How To Build Growth Strategy With Limited Resources w/ Paps Shaikh

00:00
Paps Shaikh
Banging your head against a brick wall, your head starts to hey hurt.

00:03
Amardeep Parmar
Pap Sheikh, a CRO and commercial director with some serious credibility and growth. Having helped a company which is now unicorn scale internationally, it really worked.

00:14
Paps Shaikh
So the business for Nextdoor here took off with mid market. You know, I went after broadband businesses. Just feel so blessed that I have built some amazing teams and these teams are now friends.

00:27
Amardeep Parmar
I quizzed him on everything that founders need to know about growth and he shared some great tips.

00:33
Paps Shaikh
And what this is just lateral thinking? Where else might we get some money? The horses that you really believe are going to win the race and how.

00:41
Amardeep Parmar
Do you deal with situations when the money is tough?

00:43
Paps Shaikh
Don't go and spend your early stage funding on nice to have stuff.

00:48
Amardeep Parmar
It's a tough market out there, but perhaps with most decades of experience has learned the timeless principles that keep being applied over and over again.

00:56
Paps Shaikh
I help tech businesses grow.

01:04
Amardeep Parmar
With all your vast experience, can you tell us a bit about when people are really struggling at the beginning to find the right customer and making sure that they're going after the right people? How can they go about making sure that there is the right customer to serve?

01:17
Paps Shaikh
I mean, I'm going to say it's a good question, right, because I think any startup will come across this at some point in the timeline. One typically has an idea of who the customers might be and things change. Things change purely because by the time you've got a product or your service which is ready, you may well then go and test it out. So you may have an idea of client X within a certain segment being the right one, but you get this feedback and then you sit there and you kind of analyse and you think to yourself, actually I'm not getting the right signals back. And at that point I think it's really important where you've just got to sit. You just got to sit and take a hot minute and think to yourself, actually maybe this isn't the right segment.

02:02
Paps Shaikh
I think it's probably best if I use an example of where I've had to do that. So next door is a company you might be aware of and you might not be. So it's a social based apps are really based around neighbourhoods. If you live in a particular part of. I'm just going to pick Leeds LS6 where I was a student. You can only speak to a certain number of people around there in your geography now. I was brought on to help the business raise some money. They went some international monetization in America. They'd been after a certain type of brands and they'd had some success there. Now in the UK I went after the same brands because it's advertising based, right? And very quickly I realised I was knocking on these doors and I just wasn't getting the right signals back either.

02:47
Paps Shaikh
And I thought to myself, okay, what am I going to do at this point? Because actually the hypothesis wasn't working and what had worked elsewhere geographically wasn't working here. And it was a variety of reasons. The business just hadn't grown to the same number of users. I'll leave it at that. So we couldn't go after the big brands. And I thought to myself, we have a fixed period of time. I had six months to prove international monetization so they could go and raise some money in America, on the west coast. And I just thought to myself, okay, this isn't working here, what do I do here? And then I think a very simple thing is when, if you're lucky, you've got a go to market plan because you've got a reference point, so you might be pivoting at that point.

03:27
Paps Shaikh
But I just thought to myself, okay, who are the other customers? What do I need? I need money and decisions pretty quickly. And I thought going to the big brands takes a lot longer, bigger businesses, bigger cycles. I thought to myself, why don't I actually go to some tech based businesses who are mid market and mid market just means that mid sized business is an American term which is used here in Europe as well. Now these businesses have budget, they make decisions really quickly because they are growing as well. So it's an interesting, isn't it? Because we're kind of talking to startups here, but I was actually chasing startups who were just further down the line and it really worked. It really worked. So the business for nextdoor here took off with mid market. You know, I went after broadband businesses.

04:13
Paps Shaikh
Broadband was really big. It suited the nature of our proposition and our pitch. And that's something you can kind of come onto later on because next door was all about the house. People were thinking about certain things and if you're thinking about broadband, it kind of made sense. And I was just so pleasantly surprised. It's a very, you know, I sit here and it was a very simple thing. Just take some time if things aren't working. And you know, I always say if you're banging your head against a brick wall, your head starts to hurt and it's that kind of message coming back to you. Just stop, take a pause and just Take some time to think about it and if you've not segmented your potential customer base, I mean, do that because it's not homogenous. Right.

04:55
Paps Shaikh
The world, in the Western world, we roughly break out and actually probably across the world, you know, you got your enterprise business, you got your mid market and you've got your SMEs, what we call SMEs here, SMBs in America. Enterprise. I'm not teaching everyone, suck eggs. Take a lot longer. Big brands have much bigger budgets, Right. And there's less of them. It's almost like the pyramid. Then you got the middle segment, that's a mid market, lots of businesses a bit more established. These are the ones who I think can be good in that early stage because they've got cash, they've been around for a lot longer. And then you've got the huge segment which is SMEs.

