The Power of Ecosystems with Abhijeet Narvekar

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of HUDDL3 group. Today I'm pleased to welcome a Navar from Houston, Texas, a good friend of mine from back in my time spent in Texas, and the CEO and founder of both The FerVid Group and Careers Unleashed. Welcome, Abhi.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Thank you, Dane. Really happy to be here. Excited for the next half an hour, hour to talk to you.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, it's going to be fun. You and I met when I was in Houston. I was working with the Australian- American Chamber of Commerce, and our friend Greg Foley was putting together some events and connected us, and I think you took me to a really good Thai restaurant down in the Bellaire area the first time we met. It was a great conversation, just hearing your story and learning more about the business, and now businesses, that you're running. For the benefit of our listeners, could you perhaps give us a little bit more of your backstory, how you've come to be in this role, working in and around the human capital space?

Abhijeet Narvekar: Absolutely, Dane. Yes, I remember the food in Houston is... It's always good, so whoever visits Houston, let me know, we'll all go and try out all the hole- in- the- wall places where the food is just excellent. But I'm going to take you all back all the way to Mumbai, so I grew up in Mumbai. If you've been to Bombay or Mumbai, you'll know that it's like New York. Imagine a very fast- paced life where everybody's hustling. You almost think you are having a game against time and maybe even against people, it's like Squid Game, maybe not literally. But I grew up in that environment where things were always super fast and you really needed to learn street smarts to just survive. To really thrive, you need to understand right at that age how to read a room. If somebody's trying to sell you something, is it to your benefit or they're hustling you, and are you ready to be hustled by somebody? Right from a young age, my parents, especially my mom, taught me the ropes in terms of how to go about in Mumbai, how to live your life in Bombay, and then be successful in Bombay. But at the same time, some of the core values that I have for my company goes all the way back to Bombay. My dad, he worked for an audit company. As you can imagine being in India, being an audit officer, there were various opportunities to make a lot of money. We come from a family where ethics is first. I learned from a very young age that... Be ethical, do ethical things, and you will still be very successful in life as long as you stay in that path. Ethics is one of the core values of my company, which I'll get to eventually. But at the same time, the way I was raised up, we always stayed in a safe zone. What I mean by that is even though I learned street smarts, I come from a family which always has worked for somebody, they haven't started a business, which means work for someone, get a good degree, have a good life, stay in your comfort zone, your path in life will be okay. I was completely against the grain on that. I always felt that all of us have it in us to step out of that comfort zone. What I realized every single time that when I stepped out of my comfort zone, I call it miracles happened. Miracles can be small miracles, but those are the things that wouldn't have happened if I stayed in my circle, right? For example, after my industrial engineering degree out of Bombay University, I got into a very large global multinational, and life was good, salary was good, but I had this dream of coming to the US and starting my own business. Working full- time at a multinational, it was a shop floor job, which means second shift, third shift, it was tiring. I took my first risk, and that was quitting that job. My parents couldn't believe it. They're like, " You just got this job, it's a great job and you're quitting?" I'm like, " Well, there's better things ahead of us, so yes, I'm quitting. I'm going to study for GRE and I'm going to go to the US." It was a big risk, I took it. While studying, I realized that, " Okay, I couldn't just study 24 hours, I had to get myself involved in something," so I started my first small business. You could call it a small gig, not really a business, but my first gig. At that time, we were talking about'96 timeframe in India, internet was just starting off, there was small internet providers, and I was the middle agent to get the internet to people. That was my first gig. My second gig then was to provide hardware and software support to doctors. Doctors were very busy in Bombay, they didn't want to deal with their computers. They would call me saying, " Hey Abhi, my computer software's not working. Can you come and fix it?" My third gig before I came to US was to partner with somebody who knew how to assemble a desktop, and I was a sales guy to sell those desktops to individual doctors. All of these three gigs that I did I realized was very fulfilling and it made pretty good money by not working for somebody else, so that bug was always in me. But then, I got admission in Oklahoma State to do my masters in industrial engineering. I came over to Stillwater, this was in 2018, 2019 timeframe, graduated and Schlumberger got me to Houston, Schlumberger as well as another company, I worked for Petris, which got acquired by Halliburton. Life was great out there, learned a lot. I was tagged as a potential who could do a lot of cool things, so life was getting busier and busier. But around 2010 now, this is when we were blessed by the news that we were going to have our baby, now our baby boy is 12 and a half years old, but six months into 2010, he was six months old. This is when my wife reminded me of the spark in me of starting my business saying that, " Abhi, if you don't do it now, if we don't do it now, the responsibilities are just going to increase, whether it's in the household front or at the company that you are working at is just going to keep going and you might never be able to really do what you really came to the US to do." That's when I, again, quit. I didn't have to quit, but I decided it was time to step out of my comfort zone. I quit a very good company and started my first company, the Rvt Group. It was, again, a big risk because I didn't come from recruiting, I came from engineering, most of my work was around process improvement. But when I hired people as a hiring manager for Schlumberger and Petris, which is Halliburton now, I realized that the traditional recruiting process was really broken and there was a real opportunity to do something new, something different. I took that idea and started The FerVID Group. My friends who knew me very well said that, " It's great that you started a company, but I can't believe you started recruiting. You could have started an oil company." I told them, " Ideas come and go, but when you feel that an idea, you can really make a difference." I felt that this area of human capital needed innovation, which I had not seen. In my small way, I felt I could make a big difference, and that's how The FerVID Group happened.

