Premium Pricing – Surabhi Shenoy

Surabhi Shenoy:
During my schooling, my education, if you would have asked me if I will ever be an entrepreneur, if I will ever run a company, my answer would have been no way. I had no background. I had no dream aspirations. But looking back, I always had the curiosity to understand how these things work. If I go to a gym, I would always look at the wastage of towels. I would always look at this air conditioning working when there’s nobody there. How do they manage number of trainers at the peak time versus non peak time? You know, if I go to a restaurant, I’ll have similar kind of thoughts going on and how do they make money or how do they lose money? It was building up without me even realizing it.

Dana Robinson:
Exit Plan is a podcast for business owners and those who want to be business owners. I’m always in search of the lesser known stories of entrepreneurship. In the exit Plan podcast, you’ll hear stories from startup to sale and hear from the professionals who helped business owners achieve their exit. Hosted by me, author and private equity manager Dana Robinson. Along with my co hosts and guests, you’ll hear real stories, tips and tools that will help you plan for the exit you want, whether you are still working at a day job or running a business. Let’s get started with this episode of the Exit Plan podcast.

Dana Robinson:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Exit Plan podcast. It’s Dana Robinson, and I have a guest calling in from halfway around the world in Dubai. Surabhi Shenoy is a CEO coach, and I liked what she had in her resume, not just because I think she’s going to have a lot to teach us today, but she has her own experiences as an entrepreneur. And as everybody knows, I do these interviews because I like to get other people’s stories of how they got to do what they’re doing. Surabhi, thank you for coming on the Exit Plan podcast. It’s late in the day for you and first thing in the morning for me.

Surabhi Shenoy:
Hi, Dana. Thank you so much for having me here. And I think all of us have something to teach and something to learn from each other. Those live journeys are always interesting.

Dana Robinson:
Yes, I agree. I think sometimes the most fun give back is giving back as we learn ourselves in terms of passing along the knowledge. And so I’m brokering that knowledge while I learn. Anyone who’s listening to the podcast gets to to ride along and learn what I’m learning and extract from you more than a story. Hopefully some lessons in life and business as well. So I never do elaborate introductions because I can’t tell what really is what makes somebody tick. And so I guess let me start by just asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself. And then I want to hear about your entrepreneur journey.

Surabhi Shenoy:
So I’m a typical engineer, an introvert. Give me a cubicle, give me a desk, and I’ll be more than happy in my own space. And after passing out from my engineering, I had a couple of jobs where I mostly tech. And I learned how. I mean, lucky for me, I had opportunities to work with the product development company like a startup. I had an opportunity to work in a services company and then I had an opportunity to work in a captive, which is JP Morgan tech side. So I mean, accidentally, coincidentally, I got to understand how these three different type of tech companies operated. And that helped.

Surabhi Shenoy:
In hindsight, when I think about it as a just college pass out, I think I was just chilling. I was just going through the motions and doing things, but trying to put as much my best as I can. 2003 is when me and my husband together co founded our first company, tech company. And I continued working outside for first two years. He continued running the company as a CTO and we had a CEO because he was a techie himself and he wanted to have a technical vision for the company, decide that, work on that and let somebody look after the CEO role per se. So that that much heavy on tech. Me and my husband, both of us were. So you can imagine we were more of coders than entrepreneurs at that, that time.

Surabhi Shenoy:
Two years later, when the company was kind of doing well, stabilized and we felt like we can both work in the same company. Plus, I think we both had grown up little more to think that we can, husband and wife can work together and not fall apart. So, yeah, I mean, I met my husband when I was 16 in 1991, and we got married in year 2000. So I know all the problems and all the things that he can do, right? Possibly. So do I want to work with him or not? Was a big decision, but I think both of us realized that the trust, the values that we bring to the table are very common and we should leverage that to build our business. And we had clear swim lanes for both of us and that’s how working relationship and a private relationship was both maintained and. Yeah, so that was a great learning. How do we separate that? I can’t say we were 100% successful, but I think a lot of people hesitate to do that or do not really do that, whereas it’s possible if you have that maturity in your relationship.

Dana Robinson:
So that was one, I think it’s worth talking about for a minute because there’s a lot of people who dream about working with their spouses. I met my wife when I was 16. We got married when I was 19. We’ve been married 35 years. We’ve been involved with over two dozen businesses of one kind from venture to acquisition and buy and build. I mean, a variety of strategies together in many of those instances and sometimes with ease and sometimes with conflict. What do you think? I think you use the word we stayed in our swim lanes. I’m not sure we ever learned that.

Dana Robinson:
That’s a good hint. What are some other things that made that workable? And are you still in business together? I guess is also a question. But what would you say to somebody who’s like, we really get along. We have these dreams about doing business together. You know, what are some things that you think can make that successful?

Surabhi Shenoy:
I think a business has too many facets, right? If he being a builder and me being an operator, that was clear that time that he’s going to jump in without thinking much. And my job is to go after and keep doing the boring mundane tasks of the day. The values that we had, how we want to build a company at the high level were understood by each other. Second part is when I say swimlanes. He was more of a tech visionary developer and I been more of a software testing background. And I created built my own team. He had his own team. Later, as company expanded, I looked after lot more growth on India side whereas he expanded in UAE, UK, other areas, geographies.

Surabhi Shenoy:
So we never actually crisscrossed. This is my decision and we are arguing about it. Those things did not happen. If the financial decisions were made, that was his lookout. I didn’t really bother questioning asking because with all the information that is available, he is making a right decision. That’s the fundamental. I mean, I had in my head so challenging it. I also want to know why you’re doing this.