05:33
Paps Shaikh
Now you'll probably know which ones are your target audience, but sometimes you might find that actually your target audience straddles two of them and sometimes it can straddle all three of them. So I think it's just. Don't be too fixated on that one segment. Sometimes you have to go knock on our different doors.

05:51
Amardeep Parmar
Yeah. One thing we're seeing a lot now is, especially now mentorship programmes, is that there's a lot of people who like the. Built a brand, right?

05:57
Paps Shaikh
Yeah.

05:57
Amardeep Parmar
They've got a brand which is doing well and they've got a personal brand, but it's all about the numbers of followers, the number of subscribers, and that doesn't actually translate into revenue. And I see a lot of people now struggling with that. So let's say you're. You're somebody built a strong brand, you're well known in your industry. How do you then go about actually converting that to revenue? So you've got those users maybe on your app, but there's no monetization there.

06:21
Paps Shaikh
Okay. I mean that's interesting, isn't it? Because in success sometimes is measured nowadays through these social graphs. Right. And it is lovely to have lots and lots of different followers. I'm just going to kind of, I suppose bring this into an example of mine here. On one of my businesses that I've started up recently, which is. Well being I haven't focused that much on social. Funny from my wife and some of my friends have said, why aren't you doing that much there? And I said, it's going to come, that bit's going to come. Actually what I'm doing is I'm actually focusing on the customers that I need and then I'll build my social kind of graph. Am I following in tandem there? Look, if you're the people that are following you, right, let's just take it through the social lens here.

07:08
Paps Shaikh
If you think they are your potential customers then the messaging to them has to be very specific. And again, this is on the proviso that you think these people are going to convert into paying customers. Now again, I just don't, you know, because this is a very broad question. It can just depend on your product or service. If you don't think that you're potential customers, they just happen to like what you're doing, then you need to kind of pivot a little bit. Again, I'm using that word because you just need to turn around and think I need to look somewhere else. And at that point, again, I'm very strong on your go to market plan. You know, you won.

07:43
Paps Shaikh
When one starts a business has an idea of who is going to be spending money and actually, you know, it's not just about the money, it's about this product and service, who is it going to serve well, who's going to get value out of it? Because that's how you get long term customers. And I think you just need to take that pause. You need to take that pause and then you need to put a slightly different mindset on and think actually maybe we're moving out of this marketing phase because actually we've done well. If the brand is recognised and you know, you've got to check something, do people actually understand what that brand translates into? The proposition? And the proposition is about like Mikey, make good trainers. Are you a runner? Do you want this to a lifestyle?

08:26
Paps Shaikh
We all understand that and I'm using a very clear and big example here. Do people understand that with your business? And if they do, then I think normally if you've got that right, you know, naturally if you're just taking that moment, you should be able to identify who your customers are. If you can't, if you're getting stuck. And I always say this, hopefully you've got some mentors or you've got some people who are outside of your office, outside of your business. Because you know, we use words like echo chambers when it's just, let's say if there's five of you in your startup, you're living, breathing the same oxygen day in and day out. And it's very difficult to get perspective. Perspective comes when either you step out, you raise yourself above it.

09:12
Paps Shaikh
But when you're doing this almost 24 7, in those early stages, it's very difficult. Someone else who you trust can come and take a view and you then pose that question to them. I think this is where we're stuck at this point. And it's almost like I kind of see as you're not your escape route or it's. Sometimes you just need to pull that cord. We need some assistance and it's going to come from externally there. I think that kind of makes sense. And I've seen that in some early stage businesses. Sometimes it might be, if you're at that stage, VCs, sometimes it might be the people who've given you a bit of seed as well, because you've trusted and they have vested as well, so they can come in and think they need some help here.

09:53
Amardeep Parmar
I guess following up on that as well. So sometimes there's the time for experimentation, sometimes it's time for. We've only got one month left to Runway. A big client has just pulled out. What the hell do we do? And in a way, we had this earlier this year. So were expecting two big partnerships with you at the beginning of the year. And that was meant to be okay. We've got this much money, we start buying things, we start moving office, get a new office, all these kind of longer term expenses. Then when the revenue doesn't come in, we. We then had to try and figure out something new. So we came up with a little patron programme and we enabled people from the community to essentially donate to us. And that didn't really work.

10:28
Amardeep Parmar
There's a few people that did that from the kindness of the hearts. What we then just pivoted a bit more to smaller partnerships in a way. So patrons who are businesses who, by being a patron, they get advertised in our newsletter, they get advertised on our website. And that one had more success and that gave us enough Runway to get the other partnerships over the line.

