Preeti Suri, founder of AdventureTripr and TripGenie, talks about building a company in the age of LLMs, how her body has signaled to her about burnout, and the signs that tell her when she needs to spend more time with the family and her son. Kahran and Preeti also talk about connecting with people very different than you, how to use different leadership styles, and ideas for other brown women looking to raise money for their startups.
As a founder, you have to learn that taking care of your health is not separate from building your company. Your body is the vehicle for everything you're trying to accomplish.
Women founders face a unique challenge: they're often told to be more aggressive while simultaneously being penalized for not being soft enough.
So I'm the founder of Adventure Tripper, which is a global marketplace for curated multi-day trips with vetted local guides. We are a mission-driven company wanting to make active travel in the nature accessible for everybody, whether it is folks who do not have the time or the community to do these trips with.
So we take a lot of pride in hand-holding folks and being able to go on these adventures and getting the confidence to be able to, let's say, climb up Kilimanjaro or just go to a sailing trip in Croatia. So that's what we do. And I'm also a mountaineer, a mom, and I'm an ex-investment banker and a
consultant holding an MBA from INSEAD and a chartered accountant by training. So I was talking to a friend of mine who was visiting over the weekend, actually from Seattle, and he was sharing with me that he's been at TikTok for a couple of years, I think maybe about a year now. And he's like, I'm basically working not that much and I'm being paid a
ton and it's like, he's not super happy. He's okay. Right? Like he's very pleased with how much money he's making. But like, and it was just interesting.
So where we were ending up is that he felt there was a number, right? That when he, we kind of ended up talking about it was like in the low single digit millions that like once he got to that number, he would feel comfortable financially to say, now I will go out and chase my passion. Was it a similar thing for you?
Whereas like you had to feel financially secure enough and then you did it or? That's a good point because that was a point in the, in consideration as well. We just moved from London to Seattle. We were buying a home and so another mortgage and being able to deal with that on single income, single income lifestyle would take a hit.
And I was on an expat contract in London, so, you know, two solid income. So it would have been a lifestyle hit. So that was definitely a consideration. I think another reason why I was able to take that risk was because I enjoy investing, I always invested, um, since the time I was in my mid twenties.
So I had the assets and the properties that I invested in as a cushion, which allowed me to take that risk. And also I feel I was privileged because my husband has a solid well-paying job. So I think I was at that point in time in my career where I didn't have as much financial stress, although we, the lifestyle absolutely takes a hit, right?
And I have a mortgage. We still have to think about it, child's expenses and everything. But I did have those cushions and the privilege of, you know, a spouse who, um, who has solid income to fall back. So now the follow-up, so now knowing what you know now, do you feel like you wish
you had taken it earlier or do you think like you would, I don't know, do you feel like you needed to build the financial cushion you did? You know, it's, I don't know who I was talking to the other day and I said, just like you're never ready to get married or you're never ready to have a child. Yeah.
Never ready to get a pet. I feel like you're never ready. And so yet it's never too late because you will have that regret of having not done it. So I feel like there's pros and cons, right? Kahran, if I had started early on, I probably would have been one of my, I would have,
would have had probably had a few exits by now. Interesting. You know, I had the talent and the energy I could have built and had an impact. I did not grow up in a context where people were building startups or startups who was even being, I didn't know about startups even in business school, right?
15 years ago, I did not think startups or entrepreneurship because I didn't, I grew up in a context in a culture where our parents did jobs, the same job for 30 years. Typically government jobs or banks or teachers and we were not exposed to that. That was not an option we ever saw entrepreneurship, especially in Hyderabad. I don't come from Bombay or a Delhi, right?
