Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Growth Focus Podcast where we bring together tech leaders from all across the globe to share their time, their insights and their expertise with us and to help you and us grow our tech businesses. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to build a fast growing tech company without having to rely on cold outreach, why founder led marketing still works, and how to do it right to make sure that it lands. And we're also going to be talking about the growth playbooks that are actually working right now and what things to avoid. So make sure that you are taking notes, you're on the edge of your seats, and most importantly, pay attention because we're going to have a lot of truth bombs, we're going to have a lot of insights coming in, a lot of golden nuggets for you. My name is Gary Lafty. I'm your host. I'm also the CEO and founder of the Growth Focused Partnerships where we help tech leaders generate substantial income by the power of their voice, from webinars to podcasting to virtual events. So without further ado, let's jump straight in and meet our guest for this particular episode. Bijou. It's an absolute pleasure and an honor to have you here today. Why don't you start off by introducing yourself and just tell us a little bit about who you are and what is it that you do.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Gary. It's a pleasure to meet you as well and be part of this.
My name is Biju. I'm the founder and CEO of Radius Agent. We are a brokerage platform powering independent real estate brokerages with software and a lot of AI powered tools. Our goal and vision of the company is to make sure even the smallest independent brokerage can compete with a large firm. Because we are in a phase where AI can really make things shorter. Businesses can become really profitable if they focus on the right tech and we want to provide them with the right tech.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Yeah, we are definitely entering into exciting times and you know that, that, that we can' have a tech podcast episode without mentioning AI. So I can't wait to dive into it a little bit later on to you. But let's dial it a little back, back a little bit more. Let's start with your origin story. Tell us what first inspired you to get into tech and then to build Radius.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Yeah, Ever since high school, I've always been in tech. I graduated in computer Science back in 2008 from Carnegie Mellon. And this is my second tech startup. Even though my first startup was in real Estate. So I've always been attracted to real estate because my dad's a real estate lawyer. So we spoke about real estate at home. So that's something that I knew a lot about to start with. And I always wanted to start at a software firm and I kind of combined those two and I've always been in real estate. So this is my 15th year in real estate and proptech and my second company, and the first company is called metroplots and we were a real estate tech brokerage. We sold over 500 properties in less than two years and we got an exit. And this is my second startup. Yes, the idea of Radius actually came from my previous startup. It's all connected.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Okay, so tell us a little bit about Radius then. What problems it problem is it that you're solving out there in the world and who is it actually that you help serve?
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah, so we did a significant amount of research before we started Radius. In that research, probably like a year or two of research. And in that research we found that all real estate agents eventually their first goal is to become really good at what they do. And then the second goal is always they want to be independent and they want to start their own brand. Every real estate agent I've interviewed who's serious and intentional about their job wanted this. So that's one thing that I found out. The second is the whole the system, right? Like if, if you or I. Gary, like we need to buy a property in the US we go through an agent and then the agent works for a team. That team is probably with another larger brokerage firm. But you as a client, you're only interacting with the agent. You're not interacting with the team lead or brokerage or whatever, Right? But you're paying commissions, all of them, and hence your commission is pretty high. In the US there is a flaw in that.
[00:03:48] Speaker C: Right?
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Like this, it doesn't make sense to an extent because the agent is doing all the work. If anything, that agent should get most of the commission. But if you dive deep, you understand why all these people make their commissions. Like a brokerage provides this infrastructure, provides this operational support for these teams to survive and do well. The team leaders provide coaching and a lot of support to their agents for the agents to be successful. But as consumers we don't see that. We only work with agents. So our for Radius, we our attention immediately went to the team leader and say, why don't I provide you with a lot of tools so that your day is not filled with support, but you can just focus on growth, coaching and just recruiting agents to your team while the software takes care of everything that you need to do and everything that you're looking for in a larger brokerage. So that way as a team leader, you can go start your own brokerage.
Our conclusion through that research was every experienced team leader can become an independent shop or a brand and we can help them grow really quickly. Long story short, in the last two or three years, every team that we've powered have grown 100% year on year in terms of number of agents, production and all of that. Because we give them back their time.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think this is the crazy thing.
