#162 - Thomas Thayyil Thomas | Transforming Deal Strategy Using AI

[00:00:03] This is the Lets Grab Coffee Podcast and I'm your host George Khalife What's going on? Thanks for finally being on the podcast. I'm really excited to have you on. Well thank you for having me Josh. Yeah it's a pleasure. I was gonna say I always like to start with something a bit more fun but I wanted to say you have a really cool name. Yes I do. You go by T3, a lot of people who know you, and that's because your full name is literally Thomas Thayyil Thomas. That's right.

[00:00:31] I like it. That's a creative name. First name, last name are the same. Is this a bit more common let's say in India or Indian culture? It is. Actually it is, as you asked, it's my dad's name. And my dad passed when I was 26 and he was so influential in our lives. Both myself and my only brother, we both named our first kids after him. So you have literally three T3s in my family. In the family? Yes.

[00:01:01] Well that's a nice thing to do for your father. And you know, I would say like a beautiful legacy to keep passing on. It is common though, right? Because the first name, last name, and then it keeps revolving. I know from a few Indian friends that that's a bit more of a common piece of culture. That's exactly right. So you grew up in India? I grew up in a place called Kerala, which is south of India, southwest. Beautiful place. If you think about Chile, it looks like that, a miniature. Mountains on one side and ocean on the other side.

[00:01:30] Oh wow. With about 32 rivers crisscrossing the state. So it is a very green state. So it's nicknamed God Song Country. God Song Country? Yes. Oh wow. That's beautiful. I've always wanted to visit. I haven't been able to visit India just yet, but it looks like a beautiful country. And it's so, to your point, very different. Like it's so large and every spot is so different from the other.

[00:01:57] And it's also interesting to see the cultures. I'm assuming because of your name, it takes after St. Thomas, right? Who sort of evangelized in India. Yeah. Yes. AD 52. So that's, that's a big part of it. You will see a lot of Thomases and Pauls in the place that that came from. Which is the Christian part of, right? Is it Kerala, Calcutta? Kerala, I think Goa. Goa is the other one. Yes. Yes.

[00:02:24] Nice. How would, so how long did you stay in India? Because I know you went to university there. Yes. So I, I left India when I was 28. Married, my son was 10 months old. We, then we went to the UK. I studied in Glasgow. My, my wife studied in, in Midland, England, Sheffield. So it was an interesting but tough time. This whole thing started there. Oh yeah.

[00:02:49] Yeah. The big story was, I started my career as an, as a lecturer. So I taught finance for, you know, for post-graded courses. That was my first job. Then very quickly, I realized, this is not for me. I like teaching, but I didn't want this to be a career. Then my wife and I decided, Hey, we should, we should just go explore other opportunities. And the best, best thing for us to do instead of immigrating blindly, we had to just go study and figure out a career abroad.

[00:03:16] So at that time, believe it or not, we, we looked at, like, we were not both not happy with what was going on in our life for career wise. And we were like, Hey, we got to go do something about it and something radical.

[00:03:31] And this is with a kid that's probably two or three months old at the time. So our idea was, if we don't manage to find visas in good universities to study abroad, we are going to go to the mountains, spend a lot of land and start a floriculture business. That was the plan. Really? That's an interesting plan B.

[00:03:56] Exactly. So from either go deep into she's a physical therapist, I'm a business and finance. So pursue that or become farmers in progress to some sort of, you know, floral essence manufacturer. That was the idea back then. Interesting. Yeah, that must've been a move for you. I mean, going, it's, it's like the, you know, tried and true immigration story. That I felt, I mean, we immigrated from the Middle East. We were in Saudi at the time, but we went to Canada and I was about 10 years old.

[00:04:26] Yeah. And I remember how, you know, stressful it was for my parents and just like any parents moving to a new city, a new country. That must've been hard, you know, for you to, in your late twenties, you're still relatively young. You have a newborn, a lot of responsibility. The pressure of that visa, man, you know, if things don't work out, you go back. That's a lot to take on. Oh, I have a really great story that, that I want to tell you there. Sure. Let's do it. I go to, I go to Glasgow.

[00:04:54] So I'm studying in, studying at the University of Stratkwes. Quite bizarrely, I'm a Scottish chartered accountant as well. So when I joined Amsterdam, so they, they sponsor your CA program, which is a three year program, not like the CPA here. And you have to take all the exams in one go. So there are three levels, five exams in first go, second, fourth, and then you have a big one day case study. If you fail twice or if you fail more than two papers, you lose your job. It's no pressure. Right.

[00:05:23] So, you know, half of my batch that started, they actually couldn't complete the program. So I have pretty strong ties to Scotland that way. So I started the program, not going to apply for a job. And so I got, go to the final lunch with Deloitte. That was my first application. I was super happy, super nervous. And I go to, this is talk about an immigrant culture shop.

