IAM810- Engineer Helps Scale Product Demands for Businesses

Archan is an engineer turned marketing professional. Archan has led marketing teams on various B2B marketing projects and has experience in scaling product demands to many folds for start-ups and SME businesses.

• CEO Hack: Ability to see the bigger picture and make an appropriate decision
• CEO Nugget: Don't follow what everyone says and believe in yourself
• CEO Defined: CEO of the assignment given to you

Website: https://ideatoasters.com/

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/archan-d

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless:

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Archan Dolakia of Hubelo. Archan, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:40 – Archan Dholakia:

Hey, Gresh, it's really nice to be part of the show. Been reading and learning a lot from I am CEO. And it's been quite a journey from reading a lot from I'm CEO and to being part of the show. It's great.

00:57 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, absolutely. Even reading, you've been contributing as well too has been featured in our posts and now you're here on the podcast. So super excited to have you on and before we jump into the actual interview, I wanted to read a little bit more about Archan so you can hear about all these awesome things that he's doing. And Archan is an engineer turned marketing professional. Archan has led marketing teams on various B2B marketing projects and has experience in scaling product demands to many folds for startups and small to medium-sized enterprise businesses. Archan, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:28 – Archan Dholakia:

Oh yes, a big hello to the entire community.

01:31 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome, hello to you Archan and before we jump in I wanted to hear a little bit more about your story and what led you to do all the awesome things that you're doing and doing now.

01:39 – Archan Dholakia:

Sure. So I think I like to mention it this way, I'm an engineer turned marketer. So back in the day, I got my first job that was into network management, which was more on the communication engineering side. So I was working with this big telecom service provider, And that actually was bringing in the high-speed internet into the country, which actually led to having access to fast-speed internet and that brought me access to YouTube, So I started watching a lot of YouTube videos and that landed me up watching a lot of Steve job videos, so, and, and, and, and 1 video led to another. And then I was, I was actually, I started to think that, okay, This is what even I would like to do.

I would like to create a buzz about the product. I would like to if I know a good product that's really good for its users, I would want to bring it in front of the users. So that thought led me to switch my career from telecom engineering to marketing. But the question was how should I get in? So then I happened to serve through all the companies that were out there in the market who were allowing, someone from a different background than business administration to work in marketing. I landed across a company that was working with a telecom product. So that actually was the entry point for me, that I knew a little bit about the product and I wanted to explore the field of marketing.

The first question I was very much afraid to answer was, what have I done on my own to sort of prove a point that I can market a product? And that was the era of free online education resources and courses and stuff. So I started, I enrolled myself into the best and most free available online course. And then I started creating presentations and started brewing ideas and stuff. That actually helped me get into my first job as a marketer. I think that was when I worked as a marketer, but I also learned the entire game of marketing, product marketing, and business administration. So yeah, that's how I started my career. And from there on, 1 thing led to another, and I started enjoying the work that I did.

And that's how I landed up working here at a startup as the head of marketing. And yeah, I think in the last 1 year, whatever ups and downs that I've seen, I think it's a good time to be a marketing personnel, who has actually seen the pandemic phase. And the industry that I work with is highly sensitive to such things because we essentially deal with the events industry. And so I was able to experience the entire depression to the growth cycle that we did. And I think that was an amazing experience. And I wish through this particular conversation, I'm able to let out that experience to everyone. And If it helps even 1 person, that would be great.

05:04 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, I absolutely love that. And it goes right back to what you were talking about with the whole entire idea of marketing if you have a really great product or service, you really want to let as many people know about it. And just as you said, sometimes in our experiences, we want to get that opportunity to kind of let people know about the lessons that we learned and things that we can kind of give to the community so that we can learn back. So I love how those things kind of go hand in hand. So I know you touched a little bit on what you all are doing and kind of the event space. Could you take us through a little bit more about Hubilo and tell us what exactly you're doing to support the clients you work with?

05:37 – Archan Dholakia:

Yeah, sure. So when I joined Hubilo, Hubilo was into providing software that would help enterprises and event organizers manage the entire event through creating some single dashboard that would create a website for them, an application that people would use to network, an application that organizers would use to manage the check-ins, check-outs. And that was the product pretty much there. And as we entered into the month of February 2019, we all know that unfortunately the outbreak of the virus had hit most parts of the world and we started seeing a dip in the business. And that is when a few of our clients actually were concerned about their plans with whatever events they had.

So our first attempt was to just come up with a solution that would serve their needs. And then we realized that, okay, it might take the situation to normalize it longer. So, so, you know, as a team, the entire leadership team got along and they decided that we should create a virtual event platform at that point in time. So I think our product team and our tech team got along and within 15 days we had the beta version ready, which was able to serve the purpose of hosting a virtual event. And to what I remember, I think this, so throughout my life I've heard this thing that necessity is the mother of all inventions. So this was a necessity.

My product team did a wonderful job at coming up with the product within 15 days. The next was the role of marketing to be able to drive the right sort of opportunity, the right sort of business, and make it available to the market the same concept which goes 5 years back, led me to sort of get into the field of marketing. If you have the right product, you should successfully be able to bring it to the right people. So I think that is when we actually started stepping into the feet of our consumers and we started to understand what would be their thinking cycles, what all stuff would they be going through. I had an event, but it got canceled, what should I do? I was planning an event, now that no physical events are gonna happen for the next 2345 months.

