Unmasking a Tech Visionary with Shaunak Roy

Amidst the corridors of academia, Shaunak faced a pivotal realization - that learning extends far beyond lectures.
Armed with a mechanical engineering degree from IIT Bombay and graduate studies at MIT, he embarked on a quest to reshape education.
Step into the extraordinary journey of Shaunak Roy, a tech luminary who navigated uncharted territories, transitioning from advising global giants to founding Yellowdig. Be inspired by his story of struggle and triumph, a narrative that unfolded against the backdrop of a decade spent shaping technology, strategy, and growth.
Get to know more about Shaunak Roy and his company at https://www.yellowdig.co/
To learn more about myself, Michael Esposito, and find out about public speaking workshops, coaching, and keynote speaking options, and - of course - to be inspired, visit www.michaelespositoinc.com
The Michael Esposito Show is hosted by Michael Esposito and produced by iHeartMedia Hudson Valley. Be sure to subscribe on iHeart Media, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, Google Play, YouTube, or the podcasting app of your choice.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This show is sponsored by DN tenInsurance Services, helping businesses get the right
insurance for all their insurance needs.Visit dn ten dot io to get a
quote dn ten dot io and remember, when you buy an insurance policy from
Denten, you're giving back on aglobal scale. Hello all, my entrepreneurs

(00:22):
and business leaders, and welcome tothe Michael Esposito Show, where I interview
titans of industry in order to inform, educate and inspire you to be great.
My guests today spent a decade advisingglobal companies on technology strategy and growth.
He graduated with a degree in mechanicalengineering from IIT Bombay and completed a

(00:46):
graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology better known as MIT. Today as
a tech entrepreneur, he is thefounder of yellowdig, a community driven active
learning platform adopted by over one hundredand thirty colleges and universities, K twelve
schools and corporate training clients. Yellowdig'smission is to transform every classroom into an

(01:14):
active, social, and experiment experientiallearning community. Please welcome CEO and founder
at Yellowdig, seanuck Roy, Welcome, Shanuk. Yes, Michael, very
very excited to be on your podcast, looking forward to really engaging conversation.

(01:37):
So based on what we just talkedabout a little before we got started,
yeah, definitely. You know,looking at at this learning platform, there's
a lot of things that pop outfor me. One, My mother's an
educator, she's over thirty years inthe New York City Board of ed.
My wife is an educator. She'scurrently teaching young children in a sixth grade

(02:00):
classroom in Poughkeepsie, New York andworking hard through a lot of the challenges
that you talk so much about interms of what you do at Yellow Dig.
And then myself, I just launcheda leadership training program or a sales
mindset mastery program and was very interestedin your platform because I'm going, hm,
maybe this could work for me too. So a lot of cool stuff

(02:23):
for us to talk about. Butas we kind of talked about before we
turned the mics on and everything,I wanted to learn a little bit more
about you and your background and yourtravels from India to the States, what
that might have been like, anda little bit about your childhood if possible,
Could you share a little bit aboutthat with us? Yes, No,

(02:44):
I mean, you know, partof being an entrepreneur has a lot
to do with the life that wehave grown into. So my journey started
back in India. I grew upin a city called Calcutta, which is
northeast India. Average background, youknow, middle class family. But one
of the things which is unique aboutour family was education was very important growing

(03:05):
up. You know. My parentswere always very interested for me to be
well educated. So that was alwaysthe expectations was always well set. From
my early age, I kind ofknew that I do have to do.
I have to go to college andI have to build up myself to something
in that domain. So my dad, you know, had a business as

(03:29):
a small manufacturing operation, and someof the early kind of funds, you
know, kind of memories from mychildhood is kind of really walking around in
the workshop. He was to manufactureyou know, battery operated cards and not
the cars itself, but various partsfor it. So there were a lot
of mechanical engineering happening in the works, you know, in the workshop.

(03:51):
So I remember kind of you know, walking around and looking at the small
pieces and wondering how these pieces hadmet and kind of really wandering and kind
of you know, trying to seeand imagine things that I could make and
very going up. So that definitelymotivated me a lot. You know.
One of the things I always sayis that a big part of my motivation
in my life is kind of beinghaving the exposure of kind of really seeing

(04:12):
my dad trying to build a business. It was a small operation by it
means, but kind of really seeinghim going through the trials and tribulations of
starting a company, but also seeingthe freedom that he enjoyed, you know,
trying to build a company early on, you know, in a small
way has played a big role inme. And my mom you know,

(04:33):
was and is a homemaker, soshe kind of took care of us growing
up. And yeah, I wasI was one of those kids who was
quite fascinated by a variety of things. I won't call myself as a great
student. I always was one ofthose back benches, kind of really doing
a variety of things, kind ofsitting in the back bench and trying to

(04:53):
get by school to an extent,so kind of went through that. It
was a very engaging, very lovingchildhood. I was very fortunate to have
a family who was very kind ofloving and gave me a lot of opportunities
going up, and yeah, Imean then kind of one things led to
another. I did end up studyingkind of well to get into the right
colleges. I would say. IBombay was a you know, difficult college

(05:18):
to get into, but I thinkI studied well before the exams and kind
of really got passionate about, Iwould say, into being an engineer.
You know, my dad had ayou know, mechanical workshop, so that
probably played into it in terms ofme kind of deciding to become a mechanical
engineer, which I did, andthen whilst think another worked in India for

(05:40):
a few years and then kind ofdecided to come to the US. A
lot of my friends I was closeto in my engineering undergrad all came to
the US and I heard great thingsabout the US, so I said,
you know what, let me justgo and go from an adventure. So
that kind of took me to theUS. Let me pause it. I
don't know if there any questions thatcome out of from that background. Thank

(06:01):
you, Thank you so much.Yeah, I do have a lot of
questions. Actually. For you,what's really interesting to me is your father's
story and all of this and howyou mentioned seeing him going through the different
trials and tribulations. I'm interested inwhat some of those were and what some
of the learnings that came out ofit for you are. You know,

(06:23):
if I kind of zoom out andthink about that part of my life,
the thing that kind of really standsout is the freedom, you know.
I know, and my dad usedto tell me that before he started his
company, he had a job andhow much he hated it because it was
like doing things that he probably didn'tquite enjoy, and he only kind of

(06:44):
lost it for a few years inthat job. And then he kind of
told me a story about how heactually started a company where of course he
didn't have the money for that.He didn't come from money, you know.
He kind of did, like onestep at a time to kind of
build a relationship that he had toand raise the money that he had to
to kind of start a small operationand that kind of grew over time to

(07:04):
the size and that I remember whenI was a kid, and that was
quite interesting. I Mean, whatI really loved about that story was the
freedom that he had in terms ofkind of really doing what he loved to
do, which is to kind ofrun his operation and it took a lot
of hard work, so I did. I did kind of sense that building

(07:26):
a business takes a lot of hardwork, but I also saw that the
benefits of the rewards, you know, of that hard work is quite apparent.
So I kind of always had thatvisual in my mind. And I
remember telling him that, you know, it's not that I want to do
your business, and he eventually soldhis business, but I want to find
my own at some point, sowhich I did, by the way,

(07:47):
I started yellow Digg is my thirdcompany. I started to other companies before,
but those were I would say,smaller, you know, prize it,
you know, when he was astudent and things like that. But
there's always this vision and from that, that kind of early childhood that I
wanted to be a founder or startsomething on my own and be free and
do things that I love to do, and hopefully I find my own passion

(08:07):
in that. What what would youcall the hard work? What would you
how would you describe the hard work? The hard work part is, you
know, essentially from my experience whenI started, for example, yellow Digg,