The commodity of the world is time. This is the most valuable commodity. You're quite right. When you and I have spoken before, we're talking, talked about all the administrative stuff that, that is not necessarily given to an admin person that a salesperson at whatever rank they will have, will have to get through. And you know, when we're dealing with stuff like that, you know, when you have your software that really helps them do that as well, you know, and.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: You'Ve run a brokerage before, right. Like your day is going to be filled with supporting your agents. Your agents probably ask the same questions day in, day out. It could be deal related, it could be transaction related, it could be compliance related, it could be like, just like best practices related.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: We can automate all of that and they don't ever have to come back to you.
[00:05:48] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: They can ask Mel for all these answers and they can also do more with Mel.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it just, it just makes so much sense. And I, I always love talking to founders here when they could see a problem and they choose their product and their service to solve that problem as opposed to the other side of tech growth which is very much the field of dreams. Let me build this. And they will come because it's going to be great. And you know that doesn't work. You know, it's just one of those things and it just wonder why they never heard in the marketplace. So that being said, Visu, let's, let's talk about uniqueness. The real estate tech market is a very crowded market. It's a, it's a very noisy market.
What would you say is unique about your approach that sets Radius apart in such a crowded market?
[00:06:35] Speaker B: A few things. The first one is I think we are way ahead of our competition when it comes to using AI to help the brokerage. The second is that that same point, because we are helping the brokerage and not the agent alone, like most tech, is focused on helping the consumer or the agent, but we are trying to help the entire brokerage. So agents and clients are part of it, but we're looking at it in a much broader sense. 3. I think the way we push our product is different from most prop tech firms. We say, this is your product. We'll white label it for you. So Gary, if you start a Gary real estate firm, the software that we give you is not the radius software we give. We brand it Gary software. So when you go out and recruit agents, you're saying, hey, come join my team. By the way, this is my software. Come in and like, use my software.
[00:07:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: And you tell your consumers the same thing. This is my app, the Gary real estate app. You can search for properties here, you can access my AI assistant here. So you basically leveling up your brand. So this all ties into our unique advantage where we say, if you want to build your own brokerage, we are the best toolkit for you. But you look good in front of customers and you look good in front of agents.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Yeah, well, we're definitely. And I think I love that approach because, you know, having speaking to clients and to other guests and other founders on this show, what we're really seeing is white labeling today. White labeling. And that that partnership that comes from white labeling is a tremendous growth lever.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: That not a lot of tech founders have actually realized is there yet.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, especially in AI.
[00:08:08] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Like, everyone's a little scared of AI and want to use AI at the same time. But when you say this is your AI assistant, like, for example, one of our teams, they renamed Mel to Willow and they said our AI assistant's name is Willow. And they introduce Willow to their clients and their agents. Now they're really proud of their AI assistant right now. They don't have any fear about, like, you know, using AI because it's their AI now. So white labeling does a lot of things both in a growth way and in an emotional way as well. Yeah, exactly.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: And I think this is that ownership thing as well, isn't it? That when you have somebody that can take ownership of it, proudly coin your words. Right. So they can proudly take ownership of this and say this ours.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: It gives them that kind of elevation within the marketplace.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: That even though it is white labeled to their team or to their clients, it doesn't need to matter.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: You know, it's just that efficiency and that up to date and, you know, especially in the real estate market, amongst other markets, but in the real estate market, that there is a. There is a theme that you must be kept up to date. You must be. Because if you're not up to date with what's going on within the marketplace, then what should I choose you as? That brokerage? Why would I choose you as that agent?
[00:09:19] Speaker B: Yeah, And I'll probably talk about this later too, but one of the growth hacks, that white labeling is a growth hack, but what comes with it is because, like you said, they're proud of it and they think it's their product.
[00:09:32] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: They have great ideas for it. So it actually helps the product roadmap as well. Because when, when you know it's your product, your suggestions to improve the product are super legit.
[00:09:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: But when you just like say, this is my product, can you help me make my product better? Your ideas kind of.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And that just helps with your R and D as well as you're growing to bring out. And you're. When you and I are always talking, we're talking about, you know, what's the next aspect that's going to come out with it and stuff like that. And, you know, when you're having such feedback and I love that word now, proud, you know, because it is. It's like this ownership of what I have. And I want to make my thing better for my business, for my clients, you know, and as you say, it's a tremendous growth hack. One of the growth hacks, one of the challenges that most people have within the tech industry is trying to explain their value as opposed to the process of what they do. How do you explain the value of your solution to somebody who's never heard of it before?
