Business Brilliance: Journey to Success with a Startup Trailblazer | Darshan Chavan | Ep 152

Jeni Clift  00:02

Hi, and welcome to another episode of our better business better life today welcoming Darshan  Chavan to two hour session. And Dan’s got a really interesting story. And I’ll get him to share more of that, but love to hear he came to Australia 10 years ago to study and took on a part time job of door to door sales and discovered that he absolutely loved it. Which is, I think for a lot of us, it’s our worst nightmare, put it up there with, you know, public speaking for some people, but really interested to hear more about that Darshan. So, but the first thing I’ll actually get you to do is, let’s dive straight into our first question. So we always ask people, What is a best personal and then best professional win for you, in the last, you know, three to six months?

Darshan Chavan  00:47

Yeah, I think so the best personal win for me is my ability to maintain that energy. And like, you know, that held in the business, alright, because for me, I don’t remember the last time I took like a sick leave or a sick vacation, even though we run our own businesses. So I’m pretty happy that I’m able to maintain that energy that held and keep it sustained for a really long time. So that I think that would be a really good, important win when it comes to the personal side. And the professional side, for me is the impact that we are making with the number of team members, we are able to help them provide the livelihood, because we have added at least another 45 team members in the last one year. And for me how I look at it as like, especially when people work remote, alright, from Philippines and other countries, we are able to have a really big impact. And we can see that it’s not just not benefiting them, but also their families, and also their closest inner circle, which I think so is really amazing for us.

Jeni Clift  01:48

Fantastic. That’s huge growth in any year. So I’d love to hear more about how you’ve how you’ve managed to sustain that growth and do it so that, you know, I’ve seen so many businesses grow really quickly. And then the systems and everything break in the process. But we’ll get to that. So tell me a bit about you. Tell me your story and how we got to be here today.

Darshan Chavan  02:10

Yeah, absolutely. Even begin with me before when I moved to Australia, I was pretty shy kid when I started my journey way back in school days. And yeah, it’s not steady. My parents used to get complaints from the school the teachers every other day. All right, and as to have very low grades, even even my university as well, where I couldn’t even qualify to apply for jobs. Alright, because my grades were so low. And yeah, somehow, like, you know, just by accident, alright, I was able to discover personal development. And I still remember pretty clearly because I was into a lot of troubleshooting like laptops and computers. When I finished my college, like my ear toil and others. I used to troubleshoot a lot of software’s like, you know, install Windows, or write clear the hardware and everything. So I was trying to download a few things online. And I came across a particular topic like 10 keys to success or something like that, from Brian Tracy. I’m like, wow, okay, this sounds interesting. Let me just watch it. I don’t know what it what it what it would be. And then that started the rabbit hole of personal development. And I’m like, wow, there’s a particular science to it as well, that you know, you need to have your goals, you need to take responsibility, you need to take action, and that’s when you can change the trajectory of your life. So yeah, I just went on that path. And that’s when I got to know that you know what, let me take another challenge of moving to a different country altogether. Alright. And then, yeah, I just applied to come and study here in Australia, and I decided, okay, you know, what everyone talks about Melbourne, because usually, I didn’t even know about Brisbane on Gold Coast at that time when I was in India. So I thought, okay, you know what, let me go to Melbourne. It sounds to be amazing. And I started my journey as an international student. But even from the day one, when I started my studies in Monash University, I was not interested in uni, not studies, anything. But I always knew that if you want to succeed in business, I could see that repetitively all the business books talked about, you got to be exceptional in sales. And you got to be really good in marketing. If you can get these two, right, you would be able to have pretty good business success. I’m like, okay, cool. Let me get started with sales. And because I did not have any sales experience zero, all right. I worked in it before that. The only sales job I could get was knocking on peoples door and selling Telstra door to door. And the first time when I started in Melbourne, there was a massive heat wave going on. It was like a month of Jan 2014. All right. All right. Yeah. No, and I didn’t know that it was so hot until the iPad that we used to work with. showed a red thermometer saying that the iPad client virtually Yeah, and they’ve been shut down. The moment I don’t have an iPad, I’m like cool. You just need the notebook and we still mash the doors and still keep knocking. There was an amazing journey, I did that for two years, until I was able to pay off my entire student debt or a student loan happens in India is you don’t get headaches, either. You make the payment, you don’t make the payment, you got to mortgage your parents house. There was another driving force for me to get really good in sales as well. But the best part was when my parents came here for my graduation ceremony, I was able to give them like, you know, the entire cash, which was supposed here my student debt off, and they were able to get their home back. And then yeah, I continued my journey. Alright, in sales, but I just moved on to business to business sales. And then yeah, I was really keen to get into learning and development, I always wanted to do a Tony Robbins seminar. Alright. And I got to know that he’s coming to Sydney in 2015 to do the firework. And yeah, that’s what I’d like to meet my business partner as well. And we’ve started a couple of businesses. And even before as well, there were a few businesses that didn’t go well, very back in 2016. We had a few businesses that didn’t go well, but it all it’s always a learning lesson we learned from there, we moved on. And yeah, last two years have been pretty massive growth in the way that we are able to share the message of building high performance remote beings.