Dane Groeneveld: That's very cool. It's funny how you talk about starting a business around a problem you encountered in your day job. As a hiring manager, you found the process was a little bit clunky. You see that for so many entrepreneurs, that they solve a problem for themselves and then realize they can solve it for thousands of other people.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Absolutely. The only mistake, if any hindsight... This impact was a real thing for me, and that was that when I first started, I understood the technical portion of the business. I knew that I could change the process, improve it, bring video into play. I'd figured out the technical roadmap, if you may, of our solution very well. What I had not paid attention to was the go- to- market strategy, the marketing roadmap. I dove into it a little too quick before sorting out the go- to- market strategy. Within six months, we were lucky because of our contacts and people who knew me and Abhi's credible, so they gave me a job, which brought us pretty decent money, but the second, third, fourth client became super difficult because I did not understand that the competition was quite a bit in recruiting, it was a commodity space. Everybody when you call them say that, " We have recruiters. We don't need another recruiting company, why would we use you?" I had to work with a coach. We can talk about that if you want later, but I worked with a coach to really get my mind in the proper direction, figured out what our value proposition was, how we were going to articulate this value proposition to people. Only then, in 2011 is when we really started getting traction and we became that 1. 2 million company within a year, but it wasn't easy. I went in, almost quit, but did not thankfully, and then hopefully figured it out.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes, it's neat. I think when you've got the gift on the technical side to realize that there's the marketing piece or the team piece. Dr inaudible, who we've done a podcast with and done a lot of work with, he always talks about there are very few entrepreneurs that are one person. You need a team, whether that's your coach, your business partner, your finance person, your marketing guy or girl, it's always about the team. I'm glad that you shared that, and we'll dig in a little bit more later on to the coach piece because I've always been intrigued by coaching in and out of work. But perhaps you could jump in, Abhi, and provide a little bit more background on that early part of your career as you were the company man, you're working for big corporate. Obviously, you'd had that early entrepreneurial experience. What was it that you found was a good definition of teamwork that you were seeing in those early years?

Abhijeet Narvekar: Everywhere that I have worked, whether it is in India, whether it is at Schlumberger, at Petris, at Halliburton, what I felt was... This is one of the key things even in our company, and that is the culture of the team. If I have to really pick something saying that, " Hey, Abhi, what is the most important thing for you, whether as an entrepreneur or even before I became an entrepreneur?" It was the culture. The culture defined how deep teams behaved with each other. The culture also defined the process, in terms of building the trust with each other so that one can have a backup when they're not available to do a particular critical project. Those things were very common, I felt, throughout the different roles that I held. Now, when you go into a client environment and you see that lots of people work in silos and they also have a lot of egos, meaning that, " Hey, this is my work, you don't come and interfere and step on my foot." Now, that kind of a culture is very difficult to work with because everybody is not... They don't feel empowered. They feel like, " Okay, I'm not going to cross my circle, I'm going to stay in that. This is what I'm supposed to do and let the other people do what they have to do," which might work for certain companies. But what I realized is people tried and they really wanted to solve a particular problem when they felt in charge, when they felt that I'm actually doing something for this business, when they felt as they were the CEO and not the CEO was the CEO, meaning you empower people enough that they feel that it's their business, the product is them. When that happens, magic starts to happen is what I've seen. Even in my early part of the career, I think I focused a lot on working with the team, it was always we. I still remember this credit goes to my CEO, Jim Pritchett of Petris... I remember I was at a Saudi Aramco meeting and the project had gone very well and they were giving us kudos, and the team basically said that, " Abhi, you did a great job." Jim reminded me in the meeting saying that, "Well, I'm sure Abhi's going to say his team." I was like, " Yes. Let me say, yes, it was the team. I'm just the front face here."