10:46
Paps Shaikh
Right.

10:46
Amardeep Parmar
But that period, like January and February this year was very stressful. And it was like I said, where you're just starting to panic and you're trying to think about, okay, we need to make payroll, we need to make the office. And obviously going to be in situations like that yourself over time, like throughout your career as well. What did you do in those moments where you said, obviously, if you can have mentoring, pull the cord, how else can you go about that? How else you think, okay, we're going to run our money, what can we do?

11:11
Paps Shaikh
It's great. And you know what? I hear from you, actually, which is the most important thing is, you know, you rolled up your sleeves because, you know, we know that you've got a product, you've got a service as, you know, this whole kind of entity that you have. And at that point, you put most of your focus on to the commercial aspect, i.e. You need to generate some revenue. And, you know, and at that point, in most of the early stages, you've got to have your blinkers on because you've got to have focus. And, you know, we talked about this earlier as well, Amardeep. And it's really important to have the. At that point, you've got to take the blinkers off.

11:49
Paps Shaikh
And for want of a better description, you have to just sit around a table and think, where else might we get some money? And what this is just lateral thinking because all you. You're not, you know, all you're really doing is were going to get some money from there. This is a profile of a type. It could be a bank, it could be a different type of organisation. It might have just been a very large bank in some instances. Right. And for whatever reasons, it's not coming from there. So, you know, the type of customer that it is. So you think laterally, who else is like that? Who else is our service going to deliver value to and where it's going to make that connection?

12:31
Paps Shaikh
And I know I'm kind of laying it out quite simply, but there's no magic, you know, we all know there's no kind of silver bullet to any of this stuff, so you just got to be able to just sit. But one of the things is do not panic, right? Because when we start panicking, everything goes out the window. Sometimes we stop being nice to each other within the team because the pressure's coming down on us. Do not panic. You know, it's a golden rule of being in any tight situation. You just need to stop. And if you are panicking, you know, I kind of. I'm doing some wellbeing stuff at the moment. Go and find some online resources which just help you with your breath work. I would, you know, I know it's a crazy thing for me to do, but if you can.

13:10
Paps Shaikh
If you can't find the calmness within yourself, because most of this is going to come from you and your team members. You just need to take a minute and I'm a firm believer, just take a few minutes to pause. Because if we start running around like headless chickens, all manner of craziness is going to happen. And maybe this becomes too crazy as well. But taking the pause in life and in business is really good. And start thinking laterally because there's going to be people out there and there's going to be customers out there that you will find. And the reason you'll find them is because you believe in your product and you've probably stress tested. Is the messaging right? Was the messaging right or did people not get a proposition?

13:50
Paps Shaikh
But you've probably been through those short little cycles if you got to this stage and you had someone on the hook, a potential customer. So continue to believe, but just take a couple of side steps and look around and think who else might be out there who can make a quick decision.

14:05
Amardeep Parmar
Mentioned about you're obviously working on wellness as well. And right now you've got two tracks, right? You're doing both the business side in the tech world and also the business side in transporter and other company as well. And you mentioned that it's because of the stage you're at the moment where that makes sense and that can work for you. But for like earlier stage people, how do they work out how focused to be versus how many experiments to run? Because say, for example, for us, right, we've got a million different things going on and that can then put us under a lot of strain, which maybe makes us less effective at each one. But at the same time, how do you learn if you don't iterate and do experiments?

14:38
Amardeep Parmar
How do you gauge that of when people in those early stages how to make a good decision about should you be experimenting with this or actually is this a no for now and we have to focus on this instead?

14:49
Paps Shaikh
That is a really. I think it's a tough question because, you know, one could draw up a weekly timeline, right, and one, you know, from a Monday to Friday, one could record actually very high level what we're spending our time on as a business. And you might want to do that, you might be that type of person. You know, there have been times, and I'm going to use a real life example where I've had a very large sales organisation across Europe, I don't know, 70 or 80 people. And we can see that efficiency isn't there. And you draw up a timeline because you just want to actually see what's going on. You might want to do this actually.

15:25
Paps Shaikh
But it's about backing horses, to use a different kind of, you know, kind of analogy here, the horses that you really believe are going to win the race are the ones you're going to need to back. Now, there may be some others that you like, but you're going to have to put them to the side. And you know, I'm bringing up all his equine thing because someone had said to me very early on, the blinkers are really important because our peripheral vision can distract us. And with the blinkers at times it means that you keep this focus on what you want to do.