Jeni Clift  06:20

So what are you actually doing now? What’s your current business? And what what what do you do? What’s Yeah, what

Darshan Chavan  06:25

We do is usually work with business owners, alright, so that they get to outsource, they get to delegate and build a really high performance remote team, okay, so that they can make a bigger profit margin, and also take time off. And how we do that is we help them find amazing quality talent outside of Australia, be it Philippines or India so that they can delegate, they can outsource and they can really focus on working on the business, because sometimes we just get so caught up doing admin related work. You know, it really doesn’t drive the business. So yeah, and the best part is like, you know, that the labor is pretty affordable as well over there. And people have a much more hunger driven. Yeah, so usually business owners, both here in us as well as in Australia, because we have clients both in the US as well in Australia, they they see a pretty good ROI. And one of our clients, Josh, I think spent the last six months he was able to save almost $85,000 When we did the calculation, and we were like, wow, Jonas, that’s a big money, man. And and the best part is, right now, he just works only four days a week. He just takes three days off. I don’t think so in the last three months, he has worked on any Friday as such.

Jeni Clift  07:37

Yeah, I was heard somebody say a while back that they have now what’s become known in their family is farm Friday, the family owns a farm. So he’s decided that he’s going to work Monday to Thursday. And on a Friday, he goes to the farm, and then the his wife and children come in on a weekend and then they can have fun time, rather than the kids having to work on the farm. So they didn’t want to go because I was you know, had jobs to do so. So he now goes and does farm Friday. And that’s blocked out in his calendar, which I really love that concept. So, so your business, so the staff that you’re providing? Are they like bookkeeping? Are they admin? What are they actually? What services are you providing?

Darshan Chavan  08:17

Yeah, usually like bookkeeping, virtual assistants, admin support, customer support social media as well, where business owners can really delegate those tasks or even later, if they have some of their management team here in Australia, they can have a support staff as well, it’s not that you need to move your entire team overseas or make them remote is to supplement your current team members. If they are already under a lot of pressure, or right. They’re getting stressed. They can always find an ear as well.

Jeni Clift  08:46

Nice, awesome. Now, when we were chatting before we started recording, with, you mentioned some awards that you’ve that you’ve won. And I’ll I’ll start with what I was talking about was your Houston No, I own an IT services business. And we’d always kind of hidden we had a very niche market around original hospitals and regional councils and we didn’t really unprofessional service. And we didn’t really want sort of, you know, mums and dads or really micro business bringing their equipment or so we’d always hidden. No signs of the building. Nobody really knew that we even existed. And then working with a sales coach, we set a theme for the year be seen be heard. And from that came invitations to speak at conferences. Nick, my husband was invited to go to the Philippines and speak to some business owners about how to transition from, you know, into a managed service provider. Those sort of things ended up on stage in the US in front of three and a half 1000 people at a conference to accept an award. So for us those awards just it came from setting that theme and changing our mindset of how we were looking at ourselves and our business and going out into the marketplace. So I guess, but you mentioned a couple of awards that you’ve won. How did you? What were they? And how did you How have you leveraged off those to build your business and build the businesses profile? And maybe your personal profile?

