#210 From Field to Fortune: The Tech-Driven Business Journey of Entrepreneur Robert Indries

0:00:02 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to an episode of the CTO show with Mehmet Today. I'm very pleased to have with me Robert. Robert, thank you very much for being with me on the show today the way I like. As I was telling you, I love my guests to introduce themselves because I believe no one can introduce someone other than themselves, so the floor is yours. 

0:00:19 - Robert
Well, I did see some people making amazing introductions in real life stages and so on. I would not be able to get that much hype of myself than those people. Those are the guys that should be hired by the WWE, like in the red corner. There are some people that are very gifted at that. In my case, I was born in a developing country, in, let's say I always try to not say poor because we had the roof, we had food, and I don't want to be offensive to people that were actually really poor. They didn't have enough food and so on, because that's real poverty. We weren't there. However, as compared to how much wealth we have now, we couldn't even buy a computer for ourselves. We had to save up for over a year to buy a computer, so it's things like that, and so in that world, I really enjoyed the thing that we were doing there. We were working the land, we're feeding chicken, walking the cows, doing all of that Just nice living. Life was way less complicated, as you can imagine, and then, at one point, I saw this book in a library and it was called the Evolution of Technology. It was an amazing like the cover looked amazing. It was the biggest book. It was pretty. It was like, wow, this looks so cool. And so I saw that I went back home. I asked for money. Barely got some, but eventually I did manage to buy the book. I was very young at the time and I was just in awe of what I was reading and seeing. And this is like I love this, this is so cool. And so that was my first real, real interaction with tech, in the sense that I really started understanding it and how physics works, how, let's say, basically civil engineering works. So I went on to actually do civil engineering. I have a civil engineering background, ba and masters and so on. I've built hundreds of projects until now, both hardware and software, so I really love doing that. 

At the same time, at one point I realized in the companies that I used to work in that people didn't really or the owners and leadership didn't really care about myself as an employee, about myself as a person in the company. I have so, so many stories we obviously don't have time to go through all of them today. So I realized that when a push comes to shove, they will never have my best interests at heart. So I never liked that. I always wanted to feel like I belong and I am part of something bigger than myself. I couldn't get it in other companies, so I started my own and I said OK, let me make my own so that I can actually care and treat people fairly, and so on. I did that, but this was over a decade ago. 

Fast forward, you know, more than 10 years Now. We have a portfolio of eight businesses, we have operations in 19 countries, we have over 100 staff. We have I mean, we make millions every year, you know. So it's a very good place to be right now. Where we are. It could be much, much better. However, we did make a lot of mistakes on our journey and, based on all of our victories and all of our mistakes, we were also able to work with other companies. Much like you, we used to do a lot of consulting in the past. We've consulted with over 300 businesses and we've generated for them over half a billion dollars as business value. Most of that is revenue in other parts as cost saving or things of that nature, but it was a very good part of our history and then we stopped doing that a couple of years ago. So that's where we are right now. 

0:04:49 - Mehmet
That's a great story, robert, and it's always nice to you know listen from people like yourself who can inspire others also as well to be on the same journey. Now, you mentioned a couple of things and first, like, if I might ask, like, what is, you know, the main area of focus or, let's say, the main businesses that you were consulting or you still consult today? 

0:05:21 - Robert
So consulting I almost completely stopped. I almost exclusively do consulting for the businesses I own now or I own shares in. Very little do I do any other form of consulting. I don't market it, I don't invite people to it or anything. We do have clients that we consult for, but it's part of a much larger package. It's like, for example, a full growth package. Like, for example, one of the companies we work with. They're at around 25 million when we started working with them. Now, 2 and 1 half years later, they're at 50 million. I think they'll pass 50 million. 

So, as you can imagine, there's a lot of work there, and the consulting part is a very, very small fraction of that, but we do that just because they ask. It's like OK, what do we do now? What do we do now? What do we do now? Right, so we just work with them and help them. However, some of my businesses are what I like to call us ends. We actually do the work. So, for example, you go into a company and you advise them as the CTO. We provide the engineers. We actually do the work. Or someone needs to improve their operations? We have the admin team. 

We have financial capabilities, legal capabilities, we have communication capabilities, pr, everything. We have the people that actually do the work. And so we found that many times we would advise people on what they need to do and one of two things would happen in many cases, not all of them. One, they already knew what they had to do. They just weren't doing it because of a lack of time. Or, number two, they didn't know what they have to do, but now that they know, they still don't do it because they still don't have the resource to do it. So you would always fall into this problem that you wouldn't have. You know what you need to do Either you knew before we talked or after we talked, but you still don't do it. And I can tell you how many consulting calls we had, weekly consulting calls where I say, ok, let's do these four things until next week, and none of them would get done, or one of them would get done, and so we would basically have a repeat conversation the following week because those things needed to get done. 

