DeepSpecialization_Manish Dudharejia_EP 70_Audio_Edited_V1
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[00:00:00] Manish Dudharejia: In terms of like a services, like we solve a very specific problem. We help agencies solve bandwidth and capacity problems. When agencies want to scale and grow their agency business without increasing their overhead cost, that's where agencies partner with us. And you realize our team is a fulfillment team in terms of like, you know, building websites with WordPress, uh, e commerce stores, which are doing SEO and content.
[00:00:25] Manish Dudharejia: So that's it. It's, it's a, it's a very long story. I'm just, yeah. putting it in a, in a, in a small line that, yeah, we are, yeah, we, we love what we do. You know, we love, we, I love the agency ecosystem and, uh, yeah, we love helping agencies grow and scale their agency business just like you.
[00:00:44] Corey Quinn: Welcome to the Deep Specialization Podcast, the show where we blend focus, strategy, and client intimacy in order to scale and simplify our businesses and our lives.
[00:00:53] Corey Quinn: I'm your host, Corey Quinn. Let's jump into the show.
[00:00:57] Corey Quinn: Today I'm joined by the founder and CEO of E2M solutions, Manish. And I'm going to, I'm going to struggle with this dude right here.
[00:01:07] Manish Dudharejia: That's fine. It's a, it's a, but that's all right. Yeah.
[00:01:14] Corey Quinn: Manish, I am so super excited to have you on the show. I'm familiar with you and your business.
[00:01:19] Corey Quinn: We actually recently met not too long ago. So I I'm just thrilled to bring you on the show to, to share your growth story of you and your agency. Welcome, welcome to the show.
[00:01:32] Manish Dudharejia: Thank you, Gauri. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Really, really appreciate it. And, you know, you've been doing a fantastic job.
[00:01:40] Manish Dudharejia: So I love agents ecosystem. And I think, you know, what you've been doing for agents ecosystem is just a great thing. There is a lot of need. In the ecosystem, you know, for people like you. So I'm like, we are definitely on the same page and, uh, yeah. I love what you are doing.
[00:02:01] Corey Quinn: Wonderful. I think that means a lot to me coming from you.
[00:02:04] Corey Quinn: I appreciate that very much. I know you've, you've been in this space quite a while and you're familiar with the landscape. So that's really cool to hear. Thank you. For those folks who are not familiar with you and your background, would you mind just introducing yourself and share a little bit about what E2M solutions is?
[00:02:19] Manish Dudharejia: Yeah, so I run E2M, uh, which is, uh, we only work with agencies. We work as a white label partner for agencies. We started this 12 years ago, 2012. And obviously back then things were completely different, but as we speak, you know, we have a team of 200 plus full time employees. We work with over 200 plus agencies.
[00:02:47] Manish Dudharejia: Mainly all across the U S and some other part of the world as well. And yeah, in terms of like services, like we solve a very specific problem. We help agencies solve bandwidth and capacity problems when agencies want to scale and grow their agency business without increasing their overhead cost. That's where agencies partner with us and utilize our team as a fulfillment team in terms of like, you know, building websites with WordPress, uh, eCommerce, which Shopify doing SEO and content.
[00:03:16] Manish Dudharejia: So that's it. It's, it's a, it's a very long story. I'm just, uh, putting it in a, in a, in a small line that Yeah, we are, yeah. We, we love what we do. You know, we love, we allow the agency ecosystem and, uh, yeah. We, we love helping agencies grow and scale their agency business just like you.
[00:03:36] Corey Quinn: Yeah. Beautiful. So you're solving two problems, bandwidth and ca uh, capacity.
[00:03:42] Corey Quinn: Which I think is very, very important. Any agency that's growing certainly is always hiring. Hiring folks is difficult, hard to find good people. It's expensive. And so if you can come in and help them to be able to grow and bring in new clients without having to worry about, you know, hiring as much and solving that for them, I think is a fantastic.
[00:04:04] Corey Quinn: Value proposition, obviously with the 200 full time employees and all the success, clearly you're, you're solving a profound problem in a, in a, in a great way.
[00:04:12] Corey Quinn: So what is your role there now today? We're going to get into sort of what was happening 12 years ago as you were building this business. But today tell us about your role as the founder and CEO.
[00:04:24] Manish Dudharejia: Yeah, my role has been changed over the last one and a half year, you know, where I kind of removed myself from day to day operations, including sales as well. So my role is more on a strategic side where I have like, you know, six to seven core people, leadership team, I kind of like mentor them. And I.
[00:04:46] Manish Dudharejia: mainly interact with this, our co leadership team. And, uh, whenever they kind of run into any problems, I kind of guide them to come up with a solution. That's the one side where I'm involved. The other side is like, I'm more involved in a strategic side, like building strategic partnerships. I travel a lot.
[00:05:05] Manish Dudharejia: Um, you know, I, I live in India, but I travel to the like a couple of times in a year. So right now I'm I'm, I'm here for five weeks and it's more on a strategic side building relationships, which you don't know, like where you are going to utilize, but it eventually ends up landing a good number of clients and on a marketing side as well, we do, I kind of get, that's my core.
[00:05:32] Manish Dudharejia: Expertise. And I, I love basically marketing and branding and everything. So I am in world that's out of my willingness and out of my passion, you know, I'm more into marketing and branding and a lot of like leadership and training for our leadership team and our entire team as well. So those are the different areas, you know, I am more involved.