The bigger cities in India. So it was never so much that even business school, it was about what would be a good paying job, which will help me pay off my education loan and support my family and my sibling. And, you know, so that was the mindset. And I would have loved to, I think I start right after INSEAD, if I didn't have those financial
pressures back, but it was after my MBA at INSEAD that I started investing and then I was more financially comfortable. So I made the decision later. I feel like this would pros and cons, you would have learned a lot of other things early on. And you'd be a lot more mature at building businesses. But at the same time, starting at five years ago, I had all the experiences because I had
worked in so many different businesses, so many different companies. I had the exposure and the confidence. I knew what I was doing, a lot stronger intuition because which is rooted in all the past experiences that I had. So I have a lot more confidence, a lot of resilience. You know, the confidence to be able to adapt like pandemic happens, doesn't faze me.
I know I can deal with it, right? I can, that confidence comes from having done whatever I did. And I feel like consulting accounting were very solid foundational skills, which helped me to make sure I was building a financially viable business. It was hard to fundraise for a travel startup in the middle of a pandemic,
but I had the confidence that I could make it work commercially because of the foundation I had of being an accountant, an auditor, and a consultant. So I think it can, yeah, you could do it. Interesting. It's interesting what I heard you say though, because it sounded like what you were saying was that there's a set of skills that you have today
that make you feel confident in your ability to make choices as an entrepreneur, which is not so much that saying that you feel like the anxiety of finances is like being saved from that anxiety is what has really helped you. It's more that it feels like you're telling me that's the skills you built than maybe the financial question helped. I don't want to diminish it.
Yes. I think that is always just a secondary thing. The primary is the conference and the skills. I know what I'm doing and I know what I'm doing is right to have a conviction when you talk to 50, 100, 200, 300 investors and advisors, everybody tells you different things. But you have a conviction that to stick to what you are thinking is right, what you are doing is right. Again, it's again a spectrum.
My early days, I was probably not as sure, but five years down the line, I know what I'm doing. So it's just you grow, you learn whatever. Maybe that would have happened if I'd started earlier. It would have happened earlier as well. Who knows, right? Do you think you could point to an example of something where you feel like you were looser in certainty and now you feel that Christmas has come over the last five years?
Maybe it's like in the business, maybe it's with yourself, but just to have an example of that. Yes. So I think because there was lots of when we started and the pandemic happened. So whether, so for context, right, I was not someone who was coming from the travel industry. So everything was based on what I was seeing, what I was researching, what I was reading,
what people were telling me as I was meeting. So I was building my knowledge. So everything had was a question mark. Is this the right thing to do? Like when the pandemic happened, everybody only sold international, nobody was selling us domestic trips. We were one of the first ones. I remember in fact, Richard Banks, the father of modern adventures,
said, you're pioneering domestic, go after it. Also that advice helped. And then after having done it for 18 months and I realized without external funding, it's not the most commercially viable thing to do. Even though REI decided to shut down international go only after domestic, I knew because of my solid finance, you know, grounding that that's probably not
the most commercially viable. I have to have a little more, it's because it's a, it's a low volume low. The cost of issues is low dollar value. The cost of doing business in the US is a lot higher with the cost of commercial permits, cost of guiding cost of financial commitment to hold a property, whether or not you sell that trip, you know, just the cost of doing business so much higher
and the willingness of the people to pay for something domestic when there's so many resources available at your disposal to go do it yourself. You know, so there's a lot of things. So commercially, it wasn't very viable in my mind, whereas internationally, you wet a guiding company, you upload a trip, you sell that over and over. We went from average dollar value $500 where we can get away for a family of four to
1500 person for one spot on a trip, you know, and now we're at $2,500 or even higher, right per person dollar value. So economically, commercially, it didn't make sense, but again, is this the right thing to do? Should we focus on international? And that's where I'm relying on, you know, my training in strategy and business strategy, which is my strong suit, but also the advice from others, like again, you know, Richard and others who were advising me at
that time in terms of is this the right thing to do? So at that time, I had a lot of questions around, is this the right thing to do? A distribution nobody sells. We've seen most consumer marketplaces do B2C first, whether it was Amazon or Uber or Expedia and then go off for B2B. I was flipping it on its head to say, I'm going to go B2B first to unlock B2C eventually. So these are very fundamental things which I was doing very differently. And I was