Darshan Chavan  10:11

Yeah, sure. I’ll tell a quick story as to how I got started with the first business award that we won, which is the f5, fast 100. It was almost like, you know, four years ago, when I was having a chat with my mentor. All right, he currently owns one of the biggest training companies in Melbourne. And I got to meet him through Tony Robbins inner circle. Alright, so there were a lot of people over there, and we were having a chat. And I just approached him saying that, would you be able to have a quick chat with me? Would you be able to mentor me and everything? And in 2019, I guess, like, you know, I assume I remember very clearly so vividly. It was in Melbourne, CBD, we were just taking a tram from Swanston Street. And we were going to the link cafe. Alright. And I was just having a chat with him. And I asked him like, how’s business going on what’s happening? And he mentioned to me, you know, what, Darshan, we just got recognized as one of the 100 fastest growing companies through b&w, because that’s what AFR was called at that time. And I just feel amazing that we got recognized as one of the 100 fastest growing companies. I’m like, Wow, that’s so cool. And just as soon as I came back home, I just took a picture of it and put it in my vision board, saying You know what, some, like very soon, I should be able to hit this goal as well. And I still remember it, it’s still in my vision board, that I should be able to make it happen. And in 2022, is when we got recognized as one of the 100 fastest growing businesses. And that’s when we really, like, you know, got to know that even though our team is 100% remote, we can build businesses, or write really scalable businesses. And that’s where we started to share our journey with many more business owners, because many people had a lot of limiting belief, saying that, okay, if people are overseas, like, you know, I won’t be able to communicate, I won’t be able to have my hands, they won’t be any personal touch. Okay, and also many, many other limiting beliefs as well, right? You know, what, what if they take my data can go away, alright, which, which sometimes is true, but there are so many ways that you can, like, you know, work around it and make sure your data is still private and secured. And people started asking us like, you know, you you still don’t I got, I can still see you working on Saturdays or Sundays used to take a lot of time off. Alright, you take some holidays, how are you guys able to do this, whereas we are struggling so much to scale a business, and what exactly is happening, that’s when we were able to share the journey, say that one of the biggest challenges why businesses don’t scale is because of a cash crunch because of the cash flow. Whereas when you are able to save almost 40 to 45% minimum in your staff wages, you have so much money to spend on ads, marketing, hiring better people as well. Because currently, we even spent almost 50 to 55 grand a month just on ad spend. The reason why we were able to afford that is because we were able to save a lot on like, you know, staff wages. So yeah, that in that way, we are able to share our journey with a lot more entrepreneurs, business owners, and it gives them the belief as well, like, you know, we are walking the talk, we just not saying that, okay, just go ahead and build remote teams, we’ve been able to show that we can do it, it it does come with its own inherent challenges, but we’re able to work our way around it, and also figure out a system as to how to keep the Remote Staff motivated. And yeah, it’s got to be a win win situation. So

Jeni Clift  13:31

what’s the challenge that people come to you with that? Either there? Maybe they’re having with a current provider or that not so much about, you know, a business challenge, but you know, somebody who’s tried another BPO, for example, and talking to you, because we’ve been down this journey a number of times ourselves and some success, some values. But yeah, what what do you hear in the industry around people saying, you know, I’ve tried, it hasn’t worked? And what do you do differently?

Darshan Chavan  14:08

Yeah, there are two things over there, right? The first and foremost is just handling our own entrepreneurial mindset. Okay, because if you’re not used to empowering people, alright, like always micromanaging them. Alright, trying to try to get every single dollar worth out of the people, alright, or maybe you’re trying to get $10 worth of value from it. It just comes across as a different way. And then people would not like to work, be it anywhere, be anywhere in the world. They would like to work with people who are empowered, who are leading them in the right way. So that that’s the biggest challenge that we come across sometimes with business owners because it’s just not the service provider or the particular virtual assistant that you work with. So it just comes down to educating the business owner sometimes alright, and letting them know and communicating them. It’s always going to be a two way street. Alright, and having that clarity in communication to the team member that you’re working with. All right. And second thing is sometimes what we believe is it just comes down to the hiring the right person or the right candidate for the right role, as Jim Collins talks about right people in the right role, and what we see is there’s always a mismatch. So what we specializes, we specialize in doing a lot of personality profiling, B disc profiling. All right, personality Plus, there’s there’s a lot of personality profiling, that we go deep and harder into it, so that we get the right person for the right role. This is where the match happens. And that’s where people like some of the team members that we help them hire. And the second thing is, most of the time, it’s the right person who’s leading them, and also who’s working as an account manager between the business and the right candidate. So what we hear most often is, everyone is amazing why before you get the business, or even maybe in the first month, right after that, sometimes an account manager gets 200 staff, or maybe they might have 4050 clients. So whereas with us, what we do is we make sure an account manager doesn’t have too many clients, because we know that that’s one of the biggest pain points in the market. And that’s also one of the biggest frustrations that clients face that you’re just another number. So whereas with us, we just take more of a personalized approach. And we also make sure we are the ones who are being more proactive in interacting with the business owners. All right, how does your team member going on? Right? Are they clear on their expectations? Because what we’ve seen is most of the time, the breakdown happens or people and the business owners aren’t satisfied when their expectations are not communicated in the right way. Okay, so that’s where the account manager comes in. And she liaises between those two, and make sure that connection is pretty good. And you know, the business owners are really getting that bang for the buck.