[00:05:55] Manish Dudharejia: And also, you know, we are constantly growing. So, you know, when you run a business. When it is 10 people, it's absolutely different. When it's 100 people, it's absolutely different. And when you have 200 people, it's absolutely different, right? So now we really have to start thinking about what kind of problems we might run into when we'll grow further to 200, 300 people.
[00:06:18] Manish Dudharejia: And then you start preparing for that. You start thinking about it as well. And obviously, you with all this AI, everything going with AI. So We like start thinking in that area as well. So these are the things, you know, which my role fit in. And also we are in the process of acquiring another business because we are growing really fast.
[00:06:42] Manish Dudharejia: So those are the areas where I also spend my time on.
[00:06:46] Corey Quinn: So I imagine a lot of the listeners who are on this listening to this podcast are not quite in the, in the position that you've been able to create for yourself as the founder and CEO, they're not removed from sales. They are the leadership team. And they want to be thinking more about AI and figuring out how to, how to position better for the future.
[00:07:08] Corey Quinn: But they're, they're typically caught in the day to day and they're leading sales. They're probably leading fulfillment at some level at various, various aspects of that. So I'm curious to hear, you know, we're familiar with now the business you've built, you started in 2012.
[00:07:24] Corey Quinn: Tell us about sort of the origin story.
[00:07:26] Corey Quinn: What was happening in your life, 2012 that caused you to eventually start E2M. Why was that? What were you doing before you started and what led to starting the business?
[00:07:38] Manish Dudharejia: Yeah. So I originally started my You know, I got into this industry back in 2007, you know, well, Google was just 10 years old and you know, SEO kind of fascinated me back then the digital marketing terminology was not there.
[00:07:56] Manish Dudharejia: You know, we used to call it like online marketing or internet marketing. Right. And I learned an SEO from a friend of mine and I just got fascinated about Industry and that led me to get into this industry. So for five years from 2000 to 7, 7 to 12, I work for two different companies and I was working as a digital marketing consultant and heading the digital marketing division.
[00:08:21] Manish Dudharejia: And for some reason, you know, I, one of the things which I, One of the qualities which I have is like, you know, I always observe and learn what not to do, which makes things so much easier for me to put a list of like what to do, right? So I, over the course of those five years, I learned a lot of things about like how business should not run.
[00:08:47] Manish Dudharejia: I saw some of the ways. And I don't want to judge them. You know, they were great companies. I learned a lot and I'm grateful for that. But that time was different. And, you know, I did not like a lot of things, how the business was operating, how like, you know, people were treated. There was a lack of transparency.
[00:09:05] Manish Dudharejia: And it was a way more of a closed businesses. And I did not like the culture as well. And, and, and I become pessimistic and I was like, I don't think I'll be able to find a company where I'll be able to work. And instead, you know, I have had that, you know, problem solving mindset from day one. Right. So whenever I run into any problem, I just usually don't complain.
[00:09:27] Manish Dudharejia: I just find, try to figure out a solution around that. And I was like, let me create a company. Where I want to, I learned a lot what not to do and how the companies should run, how the brand should be built, how the culture should be built, you know, how the people should be treated, how the customers should be treated as well, and then how the transparency.
[00:09:48] Manish Dudharejia: should be within the organization, not only within your team, but also with your clients. So those are the things I learned. I took all those lessons and because I become pessimistic, I started that, you know, agency business. And obviously, like, you know, when I started, I was only, we're offering SEO services and we were targeting like any and every client.
[00:10:07] Manish Dudharejia: So there was no vision back then. Right. I never, ever thought that we'll be Going into the space, white label space will expand to this level. And it was just that, okay, we'll start like, uh, with SEO services. That's what my core expertise is. And then, you know, it led to one thing led to another thing and, and, and the rest is obviously the history.
[00:10:30] Manish Dudharejia: But yeah, initially we were offering like all services later. We started getting a lot of interest, uh, about, uh, web dev services as well. So we got into that as well. We started hiring people into that as well. And we started getting interest from agencies as well. And that's why, that's how I realized that, okay, this is a really good industry to go after, but still like for seven, eight years up until 2019, seven years, we were like doing everything right.
[00:10:56] Manish Dudharejia: And finally, you know, we decided that, okay, now we just want to go after. I'm going to talk about one type of client, which you talk about like this deep spatialization, which, which I wish I would have learned way earlier, then we would have been, you know, way more successful than we are way ahead of time because 2019 we started focusing on this.
[00:11:19] Manish Dudharejia: only agency business. Back then we were only 50 people, right? So in last, after being specialized, only focusing on one niche and only focusing on agency clients and positioning, pivoting our positioning from a marketing perspective and also designing a business model around that. Helped us a lot to be where we are in last five years.
[00:11:43] Manish Dudharejia: So for six, seven years was a lot of lessons. I made a lot of mistakes, you know, I did not know how to lead people. I didn't know what kind of people should be hired. A lot of lessons I learned, you know, in 15, we were like 120 people, which we actually scaled back to 40 people in 2018, just because, you know, we have had no processes.
