Spark of Ages
In every episode, we’re going to do a deep dive with our guest about what led them to their own 'eureka' moments, how they went about executing it, and perhaps most importantly, how do they get other people to believe in them so that their idea could also someday become a Spark for the Ages.
Spark of Ages
Growing a Growth Marketing Firm with AI/Rajiv Parikh - Conversions, Great Souls, Belichick ~ Spark of Ages Ep 22
On this episode of Spark of Ages, we sit down with Rajiv Parikh, CEO of Position Squared, to do a mid-year review to uncover the daily grind and the high-stakes decisions behind leading an AI-driven growth marketing powerhouse. Rajiv offers a treasure trove of insights into the transformative power of AI, revealing how his company has formed a robust AI product development team, launched strategic initiatives, and tackled the challenges of fundraising to seize AI-driven opportunities.
Next, we spotlight two compelling business success stories. How does a security company specializing in deception security boost their lead-to-close rates by a staggering 10x? And what does it take for a moving company to overcome systemic marketing flaws to achieve sustainable growth? We break down these real-world cases while addressing common startup pain points like ROI measurement and channel optimization. The emphasis is on truthful, data-driven analysis for long-term success, shedding light on the often overlooked aspects of growth marketing.
Finally, we explore the art of building meaningful connections. We recount a networking event that beautifully blended fun and accountability, complete with basketball, pickleball, and even arcade games. Learn how Dungeons and Dragons served as the ultimate icebreaker and team-building exercise. We also delve into the power of recording presentations for improved content quality and the significance of authentic relationships in business. To wrap it up, we venture into bold predictions for the future, from the U.S. presidential election to the fate of AI investments and the evolving landscape of remote work. Tune in for an episode packed with insights, stories, and forward-thinking discussions.
Producer: Anand Shah & Sandeep Parikh
Technical Director & Sound Designer: Sandeep Parikh, Omar Najam
Executive Producers: Sandeep Parikh & Anand Shah
Associate Producers: Taryn Talley
Editor: Sean Meagher & Aidan McGarvey
#entrepreneur #innovation #growth #sales #technology #innovatorsmindset #innovators #innovator #product #revenue #revenuegrowth #management #founder #entrepreneurship #growthmindset #growthhacking #salestechniques #salestips #enterprise #business #bschools #bschoolscholarship #company #companies #smartgrowth #efficiency #process #processimprovement #value #valuecreation #funny #podcast #comedy #desi #indian #community
Website: https://www.position2.com/podcast/
Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/
Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/
Email us with any feedback for the show: spark@postion2.com
Hello and welcome to a very special episode of the Spark of Ages podcast. It's our mid year review, you guys. This is where I take over for our host Rajiv and I ask him the hard hitting questions. Okay. Yeah. You're the, the, the shoes on the other foot. All right. So since he's this big time CEO of an AI driven growth marketing company, and frankly, one of the smartest people I've known for my whole life and a mentor to me and all the ways that you could possibly imagine that if there's one thing you taught me, it's accountability. And so that's what we're focusing on for our mid review. Okay. This is gonna be about checking in on the state of growth marketing industry, uh, of P2 and everything you guys got going on. The goals that you laid out in January. That's right. Okay. And our last check in. That's
Rajiv Parikh:right.
Sandeep Parikh:Recall. How are we doing against those? Yeah, we're going to check against those. We're going to hold ourselves accountable and then we're going to see where our memory, I don't recall. We made a bunch of big predictions. So let's see how those are shaping up. Did we make predictions? We made bold calls. About the election, about Bill Belichick, about the economy, all sorts of stuff. And so we will check in on, on where those are actually at. We just can't be like
Rajiv Parikh:today's presidential candidates and literally just make up stuff as we go. There's
Sandeep Parikh:some cool stuff. There's I listen, because we didn't let you look at anything, but I'm just, I'm just saying there's some stuff we hit on. That's kind of surprising and stuff that we. Did not hit on at all. All right. First though, what I want to kind of chat about is just the last time that we got to hang out in person, which was this past weekend at our cousin's wedding,
Rajiv Parikh:amazing wedding to which you were the MC, which was just incredible. Uh, I love how you, you, uh, you were able to take a controversial subject, make it lighthearted. Yet hard hitting.
Sandeep Parikh:Yeah. So this was our, I mean, this is my first Indian gay wedding that I'd ever attended, much less MC'd.