Dane Groeneveld: You stuck to it.

Abhijeet Narvekar: There's a whole engine behind us who really drive this thing. It is so true because there might be one person in the front, but what they don't see is everything that's happening in the back to make a project successful. Even in my company, today the team is what is running the company, we are not. We are there for helping them, but they are the main heart of our company.

Dane Groeneveld: That's something that you can't manufacture, it's either there or it's not. I think it's interesting the way you referred to the teams that you were a part of that you defined as successful and the teams that you were supporting on the customer side, because I've been in some of those major corporations that bring out their oilfield services and consultancies and they're huge corporations with a lot of assets, a lot of people to bear, but also a lot of hierarchy. You do see pockets of those businesses where people are very much in their box, " As long as my thing works, that's all that matters." It can really get in the way of teamwork. In fact, it can become a safety issue because people don't want to raise their hand and say, " My thing doesn't work," because they don't want to be... I read a very interesting article the other week, they don't want to be I guess retaliated against by upper management that their piece didn't work, so everyone's trying to put on a brave face. It's a big organization, there's a lot of fear of separation, fear of job security, fear of promotion opportunity. I think you're right. I think the best teams... They don't have that, they are one team, they back each other, they have that trust, they know what their process is.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Now if you think about what's happening today, what I'm seeing in the market is the big companies are trying to instill this startup culture. What they're trying to do is, " Oh, we are a large organization, but I'm going to create this division or a department where you are going to operate a startup." A lot of companies are trying this model out because they want to bring this kind of behavior into the team. Then once one division, for example, is successful, hopefully they're hoping that they can propagate that to all of their people, but that is the right way to do it. We need to be honest to ourselves saying what is working and what is not. In a smaller company, it's easy for me to say that, " Oh, the way we instilled trust, the way we instilled empowerment, there was a process for it, there was a logic behind it and it worked for us." It's also easy for somebody else to challenge me saying that, "Yes, Abhi, but that's at a very small scale. You made it happen at a very small scale, I can't do it in a very big company." Instead of taking that negative route saying that I can't do it, what I think people should do, and I think they're doing now, is to be a part of the startup ecosystem. Go to startups, see how they are running the show. The small people are the ones where innovation is actually happening, where they're trying new things, and they're trying new things because maybe they have to, there is no other way. In our world, when I first started hiring... I think it's a great story, it might be jumping the gun here.

Dane Groeneveld: No, go for it.

Abhijeet Narvekar: When we first wanted our first few people and we didn't have a lot of money to bring the superstars from a big, large company, our whole idea was saying that, " Okay, how can we attract people who are very smart but we can afford them at this stage and then let them grow with us?" The idea there was we really focused in on stay- at- home moms who wanted to come back and make a difference in their career, and nobody was giving them a chance because they had a very large gap. We still have them with us. One of the person, unfortunately at that time, she was going through a tough time in her life in her family and she really needed some work. We were there, because we needed her, we needed her to come and help us being an office manager and do everything that she did for us. I mean, she was with us for a very long time. It was phenomenal. That model, we just kept doing it over and over again. We kept hiring women leaders who were phenomenal, they just wanted to come back. We see it over and over time that they not only put in so much effort, but again, if you create that empowered team, they take on those responsibilities like FerVID Group is theirs. That's how we created this trust, which we can talk about more. But the hiring, the diversity, if you look at all of this from a team per se, we were doing 10 years ago. The pandemic happened two years ago. When everybody was forced to do flexible hours, well, we did flexible hours because of who we hired. We hired stay- at- home moms, they couldn't come to work, they still had their duties at home. We told them, " No problems, you do what you have to do. You can do it from anywhere, anytime, just as long as my job is done, I'm fine with it." They got that flexibility and they were empowered. We didn't keep questioning them. That's where tools come into play because you could challenge me saying that, " How do you create that trust, Abhi, when people are not with you?" There are some tools and processes required to create that trust where you, as a founder, are comfortable saying that, " You know what? They're fine, they're doing the things," and we can go there. The whole system was created 10 years ago, where we didn't think much of it, that was what we had to do. But now, the pandemic has happened and everybody's trying out flexible work hours and remote work hours and people are still fighting it, but they will find their own path in terms of hybrid environment or whatever works. But the future of work, I feel it is all about people, meaning it's not future of work, I feel it's the future of people or it's future of humanity. What is changing and how can we make those people happy will define our businesses. If people are happy, our business is going to be happy.