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So we focus on two things or three things. I would say profitability, because that's relevant. Today, most firms, especially in real estate, are aiming for profitability, right? When the markets are pretty bad. They want to optimize their expenses, they want to increase their revenue. Profitability is super important. So we always lead from there in today's market, and that has really helped us. And then we say, how, right? How do you achieve profitability with us and how do we help you? One, we increase your revenue. And the way we increase your revenue is our tech and AI helps your agents manage more clients at the same time. Because you can't replicate yourself for like 100 clients. But I can. Mel can reach out to 100 clients and nurture all of them. Send them the CMA report, send them marketing materials, like all in parallel. You can never do that. Like as an individual. So leverage your AI assistant to be exponentially better, right? So we increase your production. So that's how we increase revenue. From a team leader's perspective, or like a brokerage owner's perspective, they want to reduce expenses all the time. I've never met a CEO who doesn't want to reduce expenses. So we go there and say, how do you solve your operational problems today? They always have people. They have admin staff, VAs, auditors, assistants. So many people helping with all this. We, like, we can reduce that. Our tech can replace all those responsibilities. So we kind of make the team efficient overall.
And most importantly, going back to my first point, which is we give the team leaders time, because the team leaders, when they started that company, their vision was, I want to get another 20 agents in the next six months, 200 agents in the next two years, thousand agents the next five years. But at a hundred, they stop. Because operationally it becomes a headache and it's super complex. They're now worried about profitability. Now, we can't just add agents in the top of the funnel. So it just stalls, right? We are saying, you don't need to stall. Here's time, here's profitability. Just go, right, like, keep getting. Doing what you. What you're good at, which is go hire more agents and coach them. So that's our value prop. We don't even talk about our features first. We say, this is your. This is the value that we bring. And then they're all years. I'm like, okay, how do you guys solve this problem?
[00:12:36] Speaker A: And I think this is the key point, isn't it bijou? It's not about feature first. And I think a lot of technology comes to the table with feature first, functionality first, as opposed to the value of what it can do, the service can do, the product can do, you know, And I think of more founders who are listening to this or are watching this, take a step back and go, okay, what are the three main values? You did it very succinctly there. You know, you did the major profitability, efficiency, and time. You know, you've got those values there that really, really help people. So let's talk about some growth strategies. You know about needle movers. Obviously, you can have all these values, you can have all this, but ultimately you still need the needle to move forward. So what growth strategies have moved the needle for you over the, let's say the past 12 to 18 months?
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I've been on both sides. Things that haven't worked and things that have worked beautifully. But I think the underlying denominator that needs to happen is you need to build a good product.
[00:13:32] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: And then that's easier said than done. Most founders, like me, who come from a tech background tell themselves product building is the easiest because you've been trained. You can write lines of code, you can hire people. You're a great product manager. Most people don't kind of think that it is complex. Me too. Me included. Right. Like five years ago, if you had met me, I would never say that product was like the toughest thing to build. But now I'd say that mainly because it's so dependent on the process.
So the simplest growth hack is build a good product. And the way to build a good product is a lot of listening and also having the right team in your company. If you have the wrong team, you will build the wrong product. If you have the wrong set of customers, you will build the wrong product. So there's a lot of reasons why you can get product wrong. So getting product right is very important, and that depends on a lot of factors. So I would say that the. The thing that helped us the most is getting the right team in place. I'm talking about the customer success team. I'm talking about the sales team, talking about the marketing team. Do they know a lot about the industry or are they eager to learn a lot about the industry? Do they have a product experience in that department? Do they have experience selling product? Do they have experience marketing product? Do they have doing customer success, onboarding and everything? For product companies, it's very important. You can't just hire someone, expect them to do well in those departments. And we made those mistakes before. When we have the right people in the right job, it just works like a symphony. The customer success team gets me the right feedback for the product. The clients are super enthusiastic about using our product. They give good feedback. Sales team is pitching to the right customers who are excited about the product. So the right teams join us. Everything works beautifully if you have the right team. So I think the growth hack, I guess, is hiring the right team.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: And I think that is so important, you know, getting the best team. We've had plenty of leaders on this show, plenty of founders, and just out there in social media, you always hear about getting the right team, getting the right team, getting the right team. But it's almost like a flippant remark because most people don't know how to get a great team. They know they should.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: But it comes from experience, doesn't it? You've got to fall down many times.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Same. I didn't know either. I thought I knew. I didn't know either, like five years ago or like even three years ago. You make mistakes and you learn who not to hire. Don't rush a hire. Hire carefully. There's a reason why really fast growing companies do like eight rounds of interviews.