[00:05:47] I said, this office is Aberdeen, which is the northernmost larger city in the UK, like in Glasgow, big on oil and gas. I wanted to make a career in energy. That was one of the reasons growing up in Kerala, a lot of our people work in the Middle East, Saudi, UAE, etc. So energy is kind of pretty natural. So that's something that I was really interested in. So Aberdeen was exciting because it's kind of the, after Houston, the second oil and gas capital there.

[00:06:15] So I went there and as part of the interview, this is all new, the cultural evaluation, testing, etc. and so on. We do it all the time at Terabonia too, when you have people coming in and making sure that our team can really work with them at a personal level. But it's a personality, cultural fit. So I go there and do the interview. I was so nervous, I fumbled the test. The test was not difficult, but I just fumbled it just because of the pressure.

[00:06:39] Like everything that you talked about, about the visa, like you're thinking about all that too much and overloading yourself and you're going through it. And it's on your shoulders. Like you feel the weight. Exactly. And then, so we go for lunch with the team, junior team. They're probably early twenties. I am late twenties. So there's about a decade gap. There's a kind of continent gap. I go there.

[00:07:04] John Jack, can you not? I grew up in a very, very common household in Kerala. You know, it's a, didn't even study in any English medium schools. I went to, I studied everything in my local language until 15. Like you think about math, physics, chemistry. I know the terms that you commonly know, like acceleration is set differently or velocity is set differently, things like that. Then it was a big shift from that to going to college and having to learn every subject in English.

[00:07:34] Right. That's kind of big change for you. So I go there, I go for lunch. And I've never handled food with knife and fork. I never, like it's, it's India. So you, you always use your hands. That's rough. So I was so nervous to, to pick that up. I ordered soup because it's super simple. You can, you can use a spoon to do it. They must have thought I was at the time. Right.

[00:08:02] Like who is this guy ordering only soup for lunch? So I, I came back and that was a very pivotal moment in my life where I came back. A lot of people, when they immigrate, they want to stick to the wrong groups and cultures and, and everything, which is, which is right to do. So at that point in time, I say, Hey, I have to integrate. If I don't integrate, I don't survive. So it's a question of survival, right? There's nothing about culture at that point.

[00:08:29] So that's why I, then force yourself to embed into a different culture. So think about coming from land of spices and getting familiar with fish and chips, the blandest food. The blandest food. Right. And yeah. So things like that. So then another story was, so as I finished my, this is my second master's program. I was doing my PhD or on the way to PhD when I was living in India. And then I left the academy altogether.

[00:08:59] And with that, then you're searching for this job. So there's another thing. I heard another podcast in, and another, another presenter was talking about how he grew up in a, in a, in a pretty middle class background and how no was not an answer. So this was way back when, where people were saying, Hey, how are you going to get this? Some people are talking about this. I'm not getting it, etc. And so on. And my answer was very bizarre. It's just like, it's not applicable for me.

[00:09:28] And they're like, why is it not applicable for you? It's the law of the country is applicable for everybody. I said, well, there's no other options. I got to make it work. So I'm going to find a way to make it work. So I, so the second aha moment was, started working in this grocery chain called Sainsbury's in, in the daily counter, right? Growing up in India. Another thing that you don't have in India is cheese. You only, only thing that you get is thing called paneer.

[00:09:57] If you go to an Indian restaurant, they always have paneer. That's a good one. Really? Grocery stores don't have cheese. In India, you don't have cheese. Cheese is not, not a food, a food stable item that you have or stable food that you have. Right. I'm working in, in the daily counter. And so we learned a lot about cheese because you have more varieties in the UK than you get in the US. And the other aha moment was, so you, you work alongside in the, in the meat and fish counter along with the daily counter.

[00:10:27] Sometimes I start pretty early. There's this older gentleman called Ian who would come to the store, right? And he, for family reasons, had a kid, I would start early. He would come in at about six o'clock and I started noticing how meticulous and disavoid this person is. He's probably about eight years old and handling his side of the equation and at the store and talking to customers, et cetera. So I start, stuck up a conversation with Ian.

[00:10:52] And then it turns out Ian is an entrepreneur had actually a chain of fish stores in the UK and London, made a ton of money for himself. And I was like, why are you working in the store right now? Like you're, there's no, it just escapes me. Like why he would do it? So he had sold his business. His children are well set. He said, look, I just need to have something that I want to follow. And this is something that I learned.

[00:11:20] This is that I know that I do very well. And I want to make sure that I, I do it extremely well to a high standard. And this gets me going. I'm eight years old. This gets me to get up from bed and doing it. That was a huge aha moment for me, where there's no money involved. There's no reason for him to work, but the way that he worked, he was very, very humble. He knew something.

[00:11:47] And then he was an expert in it and he was, he was driving it. And that was a huge life lesson for me. And then I decided, Hey, this no matter, this is a huge lesson. It's a valuable, no matter what I do, it doesn't money is an afterthought. It's just being excellent at what you do and being humble at what you do. That, that makes you a better person. Yeah. That's a beautiful story. I mean, I think it's helpful also when you're in that chapter of your life. This is when you're doing your PhD, right?