reading, I would read, I would hear podcasts, you know, and I could probably, you know, show you my books every, this is all that I started reading the first year when I was reading the second year, the third year I was reading about scaling. So it's, I was reading, you know, how to build a product and zero to one and second year reading how to market it, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, the third year I'm reading how to use scale. So I was teaching myself and now I feel like,
you know, we made the right calls and it has held us in good stead. But that was with a lot of input, a lot of research and also talking to a lot of potential investors, you know, you learn what worked, what not, what they have seen work and what they have not seen, what were they questioning, what were they unsure of? Right. And now talking to the same folks, I can tell what somebody's saying is, is just their perception or actually makes sense, you know, because I've done it long
enough, I have seen enough travel companies enough startups, because again, in the startup, and they're going to corporate, you probably do two x three x of what you would typically do. So you're just soaking in so much as a sponge. So I feel like I have a lot more, not just experience, but knowledge. That makes a lot of sense. You mentioned it a couple of minutes ago, I don't mean to take you too far back, but I just wanted to highlight it. I think for most people when they would hear
that you went from $500 to 1500 per person, and then now maybe up to 2500 per person, that you went upmarket. And my sense is that's not so much what you did. Like you have there are luxury trips you're doing, there are upmarket trips you're doing, but also you're just you're getting more value, you're delivering more value and you're able to charge a higher price. I think that's that's a fair statement, right? Totally multiple trips, because that was a self guided trip,
you're driving on your own, it's a cell drive, it only through the combination that's a digital itinerary. This is an end to end experience. Absolutely. It's a complete shift in a business model, completely different product. Absolutely. And all of that needed that rethinking as to what is your product, what who's your customer, also targeting a completely different customer as well. This is everything included right from accommodations, meals, experiences, right, domestic
flights, everything. I would be right in saying that part of the sector of the market that you've kind of zeroed in on, it's not quite at the luxury level, like you are, you feel the gap is at the level below that. I would call it affordable, actually. Interesting. And do you feel like you had that certainty or that understanding when you started or do you? It's grown over time, right? So I started wanting to make it affordable, accessible. I saw the needs. I remember that word
a lot. Yeah, I wanted to do that because it's coming from a place of mission and it's a mission driven business still is. And I dabble with that question a lot of times as well. You know, how do I balance making a commercially viable versus staying true to my mission to make this accessible to folks, right? So I talked about that. I think that's something our glisters struggle so much to because so many of us are mission driven, you know, it's how do you balance those?
So I saw a big gap at that time in the most underserved part of the market in my mind was a market which wanted affordable trips really. So that's where we decided we want to play because nobody else was catering to that market over the years I've learned there's a reason why, right? If I had the external funding, I could keep catering to that because that needs a lot of volumes for you to be able to make enough to invest back in the business and grow to be able to
do good at scale really, right? And that is very hard to do without external funding because you have to first build a commercially viable business where you're making enough money to grow the business, right? So that's how we had to shift more towards B2B, more towards premium and we still continue to run community trips which are really affordable for, you know, black folks, for native folks and those are really trips at prices unheard of. We still make those accessible because we
know where to find that inventory, who are those suppliers? We still did not shut down that part of our business, but we started growing the more premium or affordable luxury. Higher margin. Business exactly, which is the bread which which pays for my team really, right? And which helps me grow and do more. That's what I feel like when we get to a scale, I want to now in my head,
the way I want to stay true to my mission is, you know, have impact at scale. And again, this is where I'm a big proponent of doing good business to be able to do good, right? If I'm able to do good business and grow and scale our business, then I want to have a non-profit which supports the folks who cannot afford these kind of trips to Canada, who I started this in the first place because I want to make it accessible. We're still making it accessible for folks who do