15:59
Paps Shaikh
So in this instance, maybe it's quite, you know, maybe a practical way of doing this is that, you know, you almost draw a circle and think this is the core stuff or the core bits of our offering where we're going to make money and here's the stuff on the edge where we might explore from time to time. But actually this is the stuff we're just going to continue. Now, if you've got some investors, right, and you're having a board meeting with them, you want to be talking about the call because they want to hear from you that this is what you're backing, this is what you believe and this is what's actually going to take you from 0 to 1 or it may be from 2 to 3 and you just gotta keep.

16:36
Paps Shaikh
And you've gotta believe in it and you gotta believe in it. Now, there might be some movement and some jiggling around in that core kind of area, but when you leave that core area, there's gotta be a specific reason. If I was an investor and I'm talking to you as a founder, you're like, actually we've been doing this is where we put most of our R and D and this is what we believe in. But actually we're going here. There might be a signal. You've heard something from a customer, someone else has said something to you, have you tested that out? But I think to be more succinct, you know, I would probably be thinking if in an early stage startup that, you know, you've got to be spending around 70 to 80% on the call and the rest of it is experimentation.

17:20
Paps Shaikh
So as a guideline, that's how I would summarise it.

17:24
Amardeep Parmar
Hello.

17:25
Paps Shaikh
Hello.

17:26
Amardeep Parmar
Quick interruption to let you know a bit more about BAE HQ. We're the community for high growth Asian heritage entrepreneurs, operators and investors in the UK. You can join us totally fre at thebaehq.com/join. There you'll get our CEO structure in your inbox every week, which is content, events and opportunities. You can also get access to a free startup fundamentals course by joining. Let's get back to the show. So it was a good thing about as well is that I see some sort of pitch decks, right? Loop said, okay, we've got 10 different monetization models and it's okay if 90% of your revenue is coming from one of those. The rest are irrelevant to an investor.

18:10
Amardeep Parmar
Right.

18:10
Amardeep Parmar
It's like they don't need to know if you're making 2% of your money through this and 3% of your money from that. I think a lot of people miss that as well because they're trying to shake and say, look, there's so many ways you can make money. But actually what it looks like to an investor is like you don't really know what you're doing or you're not really sure about your path. And sometimes, well, I think people shouldn't be afraid to do this and say, okay, from where we are today to until we raise our next round or until like in this kind of phase, our main revenue model is going to be this. And then later revenue models me this because it's like as we grow is going to change.

18:41
Amardeep Parmar
Right?

18:41
Amardeep Parmar
And that's totally fine. Right? Lots of businesses change your revenue model over time. But trying to say, kids, okay, we're going to make 5% of money from advertising, 10% from subscriptions, 20% from this, 20% from that. I think you just lose a lot of investors because they just don't really understand what you're really good at. One thing as well, obviously. So you've worked with, you obviously worked in house like those different companies and then you've also worked as an advisor and people as well. What are some of the mistakes you see as an advisor when you go in where people are thinking about growth and their strategies there that you've seen across multiple different companies that hopefully some of the listeners can avoid.

19:17
Paps Shaikh
Okay. I'm just trying to think through some of the biggest ones and some that we probably experience as startups as well. I think this concept of spreading yourself too thin because you know, in that early stage, if you're going to investors, you might think, actually I want a broader story which might appeal to more People don't want to hear that. People just want to hear the call of what you're doing. The proposition that resonates with you as a founder or founding team member to the broader team. And I want to hear the passion and they want to hear everything, the authenticity coming out on that.

19:53
Paps Shaikh
Now you might as a sideline say, you know, this is what we're doing, this is what we're focusing on and we really think for the foreseeable future, whatever that phase is, and however long that time period is, this is what we're going to go after. But we do believe that there are some kind of peripheral areas which may be of interest. And we're just going touch on this for a very short period of time just to let you know that there is opportunity maybe to expand. And if you frame it like that, then people understand. So most of what we do in life is about communication, right? It's about you sat there and you might be in a pitch. You know, someone's attention span is so small they just need to hit the headline facts.

20:37
Paps Shaikh
So always be really succinct, always be really focused on that core messaging. And sometimes if you don't talk about the peripheral stuff, it doesn't really matter because people are going to buy you for that core proposition. So I think, you know, for me it's about not coming out and you know, throwing the kitchen sink at everyone because not everyone's going to understand there's too many, you know, if there's a, you know, if there's a line between my two fingers here and the core of what you're selling is over here. But you're actually talking about this point, this point. What you're actually doing is you're confusing the audience. People's attention span is too short. Be really, you know, be back the core of what you're doing. And I talk about the peripheral stuff.

21:19
Paps Shaikh
If you think, you know, certainly if you don't have a lot of time and if you're pitching against a bunch of other businesses as well.

21:27
Amardeep Parmar
And looking at the growth side of things.

21:28
Amardeep Parmar
Right.

21:29
Amardeep Parmar
So trying to get more revenue.