Jeni Clift  16:57

And it’s no different to any other business really, isn’t it? It’s that that account manager can make or break a relationship or a deal or a project or your team or working remote working from home or are they in BPOS in two different Philippines.

Darshan Chavan  17:15

We could see that was really high quality and high talented people these days, they allow the flexibility of working from home. Alright, but But having said that, we have systems in place to make sure that like, you know, the data is protected. And also we have different ways, alright, where we make sure that they are still working on the business. And people are able to get the returns what they need.

Jeni Clift  17:40

And it’s interesting I so we both members of EO Entrepreneurs Organization, I was learning Chair of EO Melbourne through COVID. So organizing events and spent hours on Zoom during your learning events and things and one of them was a I guess a panel on offshoring versus onshoring and you know, what’s working, what’s not working. And one of the things that I really learned from that myself and I was the host of the panel was not looking at it as offshoring or external resources, everything, these guys are just part of the team. True and where they are, really doesn’t matter. Because you know, through COVID, particularly based in Melbourne, we’re in lockdown as many other places around the world we’re and really that shift from just getting the right people into the right role, regardless of where they are.

Darshan Chavan  18:38

Big time. Yeah, because it doesn’t matter if they’re in Australia or us or Africa, or Philippines, it just comes down to the culture of your company. And that’s something that we really work hard on to making sure that the culture is set up, right. And that’s where most of our effort time, everything goes into making sure that culture in the company is set up in the right way. So that it has a ripple effect. So

Jeni Clift  19:02

How do you manage your internal culture? If you have so many people working all from home in different countries? You’ve got you have what what is the structure the leadership team structure look like? Yeah.

Darshan Chavan  19:13

One thing that we do, which we are having today, evening as well, what we do is at the beginning of the month, we have a thing called as a town hall meeting, alright, where every month we have the entire company come across and have in a zoom call. Alright, where we share the wins that the company has had, where we are going, what are our future plans. And we also have a few of the virtual assistants come and share their journey since they started working with us and what kind of an impact

Jeni Clift  19:44

So that’s the leadership team sitting in that and the account managers and then you’d bring some of your VA so that’s not an all or team

Darshan Chavan  19:52

Experience everyone because that’s why we do it after you stopped you have 30 in the evening and everyone just jumps on cat Zoo. And yeah, they’re just a few people speaking and sharing their journey. Because every month, we select a few people who have had amazing successes. And we do a lot of recognition as well during those times. All right, there’s a lot of fun games as well, we play over there, like trivia questions. And yeah, that’s how we make sure that there’s a part of a culture. And at the same time, the leadership team also knows that this is where the focus is going for the company.

Jeni Clift  20:31

I love that that inclusive, we did a lot of that through, we were pretty good had it before we’d had a remote team for 20 years. So we were pretty good at doing it. But COVID just made us to take it to a whole new level. And, you know, having that, you know, once a month staff meeting, you know, the biggest we got was 36 staff, I think, before we sold, and it was starting to get a little bit harder to manage that amount of people, but including everybody. So everybody knew that they were, you know, part of that bigger picture. And, and it also came to that be seen be heard, making sure that our staff felt that they were seen and heard, which sounds like you have the same approach. So leadership team, so you have a business partner, what else who else sits in that leadership? Yeah,

Darshan Chavan  21:17

I have an operations manager, we have an account manager, we have a recruitment manager. So yeah, and a sales lead as well. So these are the few people that we have over there. And all of them have their own KPIs that things clarified. And usually on every Wednesday, we even have a leadership meeting, where we go through in detail, like you know, a few of the skills that we can improve as leaders and less about the numbers, because numbers is where what we discussed during the one on one session, and more about the skills like you know, what kind of leadership skills that we need to build on how do we develop that culture? Okay, how do we be better at having open communication with people? How do we build people up? How do we motivate them? How do we influence people? And yeah, a few other topics like those so that they can really grow as a leader, and they will be able to have an empowering impact on the people that they lead.