[00:12:16] This is for speed, for that journey. I was in the UK already, right? That's post PhD. No, no, I started masters in philosophy in India. That was like your step one PhD. I took the second masters in Glasgow. This is post masters. I mean, I'm job searching, working on the daily counter. It's just like, you know, very difficult. It's nothing unusual here, but when you, when you move from a place like India, that's not common, right? You don't, you don't go to work when you're studying. So it's big cultural shock.

[00:12:46] I was just following the whole immigrant journey. That's all. Immigrant journey. Wow. That's my, that's my point. I mean, you're basically a double master student at this point. You're, you know, close to the beach. Like to be, it's a humbling moment to have that. And at the same time you're working, you know, at a grocery store and you're learning about cheese and, and you're basically trying to, to get a start in a very new country. You probably have zero relationships. Yeah. It's not an easy, it's not an easy thing to do.

[00:13:18] Yeah. That's right. So this, this is where this whole relationship to Tarragonia here, right?

[00:13:47] I said, the only reason I want to go to us is I'm going to start a business. If I want to be in a job in the UK is great work life balance. You get a lot of vacation and so on. So I can stay here. I'm already qualified. I was working with EY at the time, but if I'm going to us, I would want to start something on my own. And we made this decision. It was a very, then once you made the decision and you go for it.

[00:14:10] So I tried in two weeks, somebody from Houston office just parachuted into the, the only non oil and gas project that I did at the time. She came over, she sat next to me. I helped her with kind of integrating. There was a few months of assignment. And then I just randomly asked, Hey, do you have, are you taking somebody in? And she said, look, do you have any oil and gas experience? Which is the only thing that I did except for this particular project. In three days, I had the job offer. I spoke to the team, the partner liked me. And then, you know, we, we got on very well.

[00:14:39] I moved to Houston. But that was, that was a big story to kind of move over here. And then, then I went to, I moved from EY to Cooley here where I set up a practice. And that was the, the reason I brought that up is that you asked about the relationship, right? So, you know, you didn't grow up in the country, in the UK, I studied, had more relationship than the US. I'd never been to US before I came here.

[00:15:02] So it was a, every time it was a challenge in terms of setting up a practice or a business in a country that you've never been and spent little time with. And just going and selling and getting out and break the mold of having the courage to talk to people. So it's a, it's, it's been a very humbling journey, right?

[00:15:23] You, you, you have to, one thing that I know is that you have to fail and embrace failure multiple times. So the one, one thing that I keep to myself is this, uh, Japanese proverb is called Nana Parobi. Yeah. Okay. That means fall down seven and stand up eight times. Right.

[00:15:45] And that, that's, that's the only thing that's, that's the thing in distance, like you have to fail and don't be afraid to fail, but then you have to have the courage to stand up next time. You just get on, stay down. I love that. Well, I think you also, you've, you moved through some, some, you know, very, very different cities. You know, you go from India, you go to London, London, Houston, Houston, and now you're in Chicago. Every time you were setting up, I want to, I want to just drill down a little bit on your time.

[00:16:14] So after IWA, you go to Hulahan Loki, uh, and you spend a lot of time in your, you know, you become basically a director for financial due diligence and you're setting up in each of these, like, you know, larger corps, you're setting up practices. You then start their digital value practice. I want to kind of lean on your consulting background or strategy background, because you were on the other side of entrepreneurship. With Taragonia now as a CEO, you're running your own startup and you're building, you know, a really, really cool startup in Chicago.

[00:16:42] But at one point you were on the other side of the table. So I'm curious what lessons were most important to you from EY to Hulahan that you now use as a CEO of a tech company? Yes. So the very interesting question for all the firms that I work with, well, which is only two EY and HL, Hulahan Loki, really great people, really great firm, a lot of support. Like I mentioned, my desire for underlying motive to move to US was starting a business.

[00:17:10] So when I was at the EY, I tried to be more market facing. Also, although it is not in my nature. When I grew up in my family, there was a common joke that I would forever, I would be either a banker or a professor. I would never ever be in a sales role. Why is that? I like books. I like to read a lot. And so I spent my, it's one story. When I grew up, I grew up in an island.

[00:17:40] When I say island, no bridge. It's a true island, zero connectivity. If you want to go from the island to the other side of the land, there's a canoe that the government has placed in. And this person goes with big 30 foot long bamboo stick, you put the stick to the floor of the riverbed. And that's how this thing moves. But if you have a vehicle, it's outside the island. You're parking it outside and you're coming to the island. And this is not a time when you have TV or forget internet. That was 96. So I said, this is too late.

[00:18:09] So the only entertainment that I had is a village library. So by the time I left the island, which it was 12 years old, as my family moved, I had finished the whole library. Every single book in the library. So I was a big bookworm. And for a personality like that, you know, the last profession that you would think about is being in sales. And even at EY, when you grew up, that's the reason when you're asking about the consulting journey and practice.