Surabhi Shenoy:
None of that happened. Mostly if I get a balance sheet end of the year when we are filing our tax return, if his signature is there, I signed it. Plain simple. If you’re hiring somebody costing so much money and are you going to get ry from that person? He never interfered, intervened, challenged that decision. If I think it’s okay to hire, then it’s okay to hire. Let me know the cost. So I think trust, respect, common shared values. And if we do not have everyday interaction into each business decision and question each other’s decision, I think it’s possible to work because it’s a very complimentary, it was a very yin Yang kind of a relationship.

Surabhi Shenoy:
And I’m using word washing. And your question, if I’m in business with him still answer is no. I wish. But in 2017, in an accident, he passed away.

Dana Robinson:
Oh, I’m so sorry.

Surabhi Shenoy:
So that’s, I mean, part of big, part of entrepreneurial journey. And that triggered my second exit, as in my tech company exit, because doing it all by myself, I wasn’t having so much fun, as much fun as we had before. And that made me think that my business company, this whole organization and the employees, everybody needs a bigger, better career path. And on my own, I may not be able to do it. I didn’t want to align with any other partner, even though they’re a strategic partner, but I just. But that was the right thing for the company and therefore the decision.

Dana Robinson:
Wow. Yeah. Well, I’m really sorry and hope it’s okay that we’re, we’re talking about this. It just seemed like that the. I do get a lot of people that want to know how they work with their spouse, so that’s. Sorry for your loss. The. All right, well, let’s.

Dana Robinson:
I interrupted. I interrupted your. Your journey. But I also, I want to tell you, not everyone who comes on the show knows. I wrote a book called the King’s Fly Swatter. It’s a story that includes some of my own entrepreneurial journey, but it’s told in the alternating chapters with a parable. The parable has a servant of a babylonian king who swats flies behind the king. And his mentor has him getting very, very good at this horrible job.

Dana Robinson:
And eventually, once he can do that without thinking, he asks him to start listening to the king. And over time, he becomes very wise. And because he becomes very wise, he becomes very powerful and uses that wisdom for good and for the accumulation of his own wealth. And so I tell the story that so much of entrepreneurship is swatting flies. And I, like, I want to pause on your first couple of jobs. I mean, you had, you triangulated three jobs for other people, and I wonder to what extent you needed those to become the entrepreneur that you became when you were then, you know, founding technology companies.

Surabhi Shenoy:
During my schooling, my education, if you would have asked me if I will ever be an entrepreneur, if I will ever run a company, my answer would have been no, babe. I had no background. I had no dream aspirations, per se. But looking back, I think I always had the curiosity to understand how these things work. If I go to a health club, a gym, I would always look at the wastage of towels. I would always look at why this air conditioning working when there’s nobody there. How do they manage, number of trainers at the peak time versus non peak time? You know, if I go to a restaurant, I’ll have similar kind of thoughts going on and how do they make money or how do they lose money and who’s caring here? So that was always in my thinking or the way I looked at the world. So these companies were both, the companies that I exited had multiple of them, but proper exit.

Surabhi Shenoy:
I think they got built with all this happening unconsciously. Me picking up things and soaking in when they were happening, right. Me being fly on the wall, me thinking, listening, like you said, you know, it was building up without me even realizing it. And, yeah, so never thought, but I think always got used.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. And so you’re, over the course of years, you’re subconsciously absorbing, you’re asking questions, you’re curious and then you get involved with, you work for a business and you probably are doing the same thing there. You’re doing the job they hired you for, but you’re looking around and thinking, how do they do this? How do they, you know, how do these teams work? And you learn and during that time probably still aren’t thinking, I’ll be one of these other people. You’re not necessarily dreaming that you’ll be the CEO of a company and you go through another business cycle as an employee and then you go work for, was it JP Morgan’s platform? So you’re sort of rising into something that at some point has to hit you. I think I can do this thing. I mean, do you remember a moment when you said, I think I can jump into this, or did someone drag you in?

Surabhi Shenoy:
Oh, my husband dragged me fully, like I said he would jump. And then I’m kind of caretaker of what’s next. And I enjoyed the process though. It’s not that it wasn’t my desire or I had any complaints about it at all, none whatsoever. I enjoyed building all the businesses that we built. I wouldn’t trade off any of those experiences. It just, I didn’t know that I was getting trained for something and eventually it will be used. So, you know, yeah, it helped because in JP Morgan, me being so naive and, you know, first two years, three years of my career, why are they wasting so much money? Why is this company so big and bloated at the top and why, you know, I had so many questions.

Surabhi Shenoy:
But then slowly as I spent time there, I realized why did I, why they do what they do. And when I was building my company, I kind of knew the best practices. And then the only question was, how can I really make it work for my small size business? But if I wouldn’t have known skip level meetings between manager and one level down, what is the purpose of that? How does that help the smaller guy in the hierarchy? All these kind of things. If I wouldn’t have worked in JP Morgan, got that experience, I wouldn’t have learned on my own. So all of that helped. Right. So every experience counts.

Dana Robinson:
I love that. I think you said it, but you implying that you were always training for the job that you didn’t know you’d eventually have. Yes, and I think that’s, and to some extent, I talked to a lot of people in their sort of career pivots, you know, sort of pivoted. I mean, I, I’ve been an entrepreneur for 30 years, but my, my practice, my law practice paid the bills. And about five years ago, I finally burned the boats on that and said, I’m, I’m gonna be in, you know, the private equity business and do roll ups. So, so the, but a lot of people say, like, well, what is, what is the thing I should do now? And I think do the same exercise is maybe some good advice for people. Ask, what have you been training for at all of your previous jobs?

