Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Sean Steele: G’day everyone, and welcome to the ScaleUps Podcast where we help first time Founders learn the secrets of scaling so they can fulfill the potential of their businesses, make bigger decisions with greater confidence, and maximise the value and impact they can have in the world. I am your host Sean Steel and my guest today is Hitesh Kumar Madan, one of the three directors at TechForce Services, arguably Australia's most winningest. I don’t know if that's actually a verb, but let's use it today. Winningest and fastest growing technology services companies and one of my favourite clients. How are you today, Hitesh?

[00:00:30] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Excellent, mate. Thanks, Sean, for getting us to the podcast and really feel incredible being a part of your podcast. So, thanks for getting us in here.

[00:00:39] Sean Steele: Oh, my pleasure. Well, I guess a bit of context is set up for people both, how I know you and a bit of background on TechForce. So, we've been working together for two years now, so I provide guidance and mentoring and advice for you and your two co-directors Vamsi and Sathis on a very regular basis. And we cover a whole lot of ground in our conversations from really strategic stuff to really practical, detailed stuff. And fundamentally, I've been helping you develop strategy, optimise the business model, support you either execute the strategy and help you build the foundations of a business that's going to support the rapid growth that you guys are experiencing, so that you can fundamentally fulfill a purpose and the potential and the impact of your business, which is very exciting, what I absolutely love doing and it's been a real privilege to do that. So that's a little bit about sort of how we know each. But interestingly for the audience, if you listen to the intro I've been saying for about a year now since I started the podcast, that I do three things. I interview Founders who successfully scale, I interview experts who've got value to add to Founders who are striving to scale, because they see patterns and things. But finally, that I follow a group of Founders as they strive to scale, like a fly on the wall style experience interview, maybe five founders, something like that, probably three times a year, but over the next three years, so that you can actually follow along with their journey or the highs and lows and that that will be sort of shared openly. And you are in fact the first Founder I'm going to be doing that with who is very much still growing and scaling. So, how do you feel about being my Guinea pig today, Hitesh, you are number one.

[00:02:09] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Not really the Guinea pig, Sean. I would say it's really, really a privilege to be the chosen one, I would say. And having worked with you for nearly two years now, it's been kind of a part of our extended family, to be honest. So been really, really happy that you chose us to be a part of your first podcast in this journey. Yeah.

[00:02:32] Sean Steele: Thank you mate. Well, look, if I had half an hour, I could probably get through all the awards that you guys win. Like, I don't know many other companies that win as many awards as you guys, but maybe a bit of context in the company, you guys are a Salesforce consulting partner. You help bridge the gap fundamentally between like a company's vision and their ability to execute. It's all about sort of right systems, doing the right things to enable their success. That's consulting, its advice, its applications, its integration, its migrations, its health checks. Its a whole bunch of things. And from a customer point of view, you guys have some real industry expertise in education, in financial services, in public sector, in healthcare and recruitment. And that means you have a lot of depth of knowledge in how to optimise Salesforce, sales cloud, the marketing cloud, service cloud, experience cloud, but then also the industry clouds now, education cloud and public cloud and financial cloud and Health cloud. I feel like I'm floating on a cloud. I feel like I should have a carpet and some fantastic wind beneath my wings. So, is that a reasonable summary of what TechForce is doing?

[00:03:41] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Yeah, absolutely. I think, what we have specialized in Salesforce application customisation platform, extending value to customers while they are doing their digital transformation. So, we have been building those building blocks for them. Even in fact, one of the very recent examples was one of the customers who was actually working in the FinTech space and they envisioned a product for themselves, so that they could work with their advisors and they could use the Salesforce platform in that parlance. So, we had a fantastic journey with them. So basically, what we are working on is not only impacting the lives of our customers, but how they are also impacting the life of lives of the end users. That really gives us a really, really good value that we can derive for any of the stakeholders.