[00:18:39] After a couple of years in the US, I went to my partner's office and I said, I don't, good friend of mine, great friend Travis Stilis. I clearly remember this conversation. But hey, I don't think I'm going to stay here more than 18 months. And he was asking me why. He said, well, I know I'm going to make the promotion. I just don't think that I'm cut out for sales. It's very, very hard for me to have deeply technical. I don't want to go through sales.

[00:19:06] And his response was nothing else. Right. So it's like you're not trusting yourself is essentially what it is. That's how he goes. Then I just came out of that room thinking that maybe he sees something in me that I don't. And you call it this your heart image concept because of different type of blindness that you sometimes you, other people see things in you that you don't. So this is probably one of your blind spots. If that is the case, why don't I give it a shot?

[00:19:34] And from that moment onward, I started at the networking events really, really pushing me in front of a cold situation, which is super uncomfortable. Still uncomfortable, but it is what it is. You have to deal with it. Then because I started trying, the other people around me start picking on it and just gave me more and more responsibilities that are more market facing.

[00:19:58] Then eventually I found my rhythm, started generating revenue at a much junior level and built a really large group in a new position that I took on. That gave me the confidence to set up a practice for nothing. It was also part of the EY travels, which was becoming a challenge for me. And then I needed to kind of stay close to house.

[00:20:19] So two things, my move from EY to HHL, the big desire was, or big aha moment was, it's the culture and the team that you work with. Very quickly discovered that I can, I can design something, I can sell something, but if I don't have a team, this is nothing. It's all about the team. That was the biggest aha moment. Went back to my core behavior of reading and watching videos, because I don't know, I don't think I'm good at it.

[00:20:51] But then I started looking at high performance teams and where, where do high performance teams exist most in the world? Sports. So I started watching and following a lot of sports coaches, sports managers, learned a lot of lessons in terms of, if you have star athletes, they don't, they hate mediocrity. They want to perform, they go hard at it.

[00:21:19] But also you have to think about when they need breaks, when they are teetering, injuries, all that stuff. The whole philosophy that I ran at HL and continue to run that is entirely based on that. You get high performance people who want to run harder, then they're not the ones to kind of take a pat on the back all the time because they want you to tell them the truth in a nice way. And then you have to say, don't be mean. Don't be mean.

[00:21:47] And kind of reading the pulse on when they need that break, what motivates them. And the biggest thing when you're managing to these sales or other sports team is also same conversation that I had with my partner back today. It's not about what motivates you. That's just 20% of it.

[00:22:09] 80% of unleashing human potential, probably 95%, is understanding what they are afraid of, what they are hesitant to do. Southside of morality reasons, you're not asking anybody to do anything illegal or immoral. But what is it that you are really afraid to do? And then helping them conquer that fear.

[00:22:31] So once you do that, once you show people how to get there, which is basically making them really uncomfortable, being uncomfortable, that's a journey. But that's a very sports methodology. I was watching this, I forgot the name of the documentary. I think it is called The Playbook in Netflix. Jose Mourinho, the biggest coach in... Oh, is this where they follow different coaches? That's right. I love that.

[00:23:00] That was awesome. That's right. So Jose Mourinho says something in the world, that's one thing Dr. Wors said, and one thing that Jose Mourinho said that really stuck to me, which was, Jose says, look, I'm never telling Cristina Ronaldo how to handle the ball. Right? And none of my players, I don't need to tell them how to play soccer. They know it very, very well. That's why they are in one of the best teams in the world. But I'm going to tell them how to play in the team that I match.

[00:23:29] I'm going to tell them how to manage your position. Right? And then that's where I'm very strict down. That's my job as a coach. So I don't need to be a good player because I'm not really teaching skills. I'm managing the team. So that was very important. Understanding a player's strength and weaknesses and vulnerabilities and how that fits into a team. And how together that team works really well. That was one thing.

[00:23:55] Dr. Wors come and was like, you worked so hard to be in a position where you are going through extreme stress and duress, but run towards it and embrace it. Don't run away from it. Always remember that you worked way too hard to get to this position. Right? So this is part of the equation. Just embrace it. So those two things. Do you remember Doc Rivers, by the way, the basketball coach? Yes. The Boston, well, formerly Boston, I think he's at, where is he now?

[00:24:26] Philadelphia? No, that's Nick Nurt. Anyways. But he was the coach when the Celtics were on their prime. Yes. And they were at that time my favorite team. And he talks about the philosophy of Ubuntu. Yes. South African, you know, philosophy and ideology of I am because you are, you know, and it's always about the collective. And, you know, I'm on this earth so that I can feed your energy and together we create this collection of, you know, abundance.

[00:24:54] It's a very interesting method that he put into Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, because all of them were like these alpha high performing athletes. You know, each were like big celebrities at the time. So how do you make them fuse together versus, you know, play separately and selfish basketball? Like how do you actually play as a cohesive unit? Very difficult to do when you have high egos. That's great.