Surabhi Shenoy:
In hindsight, yeah.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. But you can have hindsight tell you what should you do next by looking back and saying, what have I been training for? And that keeps people, I think, many times from being distracted by shiny objects and thinking, oh, you know, AI is cool. I’m going to, my career pivot is I’m going to get into AI, which would be totally fine. I, but a lot of people, if you’ve spent 20 years doing something or even ten years doing something, that might be the thing that you’ve been training to do that is right under your nose and an opportunity to leverage all of what you’ve already been doing. Swatting flies and learning without knowing what you’re learning for, can coalesce around what becomes next for you.

Surabhi Shenoy:
You said it so well, Donna. Thank you.

Dana Robinson:
Thanks. I get to say some things sometimes on my podcast, so it’s the, but it’s mostly about you. So let’s talk about what you think through the entrepreneur. I’ve got entrepreneurs who listen, I started a business, want to start a business. They’re in a business, and they want to figure out, how do I grow this, how do I exit it. I know you are a CEO and leadership coach now. And so you are professionally taking lessons learned and applying them to real life context. But if you think back through your stories, are there some common mistakes themes? Are there some things that are things you keep seeing that if you do this, this is going to have a beneficial effect.

Dana Robinson:
What are some of the lessons that we can draw from your own entrepreneurial?

Surabhi Shenoy:
So in my backstory, if you look at it, the first company, tech company, started in 2003 and growing that we were just had no idea how to do it. We were a bunch of engineers trying to fulfill client work and orders. That’s it. Now in 2007, we started another business which was a health and fitness company. And when I give you an example of when I walk into a gym, I’m looking at everything that was kind of, I was using it here again, it’s such a service, retail, cash on a customer relation kind of a business. Very high end sales. Every day you push, push, push on sales, right? It’s so customer, consumer centric. And that business, because I did not know anything about it.

Surabhi Shenoy:
And the first time a tester straw filled body sat in front of me for me to interview, I have no idea what to ask him. Even if we speak same language, we don’t speak the same language actually. I mean, we can speak my mother tongue, but it’s still not going to be the same because I’m too corporate, I’m too professional, I’m too leadership trained coach, a true trained person. And what do I ask him? And it was so odd. But those four years is, I always say that those four years actually transformed me from an engineer to an entrepreneur because I did not know anything. I went full in, like head in head first, understanding how to do sales, how to do marketing, how to design an, a five size pamphlet to talk about my services. And that doesn’t mean putting all the services that you have on that one small feet, right? Because I want to maximize the money that I’m paying. And no, that’s not how you do it.

Surabhi Shenoy:
You have to have your hero product, you have to build your value proposition. You have to be able to stand your ground and an extreme competitive market. Create a space where you can charge your premium. How do you do that? That was all was great learning. Within a year, I was breaking even. Four years later it was grown to a level where somebody came in saying that we would like to acquire this because of the membership base, because of what the environment and we were in extremely competitive market. I mean, I must say that because it wasn’t easy at all. But having a unique value proposition and really harnessing that was a game changer in this whole story.

Surabhi Shenoy:
And for that they asked that question. And when they asked, I was wondering, okay, maybe going back to my tech company and fully focusing there would bring higher ROI versus me spending here six in the morning till whatever, six in the evening to watch how my male trainers are looking at female members, how are they training, how comfortable they make it. I’m like hawkishly monitoring each and everything because it’s a reputation in the service industry. So I thought, okay, let’s do that. The first attempt completely failed because I was so naive and I was so like almost stupid. I was, I was trying to convince them and I was talk about, I was talking about our equipments, our services, our members are all that different thing. And they were looking at my face like, where are the numbers? Lady talked to me in numbers. I’m selling passion and they’re sending auditors.

Surabhi Shenoy:
It was so funny. And they just thought that they have no idea, I mean, I have no idea how what I’m doing here. And that was a good slap for me to get my entrepreneurship had start wearing that and talking about it. And the second attempt, then I did much better. And then the exit happened. We walked out from there. I came back full time. This was me kind of putting tech company little less on the slow burn.

Surabhi Shenoy:
But my husband was taking care of all of that. I was not so much fully involved in the business those four years. And then I went back to my tech company. This is 2012. Then until then, my tech company, our tech company, used to work only for us clients. So we used to build the us startups would outsource their entire product development to us. So we were the engineering arm for these companies. And I had amazing team, cutting edge, bleeding edge technologies, whatever you want to call it, as the guys were so passionate and I open source and, you know, the innovation of it, you name it.

Surabhi Shenoy:
And the blessing in all this was I learned how startup founders really dance to the tune of investors.

Dana Robinson:
Dana Robinson here. Quick plug for my book, the King’s fly swatter. You can see it here behind me.

Dana Robinson:
If you’re watching this, I’ve got it in my hand. It’s a beautiful hardcover book, printed to make it giftable, something that you can share with a family member buy as a gift.

Dana Robinson:
So this latest book, it’s a fable about a person who has a really crappy job. Let’s just start there.

Dana Robinson:
This is a book that most people.

Dana Robinson:
Can relate to because we’ve all had crappy jobs.

Dana Robinson:
This is the story of Ubar, a.