[00:12:06] Manish Dudharejia: There was. No structure, leadership team and there were not the right people at the right position. And 18, 19 was a time of like, you know, a lot of realization, rectifying mistakes during those times. I learned a lot about like how to make decisions, you know, how done a deep dive into like all types of different types of philosophy, psychological concept, mental model frameworks, and how we learned a lot.
[00:12:33] Manish Dudharejia: And then, you know, we kind of like started making the right decisions to be where we are right now. And it's a still constant learning process.
[00:12:42] Corey Quinn: Yeah, no, it never ends. That's for sure. So that all makes, is very clear to me. And what I'm curious about is when, it sounds like in 2019, you went from going to serving everyone, doing a lot of different things across SEO, web development, and so on and so forth, And that's when the sort of the, the pivot or the, the focus into the agency space.
[00:13:05] Corey Quinn: I imagine you were working with agencies prior to 2019, but what, what was happening, what happened in 2019 that caused you to say, okay, enough with the working with everyone, I want to focus in on digital agencies, like what was happening in the business? What led to that decision?
[00:13:23] Manish Dudharejia: Yeah, I think we don't realize that, you know, when you don't have a specific niche.
[00:13:28] Manish Dudharejia: Your marketing channel is like, you know, it's not optimized either. Right. Because now you're marketing, you are going after any and every customer, which means you are talking about, you know, going in a direction where you don't know where you are going. Right. It's kind of like you are going into an Amazon forest and.
[00:13:48] Manish Dudharejia: Yeah. You don't know where you are heading, right? And you end up spending more time, more energy, more money, and that doesn't give you the desired results. So we tried and tested for six, seven years. And we don't realize when you have a different industry, then every industry has its own need. And every industry.
[00:14:09] Manish Dudharejia: You don't need a special type of team, special type of people, and you, you end up having a lot of different people, a lot of different processes, you know, which kind of like create a haywire in your operations as well. Right. So I feel like, you know, in order to channelize the energy, I always think like that, how can I get the most out of my time?
[00:14:29] Manish Dudharejia: Right. And how can I get the most out of every single. Penny we are spending on marketing. How can I get the maximum efficiency of the team? And the answer to all these questions was just okay going after one niche. Right? So we don't realize that, you know, when you know that you are going after a specific niche, you are saying no to a lot of things for a great reasons, right?
[00:14:52] Manish Dudharejia: And my favorite example is that. You know, let's say if you are an agency business, right? And you are targeting plumbers. And one way to say that, okay, we help plumbers to get more visibility digitally on Google. You know, we build websites and do marketing from all across the U S right. Or you say we help plumbers In California, we're located in this zip codes, right?
[00:15:17] Manish Dudharejia: And help them to grow their online visibility. So now you are talking about that. Okay. You are not going after all across the U S you are going after, you know, specific zip codes of California. So that makes now, you know, okay. Think like that. You know, you are, you are not doing nationwide SEO. You're only doing local SEO in a PPC campaign.
[00:15:38] Manish Dudharejia: You're only targeting specific zip codes, which will bring your CPC down as well. Right. And you are getting the, imagine your agency is right there in California. You're getting, you know, your clients at the same time zone, which means they are calling you on the same time zone as well. Same goes with Facebook as well.
[00:15:57] Manish Dudharejia: So we don't realize that, you know, when you focus. And then specialized in one niche, you are saying no to a lot of things for a great reasons.
[00:16:07] Corey Quinn: And so I love that. Obviously, I'm a big fan of specializing and saying no and saying no to a lot of things. You can say yes to one thing. What about the agency space made that made sense for you to lean in to go in that direction versus potentially, you know, a dozen other directions?
[00:16:25] Manish Dudharejia: Yeah, I think, you know, every business should understand what's your position in the ecosystem, right? We are a part of global economy now, right? And I, it took me a time, a little bit longer time for me to understand that. Okay. You know, I'm from India. I live in India and what is my core expertise? You know, I traveled a lot.
[00:16:45] Manish Dudharejia: Across the U S I traveled to probably like 30 plus states in the United States. And I have met like hundreds and hundreds of agencies owners in person in last course of like eight years. And then I was like, okay, I understand this market really well. And I have a really good expertise in, you know, building a team and building a culture and hiring people.
[00:17:04] Manish Dudharejia: And India has a great pool of talent. You know, India is probably the only country was, which is the highest youth population and a lot of dining people. And I'm like, Let's fill this gap, right? If I'll go after a direct businesses over here. I'll probably have to have a sales people across the US every state, right?
[00:17:21] Manish Dudharejia: To go after the local businesses instead. What if we partner with agencies all across the US? We'll do, we'll do sales for us and they will bring that projects on a continuous basis, which will help us to generate recurring revenue. And then we provide them a fulfillment date, right? So I think, you know, I found our position in the ecosystem in a way, okay, this makes a lot of sense, right?
[00:17:44] Manish Dudharejia: And I kind of like, you know, put an analogy that if Apple would be manufacturing iPhones in the U S they would be obviously selling it like three X, four X prices. Right. So if you see like, you know, Apple thinks like, okay, Apple products are designed in California and manufacturing China. Right. If you see their products, every product, they have written in like designed by Apple in California and assembled in China, right?
[00:18:09] Manish Dudharejia: So that's Apple realized that, okay, this is what our speciality is. Like we are really, really good at design, but manufacturing is something someone has already, you know, done it well and at lower cost, then why don't we, you know, utilize that? Because anyway, we are a part of global economy and that's how, you know, we present ourselves that agencies, You know, we're really good at sales, bringing clients, and then we provide them a fulfillment team.