[00:25:17] The two words that fed into one of our core beliefs in Taragonia are Ubuntu and Kaizen. Exactly that. And I go to the other one. Yeah, Kaizen is the other one, the continuous improvement. Improvement. Every single area that they're speaking of. So how do we manage ego would be my biggest challenge.

[00:25:40] And therefore, the three values that Taragonia has, intellectual humility, integrity, and innovation in that order. Innovation comes third, right? So the intellectual humility was a desire to crush egos, meaning humble yourself.

[00:26:00] You can express, be open, be open and express your views, but express it in a way that you should always recognize that there's something that you always don't know. That the most uniered person in the room could enlighten you in that aspect. So be humble. Our principle coming out of intellectual humility is what we use every day, which is called debate with decorum.

[00:26:24] So you can debate, you can challenge everybody, attack the problem, not the person, but debate with decorum in a way that everybody's encouraged to express their opinion. It's funny that you said that, but then that feeds into also personality types. If you are an extrovert, then you have no problem expressing your views. But if you are an introvert, it takes you a long time to express your views.

[00:26:50] Sometimes if you are, especially with a lot of engineers in Taragonia, you like reading and you like dropping notes. And that's how you think, not by speaking. If you ask me, I like to express my view by speaking. So one of the first applications that we procure at Taragonia was Miro. And the reason was Miro is a virtual board that teams can come together and put their sticky notes and things like that.

[00:27:15] The reason I made sure that we procured that was exactly this introvert, extrovert dynamic in a meeting. Where if you are having a meeting, only extrovert people speak, introvert people find it very hard to express themselves. So you're not getting the maximum out of your team members who are really, really right.

[00:27:37] But if you give them an opportunity to express those views in their own environment or their own cave, so to speak, then the best ideas come forward. So that way they can go back and kind of think about it and then add to the thought process. Because we were creating something very, very new and we are creating new every day. And that requires constant innovation and introspection. If I'm not able to draw the maximum out of my team, how am I going to do it?

[00:28:06] So that whole thing about the boot due to continuous improvement to how people trushing or managing egos do, how that manifests in a day-to-day meeting or communication within the companies. Now you've got false strength. I did want to comment and I love that by the way. Yeah, I'm really enjoying the sports analogies here. What I wanted to comment on actually, I found super interesting and I haven't heard that before is your comment around when you're trying to build teams.

[00:28:35] The one thing that you try to focus in on is what someone's biggest fear is. I found that such an interesting position because usually to your point, it's like we in business, you usually focus on what motivates, you know, what's like your incentive, what's your driver, what wakes you up in the morning, right? All these key kind of tactics and you're trying to get under the surface, but I never, I've never really, I've never seen it from the other side, which is what scares you the most.

[00:29:02] And let me help you, you know, get closer to that fear and let's sort of unlock it and work on it together. It's part of your self-development. And what a great way to build loyalty from people working on your team and in your company that they see you as like, you're actually, you're really taking time to care about something that they want to work on, you know, above and beyond their immediate task and role. What a cool thing to actually focus on. Yes, because it's a, if you conquer your fears, then you're increasingly realizing your potential. Right?

[00:29:31] There are things that hold you from doing something, right? So there's an interesting story. I said a bit of theology, but I'll explain it in this context. And I always think about it. So a person climbs a mountain, it's late, big avalanche falls down, he's attached to a rock, not a big believer in God, but he's dangling and he knows he's going to die of hypothermia if he stay there. He speaks to God. If there is a God, just get me out of here. Yeah, help me climb the summit. Yeah.

[00:30:01] And he hears this thought in his mind that cut the rock, right? And he's like, he just couldn't do it. He just couldn't cut the rock. So next day, the search and rescue team found him dangling dead on the rock three feet above ground. Wow. Yeah. So I'm not talking about theology here. It's more like that fear is the rock to cut.

[00:30:26] And unless someone tells you there's a net below, you know, three feet below, you're not going to cut it. So all you need to do, there was nobody to convince him that there was a net below that, because he didn't want to die of falling. And so if he even show an illusion, there is a net. People will cut the rope and then they realize their potential is the most beautiful thing to actually see. Hmm. I resonate with it.

[00:30:56] It's almost like the dark night, Batman. Do you remember when he's trying to jump? Yeah. Yeah. He had to cut the rope. Uh, yeah. Uh, that that's my favorite scene from that movie too. Cause you really have to, if you always have like a pillow that you're going to fall on, you're really never going to push it beyond what's comfortable for you. I think that's the other piece that comes to mind. And curious for you when you were starting Taragonia, which I'm banking on the, you started in, well, technically launched it in 23, I think, right? March 23. Yes.

[00:31:25] So what was your biggest fear? What becoming a CEO of a, of a growing startup? Like if I were to ask you that, what would, what would that? I just, my biggest fear for that was, could be career ending, right? So if you're a technologist, if you're a mathematician, like my call phone or so, you can just, you're exercising a skill that is valuable again, right?

