Bootstrapping Your Dreams Show

Bilsay serves as Regional CFO (TIP Region) and Board Member at DöhlerGroup. DohlerGroup operates in more than 130 countries across all continents and offers fully integrated food and beverage solutions from concept to reality. Bilsay has over a decade of experience in M&A, Internal Auditing, Strategic Planning, Project Management, Business Development, Compliance Management, Process Reengineer...

Did you call investors? Is the branding meeting scheduled yet or not? Did you make sure that all the salaries are right?  This is a perfect example of micromanagement. Assign the task to your employees and get out of the way. Let them work on it and report back their results.  Otherwise, you will never get anything done. You will stress your employees out and ultimately they will leave.  Support t...

How do you know that the strategy you're working on is going to yield results and bring in the cash flow that you need for a healthy sustainable business?  First of all, what is the demand for your product or service in the marketplace? Are people looking for this type of product? Because if that is the case — you have a fighting chance that people will actually find you and pay for your prod...

How do you recognize highly relevant offers or products that the market demands? Well, the very first thing is to focus on your area of expertise.  If you're an expert in business, technology, marketing, or sales — try to observe the gaps in the marketplace and the problems people face — something that has a huge impact on the bottom line — either because of this problem, they are losing a lo...

In order to overcome the imposter syndrome, you should always look back at how far you have already come.  If you just draw that trajectory on a graph… I haven’t seen any life journey which goes up and then all of a sudden crashes down. if you can read the pattern — it goes up.  When you notice how far you’ve come, you can only project how far you're gonna have to go. But you can appreciate t...

Christa joined Corel as the CEO and sits on the company’s board of directors. Corel builds software solutions that simplify the task journey for knowledge workers. Corel is a KKR portfolio software company - KKR is one of the most prestigious private equity giants with assets of more than 470B under management.  Christa is an accomplished executive with more than two decades of experience leading...

Don’t use very technical language and don’t attempt to be smart. Instead, treat everybody like they are in seventh grade and use simple language so that most people can understand what you're trying to say.  The second thing is — to try to use different mediums — if you’re a good writer, write; If you’re good at video, shoot a video with the same content and then create audio out of that and...

I have a brilliant idea for my business. And I have approached so many investors but I'm just not getting any positive response.  A lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake of approaching investors and just talking about themselves. But you need to focus on the priorities for those investors — what do you bring to the table? How are you going to make their money?  How fast are you going to bring...

I spent the weekend in the jungle on a meditation retreat, and I met a lot of beautiful people there. One question I get asked very frequently when I tell them that I work with artificial intelligence is whether it is harmful to humans — will it take over?  And I firmly believe that this is a fear of the unknown, even though people like Elon Musk are warning us about it — I don't believe in t...

I know we shouldn't talk about money but I'm curious.  How often do you check your finances? Daily, weekly, monthly, or never? I'm asking because I've noticed with our most successful clients — have a certain financial habit.  They keep track of their finances. They look at their personal savings account, business accounts, and retirement accounts — and they know exactly where...

When I asked some of my current and past clients to describe my services and my frameworks — in one word, these are some of the typical words I get — amazing, mind-blowing, unbelievable, and so on.  If these are the kinds of attributes you are looking for in your business partner or growth accelerator, then we may be a good fit for each other.  Drop me a message and let's get on a call.  Prof...

A lot of people think the relationship with your customer starts when you make the sale. But that's a misconception.  The customer relationship starts when they first notice you and become aware of your brand. Now, as they become aware — they show some interest, they will start to stalk you and will consume everything that you're putting out.  This is the journey — they are developing th...

Well speaking about me in primary school — I was terrible. I was always in the lower 50th percentile. But something happened in seventh grade, I had a serious illness. And I just bought out of taking any examination for that year. But there was one particular teacher who encouraged me to study hard and just go for it. She said, even if you fail, it doesn't matter because we all understand. Yo...

Why do you do what you do? As startup founders & business owners, we really need to figure out what is our ‘why’.  So how do you determine your ‘why’?  Well, there is a simple exercise with seven levels of why — ask yourself, why are you doing this?  The typical first-level answer is to make money. Then ask yourself again, why do you need to make money and probably you will say something like,...

Shownotes (20:14) Manuj asks what is the value of a degree today… I think eventually it's the experience that counts. That's why I think the technology programs are more hands-on — it doesn't mean that you have to go in and do all the coding yourself. I mean, at Carnegie Mellon, I did some coding, but eventually, I was able to interest a very smart undergraduate student to implement...

Introduction to Dev Gadhvi  (0:28) Today, we are going to have a very interesting discussion with Dev Gadhvi. Dev has a very inspirational story — I will request him to introduce himself and share a little bit about his story. But he's one of the leading entrepreneurs, mentors, and coaches, who help 1000s and 1000s of people around the globe, find their passion and build a business around the...

After working with hundreds of investors, what I’ve found is savvy investors only invest in businesses that they really understand. And they don't go around looking for all kinds of opportunities out there. They just pick a niche. And they get experts at that. Because they really understand these companies — they can see where the founder is trying to take them. And then they can help provide...

Well, the key is to share that idea and have a lot of conversations with a lot of people. So whenever I have to test an idea, without even creating a landing page without even creating any kind of prototype — I start talking to my network. I share that idea and say, “Hey, you know, I've been thinking about this idea. What do you think about it? Do you think this is a real problem in the busin...

The best-kept secret in the startup world is that your network is your net worth. I have noticed the difference between the clients who are really successful, and the clients who just struggle. And the difference is that people who I mentor and coach and who follow my advice — go out there and have conversations, expand their network, and spread their influence.  Those are the people who find succ...

In order to overcome the imposter syndrome, you should always look back at how far you have already come. Like just draw that trajectory on a graph — I’ve never seen any life journey, which goes up and then all of a sudden crashes down. if you can read the pattern that continues to go up… So when you notice how far you have come, you can only project how far you need to go. But you can appreciate,...

Credibility is so important these days, we are living in an attention economy. Even if they are paying attention but you don't seem credible enough — then they are not going to do any business with you. So how do you build this credibility very rapidly? Well, Showcase the results you're getting for your current clients & customers. Research has shown that 92% of people rely on the re...

Introduction to Arun Patnaik (00:30 )Arun has an amazing story — right now he's a vice president in Oracle. And he's working on some really exciting projects, which we will talk about. But he also has a very interesting story similar to mine, he came from India, from a remote village, and now he's managing a team of about 250. So let's talk to him. Let's understand his jou...

What I used to do as a kid was I used to break things apart and put them together, or at least try to put them together as best as I can. And I was really good at creating art and new craft projects out of recycled material. That was a lot of fun for me. Slowly, this passion developed into more technical fields like computer science, physics, and chemistry. Ultimately I found my true passion, whic...

Well, it's an Industry known fact that 90% of startups fail in the first year, and then the rest who survive — fail in the next five years. This means only about one to 2% of the startups actually become successful businesses. Why is that? because of one reason: cash flow. Because the strength & health of a business depend on cash flow — how much cash are you bringing in, how much revenue...

Introduction to Dr. Yogesh Malhotra  (00:45) Dr. Yogesh Malhotra is the Founding Chairman & CEO of the New York, USA, based global venture capital and private equity firm, Global Risk Management Network.  He’s the founder of AIML Exchange, BRINTTM Future of Finance, and C4I-Cyber and has a worldwide impact on global digital transformation practices.  Malhotra is an MIT-Princeton industry exper...