Rajiv Parikh:Much less. How about Hin, Hindu ceremony wedding? It wasn't, I'm talking about, this was wild. Yeah. And a priest, she's an LGBTQ person as well. And she did it with Sanskrit. She did Sanskrit and translated for us and did just a beautiful ceremony. So unbelievable. Yes, that's right.
Sandeep Parikh:Up on the, the, I was, she was so incredible. She's, you know, yeah, she's, she's lesbian herself. And then she did such an amazing job of translating, you know, the scripture and the ceremony and like removing the gender from it and making it. What I thought was so cool about it, and I want to kind of get your take on it, was like, it made it about, like, the roots of what these rites and rituals are really about, about the love and the bonding and the, like, commitment, and it took away all the, like, kind of patriarchal, like, all the stuff that's, like, about, you know, like, okay, now, You know, property and all this other stuff. It kind of made it about the essential. This thing, you're
Rajiv Parikh:supposed to give gold to this and you're supposed to do this. Did the dowry obey? And it was really structured beautifully. And she poked some fun at the whole. Notion of, well, if someone, if someone's in their cycle, they can't do this or that, and they have to time everything perfectly. She's like, I don't care who comes up and blesses them. Right. You can be in any stage that you want. We still love you.
Sandeep Parikh:I love that moment. That's so funny. And she was like, so no matter where you are in your cycle, please feel free to come up and bless these guys. All right. Well, let's jump into. I guess your, your other marriage, which is your marriage to position squared, the leading growth marketing company in the world. I don't know if that's true, but I'm just going to say it is. I'm just going to say it like you go ahead and fact check me. I dare you. In fact, fact check me and then write it in the comments because that'll help the podcast. Um, so let's just start here though, for those who are unfamiliar with Uh, you know, what, what it's like to be CEO of a growth marketing company. What is, what is a day in the life? Let's just take, what's a day in the life of Rajiv Parikh. What do you, what are you doing on a day to day basis?
Rajiv Parikh:I look at my job as, uh, I'm the, I'm the chief ambassador spokesperson for the company. So you know, situations vary highly, but there's some combination of talking to people internally, uh, to top leaders internally, some client connection, some, uh, some new prospect. Situation, some partner situation, because I think that's where there's tremendous leverage that we, we need to need to scale and grow. And in today's case, it is fundraising for the company. So there's a lot of work with regard to that. And I'm leaning on my staff to take on more of the, the, the client and the, and the. New prospect acquisition activity so that I can spend more time on the fundraising activity, which is something that we haven't. I have done in the past. I've raised about 80 million in different companies that I've started are part of. But now I'm going on a fundraising path here because I really believe that the time is ripe. To, to leverage all that's going on with AI and really, truly be disruptive in the market. I believe like we talk, we've had so many Great, yes. Talk about ai and I believe that, uh, the marketing firm, agencies, service provider, the marketing side of companies are being fundamentally disrupted by what's going on with AI at every level of the job. And I, I think this is. A particularly strong time to strike. So one thing I did do is bring in a really strong AI team, a product development team in November of last year as part of driving ourselves forward. And they've just been rocking it. Um, working closely with the operational teams to take all the different workflows and processes that we've already automated to a certain extent, but take it to another level with AI. So
Sandeep Parikh:yeah, spinning all the plates. So you're really like looking at AI as a way of like, how do I sort of. Elevate, you know, our existing infrastructure and processes, right? Like, how do we imbue this into everything that we're doing so that we can take advantage of this new technology essentially, is that like, and then like crafting that narrative and then selling that to investors.
Rajiv Parikh:Yeah, like, um, one of our guests, uh, Ajay talked about the notion of an ICP.
Sandeep Parikh:Ajay Gandhi. Yes.
Rajiv Parikh:Ideal customer profile. And one of the folks that came to our event, uh, Jonathan Spear, his, his whole company is about that. Helping companies better understand who they're, you Ideal customer profile is. And so when we work with folks, we as a services firm are inherently limited because we have only so many people that do the job. So a lot of my time when I'm talking to folks is spent qualifying them on whether they're a good fit for my company.