[00:04:37] Sean Steele: Yeah. I love that. Because it's like, you know, because my business is all about fundamentally helping my Founders achieve their purpose and their potential impact. And that's exactly what you guys do, but you're doing it from a systems perspective to make sure that that can be enabled at scale. One of the things, just to quickly talk about the awards, I mean the number of awards that you guys have won before we started working together and since we started working together, Australia's fastest growing company, multiple times, fastest growing companies in Asia Pacific. ARN Innovation Awards multiple years in a row. The CRM fast 50, three or four times in a row, the financial review Fast 100, the technology fast 500, like list goes on and on and on. And today, given you have been winning so many awards, I am going to be unpacking with you a bit about how you've got there, you know, the things that have been contributing as a leadership team yourself and your co-directors to the staggering growth rates you guys have been achieving. The mindset you've been approaching it all with, the stuff that's been tough, you know, that hasn't always worked because every Founder on this Podcast knows that life is not easy as a Founder. You face a lot of difficulties, some things that don't work, some things go terribly, and some things are fantastic. And hopefully it'll turns out in the wash and continues on. So, lots of questions for you. So, let's jump in, maybe if you could just give people just a really short intro to the genesis of the business, you know, why it was started and what the vision and hope was for the business at the beginning?

[00:06:03] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Sure, Sean. I think, very simply put, we have always tried to solve, make complexity, or rather simplify complexity. That's what we have always been, and that's exactly what happened when I say the genesis of the company as well, and that's where I would want to extend the credits to my found founding partner, which is Vamsi. With this passion to go ahead and solve the challenges for the customers, customers would approach him and have a quick chat; Hey, look, here is what I'm facing. He's been running the developer group in Sydney for good, I would say seven, eight years now. He's one of the Hall of the Fame MVPs in the country. And that's where customers, when they approached him initially, he started as a freelancer. And, slowly and steadily it got into, hey, look, why don't I leave my comfort job and get in to serving the larger Ohana, which is the Salesforce community in terms of the customers, right. It took that leap forward, and when he took that leap forward, and that was, I would say, the genesis of TechForce Services as the organisation. Then along the way, you know, you find like-minded people like myself and my other partner. So, three of us then joined hands to bridge the gap while he was a technology focused guy, I was more of a sales and marketing kind of a person. We also wanted someone who could actually think through the vision, think through the long term. So, that's where we had our third champion joining in. So, that's how this organisation has been built to make sure we send them the foundation at the core and then grow on the pillars of our growth and the growth cycle that we achieve here.

[00:08:00] Sean Steele: And actually, it makes me realise that one of the things that's a real strength with the three of you is, it’s like 1 + 1 + 1 makes about 5 or 6 between the three of you. Like the, you all have very diverse skill sets. You know what they are. You don't double up on anything and where you have gaps, you do a great job in filling them with external experts or advisors or consultants or whatever it is that you need to, like you're aware of where your gaps are. But as a combined unit, you are very effective. So, you know, if I was ever doing a case study actually on successful business partnerships, I would put you guys up there because they're not easy to do, right? Like there's always tension. There's always, you know, everyone has different opinions about stuff and somehow you have to come to an agreement about stuff on a regular basis and be able to keep moving forward. And you've been doing very well in doing that. Can you, Hitesh, just give the audience a sense of, I guess the scale, you know, the size of the business now, where it was several years ago, just to help them get a sense of the journey that you've been on and where you are at today?

[00:09:00] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Oh sure. I think, we started in 2015, of course, as a one-man organisation or I would say one man army, right? Isn't it right to say? But yeah, today I think we have reached two level of around 80 people. Yeah, that's what it is. And in fact, not only just the number of the people, which is, which matters, I think it's about how productive the team is, how effectively they are delivering or bringing value to their customers. I think that is more important in my mind. You can always add masses, right? I can go to certain countries wherein I can have people and people and people joining me, but it's just not about the numbers. What we are more concentrating on is how each one of our team members is contributing to the value, not only to ourselves, but also making sure they are the impact players so that it impacts the customers as well. So, that's where we are.

[00:10:03] Sean Steele: And you've got a real key metric, which I know is on your website, which is your Salesforce customer satisfaction score. Because every, for people who don’t know about Salesforce, every time you've completed a project, your customers are rating the success on that project. And you guys have done well over a hundred projects from recollection, and you have a Salesforce CSAT of 4.9, is that right?