They were the most urgent thing, and so I understand I was helping as an accountability partner to say, hey, I hope you feel bad for not doing what you said you were going to do, but other than that, I would have rather just said hey, here's the admin person. You need to get these procedures documented. There you go, we will do this for you. And so one of our businesses, for example, is in engineering. We build things. We have the boots on the ground, the people that actually build, whether it's hardware or software. We love. The more complicated the better for us. Another company is a marketing company that helps grow those businesses. Again, those can provide the strategy as well, but we work very well alongside consultants like, or someone that's inside like a CMO or a director of revenue or someone like that VP of sales. We work very well under them because they say these are the targets and then we work to achieve those targets. 

Another company is an HR company, where we hire internally for them, like we don't outsource but we allocate or however you want to call it place. It's called placing in that field. And I have many other types of businesses that have nothing to do with services, like, for example, I have an Airbnb for luggage and that one has started in Manchester. We have 75 locations in the UK and in the US. We went into the US this year. We already have like 15 locations in the US already, so it's around 90 locations. So this year we're going to pass 100 locations. So I'm very happy about that. And all of these businesses are in different places. Like the HR company is in Roderham, the engineering company actually has three locations in Europe, uk and the US. The marketing company is in Florida. So all of these are in different places on the planet. 

We just history just defines you Like something happens at certain points. I say, oh well, this makes sense to start now here in Manchester, so let's do it now and here. Like we don't overcomplicate things we don't have, or I mean we do, but obviously we have our blind spots as well. So we like to believe, we have very little beliefs that things have to be in a certain way, like this is how it should be. So because if you have beliefs like this is how it should be, that keeps you back, it holds you back, it decelerates your rate of growth, because now, instead of focusing on the result like you want the result, you want this incorporated, this to happen, this to happen, this to happen now, because it should be in a specific way and it's not Now. Everything gets delayed by a week, a month, a year. This delays, delays, delays, because things should be in a certain way. When there are less shoulds and more of this is how it is and let's deal with it, then things tend to progress faster. 

0:11:00 - Mehmet
That's great. Now, one thing which is really fascinating, I would say, is the ability to generate revenues for your clients, because, at every business owner whether you are still in the startup phase or maybe you are a small business and we talk a lot about these mainly two sectors, I would say or like these personas on the show they need to generate money as fast as possible and they need to have a sustainable business. So what are some of the unique strategies that you have implemented to achieve such success, robert? 

0:11:39 - Robert
OK, so every company has its own history. They differ from company to company. In some companies I wouldn't even think of going in without 100, 200 grand in capital. I wouldn't even consider it not even a little bit, because you need to stand out in the market, whether that is with tech like tech that's better, then what's already on the market, or marketing that's better, and so on. And so in that case I would help people raise capital. So I've helped people raise a lot, a lot of capital until now, probably many millions in the funding rounds, and within those, you basically have to have a business model that breaks even before you finish the capital. 

So let's say you know you need 150 grand up until you break even. Ok, well, raise 200 grand, give yourself a little bit of room and then manage your money in a way to hit your targets. If you're not hitting your targets, spend less, because you have to spend less, don't spend more. Everyone makes that mistake. Oh, we're not hitting our targets, we need to spend more. Well, if you're not hitting your target and now you're overspending, you're putting yourself in an even worse situation, because the money will last you less and you need more time to achieve because you're obviously behind on your target, right, so you need to spend less. Is there a reasonable thing to do as an adult, right? If you realize, oh, my money won't last until the end of the month, I stop spending, right, so that is the same in companies. It's the same financial management, right? So that's what you do if you raise capital. If you don't have capital, or if you need capital and you raise it, then that's what you do. If you don't need to raise capital, then what I recommend is so we have certain principles that we work along on, and one of those principles is Warren Buffett's Fortress Balance Sheet. So it has three main points, but one of those points is to keep operating costs low. If you're, operating costs are above revenue, you're already doing something wrong. Why is it above revenue? You're running a business, not a charity. What are you doing? Right? It doesn't make any sense to operate a business. 