Dane Groeneveld: I think you're absolutely right. There are so many parallels with that future of people statement. Some of the materials I've been reading, some of the concepts I've been talking to folks about, at the end of the day, technology's changing fast. You guys have been ahead of technology for a long time, you're probably too early on some of the ideas you were bringing out 10 years ago, and now there's the ability to do some of that at a much lower cost, at a greater speed, a greater scale. It really is interesting because what that means is as technology becomes more available, more affordable, it's not the smartest people in the room that are going to win or the people with the biggest pockets, the ones who can afford to build the new tech, it's going to be the people who have a power of putting good teams together, keeping people happy, because those are the individuals who are going to make sure the customer has a good experience, the team members have a good experience, the vendors have a good experience, and they pull the whole puzzle together. That's why I'm a big believer in the power of ecosystems and the human's role in ecosystems as we go forward in all of our industries.

Abhijeet Narvekar: The ecosystem comment is so true. Recently, I was invited by one of our local ecosystems here to just be a part of some things. Being busy with what you're doing, you're always... The first thought that comes to your mind is just keep doing what you're doing, life is so busy that why do I need to go out there and now do more things? But only when you get out there, you realize that it is even more fulfilling, you have made new connections, you get new ideas, you can bring that back to your own company. Ecosystem internally and externally is very key, and all of us need to make time to go there. In terms of, I think you mentioned one more things of innovation. You're right. From a technical innovation standpoint, we had brought in this whole video interviewing in plain 2010 when HR was still challenging that they will get sued if we did video interviews. We were a little ahead of the game the way we were doing it, and the challenge there was how to convince people get through that hurdle saying that, " Hey, it'll be okay. This is a tool in technology, if we do it right, nobody's going to sue us." But, it was a challenge. Now today, that has become a regular thing with Zoom, with all of the video things that we are doing, people are getting more and more relaxed with it. But my point I think there was what I've seen, as founders, is there are thought leaders, meaning a lot of us who come up with different ideas, different thought processes, and that may be trying to change the entire game, but then your team, they have their own thoughts, maybe not like, " Okay, I'm going to change the whole world, but the processes." They come and they say that, " Hey Abhi, it'll be better if we do this process in a particular way to have even more client satisfaction." We have three main core values in our company. One is be ethical, be honest, keep that line. The second is trust, create trustworthy environment within our team, within our clients. The last one is satisfaction. What I mean by that is not just client satisfaction, but satisfying our own team, each other, looking after each other. If you create that ecosystem, I think it works very well to help each other and take us forward that there might be a little subtle competition happening internally, and that is just natural because one person does well, the other person feels that I need to catch up, et cetera. But as long as you identify the people who are already ahead of the curve and people who are not there yet, but they have the potential of getting there and you train them, you handhold them to get them there, again, you are looking after your entire ecosystem in a good way and that is healthy.

Dane Groeneveld: I think you're right. I like those three. Be ethical, create a trustworthy environment, and make sure that people are finding satisfaction. They're very tangible and they're very much tied to the way you do your work. I like values that tie to the way you do your work or the way you deliver work for a customer because they drive certain behaviors, you don't have to guess at what this means. When someone says, " Be customer centric," you're like, " Well, what does that mean?"

Abhijeet Narvekar: What does that mean?

Dane Groeneveld: But be ethical, obvious trust is huge. Satisfaction is much easier to understand both in the personal, the team, and actually in the customer environment too because you can measure that.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Sorry. You're absolutely right. All I wanted to say was you can use these... If your values are defined correctly, you actually can use it in your real life meetings, client meetings. We had a situation recently where we were working with a complete new client, and the client said that, " Please don't do a particular thing to us." We went back to our core value and said that our core value is being ethical, so we have not done whatever you're saying to any other client and it'll not happen to you. I mean, that's just who we are. Once you are passionate about some of these things, it shows. It's not just a lip service that we are saying it. I don't have to go back to my employee handbook to see what my core values were, I forgot what my mission was, a core value was, it should just come naturally because that's what you're doing on a daily basis.