Dana Robinson:
Servant in the court of a babylonian king who masters his boring, monotonous job and then learns to listen to the king, hearing him rule the kingdom while quietly swatting flies behind the cane. Eventually, Hubbard becomes the wisest and most successful man in the kingdom. The story is fun, and it’s easy to read, but it’s not mythology. It’s my story. And as I shared the idea with colleagues and friends, I learned that it was their story. And guess what? It’s your story if you’re at a job of any kind, one that you love, one that you hate, one that’s just enough to get by. This little book gives fresh perspective on on how to leverage that job to get you something greater than a paycheck. The lessons in this parable are entrepreneurial lessons, but not what you might think from the current entrepreneurial zeitgeist.

Dana Robinson:
If you or someone you know are looking for a real pathway to entrepreneurship, here’s the secret. Your job is the way out of your job. It’s counterintuitive, but once you see how it works, you can’t unsee it. Learn the way of the fly swatter from the parable of Ubar and from the stories I share from my 30 year business journey. You can get a free copy of the King’s Fly Swatter by going to danarobinson.com.

Surabhi Shenoy:
Because they want to raise funds. The competition is doing this. I want this change in my product, and my guys are sitting overnight and trying to show that in the demo that is going to happen tomorrow, I knew how the fundraising happens, the different rounds of funding, what each round demands. So again, I’m getting trained on without realizing how to do, how do they build their business and what’s the good thing about it and what’s the bad thing about it? Both. And lucky for us, most of the companies that we worked for designed, developed the products, got acquired by really big giants, and that’s how we actually acquired customers, as Intuit, Teletech, nice Systems, Nokia. These are the customers that we acquired because these companies acquired startups that we were working for. And we knew entire know how right of the product. So by default, we had to be onboarded because we are the ones who are going to continue implementation, continue servicing these products.

Surabhi Shenoy:
And that was an amazing experience. Again, I had to go get to work with startups and I got to work with these big Fortune 100 companies. So both, both sides of experiences. But by 2012, when I went back after selling my health and wellness company, we had seen two years recessions of 2008 and 2011. So lesson learned. Everything is on dollar value and dollar depreciated both these times for India very heavily. And we suffered, but then the team was really strong, so we suffered together. Let me just put it that way, right? So in support with each other, we sailed through that.

Surabhi Shenoy:
And when I went back, I thought, okay, it’s time that we start looking at other geographies. We are sitting here in India, why not expand here? And then I started looking for customers in India and I took all our open source experience to private sector banks of India. And in this process the banks were so brainwashed by Microsoft’s and oracles of the world, sorry to say, but that license, because their job is to sell licenses, so they create a bubble that these are the best and the most secure products. Open source will never pass that. Your security, your ciso, your risk, all these audits, they will never pass those things. And you need to buy our licenses. And we are going there a bunch of people and saying that that’s not true. And every, every such company will have, not every, but few will have some champions who want to be different than was the norm, right? So few of them gave us opportunity that, okay, prove it to me.

Surabhi Shenoy:
Go through the audit, pass the audits and if it works, great, I’ll give you more work. Okay, so we did that and they supported and we somehow managed to go through these audits, pass through these audits, because finally all these products are oracles and all built on some bare minimum, bare bone technologies, right? Open source. And there’s a rapper around it, but who can argue with these big giants standing there, right? So with that happening, the biggest advantage for banks was the cost of ownership came down so drastically because no licensing, right, right. I could charge premium and look, my guys are not cheap and I’m not cheap. So I’m reducing, helping you reduce your cost of ownership by like 90%. So pay me more money. And that time, that skill and that level of expertise was not so evident in the market. So we could create our, even though we were very small compared to, you know, the big giants of India, Infosys and cognizant and tcs.

Surabhi Shenoy:
These are like listed companies with a lot of money, a lot of sales and marketing, and we are very small compared to them. But I could create my space. So even in my coaching today, I always, when somebody says quality, when somebody says low cost, I mean it’s a, it’s a really, really race to the bottom. And they always complain after two years that I don’t get enough profit, I don’t get enough margins. My customer always squeeze me out. But you started it, dude.

Dana Robinson:
Right?

Surabhi Shenoy:
You said that I’m cost effective. Then they’re going to squeeze more and more out of it. You never said that you should pay me premium because this is who, what I bring to the table and I’m helping you. That’s the benefit of working with me again. I can’t really claim that I had all this wisdom and intelligence then, but I just knew that I don’t want to be in a commodity he’s giving me for this price. Why are you charging me such a high amount? Right. I didn’t want to be there. I was very clear on that.

Surabhi Shenoy:
If I’m in the business, it’s for respect. Right? So I have to go there with that. And even in coaching I’m so strong on this point. Get your offer clear. What are you giving? How is it helping your customer and therefore charge a premium and build expertise in that specific area so that you can charge what you charge and they have no other option?

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Surabhi Shenoy:
I love that extremely crowded market. If I could figure this out. I think everybody else can. If they just come to the desk and think, which is rarity.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s interesting observation. You were able to identify where you were going to create cost savings, but it wasn’t on you. It was, you’re replacing a widely overpriced product by the incumbents and basically guaranteeing they’re still going to survive their audits. And the price for that is a premium in terms of you and your competition. At the same time, it’s drastically reducing their cost of being able to dump one of their incumbents or many of the incumbents in their tech stack. Right?

Surabhi Shenoy:
Correct.