We had these discussions recently in the partnership that we went into, where the other side of the partnership there are four partners me and my partner for a long time, and then them too and the other side of the partnership just loves spending money. They're like just spending, spending, spending, spending, right, and we're like cut the costs, it's not making enough revenue. What are you doing? Our revenues are 15 grand, costs are 20 or 20, whatever, right, this is not sustainable. Please reduce costs up until we get to that revenue. And we've had these conversations with them for a long time. 

Barely now they're starting to move a little bit. I don't know how fast they will move, but basically they've just overspent like crazy because they've made a lot of mistakes in implementation. And so when you make a mistake, guess what? Now you need to spend more to fix the mistake. And now you're still late because something you should have had for less money a month ago, now you have for more money now, right later. So we've had that over and over and over again and we just overspent a lot. 

And so don't be that company, just reduce your costs. They're like well, maybe I won't find these people. What's the point if the entire business goes bankrupt? You lose them and your business and your clients and everything. Right, you need to cut costs, you need to cut losses. It's not meant to be easy, right? If it were to be easy, we would just play it like a game and all of us would be millionaires and billionaires, right, but we're not, because some of us make the hard calls and say, okay, there are six people on the team right now. Right, I can't afford two of them. 

I need to renegotiate salaries with all of them right, or just leave two of them off right, or do something right. I need to cut those costs, so that's what I recommend there. And then in terms of growth, effectively, many people believe still to this day which is shocking to me in Silver Bullet. They do, and I don't understand why. I really don't At this point. There are so many books, there are so many movies, there are so many stories, there are so many podcasts like this one. There's just so much content out there to tell you that this is hard. You just stop believing it's easy the moment you stop believing it's easy. 

It's like an animal. It's like you go to a lion and you hit it You're gonna die. That's as simple as that. Like a wild lion, if you go to it and smack it on the face, it's gonna chew your arm off, right. You need to give that the respected needs. If you are in your little bubble and you don't understand that, this needs respect in a different form of respect, that's life threatening danger. This isn't life threatening, but it's the same concept as a metaphor. If you're an engineer or you're background in engineering, you understand metaphors the same way I do. If this is the business. The lion is the business and you just go and wing it, you just smack it right, it's gonna bite your arm off, it's gonna put you in debt, it's gonna ruin your relationships, it's gonna do everything bad to you because you didn't respect it, you didn't understand. You need to put in your work, you need to find the capital, and so on. 

For example, a startup came to us two days ago. There was a startup in Africa. I saw you have business in Africa. That's why I remember. So there is a startup in Africa. They come to the call. The call ended in eight minutes. Normally our calls last for 30 minutes, an hour or more. Right, because we discussed strategy. We'd go whatever After eight minutes was done, why we hopped on the call and the two people that hopped on the call they were discussing with us. 

At one point you would just start hearing chickens like a rooster, right, okay, well, it's fine, you're just hearing chickens. A minute later you hear a cow. What are we doing? You guys on the farm. It's strange, but I think they were probably on a farm, because otherwise I'm guessing that was an artificial background noise. 

So they're there and they were a startup and they came to our marketing agency and they said we would like you to grow our business. So, okay, perfect, let's discuss what you need. And we discussed a little bit and they said but we want you to do it performance based. We said, no, oh, but we can't pay for you. Well, then make money until you can't pay for me. What do you want me to say? You know it's like no. 

So you do everything, you pay staff, you pay tools, you do all of the work for as long as you need to, and you will only get a share right in whatever it is that the profits are, the revenue is. These people still don't understand that we would take all of the risk. There is zero risk with them, because we're doing all of the work and if something works, we both succeed, but if it doesn't work, only we lose. They don't lose anything, right? So this is not fair, it's not ethical in any way, shape or form, right? So basically, that call ended in like eight minutes or like look, just this won't work. 

But the reason why I'm bringing this up is because if anyone's listening to your show that's, you know, start up small company and so on and still has these type of discussions with with marketing agencies. I would like please stop insulting us, please. I have a business to run right. Like this is not. If you would be in my business, you would not do pro bono work, trust me, like you. Just, you have salaries to pay. You have a business to run right. This is not how the world works, so I'm just setting expectations right. 

So, in any, whenever you have business, if you want to grow the business, you need to be in a place where you either invest time or money, or both. Okay, that's, that's it, case closed. If you're not willing to invest one, the other or both, then you should not have a business. You should be an employee and very happily you can add value to other others, like as an engineer, right? Instead of you being the CEO of the company, be a director of engineering somewhere, right? They pay you your salary. 