(08:28):
there is a lot of work thatgoes into starting a company that you
end up doing. Which have youhave no idea when you're working in a
company. So for example, beforeI started Yellowdig, I was, you
know, well employed in a consultingjob. I used to work for a
company called Boozal and Hamilton, whichwas an amazing, really good consulting company,

(08:48):
which gave me a lot of exposure, and I worked really hard,
meaning I worked from eight am tonine pm often, you know, consulting
and traveling across the US and havingclient meetings and coming up with strategies and
all the things that you would doas a consultant. That was hard work.
But when you start a company,your work is slightly different where you

(09:11):
don't have a very scheduled work becauseyou're trying to figure it out, you
know. I mean, especially asa young entrepreneur, you're trying to kind
of really you have a vision roughly, and then you're trying to get an
operation going. So you're kind ofdoing a variety of odd things, maybe
calling clients, you know, makingsome sketches, thinking about some things that

(09:33):
you want to build maybe two orthree ers down the line, and then
kind of really going about it ata pretty intense level. That is hard
work. And I've seen that actuallywhen I was when I started the company.
In the first couple of years,I was kind of doing a bunch
of things. It wasn't that fallingto me because I've seen a little bit
glimpse of that when I was youngin my dad. So that definitely helped

(09:54):
me to get through that period becauseI kind of knew that if I do
it, if I make some smartchoices, I'm going to make all the
mistakes possible for sure. But ifI make enough smart choices, and if
I kind of stick to the missionof actually studying something, I'll probably land
in somewhere where I'll have an operationthat I can scale from there, and
and that and that kind of youknow, at least that idea that that

(10:20):
was in my mind came from mychildhoo to a logic extent, hmmm,
definitely. I'll say that it's interestingtoo that you you always knew you wanted
to be a founder, but youstill went and worked somewhere. And I
would assume that that some of thathad to do with your educational background.
So it's so funny overachievers always say, you know, I wasn't a good
student. I kind of got backbench, but you were backbench and you get

(10:43):
into a really great, prestigious collegein university in India, and then and
then you come to the States andyou get into MIT, and obviously you
are a high performer there. Couldyou share a little bit about that experience
at MIT, because it's well renownedfor the technolog and everything that that you
know, you do there. Yeah, I mean, you know, if

(11:05):
there's one word I'll summarize my mightexperience that it was inspirational. I meet
so many smart people, so manypeople who are kind of really thinking at
such a different level that I havenot experienced when I was in India,
And of course India was my formativeyears and I met a lot of great
people there, and I you know, did my undergrad in it, which

(11:28):
was also very rigorous and very helpfulfor me. But M I T was
a place where it was a veryopen, very open culture, where there
was nothing that I could not walkinto a room and have a conversation with
anybody. There was a lot ofyou know, of course, a lot
of courses. I did buy,you know, masters and I did end
up doing two masters there. Butthe thing that stood out for me is

(11:50):
essentially that inspiration part where so manypeople I met, and so many ideas
I got, and I actually starteda venture in MIT when I was a
student, which were it's a slightlydifferent kind of a venture where I was
building products using handicraft skills in India. So I partnered with a few organizations
in India who were building who hadamazing handicraft skills where they were kind of

(12:13):
doing needlework. I don't know ifyou've seen any of those cushion covers and
things like that that you know sometimesyou've seen like some high end stores where
they have these needlework of like artisanswho do these kind of very intricate work.
And I kind of really thought aboutmaking that whole operation much more efficient
using technology where I'll have you know, you know, relationship with actual the

(12:37):
source the people who are creating thatart work, but also kind of helped
them with support from our design pointof view, material point of view,
and also the kind of distribution channelsstandpoints. So I kind of build up
a website and kind of had somepartnerships and some materials that I kind of
sourced from a variety of locations andsupplied that to those people who are actually

(13:01):
doing the handicraft and and then andsold it in the US. It was
a complicated business, as you canimagine, it's a pretty complicated supply chain.
But I kind of thought that wouldbe an interesting business to start with
that. So I did that forabout a year and a half when I
was a student at MIT. Andat the same time, I was studying
that time, so it was inspirational. I was so kind of amazed by

(13:22):
what's possible. I said, youknow what, if I'm at MIT,
I better not only study but actuallytry something and see if I can build
something here. So so that lastedabout a year and a half and then
I actually got a job at Booth, and you know, I had I
also had a challenge around my visasituation because I could not run a company
on a on a student visa orwith a work visa. So I had
to get a visa sponsored by acompany who would support my visa and I'll

(13:45):
work for them. So I hadto stop that business and kind of took
a full time role when you startedthat first business of the you know,
with that obviously, with that complicatedsupply chain. I'm interested in since you
were a student and you were kindof like going back and forth. Were
you concerned about like solving a problemand finding a solution and whether there would
be a market for it or wasit more about the experience in that one.

(14:11):
It's a great question, you know, but it was. I mean
I remember doing a little bit ofmarket survey. What I did was I
attended when I was a student.I went to a few conferences where there
are buyers and sellers of high endhandicrafts, and that was the business I
was getting into. So I remembercoming to like from I was in Boston
and I took a come to NewYork and you know, it ended one

(14:33):
of those conferences. Then I'm insomebody else as well. So I did
a little bit of market survey justto see if there is a demand for
the product I was looking to build. But it wasn't like a kind of
a thorough survey in terms of what'sthe market size and what's the growth rate,
and what are the challenges, what'sthe competition, like you know,
how much capital you need to geta business started. I didn't have enough

(14:54):
exposure to kind of do that levelof analysis. But it was mostly product
driven analys which which was helpful.And then I went to India for about
one of my summer as I decidedto not to take an internship and actually
go and spend about three months withthose artisans in India. So I went
there and I kind of really livedwith them for a few months. It

(15:16):
was interesting actually living almost in avillage and really saw their lifestyle and saw
you know, it was quite inspirationalfor me to kind of see what they're
doing. And then you know,build up a few relationship with some vendors
there who would supply me the materialsthat I will distribute to those handicrafts out
to those artisans who will do theartwork on those materials, and then I'll

(15:37):
have another vendor who will ship itto the US. And then in the
US, I had a few distributionchannels that I had set up based on
my kind of relationship that I hadset up early on. So, yeah,
it was it was interesting. Imean it was not, as you
were saying, I did not dotoo much of like real market analysis and

(15:58):
survey. It was almost like divingin and trying to figure things out.
Yeah, maybe that's in my naturealso a little bit, so that's kind
of what I ended up doing.Yeah, certainly, and speaking of your
nature, I'm interested in what yourparents were thinking while you were doing this,
because it's obviously not one of thetraditional ways of creating an income.
But being that your dad has thatbackground, I'm interested in what kind of

(16:19):
support you received. Yeah, youknow what, it's I have been so
lucky because I remember growing up myparents were quite concerned about me getting a
good education, so they made surethat I, you know, whatever other
things I used to do, Imean, I'm getting the support needed or
the time that I have to getto a good college, which I ended

(16:41):
up doing. But as soon asI got into a college, I mean,
they were completely hands off. Theywere like, do what you like
to do, and you know,just make sure that you're, you know,
not completely doing something crazy, butas long as you're doing and following
your passion, I'm totally fine.So I remember my parents were totally fine.
I mean, yeah, you're doingsomething. Hopefully you're doing something good.
Sometimes I'll talk to my dad ormom about it, but they would

(17:03):
be mostly hands off. So whatwas the second business that you started then?
Yeah, so this one that Iexplained was my second business, which
was when I was in MIT.That my first business was in it,
which is with when I was doingmy undergrad in India, so that business
was interesting against So you know,I was doing my undergrad in mechanical engineering,