[00:15:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: You need to get all kinds of perspective. Even if there's one reason you think this person is not a good fit in your team, don't go for it.
[00:16:03] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: A good candidate would fit in perfectly. Right. Like they would check all the boxes. So you want to look for the right person. It's almost better to wait and find the right person than find someone quickly. And because you have to roll back the years if you invest time with someone.
[00:16:18] Speaker C: Wrong.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that's as you go. But there's two things you've mentioned there that I just want to pick up on. You know, number one, as you say, you're actually rolling back those years. You're going backwards in time. If you get that wrong person, that wrong team member who's actually going to be more of an anchor than more of a parachute. Right. That's going to take you because they're just going to hold you back down, but also taking your time. And it's an oxymoron. It's the irony of, hold on, I need someone, but I've got to take my time to get someone. And so you've got this constant battle when it comes to finding that right person. So probably one of the lessons there would prob. Probably be, don't wait until last moment before you need someone. Start planning that ahead and start talking to people and start bringing up and start just really asking questions so you know if they're a right person for you.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And the interesting offshoot of all this is when you interview more people, you're definitely interviewing people from your competitors who work at your. So in the process, you're also learning about other companies in the interview. Just how you're asking me questions to learn from what?
[00:17:17] Speaker C: Whatever. Right.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: I do the same thing with my interviews. I learn from different companies. What mistakes did they make? There's a lot of value in interviewing a lot, even though it's a big time suck. But I think founders should spend a significant amount of time interviewing in the beginning.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And I think one of the other aspects of interviewing before I move on, one of the things that I always have done for 20, 30 years now is if I'M interviewing from a competitor. It's almost then the choice now is do I bring them on because they're great or do I keep them at my competitors? Yeah, because I'd rather have them there than on my team.
[00:17:50] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: And that's a really key point of it. So let us talk about growth strategies. That hasn't worked. You know, you and I have talked about cold outreach before, that it didn't really work well for you. What have you learned about building trust and credibility instead of just blatant cold outreach?
[00:18:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Especially in our industry. You should. You probably know this really well. Real estate agents are out there. Everyone that we are targeting are out there. So what I mean by that is they're trying to put themselves out there for clients to find them, which means they're easily findable. So everyone who's selling products to them can easily access them. Which means it's an advantage for us because we have everyone's email and phone number. But everyone has their email and phone number. So they probably get like 20 sales calls a day.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Like different tech firms, different solutions. So it's very difficult to stand out in the first two minutes of hello, tell me about you. Like, it's very, very difficult for us. So that's why in our industry cold outreach would never work. If they get 20 calls, they probably get a hundred emails.
[00:18:53] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: So emails doesn't work either you need to be in places they go and they are trying to listen to someone or they're trying to get information from someone. You need to be there. So for us those are events to referrals, like if they go meet other agents. Because agents work with other agents all the time. So when. And team leaders work with other team leaders all the time.
[00:19:15] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: So when, when a team leader prospect goes to another team leader, if that other team leader works at Radius or like we partner with them, then that's a win because they'll sell. So you need to kind of empower your clients to like sell for you. So word of mouth is really, really big for us. 3. I think from a marketing perspective, just our website and our social media everywhere, we've started using the stone of using our customers voice to sell ourselves. This is how I grew my business from 20 million to 90 million over two years. Partnering with Radius, it's way stronger than me saying we help you grow because it's coming from the partner's voice. So we've made tweaks like that and obviously none of this will work if you don't build the right product. So you need to also build the right product. But from a voice perspective, this is how we reach our customers.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that's the key thing is again utilizing current, past and current clients who have done really well. Because as you say, you got a great product. If you, if your product does what it says it's going to do is going to help. Yes, your clients. So if your clients are growing, rather than just the blanket testimonial, maybe a case study here and there, you're actually encouraging them to do that selling for you.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: Via their results.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: Exactly. Yep. And, and, and again it is their product. So we've kind of given them a product that they call themselves theirs.
So they're actually happy to do this.