[00:18:35] Manish Dudharejia: So anyway, getting back to our discussion, that was the reason. And we thought that, okay, this way, if we lend one client, it will help us to keep getting the recurring revenue and keep getting the projects on a regular basis. And also, over the period of time, I realized that, okay, You know, having the benefit of going after agencies was like, okay, we realized that, okay, where these agencies are hanging out, right?
[00:19:01] Manish Dudharejia: I started building relationships with agency coaches and I started outreaching them that, Hey, if you guys are putting together any events, we would love to sponsor those events. And agencies always look, uh, coaches always look for support, like. Partner like us, who we help them to put together the events and we kind of get in front of our targeted audience.
[00:19:23] Manish Dudharejia: It just creates a win win win for everyone. So imagine, you know, you are going after a niche of like, uh, You know, let's say architects, right? And there is a conference which is happening where, you know, all the architects are coming up and you are getting to that conference and you are sponsoring that conference, which means you are getting in front of all the architects.
[00:19:44] Manish Dudharejia: Same goes with law firms as well. Same goes with any industry. So that was kind of a reason we were like, let's go after this space. And I kind of understand this space really, really well.
[00:19:55] Corey Quinn: Yeah, having been a consultant, you know, working in a firm, but in the, as an SEO 2007, 2012, then being an agency yourself and then eventually serving agencies makes, it makes a lot of sense.
[00:20:08] Corey Quinn: In the early days, when let's say in 2019, when you're like, okay, All this makes sense. We want to focus in on as a white label partner for agencies. How did you build momentum? Like what were some of the things you did? You mentioned that you partnered up with some agency coaches and you sponsored events.
[00:20:25] Corey Quinn: Is there anything else you did to kind of build momentum in, in the specifically within the agency space?
[00:20:32] Manish Dudharejia: What we did, you know, with pivoting our business model where we kind of like, you know, we realized that the classic business model project to project have had a lot of problems. Then we pivoted business model.
[00:20:43] Manish Dudharejia: We started offering unlimited services, which is like sort of like there is a fixed cost monthly cost. So agencies know their cost and we provide them unlimited support. Like they can get it done whatever they want within the assigned bucket of hours. So that was kind of like our offering was very, very unique and flexibility.
[00:21:01] Manish Dudharejia: Right. I think, you know, we started building a top notch customer service team. We have a team of like 12 people right now in customer service. Few things which I, you know, realize that, you know, what agencies are looking for when it comes to outsourcing. And those are the areas where Having a lot of transparency, not having a long term contracts, like having an arrangement month to month.
[00:21:25] Manish Dudharejia: So designing the business model around the need of agency was a big thing as well. And obviously like, you know, marketing message was very clear. Like now we are like one line, we can explain our business, which wasn't possible earlier. And then the referral machine worked out really well. We still get a lot of our clients.
[00:21:44] Manish Dudharejia: through referrals, right? So I think apart from this relationship and obviously we have a lot of great, you know, presence on Google as well. So our rankings are also really, really great. It helped us to do a lot of targeted PPC ads as well. Although now we don't spend a lot on that because we get a tons of leads through referrals and all these channels and everything.
[00:22:06] Corey Quinn: That's great that you've got that all set up. Still, there's, I imagine that having been on the agency side and then also working with companies who wanted to sell their products to agencies, there's a lot of competition, I think, in your space. There's a lot of companies coming in and saying, Hey, you know, you have these digital marketing agencies who are finding the clients, they need help with the fulfillment and the, you know, the, they've got bandwidth and capacity issues, so we're going to be a white label provider as well.
[00:22:35] Corey Quinn: How do you position. Your agency, or sorry, your, well, your business, your white label service, so that you're differentiating the market. How do you, how do you try and differentiate?
[00:22:45] Manish Dudharejia: I think the biggest thing is cost because the, our team is, entire team is based in India. So it's kind of three X, four X lower cost than what agencies are charging here in the States.
[00:22:55] Manish Dudharejia: So that's the biggest factor is like, you know, providing them the quality service. At the lowest cost and still like making sure that the quality is top notch. That's the first thing. And second thing is like, you know, mix and match, right? So usually agencies who kind of like have a different needs, they have to hire different people or WordPress.
[00:23:15] Manish Dudharejia: They need a SEO, their content or e commerce. And with the dynamic change in the industry, the industry like itself is evolving a lot more faster than. It was earlier. So here they kind of get like everything at one place at one course, and there is a single point of contact they have. So I think the, those are the things which is like multiple, multiple like expertise at lower cost and the top notch quality that kind of how I, we differentiate ourselves.
[00:23:47] Corey Quinn: Hey, it's Corey. I hope you're enjoying this episode. And I want to let you know that I have a new bestselling book that has just come out that gives you my proven system to escape founder led sales. It's called anyone, not everyone. And it's been endorsed by Aaron Ross. April Dunford, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, John Rulan, and many others.
[00:24:07] Corey Quinn: If you'd like to get the audiobook absolutely for free, there's a link below in the description, or you could simply go to anyonenoteveryone. com and start listening right now. Beautiful. At what point in your journey did you hire your first salesperson?