21:30
Paps Shaikh
Yes.

21:31
Amardeep Parmar
What are some of the mistakes people make on that side? If they've already got their funding, how do they maybe misuse those funds?

21:38
Paps Shaikh
Oh wow. I mean, God, I mean, I could use so many examples. Don't go and spend your early stage funding on nice to have stuff which, you know, happened. I was around in the dot com boom at the turn, you know, in 2000 I left Emap, big media company that five years they helped them launch a startup, went to Goldman Sachs business. I mean, I'm not going to spend too much detail. We had an office in German street and at the time it was the most expensive office in Europe. I arrived there and I thought, my God, this is luxurious. It's in German street, is by Piccadilly and where all the big members clubs are from. Hundreds of years ago. Don't spend your money. I mean, everyone knows this. Don't spend your money on all those nice stuff. I mean, you know, it's nice.

22:19
Paps Shaikh
Maybe go and have a nice celebratory drink or a meal, because you do need to mark these events and get the team together and get people to feel good. Right? But the feel good factors do not come from material things of having really nice office chairs and all stuff. You know, you got to look after all that. But it actually comes from feeling good about how the business is doing. And that is sometimes a bit more ethereal. And I say ethereal because you can't touch it. It's not about nice tables and all the rest of it. The money has to be. If you're getting into the stage where you're about to commercialise, yourself are a founder or you might have a CTO with you. Do you have a commercial person?

22:55
Paps Shaikh
Do you have a person who really understands how to take the offering, believe in it and then evangelise? Because some of this is about evangelising. We use these words and this word really came through in the dot com boom because were going out and trying to sell technology, which actually the world wasn't even ready for. And the reason this tech startup, the first one I went to in 2000, I mean, it was back to me, it had taken a huge amount, tens of millions. The industry were going after, they just weren't really ready for it. Concept was great, the product was amazing. I mean, that's a slightly different situation, I think, you know, in this day and age, you know, hopefully, you know, that rigour of creating something and always has happened.

23:37
Paps Shaikh
So to your question, you know, I would question, are yourself the right person as a founder, to be able to go and evangelise and take this out? So if you've got some cash and you're thinking to yourself, how are we going to get maybe some test customers? Or we've actually got some test customers, how do we actually grow our customer base? Have you got the right person to do that? So you might think to yourself, actually, do I get someone in now? You might get a consultant in who comes in for one day a week. There's many ways to do this, right?

24:06
Paps Shaikh
Or you just see some real talent in, you know, maybe someone who's been at a uni for a couple years, doesn't have to be unique, could just be someone else, you know, who's at a certain stage in their career, huge amounts of energy, because you need energy to do this, you need a huge amount of resilience because the number of times even with the best product in the world, you're going to have people say no to you for a variety. They might just not like your trainers when you've walked in. Right. Who knows what that is? But you know, maybe someone's taken umbrage with that and don't take it personally because. Because you're going to have to knock in a lot of doors in sales. Nothing has changed. It is a numbers game.

24:44
Paps Shaikh
You've got to build your pipeline, you've got to talk to a huge number of potential customers out there and then as the funnel works down, a bunch of them are going to be right. It'll resonate for a few of them and that's how you start to get traction. But back to the point, are you as a founder or one of your co founders the right people to do that? So maybe you want to spend some money in getting some help in with someone who can do that for you.

25:07
Amardeep Parmar
I think it's also such a challenge because especially say science startups or where the fans are very technical is people fall in love with a product but not think about our customers willing to pay for this. Are people actually going to buy this? And like I said, they can spend so much time in building a really good product and then they kind of. It's almost in the money side is almost a dirty side to some people, right.

25:28
Paps Shaikh
Well, it has been in business for a very long time. Look, I'm very open about this. You know, I've been. I was really early on in the days about advertising. Now without advertising most of the services would not be available. Look at Meta at the moment in Europe they offer a ad free model, right, where you can do subscription and they're about to test it. In the UK it's not worked in Europe people aren't paying for these services. So there is this value exchange. So I saw this in the early days of the Internet and the reason why the Internet was not making money because there was no ways. You know, everyone, all the publishers were online but they were making no money. And it was like what happened search advertising, where I was very early on, suddenly became this.

26:14
Paps Shaikh
I mean I was going to be honest, this business, E Spotting, which was a UK based business, purchased and backed into NASDAQ in 94, 95. We were printing money because we'd suddenly found a way. But as my wife has always joked with me, she says, you're one of the people I'm not going to use the expletive. I don't know whether we're allowed to swear. These are not special. Okay? She said those fucking annoying ads that are always around. And she used to say it half jokingly, but it was a truth. So you've got this push and pull and I understand. You know, I studied science in university. When one comes from a discipline and one builds something, it's like one's own baby. You almost don't want it to be with anything else out there. And making money sometimes can be a really dirty word.