Jeni Clift  22:14

Fantastic. You mentioned earlier about you meet your business partner at a Tony Robbins event. What other things have you done around that personal development? Because it sounds to me like that’s been a big part of your your life and your person? Yeah,

Darshan Chavan  22:26

I think so. Like, yeah, personal development has been a really, really major part of my life. So I think so I’ve done all of Tony Robbins seminars be date with destiny, alright, his business mastery. And even last three months ago, like in September, I had my parents visiting me over here, even I took them to the Tony Robbins seminar as well and make them walk on fire. So it was a really cool experience. Really happy with it. In the beginning, I’m like, How can you walk on fire, I’m like, you just go and be in a state and make your move and go for it. Alright, and they were pretty pumped to do it. So that’s with Tony Robbins, and I’ve done a few seminars of John Demartini. So he has had a pretty good impact. But when it comes to leadership, and personal development, there’s another person Darren Hardy, who has written a book called as entrepreneur roller coaster. So yeah, he has a few programs as well, like hero’s journey, like you know, and many others, which really prompted me to improve my leadership skills. And on top of that, we get mentored by an amazing leadership, mentor, as well. His name is Peter Cox. So he’s been a board member for our group of companies, where we spend almost four hours every month, sitting one on one, talking about where we are heading, how do we really keep the leadership team motivated, accountable? What they do, alright, and how do we align them towards a common vision? So yeah, these four hours with him every single month from last three years, has had a massive

Jeni Clift  23:57

So who’s in that meeting is that you and your business partner is my

Darshan Chavan  24:01

Business partner. And once every three months, he has an individual chat with a few of the people in our leadership team as well, where whom we see that they’re gonna grow, they’re gonna get better. So that’s all Yeah, I think so personal development has been so much important part of my life. And what we do as a team as well, is every Monday I get to share a very inspirational motivational video with the entire company. And in their own individual team hurdles, we come across and discuss one takeaway and one action step that we can do after watching that video. So yeah, personal development has been a massive impact.

Jeni Clift  24:39

What do you think? Or do you think any cultural differences play into that personal development space? I, you know, I do now coaching and implementing and various other programs that I run with businesses that have you know, lots of diversity in Australia and their staff but all So offshore teams, and I’m often asked about, you know, how the sort of programs and training that we run, how it’s received with, with people in the Philippines, for example, or India or Sri Lanka, South Africa is another country that we we have, you know, team members in. So do you see any differences from culturally,

Darshan Chavan  25:22

I think so the only difference I can see a little bit is people, maybe from Philippines and India and other things tend to invest more in maybe business coaching, or something that that’s more tangible, rather than just life coaching, or trauma coaching, or like an all other kinds of stuff, that that’s something which I’ve, I’ve seen myself over here, because over here in Australia or us, I can see people might indulge a little bit in NLP, which is just like, you know, amazing, which has its own benefit. But when I see people in other countries, they are more towards more tangible results. Like we it can be sales coaching, it can be marketing, coaching, or business coaching. So people are so much more driven and keep going towards it. Whereas I think so in Australia, we do go into a lot of other coaching says, Well, I can help me and other stuff. Yeah.

Jeni Clift  26:14

So it’s more tangible give me a skill, rather than things that are perhaps a little bit harder to to understand or to grasp. Now, you touched on earlier about you do some disc profiling. So who do you do that with? If if I came to you and said, I need a VA? Do you profile me so that you’re you know that who I am? And can match them?