(17:27):
which was good, but I wasnot quite I felt that, you
know, it was great education,but I could not find my passion there
because in a mechanical engineering was bythen not seen as something which is cutting
edge right where you're building the newproducts and services you cars and things.
It has been there for you knowages. Of course things have changed now

(17:47):
with the lawn mask, you know, and kind of SpaceX and other things.
I mean, I would love togo and probably build a rocket again,
but we were not really thinking aboutthat back then. So I convinced
a few of my friends to buildan app app which runs on a phone
to do a voice to text translationessentially. The idea was that and that

(18:11):
was you know, early two thousand. There was no Apple phone that time.
We had those blackberries that time.Just to kind of see, like,
if you're browsing your website, theidea was that can we kind of
translate the text a in the websiteinto a voice based navigation system so that
you don't have to really scroll throughthose like very clumsy little screens, and

(18:34):
the idea was based around that screensthat blackberries or the low old school phones
would offer, which is not veryeasy to navigate. It wasn't that,
you know, as slick as likeiPhones and what we're used to right now.
There were no smartphones back then.So that was idea and that was
very relevant and that day, andI won't think that would be very relevant
right now. So that was myfirst business. We did a bunch of

(18:56):
things. We've been a prototype andwe showed to a few people. We
get a few users, but nothingcrazy. It kind of stopped. It
was you know, almost ended likea school project or whatever. So it
was like self funded, but therewas really no revenue coming in. That's
exactly right. I mean we triedto. We got a little bit of
funding because we applied for a businessplan competition and we want it, so

(19:18):
that gave us a little bit offunding to do a bunch of things.
But yeah, it did not reallygo through a proper funding problem. Was
that Steve Jobs that funded that portionof it to see if you could get
into Apple. Oh, I wantto paint a picture for everyone of the
phone that you're describing because for ouryounger audience, you just reminded me.
You sent me back to the BlackBerryof like what was like this big technological

(19:41):
advancement was when they put the ballon it. To remember, they put
the ball in the middle of thekeypad and that was our mouse. Yes,
I actually I remember that was thenavigation we were using that time.
So you scroll through the ball andit would be a little menu. You
go through that, and then themenu can read only three four words.
But if it's like a paragraph,how do you explain that that way?

(20:02):
You're trying to explain the back ofinto like a few words, you know.
So it's incredible where our phones wentfrom to where they are today.
It's just like, and I havechildren. I have two daughters. That's
Denise, and tell me that's whoare insurance company is named after Dan ten
And they're six and eight and theyknow and this is no surprise to anybody
with young children. They know howto operate the phone. And it's amazing

(20:26):
and you could just you know,if when we show them phones like the
old phones, because of course Ikeep them because it's like keeping like an
old rotary phne, They're like,how do you even operate this thing?
This looks weird you mentioned. Yeah. I mean, look, I have
daughters, two two daughters, andI completely agree. I mean, you
know, honestly, like for likea two or three year old, they

(20:49):
can navigate the entire phone, goto various websites, watch YouTube videos,
go to TikTok watch that. Imean, they should not be probably,
but they can't. So the amountof advancement we have done in technology in
the last twenty years, it's justamazing. You would take that like a
long view on it. Yeah,and you know, I definitely don't want
to forget about bringing up chat GPTbecause I'm sure that we'll have some nice

(21:11):
conversation around that. I want togo to Elon Musk for a second.
You brought up mechanical engineering and howit kind of shifted from back then to
where it is today. What doyou see in the mechanical engineering space today
and what you know, like yousaid, Elon Musk, with building rocket
ships and what is that leading Whatdo you see that leading to in our
world today? You know the bigchange I see and I did my I

(21:33):
graduated from my undergrad in two thousandand one. So it's been like almost
twenty two years since my complete myundergrad Back then, you know, mechanical
engineering. For you to build anything, you needed a huge operation, meaning
that you had to add a bigmachine that you will cut materials into spieces.
You need big gatcamp computers to designvarious parts that you want to do

(21:56):
and then you can probably make somethingright, but that's going to be very
expensive. You can't do on yourown. You need you know, essentially
operational support and fair amount of investmentto build anything. So a lot of
the work, a lot of thestudies are very theoretical for us, So
we kind of studied like thermodynamics orlike you know, the or physical like

(22:17):
various physics problems that we will kindof spend a lot of time on.
We'll do a lot of drawing tokind of create you know, structures that
we can't build, but we canactually visualize that it will be there.
The difference today is that you know, a lot of that has become very
easy to make, like, forexample, three D printers. You can
come up with a part and youcan just three D print it and you
can build something which is fairly operationalwithout really relying on a big machine that

(22:42):
you have to go to right,So a lot of that, a lot
of the hard work that we usedto do manually is also can be automated.
Now you're very high end software bywhich you can model things you can
build like a little car or arocket. I mean not a rocket that
you can launch, but at leasta prodype that you can build. So
that has I think unlocked a lotof creativity in mechanical engineers who can now

(23:03):
build new things without relying on ahuge amount of investment. And also the
you know, like companies like SpaceXor others of the many other examples are
really kind of really going to thenext level of our kind of society where
it's beyond software. Like a lotof the innovation that has happened in the
last twenty years is around software.You spend so much time iron a software

(23:26):
company, but the next generational innovationis a mix of software and hardware that
kind of changes your life in differentways that wasn't possible before. Like even
the boarding company that he has wherehe is building you know, super fast
trains from you know, SF toLA and things like that. That's a
very interesting engineering challenge that changes ourlifestyle completely, right, It's not only

(23:51):
just building better cars, it's kindof really reimagining your lifestyle. I don't
think that was possible twenty years back, and I think I think there's a
lot of opper trinity now, likeengineers were coming out today can really build
you know, these systems which arebeyond software, where mechanical engineering and other
types of engineering will kind of playa role almost like a systems engineering approach,

(24:14):
which is kind of very interesting rightnow. It is, and I
think rather than holding off on thisbecause it just feel like it fits in
perfectly in this conversation, is youknow if three D printers when they first
started out, there was this wholeuproar about them and you go into the
air quotes of taking away jobs.Of course, chat GPT is now the

(24:36):
big one getting getting that kind ofasterisk next to its name. And AI,
more specifically, I'm interested in,how do you see since since three
D printers helped advance a lot thathappened in mechanical engineering, how do you
see AI advancing what's happening in thatspace as well? You know, that's
a very interesting domain to be honest, Like I'm starting to put my head

(24:59):
around AI, and I'm kind ofconsuming all the information that all of us
are consuming, right, that's comingout around CHADGPT and all the benefits and
all the big risks around AI thatwe have to manage. So in terms
of the benefits, I see thereis a tremendous amount of benefits in AI.
Right. For example, chad GPD. You know, one of my
daughters is doing kind of tutoring usingCHADGPT, where you know, she's kind

(25:22):
of posting problems and she's getting theresults and then she's kind of asking follow
on questions to get better results.Almost you would have to need a tutor.
I would have to do it myself. But CHAGBT can do it a
large extent to some of that.And I see there are better apps coming
up. I was looking at avideo by Khan Academy. They're launching what
they call is Konomigo or something likethat, which is almost like you can

(25:45):
go in and ask questions and getresults almost as a tutor on the side,
one on one tutor. So that'sjust one example. I mean there's
so many other use cases of chadgyptI can see, or the large language
model based AI which is going torevolutionize I think education and work and manual

(26:06):
tasks. And there's something called autogptthat I've been hearing about which can actually
take automatic tasks for people when youcan actually ask it to like do a
you know, I was listening toone of the podcasts we're talking about,
like, you know, you justdo a restaurant reservation and they will actually
look up if your restaurant is availableand do the reservation for you. Where
you had to make a phone callbefore. Now it can automatically do it.