Dana Robinson:
So that’s fantastic. I mean, I do think that small to medium businesses, especially if you’re talking about trying to build a business to exit, should never be trying to do something that’s less than premium. I think commodity is something that might be profitable at scale. It can never be profitable at growth at some phase of trying to get a business off the ground. And so premium and being able to price for premium requires that you understand what value you’re bringing to the customer. You’re bringing increased value and you’re charging for that increased value. And that’s the same, I mean, I’ll tell you, because I’ve been involved with very non technology companies, it’s the same story in h vac plumbing. Landscape maintenance, pick your trade, your home or property service business, where you think these, these easily become a commodity.

Dana Robinson:
And many of those business owners spend 30 years being afraid to raise their price. I had a conversation years ago with an operator of a H vac business, and he asked for advice. And I said, you know, tell me a little bit about your business. And I said, number one, raise your price. He goes, how can I do that? Go, well, what’s the value you’re providing to your customers? Are you just another guy in a truck or do you have a team of smart people? Are you going to back your work? Is your brand worth more than somebody else? And he said, yeah. And I said, then charge for it. But then you have to saturate your sales process with that psychology, with that messaging, and engender that belief from the very top of your funnel all the way down through your sales process and your employees. And, you know, if you can do that, then you’re charging a brand premium.

Dana Robinson:
You’re literally saying, I’m going to sell an air conditioning system for 20,000, that someone else sells for 12,000, and that premium that, that I command comes from me delivering the greater service than somebody else who’s charging less. And, and that’s what gives you the ability to monetize that business while you have it and monetize it when you’re ready to exit, because no one wants to buy a commodity business.

Surabhi Shenoy:
Yes. What’s the point? And you said it, well, even the sales process needs to be saturated with this mindset and this thought. Therefore, you can position yourself in that specific way where that price point can be achieved. If you just think that this is who you are, but you’ve never actually conveyed with equal amount of conviction it won’t happen. And that’s the piece that gets missed out. Even if they do it, they don’t know how to position and train their team to say that out loud to your customers. To their customers. I mean, I love the word, saturate the sales process with this mindset.

Dana Robinson:
So I want to go back to your fitness business for a minute. You had four year run of that fitness. You watched it like a hock. You shaped it to be this thing that could compete in competitive market and have a premium. Did you find yourself with a business coach reading what were the resources that enabled you to do that in four years? Or were there things that you wish you had done that you now know that you could have done back then? That’s a great story of business success. And I’m always curious at what point you did you create business and process? Was it really just relying on you and the strength of your watchfulness? Or did you build a business where all of those things were embedded in and could carry forth for the new owner?

Surabhi Shenoy:
So great question and I’ve never verbalized this before, so I’m going to try to remember, think and answer. So bear with me. By nature, I’m a very note taking person. So notes and notes, journals after journals, you will see everything documented. And at that time, there was no YouTube as a university where you can learn things. So it was always books and books and books. So I read a lot of sales, I have read, I read a lot of marketing. There was some very unique, obscure videos on some series where they’re talking about how to sell gym membership.

Surabhi Shenoy:
I can’t remember her, but there was a lady with a short, really hair with good fit body. I mean, she herself must be some kind of bodybuilder trainer and she’s coach. She’s talking about how to show your gym, show your facility and the kind of enthusiasm that you need. And those were my so called learning teachers. As such, I hired lot of few, couple, lot of consultants thinking that I don’t know anything about this business. So I had a really big branded named trainer who would come and train all my trainers to create our unified training process for members. I had somebody who would come and help us package all our diet, nutrition related things. How do we productize? Because see, these are services and in the health and fitness kind of world, you have to prioritize them.

Surabhi Shenoy:
So that was my first lesson in how to productize a service which later I actually used in my tech company newsletter. I use that, I write it right every week. And I think a couple of weeks back my newsletter was about productizing the service and how interesting all of these how it is interwoven. And now I’m thinking where I picked up what I picked up. But that process taught me how to create really high ticket item, how to show a body transformation with that premium price put in premium, the highly experienced, sought after trainers on that job and how to have a low ticket item and do the trust building from low ticket to the high ticket. Right, the funnel part. But the point I want to make here is when I said in, you know, in the previous question that this is the, this experience actually transformed me from an engineer to entrepreneur. That happened mainly because I started to trust my own gut, my own instinct, because I hired all these consultants and they would come and give me advice, maybe it was right in their own space, but when I have to put it collectively together for my own business, I used to be wishy washy.

Surabhi Shenoy:
I used to be, should I do this? Should I do that? And then most of the time, I do something which I didn’t think was the right thing. I was. I was right there. I should have listened to. I should have. I mean, I wanted to do it. Why didn’t I do it? That was amazing confidence building activity for me. So.

Surabhi Shenoy:
And it. It helped again, coming back and the personal loss and the crisis that I went through were all came handy in these, because, again, I was in a place where I didn’t know so much about the business side that my husband used to handle. I had no idea how to do a payroll. I’ve never done a payroll in my 18 years life. He managed it. How to look at cash flow, I have no idea. Once in a while, he’ll ask me, so what’s your collection this month? And I’ll give him number. But complete as an organization, I had no idea how we were managing all of that, so I looked after entire operations, sales, marketing, HR, admin, all of that, and delivery, most important, the tech part.

Surabhi Shenoy:
But I drove the sales from the front. Close deals, large size, small size, build, solid team, all of that, but nothing about finance. No banking, no compliance, no, none of that, which was a big learning later. At that time, I actually ended up working with great mentors, and I cannot say coaches, because they actually taught me what is required. What do I need at that point in time? So they were great advisors, mentors, and it felt very safe to confide and say, I don’t know, and they would still take that in. And that’s. That’s the space I try to create in my coaching conversation, and it’s okay, but you’re here, and that’s the best. How many people are not here where they know that I don’t know and take action for that? Right.