27:01
Paps Shaikh
I think people are going to get over themselves if you aren't. That's. I'm just going to use the example, you know, if you're a scientist and it feels so foreign to you, then that's when you need someone to come and help you. Because if you've obsessed about your product and I'm going to use this word, the next stage is you're going to have to obsess about your customers. And I use it in a positive word because your customers have to. You have to build relationship with your customers and you've then got to make that product or service really valuable. That's a value prop and all the rest. We talk about it because, you know, you got to look after your customers. Right.

27:41
Paps Shaikh
It's no different to walking into a shop and buying some food and someone has got a look on their face and you're like, do you know what? I quite like your food. But I'm not getting the high five. I'll actually go and buy something which is not as good as this because I actually want to feel valued. We all want to feel valued. And this is not just about business. Right. In our relationships, with our family and friends, outside the business, it's the same, people buy people. So maybe it's just that you're having to move into a different phase and also recognise if it's not, you're not going to be the person to do it.

28:17
Paps Shaikh
And I think it's very hard for founders to do that because, you know, you have built this baby, which is beautiful and it looks magnificent, it's working and all the code is there and everything's great, but there's no customers, there's no one buying it. It's a common. It's a common challenge.

28:33
Amardeep Parmar
Yeah. I think, like you said, it's one of the things, I think sometimes you get this mixed feels from social media, from LinkedIn and stuff about saying how the founder has to be the person, but it is looking at the founder might have a really good skill set, but that skill set doesn't make the actual money. And like I said, it's being honest with yourself, is that if you feel sales is a dirty word and you don't want to be doing that, then if you let your company go bust or you give up your ego and your pride and you say, okay, let's get somebody in who's going to focus on that. And it could also mean that you then do the side of the business that you're really good at.

29:07
Paps Shaikh
Absolutely.

29:08
Amardeep Parmar
So getting that person bored frees you up, rather than you doing sales really badly and get somebody else to help you on that side. And then you can spend all your time in the stuff you love.

29:16
Paps Shaikh
Well, and also, you know, even though you're a founder, your conviction as you're pitching to a potential customer might not come through. And that would be a real shame for you as a founder, because you might have someone who's helping you do that. Right. Who's actually doing the pitching. And then they invite you in because, you know, the chances are you're probably going to go to some of these, most of these meetings. In these early stage meetings, you can be the founder, and that's your role. And you've got someone else who's kind of teeing it up, getting the customer excited, raising their desire to a point. And then you get introduced as a founder. And then actually your story sounds so much more authentic because you.

29:54
Paps Shaikh
Because you're naturally going to exude all of that great stuff and your own narrative of why this business was created, and you're kind of going to be introduced very naturally, and you're not going to feel like, oh, I'm not doing a sales pitch here, because you've built your own narrative that I'm not that person. Now, narratives can also change. Now, if you're two or three of you and you can't hire a salesperson, the other bit of advice I'd give you is that we, and you use the word ego, which is really important. Our ego is built by ourselves. We have built a narrative about our own self since were born. If I was to ask an average person on the road, you know, who are you? Some most people will say, I am this person.

30:39
Paps Shaikh
I come from here, I come from this part of Bristol. This is what I like, this is what I do. But that narrative is purely your own. You can change the narrative and challenge yourself. And sometimes you're gonna. You might have to do that. And you know what you're gonna be doing? You're gonna be rolling these sleeves up and you're gonna say, I am gonna have to do something else, and I'm going to have to believe in it because I have no other options. Because, as you say, the runway of cash is about to run out, and this business is too important to me. And I believe in it so much that I might wear a different hat and I'm going to go and do something.

31:09
Paps Shaikh
And it might actually feel good for you to do that because you're learning from the coal face and get that real feedback from customers about what's working and not working.

31:16
Amardeep Parmar
I think one of the worst things anybody can do in pitching or when a founder is in their business is asking for permission. So it's like when they're talking to you sometimes and it's. They're not telling you that their idea is good and they really believe in it. They're trying to see if you believe in it. And when you do that, it's straight away just, even if you had the best product in the world, it's like, feels like to me that you're asking me to see, like, is this a good idea? You should be. You should know it's a good idea. You should have that conviction in yourself.

31:43
Paps Shaikh
Absolutely.

31:43
Amardeep Parmar
And I think that's a big skill that a lot of people have got to learn. Because even if you get a salesperson on board, like you said, if, as a founder, you're going to have to talk to people eventually, if you can't bring across that energy of like, yeah, we're doing something good here.

31:56
Amardeep Parmar
We're.