Darshan Chavan  26:40

Usually begins with a virtual assistant first, okay, because we have a pool of people who keep applying. Alright, because we have some amazing ratings as well on Glassdoor, like you know, we have almost like 28, five star reviews on Glassdoor when people come and say that they have they love working with us. And also what we have done is we have built an entire landing page only to hire top level talent. So a lot of people know that they can have amazing benefits working for us. So we get a huge number of high quality talent applying for us. So we usually try to profile them. Okay, that’s how it begins with and depending on the role. So let’s take an example, if it’s going to be a customer support role, we try to look for just taking bisque, as an example. We try to look for a person who’s more I, when I say I like someone who’s more bubbly, who’s a people person, alright, and people are speaking to them on the phone. Okay, so whereas if you’re looking for a bookkeeper, you will look more for a C type of personality,

Jeni Clift  27:37

You don’t want an eye like me, yeah,

Darshan Chavan  27:41

My personality is going to be a disaster. And that has happened to our experience. Because you got to be detail oriented, you got to be analytical, you got to be processed. But most of the times that this doesn’t happen, alright, because you just look at the experience. And someone, they might have worked as a bookkeeper, but they are extremely high personality. But still five years, they’ve been working as a bookkeeper and might not have done that a best job. Whereas when you look for a bookkeeper, and if they are a high C personality is going to be an amazing match. So that’s the first part of doing it. And the second part is, as soon as we help that team member on board, we start working with them, we also profile the business owner, so that the staff member understands if they’re going to be an extremely high D, they don’t care about anything, they just care about the results. Alright. And even though they may come across as a little bit more bottom line, they mean good, alright, because that’s a personality that they have. They’re, they’re really high D. That doesn’t mean to say that, like, you know, they’re a bad person. They’re just worried about results. They’re worried about taking action. And so that’s something that we try to communicate it with them as well. So that that is kind of a match in the personalities, and then other everyone knows who they are working with.

Jeni Clift  28:58

Yeah, it’s interesting, we, I’m a disc profiler. So I’ve a lot of knowledge and, and used to use this a lot in our business as well. And when we started using it in the business, we we actually discovered that we had hired a lot of eye personalities. I think all of our sales team were di D, which kind of makes sense. And our sales coordinator was an SC thought, Well, that makes sense as well. But we really started using that tool to bring some balance even into the technical team because you even though they were text, they’re still customer service. And, you know, a big part of what we did for our customers was actually being able to take our customers through the journey that yes, we’ve got your problem. Yes, we’re working on it. We care about you. And you’re trying to bring that balance of, you know, across, you know, I see CI into the team as well so and it just changed the way that our our whole team Team work together. But also understanding you said this about, you know, you bring a VA in to work with your client and they know who they’re dealing with. That’s a critical part of it as well. And, and I’m doing a lot of I’m actually doing a webinar on for EEO next week for the Asia Pacific region on exactly this. So I love these profiling tools, and then behavior tools, because I think they’re very underutilized in, in running our business. And, and, and bringing love the word balance. And often when you start working with a client, and you look at it, and pretty much everybody’s the same, it’s like, I can see the can see we’ve got a bit of a cultural problem here. In many ways. Now, there was another award that you didn’t talk about, before there was the you talked about the first 100. But there was another

Darshan Chavan  30:57

Yeah, that’s something which I’ve just got to know, a month ago. 40, under 40. All right, from business elite awards. Yeah. I mean, I was pretty, pretty privileged as well, starting as an international student. 10 years ago, I was able to get recognized because the award ceremony is during the EOC, Sydney in on a rainy night. So yeah, that’s when I’ll be able to collect the award. But yeah, I just feel so much grateful and blessed. That, yeah, I’ve been recognized as the top 40 entrepreneurs under 40 years of age. Yeah, I just turned 35 in April. Nice.

Jeni Clift  31:29

Wow, baby. So congratulations on that, too, by the way. Now, what’s next? What’s the future? Yeah,

Darshan Chavan  31:38

for us, like, you know, the main mission for us to help at least our 200 business owners, alright, to understand the power of building a high performance remote team, okay, because there are so many people who want to grow in their business, but until unless you don’t grow your team, it’s really hard to scale your business. Alright. And I’m a firm believer in the code, which says bigger the dream, the more important the team. Okay. And then sometimes, and to be honest with you, that was my biggest limiting belief and struggle, when I first started my business journey. Because I started in sales, I used to have so many limiting beliefs that no one can do a better job than me. I am a sales champion, alright, no one can do in my company has good sales than me. Right? Or I’m the best in marketing, no one can do as good marketing as me, all right. And

Jeni Clift  32:28

it’s not really scalable.