(26:27):
Now. A lot of this isvery primitive right now, but I
can imagine in the next you know, the way technology develops in the next
two three, four years, someof this is going to be very good
and very efficient and very precise,which is going to make our lives easier
to a loge extent and probably addus more value. It's going to reduce
the information overload and give us veryprecise information or summarize it for us,

(26:51):
which is going to be helpful.The flip side is also, as you
can imagine, is equally you knowissue that two big flip sides. One
is, of course, what happensto the jobs, you know, we're
already hearing. I mean I justheard from IBM. I believe they are
cutting jobs because they're going to automatea bunch of their roles in AI because
it kind of could be a lotmore efficient. I think that's going to

(27:14):
have an impact across the board becausepeople are going to lose jobs. You
know a lot of jobs that werevery manual or could be you know,
based on basic skills as could bereplaced by AI. I think it would
be replaced a matter of time.So what do we do about that?
What do we do about reskilling theminto new kind of technologies or a new
kind of using AI to actually getto hire value roles, which is one

(27:37):
big issue we haven't quite figured out. The other big issue is that AI
getting out of control, right becauseyou know, chat GPD, if you
don't make sure that those AI modelsare build in a way that's actually helping
us and not going to create anysort of mental decision, you know,
especially in kids right Like for example, you know, Facebook has been around

(27:57):
for fifteen years now, and nowthere's a lot of talk about the negative
impact of Facebook and Instagram, especiallyyou know, young young people, especially
young women, like you know,they so much talk about it can actually
cause a lot of mental issues foryou if you spend too much time in
social media because of so many kindof effects of social media that is not

(28:18):
very apparent in the beginning. Now, we all thought social media is a
very simple thing where you connect withpeople and get information. That's all good.
But there is a negative effect ona psychological level that we are starting
to understand. We still don't knowquite yet what the negative effects are,
but we know there isn't negative effects, right, So same thing for chat,
you know, GPT or AI.I think there is a negative effect

(28:41):
of GPT that we just don't quiteunderstand, right. I mean, if
CHADGBT is giving us responses on toour questions, but that those responses are
biased in some sense or slowly nudgingus in a direction which AI thinks is
the right way of thinking. Butif you don't have the analytic skill sets
to analyze it ourselves, and weare blindly trusting those results, especially those

(29:07):
models are not quite you know,unbiased, right, I mean, it
depends on what does bias mean.There's such a big topic. It can
lead to very subtle changes in humanpsychology that might lead us to a bath
which tenures down the line will suddenlyrealize, oh my god, what happened
here? We got programmed by AIand we are living miserable lives because you
know, maybe we think we aresmarter because we have a bunch of information,

(29:30):
but we are psychological mindset probably gotcompletely you know, disrupted by AI
models that we have no idea.So there's so many things that are risky
about it also. So that's whyI feel that we have to be very
conscious about how we are using AIand kind of really put a critical lens
on everything that is being developed aroundAI. And I know there is a

(29:51):
lot of talk going on in thisarea, but I do feel that there
is a lot of risk around itthat we need to be conscious about.
That's thank you very much or elaboratingon that. That's pretty incredible stuff.
It's one of the one of thecool things that I see in in the
AI space and the chat GP wellAI, I'm gonna say not chat GPT

(30:11):
because it didn't work in this space. Is I'm a big basketball fan and
I don't get to watch too manygames anymore because of of of the entrepreneurial
lifestyle. This this so called freedomthat we have. But I was watching
a video of a YouTuber who that'spretty much where I get all my basketball

(30:32):
information from. Uh he he founda couple different AI sources that were able
to predict correctly the last three yearsof champions for the NBA and right now
the NBA Finals are going on,so uh so it was very interesting on
there on its prediction of who's goingto win this year, and it was
accurate every year, so it's prettyinteresting on how this can all work out

(30:57):
and play out. But I Ialso agree with your caution of the bias,
because I mean, when we thinkabout almost anything that we consume in
terms of media, in terms,I mean, even this podcast itself has
its own bias of my own ideasand my own thoughts of how I want
to ask questions and perhaps of theguests I interview, and how you decide

(31:17):
to frame things and everything. Sothere's always some sort of bias. So
I think that critical thinking is soimportant that regardless of what we do,
critical thinking is one of the mostthe foundation to being able to go on
in society and have a productive life. So that's one of the things I
would maybe point out there for everyoneis just to consider that and stay inquisitive

(31:41):
as to why did that answer cometo play as we kind of go back
to Yellow dig. And it's interestingbecause it's kind of like on the heels
of this conversation in terms of socialmedia, and what I've noticed with a
lot of companies that are trying towhat's happening in the social media world is

(32:02):
that they're creating their own platforms,and they're creating their own social platforms.
I'm big into self development and I'mpart of growth Day, which is a
self development platform, and in therewhen I started going in there, I
noticed that I joined Growth Day becauseof the learning aspect of it. There's

(32:22):
courses, there's a journal, there'sall sorts of different things, and Brennan
Bouchard, who's the founder of it, does these live events every Wednesday where
he has different keynote speakers come onand you could learn from these keynots once
a week, which is just incredible. So I joined it for that reason,
and then I learned while I wasin there in the platform that it's

(32:42):
got its own social media thread.It's got its own thread where you can
post pictures, post thoughts, ithas its own areas where people can host
their own live events in the app, and I think about that and other
apps. I'm just using that oneas an example, is that it's kind
of shifting away from the Instagrams andthe facebooks to get away from that,

(33:05):
like, as you said, thatnegative vibe that happens there, and there's
a lot of positivity that happens onsocial media. I don't want to,
you know, just completely bash itbecause I know that, Like on my
social media thread, I only followreally inspirational people, positive thinkers, people
that are doing good in the world. And so therefore my threads are typically
positive quotes and inspirational things. AndI do in ig Live every single morning

(33:30):
where I put out positive messages andmessages to help people. So I think
it could be used in a verygood way. But you did something and
you were inspired I guess by socialmedia with Yellow dig in the education background,
and so I'm interested in back intwenty fourteen when you started formulating this
idea of this company, what waswhat was kind of like the first piece

(33:55):
of the puzzle that came together foryou, was at the social media angle
or was at the education angle?Where did this all stem from? Yeah,
that's a great question. You know, back in twenty fourteen when I
started the company, I was thinkingI started the company in twenty fifteen when
we launched the platform. One ofthe early kind of triggers for me to
think about this as a platform wasthe benefits of social media, which is,

(34:21):
you know, Facebook was kind ofgetting going that time, you know,
getting way there had been around fora while, but it was really
kind of becoming a mainstream platform backin that time, and LinkedIn and others
were also getting a lot of traction. So my hypothesis was that, you
know, social media is not goingto be something which is just a blip

(34:44):
in our lives, like it happenedand we forget about it and we moved
to the next thing. It isfundamentally changing humanity. You know, Facebook
has like billions of users. Nowwe're all connected because of social media to
a large extent. You know,in LinkedIn, you can go and look
up anybody pretty much right and yousee the background at least their work history.
You can have a sense you canhave a conversation with them if you

(35:06):
think that would be relevant. Sothat aspect of connecting us in a seamless
way was quite attractive to me.Kind of the problem that I noticed as
I grew up in India. Forexample, right, I have my relatives
there. How I am in touchwith them is through Facebook to a large
extent, my work relationships over thelast three ten fifteen years. I mean,

(35:27):
I'm in touch with them through LinkedInbecause I see them posting in LinkedIn.
I kind of reach out to themonce in a while at least even
if I don't talk to them,I know where they are. And that
kind of connection wasn't even possible before. So all of that kind of gave
me this idea that you know,education is also similar in that sense,
because you know, we love tolearn by discussing ideas with one another.