31:56
Amardeep Parmar
We've got a great product, we've got a great team. If you can't say that and sound like you believe it's just such a red flag.

32:03
Paps Shaikh
Do you know what a bit of advice I'd give you? You know, luckily, with so much content available on the, you know, there's TED Talks, there are, you know, I can probably provide some links of some very good. What I would call. Call sales leaders who help you find your own kind of comfort in that space as well, because not typically commercial and sales people are seen as more outgoing and just find it and they look, I think there's some truth in that. These people generally can walk into a room and just find it easier to go and shake a hand, introduce themselves, and there we go. It's almost like the pictures are it. Even if they. And the really clever ones don't do it as an obvious pitch. Right.

32:45
Paps Shaikh
Because they're the ones who understand the subtlety, can read the room and we all have different skill sets. Some people are just much better at actually coming up with a concept and coming up with the most amazing product that the other person can't do. So again, if you're in a tight situation, you don't have the resources to go and find that other skill set. Just go and learn a little bit, get yourself out your comfort zone and maybe you've got some friends who aren't in your business and you might just have to ask a favour and you know, you're probably going to have a broader network in the business community.

33:15
Paps Shaikh
Say, look, I'm stuck at this stage, can I just do some role plays with all the sales teams that I have built with taking new products and services out to business and all tech base, like any sports person, like anyone else, we have always done role plays and we practise. So you and your founders, you might be doing with them, it might be your partner at home or it might be a friend. And so you're going to have to sit there. Can you understand what I'm saying in plain English? Even though this is a tech based startup and they should be able to say yes or no. So as we know, we have to move out of our comfort zones.

33:53
Paps Shaikh
And if you're a founder, co founder, you need to be very comfortable that you're going to move out of that comfortable situation at some stages and this may be the point that you have to do that.

34:04
Amardeep Parmar
So just for go to quick fire questions there, you mentioned about building sales teams and obviously when you're trying to grow and scale rapidly, at some point you're going to need to hire. How do you go about the decision and how do you hire the right people?

34:16
Paps Shaikh
Yeah, really good reference point is what's your culture? What is the feeling in your business? I, I just feel so blessed that I have built some amazing teams and these teams are now friends and because they were the right culture, they were the right fit, they performed, they engaged. But I'm going to fast forward a little bit. These are the people who make up your network. As you grow and through your own career, there's going to be times when you need a hand. There's one group of people who are always going to help you and this is this network and I call this the kind of close network that you've worked with when there is a team that is working together and sometimes, you know, playing together outside of work as well, that strength, it's just like your own close friends.

35:09
Paps Shaikh
I mean, most of these people are my very close friends now over the decades that I've worked, you know, I go and visit them regularly, the ones that are outside London, we meet up for drinks and all of that. So back to the point. These people have to fit. I would rather interview 20, 30 times to find the right person. I never, ever. And I've only learned this because I was lucky. When I was working for a company called emap, it did a lot of recruitment, is something called the milk round, which I don't even know if it exists now. Yeah, I mean, I was kind of up. I just had a knack for people and I was born to a pretty young age to be part of that team, to bring loads of people in.

35:47
Paps Shaikh
Some of that, as you get older, becomes instinct, you know. You know the people who are going to fit with you, because you can look at the CV, you got LinkedIn now as well. Great. So you make that first pass, I think, on paper online, that looks pretty good. And then you've got to trust your instincts. I always trust my instinct. Instinct is a odd thing when you look at it in a scientific and psychological basis. Instinct really is based upon the experiences we've had on life. It's not like someone was born with great instinct. Now, I'm not going to mention a politician on the other side of the pond. He used to say in his last term that, oh, I'm going to base this on a gut decision.

36:24
Paps Shaikh
I'm going to psychologists look at it, say that you've got to have some experience in doing this, so just base it on your life experience. But obviously you do the first part, which is do they meet the job spec and all the rest of it, but only hire the best people you can afford. And are they going to fit in your culture? Because if you do that, there's longevity. These people are going to hang around with you. They're also going to be invested in the business and they're going to feel it like you feel the business as well, which means that you're all aligned and you're going to be successful. So do not hire in a hurry.

36:58
Amardeep Parmar
So really enjoyed this chat. We're going to go to quick fire questions. So first one is, who are three British Asians or Asians in Britain you think are doing incredible work and just shout them out?

37:09
Paps Shaikh
Okay. All right, I'm going to. Some of these are very obvious, but I'm going to tell you why. I think Sadiq Khan has taken a huge amount of flack because I think personally this is just my view, he's been trying to do good. I'm a Londoner, born and bred in London, live here. I just think he's been trying to do good and sometimes when you're trying to do things which great with people who may be just thinking about themselves and, you know, I'm not throwing anyone under the bus, pardon the pun here, but the point is that I just think it's trying to make London a cleaner place. There's a lot of people who suffer from asthma. We know. I mean, after living here all my life, what happens with too much carbon monoxide being out there?