[00:24:22] Manish Dudharejia: That's a very interesting question. I think, you know, it's funny at this size, we only have two salespeople right now.
[00:24:30] Manish Dudharejia: So we hired, I mean, I hired a few biz dev guys. You know, in initial days, but I wasn't happy with that. The first person, you know, I hired, uh, in late 2018 when I started deciding that, okay, now we want to focus and, you know, grow in the right way because up until that time, you know, I was the one who was doing sales and then I realized that, okay, this is not scalable.
[00:24:56] Manish Dudharejia: This is not, you know, I don't think this is the way we can scale the business. So literally after five years before that. I, who had hired, but not, they weren't like the right people. And then I learned like, you know, okay, how to hire actually the right people.
[00:25:13] Manish Dudharejia: And, and that's something, you know, I'll, I'll talk about it because I, that framework I learned, which makes a lot of sense for agencies who are in a scaling stage.
[00:25:22] Manish Dudharejia: But yeah, to answer your question, 2018 was the first hire and 19 was the, Second, uh, higher and then now, you know, those people are hiring the other salespeople as well, but we are very, very picky when what kind of people we hire for sales.
[00:25:39] Corey Quinn: Yeah. So just to feed this back to you, you hired a couple of BD folks that didn't really work out, but then you hired your first seller in 2018 and then 2019 was your second one.
[00:25:49] Corey Quinn: They're still with you. This is the same two that are still with you.
[00:25:51] Manish Dudharejia: Yep. They are still with us. And in fact, they have grown to the You know, one of them is now our VP of sales and customer service. And another is like director of SEO sales and customer services. So that's
[00:26:03] Corey Quinn: great.
[00:26:03] Manish Dudharejia: One of the advices, which I'll give to agencies that you are building.
[00:26:07] Manish Dudharejia: Yeah. When you are building a team, let's say, you know, you are in the phase of building your agency. You got to make sure you are hiring a team of generalist. And then when you are in the scaling stage. You hire a team of specialists, right? So think like that, you know, the early people you are hired, those people must be really, really good at like independent judgment and making really, really good decisions because later those are the people who are going to hire more people for you.
[00:26:38] Manish Dudharejia: So you are not going to be in the hiring process later on into that, right? So that's the advice I would give that. Okay. If you are looking for a salesperson, right? Look for the person who can do not only sales, but also can do a customer service as well. And some sort of like, you know, let's say project management as well.
[00:26:55] Manish Dudharejia: Right. And guess what? Like, you know, if that person is doing multiple things, it would be a lot higher for that person to hire another person and train that person. So you don't have to do it again. Right. And also it will keep your cost lower as well. So One of the person salesperson we hired, she was just doing sales.
[00:27:14] Manish Dudharejia: And later, you know, she was really good at customer service. And now she's having a sales team and she has like 12, 15 people customer service team as well, which I haven't hired. Right. Same goes with our SEO sales guy as well. So it is super important that you must have a team of generalists will turn into your leadership team at eventually.
[00:27:37] Manish Dudharejia: Because they have those qualities that they are always ready to go above and beyond and ready to take on new responsibilities, which kind of help you to build your leadership team eventually. And they will start hiring people for you as you scale and grow as you scale and grow your agency. Right? So this is the framework I use is like, you know, while building a while building higher generalist while scaling higher specialist and classic example is like, If you need a digital marketing special, digital marketing team, then you are talking about hiring an SEO specialist, hiring a social media specialist and hiring PPCS specialist.
[00:28:15] Manish Dudharejia: Instead, hire one guy who is a digital marketing specialist who does all these three. And let this person settle, train that person. Once you gain that confidence in that person, then that, that person will hire three different specialists for you.
[00:28:29] Corey Quinn: Yeah.
[00:28:29] Manish Dudharejia: That's how you can keep your course down. You can manage, you know, lower number of people.
[00:28:36] Manish Dudharejia: And then, you know, you are gradually building a team of specialists, which is built by the guy, you know, who trained you.
[00:28:42] Corey Quinn: Right. So keeping your costs down, less overhead, less people for you to directly manage, let them hire the team based on what the specialists that are needed to replace or buy back their time, if you will.
[00:28:55] Corey Quinn: I think that makes a ton of sense. Certainly reflecting on my career that, that, that mirrors a lot of what, what we've done. And I think that's, that's great advice. Thank you for sharing that.
[00:29:04] Corey Quinn: So looking back on your, your business now, 12 years in. What were some of the big milestones you've already talked about in 2018, 2019?
[00:29:14] Corey Quinn: Focusing on the agency space, let's say from 2019 to to, to till today to 20 20, 24. . We're in May, 2024. Yeah. What are some of the big milestones between those years?
[00:29:30] Manish Dudharejia: The biggest is back then we were just 40 to 50 people. So now we are like, you know, 5X size of team, which is 200 people. I was working like. I was In business, you know, I was doing pretty much like sales.
[00:29:45] Manish Dudharejia: A lot of, I was involved a lot in operations, literally every function of the business. The biggest milestone is like, you know, I freed up my time literally from, I removed myself a one and a half year ago. And by building the right team and everything, that's the biggest milestone. The second thing is like.