[00:10:27] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Yep. 4.9 out of 5, and we take pride in that because each and every project that we deliver, we actually not submit it to the customer. We submit it to the customer via Salesforce, right? It goes through them. So that's where it gets validated before even it gets publicised on the app exchange. So, we are really conscious of the quality that we need to bring onto the table, and that's where, not just about what the customers are speaking on the app exchange, it's also about the length of the customers who stay with us. It's like four years, five years, three years. Once we join hands with any customer, what I have realised is, not only they love us, we love them, but that's again, a two-way street. You can't just have one-way street. And we also enjoy that engagement, building that flexibility across in every aspect.

[00:11:25] Sean Steele: Well, I want to bring this into my next question because one of the challenges every services business owner faces is scaling quality. You know, to your point, you can add more people, but if your quality of delivery goes down, which can happen very easily, especially you guys are growing, I think you grew almost 90% last year, which is pretty, that's stellar growth, keeping up your service quality becomes just a harder and harder task, the faster the business is growing. So, can you talk to me about, I guess a couple of the things that you think have been real standouts, whether they've been decisions or strategies that you feel like have really enabled your growth? But as part of that, could you also talk to me just about the quality side and how you've thought about trying to maintain and protect that reputation you've got for quality?

[00:12:14] Hitesh Kumar Madan: I think, the quality side, it flows from the top, is what I would say. Okay. And the reason why I say so is because, with Vamsi himself being a technology-driven person, you can imagine the situation wherein we recruited our first person, which passed the quality standards which he had. And that just flew down. And that's a domino effect that came in in the entire journey. But at the same time, I rather than giving the credit across to that, but it's fundamentally people, not only we choose the person with the right attitude and attribute, but also equip them in their learning paths. We encourage them to consistently build and develop their own skills. Because if we do not do that, or if we do not equip them, and not equip the teams to learn consistently, they would not be technologically advanced. Salesforce comes up with every new solution every, like quarterly or a, you know, it just is there, right? It's a constant evolution. So, we also need to constantly work with our teams in their development journey. So, that's where quality automatically continues, or we have kind of embedded it into our process. So, you keep rewarding teams who are going ahead, keep supporting them who are really, you know, learning is one of the skills that we look at. Are you an avid learner? If you are, perhaps you have an entry path into TechForce. If you are not, sorry, mate will look at some other.

[00:14:01] Sean Steele: Well, you know what's really interesting for Founders who have no technology element, or no major technology element for the business. One of the nice things about technology is because it's constantly being updated and because there's constantly new things coming out.

[00:14:12] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Yeah.

[00:14:12] Sean Steele: The professional development path is almost sort of natural. What I see as a big risk is, services businesses where there's no push. You know what I mean? Like, it's not a mandatory, you need to know this thing the next time. A building, a professional development culture is absolutely critical because you are essentially selling the cumulative knowledge and skills and talent of those people right now, but it's aging every day. So, if it's not getting better, you are not getting better and you're starting, your asset fundamentally is starting to age, which is a real problem. So, that's been about how you've been sort of scaling quality; both, people and their professional development. What are other things that have really you think have been a key to your growth rate?

[00:14:58] Hitesh Kumar Madan: I think what we have also consciously done is divided the business also into three key parts, right? We started with projects, which was called to us wherein we were delivering, and we had the delivery ownership to bring the outcomes that customer wanted. Second thing, slowly we started was to look at the people side of the business as well, wherein we not only…Sometimes customers came back and said; Hey, look, we don't want the delivery ownership to get passed onto you because we have our own project managers, we have our own delivery managers, and we know our business better. And which is fair. So, can you help us on the staff augmentation side? So, we kind of, you know, expanded on that front. So, that's second piece that we…

[00:15:44] Sean Steele: So, they needed a Salesforce architect or a systems administrator or a developer or something, and you were like; Hey, well, why don't we help you find a great person and we'll place them with you? And they sort of work to the client. Is that how that typically happens?

[00:15:57] Hitesh Kumar Madan: In a way, yes, but fundamentally, rather than just finding a person and giving them, because we are a consulting organisation, primarily, right? So, that's something which is our bread and butter. So, which is where we anywhere identify the quality, which is what customer always looks out for. They want quality. Moment when they came to us, that messaging and the clarity was; Hey look, I'm not to undermine the job that our recruitment colleagues do, but here is the value, what we do is we bring quality from the consulting expertise that we need to work on. Which is where… we basically, I would say send the person to a customer who we would hire.