not have the time. There is so much burnout in the workplace. There's so much loneliness, right? And people do not have the time or do not have knowledge or do not have the community to go do this with. It's not they might have the financial resources, but they still face the barriers to access this. So we're catering to which is widened the, you know, the spectrum of who we are enabling this for. But being able to cater to the folks who only financially cannot economically
cannot afford these adventures. I feel like the best way to solve for that at scale is through a non-profit because that's very hard to make that a commercially viable business. It's never cheap enough. It's never good enough at that price. So I feel like that's where we want to invest into a foundation, build a non-profit to cater to that and do free events, free trips, which get funded differently or at cost. So that's kind of my vision eventually to be able to do that. But
we on the side continue to run trips for the marginalized. I see. And not so much, so much like you would make those like what you used to do, those digital downloads, as that as being your offering for that segment of the market. You are thinking that you would like to kind of still have a complete offering of a fund in a different way. Because again, that digital, you know, business again needs a lot more investment in the technology side of things for it to be
scaled by doing it humanly is again, not the most commercially viable business model, unless you have the resources to invest in technology and scale it that way. So I think again, we need to get to a scale where we have enough, you know, scale to be able to then widen go out for a wider market by doing digital self-guided itineraries. At this stage of the business with limited resources, we have to focus on what will help us get to the next. It's likely what you're building is far more
defensible because at the end of the day, you know, we live in the world of L.A. L.A. L.A. L.A. L.A. Like someone will be able to create a digital itinerary. It may not be as good as the one your team could create, but it may get them 60 or 70 percent of the way there. And then they're not willing to pay $600. Yeah. No, that's very clever. Interesting. So do you feel like I'm going to just come back to this notion of like kind of balancing this, this sense of kind of being moral
driven or like, you know, having like a purpose, mission driven, and then still kind of struggling with that commercial. So when you're having like your investor conversations, is that still like is I imagine, of course, it comes up when you're thinking about hiring people that you're kind of trying to understand if they're mission aligned with you. But how do you handle it when you're trying to get money from people? You want to get money from people, you know?
Yeah, I think this is where I've been fortunate enough to focus on it. It's a little function of the timing, right? Because the pandemic happened and we were forced to think about a business model first, build a self-sustaining profitable business first, that we can sustain and grow on our own, which gives us again the privilege of walking away when we think the investor who wants to invest in us is not mission aligned.
I am super picky in how we pick our team. I feel like that's what takes us forward. We have the best team. I think that's one of our biggest, you know, differentiators. We have an excellent team, but I'm equally picky in who we want to take money from.
We have walked away from money multiple times. So very, very picky about, you know, is this somebody who understands what we're building and is not just, yes, I mean, I understand you're in it for the money side of things. You know, venture capitalists want to make, want to see their invested capital grow and multiply. Absolutely. And we're able to do that.
But as long as I think travel is a business of trust, it is very important to build that right in the first few years and figure out what you want to be known for and known as and build that brand before you start, you know, just going after growth and scale. So just to keep you there for one more minute, though, tell me a little bit more about the scenario, right? So imagine you're in this meeting with an investor, you're realizing they're not mission aligned with you. Like, what do you do?
Like, do you still try and get something from it or do you try and like wind it down as soon as possible? Like, how do you? It's not very hard because that very many times comes across in how do they value you, right? At what terms do they want to invest in you? And this becomes very easy for us.
As hard as it is for female founders, we don't get fair terms because my experience has been that they know how hard it is for you to raise as a female founder of all the venture capital funding in the US. 2.3% goes to female founders. 0.8% goes to female founders of color as ridiculous as it sounds. It is true.
As I had a golden CV, what I have accomplished surviving a travel company through a pandemic, delivering the traction that we have one of the fastest growing travel startups and yet. So I'm a living statistic, right? So as ridiculous as it sounds, but I feel like and the experience has been this lot of people come up, say, we want to support female founders because they know it's hard for female founders to raise. But my experience has also been they try to exploit that situation. They know how hard it is for you to raise.
And that's why they try to exploit you on the terms. And I feel like this is a double its word because I'm an ex-investment banker. I know where we're valued by looking at comparables. How do you value a business? I was an investor before this break.