So how else can I keep my community engaged? People were facing issues with a lot of video conferencing software because of the kind of traffic that was coming in. Plus webinars were never a solution to replicate the live physical event networking experience and stuff. So we sort of understood all that people around in the market would be concerned and cared about. And then we started actually putting out the bit of knowledge information and stuff in the market. And that got stuck with the target group that we had. And yeah, from there on, I think we are now, we have grown, multi-folds. We have served more clients than we did before the pandemic. So I think that way as a team, we are successful in creating the right product and then being able to deliver it to the right people at the right time.

09:01 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's what it comes down to kind of being able to kind of be successful in the business and I think I feel like the word of the year not close to the word of the year should be the word pivot because a lot of times because of these disruptions happen and as you mentioned that necessity is the mother of invention A lot of times you have to make those shifts and changes and re-involve or reinvent yourself or your business. And it sounds like you guys have definitely been able to do that. So I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be for you personally or the business or a combination of both. What do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

09:34 – Archan Dholakia

Right, so yeah, I think I did a lot of introspection and retrospective analysis on what actually worked for us. Because, and why I did this was, I actually wanted to know if at all in the future any such situation comes in, people should not say that what these guys did was a fluke. So I think the secret sauce was, or I should say there were 2 to 3 things that we did right. So the first thing was, the benefit of being a startup is you have high agility, right? So you can make decisions quickly.  You can mend your team the way you want them to mend and come up with the answers. So the first secret sauce, whether you are a startup or a mid-scale business or a big conglomerate, have that, if you're a big, big enterprise, have that one emergency team that can function or think like a startup.

So say, for example, if you are a hundred thousand people company, it is difficult to incorporate a huge change or it is difficult to come up with one product that would wonders. So I think, what people can do is they can create a group of 10, 15, 20 people who can actually work on that pilot project and, and can try and execute it. But as startups and SMBs are already of a size they can try to be as much agile as possible in terms of their execution. So that is number 1. Number 2 is most startups or most SMB companies always fear the fact that their competition, which might be a huge, huge enterprise would always have deep pockets you spend X amount of money as part of your marketing expense, they would have money, they can outspend you in that part, right?

So what you need to do is you need to outthink them in terms of marketing. And I think that that's 1 thing that my team back at TubeLoad did right in terms of marketing we got into the shoes of our target audience and we produced information and content that they would search for in the next 2 to 3 months. Right. So otherwise it's all chasing game. You know, you're putting out the repetitive redundant information that's already out there. People who are already doing well on digital platforms with large followers, have page rankings up high on Google. And there is the chance for you to outperform them. So you need to outsmart them. You need to work on things that your target audience would, you know, search for in the next quarter or next 6 months or next year.

So I think that is the secret sauce number 2. And the third thing that I thought really worked for us as we were somehow together was able to keep the morale of the entire team high because it's not the job of 1 or 2 people to turn it around. So you need people who would believe that things would go right and they would be paid off either by recognition or just by being part of the journey that you are promising them. So they need to believe in you and you need to be empathetic of their situation. And I think that was the third thing that I believe was my secret sauce. So yeah, I think these 3 were the secret sauce, if you ask me, as for my analysis, the agility, ability to out-think your competition, and keeping your team's motivation up high.

13:20 -Gresham Harkless

I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

13:29 – Archan Dholakia

I think What I have learned from my CEO, the guy with whom I work, is that you should always have 2 things. First, the ability to get a hawk-eye view of things, right? To be able to see the bigger picture and then make the right decisions based on the excess time.

13:54 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget and this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It might be something related to marketing or something. If you were to happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business professional self.

14:07 – Archan Dholakia

If I were to go back 5 years or say 7 years, I would ask my younger self to not follow what everyone else is and try to give yourself some time, not be too hard on yourself, and see where you naturally navigates and ends up because either then or later on you would ultimately end up doing that, which I eventually did.

14:35 – Gresham Harkless

I want to ask you, Archan, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:39 – Archan Dholakia

CEO means you are the CEO of the assignments that are given to you. And because you are a micro CEO, probably your incentives might be micro incentives. But when you accomplish them, it's as good as a CEO taking a successful exit from his venture. So you take a successful exit from your junior self venture and then you progress to your senior self venture. And if you do this way, probably you might have an exponential growth in your career. And I think that's what I'm seeing.

15:15 – Gresham Harkless

Archan, truly appreciate that. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all those some things that you're working on.

15:27 – Archan Dholakia

Well, it was amazing talking to you. I felt like I was talking to the entire community. So it was fun. Yeah, that's it. I hope more and more people come up with it, it would be great to hear what people liked about the conversation that we just had. And if there is anything they would like to share, I have all my ears and yeah, I think it's mutually, you know, the knowledge sharing is mutual. So I think I've given my bit and I'll be waiting for people to sort of give their bit in whatever way they can and it will be fun to connect with all the viewers and followers of I am CEO and, and look around what you have to say.

16:06 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And to make it even easier, Arch and we'll have your information in the show notice as well too, so that people can reach out and connect. And I think that's at the true spirit of I think human existence is the opportunity to get to connect and to share and to uplift and grow together. So I appreciate you for helping us.

16:22 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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