Surabhi Shenoy:
So that’s the biggest. I mean, I. I’m so indebted to some of these people who helped me through that journey.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Surabhi Shenoy:
Teaching me how to really build.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. I love that story. I’m glad I went back to it because I think of the, I’ll call it the small hands on business. Gave you the opportunity to apply a lot of things that were probably learned when you were working in your tech companies that you were part owner of, but that it wasn’t all under your umbrella. Right. When you have this health business, the fitness business, that’s an opportunity for you to coalesce and bring all of these things together in a small microcosm, because you don’t have large teams of teams and layers of management and allocations of responsibility and who’s in charge of which piece of what budget. This is all you. But that business, when you really think of the business as a machine, they’re the same, right?

Surabhi Shenoy:
Yeah. Oh, sure.

Dana Robinson:
And what a great way for you to take the learnings of big down to small and then pull it all together, and then also to realize that all those instincts were coalescing at the same time. And to some extent, do you think that bringing in flashy coaches and let’s call it the consultant phase, you realize that probably some of them were unnecessary, but maybe, do you think it was still worth the effort to see that, to build your own instinct? Oh, I’m paying this person to tell me what I realized. I already knew. But you wouldn’t have known that if you hadn’t given it a try.

Surabhi Shenoy:
The way I look at it is there’s no lack of information in today’s day and time, there is absolutely no lack of information. Rather, it is another level of problem of too much information. And what is applicable to me in my situation and in my personality is still not known. I have ten ways I can grow this business. Which way should I grow? Which will be cheapest, fastest, and most assured way to grow? Who do I discuss this with? Who can show me, poke fingers into my thinking? And that’s exactly what I do. Right? I’m not soft on them. I’m saying that, how about this? And they, oh, my God. I never thought about it.

Surabhi Shenoy:
I said, okay, good. So let’s think about it, and let’s go back to numbers. Let’s. Let’s do a data driven decision making. And what information do you need? And after that, we decide, okay, we still don’t know these three numbers or facts, but it’s okay to go ahead and take this decision, that’s fine. But we know that we don’t know. That’s all I want you to know. Register.

Surabhi Shenoy:
So, and I. The way my life turned around hasn’t collapsed. In a way. Some of these mentors I wasn’t even looking for, they were literally parachuted and kept in front of me, brought in front of me. I did not know. Now I call them mentor. That time, they were more like father figures. They were more like really trusted somebody who will hold my hand and say, okay, I’m here with you, and let’s walk.

Surabhi Shenoy:
So I didn’t really have a title for them, that he’s my mentor or he’s helping me do this. I call them today that. But they were, they were put in next to me in a flight from Mumbai to Dubai. And in that three hour flight, we ended up talking, and he took a pen and paper and he wrote down what I should be prioritizing at this moment. I said, okay. Stayed in touch with me. Then I said, okay, I can trust him because so many people I couldn’t trust at that time that I said, can you come to office and let’s have a conversation? And then I ended up hiring him. That, please, can you come once a week and help me do this? And that’s how I got real.

Surabhi Shenoy:
So when I started my health and fitness, I went on steroid. Learning about sales, marketing, productize services, all of that. And here I went on learning on steroid. Everything about finance, the things, financial models that I did not know how a business should operate on, what strategy means without numbers, which is none, how do I really do that? So my coaching also today is goal is single revenue, better margins, and best possible cash flow that you can. And my. My promise to them is I will show you where your cash is in your business. Do not go and borrow. Do not get a load of financial cost of finance right now unless I try once.

Surabhi Shenoy:
That’s my kind of, you know, promise to them. Because growth is expensive, right? Growth needs cash. So many variables when you’re trying to grow. And then every business owner starts thinking that I need to borrow, I need to raise funds, I need to do 1234 to grow. Otherwise, I’m just in the same cycle, right? I’m putting a little bit, I’m putting it back in the business and just keeping it going. So how do you break that cycle? Some of these things are very deep study and thinking, but unfortunately, we are not taught to think systematically and strategically. So that’s what coaching does. Bring them to the table, force them to think.

Dana Robinson:
I love that. I think it’s great that you’ve built a coaching practice after having actually seen coaches in action. Had mentors seen the impact, found their sort of fulcrum points and where they can apply leverage. So I like stepping back every now and then. It’s sort of like making an observation. So you, I picture your trajectory as, like, worked, you know, in environments that gave you the skills while you didn’t know you were developing them. You end up in businesses that you own with, with your husband, where you’re suddenly applying those skills and learning, these are, these become bigger environments where you don’t, you don’t capture the full entrepreneurial kind of cadre of skills, aptitudes and knowledge. Then you end up in a non technology business.

Dana Robinson:
It all comes together and then you exit that and you’re back in technology and you’re scaling a business that takes all of what you learned in the smallest of the experiences and that brings you to this business that ends up with your clients selling to big Fortune 100 companies. And then eventually you were able to sell that business as well, right?

Surabhi Shenoy:
And from the health and fitness wellness business. When I went back, the process of selling that taught me what exactly gets value? And if I just, my tech business until then was very service focused services business, right? We were building products for somebody else. We didn’t own any ip, we just did great job. But finally, it’s a service. If the client pulls the plug, I’m high and dry. I don’t know what to do next. So there is not enough predictability, there is not enough property asset that is created which can get value. And also even the services is so difficult to sell, because then I’m relying on this one salesperson to use his or her intelligence to sell my service, which is so difficult to build trust and say that, okay, buy this from me.