Dane Groeneveld: There was an article I read recently by a professor out of Yale and he was actually taking a bit of a shot at some of the bigger named management consultancies that we come across. He was suggesting it's the beginning of the end for a number of them because, and this ties back to being ethical, a lot of these consultancies come in and they listen to what the customer tells them and they don't think about what's causing that customer's problem. They think about, " What service can I sell you? Now I can do a one million or a two million or a five million project. This is my methodology, we're going to make it look nice, present it to the board." But the challenge there is that... This goes back to not only be ethical, be trustworthy, satisfaction, it's all three of your values. The challenge there is that you are doing work to suit you, it's your methodology, it's your pricing structure, and you're not really listening for what the customer's real problems are or giving them advice, which those smart people around the table should be able to give into saying, " Well, actually maybe there's a leadership issue here. Maybe you need to take these two people out of the room and see how the team performs when they're not there. Or, maybe there's a product issue," but not let's go through this big discovery process. I think with the availability and affordability of technology, there also comes the availability, affordability of information. That means that customers... Actually, Dan Pinks says this too, customers are now moreso than ever more sophisticated in knowing what they want or what they got. It's gone from that buyer beware to seller beware context that Pink talks about. Values like that mean that a team feels good about the work that they did, that they've got a good relationship with their customers, that they're going to be a sustaining, enduring team and sustaining, enduring brand that shouldn't get knocked off their center of balance.

Abhijeet Narvekar: True. Another thought process here to just think about as we are brainstorming is when anybody goes to a client, there's still a vendor... We are the client, you are the vendor relationship. What we have seen is when that relationship, and we don't want to be... When we say that we are the same, meaning we are not saying that we want to merge with you or anything like that, but at the same time when the line starts blurring saying they start feeling that you are an extension of their team, where they can call you and talk to you without getting worried about they're going to rip me off, that's when I think the satisfaction on all sides grows tremendously. We have seen the other way where we try to tell our clients, saying that we are one and the same and they take it the wrong way saying, " You are not. You are a vendor, so don't even think about we are the same. You have come here to do a job, do that job, and then you go." In that kind of environment... I'm not saying it's a bad environment, but the structure, the processes need to be very different. For a smaller company like us, we try very well when we are working as a really close partner, because then to your point, we are honest about what we are trying to solve. We create that trust where they can call us any time and say, "Abhi, I've got a problem. I need your team to help me out." We are like, " Sure." We don't even talk about money because we know at the end of the day we will get paid and they will do the right thing. But, that doesn't happen all the time. Most of the vendors take the... Because they've also been burnt on the other side, they take the big consulting route where they have their process, they're like, " We are here to give you a solution. We are going to give you a solution, make money and walk away." Then, whatever happens is your business. I think there's both sides to the story where if everything was right, like some of our clients are, then it really works very well.

Dane Groeneveld: That's actually a good directive too is that if you can, as a business owner, as a team, if you can find those customers that value the partnership, the trust, they're going to be the customers you can grow with, do sustainable business with, and protect your team, because that's also an important part of teamwork is it's really hard to have all of these values and then get in front of a customer and the customer starts beating your team up and you're like, " Hey, they're paying the bills, we're not going to say anything." Whereas if you can put your team in front of a good customer time and time again, they know that you're truly living those values.

Abhijeet Narvekar: No, absolutely. Another way to do it, which we have done once and twice, is to walk away in a good way. Do your job, but then don't ask for more work. It's like, "Okay, we said we will do this, we will work hard and get it done," but then slowly just back away from them and focus your efforts on other clients where you haven't burned the bridge, you did what you were supposed to do, but you're not asking your sales team to go and upsell and get that client to give us more money, you just walk away from it.