So I know where a fair valuation is looking at all the data. It's not just my perception or numbers. I'm cooking up, right? Looking at all the data, I know where it should be valued at what terms we should be raising money, right? So when somebody comes and tries to have that, I know.
So I'm not an idiot, you know, so I know that this is not the person I want to deal with, right? And then there are some who come and do absolutely praise the, you know, they come up with a number, which I know is absolutely on market. And they're being an investor and they want to still bring it in a couple of million dollars, which is absolutely fair because that is what you would do.
And that is what I would do as well to get the best possible deal. But you don't cut it into half. You know, that's what tells you about the values because it doesn't have to be the same mission. But there's enough indicators for where someone's values are. And I think we're in a position of privilege to be able to pick and choose, you know, people that we want to.
Because I feel like as important as it is to find the right co-founders to build a company, because that's one of the biggest reasons why companies fail. I think it's equally or even more important to have the right investors backing you. So yeah, and I think we have the privilege of having the option to say no and walk away. Yeah.
Do you feel like there is there like a generation now of like women investors or women angels? Because I feel like you are like in that second or third generation of women entrepreneurs. I'm so much right now. Absolutely. Because I think so many women have faced this and have looked at what who have been,
who have persevered and built their businesses, regardless, right? They want to support female founders. I'm seeing this every week. Are there any that come to mind for our female founder listeners that you would share and tell them to look at? So there is a group that I'm involved with personally as an angel investor now.
One is the F-bomb club. I remember they run, used to run a pitching competition called Pitches to Bitches. I was a Pitches to Bitches winner. Amazing. I love that.
And the founder, Megan McNally, tells me that, you know, it was that, it was that, that was a pivotal moment for them. Because they really wanted to fund me and back me, but they weren't to fund back then. But it's just the fact that they could not help me get funded, you know, ignited this movement or this inspiration to start a fund so that they could invest in female founders who was coming and pitching it, you know, this, this event that they organized. So they could actually make a difference than it just be a network and, you know, being share leaders for you, which also was amazing, but they are actually making an impact.
So I joined their very first group of angel investors and wrote my first check earlier this year. So excited. The second one, I mean, incredibly excited about is the Brown Girl Angels. And this was started by a lady who backed some amazing, you know, they see Brown women owned businesses like the Brown Girls Mag. magazine and then the Brown and then Sahajan and some of the other, you know, products and brands that I look up to being built by female founders.
And she was great at identifying these opportunities. So her name is Samparga V. Varma. And I am now, she's literally just this is one of the newer angel funds. She's still pulling together angels. So I'm joining forces with her and an angel investor in Brown Girl Angels.
Very cool. Yeah. So those two are what I, you know, shine the light on. Cause I think one day have felt this need to back amazing, amazing female founders. Cause there's all these stats that the female founders exit on an average one year earlier.
They, you know, deliver higher returns and, and despite that, they don't get the funding. So it makes a lot of commercial sense to investment female founders as well as investors. Also, I don't know if you come across the stats of how there's a shift happening in the wealth in the next, I think 20 or 30 years, women are going to be, there's a huge, and I don't remember the exact stats. There's going to be a huge transfer of wealth to women. There's a, there's a company called Portfolia, like portfolio, but with an A at the end.
And they, they started, I think it was during the pandemic, which when they, and they were very big on that, they were really just talking about that, that there's this generational shift underway where the men are dying, right? They're getting older, they're dying and their wives are living longer. And there's more women who are in control of their finances and they don't feel like investing is accessible. Yes. I'm not a huge fan of Portfolia.
Unfortunately, like I've just, I find that the way that they like handle their deals to be very frustrating, but I think the idea is very sad. And like, I think the generational shift is very much happening. Totally. And I think those women want to make a difference and they want to put their money very intentionally, you know, to support other women. And there's no reason why I am an ex investor.