You're responsible for the projects case closed. If you're good at marketing, the marketing, sales, sales and so forth. If you own a business, you need to understand you're responsible for how much money that business makes, not the agency, not, you know, the consultant, not anyone else. You are, at the end of the day, responsible for how that business operates, so you need to spend your time or your capital in order to grow it. We have businesses, for example, that were startups and we've grown. We've started with a company, for example, at 300 grand a year they're making it was an engineering, it was tech company. They're making 300 grand a year. Three years later we got them to 4 million, right. 

So this company that was relatively small. It was a startup, one year old, two years old, whatever they were at that time. Right Now they're six years old, they're at 4 million. Right, life changing, literally life changing for those people, right, the owner and the leadership team and everyone else involved. Right, that was there. So it can happen. But guess what? That person paid me? Right, they're paying us to grow their business, right? They paid us millions until now literal millions to get them to 4 million a year. We do both tech like engineering work for them and we help them with lead gen marketing. Right, so, we did both. So that's why they paid off so much. But at the end of the day, now they have a company that's making 4 million, right, so next year they'll make another 4 million. They don't need to pay us millions anymore. Right Now, they're just making that cash every year. So they're very happy, you know. 

0:22:16 - Mehmet
Robert, like you mentioned a couple of things that triggered a lot of thoughts in my mind. First one it's like maybe it will look direct to some people, but yeah, I don't know yet why people think everything can be copy and paste. Things doesn't work in a copy and paste, and I will link this to my next question, so, which is related a little bit to lead generation, by the way. So you mentioned, from startup capital, fundraising perspective and people, you know they they believe what they read or why they know that it's wrong and they still do it. Actually, I was thinking about the way and this is for startup founders and for solopreneurs, entrepreneurs whatever you do, maybe even you're working as a sales or business development somewhere in an established company. 

I need your opinion on this why copying something, it's not always the best way of doing business, why you need to be creative in business development, why it's so important to put your personal touch when you do business development. Because you know why I'm saying this and this is an advice for everyone. If you don't work in this field, but you know someone who works, please, because I will let Robert and I will. Maybe we'll agree or maybe we'll disagree, but just I need to put my two cents here Because, as they say in English, rant, I'm doing a rant. 

0:23:52 - Robert
Rant, yeah, yeah. 

0:23:55 - Mehmet
So stop mimicking someone in a robotic way to do your outreach. I'm so sick of this and you know because, with mentioning names, there are a couple of guys who are very famous now on the Internet and everyone talks about them and they say, okay, I've seen you like that guy post and I think you know, is this how business development should be done, robert? Like is this how you grow a business? 

0:24:29 - Robert
So a few thoughts here. So, as context, the lead gen company the BTB lead gen company that we have has generated over 100 million in closed revenue from outreach cold outreach. So we know our thing or two. We have millions of data points on how to do this properly. I can tell you that we invented the custom first line. That when, when people use custom first lines and emails. We invented that seven and a half years ago and we shared it on YouTube. We were teaching it to everyone. Please stop copy pasting an email and sending it to everyone. Have a custom first line at least, right? Hey, mehmet, I noticed you do business in Africa. You know we have five clients there would love to take your opinion on something. That's it, right? It's very like I actually took two minutes to do a little bit of research and now you are 10 times more likely to reply to my email. Okay, so we've tested our theory many, many times. I've tested it in the weirdest instances. For example actually I don't think I should mention names, but one of the biggest auto manufacturing companies on the planet. Right At one point I said you know what I want to work with these guys. 

Let me see what I can do. I find the email of the chairman, right. So the chairman for anyone listening that doesn't understand European fully there's the CEO of a company, that is the executive, chief executive officer that executes the strategies, and so on and so forth. The CEO reports to a board, a board of directors, that owns and manages the entire entity, and then the board of directors reports to a chairman, to the top guy. So, above and above and above, the top person is the chairman, right? So I said, let me find the email of the chairman and let me email that guy or the woman, if it would have been a woman, but it was a guy in France. And so I said, okay, I didn't even know the chairman is French because it was a British company. So I said, okay, fine, I don't mind. And so I emailed the guy one email, and, I kid you not, that email gets sent to the entire leadership team. I get put in touch with the CTO, right, and they're like you need to talk to this guy, you know, and so on. 

And we started having some amazing conversations after that. One email, one email, right. I did the same thing over and over and over and over again, right, so many times. But guess what? All of those emails were handwritten. I wrote every single word by hand, just typed it out, sent it and it worked right. So does not guarantee that what you will do will work. I have millions of data points that tells me what works in a cold email, right, and what works on LinkedIn and so on and so forth. Right, I know what works. So tapping into that knowledge is how I write that. 

