to learn given I had no experience in the industry. I had no experience on how to run a brick and mortar. So we did all right, but then... you know, in hindsight, I can be like, I could have done takeout, I could have done this cuisine, you know, it becomes a little bit more clear. But that again, gave me so much learning about management and leadership about cash flows, about marketing, about how to run a sound business that's got very thin margins, right. So that was that was another big stepping stone for me.
• 24:00
  Jack Tompkins: This is scrappy as hell so far. You're sliding extra business cards out to clients and you corrupt your friend who got you the stable job and bring him into the restaurant. I totally agree though. Like I have nothing against MBAs. I don't have one myself, but
• 24:03
  Neel: Yeah
• 24:09
  Neel: You
• 24:17
  Jack Tompkins: I don't know what chapter, fighting with a drunk chef comes in on, but like you can't get that in school. Like it's so much better to just learn on the fly. At least I don't know. I'm a bit of a skewed opinion there, but okay. So you'll last two years in a restaurant, which is pretty good for a restaurant, especially a first time owner. What age are you at this point?
• 24:20
  Neel: Hahaha
• 24:38
  Neel: I bought it at 28 and I sold it at 30. I literally sold it on my birthday. That was my last day.
• 24:42
  Jack Tompkins: Okay. All right. So you're 30 years old. nice. mean, getting a grandma gives five bucks for my birthday check. mean, you get a nice exit. Okay. Okay. So you're 30 years old. You've got some experience. You kind of know what you're looking for. What's the next business?
• 24:50
  Neel: You
• 25:00
  Neel: So at that point, I am consulting now. So I'm consulting marketing, a lot of branding work, a lot of brand strategy. At that point, I was still quite hands-on. I was far more strategic than I was when I was just a graphic designer. But I was still hands-on. Like I would do brand identity work, packaging, websites, and then also help with their marketing strategy. I would help with their company culture. I got into that type of stuff too. And so I picked up a lot of hospitality clients because I was running a restaurant. So, and then a lot of people in my network were launching restaurants at the time or they're buying them. And so that gave me a bit of a... pipeline, right, in that industry. And then that, yeah, it evolved. I did have some partners that were more in the video side and they did some web development. That lasted a little bit. And then I was more independent after that. And that just kind of evolved more. It got heavier on the consulting side, but I was still, you know, pretty hands on. I would bring in subcontractors to start doing a lot of technical work. So I started learning to structure my business a little bit better. And then a few years of doing that, I was reached out to by a local tech company, a media tech company, and they were a startup. There were about 12, 15 people. They saw me on Twitter because at that time, this is now 2012. So I was using Twitter a lot and I was getting clients from Twitter, which seems like such a foreign concept now. And yeah, I was posting my work. was just networking a lot on there. It was cool. And then I was getting referrals and then, I got introduced or I got reached out to.
• 26:50
  Jack Tompkins: especially even back then in 2012, that's awesome.
• 27:07
  Neel: my birthday. This is so funny. Things land on my birthday. So I got reached out on my birthday to come in and help them rebrand one of their properties, one of their products. So I went in and met with them and...
• 27:09
  Jack Tompkins: Man.
• 27:22
  Neel: It was the, I guess at that time, he's now the chief strategy officer, but he was like employee number one. So he had brought me in and then the CEO came in and you know, they kind of, they were, it was casual and I had seen her Tedx talk, you know, the year before. So we just kind of kicked off on that. It was kind of like an interview thing, but she was, she was very intuitive. So it was, it was more of a discussion, but I'm wearing a hoodie and a hat. Like I'm just like, whatever. I'm just, I'm not, I'm not dressed up like in a tie or anything like that. But we just hit it off and she asked me if I'd want to join the team and I said I'm doing pretty well on my own and consulting but why don't I consult with you guys for a month or two and then kind of take it from there. And so I did. I helped them with their vision and values and their key positioning and then I started helping also the CEO. She was doing a series A so I learned a lot about how to structure Investor readiness is something that we offer now But like all the research that was done there the market trends the storytelling when as it relates to the investor side I had become full-time and then I built out the entire marketing function in that in that firm And that to me was a massive learning. It was nine years and we scaled very quickly from that small scrappy startup to about 400 headcount at one point 450 We became international, we became number one in what we did. The series A was a 36 million raise. So that catapulted us and my department grew very rapidly. In 2020, we went public and I jumped out in 2021 to basically where I'm at now.
• 29:12
  Jack Tompkins: Whoa, okay. I mean, this is why. So you're in a hoodie. You're just like, I'm doing my own thing. You look like you could design your own tattoos. Did you design your own sleeve?