37:46
Paps Shaikh
So I think being brave and being of Asian descent and it can be of anywhere from the world, right? I'm just picking because that's where he's from. I think he's been brave and I've seen stickers on back of vans and cars with really negative messages about him personally. And I think to put yourself in the firing line and take to have tough decisions is great. There was a DJ, I'm a DJ, I've been DJing for many years. And Yung Singh, who I love and I think there's not many Asians on the DJ circuit and certainly global. And I also like the fact that he plays eclectic music. You know, he might be playing UK garage at one point. I saw him in Glastonbury a couple of years ago and then he obviously bought some Punjabi music.

38:28
Paps Shaikh
And, you know, my mum was born in a Punjab, so I kind of love the Punjabi music. I don't listen to it all the time, but when it's mixed thin with a house set, it just feels great. And, you know, I'm so happy for his success. And again, to see an Asian on the global circuit. I had two others and I'm just going to quickly reference them because I don't know which one I'm going to go with at the moment, depending on which one. No, you know who I'm going to go with? I'm going to go with Nish Kumar, who's a presenter and comedian. I mean, the man is funny, he's Asian or not. He is deeply political and he has taken a lot of flack as well because he sticks to his guns, he calls people out.

39:07
Paps Shaikh
I almost think he's like a journalist as well, because he does straddle that with some of the programmes. He picks deeply political topics and then he goes for it, he goes for the jugular and it feels Uncomfortable. It's a bit like Ricky Gervais commenting, you know, if you like it or not. Some of these people say stuff which has to be said and I'm no good at. I'm not. Most of us are no good at doing it. But if you can deliver it in a way with a bit of humour, it challenges what's going on and we need people like this challenging the status quo and everyone else is in power because everyone needs to be challenged. Right. We all do. 3 Asians doing great stuff.

39:43
Amardeep Parmar
Awesome. And then people want to find out more about you and what you're up to?

39:46
Paps Shaikh
Okay, right. So I help tech businesses grow. I mean, growth is my key area. You know, you might want me in an early stage to get a go to market strategy together. I love helping businesses. I mean, I just, you know, I still get a kick out of it. I love startups, they really are. You know, for years all my friends have said, don't you just want to go and work for a big brand and you can leave it at half five? I'm like, you know, if I feel something, back to instinct. I feel it and then you kind of back it. So I help bridge businesses. You can find me on LinkedIn, basically. So that's what I do, kind of like half of two thirds of my week is consult and help businesses. I started a business called Good Vibration.

40:31
Paps Shaikh
I've been a medit. I've been meditating and doing yoga for a very long time. I realised 10 years ago corporates need some way of helping their people to manage their mental health and certainly seeing what we've gone through in Covid. Right. So I trained very luckily with Deepak Chopra and his team to become a meditation teacher. I also do sound healing as well. So on Insta, maybe we'll put a link up. It's just called the Dot Good Vibration. I also organise parties in North London and that's something else called Saturday Social as well. But we'll put some links in there, man. Apart from that, I just wish everyone good luck and you just got to keep going and believe in yourself.

41:09
Amardeep Parmar
Is there any way the audience could help you?

41:12
Paps Shaikh
Yeah, you can get me in to come and do some sand baths with you if you feel like you need. I mean, you know, some of my programmes on the well being side are geared towards corporates. You could do that or you might want to just hire me because you need to get to the next stage in your business. Yeah, that's how it can help me.

41:30
Amardeep Parmar
So thanks so much for coming on today.

41:32
Paps Shaikh
Pleasure man.

41:32
Amardeep Parmar
Any final words?

41:34
Paps Shaikh
Final words? Yes. Be authentic. I know we hear a lot about it, but through the lens of being someone Asian, maybe, you know, the number of times I sat in meetings and I felt like I'm the only non white person there and it doesn't really matter, right? But you know, I'm, you know, I've been around a business for quite a while. Sometimes I felt uncomfortable and I thought to myself, do I have to fit into this context? And I've just always thought to myself, as you know, it's been, I've grown into this. But if you're slightly younger and you're earlier in your career, just be who you are. People only want to buy you. Now, if that person sat there doesn't want to buy you as who you are, as the authentic person, don't sell to them.

42:15
Paps Shaikh
You'll find someone else who will believe in you. And that only comes with authenticity. And the other thing with authenticity is that it's the truth. It's actually who you are, what makes you up. There's nothing else there. Just believe in yourself.

42:29
Amardeep Parmar
Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time. 

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