[00:30:03] Manish Dudharejia: Obviously the team like Fi X also, we pivoted our business model. Uh, we pivoted to recurring revenue business model in late 2019 and a hundred percent from 2021 actually. So our a hundred percent business model is recurring revenue right now, and we are doing like multi seven figure in annual recurring revenue right now.
[00:30:25] Corey Quinn: So let's talk about the, the, the leadership team where you went from being heavily involved in the operations, working in the business to hiring a leadership team, or maybe grooming a leadership team so that you could be separate from the day to day option operations. What were some of the, like, what, what are the functional leaders in your organization and did you hire them from within?
[00:30:47] Corey Quinn: Did you hire from outside and how did that, how did you end up building that team?
[00:30:51] Manish Dudharejia: I personally prefer, you know, our core leadership team, they have been with us since very long. Some of the people have been with us like eight, nine years. So although I did not know this framework, unconsciously, I hired people like that who are kind of like, you know, generalist and over the period of time, they become a part of our leadership team.
[00:31:07] Manish Dudharejia: Right. So I personally prefer not to hire completely new person in our core leadership team, just because, you know, someone will come up. from a ground level, they will be always able to understand the people's problem, right? So we, and that also gives a really good signal to your team that, Hey, you have a really, really great opportunities over here because if you have a capabilities, if you have a potential and you know how it is, right?
[00:31:34] Manish Dudharejia: No, we talked about that. You read a lot about novels. Wisdom as well. And so do I as well. So he always talks about play long term game with long term people. And that's how the framework I follow as well. So now people have a reason that, okay. You know, one of the person, you know, the persons in our team who is heading over operations, he used to be a designer nine years back.
[00:31:57] Manish Dudharejia: Then he turned into a developer project manager. He's now heading over operations of web dev. There is a You know, a lady who is heading our e commerce operations, she was actually a friend and developer nine years back, right? And the person, you know, there is a lady who is our VP of sales and operations.
[00:32:14] Manish Dudharejia: She was actually just doing sales six, seven, six years back. So I always love that thing, you know, well giving people opportunities who have been with us since long, because they have kind of like worked really, really hard. That's where, you know, you really want to make sure one of the things which I always advise that.
[00:32:33] Manish Dudharejia: And then I don't know if you read this novel's framework, which is principal agent problem. Have you ever read that framework or no? So he talks a lot about that. You know, majority of problems in the world are related to principal agent problem. So what is the principal agent problem is like you as an agency owner is a principal.
[00:32:51] Manish Dudharejia: Your team is an agent and your clients You know, I think like that they are the users, right? Now, usually as a principal, as an agency owner, your incentive, uh, your goal is to make sure your customers are really, really happy. But what if your agents, like your team's incentives is not the same? What is their goal is not the same, right?
[00:33:15] Manish Dudharejia: That's called the principal agent problem. So what do you really have to make sure that And incentives for you as a principal as an agency owner must be the same of your agent's incentives when you are delivering to client because technically you are, you know, hiring agents to put your clients work into their hands and they are going to the one that will execute work for your clients.
[00:33:38] Manish Dudharejia: Imagine if their incentives are not aligned with your incentive, which is like Uh, top notch level quality and great customer service. Obviously, you're putting your clients into people who are not happy. Right. And I give the best analogy. I use this example. Always think like that. Uber is a principle, right?
[00:33:58] Manish Dudharejia: As a rider, I'm a customer and driver is agent. Imagine, you know, Uber's incentive is not aligned with, you know, a driver's incentive. And then obviously as a rider, if I'm getting in an Uber, where driver is not happy, you know, what they are getting paid from Uber, I'm definitely not going to have a good experience.
[00:34:17] Manish Dudharejia: And probably next time I might start booking a lift, right? So you really want to make sure that. Not only your leadership team, but your team, their incentives are, must be aligned with your incentives.
[00:34:32] Corey Quinn: Okay.
[00:34:32] Manish Dudharejia: That in terms of like making sure they are getting really good paid. You have to have a very hard conversation that, Hey, are you happy working here?
[00:34:39] Manish Dudharejia: Right.
[00:34:39] Corey Quinn: Yeah.
[00:34:40] Manish Dudharejia: We kind of like make sure that everyone in our company must be happy. We are open door policy. If you are not happy working here. Just tell us either we'll fix our problem or we will let you go. If we cannot fix the problem, because we don't want to like kind of hold you into this, right. But at the same time, we wanted to make sure that you must be happy working here.
[00:35:02] Manish Dudharejia: Once we put our clients into your hands, you must provide them the top level services. And that is the only way. You know, you can grow and scale the business. You can have the highest level of customer service. So this is the one big problem, you know, as an agency owner, you should be constantly solving in your agency while growing, solving principal agent problem.
[00:35:25] Corey Quinn: And when you say incentives, that isn't always financial incentives.
[00:35:30] Manish Dudharejia: Uh, not financial, you know, it's an opportunity as well. Right. Let me tell you one thing, you know, as an agency owner, you always want to hire people who are smarter than you. Right. But then people who are smarter than you, why would they work for you if they are smarter than you?
[00:35:44] Manish Dudharejia: Right. So that's where you really want to make sure that you keep throwing new opportunities at them as well. You know, make them realize that it's not you. So this is the framework I use, which is again, you know, I learned from novel when you start find people who love to do what you hate to do. Right.