• 29:23
  Neel: I designed most of it, yeah. But I did it during COVID. I had a whole bunch of drawings, and then the artist I went to is like, that won't work on an arm, let me restructure it. So he took my concepts and he made them better, much better.
• 29:25
  Jack Tompkins: Did you?
• 29:38
  Jack Tompkins: Okay. You didn't do any of the stenciling yourself. okay. I was trying to find the limit here.
• 29:42
  Neel: god no. I'm too old for that now. Maybe when I was younger I would have maybe experimented with that but not now. I'm die of an infection.
• 29:50
  Jack Tompkins: Okay, so you have this personality where you're like, I'm here. I'm just kind of doing my thing. Things are going well. And then the company explodes. It goes to 400. You're doing all this good stuff. At IPO, that's wild. This is awesome. So this is as scrappy as it comes and being so good that it becomes unbelievably successful. Let me fast forward to today. So let's go really quick. When do you start Tropoly?
• 30:19
  Neel: So unofficially is when I left that company. So I say unofficially because the work was similar to what we're doing now. I was just more independent. So it was me and then one of my current partners was working with me closely on a bunch of projects. And so we were getting...
• 30:21
  Jack Tompkins: Okay.
• 30:37
  Neel: Yeah, so marketing strategy work, we're getting a lot of rebrands at that time too. So big, big, big messy rebrands, which is what we love. One of the things we love. And so we were partnered on several clients. I was doing some fractional work too. There was an energy company. It was like a fractional COO. They were in the EV space. So I there for, I helped out for a few months there. I knew the CEO. So I was kind of his right hand man for a couple months to kind of structure the company a little bit. And again, this is like, Learned experience from that startup because yes, I was head of marketing But we did a lot of strategy and operations work right like to scale a scale of function. So it's a very trans Translatable to to this firm and then yeah, and then we continued on the path and It was 2022 And yeah near the end of 2022 where I was like, let's give it a name because having different weird email addresses with a single client looks unofficial and looks a little bit junior So let's let's let's do this thing. And so we made it official in 2022 End of 2022. It's in November. I think it was
• 31:58
  Jack Tompkins: On paper, your mom has more masters than you do, but you've got at least two or three different MBAs that you've learned through experience. I'm gonna give you the win there. So you name it in 2022, we've got this whole thing, and at this point, you've kind of taken on roles that are like, hey, I'm pretty good at this thing, but something needs to get done, like, I'll give it a shot. Hey, I kind of like this too.
• 32:04
  Neel: You
• 32:22
  Jack Tompkins: So you've got some COO in you, you've got some CMO, you've got the design level, you've got all this stuff coming together. Talk to me about now the shift towards that sophistication in Tripoli today, like systems, processes, models, all this stuff. You've learned it from the past. What is a typical deliverable to a client these days?
• 32:44
  Neel: Yeah, so one thing we take pride on is that experience. My partner was part of that firm with me. He had his own entrepreneurial journey before that. And my other partners run and built agencies. He's always been independent. So we come to the table with this intersection of executive experience. entrepreneurship and then you know on the agency side to be able to deliver right so it's it's a trifecta that really differentiates us and so the sophistication with clients now is like when they see us and you know we're we're getting something off the ground we're asking for revenue projections we're asking for their org charts, we're asking for their relationship with the dynamics of their departments, we're asking for historical data, customer data, and you know why they're acquiring the customers. We do a lot of work on the research and the market, like looking at the market, looking at competitors, looking at them, looking at their customers, we, and looking at the industry, we want to be as smart as possible so that when we deliver, we're delivering foot context. You know, some clients or some companies may not have patience for that. They're like, we just need you to execute. We need you to run this campaign off the ground, blah, blah. We typically say then you should probably hire an advertising agency or something like that because they're very tactical. Yeah, it's not a fit. Yeah, because then it's not a fit for us if we're not understanding the foundations and if we can't help build the foundations. So that's...
• 34:27
  Jack Tompkins: refusing work, the ultimate sophisticated move.
• 34:42
  Neel: Where we come with the sophistication so we do the market stuff we do we and we build artifacts like I kind of mentioned the The the projections model for one of our clients now. We'll do your we'll do your positioning, you know, we'll define your category Well, we'll define your differentiations your pricing your value proposition If it's already in place great, then we'll scrutinize it and shape it if it's perfect. Well, i've never seen that before but sure We'll take it it will will review your brand is the identity making sense. to what you want and where your ambitions are. So we can help you rebrand as well. So the positioning work that that market work, the business modeling, the branding, those are foundations and those are hands on. We'll build those and we'll do those, you know, and then it's about operationalizing it. It's like getting getting it, getting your scaffolding. So if you're a B2B firm, is your tech stack matching your marketing tech stack, you know, your sales and marketing? Is it all working? Do you have your right data strategy? process is optimized, right? So giving you that go to market kind of function is your right team in place, like giving you that capability, right? And working on that. And that's where we start getting more and more granular. And then it's like helping you operate that. So we have a full stack marketing offering, you know, and we bring in teams and we can run that or we'll advise on that. So that's kind of like going from high level all the way to the ground level. But throughout the whole process, the client feels like they have a partner. We get on calls with them on the weekends. I don't care. We're embedded. We'll work with them.