[00:16:48] Sean Steele: Right. Yeah. Okay.

[00:16:49] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Okay. If I can hire him, I can send it across your way. Otherwise, I would not send.

[00:16:52] Sean Steele: Yeah. It's not a body shop and a sort generic recruiter.  Otherwise, you're not adding any value. Yeah.

[00:16:57] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Exactly. So that's the key difference that we brought onto the table, which is where customers did love that part of the engagement because it saved their time. They would've spent even two… there had been instances when they spent two months, three months identifying the right resource, but when they contacted us, or we contacted them; either way, within two days, job done. Sorted, right? That's the quick outcome. And then the trust was so strong, like they still are with us. And this, I'm taking a reference of a customer who we started say little over three years ago. That's the belief that they build into TechForce after giving us a chance. And we enjoy both sides of the engagement that way. Customers enjoy our engagement. We enjoyed the engagement with them.

[00:17:45] Sean Steele: Yeah. Okay. What about the mindset? Because I think that's something that's easily overlooked. You know, fundamentally, all of your decisions, all of your projects, all of your strategies start with how you think about your business, how you think about your market, how you think about the opportunity. What do you think is been important in the mindset, and I'm interested as to how that interplays between the three of you. Like, does one of you push the other ones more than the other one? Like, you know, does somebody play the black hat because someone needs to play the risk analyst, but somebody else is the blue-sky thinker? Like how does that… tell me about the mindset and how you think that's influenced in a three-way group of directors, how that's played out?

[00:18:32] Hitesh Kumar Madan: I think I would say we've been the luckiest group of people, I would say. Okay. And why I say so is, anything which does not resonate with me might resonate with other people. And actually, that difficult situation becomes an opportunity because we all three have different perspectives. And that's actually has stood really, really well with us. And we have made sure, if I didn't see something as, oh hey look, that's an opportunity, maybe the other two directors did it. Or if they did not see, maybe we two saw it. That's how it has actually stayed strong because the overall vision for the organisation, overall goal is common. Let's grow, let's scale, by not again, looking inwards that; Hey, look, we want to scale tech. No, no, no, not really. That will automatically come in. What value are we bringing it to the customer, right? How are you going to help him? Is it worth helping him on this side? Or not only worth helping him, how does he see the value that we bring onto the table? So, we have kept customer as our top priority. And no brainer, but just a question of making sure everyone does it, but where you miss out is perhaps on the execution. So, we have consciously made sure that it is executed well. And that's where we bring that key difference. And some of the remarks which have stayed from the customer side with us is while they've worked with many other partners in the ecosystem, but what they enjoyed with us is the flexibility, the scalability, the engagements that we build. And again, coming in from me, might sound like as a sales pitch, but not really. This is exactly what our customers have said, hand on heart, that's exactly what has happened. So yeah, that keeps us going, all three of us.

[00:20:25] Sean Steele: Well, I think even, you know, you have a brand promise to customers and I know because I'm in a privileged position where I get to work with you, your strategy and your business model. And I know that one of your brand promises is actually around flexibility and that might sound simple to people, but in an organisation where you're supplying people and you are managing sort of human resources, for want of a better word, you know, flexibility is not often something that you can offer. It's very difficult to offer because sometimes it comes at a real cost to you. And I know that your approach as a team is to essentially do whatever's required. You know, flex it up and down. Hey, if you need to, rather than… like I know a lot of technology consulting organisations because I've dealt with lots of them. I've done some very big, you know, half million dollar plus projects where you sort of get this, they're keen to get a minimum amount out of you every single month as a retainer. They don't want it to go down whatsoever, and you get all the song and dance, razzle dazzle up front, you get all the directors and all the senior people's attention. Then all of a sudden, you're dealing with the junior burgers, you've got the people who know absolutely nothing and until there's a problem, you can't get the attention of anyone senior. And I know that's exactly the opposite of how you guys are. You're like; Hey, if you need less from us next month, then you need less from us next month, then we'll take it on now, our books to change to our resourcing to match what it is that you need. And I just think that's really wonderful for a customer. But is that difficult to manage as an organisation?

[00:21:56] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Frankly speaking, we don't find it difficult at all. And the reason why we feel so not only again, as us, but even as team, that's the learning that has stayed with us. Having worked with large corporates, large enterprises ourselves, we know where the gaps are.