I have the skills to do the diligence and invest in businesses. So there's no reason why I should not play my part in, you know, supporting other female founders. Would you, would you think about doing mentoring as well for others? You know, is that something you already do? I already do it, but I just have to be mindful about my time.
I mean, since the time I was a lot of them, you know, ladies who started their businesses afterwards, anytime they would reach out to me, I have never said no to any female founders who's reached out to me for guidance because there were many who helped me. And it's just, you know, paying it forward. I have so many that, you know, and I made close friends with them now and we're all a part of a community. Okay, I feel like anyone who has been listening to this will also have this question, but talk about your time. How are you, you have to start up your own child, you're mentoring also.
Are you very organized where you like, do you do 15 minute blocks for your day? Or like, are you someone who kind of, you know, things are going to accomplish? I'm definitely very, you know, organized and which is what gave me the conference to build a second startup. It was definitely a question again, but I thought really hard about it, you know, with still a young child and him needing me still. How old is your son?
He's turning nine soon. Oh, wow. So he's, yeah. Yeah, by the day. I really have been growing them both at once.
So he was like, yeah, very mindful. Yes. But I'm an early riser. My day starts at five AM, you know, so I'm an early riser. I can get a lot done very efficiently quickly.
But also I think one of my superpowers is channelizing others and is motivating and inspiring others. So motivating my team, finding the right people. So I think that helps me scale myself a lot more. So I am really proud of the team we have at Adventure Chipper. So maybe just give me a set.
So you have a couple of hours in the morning and then you, I imagine have to gather on to school, you're making, you know, breakfast and lunch. Yeah. Okay. So five to seven is when I do my calls.
I start my calls usually six to seven, five to six is usually, you know, I would do a workout or it's my time. Yeah, wake up. Yeah. Try and bed for a little while. Yeah, like I'm out.
But, and then my seven to eight is blocked because that's when it's breakfast as a family, getting the kid off to school. Eight o'clock is when my calls start again, nonstop. So eight to 12, those four hours again, I work with my team, get whatever needs to get done. And then 12 to one is again blocked. And this was an hour now that we're talking.
I go get a run in time for a break and then again, get a couple hours work done before the kid is back from school. And then if I'm taking him and we take turns, I have an equal partner, which is incredible, which is the only reason why I'm able to do this. Because I don't think if you have that sorted, you can really do this quick. So without, you know, your life falling apart, really.
We take turns the days when I'm taking the kid to soccer or his whatever class he has. So I would just cut circles around his soccer field, soccer field. Or that's how I get my exercise or workout in that I would, you know, run around the field or the trails nearby. So get my exercise in that way and then come back in six to or get work done. You know, if there is something I need to get done, I've done calls when I'm there or getting things done.
And then between six to nine is again, family time, dinner with family, another hour and a half to two hours. Sometimes calls. It's in the evenings that I usually meet without engineering product teams. Is there in the remote? In India or they are also part-time, have full time after they put their kids to bed.
They're starting their second shift really. So yeah, and that's kind of. Okay, so it's not, you're not strict about saying, okay, you know, the mornings are when I work on Adventure Tripper. And then, you know, if I work on, you know, stuff for Tripp Genia, you know, it's not like you're segmenting and saying, this is. Yes.
Other than your time with your family. You kind of let things. Other than yeah, Tripp Genia will probably happen over the weekends or the conversations that I'm having. Some of these meetings, like in the between four and six are going to be meeting potential co-founders meeting, you know, potential investors. So those are usually in-person meetings or testimonials for people I've met for our customers from Adventure Tripper.
So four to six is usually, you know, meetings in person is where I'm hanging or over the weekends. I do end up working a few hours over the weekends as well. And that's when I would do a trip. I see. Okay.
And then, and then something I think if you've heard some of our past episodes, Divya, I have talked a lot about. And I think some of our past podcasts, I guess I've talked about, but like, what do you do when it doesn't, you know? We're like, damn it. I didn't do this work. Right. And I like feel shitty about myself and you want to just like lie on the couch. Like, do you have thoughts?