[00:36:06] Manish Dudharejia: Not literally you hate, but imagine, you know, as an agency, you, you are like, okay, I'm done with sales. Like one and a half year ago, I was like, I haven't done enough sales. It's, I still love sales. You know, I still love to go on a sales call, talk to my clients, but how to think practically, right? That's not how you can scale the business.
[00:36:25] Manish Dudharejia: But then there is someone who loves to do what you hate to do. Someone is there, out there, always in the world. Who loves to do sales. So you are making sure you are having the right person. When you handing over a particular responsibility, there is someone you hate to do oppression, but there is someone who loves to do oppression, right?
[00:36:45] Manish Dudharejia: Someone who, uh, loves to do project management. You hate to do project management. So always use this framework that find someone who loves to do what you hate to do. Then, you know, you will be able to hand over the responsibility to the right person. Now, Coming back to our discussion about the incentives.
[00:37:02] Manish Dudharejia: Now that person will also start hating what that person is doing at some point of time, because that person is really, really smart, right? So now you've got to make sure that the wheel keeps spinning, right? Right. So guess what? Like, you know, the guy who is heading over operation, he used to do project management at one point, we kind of like asked him that, Hey, you create your replacement, you find someone you can, now he's managing the team of project managers and he's more responsible for delivery.
[00:37:33] Manish Dudharejia: The person who is our VP of sales and customer services. You know, she has done enough customer services and now she has like team of account managers, who is doing all the account management and customer service. Right. At some point, she will have a sales team as well. She already started having, building a sales team.
[00:37:48] Manish Dudharejia: And then now she will focus more on other part of the business as well. Right. So it's not, this framework shouldn't be going with you. It should keep spinning with your team as well. So incentive is not about the financial. Obviously, that's the most important, but also you make sure that they keep seeing, okay, they are not only growing financially, but knowledge wise and opportunity wise as well.
[00:38:11] Corey Quinn: Yeah. One of my coaches, Dan Martell, he talks about this idea about that as the leader, part of your job is to understand the hopes and dreams of your employees and then to cast a vision big enough. That is inclusive of all of their hopes and dreams so that they can, they can experience that. And your job is to create the conditions where that comes to church, comes to life for them.
[00:38:35] Manish Dudharejia: That's so true. I feel like, you know, I like, uh, Simon's neck, what Simon's neck, you should always. know, you should not look people as a commodity to make money. You should always look money as a commodity to help people grow. Right? Yes. You always want to think like that. Uh, so if someone asked me what I do, and I always say I work for our people, I help them to grow.
[00:39:02] Manish Dudharejia: So your vision should be always like, You are helping your people constantly grow from a knowledge wise, financial wise, and eventually you will end up growing because that will be a byproduct.
[00:39:13] Corey Quinn: All right. Well, I've just got a couple more questions for you. This has been great.
[00:39:17] Corey Quinn: I know we can talk forever, but I'm curious your perspective now, having gone through the generalist approach for many years, becoming clear that you wanted to specialize and become an expert in serving digital marketing agencies as a white label partner.
[00:39:32] Corey Quinn: Now, having done that for a number of years, What's your perspective on the risks of being in only one vertical market? Are there risks involved as a business owner? And, you know, how are you managing that risk?
[00:39:44] Manish Dudharejia: Yeah, no, that's a really, really good point. You know, we think about it like with all this AI disruption is going to happen, right?
[00:39:51] Corey Quinn: Yeah.
[00:39:51] Manish Dudharejia: What if someone is going to build tools where, you know, the websites will be built? In like minutes, like SEO will be disrupted. And what are we going to do? Right? We only know one industry, but you always think like that when you know the industry really well, you can always come up with a solution, which you never thought of because you have that compounding leverage of that.
[00:40:15] Manish Dudharejia: So one of the. A disadvantage is like, you know, the economical situation, how the economical situation and circumstances will change the industry. That's the one thing. But as long as you, I always feel like that, you know, if your business, you know, a Paul Graham, Y Combinator founder always talk about that.
[00:40:37] Manish Dudharejia: When you are in a startup industry, startup world, right? If you can sell your product, even in the time of recession, you know, if you, as long as you have a great product, even you will, you know, go through the recession, right? So as long as you have a great team and great service, and you know, you will navigate through those kinds of times.
[00:40:56] Manish Dudharejia: I, I think, you know, the only advantage, only disadvantage, Is kind of like the unforeseen circumstances or situations or events which will happen outside of your control, right? At that time, you know, but there is always, you know, crisis always create new opportunities, right? And that's what we witnessed during the COVID time as well.
[00:41:18] Manish Dudharejia: So. As a, because I'm more optimistic, even I'm pessimistic. I'm very cheerful, pessimistic person. So I always think like that, that if there will be an AI disruption, probably we will be the one we'll be making a disruption, right? We'll think, start building tools like that. So that's the only advantage.
[00:41:35] Manish Dudharejia: Disadvantage is that, and when you have a large which is total addressable market. I think you always look at that, you know, when your time is really, really high, then you will always find the solutions around that. Yeah.
[00:41:49] Corey Quinn: But I liked, uh, I liked the, the, the, the frame of it's, it's better to be a specialist in a vertical market because you become an expert in helping them to solve problems.