[00:22:15] Sean Steele: Being on the other side. Yeah.

[00:22:17] Hitesh Kumar Madan: We are on the other side. So that's where you exactly liberate that; Hey, look, Mr. Customer, this is what is required, and we value that and we will make sure that it is available for you. And sometimes even there are tough decisions there taken quickly, and that's where the agility comes into. And customers love that because it helps them, it helps us. And in a market like Australia or any other market that we operate on, at the end of the day, it is the trust which becomes the most important asset, and we strive, we make sure that we build that with not only our people, but also with the customers, by virtue of doing the right things.

[00:23:02] Sean Steele: Let me ask you one more question on mindset because I really want to chat to you about some of the tougher stuff, you know, the things that you guys have really faced as a team.

[00:23:11] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Do I need to be scared?

[00:23:13] Sean Steele: No, no need to be scared. All good. We've recently gone through a what I call a StratEx process or the ScaleUps Roadmap process. So, you know, quick plug for next year I'm developing a course to take groups of Founders through that same process. But I've taken you guys through that process and the point is you develop a growth strategy, you optimise your business models, and at the end of it, you end up with a really clear strategy that's very communicable, and you end up with a really clear 12-month execution plan. My question is, when we were going through that process, part of that process is setting your ambitions for the next three years. So, sometimes that includes financial targets, usually it includes some quantitative, you know, you're trying to figure out what the size of your impact is going to be. And that of course, also turns into financials. But halfway through that process, you guys practically doubled what you thought you'd be able to achieve in three years. What made you change your mind in your thinking about how much further you thought the business could grow?

[00:24:14] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Interestingly, one of the very, very, key things that has stayed with us as three of us is openness. Right? Openness to what we don't know. We don't know. Correct. We might have done businesses for large enterprise as an employee and scaled them to 50 million, a 100 million. We might have done that, or we have done that in the past. But doing it for yourself is a completely different story. Completely. And then you realise, hey, look, okay, what exactly it is? So, it's like, you know, grass is always getting on the other side. You realise it once you're on the other side. But yeah, coming back to your basic question, what change that thought process was while we were trying to discover ourselves during that StratEx discussion, we started reflecting on; hey, look, why we are doing this, how we are doing it, what would be required to be done. I think it was about getting into the granular details of. And while you're doing your day job, as in trying to attract customers, go meet, talk to them, you sometimes miss that part of the story. So, which is where this StratEx discussion with you came in as a true mentorship and advisory to us, wherein we sat down, we reflected upon it after our initial discussions. Hey, look, why exactly are we talking about x? Why can't it be 2x? Let's reflect on it. And for all that matter, when we started looking at the larger numbers, which are actually publicly available to the market that we are in, we realised; Hey, look, no, let's stretch ourselves. Let's keep doing the right things. If we want to be a larger organisation or larger enterprise, we need to take these strides as well. Take that leap of faith from where we all started. Did we think in 2015, 2017, that will be to this side today? Perhaps, no. So, it's like with your experience, with your expertise, we could see that future in where we are, and that's where perhaps it was fairly easy to take that leap of faith. While it does leave a bit of anxiety, hey look, will we be able to achieve or not? It's like, as you had rightly said, it's an audacious goal that we had picked, but that's fine. That's what we Founders do, right? That's what we want to achieve.

[00:27:16] Sean Steele: When you set your goal or your goals, if you don't feel any sense of, you know, a bit of anxiety or like, I actually don’t know how we're going to do that. Like, if there's no sense of that, if you are completely paralysed, like there's absolutely no way that's going to happen. You've probably gone a bit too far, but if you look at the goal and you go, I know we've got that in the bag, I can do that, no problem. It's probably too little. And somewhere in between there, there's this cognitive dissonance, this natural tension where you go, oh geez, it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable writing that down. I think that's right in the sweet spot, you know, because it makes you stretch. You have to think a bit differently. And sometimes, in the absence of being able to actually step back and think about your business be forced to, you know, it's hard when you're a Founder, you are just in the business all the time. Like being forced to step back and having to really reflect on where you want it to go. It's probably one of the hardest questions to answer, right? Like, what do you want? Always the hardest question.