(35:49):
You know, there is of coursea part of learning which happens because of
watching a YouTube video or a lectureor being in a classroom, which is
consuming of content, which is important, But there is also an aspect of
love learning which happens by discussions.And if you're in a classroom, if
you go back to your classroom days, sometimes the case study discussions that something
will happen in a classroom where peoplewill speak up and their own points of

(36:13):
views or on a case study,or you know, people will kind of
debate a topic, or they willshare materials which is out there, like
I found this video or something whichis relevant to what we discussed last week,
or this material And this doesn't onlyhave to come from the instructor of
the professor. Everybody's learning can actuallybring those resources to one another and actually

(36:35):
have a discussion around it, andthey can be anywhere. It doesn't have
to be in the same classroom,right, it could be anywhere in the
world or any parts of the country, or it doesn't really matter. So
I could see that there is avalue of a platform where people can discuss
and debate and go deeper in atopic in a social media style, but
not on Facebook or not on LinkedIn, because imagine you want to do the

(36:58):
same thing in LinkedIn, I meangoing to be very difficult because LinkedIn is
designed to create a brand for yourselfto a large extent on your work history.
Facebook is for connecting with friends andfamily. You want to see your
kids, you want to see yourfamily photos, you want to see where
you've been fortification, you had abirthday party. Those things are very relevant
in Facebook kind of an environment.So it's also very environment specific. What's

(37:21):
the context of that and the appthat you were talking about, you know,
that's designed for self development for example, Right, so if you have
a community of people who are allfocused on self development, they coming together
create a very different vibe and thenyou need features and functionalities around it.
So I had a very similar idea, I would say to that too,
but focused on learning. So webuild app, and we went to various

(37:42):
schools and we said, you knowwhat, you want to use this thing.
And of course in the beginning itwas like, okay, what's the
value of this kind of an app? But now, over time what we
have seen and we have shown isthat if you have learning in the context
of a community is always better thanlearning just on your own. And you
know, colleges, universities, highschools, you know, we spend trillions

(38:05):
of dollars globally to you know,to create those spaces. The whole idea
for campus is that students get togetherand they actually meet with one another,
and that's you know, you goto your football game, but you also
want to be in your classrooms,or you want to be in your lecture
halls or whatnot. So that wasdesigned for the last fifteen hundred years.
But the future of that is essentiallya community where you are connected as part

(38:28):
of a community and you can findthings and meet people and discuss things naturally.
Where is that going to happen?Right? Somebody has to build that
app for that to happen. Andthat's what yellow Digg is is to kind
of create that virtual campus to alarge extent, but it could be virtual
classroom too that you can meet peopleand engage with one another. And you
know, I'm always interested in thename. So in all of that,

(38:51):
I'm wondering, Okay, so wheredoes yellow dig come from? Then?
Yes, you know, I getthat question. I have got that question
so many times, like what's thename? It's very interesting because when I
started, right, it's I hada I had a I would say,
an idea of this vision back thenthat we want to build the words,
But I didn't really have a concreteidea this is how exactly it's going to

(39:13):
shape up, or I didn't reallystart with that. I really started with
a kind of a mission. Andso the word yellow. So every color
has what they call is a colorpsychology or color meaning behind it. So
for example, yellow stands for cheerfulnessand fun. You know, if you
see yellow color, it makes youhappy, it makes you bright and sunrise

(39:36):
and you know everything is bright andyellow, and and I love that color.
I thought that, you know what, if you're building something in education,
it got to be it has tohave that feeling. It can't be
dark. It can't be like somethingwhich is like, and that's one of
the problems of education. So yellowwas that I liked the color, I
like the name of the like that, like the meaning. So I decided
to put that name. And thedig pot came from, you know,

(40:00):
digging together. So say, ifyou're a community of fifty students and you
know you're listening to a class,you know your professor, you're learning something.
But hey, if you discuss thingswith one another and just be vulnerable
and talk openly, you'll learn somuch more. Right, everybody has their
owner perspective. So that was adigging part. So I kind of said
yellow digg is what it is,and dig in at. And to be

(40:22):
very honest, I thought it'll onlylast for a few years. I mean
I never knew that I'll be doingit for eight years now. And and
you know, so so now peopleask, okay, now it's a name,
people use it. It's fine.It's stuck. So but it's different
also, it's doesn't it doesn't givea vibage an education company or social media
company. That's cool and I lovethe I like the social media aspect of
it. That that you brought incould you share since you didn't? And

(40:45):
I love that that you didn't knowit would last for so long. It's
so cool. You know. It'ssuch an entrepreneurial mindset of like, let
me build something, let me havea vision on something. It's really cool.
And what's the next thing around thecorner? What was the journey like
from from then to where you aretoday? It was interesting, you know.
We launched our first app in twentyfifteen, that grew the business,

(41:07):
and then we realized that there's abunch of things we want to change in
it. So long story shot.Twenty eighteen, we decided to rebuild the
lab. So we kind of rebuildthe entire thing from ground up and launched
relaunched it in twenty nineteen. SoI went through the first I would say
pivot, our iteration of the business, and twenty nineteen is we launched and

(41:28):
then COVID happened right after that,so we went through that period. Yeah,
it was an interesting time, youknow, you know, in all,
you know, there was good andbad in everything, but I think
overall we benefited through that transformation ofhow learning happens now is mostly hybrid as
opposed to there's a fixed way uplearning. A lot of universities are offering
online courses, hybrid courses. Studentsare expected to be anywhere in terms of

(41:52):
learning, and our app actually supportsthat, which I don't know whether it
would have happened without COVID at therate we have now. I was going
to ask you in terms of thatrate, like, did you see what
kind of spike did you see whenCOVID happened? You know, the app
that we launched in twenty nineteen,it had only one customer, of course,
you know, we only started withone customer, and then you know,

(42:14):
during COVID, we rapidly grew toabout dozens and dozens of universities were
signing up with us, and thenyeah, I mean now we have over
one hundred and fifty universities using US, getting towards two hundred pretty soon.
So I think the spike was theneed for the platform went up dramatically during

(42:36):
COVID, But twenty twenty was aninteresting time for us, Like it wasn't
that the need went up, butthe market kind of collapsed. If you
know that, you know, enterprisebuying almost stopped. So schools came out
to us said that we love theplatform, we want to use it,
but we don't know who to buy. We don't know who the budget owner
is, we don't know who canactually make a decision for us because everything

(42:57):
is closed down right now. We'reoften all programs over zoom and Zoom is
not the right solution. And youknow that a platform like Yellow we can
add a lot of value and thingslike that. So we give the platform
for free actually to a large partof twenty twenty. So that's how we
drove up the demand of the platformand we started monetizing that into any real
you want to do it, andthat's how we do. When when you

(43:19):
think back about some of the objectionsthat you had previously to COVID, to
this, to online learning, whatdid COVID really overcome a lot of those
objections because people were confined to theirhomes or was it more of where COVID
showed these people that whether whether peoplewere confined to the home or not,

(43:42):
this is a model that they shouldadopt. Yeah, I know we are
still going through some of that change, but I think the biggest change COVID
drove was change in behavior, meaningyou know, just like we are now
so used to working from home,right, Like imagine before COVID, like
if somebody said that I'm going towork like ods from home and one day
I'll get into office, which is, by the way, our model right