[00:20:35] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: They want us to grow because they want more teams to come within the brokerage. So there's like a lot of alignment there in getting our clients to talk about us for our.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: And what a great advocate for advocates like there for, for white labeling again, isn't it? Because the more you can get on, the more teams you can get on together that have this ownership then this becomes a community when itself and when with that then you have another community and which again is a fantastic growth strategy even though you're all competitors. And you know, I'd love to see more of that within the tech industry, you know, using, using that particular growth strategy. But you mentioned sales before. I mean obviously at the end of the day we talked a bit about marketing, but now let's talk a little bit about sales. You're still very much a founder led sales guy. The founder said sales. A founder led sales organization. What role do you think a founder who's maybe listening to this or watching this. What role do you think a founder should be playing in founder led sales? Founder led marketing today?
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Yes. Especially for enterprise sales when the account size and ACV is a lot higher. We're talking about a million plus in ACV or close to that. No one's going to partner with us if they don't speak to the founder of the company at this stage.
[00:21:44] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: Because a, they have not heard of you so they're trying to evaluate you and see if you're trustworthy. And is this brand credible? That only comes from talking to the founder.
[00:21:54] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: So I think as founders we need to put ourselves out there and go like go top heavy. So get into the sales funnel a little earlier.
[00:22:02] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: Than you think you should. Usually founders tell themselves I'll jump in on the last call. But with Enterprise Sale, I Don't think that's the case because there won't be a last call like if you don't lead the sales efforts. So I would, that, that would be my first advice, go to the top of the funnel and start meeting these teams. The second would be again, like I always say, it's the product. So at this stage, my goal is to build the perfect product. We have like 70% of the perfect product that I want to build, but the remaining 30% I'm still like trying to figure out. Like wordless can be built. And this can only happen when the founder themselves goes and talks to new prospects and then, oh no, for example, I'll give you an example. We, we just sold a couple of teams that are like 200 agents, 400 to 500 million in production. Now I'm talking to a team that is close to a thousand agents and another team that's about 4,000 agents. And when I jump in on that sales call right in the beginning, the questions that they ask me, I probably the only person in the company who can say, yes, that can be built, right? That's possible. I can do that in three months or a CTO can say that. So I think it's very important in this stage, when you're still building the product, that you get these new ideas from these sales calls.
And I think there's a different energy that a founder brings to a. Because as a founder, you've thought about this business model day in, day out for so many hours.
[00:23:20] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Sometimes you wake a founder up in the middle of their sleep and ask them, hey, what's your business model? What's your roadmap?
[00:23:26] Speaker C: They'll say, right?
[00:23:27] Speaker B: You can't expect that from anyone else in the company because they haven't spent so much time thinking about it.
[00:23:32] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: Your brain is filled with that. So when you talk to a business leader trying to sell them, you can answer any question immediately way faster than anyone else in your company. Not to say you don't have to train someone else, you should always train someone else to get there. But at this stage when you haven't built the product fully, I think it has to be founded at sales, especially in enterprise sales.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there's a tendency, and you've seen it as well, where even in tech, you still see 5, 10, $15 million companies who are still doing founder led sales or an element of it, but there's far too many trying to kick it to the curb and give it to a team far too early.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Yes, I've made that mistake.
Three years ago, we went and hired like this entire sales org and marketing org and VPs and CROs and all of that. It was too early for us.
In hindsight, I wouldn't do that.
[00:24:23] Speaker C: Right.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: Like, I would have probably done it myself first and grown it to a certain point, understood the product really well. Because even the teams that they hire under them will be wrong if you hire the wrong person at the top at the wrong time.
So there's a lot of trolling back the years that you have to do if you make that mistake right at the beginning.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: It's the ingredients, isn't it? We always say this. You can only, you can only bake a cake with ingredients you've got. If the ingredients are wrong at the start, whatever you try and get out of it, it's always going to be wrong. No matter how many levels you go.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: Down, your investors might ask you to go hire a lot of leadership. Everyone around you will ask you to do that. But I think with experience, founders will know when to hire, when not to hire. And I think we know that.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. You know, you know which particular, you know, avenue you need to focus on when it comes to that team. So talking about focusing and now looking forward with growth, what are your revenue or impact goals now over the next sort of 12 to 24 months? What's the future looking like for you guys?
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Yeah, so our, our vision, like every business has a number that they're trying to improve, right? Like, I'm not talking about revenue. They must be like this number one metric that signifies what their success looks like. For us, it is a number of transactions that our software processes.