[00:28:13] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Yeah. In fact, you know, Sean, well, I must share with you, not sure if I did in our past conversations or not. We were really open about even these audacious goals to our teams internally. Alright. I'm really glad that few of the team members did come up and they actually said that; Hey, look, we can do more. I said, wow, that means this other one is even less. Right? Look where we are. But what gave us, what was left with we as three of us was the confidence. Because team believed in that. Right? Which is where we thought, hey look, that means we were missing something. And that's where I would say that openness, transparencies with the team is usually very helpful and handy when you are trying to build an organisation, which you have a clarity on that, hey look, we want to build an organisation which not only transforms businesses for customers, help them scale as well. So, that's where I think it really helped us while team stood up and they said, hey look, here is the flag, let's keep it high and we'll achieve it all together. We said, wow. Let's go.

[00:29:31] Sean Steele: Well, you know, it would be remiss of us to make this interview sound like everything is sunshine and flowers and daffodils because whilst you guys have done an incredible job and you have, and your results have been staller, I don't mean just quantitatively, but I see the culture that's emerged in your business, because I see it on LinkedIn every day. And the way that you celebrate each other and the way the team gets behind things and the way that you come together and celebrate a team, it's very authentic and wholesome. But there's challenges, right? And I'm interested to know, as a leader, what's been one of the most difficult times for you personally through that period and how you've approached getting through it?

[00:30:09] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Tough question indeed. Frankly, you know, even on the challenges side, probably sometimes it was about thinking of the future, right? How do you align what is going to happen? No one has a crystal ball. Correct? Which is where what we probably took the right step ahead and it stayed with us that, hey, look, look, plus one, right? If I am today at x and I have to be at 2x, I don't know how to go to 2x, so why don't I take some external help or guidance coming in our way? So, which had been the biggest fears as well, but that's where we came in to convert that fear to a challenge, achieve that challenge and make sure that we are able to come out successfully by following the right path or learning from the experiences of others who have done it. I think that's where we stand and that's been a real challenge for us.

[00:31:05] Sean Steele: I think that's actually, you know, one of the things that I probably haven't reflected on enough is when you're a Founder, it actually takes a real sense of vulnerability, right? When you recognise that, you don’t know what you don’t know, and you have to go out and look for someone who's been there before. You're putting yourself in their hands to an extent, you're having to really open yourself up and going, actually, I don't really know what's coming. I'm not quite sure how to navigate it. There's a lot of trust that goes into that process. And so, there's a real vulnerability that you have to go through to come out the other side and hopefully some people come out the other side of that vulnerability and go, I'm just going to keep putting my head down and hope that I figure it out. And some people probably get there a bit faster because they're willing to ask for help. And that's not a plug for me. But I think that's just for all Founders, wherever that help is coming from, that understanding that you need help is actually a really critical part. If you want to grow your business faster or make it more valuable, or increase your impact and you don’t know how to get there, then you're going to need some additional input. And I know one of the things you guys, I've seen the way that you hire CFOs and all sorts of different people in and around your industry, whether they're consultants or otherwise, and you're always really key to test the proof points, like the demonstration that they've actually been there before, they know what they're talking about, not just the sort of hearsay. What about things that maybe you guys have tried as a leadership team, initiatives or decisions that you've made that didn't work out? Like what things haven't worked out for you as leaders and what did you learn from that?

[00:32:36] Hitesh Kumar Madan: That'd be, again, hard to say that, Sean, because as I said during our conversation today, if something is sounding very difficult to me, it's an opportunity for the two. Okay? Difficult for them. It's an opportunity for two. So that's where the trial has become a lethal combination, I must say that. And then we are able to deliberate on it together. And sometimes, you know, of course, like treat it as a weed and take that away even before I'm embarking on that journey, because that's where the thought process is. Three different experiences, different knowledge, skills come in, and we are able to quantify it and follow a very scientific way to look at, hey, look what should be done and what should not be done and arrive at. So, it's very difficult statement to make, but thankfully we have not had many such situations where it became really, really difficult. We could stay away from it well ahead of even getting into the deep side of it and continue delivering it in the right direction. It's just that we, if for something I didn't believe, let's say. But I believed in my other colleague is what was important and then we made sure we succeed. That's the way we have worked and which has helped us out in terms of beating our own expectations, to be honest.