• 36:23
  Neel: We got WhatsApp group chats, you know, just to kind of keep it open. And then we have structured meetings every week. We run them as sprints. So every, every meeting we either have a topic to discuss, something to deliver, something to review. So the client also feels like, there's something moving constantly, right? So I don't know if that answered your question. I think I went on a couple of tangents there, but that is kind of how we work and how we kind of bring in the sophistication, the high level stuff. with the grounded stuff.
• 36:54
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah, hey, we're all about the tangents here. One of the questions I like to ask is, how do you continuously, I'm a consultant too, right? That's sort of a, just part of the course in the industry. You have to continuously prove value. I'm gonna ask you that, but I feel like I know the answer, because you're an embedded partner. You're doing stuff at all levels of execution, continuously, right? I mean, that's gotta be a pretty big differentiator for you guys.
• 37:21
  Neel: Yeah, I mean there's cases where I've got myself out of client work because it's working. We don't, we want to be a partner, not a parasite, right? So at some point, we want to make sure we came into that capability building has actually happened. And you could scale without me. If you want to keep me on as an advisor to kind of guide you through it, cool. If you got it, you got it. There was a cybersecurity client. So I was embedded more of as a fractional CMO. They had marketing challenges for years. You know, we did some, we did some
• 37:28
  Jack Tompkins: Right. Right?
• 37:58
  Neel: project-based work with them before. We rebranded them, we did some campaigns and stuff. The CEO asked me to kind of find him a CMO. And I said, you're too small to have a CMO because you have one person in marketing. So why don't I look under the hood? Yeah. So I said, like, why don't you, why don't you let me look under the hood and then maybe I can work with you fractionally. And so that happened. And, you know, I provided some structure to their marketing. We've got some real data. We're connecting MQLs and SQLs. That's a market data. We were starting to see leads come in, being able to track them better, invested more in some of their activities, stood up new
• 38:13
  Jack Tompkins: You gotta be blunt about it. Yeah.
• 38:38
  Neel: activities but then it wasn't just me you know I was bringing in agencies bringing in subcontractors to kind of build around that and they had some already we did some hires key hires and then I was yeah and then on my way out we made a made a more junior scrap your hire because that's what they needed all right so I brought in the council and leadership the CEO asked me to be a player coach because he said I don't know how this works because I've brought in leaders and it hasn't worked and so he was on every almost every one of our marketing meetings, he saw how the decisions were being made, he challenged it, he would support it, but him being there allowed us to move way quicker as well if a decision had to be made. And so I think with me exiting, stepping out, he feels way more informed. He's where the leads are coming from, there's dashboards and reports coming out, they're going to the board, you know, so that's an example of us, you know, getting the capabilities built. and then getting out because we don't need to be there anymore.
• 39:41
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah, okay, this makes a lot of sense. And this is a multi, certainly multi-month, multi-year engagement for a lot of people.
• 39:50
  Neel: It can be, yeah. And sometimes there's a breaking between too, right? So if we've kind of delivered on something that's more project-based, then yeah, maybe we'll come back a little bit later and reengage. But we would prefer long, obviously we'd prefer not just prefer them longer and not just from a monetary standpoint, for a success.
• 39:55
  Jack Tompkins: Sure.
• 40:06
  Jack Tompkins: He he he.
• 40:14
  Neel: Rate like we want them to be successful like we're not trying to take on 500 clients. So like we will scale but We we scale slowly because we want We want to be embedded. We want it. We want to show our expertise. We want the clients to feel that they're not armed length from us. actually in there with them and we get excited. We're a bunch of nerds. We get excited about the industries we work with, right? And there's this cool innovations that, you know, these folks are spinning up stuff that we can't do, you know, so we get super excited about it. We learn about as much as possible. So that to us, we want to see it through. We want to see them get their, you know, series A. We want to see them launch in, you know, international markets. We want to see their product come to life. You know, to us, that's why we do what we do.