[00:25:36] Speaker C: Right.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: So for me, I'm now looking for big leaps in that number. I used to go after small teams that'll help us increase our transaction by 20 transactions. But now I'm going after much larger teams. So we can, can I increase in a month, can I increase it by a thousand transactions? So our vision is to get a significant market share in the number of transactions that goes through our system. We're obviously starting small. We're mainly in California. We got have our license in Texas and Florida and a few other states, but still our main focus is California. And we're trying to improve the model here and get the number of transactions, market share in California and then we want to kind of raise the next round and like expand it beyond California.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: So with everything in place, let's, let's talk about those impact goals, those revenue goals, and you know, like, you Say, the effort it takes to get a team that does a thousand transactions compared to one that does 50 or 20 to 50, relatively the same. It's just now what you're actually going to do about it, what's already in place to get you to those goals, and what still feels like a missing piece of the puzzle, I would say.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: I mean, we still have like 20, 30% of the product to build, but our product, whatever we have, is already kind of superior to whatever else is out there. So it's actually kind of once we get in front of a big team, we have like a 80, 80 to 90% conversion. So it's kind of easy at that point once you get in front of the team. So our challenge right now is how do we get us in front of more teams? Because if we can figure that out, which is what we are doing with events and changing our marketing material and finding growth hacks to get there, but that would be where we have a bit of a challenge. How do we get ourselves out there so that they find us, not us finding them.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think this is the key thing. You want as much inbound as you can. There's got to be an element to go in that. But we've talked about growth, you know, just in the period we have. And before I'll ask you your last loaded question, as it were, just as a query. We've talked about white labeling as a fantastic growth strategy. We talked about the community as a fantastic growth strategy. We talked about building those teams so that everybody feels proud about it, you know, and as you say, and people will be listening here and watching and probably nodding their head and go, Yay, 30.
Not finished yet. But we all know that when it comes to this, you're never 30% away from it. There's always something to build upon that.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: You actually think it should always be. There's 30% more. Like, if you built a product, then what's the fun in it? Right? You always want to like, oh, once I like even the 30%, I would probably. Let's say I finished that, I'd be like, oh, I want to build a mortgage product, and then there's another 30%. And then once I have that, I'd be like, I want to build an escrow product, there's another 30%.
[00:28:02] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: So it should always be, there's another 30% of product left. But whatever you have must be way above whatever they have as options.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. That's where I focus and that's where the growth is. And that's where the focus is. So here's your loaded question. You know, and I ask all of my guests this question. If you could leave founders who are listening here or watching here, Bijou, if you could leave these founders with one hard won insight, you know, the one that's done you blood, sweat and tears about scaling a tech business today, what would that insight be?
[00:28:34] Speaker B: I would say get the right team to build the product. You have a vision, your gut is right because you started the company, because you did some research. You know a lot about an industry and you have a solution and you have a vision for that solution. Trust your gut and your gut's always right. But make sure you get the right team to support that feeling and can sell that vision and can build that vision.
[00:28:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: Like it cross. Going back to my first point, spend time there. Don't rush into hiring some team, no matter who tells you what to do. Like as a founder, you need to protect your idea, you need to protect your company, you need to get the right people into the family. That's, I think, the shortest way to success. Even though it feels like it's long, it's the shortest.
Sometimes things just align for companies and they go really fast. You, you don't have to get pressurized by another company's successes. We just take your time to get the right team in place.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Yeah, well, as I say, comparison is the thief of joy, isn't it? And what a great place to finish this interview on. So, Bijou, if somebody wants to get hold of you, wants to talk to you, potentially work with you, what's the best way of doing that?
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Email. My email address is bijoudiusagent.com Feel free to send an email. I'm also on LinkedIn. Look me up, Biju Ashokan.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: Well, I'll make sure those links are in the show notes so they can just go straight through. So all that remains is to thank you, Bijou, for your time today, for your insights. It's been an absolute pleasure having you here today.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: Thanks, Gary. Absolute pleasure talking to you as always.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: That's great. And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us for yet another episode of the Growth Focus podcast. And as per usual, if you've been to this show before, if you listen to this show, you know what I'm going to say. Make sure if you picked up something from Beachy today, if you thought that is a really great idea or even a potentially great day, make sure you like it and put it down in the comments so that other people can see what you're picking up that might potentially help them as well. But more importantly, we're here to share. We do this so you to share information with you so that you can grow. Please do the same by sharing this episode and other leaders episode as well of the Growth Focus Podcast so that we can all grow together. So until the next episode, work hard, work smart, but more importantly, be profitable and we shall see you on the next episode.