How do you get out of those moments? And this is again, you know, you get better over the years, just like you get better at, you know, a lot of things running startup. And I think five years in, you get better at it. You just realize that there are definitely going to be days, especially if Monday and Tuesday have been uber efficient, then Yeah.
This day will be a slump, you know, I have put in so much. And you don't get mad at yourself? You're. Yeah, yeah, totally. I don't beat my, I need to beat my self up.
But now I've learned that this is natural and this is normal. And a lot of this learning happened. So my fourth year of my reading was when the body, because I had a hystic to me that has shingles. I'm like, at this age in my early 40s, when I, why am I getting shingles? And so I did a lot of reading on when the body says no, so many things, you know, on healing, on trauma.
I just, on burnout, you know, outlive. I did all of this was my reading, my fourth year of building the startup. And which taught me that that balance and pacing yourself is just so important. So I've been a lot more intentional about, you know, taking it easy on myself, focusing on my emotional health as much as I focus on my, you know, physical health, I make sure as regularly
as I get my, I'm focused on my fitness and what I eat, I make sure I get my sessions with my therapists in every month. I make sure I'm taking care of my emotional health as well. So just, you know, and spending time with family is what I've realized is that downtime that you need also to keep you going.
Cause otherwise that guilt, you know, it all just comes together. So I think that was a great- You could give maybe an example of like, if there's one that's not too private, but like one of where you felt like, you know, in the past you would have handled it in one way and now kind of, you know, since you're four, you're handling it differently.
Yeah. Last year was a big, I think life lesson for me, all those health issues, because it was running a hundred miles an hour, right? So the night before my surgery, and this was a big major surgery. And my son wouldn't talk to me.
We had a tiff, you know, I wanted him to do something, he wouldn't. So we had a clash and I remember bedtime and I went to put him to bed. He was not ready to talk to me. And then I finally said, baby, mama, maybe I'll come back after the surgery tomorrow. I'd really need to talk to you.
And that's when this kid starts crying, but everything comes out. And he's like, you don't hike with me anymore. You don't take me on your trips anymore. You do not know any kids in my school. You don't come to any events in my school.
You don't know any of my soccer, you know, buddies. And you don't come for my games as much anymore. So everything comes out in kids. That for me was a reality check. And now I will not miss this game.
If you want, I have to take him for a bike ride. And after me, he comes after me. I will prioritize that. Everything else happens because I'm a lot more efficient because mentally my head is in the right place.
And I don't have this guilt and I don't have. So I will do what it takes to spend time with my family, with my child, because that is my number one priority. And I feel like I'm so much at peace with myself. And I'm so much more efficient with my work time that I put in,
even though it is fewer hours than it used to be until, you know, before my surgery. Because I'm in a much better headspace. I make a lot better decisions and I'm a lot more efficient with whatever. Even if I spend half the time, I'm a lot more efficient. So will you sometimes have moments where you sit down to like work on something
and then you like, you stop and you're like, oh, I feel like I haven't seen my son. And then you'll just not work on it? Or like, how would you handle it? I wonder how does it manifest? No, so this is where, you know, the structure and the discipline and being organized helps
that I should have spent my quality time. When he comes back from school, I want to spend those couple hours with him, right? Whether I'm driving him, whether I'm playing badminton with him outside, taking him for a bike ride. Once I spend that, and I can see it in his behaviors, I'm good with reading those signals
where if he's irritable, he's actually, you know, shouting back about something. I know that he needs attention. He's missing that. And I'd reflect back, oh yeah. The last two days, I did, he did not get my attention because I had this pitching competition,
this come up and that come up, and I could not spend that time with him. So I've become much better at also having read all of this stuff last year, become much better at picking up those cues. And again, you know, working together with my partner between the two of us, like yesterday, where was I yesterday?
I was supposed to be at an event yesterday. So, so I made sure that my husband was, he was the one who took him out for a bike ride yesterday, you know, that one of us is spending that kind of quality time with him. Yeah. But then I might.