• 41:03
  Jack Tompkins: I mean, seeing the full, growing your company is one thing. Being able to impact change on multiple other companies and see that trajectory is so, empowering is the word that's coming to mind. don't know, that's maybe not the right one, but it's very impactful, right? Before I hit you with the lightning round of some scrappy versus sophisticated questions,
• 41:19
  Neel: yeah.
• 41:25
  Jack Tompkins: You have a tagline, two that really stuck out to me. One is transformative growth. So I wanna ask what does transformative growth mean to you? And then the other one is, I love this on your site, brands that look small stay small. I'm assuming those two kinda go together. Give me some thoughts. Why are those kind of taglines for the company?
• 41:48
  Neel: So, Brandza looks small, stays small, I believe was from one of our case studies. Yeah, so that was a rebrand project. This company had evolved over, I think, 15 years at that time. They had scaled, they're working with enterprise clients and their branding looked like, you know, was Donald Fiverr.
• 41:53
  Jack Tompkins: I think so, yes.
• 42:12
  Neel: Right. And so it's like it's like, okay If you're gonna hit some roadblocks or if you haven't already because your perception doesn't match your capabilities You've probably made it really far because you're very good at what you do and you have relationships and connections But you want to scale at this point? A janky brand is not gonna allow you to do that, you know, not at this stage early stage sure but now at this stage It needs refinement and sophistication So that's where that you know brands that looks more
• 42:39
  Jack Tompkins: There it is.
• 42:42
  Neel: stay small comes from. And then the other one, transformative growth. Okay, so what we don't like doing is stepping into a firm that's already operating and they just want us to kind of tweak a few buttons and have it grow a little bit further, you know. We want to, this goes back to what I saying earlier, is get into the foundations, get into, get into stuff that's going to get you past your current stage. Your company should look a little bit different after we're done working with you. Right. And so that could be, again, you've got a new product in market in, in a different, different territory, or you have a new capability that's allowing you to do stuff you couldn't do before. Right. So to me, that's, that's transformative. But yeah, it's still adding to your business growth, your bottom line, your revenue and all of that. So it's not little incremental add-ons. It's actually, okay, let's take you to a new direction you wanna go into.
• 43:47
  Jack Tompkins: Right, that is a different company to some extent at that point. love the, that's a very quantifiable thing. Before we started working with you, we sold X, and Z. Now we sell X, Y, and Z, one internationally, and two, we also sell A, B, and C, whatever it is. That's pretty cool, and that's pretty, talk about like continuously proving value, that's continuous and then like huge value.
• 44:02
  Neel: Yeah.
• 44:12
  Jack Tompkins: Last piece here, folks listening, your ICP, who are these types of clients? Give me a size range.
• 44:21
  Neel: We like five to 50 million in revenue. I think that's a good stage. Now, big asterisk, we have clients that are smaller than that. But if they're well capitalized, if the founder is sophisticated, it's scrappy. Then it's still a good fit because... They have trajectory, they have product market fit and they're growing. We're able to, you know, kind of take the reins from there. Now, I know I'm giving you an indirect answer, but because it's, we've hit a range, right? Now we have a client that's...
• 44:57
  Jack Tompkins: It's all good.
• 45:03
  Neel: Like I mentioned earlier, SaaS product brand new is innovative. It's going to, you know, if it, if we're successful, it's going to transform a part of the industry. The reason why this is a fit is because he's run other businesses and he's got adjacent businesses and he's scaled them. So he's got a competency in knowing how to build and scale. And then he's well funded and he knows how the funding is going to be distributed. So those are some of the signals. We'll work with early stage clients in that way. Otherwise, yeah, we like the 5 to 50, the mid cap. They're growing, they're getting messy, things are breaking. And they're trying to do something that is, again, transformative. They're trying to raise money. get into a new market, they're launching a new product, they need a rebrand. These are all change events that we'd want to guide them through and be part of that change with them. So it's not, don't, and sorry, the buyers are typically decision makers and CEOs. We work with mostly CEOs and founders. And we'll work with a broader leadership team. beyond that, we don't, we don't peg ourselves to one industry where industry agnostic. But one thing we've noticed that's a theme is the industries are pretty complex. Usually, you know, we've done work in energy, we've done these deep manufacturing, deep tech, food, food innovation. So we've noticed that the industries have some complexity to them and they have a complex sales cycle, you know, long complex sales cycle that require multiple touch points. the funnel needs to be somewhat unique in order to get their attention and to close them. And then we're able to guide them through those stages. I think a lot of marketing agencies steer away from that because it's hard to get results, quick results. Yeah, but that's where I think our advisory and our strategic kind of lens helps with that. That's what's, it's a fit.
• 46:54
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah. Scary.