Dane Groeneveld: No, I like that. I made a note here earlier when you were talking about the startup culture and being innovative. I love the way that... You've always shared this with me, the way that you built the business around bringing in some stay- at- home moms that had a lot of potential in creating that empowerment, giving them the opportunity to grow with you. As I understand it, you redesigned a lot of the at FerVID Group, the video interviewing and the candidate engagement processes around that team that you were able to hire. Perhaps you could share a little bit more of the how. You mentioned some tools and systems to create trust, to create that growth. I'd love to hear more about that.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Absolutely. It all happened because we had to solve a particular problem. Let's go all the way back. When we first were only three people, it was easy to communicate with each other. At that time, the person that we had hired, she was coming in from nine to 12 every day to our offices. But one of my business partners was in Dallas, is in Dallas, so he, myself, and the lady, and she was there three hours a day. It was very easy to create a trust, all of us were working with each other very closely. Then, we hired two more people and one of them started working full- time remote, so now we had to start thinking about, " Okay, how do we feel comfortable?" It's all practical stuff, meaning as a small business owner, there's work to be done. Now if the person is communicating with you regularly, then you don't worry in your mind, " What's happening? Are they okay? Why am I not seeing resumes? Are they working?" Those kind of silly thoughts come into play when you don't trust someone or you just haven't had the opportunity to create the relationship with each other. That's when tools come into play. We had to start thinking about, " Okay, what..." Email's too difficult. Some people don't even check their emails regularly, which is good because they're working, otherwise emails can take eight hours of your day. Some people don't even want their phone when they're so engaged doing whatever research they're doing. What is a tool, this was in 2010, that we could use that will help us communicate with you? One was at that time, Skype. Skype was free, Skype is still free. We said that everybody in operations team need to be on Skype, which means that if somebody has a question and we pose that question to you, you don't have to drop everything and respond, but in a reasonable timeframe response because somebody is worrying about it. I'll talk about this worrying about theory as well in a bit, because that person, whoever's in charge, has a deadline and they have delegated some tasks to their teams. Now, if the leader's getting nervous, the deadline's coming up, it's tomorrow at noon, but my team is not telling me where they are... I mean, are they okay? You start getting nervous, and that's when things start going the wrong way, if you don't hear things back. We first said Skype. Skype was working okay, but our team started growing. We said, " We need to have a place where, at the end of the day... It doesn't have to be a big anything, end of the day we need to type in what were our best things for the day, worst things for the day, two points each, and the status. That's it." Don't make a big deal out of it, but before you end your day at 5: 00 PM, can everybody please go to this system and just type in their pros, their cons, and where do they stand on their project? That way whoever the leader is has to check before 5: 00 PM, before he or she goes home, everybody's status very quickly saying, " Okay, got it. This person is struggling, and tomorrow I have to help him or her." We started instilling these kind of things. Now, the tool we used kept changing at various times because we were trying to use cheap or free tools so whatever was there, we would use it. But that habit not only helped the leader, but I'll tell you the habit helped each individual. It was like journaling. What was happening is people were writing down saying, " This worked very well for me, but I really struggled with this." The next morning what we were telling them is, " Wherever you struggled with, don't try the same thing the next day." You talk to your teams, call your teams saying, " How are you doing this? I'm struggling." Or tell your leader saying, " I need some training on this," so that way you keep improving on a daily basis based on what you tell us at the end of the day. That worked very well for a while. Then again, the team shuffles, things change. We had a couple of new salespeople. As we were growing, I think the tools and technologies that we were using kept changing because... I think it was Yammer or something at that time.

Dane Groeneveld: I remember Yammer, I think ExxonMobil still uses Yammer.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Yammer, that's what I think we used as well. Then, also what we realized was salespeople work differently than operations because salespeople had their own CRM. Then, they started complaining saying that, " Well, I'm putting everything in the CRM, now you're also asking me to go put it in Yammer. Why can't you go to the CRM and see what I'm doing?" Those kind of issues also start happening. But then again, you have to come up with a way saying that, " Okay, maybe the operations team is comfortable using Yammer, let them do that. The sales team has the CRM system, let them do that, so we are not duplicating the work just because the CEO wants to. Let's go with the flow and figure out what's working for who." As you can see, it's a little fluid how we kept doing it. But then on the other side, if you think about the customer side, what we were doing... This is very interesting too. First, we were doing video interviews. The idea was that we are not just going to find people, we are going to interview them because of our leadership background. We are going to record this whole interview and submit the top people. We actually had a full video studio, believe it or not, in 2010 in our office. This was funny because really all the leaders would come, there were lights and we had a makeup kit and people would put makeup and some...

Dane Groeneveld: I thought your videos looked better than mine.

Abhijeet Narvekar: But we failed miserably because the leaders were stressed, they were hot, this light on their face, they were sweating. We realized that, " You know what? This is just a bad idea." I mean, we thought theoretically this would work. This is where business pivot comes into play. You learn from your mistakes. We invested a lot in that studio and we realized this is not the way to do this. That's when we, in fact, created a system just like what you all have, two videos recorded. But as you correctly said, the video technology back then in 2010 was still not the best. Only one- way recordings were happening, two- way recordings were not happening. We still had to rely on Skype and other third party tools to do what we needed to do. But that also kept changing, if you may, based on those experiences because client, candidate, all satisfaction is very key. You need to make the process smooth without compromising the quality. You always have to think about, " I'll take this away, but hopefully that doesn't screw up what I'm delivering to the client." As long as you have that balance, I think we kept moving it along. I hope I answered your question, Dane.

Dane Groeneveld: No, it does. I love the fact that it's organic, but this daily check- in is very interesting because it's become very popular with people working remotely, and you were doing it 10 years ago. I love the way that you explained the CEO can't enforce this is how we do it, we're going to let the departments organically determine their best tool for that particular process. I think that's a big part of this whole digital experience movement that we're seeing in the hybrid and remote workforce. I'd be intrigued, Abhi, today what tools are you seeing that are starting to emerge as your preferred tools to replace the Yammer's and the Skype's, or are you still on them?