(44:05):
now, it would be like crazy, like is that really possible? Like
first question is that is that possible? Like can we really get the work
done even if you're working from home? And are there ways to coording?
I mean that that be have provennow that you know, to a large
extent you can do it right,there's some design needed around it so that
we are efficient. Same thing hashappened in learning too, where before COVID,

(44:25):
the idea was that, yeah,you can only learn if you're in
person. Yeah you can do aclass online, but that's on the side,
but you only learn when you're together. But then through COVID, now
people have realized that online learning isas efficient could be even more efficient in
many ways and more open and moredemocratic in that sense if you if you

(44:47):
than in personal learning. So thatbehavior change actually COVID drove. I think
a lot of schools, instructors,students, parents kind of thought that that's
not possible. Now they know thatthat's possible because they've gone through that change.
So that that is basically what hashappened in this space for us.
And I think, you know whatI what I see is that just like
work from home is going to bea long term trend and there would be

(45:10):
various variations around it. Similarly,for learning, it's going to be hybrid
go forward, so you don't haveto quit your job and go to a
campus or you know, you canstill keep your job and learn online and
then go to campus maybe once aweek or once a month to meet with
your professor, with your students andthings like that. So I think that

(45:31):
change, you know, it's goingto be a long term trend. But
I think COVID was a big driverof that behavior change. Yeah, I
like that you call it a behaviorsof objections, but I yeah, I
mean before COVID, that was abig thing was you're not going to learn
anything online. You know, youcan't learn that way. You have to
go to a classroom and all thatstuff. And I mean, for me,

(45:53):
I've worked from home even when Iworked for companies for most of my
career, pretty much all of mycareer, And when I think about it,
I think there was only a smallstint that I had to go to
an office every day. But outsideof that, being an outside salesperson,
you know, it was report tothe office maybe once a week. In
fact, as on the sales side, I remember, and I would assume

(46:15):
that this was the same all around, because everybody in the office talked about
it was if you're in the office, you're not selling, so you know,
so it was so you know,I mean, and you know,
I say I work from home becauseI was either on the road or why
would I drive an hour to goto the office when I can just do
a lot of the work that I'mdoing at the office from home. My
boss, my manager didn't care whetherI was doing it from home or not,

(46:37):
because as long as we're selling,you're selling right where I'm going with
the whole other side of this was, I mean, before COVID again,
going back to online learning, peoplewere kind of adverse to it. But
for me, I learned a lotof the things I do through YouTube videos.
Through online I mean, it wasn'tdedicated online courses like what you offer

(47:00):
or a yellow dig, but Imean I was going through the people that
inspired me and that I thought werethought leaders and that I wanted to learn
from and with their strategies that theywere doing, learn what they are,
and I did it all through YouTubevideos. So it was like, you
know, covid only showed us thatthat's possible to some of the people that

(47:20):
thought it wasn't possible, which isvery interesting. Could you share a little
bit more about yellow dig and howthe platform works. Yeah, no,
happy to share. And by theway, it's a very interesting thing that
you know, it was always possible, right, I mean, you know
online could have been a great thingeven twenty years back. I mean,
you know, we had the basictechnologies with just that we didn't use it
and people who were passionately using itthat now is becoming mainstream. I think

(47:45):
that's the big change that's happening now. You know, in terms of platform,
it's a software as a service companywith we provide support as well.
So essentially what we do is thatwe license our platform to our clients institutions
that are using US, mostly higheducation, but we also have Kate Golve

(48:05):
and corporate training programs that are usingUS, and they will we integrate into
their systems. Though, as youknow, any organization, they have multiple
different things that they use for trainingand providing online education or hybrid education,
so we integrate that so that it'sa very seamless experience for the students.
One click they can join our platform, and the value for them is,
you know, like what would bea kind of a non engaging online experience.

(48:30):
I mean that's what happens if youif you have kids, or if
you go to any elements, youknow, school, your experience is very
very kind of static in some sense, right, I mean you kind of
go to the class, attend thelectures, you come back, and you
kind of do your assignments. Butwhen you have a yellowed egg, you
always have a community with you.So if you're in a you know,
economics one on one class and youattended the lecture, maybe in Zoom or

(48:52):
maybe have any other software, ormaybe in person, and you know,
in that evening, you know you'rereading a chapter, you have a question,
you just put in the community andsomebody will answer it. You know,
instructors can create a very interesting simulationsor debates on our platform where they
can ask questions on a weekly basis, or they will assign a topic,
let's talk about this topic this weekand next week something else, and everybody

(49:17):
is encouraged to participate. We havea point system which we track participation and
that can be used for participation grading, which is one of the kind of
sticks we have to get everybody intoit. So as you can imagine allline
forums, like only five percent willtalk, majority won't. But what we
find is that if you give theman incentive to go in and they start

(49:37):
talking, they actually like talking.That's what people are, right, So
we get them through that hurdle throughour game full learning or point system,
so that happens. So a lotof instructors are very amazed by Oh,
I thought that my students don't wantto talk, but I know, yeah,
if you get them in, theywill allowdlight to talk and you know
it's and they get into a lotof engaging debates if you design that experience

(50:04):
and then in outside the classroom,you know, if you have questions about
Let's say I need help on myessay. I have to write an essay,
but I don't know I you know, I don't speak English. Well
whatnot. You can go to thecommunity and ask said, hey, I
need help in this. Somebody willhelp you out. Maybe another student or
some other you know, somebody inthe university can help you out. You're
you're looking for a job and youknow you need help with your resume.

(50:25):
I you know, I need toget prepared for my interview. Can give
me some resources of course you canfind in Google. But you have a
community with you now because you're goingto the school. You're paying for it,
and those schools would like to helpyou, and they have the resources
available. So we are just makingit easy for them and and and always
as part of a community, becausewhy not, right if you have a

(50:46):
community around it, it's not morefun than just kind of talking to one
person. And you can do oneon one too. I mean, we
have that capability of a platform whereyou can just jump onto one mentor or
one support resource will help you out. And yeah, so I think that's
how it works. So we kindof make the Digital Campus Community Network.

(51:08):
It's a community but it's a network, and hopefully you're building more connections when
you're there, so that when you'regraduating, you just don't know five people,
but you know five hundred people.Yeah, and then you can you
know, you can get to knowthem in LinkedIn and whatnot, or you
can be yellowing also and that's alsoavailable. That's pretty cool. And you
know, you're always innovating and alwaystrying to find new ways to improve the

(51:30):
platform. So I'm curious as towhat challenges do you see now ahead in
whether it's in the platform or justin technology and education that you're trying to
solve for. You know, educationI think is going through a pretty steep
innovation cycle right now because of COVID, right because of move to online,

(51:52):
and a lot of schools are facingenrollment challenges if they're not innovating and increasing
their experiences. There is very limitedreason for a student to spend like one
hundred thousand dollars or even like twentythousand dollars to go to a school and
not get that digital experience that isgoing to help them, right. So,
so I think that is driving alot of universities to actually send money

(52:13):
in this area and inno it,which is a great time for us to
build a company right now in termsof new innovation, you know, like
AI is going to play a rolebecause we have now very intelligent systems that
can use that data to actually helpstudents what need like real time help,

(52:34):
as well as nudging students who needthe help. So we are kind of
looking into those kind of technologies toincorporate into the platform. Virtual reality or
metaverse is kind of gaining some traction. You know, for example, if
you are you know, if you'rein a lab, you really want to
interact with them, you know stuffright, machines or chemicals or whatnot,

(52:57):
But how do you do it online? You can potentially do it using digit
you know, Metawhorse or some sortof like you know, virtual reality solutions.
So there are some very interesting experimentationshappening right now. It's it's still
a very early stage, but Ithink there is a lot of potential in
kind of creating that three D experiencefor students when it makes sense. Then.