[00:41:59] Corey Quinn: Their problems will evolve and because you understand their, their perspective and their business and you help them to, you know, let's say grow, uh, or do marketing. You're the best position to help them to figure out the next best tool because you're the marketing expert who is also an expert in their business.
[00:42:16] Corey Quinn: So I think that you're, you're positioned very well.
[00:42:19] Manish Dudharejia: Yeah. I, I, I always think like that, right. You know, there are like so many fishes in the ocean and then you can go off to literally every fish. And, but now you decide to go after a specific fish. And we know like, you know, 70 percent of the art is water.
[00:42:38] Manish Dudharejia: Then you can imagine how many fish is out there, right? And then how many specific fish is out there. So that's how you think. And that helps you to be focused. And if you, if you are an opportunist, and if you know your industry really, really well, like you said, our world is never going to be a problem for you.
[00:42:58] Manish Dudharejia: There will be always problem. If AI will be there, we will run into a new problem, right? Exactly. Then you, you can always, you know, as long as there will be a problem, there will be an opportunity. That's right. Regardless of the industry you are into.
[00:43:11] Corey Quinn: Yeah. And, and, and, and the world needs specialists to be able to provide outstanding value in those times of need.
[00:43:17] Corey Quinn: Last two questions. For you, what would be your parting advice? Let's say for your, the, the 2018 Manish who was struggling as a generalist and they're trying to grow. What advice would you have for your younger self or for maybe an agency founder who is on this episode right now, listening to you, they want to create the life that you've created, which is fantastic, you know, what advice would you have for them?
[00:43:43] Corey Quinn: You know, in, in, in helping them to scale up and get to the next level.
[00:43:47] Manish Dudharejia: Think like building the right team. That's the most important thing. You know, play a long term game with long term people. That's the most important thing. You are always thinking about your team, not just thinking about you, your growth.
[00:44:00] Manish Dudharejia: So that kind of like, you know, keeps them motivated. Right. Second thing about that, like be obsessed about freeing up your time. Right. Do not get married to your work, you know, for a, for a while you might feel like, okay, I'm handing over responsibility to someone. So you have to literally stay away from making this and you have to take a backseat and put someone in the, you know, front set.
[00:44:25] Manish Dudharejia: Yeah. Some of the decisions they might be making. Wrong decisions, but that's okay. You know, that's how they will learn as well. Otherwise, you will never be able to get out of that. So you have to literally say no to a micromanagement and some of the things like, you know, which you really have to ignore as well, because you are being you, right?
[00:44:45] Manish Dudharejia: The people who are working with you, they will be doing a lot of things the way they want. And as long as you are going in the right direction, you know, it should be fine. The other advice I would give is like, you know, I call it like, you know, a lion framework. So rest, you know, kind of like rest, sprint and repeat.
[00:45:05] Manish Dudharejia: Right. So as an, I mean, as an agency owner, you know, we always struggled. There are days where you don't feel absolutely productive. And at the end of the day, you feel like regretting that. Okay. You know, I wasn't productive at all, but You have to understand we are not designed to work like nine to five, Monday to Friday, right?
[00:45:24] Manish Dudharejia: So you always remember the lion framework. You only work when you are, you know, inspired and then rest and repeat, right? So right now I still do like 18, 20 hours of work, but only the days when I'm inspired probably two, three days. And then there are days where I don't do anything when I don't feel like doing right.
[00:45:43] Manish Dudharejia: So take it easy, you know, find your A really, really hyper productive time and make sure you are doing those kind of your high productive work when you are inspired and don't feel regret when you, when there are days when you don't feel productive, it's okay, you know, just take some time off and that will actually help you to come back with more energy and you will be more, you know, coming up with more ideas.
[00:46:07] Manish Dudharejia: So those are building the right thing and being obsessed about freeing up your time to be productive. We'll absolutely unlock the next chapter.
[00:46:16] Corey Quinn: Beautiful. Love that. And then rest, sprint and repeat the lion framework. And that's what
[00:46:21] Manish Dudharejia: like novel speaks a lot about as well. Yeah.
[00:46:24] Corey Quinn: I love that. Last question.
[00:46:26] Corey Quinn: What is your motivation?
[00:46:28] Manish Dudharejia: I think my, honestly, my motivation is the people, you know, when I, See, uh, what keeps me up and going every single day is like seeing people, helping people to grow. That's what keeps me always going and helping our clients to grow. That's what kind of keeps me motivated that, okay.
[00:46:52] Manish Dudharejia: And the, the thing which keeps me going always that there is, there are a lot of problems out. There is a lot. And there's a lot of things to do and it kind of keeps me going and inspired and, you know, going after that. Right. I mean, we haven't like it's been only 200 people and 200 clients and there are so many people out there are so many agencies out.
[00:47:15] Manish Dudharejia: So it's kind of like, you know, endless opportunities. So that kind of keeps me always going.
[00:47:21] Corey Quinn: Beautiful. I love it. And he's, thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing your wonderful journey with us, your wisdom, the highs and lows and uh, everything in between. So thank you very much. Appreciate it.
[00:47:36] Manish Dudharejia: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on this. It was, uh, it was fun talking with you.
[00:47:41] Corey Quinn: That's it for today. I'm Corey Quinn, and I hope you join me again next time on the deep specialization podcast. If you received value from the show, please go to apple podcasts and leave us a review. Thanks. And we'll see you soon.