Abhijeet Narvekar: Well, I think we do anything and everything today. That is the difference. Earlier, we didn't have an option. We were using Skype mostly because that was free, the video quality was great, nobody complained about it. It was easy for us. When I said Skype, some people didn't have it, but they would install it and get it done, it was that easy. Today what has happened is Microsoft Teams has a video component, we've got Zoom, which has a video component. People have their own tools, which has a video component. When you ask them to interview using Skype, they will push back and they say that, " I don't have Skype, they will not allow to install me. Can you use Teams instead? Or, can you use Zoom instead?" From a video technology standpoint, I think we have evolved in various ways. What we have done to keep the client satisfaction easy, we don't complain. We are like, " Which tool do you want? You want Teams? That's fine with us."

Dane Groeneveld: You're agnostic.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Then, because we have a backend process where we edit and we do what we have to do to package it into our own portal, so that is still there... The portal standpoint also has changed. A lot of CRMs and applicant tracking systems are now giving you the capability of recording video, attaching video to the candidates, et cetera. But the only difference in the way we are doing it is when you plug your ideas into an existing product, it is still quite a bit of an uptake and a lot of different steps to get there. While what we have done is we use these tools to create the videos, but then we have our own proprietary little portal where we streamline everything. The hiring management doesn't have to open 100 different things to get there, in one click they have everything in front of them where they can make a quick decision. Now there are, again, lots of things that we could improve because when companies merge, for example, and one company has their own way of providing candidate reviews while the other company has their own way of providing candidate reviews, and now you're merging the two, how will they do that? Is email getting the default, or which tool wins in terms of providing reviews? This is just an example, but what we're seeing is there are a little too many options today. Earlier life was a little easy, now competition has increased in this space.

Dane Groeneveld: It's very fragmented.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Yes, it has become a little more complicated to determine which tool works the best for who.

Dane Groeneveld: It's funny because... We're going down a rabbit hole now, but if you think about the candidate experience, it sure would be nice if a candidate or say a data analyst role could do one video interview that they make available to 100 different employers rather than having to do 100 different video interviews. It doesn't seem like the industry has traditionally focused on the candidate experience, they've always focused more on the hiring manager, the recruiter.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Well, true, but you also have to think about each... Even if it's a data analyst role, what we have seen is what each hiring manager is asking is still a little different. If you want to really interview a candidate and you want to give both parties the right experience, because on one side, yes, you can do a both thing, but it'll still be a hit or miss because they will still say that, " Okay, you all didn't ask the right questions, so I still don't know whether this is the right candidate." While if you do a custom video for each candidate, it's a lot of work, but you can get an honest review at the end of the video saying that you are not a fit for this data analyst role because I have five others who are. I think the custom solution, even though the candidates also have to do a lot more work, I think the feedback loop is better.

Dane Groeneveld: That's a good point.

Abhijeet Narvekar: They get an honest review saying that, " Hey, you are not a fit," which I think is much more valuable for a candidate, rather than just sending the same resume, same video to 100 people and not hearing anything back because that is even worse.

Dane Groeneveld: That's a great point.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Because they get more depressed, saying that nobody loves me.

Dane Groeneveld: Right, and they don't know what to do next, because if you miss out on a role because you didn't have enough experience on this BI layer software or on this particular data set, you know that if you want that job in the future, you have to go and find that experience. I think you're right, the feedback is very important. That's a good rebuttal. Final question, Abhi, I love when you said, when we were talking about ecosystem, that the value for teams and entrepreneurs in going out into the startup community to just watch, listen, learn, be inspired can be huge in terms of bringing ideas back to the team and to the business. Can you tell me a little bit more about Careers Unleashed and how you are out there in this startup community now learning about some of the great things that are being done and how that may take Careers Unleashed and The FerVID Group platforms forward into the future?