If you write like a custom email to Mehmet and he was like what's this guy talking about, right? You'll be like, oh yeah, I don't care about that, so you might not get my responses, but I have had campaigns that had 100% reply rates, 100% open rates and 100% reply rates Industry unique. You never hear about that, right, and so I used to have that. I don't do that anymore for a while now, but it can still be done to this day. It's less effective than it used to be a year ago, two years ago, seven years ago, whatever is getting less and less effective Because of the people you're talking about, Mehmet, because these people are getting bombarded by crappy, spammy emails and so you send one that's actually good and it gets lost in 10 other crap emails. 

So why do people do that? I can tell you for two reasons. Number one is the gurus. Tell them to. The guru, says the guru take this email campaign, this exact script, and use it exactly in this way and it will work. Bs, obviously. You know it's BS, right, the moment you see it, you know it's BS, but they're like that's what they sell. So I'm just going to do what the guru says because it worked for him. So I'm going to do that. That's number one. 

Number two is because most people, again, are still looking for the silver bullet. They still want to get something for nothing and that is the worst thing of society, I believe, like people that want to make money without doing anything for it. Right, it's the worst in business, in entrepreneurship, in leadership, in everywhere. Right, it's almost like being a psychopath. Right, like being a narcissist. It's like, oh yeah, I'm not going to do almost any work, I'm just going to press a few buttons, do this campaign, you know, copy paste, and all of a sudden I'm going to have General Electric as a client, guess what? No, right, it doesn't work like that. So if people and that's why I don't know, if you noticed, you mentioned motivation earlier, like inspiration and so on. 

On this call I might have been very rough, but I feel many times people need a good kick in the butt so with that kick they actually move forward. You're like, let me kick you in the butt so you actually get some momentum and move in the right direction, because otherwise you'll keep searching for things that don't work right. So, all honesty, copy pasting does work If you copy paste something that someone specifically told you will work for your audience in your niche, to sell your product, and so on and so forth. Like, for example, we've had a client at one point and the client this client is someone I know for three years now and they started working with one of my companies for us to do lead job for them and my company wrote their script. And I hopped on another call with this guy and he said, robert, your team is asking me to give feedback, but I don't know what feedback to give. Do you mind if we take a look at this together? I'm like, well, that's a weird position you're putting me in, but sure, let me look at our work. 

And I read what they wrote and I did disagree with it, but I said, do you mind if I rewrite the script completely for you, because I know the guy for three years, like I knew what he actually is selling. And the guy said, robert, sure won't they be upset, or you know this point. I'm like no, no, no, just do this. And I wrote the entire script, right. One email and then three follow up emails right, because you follow up the money's in the follow up, by the way. That's the rule. So run email and then a few follow up. And so I wrote it line by line and the guy literally copy pasted that. Guess what. The guy's getting like 20 to 40 leads every month from that script. 

Like I just wrote it, he copy pasted it and it worked, but it was specifically written for him, right? So if I would have taken, if you would have taken, something generic off of YouTube, what are the chances? I mean, please think, guys, you have a brain, anyone that's listening, you know it's a generic message off of YouTube. How the chances of it actually working for you are so small that you can test it just to get the baseline. Like, send it to 100 people and see the open rates, see the reply rate and so on and so forth, and then after that after those 100, the next 100 is your script and see if you do better or worse than the baseline right? So that's my two cents on it. 

0:32:07 - Mehmet
And I will add also, robert, here, you know like, unless you are having, just for the sake of example, I'm saying this unless you have this product, which is, you know, everyone wants it. Now let's say like chat GPT right. 

Okay, but if you are selling what I call, I like to call it commodity. You know I like to call it commodity and I'm inspired by maybe you know I follow a lot of entrepreneurs. I started a lot of entrepreneurs and one of the best guys in my opinion who did this framing is Steve Jobs. So you know, like if you're not really selling something that you can convince the other side it's not a commodity, it doesn't work. And to your point about the gurus, I advise everyone to read a book called the millionaire fast lane. 