(53:22):
Also, I think the other excitingpart of our education now is that
as we use technology, we candramatically reduced costs because you know, if
you look at the cost of education, Like the real cost is actually maintaining
physical assets like buildings and campuses andsalaries of people. It's a huge operation

(53:42):
typically universities how they are, whichis why education is so expensive, you
know, and it's dramatically expensive.As we move online and create those experiences
which are as good as being inperson, which is possible, I think
we can dramatically reduce costs and makeit available to a lot more people.
So imagine you go and get abachelor's degree in you know, your passion

(54:06):
area, you know, for liketen thousand dollars as opposed to fifty thousand
dollars. It will still cost moneywhere it could be much lower. And
I can imagine in the next fiveten years we are going to see schools
which are digital first. I mean, we know the online schools have been
there for a while, but theywere not digital first, right, they
were mostly still operating in the oldmodel. But now you can have like

(54:30):
imagine a school which has that engagementand then you can virtual reality and you
can engage with any time, anywhere, and you can meet people and do
experimentations together. And they're really reimaginingcollege. You know, we have talked
about it for a long time,and I think it's coming in the next
for five years, ten years forsure. Wow, So so we'll see,

(54:50):
you know, who does it.I mean, you know, it's
an interesting time. That's pretty cool. And so because you have this like
serial entrepreneurial mindset about you, arethere any other companies that you have that
kind of like buried under a blanketright now that you might be sneaking out
at some point. This company iskeeping me quite busy. I would say,

(55:15):
like quite busy right now. Butone of my most joyful experiences is
when I discuss business ideas with otherpeople, other entrepreneurs. So there's always
ideas. We're just saying. It'sjust that, you know, I don't
have the capacity to do another companyright now, but but yeah, I
mean I would love to at somepoint I have, you know, I
mean I'm done with you know,building Yellowtic to the point that you know

(55:37):
it has grown to a point andthat I have more time and of course,
yeah, so are you still codingyourself or do you more manage the
day to day. I'm more managedday today, but I'm quite involved with
the product side of things because that'smy passion. I love it. I
love to kind of discuss ideas,features, functionality, and everything else.
But our team, you know,does most of the work and it's doing

(56:00):
pretty well. What do you thinkas one of the greatest I guess strengths
that you have in terms of leadership. Since you're so focused on the product
side, there's there's so many othersides of operations and sales and all these
other things. So in order toinspire all of these different teams and departments,
what's one of the strengths that youhave to be able to do that?

(56:22):
You know? I think what I'veseen is, you know, my
friends who have been very successful entrepreneurs, and I've seen many very successful entrepreneurs
over the years, and I've seenmy growth as well. I think it
comes down to kind of being veryconscious about what you're good at and what
you're not so good at, sothat you have people to help you in
those areas. And for me personally, I think I'm good at building products

(56:49):
and thinking about how to solve aproblem music a product or a service or
technology. I think I'm good atthat. I think I'm good at identifying
people who can help in various areasof that vision. And kind of keep
them motivated to kind of build withus. I mean, you know,
I think, and it's there's nosecret sauce there. I think doing the
right things, hopefully so that youknow we're doing the right things. I

(57:12):
mean, I think that kind ofhas its own momentum. So I think
that's what's been going there, andI've been kind of trying to do that
as much as possible. Yeah,I mean, I think that's where I'm
good at, and there are otherareas where I'm not so good at,
and there are other team members whojump in and kind of make sure they
do that. So I think that'sthe secret sauce. I mean, to
be honest, like, I don'tthink there is a kind of silver bullet

(57:36):
to be an entrepreneur. I thinkit's just about kind of really understanding what
you're good at, what your desiresare, and then kind of really creating
a plan and a vision. Ithink that's important to be an entrepreneur,
and then kind of getting other peopleinvolved is what it takes. Yeah,
And I guess having them see thatplan and vision and trusting them that they

(57:57):
believe in it and that they're goingto carry it out in their department.
It sounds like that you have alot of trust in your team. Yes,
yeah, I trust my team.I try to delegate as much as
possible. And yeah, I meanthat's kind of how it is. Yeah,
that's really really great. I alwayslike to ask something about a way
that people live their lives and theirmantras, and one that I found about

(58:20):
you in terms of a mantra,a success mantra that you have and you
could change it if you'd like,But I'm just interested if you could elaborate
on this one that I found,which is it's easier to be motivated,
grow and be recognized for your contributionsif you are motivated by the impact you
create. Yes, no, I'mnot sure where you found it, but

(58:43):
I think that's spot on, youknow, because what I've seen is that
and it's not only for me butalso the team. Is you know,
the from a motivation standpoint, youwant to start a company or you know,
take a job is because of moneyfor us probably right, if you're
going to make some money now inthe future, could be one motivation.
Maybe one of the big reasons peopleactually work like it from bed and just

(59:05):
go to work anywhere. Right,The other motivation could be like, you
know, family or somebody want totake care of and that's why you do
things. But what I've seen iswhat has kept us going, you know,
in our ups and down says theresults that we've seen. You know,
like sometimes like we see some ofour customers will like write to us

(59:25):
saying that hey, this actually happenedand I love this thing. And one
of our teammates were want to callyesterday was saying that, hey, I
went to this conference and people werestopping by and said, Hi, we
love yellow egg. I mean waslike that that was a big thing for
him, Right, I think thatdrives people to a large extent. And
that happens because you know, wefocus on the impact that we're creating.

(59:50):
It's a balance always, right,It's a balance around creating impact and having
an operation that actually can sustain itselfand grow. I mean that's definitely balanced.
But the impact part is times Ido feel that, you know,
sometimes it's not talked about enough forpeople just talk it as a buzzword like
saying, hey, we want tocreate impact, but what does that mean
in real sense? Like are youcreating impact from really high quality user experience

(01:00:16):
and then you know, that couldbe an impact, or it could be
that, hey, I'm helping studentsto finish college in this specific way and
they're getting a great experience. Sothat part I've seen is probably the big
thing that has motivated me and keepsme on this journey and as well as
a lot of our team members.And when you think about impact, I'm

(01:00:38):
interested in this because I was dealingwith a situation recently where we set a
goal post and the person felt overwhelmedby this goalpost. And what I let
them know was that, you know, it's just a goalpost. It's just
there to kind of like guide us. But you know, really what matters
is that you put the work inevery single day and if you get to

(01:01:00):
that goalpost, then great, andif you don't, when we get to
that space and time, which itwas a two week goal post, then
we can reevaluate where we are andsee if we need to move it a
little bit for you or you know, or if you accomplished it. And
when you think about when you're talkingabout impact, I was thinking about that
situation there, and so I'm interestedin your thought process in terms of creating

(01:01:24):
this impact. What is your Ithink advice is such a strong word,
but I'm going to use it hereand I think people can understand the context
of this question. Here is what'syour advice for the entrepreneur, the business
leader, the executive, the communityleader who wants to create an impact but
sees that they're either potentially falling shortbased off of some statistics or they feel

(01:01:49):
it's more of a feeling that they'refalling short. What's your advice for them
while they're experiencing this. Yeah,and it's a great question. You know,
in terms of creating impact, oneof the things I've noticed is that,
you know, it's important to kindof really focus on the details what
drives that impact versus having a highlevel goal of having impact. Like for

(01:02:10):
example, like what I see sometimesis that, Okay, we want to
create you know, better student experienceso that they feel more motivated. Right,
But that's a goal that we wantto achieve, But that's only going
to happen if our product works ina certain way that the students actually find
useful. So like translating that impactinto something which is very tangible and kind