Sandeep Parikh:Yeah,
Rajiv Parikh:because if I get the wrong client, they'll suck up our client, our resources, and we won't make the client happy on their side. And they'll say negative things about us. And sometimes it's just a fit. Two people can be perfectly good, but just not be a fit together. Right now with AI, uh, I, we have the ability with technology to still have a service presence, but with so much more technology, we can broaden. Who we talk to and how we help them. So we're not at, we're not bandwidth limited in the, like we were previously. We have much more scalability in our ability to run with that, run with customers. So that changes our notion of what is the ICP, the ideal customer profile. So is it
Sandeep Parikh:broadening that? And so it broadens that definition for you, essentially, like you're able to bring on more or sort of more people fit the bill.
Rajiv Parikh:More people fit the bill and I don't have to do as precise of a job. My team doesn't have to do as price of a precise of a job. Nailing the perfect fit and spending so much time on that.
Sandeep Parikh:That takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of energy
Rajiv Parikh:going through people who you know in your, in your relationship to, to. To gauge that. So it's a, and it's a real problem. It's a real, not a problem, but it's a real challenge for services, businesses in general, just finding the right fit between you and them, because sometimes the squeaky wheel, the one that complains the most, most of the time, they're not the most profitable client and they, because they're so damn squeaky, they eat up all your resources at all your senior management time. So then you don't do as good of a job with the clients who may be extremely profitable for you. And so in this. You're in this situation, but you don't want people to say negative things about you either. So it's tough. It's not tough. It's just the life of running a services business.
Sandeep Parikh:Sure. Sure. I mean, it's kind of like you're dating multiple partners. Essentially, you got to keep everybody happy. Yeah. Yeah. We should give you a lot of attention in time too. And you know, how do you keep everyone happy? And then even if you do break up, you still want them out there being like, no, he's a good guy. It just didn't work out. Yeah. Yeah. So
Rajiv Parikh:we want the technology so the technology can broaden, expand us. Yeah. And then it can open up our ability to train people, to work with our platform, to be those representatives that work with clients. So I see that I see the ability to go, not just 10 X, a hundred X, a thousand X with what we're building, because we're taking all the things we've learned of how to run an ad campaign, how to do what they call account based market marketing, all your secrets, secrets, all these secrets that we've put into workflows and really, and put them into the AI platform, have it like learn from it. And then make our team be like the best, like the best thinker, the best marketer, the best strategist, the best optimizer. Wait, you're using human intelligence with artificial intelligence to then opt. That's crazy. There's actual, yeah, it's merging. It's really merging. It's like, it's, I, you know, some of us have, have been in this business for 20 plus years and we can't be on every call, but we can now arm our people to be They won't have our personas, but they'll have a lot of our knowledge in those calls. And they'll be thinking about it. They can, they can then leverage that for clients and then they can bring their own special skills that we don't have, or we can bring that into our calls. So it's really both. So like when I show off a really Interesting keyword tool that my team has built that used to take us, you know, like it would take us about a week to do the research that now we can do in two hours. Now I can show something that my team used to just do in detail about a big process. And I could say, right now I can dig into something I didn't know. Or the same thing with our landing page generator that we've built, where it's like AI, you know, like literally it looks at your website, it looks at your competitors. It. Builds a brief or what the campaign brief for you and with AI, you converse with it. And then all of a sudden it gives you a prototype of your site. Right. That you can literally take the code and drop it and go. And it's like what normally would take two weeks can now turn into a day. Yeah. Right. That's really incredible. And so now you can really apply it much more. You can be much more real time. We can create content and campaigns for so many other levels because an experiment in a way that we couldn't do before, that's like the team already has shown that compared to typical statistics, typical conversion rates, we get about. Two to sometimes 20 times the typical conversion rate, but we do it with our team and with the tools that we have imagined. If we can bring, instead of just doing that with 50 clients or a hundred clients, we can now go to thousands.
Sandeep Parikh:Pretty cool. Why don't we just do this like a. So for the people in the audience, you maybe don't totally know what position squared is all about. Can you give us like a brief description overview of
Rajiv Parikh:yeah, position squared. I started it in 2005 because as a person with an engineering background and a marketing background and a product background, I got really excited about what you could do with Google and how things that used to take me weeks and months and years to get answers for about what the messaging, the channels that were, um, You know, what product messages are resonating with customers and millions of dollars of investment I could now get in weeks and months with Google search. And so that spurred me to create this. And we've of course, expanded beyond that to do. Advertising across any digital channel, any programmatic channel. We've now built content, which is in the form of videos and graphics and 3d and just all kinds of cool information, content level offerings, social content, social posts. We also got into infrastructure because we had to implement those things faster. Website app. We started building analytics tools. We started integrating multiple tools together because marketing became so sophisticated that you had to work across. Multiple platforms and technologies. And then we built a whole system around it to take the things we learn and put it into workflows because people come and go and best practices, you don't want to forget your best practices. So we built a system around it. So that's position squared. We're all about driving. The buyer journey, we want to help that great innovator who's doing amazing things. And for me, I want it to be so involved with new innovation and this lets me get involved with lots of new innovation. And so we can work with those innovators, understand what, where their buyers are today, potential buyers are today and take them from a point of. Um, of status quo to thinking about a change to their benefit and then helping them go down that path to eventually to buying and then renewing and then scaling. And so, um, that's what the company is about.