If you read this book by MJ, so he explains that the first one to get this methodology is actually the one who's going to be a millionaire and everyone who's going to copy this guy, they will be struggling to copy the first one. So, highly advised to read this book because you'll understand and you know I feel sorry, robert, for the new generation that they are putting in their minds. You know this methodology Like, for example, we see this a lot nowadays on social media oh, the only guide that you need to buy now because blah, blah, blah the only you know product that if you don't buy that doesn't work. And I think because also, I advise everyone to understand, because you mentioned something very important about psychology also as well right, so you need to understand psychology of people and, more importantly, you need to understand the cultural difference, because what works in the US doesn't necessarily work in Europe. What works in Europe doesn't necessarily work here in the Middle East, in Dubai, or in Africa, or in Australia, I don't know. So you need to put into consideration when you acquire a methodology. 

I'm not saying the methodology is wrong. The methodology is works, perfect in its frame. Right, yes, because, remember, like everything is tied to multiple data points. I like this, robert, and this will lead me to the next question. So you mentioned about data points. Now how do you leverage technology you know in all your business? I know like you also build technologies as well, but how you, how you leverage the technology you know running your businesses. 

0:34:41 - Robert
So technology should be used as a tool to reach KPIs that you set as a business. At the business level. I can't tell you how many times, as a tech consultant in the past, I've had conversations with people that would tell me I want these five features, and I would ask why. And they would tell me why. I'm like okay, but does your end client actually want this? Like well, why wouldn't they? I'm not saying they wouldn't, I'm like I'm saying did you ask them if they want this feature? Right? Well, no, okay, but before you invest $50,000 into building these features, shouldn't you at least ask one person? You know, come on, just ask one person and if you're at it, might as well ask three people. Right, what do you actually want so that this experience is better for you? And then you might be shocked at the answer. Right, maybe they'll say exactly what you want, like what you're thinking of, or maybe they'll say something completely different. So technology should always be a means to an end. That's the rule. That's my answer, right, it should always be a means to an end. Tech shouldn't be built or used for the sake of using it. Many people use it because it's cool, right, or they want to use it like they sign. So many people signed up for base camp when it was like a big deal and they're like they weren't really using, like they were just signed up to base camp because it was cool. Right, and like, okay, and show me your, show me your business roadmap. Oh well, base camp doesn't allow us to do that. I'm like, then, why are you using it? Oh, because we have our tasks here. And why are you paying $100 a month to manage your tasks somewhere? You know it's just like you have free tools to manage your tasks if you need that, right, and so it's. People don't use the tools for what they're meant to be used, because they don't attach a business KPI to it. So let me give very specific example. Yeah, please, if your goal is to increase the productivity of your staff so that you do more, let's say, okay, what's the first thing you need? That almost no one does is to get the freaking baseline. What is the baseline? Where are we right now? I can't tell you. Almost 100% of the time, maybe. Let's say, some people do that and I'm shocked when people do everything. I say because I'm like looking at them like, oh, my god, you guys actually know what you need to do and it's beautiful to see because I can work with them so much and we can make so much money for everyone right, and it's super cool. But most people, you know, like we want to increase productivity and like, okay, where is it right now? Well, it's not where it needs to be. I understand, where is it right now? 

Like, for example, most marketing agencies have no idea how much it takes them to write a piece of content. They don't know. Right, they give, they delegate the task. Sometimes it takes three hours, sometimes it takes eight hours, sometimes it takes six hours and like, okay, but you need a benchmark. If you don't have a benchmark, don't you have data? Is this the first time you wrote an article? Haven't you written a hundred articles until now? Do you not have statistical data to tell you how much it takes to write an article? Come on, you can. You can find statistical data if you've done something enough. And if you don't have, you're either not mature enough as a company, ie someone should work with someone else instead of you because you're not good enough. They should come and work with me, because I'm obviously better, I know this stuff right, or they can, or you're lazy right. 

Again, we come back to the not time or no money, right, if you don't have enough time because you're busy with clients, hire a chief of operations, a manager, hire someone to do the business analyst, hire someone to get the data for you and do the procedures, figure stuff out, improve and so on. We do this for our clients now, like we literally run their operations for them, and they can just do whatever they want. Right, with the rest of their time. Many times I advise them to go on vacation and the business will grow faster when they're not there. But basically, it's a point where you need a baseline, right, you need a baseline to say, okay, this is our level of productivity right now. Okay, what do we want it to be? What do we expect it to be? That's the goal, right, that's the, the vision, this is what we expect it to be. Okay, how are we going to get from here to here? 

And now come the solutions and that's it. If the solution is technical, right, we, if we use this app, like, for example, ai content writing, it will write the draft for us and then that takes away 30% of the time. Right, we'll write the draft and then we will write everything else after that right and so perfect. Okay, we reduced it by. We reduced the time by 30%, which means we increased our effectiveness by 30%, which means we make x more money, or we can make x more money, right every month. Or save why more money every month, right? So, basically, technology should always be a means to an M right, and that's it. If, as long as it is, you will never go back, because you you will be paying for SaaS that you actually use, that actually helped you grow your business that's great insight and I 100% agree with you, robert, on this one. 