[00:34:04] Sean Steele: That's so interesting because I hear there's two different parts of that. One is you go to each other when one of you is struggling with something, it's like, hey, I'm struggling with this. I'm not quite sure how to get through it. And you go to your other two as your resource, but the way that they respond, because each of you have your own areas of the business that you need to take charge of, right. But there's a vulnerability there between you, there's a safety between you that says, hey, it's okay to go. I don't know what I'm doing here, or I need help. Can you help me? And it's also, I heard the second part of that is sometimes someone, you might go, they come up with an idea and you go, well, I don't really understand it, but if you are convinced we should go for it. And you sort of get in behind each other and give the person room to kind of make it real. That's an incredible asset for the three of you to have, really super interesting. What about advice you've received along the way, Hitesh? You know, I mean, for you personally, quite often we have mentors in our lives, we have previous bosses, and we have, you know, particularly when we go through difficult times or challenging periods, that advice really plays a stronger role because it's something that you come back to that helps you get through that period. Can you think of a time where you've had to really rely on a piece of advice that perhaps that you've received in the past, and what was the situation, what was the advice, and how did it help you through?

[00:35:23] Hitesh Kumar Madan: No, we're glad we are surrounded by the right people who give us the right advices. Right? There are so many, but some of them which have, like stayed with us is one; keep your head down, and keep going. Stay focused. Deliver. And that's as old as maybe when we started 2016, 2017. Do the right thing, because once a customer is happy naturally, I'm not expecting, but in all his goodwill, he'll also let me know that, hey, look, this is what you do, this is what you get, so we'll keep building our pipeline. So basically, you know, holding each other's hand and get going. So that's one piece of advice. The other piece of advice, which again, has stayed down particularly with me was, and that's again, one of my past experiences not in this organisation. It's kind of working with a larger organisation and then trying to see, okay, how do you solve that? While you aim for a long-term objective, do not worry yourself or don't let the anxiety set in for the long-term. Focus on small. Take baby steps. Take baby steps. Keep achieving them. Keep reflecting on them, with an eye on the long-term goal and eventually you would realise that you have achieved it without stressing yourself, without burning yourself day in, day out. So that's, again, those are some of the advices which have stayed with us and that's where we all have learned from each other and grown this organisation input in particular. And I'm sure we are in the right direction with all the people, all the team that we have. So that has stayed with us.

[00:37:09] Sean Steele: That's interesting. Yeah, it struck me as something that actually I probably really needed to learn as a CEO. Because I used to put a lot of pressure on myself on the long-term stuff, because I knew where I wanted to get an X period. And so I was always concerned about that and I found it really difficult to get back to the now and just focus on the next thing and the next day and just worry about that. I really found it quite challenging to disconnect those.

[00:37:32] Hitesh Kumar Madan: I think that's hats off to one of my senior colleagues. And I can't forget, that's a lifelong learning that I got, particularly, just don't worry about what it is. Break it.

[00:37:45] Sean Steele: Just focus on the now. What's it called, the one-minute march or something like that? It's about the march on the way to get to the destination, to one foot after the other. What about, what you are most proud of in the business, Hitesh? 

[00:38:06] Hitesh Kumar Madan: So many things, but the most important thing, our team. We really, again, are glad, lucky, and we are proud of each and every member of our team, and we strongly believe in that. It's about that team which is taking us to where we are and they are invested in us. They are invested in the customer relationship. They're invested in bringing value to the customers. We really feel proud. More than just proud. It's more about even being thankful. And we are like a family unit that way. Which really stays with us, as each and every member. So, it's not about me being proud, it's about each one of us being proud of each other how we are doing it. So, that's what we all are proud of everyone.

[00:38:56] Sean Steele: Nice. What can you tell us about where the business is going to be heading in the next three years? Like, what do you think the business will look like? Because one of the things that we want to do with you is, you know, today's been, I guess, a bit about getting a sense of where the business is at today, the journey you've been on to date. But going forward, we're going to be thinking about, okay, from now, what are the challenges that you are facing? How are you overcoming those? What are you dealing with as a Founder? Because it's an interesting insight into the life of a Founder, which is not always rosy. And maybe we haven't dug as much into some of those challenging periods as we might in the future. But because it's not always roses, right? But what do you think the business will look like in three years? Where are you trying to take it?