• 47:04
  Jack Tompkins: Okay, that makes sense. All right, lightning round. How many phone numbers do you have? Just one, okay? Do you recommend books or do you recommend podcasts?
• 47:14
  Neel: Oof, oof, man. Man.
• 47:23
  Jack Tompkins: Now it's Books? All right, sophisticated. You're getting sassy with chat GBT.
• 47:24
  Neel: Books. I'm gonna say books.
• 47:31
  Neel: Oh man, I get so annoyed with it. But you know what, okay, call me sexist, but when I'm texting with it, it's a boy, but when I talk to it, it's a girl. And she's so much smarter. She's always smarter. I can have those conversations. And then when I'm like, hey, can you do this research or whatever, and it screws up, I'm like, well, you're an idiot. Like, what? Come on. All right, so I don't know. It's a weird relationship. So yes, I do get sassy with it.
• 47:50
  Jack Tompkins: Okay
• 47:56
  Jack Tompkins: love it. Okay, multiple relationships with AI. Good, good, good. Do you have a docking station on your like home desk?
• 47:59
  Neel: Hahaha
• 48:06
  Neel: What station? A docking station?
• 48:07
  Jack Tompkins: a docking. So like, do you have all the wires going into your computer? Or do you have all the wires going into a central spot?
• 48:13
  Neel: a bit of A and a little bit of B. So I do have points of convergence for my wires, but I don't have a central dock to it. So, but I have a couple, I have one there, I have a dongle here and yeah. It's pretty, it's organized chaos. Let's just say that.
• 48:20
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah Okay.
• 48:28
  Jack Tompkins: Okay. Sure, that is the theme of the episode, think. How many monitors and are they the same monitor on the desk?
• 48:33
  Neel: Yeah.
• 48:38
  Neel: I have one big monitor here and then I have my laptop. And sometimes I'll bring my iPad for, if I need to kind of just like have something there during a meeting or conversation. But it's typically these two.
• 48:43
  Jack Tompkins: Okay.
• 48:56
  Jack Tompkins: Have you ever sent an email where everything was just in the subject line and there was nothing in the body? Got him, there it is.
• 49:03
  Neel: How did you know? So I still get this from my partner, still makes fun of me and people still make fun of me of this. This was when I was at that high growth firm. had my department was about 30 or 40 people at that time. It was my birthday and a little hungover. So I decided to let the team know I'm going to be late or I'm going to I think I took the day off. I can't remember.
• 49:22
  Jack Tompkins: Hahaha
• 49:31
  Jack Tompkins: Okay.
• 49:32
  Neel: and I wrote the entire email in the subject line and I sent it to 40 people. Okay. And I didn't realize I think I'm I don't even know how I did it. I think I think I did it from bed. I can't remember. I'm a laptop or whatever. I don't even remember how I sent it. But I remember my first response.
• 49:38
  Jack Tompkins: You
• 49:50
  Jack Tompkins: Yeah.
• 49:54
  Neel: loud noises. That was it. That was a reply. And then it's like, what? And then I kept getting all these like, you know, like it must be quite a hangover. Ha ha. All these all these responses. I think what the hell is wrong with everybody? Like, what did I do? And then I looked at could see the subject line is like this big on top of Gmail. I'm like, my god, I'm such an idiot. So I can't believe you asked that. That's the thing that happened to me. So yeah.
• 50:03
  Jack Tompkins: Right?
• 50:09
  Jack Tompkins: Hahaha
• 50:20
  Jack Tompkins: Oh, that's too funny. That's the perfect place to end it, man. This is fantastic. I'm going to say 100 % Scrappy Beginning and now a nice healthy blend of sophistication and scrappy. Neel, thank you so much for coming on. If you are a company out there, complex industry, you need that integrated marketing partner. I'm calling you. I'm referring people to you. I'm also, we're going to go get drunk and play video games together too.
• 50:48
  Neel: I'm so down. I'm so down.
• 50:51
  Jack Tompkins: Thank you for coming out man. What do we want the folks out there to know? Any social handles, anything coming up that you want to promote?
• 51:00
  Neel: Yeah, you can you can find me on LinkedIn and EELSINGH That's pretty the best place to connect with me and then you know our website is tropoli.io so T-R-O-P-O-L-Y.io We are updating it so as always But you could you can reach out to me or my team on both of those places
• 51:24
  Jack Tompkins: Perfect. Once again, Scrappy Beginnings, a healthy blend today of sophisticated and scrappiness. Neel Singh, everybody. Tropoly, go check it out. Thanks so much for coming on,
• 51:34
  Neel: Thanks Jack, this was awesome.
• 51:36
  Jack Tompkins: Awesome.