Sandeep Parikh:Are there actually any recent like business cases that you've, that you've done that are worth sharing with the audience? Do you think, I know you let your, your, your MBA guy, you love football. We love doing these business cases. Are there any that sort of stick out to you?
Rajiv Parikh:Yeah. Uh, one, there's two really interesting cases and I'll talk about one is a security company, it's a little geeky. It's in the area of what they call deception security. So the idea here is a lot of times some, a company you'll get attacked by hackers or potential hackers and they, they come to you and you have defenses Imagine if they're attacking. And they think they're attacking you, but it's really not you. You know, it's like putting up like images of yourself all over the place or like in a war as if my tanks are everywhere and my, my forts are everywhere, but it's not really me. They're just, you're attacking the wrong thing.
Sandeep Parikh:Yes. Yes. You're a sorcerer, a mage. That's that's used these spells to make yourselves. I get, I listen, I do
Rajiv Parikh:D and D I get it. So imagine this deception security company and they were in a spot where they had raised money, where they're seeing some growth and it took them a while before the market took hold for them. And so they hired us as a firm that can help them with marketing because now the people are showing interest. And we pounded it out with them for about a year. Figuring out who their buyer is, what messaging they need, what, uh, how do we express intent with really limited budgets? They didn't have the budget, like some of our fortune 500 client clients have right now, midsize clients have. And so we were able to get, my team just told me. The other day that we're literally for like tens of thousands a month in marketing spend, and that's includes my team, their team, their media spend, their tool spend, able to now get like from a lead to close 25 percent of those leads close compared to most companies. And this is what we call account based marketing, where you're really targeting people. Most companies are only 2%. 2%. So we're doing 10 X.
Sandeep Parikh:Yeah. Wow.
Rajiv Parikh:And so literally for those tens of thousands a month, they're closing about a, about a million and a half dollars in ARR, annual recurring revenue. Like that's an incredible return. And so that's what they got. You know, like that, I'm really excited to see that, that how we can deliver even for Early to mid stage companies. And then there's another client that we took on that's in the, in the moving space. And I can't mention the name of the company. We're sworn sworn to secrecy and, uh, uh, cause the, and they'll let it, they'll let us announce it, but we took them on as a client. And what's really cool about them is they had another firm that they were working with that got them up to a decent size, but they realized they weren't proactive enough. Then something was, the results seemed too good to be true. In terms of their, their media spend to, to sales. And so they eventually hired us. It took a few months to actually get this thing done. And then once we took over, we realized how many things were broken and the team just worked like every day. There's about five to 10 conversations with them about how they're, how we're fixing their systems and within a month, this usually take three to six months, within a month we've wired everything. And we still got the results, but now we know the results are real and it's awesome. Interesting. What was the too good to be true part about it? There were a lot of, um, duplicates that were coming in. They were measuring every click as what they call a conversion.
Sandeep Parikh:So they're mismeasuring essentially their success. And usually
Rajiv Parikh:that's a big problem that. That happens when we take on clients. It's hard to tell them to identify that problem because they can't open up their system completely to us when we're in that earlier phase. But it's a problem that they, it could be a 10 million company. It could be a hundred million dollar company. It can be a multi billion dollar company. And we usually find that there, I think it's usually the same practices not being analyzed Yeah. Or it's just pure laziness. Right. If the numbers look good, why mess with them? Why why, don't check them. If you check them, they might be, they might break them. Yeah, totally. We might find out
Sandeep Parikh:that we really
Rajiv Parikh:screwed up and we should
Sandeep Parikh:have been talking about a long time ago. Yeah, you're like truth seeking. Like, like, cause, cause, you know, you, if you don't. Know exactly why it's working or what, then how can you replicate that success? Or how can you learn from it? How can you build off that? That's the challenge. If you're not really telling yourself the truth about what's under the hood, right? So are these some of the common pain points? Like what are the, what are the common pain points that you see in startups? I think this would be good for anybody out there. We got, we got listeners that are like starting their own companies. Like what, what do you see from the, from the side, you know, from this marketing agency side?