Surabhi Shenoy:
Whereas other hundred people, thousand people are selling the same thing. So the productizing that service was one important thing that I did over, over multiple years. And the cash model, the revenue model, was done in such a way that I could actually put in my extra cash in building products. So by the, by next five, seven years or so, we ended up building two fintech products within the company. So we had banks already as our customers, we are already empaneled as vendors with them. What more can I sell them was the question. Right. So, and then they were also teaching us so, so much about as we are sitting and talking that this is the burning problem for them.

Surabhi Shenoy:
And it was easy to start, I mean, once you start listening, tuning in, you get your inputs, right? So I didn’t have to do a lot of market research. I think some of them were built alongside, along with help of clients, these products got built. So that gave me, so the model became really beautiful in the sense that my services gave me cash flow, my products gave me my margins, because products are still unpredictable, right? I mean, when will I make? Some banks will take three weeks to give me a purchase order. Some banks will take three months to give me a purchase order. How can I build my cash flow basis this unpredictable behavior from the customer. So it balanced out in a way where I was always assured my monthly expenses plus, plus was taken care of by my services and productizing. So we used to do a lot of staffing. And I wrote about this in my newsletter where I said, we created a product called talent on demand.

Surabhi Shenoy:
Now it’s the same thing. It’s the packaging that changed. It’s the way we presented the product as a, as a whole thing changed. It becomes so much easier for sales to talk about it. My sales guys could actually present the product so much better because it’s a defined, it’s a structure rather than, yeah, we can do whatever you want. Doesn’t really clock click in their head. So, yeah, a lot of learnings there and bringing it all now. So, after sale, the next work that I wanted to do was mainly about not have such high operation, big operation.

Surabhi Shenoy:
When I exited, we were around 200 plus people, 200 engineer plus. So it’s 25, 30 customers, CIO’s, ctos of these banks, their egos, the payments, all of that, right? So I wanted to have not that bigger operation, but I really wanted to have much larger impact. And after a lot of soul searching and thinking, I realized I like two things, teaching and building businesses. So I said, okay, let’s do this. And I got an opportunity. People were asking, can you help me with this? And I was just doing it for fun. And I said, okay, I like it. Numbers give me a kick.

Surabhi Shenoy:
I see that growth happening. I feel good about it, and maybe I can do this as my next life. Phase three, maybe. And then everything started.

Dana Robinson:
I love it. And so now you’re taking all of what you’ve learned through that whole career, and you’re becoming the trusted mentor that you had in some cases, but that you, that wasn’t easy to find. Like you say, they sometimes just showed up, and you were, you’re curious and ready, and maybe there’s somebody listening to this that is hearing you and saying, I need somebody like that. So that’s, I’m glad you’re on the podcast and happy to also promote your business and connect people to you. The, let’s talk about who you know, like, what’s the. What’s your ideal customer and kind of what’s the. I’m happy to hear, like kind of the. The pitch or the why? Why you? Because that’ll help anyone who’s listening go like, yeah, that’s me.

Surabhi Shenoy:
Great. I mean, I never thought this would go to our sales, so I don’t have a pitch. Prepared for this. But my.

Dana Robinson:
Close me. Close me. I’m here. I’m listening. Close. The lead has been set. Go ahead. I’m ready.

Dana Robinson:
I’m ready to be sold.

Surabhi Shenoy:
Okay. So more than a coach, I’m an entrepreneur. I have sat in the middle of the night, in the middle of my bed and have the absolute congested feeling in my chest that I have to pay my salaries tomorrow and I don’t have enough funds. I’ve been there. I have been through process and time where my life changed overnight. And then there was sense of such strong responsibility, duty that all I could think of is I have to show up because there are so many people who are, they will all find their job. Yes, but today it’s my responsibility. I’ve taken money from my clients.

Surabhi Shenoy:
I’m supposed to deliver the product that we are supposed to deliver. And I think because I showed up, they also stood really strong next to me, all my clients as well as my employees. So that was the biggest value creation that had happened there already in terms of that. So if you, I always tell my, any founder, not even if they are buying from me or not, but the first and foremost, the work has to start with you because you want a bigger business. But do you have this growing and do you have your eyes open? So growth mindset is so overused, but you have to really get there. You have to improve your skillset. A typical cloud architect creates a cloud consulting company. A baker creates a bakery.

Surabhi Shenoy:
A personal trainer thinks that I’m going to start my studio, fitness studio. You’re expert in your own field, like I was engineer. But we have never been trained to really day to day basis how to run and grow a business. So that skill set is missing. Clearly, even today when I talk to my founders, they are brilliant people. They are extremely smart, extremely ambitious in their own ways. But read your revenue statement. Read your p and l statement.

Surabhi Shenoy:
You can’t. They can’t. So then if you don’t know this, how are you going to make decisions? So let’s do this. So I’m talking, this is a very basic level, right? I mean, there are people skills, there are negotiation skills, there are skills which I have suffered through and I wish I had somebody to tell me that you need this, you need to learn these skills. Then you will progress better and faster and with little more ease and peace, you know? So I start with you, as in you and your business in you. Then we are looking at your skill set, your mindset, your performance, your energy, your focus, all of that. Is getting covered because if you are not at ease here, you are not creative, you are useless to your business. If you are not creative, problems are going to come, right.

Surabhi Shenoy:
You have to solve them. It needs creativity. So how do you really take care of your own emotions and flow is very important. So I take care of that. That’s some small piece of. And it is, that is an ongoing process because as business grows, you need to grow with it. Rather you need to grow first. Then the business will grow, I believe so that’s one.