Abhijeet Narvekar: Perfect. No, very good question. About two years ago or so, we started another company called Careers Unleashed. Thanks for bringing that topic into play here. Just to give context behind Career Unleashed, and then I'll answer your question very quickly. The Career Unleashed idea came because of FerVID. We were helping companies hire good people. We were interviewing a lot of people, mostly in the executive space, but we also started interfacing with young students. What we realized was that students... A lot of them didn't have a clear idea of what they would do with their degree, so they would spend tons of money getting a loan to get a degree, but then they wouldn't really know if they'll ever get a job, especially for liberal arts, psychology, history, English majors where the career path is not very clearly identified. We came up with an idea called Career Unleashed where we analyzed millions of resumes to define past career paths of real people and then give them ideas and analytics. That's how we started this Career Unleashed idea. With any idea, we can come up with our own thinking of this is what will solve people's problem. We did a lot of different focus groups, but the focus groups were still 10 people here, 15 people there, and now University of Houston Downtown is using us. But what we realized is when you go to the ecosystem, when you communicate, interact, you talk about your idea, talk to VCs, other founders, they all have a different input, a different opinion. That brings tremendous value back to me saying that we might have to pivot... What I heard today, it looks like it'll be successful, but it might take a longer time. How about we pivot to do something faster? In our world, our mission is to help students from high school students to college students, even mid- career professionals, live a great life by really charting out their career path and getting help, and that's what I said by coaching. When you want to be empowered, you also have to invest in yourself. You have to really think about getting a coach to help you through your career. Now, that coach can be a person or it can be a tool like Career Unleashed, for example. But at the same time, we also thought... Talking to the ecosystem, we realized that B2B, for example, companies have performance management out there, so they say that Dane is a very high potential candidate, but most of the companies it's at locally, the management knows that Dane is a very high potential person. Somebody in Malaysia might not have that information, that Dane is a high potential person that is available for the whole company. Using the analytics that we have in Career Unleashed, what we are going to try and resolve is take it to companies to understand their own internal workforce, get some data points from other HR systems, and create this very visible talent management or talent trend. I call it trend analytics. The trends that are happening internally to really make some smart decisions. This is getting very key because I want to end our conversation... We are talking about the future of work, things are changing rapidly. People realize that health is important, people realize that my family is important, my time is important. To get these three now, they're willing to even quit a very good job, trying to prioritize what they feel is important in their life. When they quit, where are they going? They're going to either start their own gig, because now gig economy platforms are there, so people can start their own gig, it's not too difficult. Or, they go to startups who will give that flexibility to them. Now, these trends you need to identify to be ahead of the curve to say that this bunch of people in your company are at a high risk, they will leave if you don't do something now. That's what I think Career Unleashed is trying to resolve at the B2C or consumer level or at the business level.

Dane Groeneveld: No, I love that. I think it's a nice full circle on your point on coaching and go- to- market, which is in your early business it was bring on a coach to consider go- to- market. Now, later in your career when you can go and engage with those startup communities and with your customers, you've been able to introduce, invite them into your team from a... I guess it's more of a virtual team, it's not a real team, but they've been giving you feedback, letting you know where they see their problem and your solution coming together. I love that concept of trend analytics because trends are really the only data that we're going to be able to rely on with the amount of change that's ahead of us. If we're looking too much at historical data, it's not going to lead us to where we're going to need to be in the future. That's a really cool concept. We should come back and talk more about that in the future.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Absolutely. On another day, we'll talk about mindset coaching too, because the coaching I was referring to when I was first starting this company and I almost gave up, that this coach, inaudible out of Boston who really worked with me on my own mindset saying... The whole very quick summary there was, " When you do something, when you step out of your comfort zone, life is difficult, it's not easy, and that's why you're stepping out of your comfort zone. But if your mind keeps saying, go back in that comfort zone, let me go back to my circle, then you will not move forward. The mindset needs to be, I've taken my first step, let me not move backwards now. How do I keep moving forwards to get what I need without making excuses, without putting doubts in our mind?" As you started this discussion, saying that we need to help people and inspire them, what I would say is all of us are always happy in our comfort zone, but try to do something new, try to do something different, even if it's a small thing. You will see, it'll give you so much joy that it'll take your life to the next level.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that and I love that intro. I didn't even realize just how your first, second, and third gig started when you went back to study. You took the small steps that have really led to some much bigger leaps, which is fascinating and exciting for others to follow in your footsteps.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Absolutely. This has been a pleasure. Thanks for having me here. It's been a great discussion. I think I took a little too much of your time, it's been an hour.

Dane Groeneveld: No, this has been great.

Abhijeet Narvekar: It's been my pleasure.

Dane Groeneveld: This has been a great conversation, Abhi. If people want to find you to learn more about The FerVID Group's video interviewing process or the Careers Unleashed platform, how do they best connect?

Abhijeet Narvekar: Well, I think LinkedIn is the best format. I'm out there, just send me a connection request. I would love to have discussions with you. If you need some ideas on the career, just give me a ping on LinkedIn and let's talk.

Dane Groeneveld: That's great, Abhi. Well, thanks again for your time today and for your friendship and partnership.

Abhijeet Narvekar: Same here. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

Dane Groeneveld: Cool.