[00:31:49] You don't want to go expose yourself at a senior level and had pretty risk-free meaningful income coming, hitting my bank account to go and expose myself and set up a business and, and, and, and general is a, is a failure, right? So, so fear of not the idea, not working out or kind of the fear of the unnot because there are, there are things that you wouldn't, you can't expect in a business.

[00:32:16] Things change every day, every hour, forget, forget the month or big, big plans. And then just, well, my family was a big reason to support me. My wife did say my son was in college. It's a huge thing to me that, yeah. When usually you would just finish the kid, you'd have come out of the college and then do something like this. But both of them said, Hey, I really wanted, they know I really want to do it.

[00:32:42] And the counter fear of fear of failure was fear of regret or living with the regret that I'd never took the punch when I had, when I had the chance. Then it all came down to risk management. That's my, one of my core principle is be risk aware and not risk-averse. If you are not risk aware, you're just foolish because you just didn't think it through.

[00:33:09] So understanding what could go wrong, I forgot the name of the CEO of the founder of Zoom. And I, it stuck to me like a lot of times and COVID actually played a big part in it. So he's read it somewhere in his interview, one of his interviews where he said, he wakes up and thinks what would kill the company? What could, what is it that could kill the company? Like every day. So if you think like that, then you're, you're just being risk aware all the time.

[00:33:37] Not that you are risk-averse, but you're thinking about what's your response to that risk. And quite funny enough, our investors who shall remain unnamed for their confidentiality reasons, very, very experienced investors, professional investors. And I have a, one of us, my board member, his question, every time we meet, which is every two weeks. What are the key risks? What are the risks that you see?

[00:34:04] And at the time for me, there's no answer. Because everything that you see is an opportunity or a risk. You just cannot balance it. Over time, if you ask me right now, I can kind of think about what are the key risks and how we are managing it. So my biggest fear was that losing face and being exposed, but then it was counterweighted by the fear of regret. Yeah.

[00:34:29] I mean, the army, I heard the army, there was a panel of former army and Navy SEALs folks turned private equity cold war as it wasn't on the panel that, that we did at our office, but a different event. And one of the guys said something that really, you know, that I found very interesting, which is they take risks, not chances, you know, and so it's all about contingency planning. You don't go into a battlefield taking a chance. That's completely idiotic. Like you go, you understand there's a risk.

[00:34:57] It's the most obvious risk in front of you. And so they figure out what are the things that can go wrong. And they sort of plan for a crisis mode. Yep. It's a, because it's the same environment, right? I think what they call it, I forget the extreme ownership. They talk about that. Oh yeah. Joko Willink. Yeah. Joko Willink. Right. And Leif Babbitt. One of my favorite books. Yeah. That's awesome. Where there's a lot of similar parallels.

[00:35:25] So 2023, we're almost, almost two years in, let's say just for ease of timeframes here. Walk us through like what I didn't really get the chance to ask you why, why did you decide to build what Taragonia is today? Which for a lot of people listening, it's in a nutshell, you provide the right analytics for private equity owned businesses and founder owned businesses, so that they're equipped with the right data to actually make improvements in their financials and their operational performance.

[00:35:55] If I can describe it in kind of a linear phrase, but why the, out of all the problems you could have, you know, decided to tackle. Why, why this specific one? That's not the problem, George. That's a, that's what we do, right? The why are, or the, what really is the problem is rapid business scale. Right. That's what private equity firms do.

[00:36:18] So they buy companies and they scale it three, four, sometimes 10 times in about 60 months. What is that? So this, this is really interesting that you say that, or the problem we are solving is how to help them to move that fast without things breaking. And with clarity and with focus. Analytics, AI, all that stuff, details. That's not, that's not the fact.

[00:36:46] So what happens when you're an entrepreneur or founder or family who ran a business go to do about 100, 150 million dollars, either need capital or expertise, or you want to go by other companies. That's what private equity firms provide. They provide the capital, they provide the professional advice, they provide the mergers and acquisition expertise, which is kind of the centralize within a firm.

[00:37:10] But what really happens is now you don't know, you can't just call George and Paul and everybody around you who you used to work with. And they don't want the business. If you have a problem that you should call them and you resolve it, you know your customers. When you go to that north of 100 million dollar revenue question, now I'm just taking an algorithm, number of scale could be different for everybody.

[00:37:32] Once you go beyond a certain scale, your management style needs to change, your management framework needs to change, your operational practices need to change. Everything needs to be built for scaling, right? And one way to objectively assess where, where you're, what are you doing and where you're going is data. Right. So you take the, we cannot solve for the human equation. That's something that company needs to do.

[00:37:59] That's what the CEO is, in terms of managing, there's a culture and strategy and frameworks and protocols and policies. From a telegony's perspective, using technology, we can solve for that data equation that provides them that clarity and focus. So said in another way, again, going back to the sports route, I'm a big motorsports fan. Motorsports, you were saying? Yes. Okay. Interesting. Huge F1 fan.