(01:02:32):
of focusing our goal setting around thattangible goals is quite important and there are
so many ways we can spend ourtime and kind of make things better,
but maybe kind of finding the realsmall goals that actually drives value towards that
goal is more important than having thatgoal and maybe measuring the high level statistics

(01:02:54):
like we do nts, like productNPS for example, Right, we know
what is our NPS that promoter scoreessentially in our product. We get that
and we measure that on a weektwo week basis. But if you say
that our goal is to have higherendps, but how do we get there?
So then that comes down to kindof actually looking at the user feedback

(01:03:14):
or talking to customers and truly understandingthe problems and truly analyzing it and then
kind of creating plans to solve them, you know, which are small steps.
None of them is going to improveNPS tomorrow, but maybe six months
down the line it's going to changethat. So that level of detail is
probably what's important, I feel,because sometimes we stress around this, Okay,

(01:03:35):
I need higher NPS, my ndbas is not going up. There's
no way to solve that problem withouthaving that detail plan. The second thing
I like to say is that youknow, as you said, like that
example which is a goal post,like we need to have high goals,
but we can't stress about it.The moment we start stressing about it,
it's just the fun is gone.Right, So I think it's also kind

(01:03:57):
of important to say that he goalis for it's a forcing function for you
to think big and taking steps atevery moment that actually drives big actions.
Was just small like, you know, don't the small stuff, like do
the big things that's going to driveus there. It's a forcing function for
us to do the right things andnot to just measure ourselves. And you
know, it's a game, andwe'll see where we land. Right.

(01:04:19):
We may go one hundred percent,we may go fifty percent. But you
know, like one example all kindof comes to mind is that you know,
you know, one of our marketingmanagers, I mean, she was
planning a confidence and she came upwith this idea and it was an amazing
idea to kind of bring all ourclients together and we'll invite all our users
and and and we what should bethe goal? And I said, look,

(01:04:44):
and she was saying, Okay,you know it's only happening next month.
So maybe if we get one hundredof our you know client show up
or you know participant show up inthis webinar. That would be great for
all this conference. That'll be greatfor us. I said, maybe we
said a much bigger goal, likeSAI a thousand. Let's say we say
that we want to get a thousandregistrants for this conference. That probably is

(01:05:04):
impossible in the next one month.But the reason why do we set that
goal is because then we will thinkbig, like, we will do things
that we would not do if youjust set a goal of one hundred.
So why don't we set a biggoal? Why don't you we come up
with ideas that are going to pushus towards that goal. And if he
landed like two hundred or three hundred, that's okay, because we did things

(01:05:27):
to get us two hundred and we'lllearn something out of it that, Okay,
we could not get two thousand becauseof these things. Right next time
and we do it with something else. So that exercise and that conversation was
very helpful because then she said that, Okay, now I understand it's not
a stress. If I go atthree hundred, I'm not going to be
like seen as I failed. ButI can explain that Okay, I did
these things to get to hundred onethousand. I didn't get it because you

(01:05:49):
know these reasons. This is whyI learned out of it, and so
it happens like we actually beat it. I remember that we had over like
one thousand, one hundred registrations forthat. Wow. Yeah, and it
was amazing. She was. Iwas amazed, like, and we don't
expected that, Like, okay,we'll take whatever we get. But but
I think that is something I triedto talk to my team is that,
Okay, the reason we set biggoals is to plan big, not to

(01:06:13):
just always hit it. And ifyou hit a half fifty percent, and
that should be okay. I mean, we should not play the double game
there saying that, Okay, howcome you didn't meet it then, because
then it kind of really diffuses theculture at that point, right, the
culture should be shoot high. Butif you fail, that's good. Let's
learn the lessons and figure out whatshould we do next time so that we
can shoot high or higher. Ilove that, And what I got from

(01:06:35):
it was it's more about the journeythan the destination. And I think that
that is you just said it soperfectly. The whole thing about setting high
goals. Again, it goes toanother quote that I love to talk about
is you know, shoot for themoon and if you don't get there,
at least your land land among thestars. And that's that's essentially the conversation

(01:06:57):
I had with this individual was reallyjust about, you know, that goal
is there, and it's and yougot to forget about it. And actually
one of the exercises that we didtogether was literally making her forget about it.
It was like, look, it'stwo weeks out, and today's not
going to change whether it's two weeksout or not. So you know,
it's two weeks out. Now,let's forget about the two weeks. Let's
just focus on today. And theother thing I love that you talk about

(01:07:18):
is what did I learn from it? That's another thing is so significant in
this is that you know, ifwe accomplish a goal, that's great.
But when we when we don't accomplishthe goal, what did we learn out
of that? What can we change? What can we do better next time
to accomplish it? So I loveall of those things. All right,
I want to shift gears real quickas we start concluding. Forget about business,

(01:07:43):
forget about everything. That we've beentalking about what do you like to
do. What is one of thehobbies, what it's sports activities, fun
thing you and your daughters enjoy doing. What's something that is just fun for
you? Yeah, I mean forme, you know, like when I'm
with my daughters and one of thethings we are trying now is roller skating
and ice skating. So I'm learning, so they are learning and I'm learning

(01:08:05):
with them. I love that.You know what one thing I love about
it is that I've always been veryscared about actually skating all my life.
I felt that I'll fall and I'llbreak my knee. But now I kind
of started doing it and say,you know, I need to put myself
out there and see what the whatthe fears that I'm to work through that,
And it's working. It's going realso far. So I'm really happy
about it. That's cool. Soare you roller skating at a rink or

(01:08:27):
is this like roller skating outside?Or it's a rink. It's a rink,
it's a ring we have close by, so we can go there,
and then of course in the wintertime we'll go for ice skating a little
bit. And she's much better thanme. But you know, I'm so
far, I haven't broken my legs, so I'm good. Very cool.
That's that's really cool. Well,I really enjoyed having you on on the
show today. Could you just forour YouTube audience and and for our listeners

(01:08:50):
here you could find the replay ofthis or you could find or maybe you
found us here right on YouTube MichaelSposito Inc. On YouTube. But could
you just show us the shirt becauseI love it. You and I are
wearing our sponsored shirts. I loveit the yellowdig shirt. It's so cool.
And that those are the Mica lassPosito Inc. Colors almost if you
look in my background there you cansee Michael's Posito Inc. More of a

(01:09:11):
navy and a darker blue. ButI love it, really really cool.
Thanks so much for coming on theshow today. It's been amazing. Yes,
no, thanks for the invitation,Michael, and it was really truly
enjoyful to speak with you. Andyes, you know, I'm glad that
you are doing this. And inanybody who wants to kind of find me,
just look me on LinkedIn. It'svery easy to find me there,

(01:09:32):
Sean Croy And if you want tolook about Yellowdigg, just go to our
website Yellowdig dot col and you'll geta bunch of information there yep. And
of course all of those links willbe in the show notes. So thank
you so much for coming on theshow today. This has been really great,
awesome. Thank you. Thank youfor listening to The michaelaus Posito Show.
For show notes, video clips andmore episodes, go to Michael Esposito

(01:09:55):
Inc. Dot com backslash podcast.Thank you again to our dan ten insurance
services helping businesses get the right insurancefor all their insurance needs. Visit Denten
dot io to get a quote that'sd n ten dot io and remember when
you buy an insurance policy from Denten, you're giving back on a global scale.

(01:10:17):
This episode was produced by Uncle Mikeat the iHeart Studios in Poughkeepsie.
Special thanks to Lara Rodrian for theopportunity and my team at Mike Lesposito, Inc.