Surabhi Shenoy:
And then in the business part, I look at four key areas. First is offer. Like I said, what are you selling? Your business model, the revenue, the pricing strategies not in place. Let’s get that on paper. So we are looking at offer. Doing all of this helps them start charging premium pricing rather than commodity. If you are thinking you are going to charge lower and lower and lower, I’m not your coach, but if you’re frustrated with the rates that you’re getting, you want to change that, then I’m your coach.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Surabhi Shenoy:
So that’s because I don’t want to deal with, I mean, I like to deal with anybody and in any situation from the position of strength. And it is me who will bring myself to be in the position of strength. So if you put yourself in the weakness, that’s not the right way to build a business. My honest opinion, I mean that’s my opinion. So people may agree or not, but that’s, that has worked so far. So first is offer, second is cash. Your financial modeling, your management and your decision making has to be from data. Because when you talk growth, I hear the bill, I hear the cost.

Surabhi Shenoy:
If you are one salesperson in six months time, he is not going to bring you any revenue. Cash in bank. Even if you brings a lead, you fulfill the lead, you raise an invoice and then you finally get paid after 30, 60, 90 days in places like India. Yes, that also will happen. So you’re not going to get paid for six months. You need to provision at least for six months salary for the sales guy. What are we talking here? Growth, right? I mean, as simple as this example. So cash, offer cash and then people, very important leadership and everything is overused, over trained, over taught.

Surabhi Shenoy:
My focus because I work so much with India and UAE clients and I think this is a global problem to attract talent. So my focus is also on how are you creating your employer branding. And that’s something that I really want to pay attention because every founder today complains about. I don’t have enough people. I don’t have enough talented people and therefore I’m not growing. Yeah, but will you join your own company?

Dana Robinson:
Right?

Surabhi Shenoy:
The question is always that, right? If you, if you search for your company and if you’re preparing for an interview, what will you find? Is that exciting enough for that guy to show up for the interview and say yes to whatever offer you are making, which will mostly be at lower side. On the lower side, because you’re a small company, you see.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Surabhi Shenoy:
So then you use the power of digital presence, social media, everything to build much stronger employer branding. So that’s for people. I mean, of course, leadership team, emotional intelligence, all of that comes into that. But I mainly focus on this aspect of people attract and retain talent. And the final part is operations, because these founders, most of them who are expert into their own skills, the revenue grows, cost also grows. So the total effect is not really great. Fixed cost needs to stay as same or lower. As you become more efficient, then the margin is becoming better.

Surabhi Shenoy:
So that, how do you bring in that operational efficiency? Where are you leaking? So before my exit, you won’t believe we were still a small size company, right? I mean, 200 people, I’m not talking JP Morgan, both big businesses, but still, I ended up hiring a costing accounts guy. Show me where is money stuck. Show me where my money is being leaking. And he went through each and every HR policy as well. Government says you should give x number of holidays to employees. You are giving x plus four. So you’re giving four days extra holiday, which is cost to company. So those were the details.

Surabhi Shenoy:
It’s up to us whether we want to act on it or something. Is just cost of doing business and you live with it. But I went through that level of detailing and then some places I fixed some places, I said, okay, I get it, but this is what we will do. Right? So, but knowing is very important. And that helped summarizing you and in your business, four key areas, your offer, your cash, your people and your operations, optimize that and then you create a flywheel. If you, if you know, good to great, you know, every, every rotation should become easier to push if you’re pushing in the same direction, which is very important. So that’s the, that’s the, that’s where my coaching program stays. But it is so one to one, it is so personalized that everything is open for discussion.

Surabhi Shenoy:
So, yeah, it’s a safe space, it’s a non judgmental space. I can get hard, but intention is for you to get the point, internalize it. And act on it.

Dana Robinson:
I love it. That’s. And for anyone listening, that is the business machine that sort of you just described and getting that built is not a one woman, one man, one person job. That is, that is definitely something that most entrepreneurs need, someone to come alongside them and hold them accountable to building that machine and removing some of the ego and some of what they don’t know, they don’t know. So fantastic to learn how that works from somebody who has done it repeatedly. It’s the end of our show. So to be what’s the easiest way for people to connect with you if they want to?

Surabhi Shenoy:
So I have my website conservation my first name, last name.com and I am I write every day on LinkedIn trying to share all my knowledge, all everything that I can talk about and so you can look up my name CEO coach on LinkedIn. You will see my subscribe to newsletter called CEO Mastery. Please do. I take a lot of research effort and I have a very narrow topic and I try to go as deep as possible, which LinkedIn doesn’t allow because, you know, on the social platform you can only write so much and you have to keep it very crisp but very tactical, very practical. Tips and suggestions, strategies and systems is what I bring in in the newsletter. CU Mastery newsletter. So subscribe these are the this is my work so far.

Dana Robinson:
Awesome. Well, for those that are watching, it’s in the show notes. For those that are listening, it’s just look her up. S u r a b h I s h e n o y, thank you for taking the time to share your story on the exit plan podcast.

Surabhi Shenoy:
Thank you so much Anna, for having me. I had a lot of fun. Great conversation.

Dana Robinson:
Good. Well, I love getting these stories and yours is one of the best. Anyone else listening? Don’t forget to email me questions comments.

Dana Robinson:
Hello@danarobinson.com thanks for joining me on this episode of the Exit Plan podcast. I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to hit me up with questions or comments by emailing me@hellorobinson.com or leave comments and questions by calling 858-252-7785 call 858-252-7785 and leave a message.