[00:38:25] And I would say, we are the, we are the whole racing engineering team who comes with the stadium. So we don't have a stadium, you can place in our stadium. If you want to build us, if you want us to build a stadium, we can build you that stadium. We do that for a living. We have the whole engineering team, the mechanics, everything that helps you to race. And we can help you build your own race engineering team as you build it.

[00:38:49] So that's because now the difference is, if you are used to driving a Corolla and now you're, let's say, driving a thousand horsepower car, which is a privately backed company with all the horsepower behind you. Make sure that you don't spin out and you have the right metrics and everything to kind of win the race. And you have to don't, it's not a fun race where you have to win. That's the CEO's job. So that's the analogy that we use, right? We bring that engineering mindset.

[00:39:17] The expertise is, is the CEO, right? Or the bold collective. So you're taking it to that one person, that person needs to drive the car. We can only show the, we can only give them the best car and the metrics and everything associated with it. How you, how you negotiate a Corolla and how you get out of it and how you kind of overtake somebody else. That's your expertise, right? That's, that's your business expertise. We are not racers. We understand racing, but we are not racers, right? So that's the best analogy that we can give you.

[00:39:46] But it's that scaling when you go from a sub hundred million dollar business to 400, 500 people struggle with it. And there's no, and then you have to think about, you asked about why we decided to solve this problem. Two more reasons. One is when you are in that type of scaling situation and you trust your own team that has business contacts, there's no reason to go advise them. That's right. That's a business officer's job.

[00:40:13] We just need to give them the right measures to kind of go do it. But then you have 80 H different sub industries. I'm just putting a number of them. And then you have different sectors, even within the same exact business. People will get data differently. So how do you solve for all of this? And how do you build a stack that works for technology stack that works for all of them? Those are very complex problems, right?

[00:40:37] And I liked solving that problem, having putting a framework or rigor where everyone else sees noise. So cutting through that noise and solving that problem. That's why I have my co-founders who are extremely smart. And then I think through the math and think through the tech. And so for me, that was an interesting problem to solve. The third one is the ability to demonstrate value is very important. We could have done this for public companies.

[00:41:05] The reason that we didn't choose to do that was how are you going to demonstrate the value for public companies? There's no way we can impact their share price in a private equity firm. And then you can see where, how much money that you made and what you're exiting at. So it's easy to kind of show that value and see that value for ourselves, which is just intrinsic benefit. Love that. Yeah. You're a very introspective person, D3. This is the one thing that's jumping in.

[00:41:35] Every answer has a very self, every question has a very self-aware answer. How do you consciously carve out time to think about things at a deeper level? Great question in terms of, that's why I said something about COVID, right? So the relationship between COVID and Terracone is just one thing, audio books. So there's nothing else that you could do. You're, you know, you're sitting at home, you're going for walks, it might be quite a night long walks or go for a run.

[00:42:05] And I started listening to audio books. Fun thing, like usually you put on music when you run, right? But if you could keep, this is something I read, I haven't really tested it. But if your heart rate is in a certain range, your attention is up. Your heart rate is beyond that range. You can't pay attention because you're kind of out of breath. So something that I figured out intuitively, then I read about it. So I started reading, listening to a lot of books.

[00:42:33] And one of the books is the originals by Adam Brand. Oh, Adam Brand. Excellent. Yeah, he talks about creativity in terms of how what drives creativity. So it's a simple experiment that he ran where this shows the power of experience and intuition in decision making. And there's a direct relationship to Terracone here. Two groups of women. One is very fashion-pro, understands fashion very well. The other one is very practical, just want to get things done.

[00:43:02] So they are given the same type of handbags with no brand. And they're asked to assess the quality of the handbag. And the finding is the quality of the results or the quality of answers and the time spent is inversely proportional. So the more with the experience, if the more experience you have and the less time that you spend inspecting and giving an answer, the better the quality of the answer. The more kind of fashion-aware group, the less time they spend, the better their answers.

[00:43:32] On the other side, the more time you spend if you don't have the experience, the better your answers are. How does that correlate to private equity role? And that's supposed to be an aha moment for me and I'll come to the kind of all the deep thinking question. Because that's a mismatch between a financial investor and an operator. You have a CEO or a CEO who has been in that industry for 20-30 years, or they could come to a conclusion and answer. Where you have young folks who graduated from very high-profile universities, very bright,

[00:44:02] trying to match up or keep up with the CEO or the board who's deeply experienced. Then you need more data. You need to spend more time with it. Right? So therefore, there's an inherent conflict between that operator and investor community in terms of their ability to work. You understand, right? It's not the personal conflict. So that actually was the idea. Hey, this is a problem that I should go solve for Teregonia. The deep thinking is, you know, you're right. And I actually go for long walks.

[00:44:32] Sometimes I take time where I'm not even taking my phone and this, not even a laptop, just papers and a pen and just sit down and write down things to come up being quiet. Right? And I think I've been advised by very experienced CEOs and CEO coaches. You've got to do, take your team, not just don't do it by yourself and no computers, no laptop, no nothing. Just be completely manual and just go to a place that everybody can focus.