0:40:21 - Mehmet
And advice for consultancy. You know tech consultants because I I still do some tech consultancy from time to time as well so tie your offering to a business, tangible KPI. You want to call it outcome, whatever you want to call it. But yes, you know, like it's something I always used to mention, so for me, like even when I was on the other side of the table. So for me, I ask, okay, how this is going to help me or my organization to increase our revenues, how it will help us to increase our customer base, how it will help us to grow faster, or how time it will shrink. You know what we do. Or sometimes, maybe, if it's like kind of, especially in cybersecurity, you know we use these terms. So how much it will decrease my risks, right? So, and you can, you can, you know, put a money value on this as well, because at the end of the day, the guy who can assign your order is a finance guy, right? A CFO director, yes, finance, whatever. And this guy they understand numbers, they don't understand features, right? So you need, you need to tell you need, okay, hey, if I buy your solution. 

Today you are doing this, as you were mentioning. You need the benchmark. You're doing this in two hours. Guess what? I can do it in five minutes, right? Yeah, this, this one hour 55 minutes, if you put the labor cost on it and you put blah, blah, blah. And when you can do these guys, it's something more useful. So you're, you know, return on investment, is this? So 100% agree with you on this, robert, robert, like we're almost like towards the end. So, and I want from you to share, you know, because also you traveled a lot and you know you've seen a lot. 

so what you would tell, let's say, fellow entrepreneurs, anyone who's interested to start a business, like you know, like you have this wisdom, and I can see it, I can feel it, you know, although we are doing this remotely. So what do you want to keep the audience with when watching or listening this episode? 

0:42:31 - Robert
So there are, let's say, people on three sides of the journey. Either they want to be entrepreneurs they haven't started yet, they still have a job right or something else they already started, but they're not successful yet. And they started, they've achieved some level of success, right. So again, nothing is boilerplate. For each situation there's a different piece of advice for you know each part, and so on. So if you are right now an employee and you're thinking of starting your own business, you need to understand why. What do you want out of it? I cannot tell you how many people should literally not be in business. They should not be the entrepreneur, they should be the tech guy, or there should be the marketing guy, they should be the sales guy, they should be someone in the business, but not the CEO. They should give that to someone else that actually knows how to be an entrepreneur and CEO and do what they need to do a director of a firm, of an asset, right. So most people are technical, they're very good technicians. I can't tell you how many times businesses promote an amazing salesperson to a VP of sales role and then they fail because they're not the manager. They're an amazing salesperson, they're an amazing technician, they're not an amazing manager of other people, right, let them shine in the role that they can shine in and they can make six figures a year, no problem. They're very good as an engineer, no problem, they can keep growing, growing, growing. Very good as a salesperson, as a marketing person, as any role you can think of. You can become rich in that role. You don't need a business, right, you can become rich. Money management Send me an email if you need, I'll help you with that as well. Right, but basically, don't go into entrepreneurship for money. Don't, just don't, don't, don't, don't. Avoid it as the plague, because it won't make you more money. It will make you less money. For, as far as you can say, statistically speaking, data points tell me that you will make less money in a business than as a job. Stats tell me this. Not, I don't know you, whomever is listening. I can tell you statistically, you'll make less money. Okay, that's one Number two for people that already started. They quit their job of law and now they're doing something and they're not successful. Yet they need to find the partner that can actually help them. Right, like, really help them or pay for someone. Right, let's say, they do make some money. They're not successful. Yet pay someone to help you, right. Pay someone $1,000 a month or whatever. Pay someone to help you grow right, because otherwise it's not gonna grow or dedicate the time right. 

But typically you don't know what you don't know, right. You have your it's there called blind spots. So because you have your blind spots, you will not know what questions you ask. You don't know what you should be doing every day. You just don't know. And that's not a shame, that's not shameful. You weren't born knowing how to do business. No one was. And then no one is intrinsically good at it. Anyone that's good in business is so because they've practiced, they learn and they practice right. And so you just aren't there yet and you can be there in the future, right. So that's basically it in terms of that person, right. Find someone if you're there. Find someone that can help you In the meanwhile, if you're struggling financially. 