[00:39:38] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Yep. I think Sean, today as an organisation, we are, I think some of the numbers are public, while I may not say that specifically because of all the awards and recognition that have come our way, But I'll leave for the audience to have a look at it. So, we are right now just short of the double digits that we are. But my whole sense is in three years’ time, how we can multiply, bring the multiplication factor into it to make sure that we are growing. It's very hard for me to predict that right now, but if you ask me, we will certainly want to put a multiplication factor to it.

[00:40:16] Sean Steele: Okay, so what you're saying is you want to accelerate.

[00:40:20] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Absolutely.

[00:40:21] Sean Steele: Yep. You got about 80 people now and the business is growing. So, I think that'll be a really interesting, especially in a business like yours, which is, it's multifaceted, but fundamentally there's a correlation between the number of people you have and the service they're providing to your customers and your revenue, but also your impact. And so I think that'll be an interesting key metric for us to follow as you grow.

[00:40:42] Hitesh Kumar Madan: I think the focus has to be, again, on making sure that we are delivering the right value to our customer, than focusing on, hey, look, I want to be a hundred million-dollar organisation. No. Let that be an outcome of what we do on a day-to-day basis, and it resonates with one of the learnings that I just shared with you. Stay focused. Look at your today. How are you impacting your customers tomorrow?

[00:41:06] Sean Steele: Yep. Awesome. Well, Hitesh, I'd really appreciate, yeah, I'd really like to acknowledge yourself and Vamsi and Satish for the way that you're running this organisation. When we first started working together, I thought, wow, these guys are, they're really ambitious. But you don't know when you start working with a set of Founders, whether they've actually got the capacity to execute on that ambition, because we can all have ambition. But there's a big difference between having a vision and actually being able to execute on win. But we know all the value is created through execution, right? So great to have somebody who's good at strategy, but if you can't execute… and I think you guys have an incredible, I mean today's really been quite insightful for me in terms of the value you get out of the relationship with your co-Founders. And I think it's a really interesting question for Founders who perhaps are little bit lonely in their journey. 

Like where do you fill in your gaps? Where do you get your brainstorming? Where do you get your support from? That may be, that could be with another Founder. That could be with external advisors or friends or peers, but where are you getting that creativity and that ability to unlock mindsets and the ability to knock over problems and leverage skill sets that you don't always have as a sole Founder. And it's not for everybody, but I think you guys are really a shining example of how to make a tripartite sort of partnership work well in a business. And I see it in the way that your team respect the three of you. So, I think, congratulations to you guys and I look forward very much to unpacking the future of TechForce with you over time. So, I guess we'll probably get you back on in, I don't know, maybe two to three times a year and see how things are progressing so people can follow along with the TechForce journey. How would you, like people to get in touch or follow along with what you're doing with TechForce?

[00:42:59] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Sure. I think. One of the ways is to, on our website, it's like reach out to us. We have our details mentioned in there, but at the same time, my LinkedIn, Vamsi’s LinkedIn. So, we are all very welcoming to any need, any help that any of you have. Feel free to reach out to us and will be more than happy to accommodate each and every request, and we are thankful to you for reaching out to us.

[00:43:30] Sean Steele: Beautiful. Thanks Hitesh. Folks, I really hope you enjoyed today and you got lots of value from it, and you found Hitesh's story interesting as I certainly do. I'd love to know what questions you have about anything that Hithesh has said today, questions that resonate, your conversation that resonated with you today. You can send us an email at [email protected]. If you've got a question for Hitesh, I'm happy to pass those on and make sure you get those answered. You can always subscribe, we certainly value if you subscribe so you know you're getting new episodes that come through. Leave us a review. Of course, our team absolutely love that. If you're not driving your car, please don't. If you're not driving your car, I would suggest take a screenshot of today's episode if you're listening on one of your players and send it to a friend who you think would actually really value connecting in and maybe who someone who might want to follow along with Hitesh's journey. You have been listening to the ScaleUps Podcast. I'm Sean Steele and I will speak to you again next week. Thank you so much, Hitesh Madan.

[00:44:26] Hitesh Kumar Madan: Thank you, Sean. Thanks for having us here.