Darshan Chavan  32:31

with business owners who hold on to it so much, without, like, you know, their ability to delegate, and I can relate the most to it. Because I have been through that biggest struggle for years ago, it was not a matter of months that I was able to hold on to that. For years, I was able to just hold on to it. But some of the conversations with mentors in EO and everything. The more I let go, the more I focused on empowering people, the better freedom I got, and also the more the business was able to grow and scale and also finding the right people. That’s what I think so people get hurt. Because even though they may want to grow their business, and they believe that they’re happy to let go off and give the control, they would have had so much wounds. All right that oh my god, I tried this last time, it didn’t work. I tried it next time, it didn’t work. So yeah, just trying to share the knowledge with people and share the journey that you know what, it’s all you might have failed many times. But I think it’s going to be a work in progress. Until unless we don’t hone that skill. It’s always gonna be hard. And I think so one of my mentor had clearly mentioned long, long time back before I started business as well. He talked about, like, you know, like, if you want to really succeed in business, there’s only three sales skills that you got to hone you got to get exceptional at. The first one would be sales, alright? Because nothing happens until you get better at sales, right? Once you start getting better at sales, you start generating business. And that’s when the cash flow happens. But for you to scale, you need to get better at marketing. All right, you might have the world’s best product. But if people don’t know about it, what’s the point in having those products? So that was another skill that I had to personally learn a lot because it was so much more different than sales. And to be honest with you, we were not able to scale the business as well until we got better at marketing, understanding the pains of the customers understanding that frustration, what results outcome transformation that they wanted, and also crafting a messaging crafting an offer. This was another crazy, crazy journey to go through. But the biggest thing what I was able to learn from my mentor was sales and marketing can make you money. But if you want true freedom, you got to be exceptional at leadership and building a team until unless you won’t master it. You might make a million dollars but you’re working 80 hours a week. What’s the point? So yeah, so usually even now, that’s a work in progress for me that there’s so many areas where I need to hone my leadership skill I need to get better at it. And so that’s why I can relate to so many business owners like, you know, as we are told sometimes even when I speak with many business owners, we try to run a business as a job. We still have a middle class mindset. And just last week, I was having a chat with a business owner. And he’s like, You know what, I want to hire staff, I want to hire a team member. But what if I, it doesn’t work? What if I lose the money, and I’m like, You got to learn something. All right. That’s a part of the process, you always there’s no 100% guarantee that this stuff is going to work for you. But the challenges for a long time during our school days, during our childhood days, we are programmed, failing is bad. Losing money is bad. But nothing much happens until you fail until you will learn from it.

Jeni Clift  35:48

That’s where you learn. Yeah, the failures are where we, where we learned the most learnings of winning is fun and doing things well. But it’s actually not where where we learned the lessons we need to and, and leadership is a lifelong journey. And, you know, it’s it’s not one of those things where you go and do the course and put the certificate on the wall and say, I’m now a leader. And even as we’re seeing other different generations, and you know, what they’re bringing to the table and their, their expectations. And, you know, so you know, sometimes I think, you know, in the the years that we had our business, you know, we thought we’d seen everything and then something will happen go haven’t seen that before. Okay, something new to learn, though. So let’s finish up Darshan with three tips for you to share with our listeners.

Darshan Chavan  36:36

For me, the biggest thing that stands out was when I attended the Wealth Mastery seminar by Tony Robbins, alright. And I was so keen to attend this because I wanted to grow my belt, I wanted to have an amazing investment portfolio, everything and I was just pumped up so that they can start this seminar. And the very first slide that they put in, they put in a pyramid, alright as to what is most important in your life. And at the bottom as a foundation of the Wealth Mastery seminar was held. And I’m like sitting there, I thought, I’m in a Wealth Mastery seminar. Why are you talking to me about health, nutrition, okay, and supplements, exercising mental health, everything. And when Tony started talking, he said, everything like you know, your wealth, your relationships, alright, your peace of mind, everything depends on your foundation of your health, your body, that’s the only vehicle that you get to use. And that’s when I had like a really epiphany and a light bulb moment. Wow, this is something which I really if I focus on, if I get better at it can have a ripple effect on all other areas of my life. So I think so just just focusing on health, energy. Alright, how can you make sure you’re always trying to be in a state of amazing energy? Because I had one of the one of the books which I read entrepreneur roller coaster, where he talks a lot about what CE O stands for, because we always think C O stands for chief execution officer, right as chief executive officer, but he says as a CEO, you’re the chief energy officer. Okay? Because until unless you don’t bring in that energy, people rarely tend to connect with you. Right? And if you’re always dull, if you’re always less energy, people tend to go off the cliff and there’s not much happens and energy