[00:45:01] And it's, it's, I'm going to experiment with that this year. I like it. Yeah, no, no. That's a good point. This is the problem. There's so much distraction. Like you do a strategy session, everybody's on their laptop as much as you like it's, it loses. What's the point, you know, or if you do it virtually, I'm much more of the belief in a proponent of when you get together, especially for that reason, you know, just collectively have conversations.

[00:45:26] You know, brainstorm away from Googling, you don't need chat GPT for, you know, half a session, like, you're going to be okay, resort to just critical thinking. It is. And I think the, and one thing that we focus on recruitment when you're recruiting people is that I look for people who are very interested in one question. It is the what if, what if, if you're constantly thinking, what if, that you're pushing very forward, right?

[00:45:52] Then, then I'm constantly reminded by my own co-founders that they also think about the how to's as well. It's one thing to go to the, how you actually do it, but then what is often the possibilities, right? It depends on how, how you kind of, how you apply different principles.

[00:46:11] Another thing that we are very focused on is cross learning where you do something in one industry and then how do you take that concept and apply it to another industry, which makes our jobs very interesting really because, because of the breadth of industry that private equity firms and private marketing companies are doing. And then you definitely missed it. I got one, one more for you. And I usually ask it in a different way. Like usually if I'm talking to a founder or CEO, I say, you know, what are some of the lessons that you've learned throughout your career journey that you want to leave the audience with?

[00:46:41] For you, the way I'm going to ask it is different, which is you've seen companies, you've advised companies when you were at EY Hulahan. These are high growth, emerging companies, you know, scalable companies. You then now even more interesting at Taragonia, you're also helping private equity firms kind of do the same as how do you hyperscale and continue doing that more efficiently. What are some of the attributes that you've realized companies that have scaled? What are those attributes that you want to carry forward?

[00:47:09] Like what are some of the key components that hyperscale companies share that you want to hopefully realize within Taragonia? Very, very interesting question, right? Because I think from a data perspective, we get it. That's what we do. So that's not even a lesson for us, right? In terms of communication is the only one word I would give, right? How do you manage communication in your companies that are doing it very well, are very good at it?

[00:47:37] Because this is saying that in a drone, regions are 150 because that's the maximum one individual can manage as a social network. So you go beyond 150 what you do. So I look at CEOs who scale the companies to that level, right? In terms of including Bezos, you know, or Musk. Everybody has a different style of jobs. Everybody has a very, very different style.

[00:48:03] But then how do you make sure that everybody is marching towards certain goals? How do you make sure that you can't control after some point? So what's the lines of communication that you manage to make sure that the ship is sailing in generally the same direction, not going away? What would you want to give up, right? It's not about... Since it's other thing that is...

[00:48:31] That's like what the really good leaders do. In terms of, I would say, if you want to take off your drone, you need to throw the weight out. Not only you have to put more helium in it, but you have to throw the weight out. So what are you willing to throw out? But then you're also... That's your personal journey. But then you have... You have to carry a lot of people, multiple locations, sometimes multiple countries, speaking different languages, different cultures.

[00:48:56] So how do you manage communication in a way that everybody's swimming in the right direction? And I've always amazed by many visionary CEOs who've been really good at it, right? Any that stand out for you, CEOs? I think it was not a US CEO, but at the time when I told you when I was working at St. Louis's Grocery Chain, it was a public grocery chain. It was a very well-known grocery chain.

[00:49:25] It had a tough time before I started working there. And Justin came, who was the CEO, turned it around. And you would watch... So I'm a shop floor worker. Yes, I was doing a part-time job. I'm a shop floor worker. But during the onboarding process, you have to watch this CEO speech that he gave to his regional managers and store managers about what St. Louis is about and what they stand for and how that translates to everything that you do.

[00:49:54] And with my business hat on, I thought, what a great idea to scale your message. At the onboarding session, you are given this message. And it felt like I was in a university classroom and the CEO is a professor explaining in very simple layman terms, you're working with not so educated people in most of these stores, right? And at different levels, depending on if you're more advanced than you're educated, but technically you're not.

[00:50:24] How do you carry everybody forward? So that's... That video that I watched was kind of an aha moment. So, hey, this is highly scalable, repeatable. He's not talking to a lot of people. You're just watching, watching a video message in time. So his body language talks about a lot as well, right? Hmm. That's awesome. I love that. What a great way to end the podcast, like a full circle moment with T3. I really appreciate it.

[00:50:53] Thank you very much for being on the podcast. It was really enjoyable, even though I know we've gotten the chance to know each other a bit more over the past couple of months. I didn't really know the full story. So I commend you on what you've built, what you continue to build in Chicago and obviously in full support of everything we can do to help you out. Thank you, George. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to working with you as well. Wonderful. If you found this podcast useful, make sure to share that with your community. If you haven't already done so, subscribe to the podcast. I'll see you next time.