Get a job. Just don't take yourself to the grave. Get the job that you can actually work on. Get the part-time job if that feeds, if you have your needs met, and so on and so forth part-time and then the rest of your time, work on your business right up until it makes enough money, right. 

And then there's the third group, which is people that have a business. They're the entrepreneur, they're achieved six figures, seven figures, whatever, but they are still struggling or want to grow whatever. Then you need boots on the ground, amazing people, team A players, whatever you want to call them right? Mediocrity will not help you when you're a small business. It doesn't help big businesses either, but it's easier for mediocrity to creep in because you have 5,000, 10,000 employees, right. But when you have 20, all of those should be stellar players, all of them. You have no excuse for having mediocre people in your business, right, they will just take you down, right. 

Okay, you can't afford to work with Mehmet as your CTO, fine, but don't hire someone that has no idea how to do what you need to do, right. Rather, hire someone like Mehmet but pay them one hour a day, I don't know. Just something that you can afford right, but work with good grade A players that can help you, right and so, or you can outsource right. Four of my companies are outsource companies. We literally do the work for others that they don't have to right. That's why our clients can go from 25 million to 50 million, right, or they can go from 300 grand to 4 million Because they actually found grade A players that take their business forward. Right, and that's it. It's. Maybe in the future, you will be able to entrust this to AI, but right now, business is still built with people, and so if you don't have the right people, you're not gonna have the right business 100%. 

0:47:39 - Mehmet
And just I want to add something, Robert, and we are in a very interesting times because we started to see, you know, this trend of fractional right. So fractional CTO, fractional. 

CMO fractional CTO. You know, I always I'm an optimistic guy by nature, so you know, because people, we know what they talk about layoffs and you know this. But what happened now? There's a lot of brilliant and I had a lot of them like guests on my podcast and these guys are more happy now. And you know, like, as you said, like, if you cannot afford a full-time CTO, you can reach out for a fractional CTO because you know I would charge you per hour, same for marketing, same for sales, same for everything. Or they can come to a company like yours, robert, also as well, and you can, I'm sure you can customize the offer for them. So, yeah, 100%, 100%, robert. My final question, like where people can find more about you? 

0:48:34 - Robert
you when we can find you. If anyone just Googles my full name, the first three pages of Google should be about me. So that should be easy. First link should be my website, robertindrejcom, and then if anyone wants to just chat with me, they can email me at robertindrejcom. They just need to mention your show. Yeah, just mentioned the CTO show in the email and then I'll. I promise I will reply. 

0:49:03 - Mehmet
Thank you very much, robert. I really appreciate it and you know it's a very enlightening episode. I can say and this is what I love to do the podcast, robert, because I meet, like very like you know, people who are passionate about business, passionate about startups, passionate to help other people also as well. And I got it, robert. You know, like if I can summarize, if I can take something for myself today and you know I hope the audience will take the same Guys, there's nothing easy. Like you cannot just copy paste something. Success cannot be copy paste. You need to work on it. I'm not saying, by the way, I'm not also like fan of work hard, you know I say no, no, no, no, no, no, no. 

0:49:46 - Robert
But just be smart, Be realistic, be smart realistic. Yeah, exactly, it worked for Mehmet with whenever he did it, wherever he did it, and so on, doesn't mean that it will work for me 10 years later in a different part of the planet. It just doesn't right, that's it 100%, 100%. 

0:50:03 - Mehmet
Thank you very much, robert, and this is how I end usually my episode. So, guys, the links that Robert mentioned they will be in the episode description. If you have questions, feedback, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Like, I'm very pleased by all the feedback that I'm hearing from you. Keep them coming. 

The podcast was trending you know the time of this recording. So we were in the top 50, actually, in Japan. We were in the top 20 in Vietnam. We were in the top 100 in the Middle East also as well, in Kuwait and the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and your reviews are really, really making me more and more like, passionate about you know this, I'm costing myself a full-time podcaster, but anyway, so, and also, like Robert, thank you very much for telling people to come to me for consultancy also as well. So usually I don't do this, but, guys, yeah, like I'm hearing stories where I will do one episode, maybe a solo episode, about just this. 

Don't spend your money, guys, on the wrong features. There are not only me, there are plenty. You can go to Robert also as well, like there are plenty of us, you know, just have a consultant, have a second option and don't be falling in the trap of something cheap. Cheap is expensive. We have the same here in the Middle East. Everything cheap is expensive in the future. So take care of that. And yeah, I hope you enjoyed and we will meet again in the next episode. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. 

Transcribed by https://hello.podium.page/?via=mehmet