Jeni Clift  38:26

Equals execution. Absolutely. They said, Yeah.

Darshan Chavan  38:29

So I think that’s one thing which I have tried to work on as much as possible. That’s where two years ago, I caught a lot into biohacking as well, because yeah, just going through the traditional method of like, you know, doctors and other things used to never work. So I had to choose my own path. Get started with ice baths, like, you know, cryotherapy many, many other things like juice, fasting, water, fasting, all those aspects had an amazing impact on my life. And I did I just feel good. Like, you know,

Jeni Clift  39:01

We had the EO Melbourne chapter retreat here in Bali, where I live in May. And that’s one of the things that we did was and I think there was 120 people in basically an ice bath swimming pool, which was very impressive that they could actually create an ice bath in Bali, but but to see that many people participating was pretty cool.

Darshan Chavan  39:26

The second important thing for me, which has played a big role is one of the books called as who not the how, by Dan Sullivan, from strategy and coach. And I think so I’ve read this book at least three times, because I could clearly see that every time I used to have a goal or a project to do I used to always think how do I do it? How do I do it? I do. I still make a list of all the tasks and everything. But Dan does go deeper into it. It’s not always the how because that’s how small business owners that’s how usually self employed people think about But if you want to really achieve bigger goals, it’s the who. Because that particular who can help you hit those goals, hit those dreams faster, and also make it sustainable for a longer time. And and to be honest with you, we have built our entire business around that concept. Who knows how because the more better you get at finding that, who, and trying to delegate them, empower them, and really motivate them to achieve your goals? I think so you will have amazing, amazing sets of leverage that’s going to be happening, because I think the leverage plays the biggest role in business than anything else.

Jeni Clift  40:36

I read that one a while ago, I might put it back on my list too, to read it again. So thank you for that one.

Darshan Chavan  40:40

Again, just to focus on long term thinking, okay, because again, it serves as a massive reminder for me, all right, it always takes more time than what we think. Because when I started my business, I thought, okay, you know what, in next year or two years, I’ll be a multimillionaire, I’ll be driving Lambos and like, you know. Okay, and then more importantly, thinking in long term, in most of the decisions that we make, alright, even when a team member has some challenges, all right, just just putting ourselves in their shoes, having that empathy, connecting with them, you know, what, people are always doing the best that they can with what they have, and just trying to understand and putting ourselves in their shoes, and trying to think long term. Alright, what is this my decision going to affect long term things? I think so that that those three things have had a really big impact, just to reiterate, focusing a bit more on the health and energy as a business owner, and focusing on who not the how, as much as possible. And also thinking really on long term prospects, like, you know, what our decisions trying to make as many decisions as possible in the long term.

Jeni Clift  41:56

Long term, and it’s so true, they say that, you know, you people way, overestimate what they can do in one year, but underestimate what they can do in 10. And it’s interesting what you said about, you know, investing in people, we, my husband, Nick, and I always used to say that, if we had an employee who was, you know, we had issues with, we didn’t believe there were very many people in the world who came to work, deliberately wanting to, you know, mess things up, or, you know, make our day a really bad day there. There are very few of those, most people actually want to do the right thing. And if they were not doing the right thing, we always look back at ourselves and say, Well, what have we missed here? How can you know, what are we not taught them? What don’t they understand? Because most people are inherently good. And they actually want to and having that long term investment is actually you know, that’s been a real learning for me. So thank you. Thanks for having me. And thank you. Oh, no, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it and enjoyed getting to know you. And hopefully we will catch up at an event at some time in the future and actually get to me,

Darshan Chavan  43:05

Looking forward to it as well. So good speaking with you.

Jeni Clift  43:08

Great. Thanks Darshan.