The other thing I feel like it's hard is when you run a company, you kind of have to do that for your employees too, you know, like they also need your soft time. That is so true. You know, every year I have lost people. I used to try and fundraise the last quarter every year.
And after I come out of it, I have always lost people. And they have told me things like we feel like, you know, where's our mommy? You know, we don't know what we're doing. We're so much because I would just fundraise. And they would feel it.
And I have lost some good people every time I come out of a fundraise. And that again, the change last year, because of the surgery, I feel like that was such a God's gift really like in my life, you know, that we all we check that I decided I'm not going to fundraise because I was left with very little energy after shingles. I'm like, I'm only going to focus on growing the business.
And I was with my team the whole time. And I saw the difference amount we wanted to raise. We just, you know, did that much sales. Wow. So just investing that energy in your team, in your business goes so much farther and
so much better emotionally, you know, time wise. And absolutely. So absolutely, my team feels it too. So I make sure we're a team of almost 20, even though now we're getting to a stage where, you know, we have the CXO level coming together.
We have a fractional CMO and we have a COO and they have their own orgs. I make sure I have a one on one, at least once in a month or once in a couple of months, even with the folks who are not, you know, reporting into me directly anymore. I make sure I have a. And how do you handle it for like really low skilled roles?
Or are those, you're contracting those out a little bit? Because something I struggled with when I was running a company in India was just like, you know, there's some people who are at, it was a harder for me to connect with. And it's just also there weren't as many opportunities, but they were also doing work that they had been very used to a different style of leadership,
like a very, very more like stick focused style of leadership, which wasn't my style. So it was very hard for me to kind of set expectations in a way that I was getting the results I wanted. I'm curious, do you have you struggled with this or you're not so much a challenge for you? Yeah, so I think like we're still early, but for example, it does happen, for example,
our interns, right? We had eight of them and I couldn't spend any time with them. And we had our sales director working with our interns, but I did make it a point to take them all show up for the graduation ceremony from the program that they were on, and they take them all out for dinner so that you know,
I love that you gave them a graduation. Their stories. And so they absolutely love that experience. And that's where I also figured what, you know, their life stories were, what their aspirations were.
And the ones who I could help with whatever they wanted with, I offered to help. And the ones where I saw potential, I had a one on one follow on sessions with a couple of them, you know. So, so yeah, so it will happen in different different amounts of time that I would spend, you know, but even that little amount of time makes a big difference to them.
So I make sure I do at least that with the folks who don't report it to me at all or are very, you know, junior and yeah, or just starting out their career. But I worked with all of them, right? When I started out five years ago, I was working with all the nine students in the community house.
I was looking to. Wow. I'm not stupid in quite a moment. I, yeah, I mean, I've worked with some really like young people. It's fun.
People are very enthusiastic, but it's a, there's a lot of hand holding sometimes. But that's what I enjoy, right? It is inspiring them and motivating them. But also, you know, I would cherry pick, and then it would be really a delight to see them shine with a little bit of motivation, inspiration, guidance.
So yeah. And what they were capable of and the ideas that they have. So I think he is finding the best and then cause then you are impressed with the ideas that they have. So like, yeah, stuff they come up with is brilliant.
Yeah. That's amazing. I feel we have talked about a lot of things. A lot. And none of, none of which you gave me heads up about.
I said pivotal moments in your life. I feel we've done some pivotal moments in your life. Oh, because the other stuff you gave me heads up about, I speak about all that all the time. So this was very refreshing. Yeah.
That's, that's I think what's kind of fun. That's what we really love to do because it's, it's, you know, the podcast is called thinking on thinking. And I think it's fun when we can kind of help people just understand people's thinking because they're so right.
There's so we make such crazy decisions sometimes. Or let me say that differently. We make decisions I think feel impossible for other people sometimes. And I think when you understand how people make them, it makes it so much more accessible, which is just really fun.
They might have been.