Rajiv Parikh:Most folks are trying to, at the earliest stages and even later on, trying to figure out if I invest in this, in a certain channel and a certain level of messaging or a certain level of buyer, I get a repeatable result on the other side that I know if I put money in, in one place, what do I get out at the other end? And do I get that? a return on investment that makes sense. Everyone has that problem to a certain extent. Some people are way more optimized than the other. No one I've ever seen is completely satisfied and nor should they ever be because there's too much technology, too much change, too many preferences, too much competition to ever change it. So that's the ever present problem. Now, to the extent people, different levels have it, that's what we end up Solving for, so they may not have the right kind of content. Like it may be an early, it may be an, uh, an artificial intelligence company that to engineers sounds really cool and geeky and all that. But to a business person, they're like, well, I don't know. I got 20 other companies that are selling me support software. Why should I buy you? What's so cool about what you're saying, don't give me all this BS about, you know, uh, the, you know, about how cool your little technology is. And, um, you know, the, the space and they'll go into all these technical words and to the buyer, they're like, yeah, that seems cool, but doesn't really solve my problem. So we have to put. The technology in a form that allows them to understand, Oh yeah, when I build this, I can tile my knowledge systems together and not do as much programming to get answers. I don't have to explicitly name every little thing. I can literally just pull information together and teach the system to build itself. And get smarter and that's, that's the fundamental difference. And so then, then you go to the company and say, you can get, you can take your 30 percent employees and turn them into 80 percent employees on the support side. And there's this cool technology that does it quickly, right? As opposed to getting into the, getting to all the technology details about this. So is
Sandeep Parikh:it a storytelling issue?
Rajiv Parikh:Yeah. It's a storytelling issue. How do I tell the story for, there's the technology buyer that eventually at some point is going to have to, it's going to touch it either at the beginning or the end of the process or the middle of the process. There's the business leader that has to have it translated into their language. There's the person to its technology. There's the it group. How does it fit into my infrastructure and where I'm going next? There's all these people that need, and there's the CFO is like, well, if I spend this money here, I spend this money there. What the hell is my return? Like. I don't care about your, you know, what amazing doodad it is. I want to know what kind of return I'm going to get from this. Why should I put money here versus the other place?
Sandeep Parikh:Great. Good tips for younger startups as they examine, you know, as they look under the hood on how they can fix stuff. I mean, the biggest tip of all, of course, is to hire a position squared. Well, I mean, a lot of times
Rajiv Parikh:you could solve for it by you call for call firms like us. We'll go in and we'll walk you through what a process looks like. Most good firms will do some kind of analysis when they walk into the meeting, um, for you, for the client. And with these more automated tools, we can do them faster and more cost effectively, and then help them understand where the, where the, um, Uh, roadblocks are where the, where the areas are greatest areas will help them prioritize it and then they can figure out if they want to invest, if this is the right stage for them to invest.
Sandeep Parikh:Right. Well, the other, another cool thing that position square does, uh, is this growth marketing summit that was so fun and cool. So that was one thing that happened between our last check in and this, and this one, uh, we just had this growth marketing summit in park city. Um, it was such a great event. Thanks Absolute blast, amazing chefs coming in, making all this great food, but also maybe the coup de gras of the whole thing, right, is really just the people and the, by the end of it, you're like, it's like summer camp, you know, it's like four days and then you're like, or three days or whatever it was. And you're just like, I just made all these great friends and they're all these really cool, smart people. Um, you know, from all over the industry, obviously you're, you're. You know, they're connected through you, but it really felt like a huge diverse group of people, uh, brilliant people. And by the end of it, you're like, I don't want, I miss you guys. And like everybody's still on the WhatsApp, like chatting with each other and making connections and hanging out. It's really cool. Um, so how, how the hell are you going to top that in 2025?
Rajiv Parikh:I think we'll probably do it in the same place because we really like that spot and we've got that spot. It's awesome.
Sandeep Parikh:You guys, there's like a giant basketball court in indoor that we also played pickleball. I mean, the place was like, it's like
Rajiv Parikh:basketball pickleball. There's a full arcade arcade. There's a bar area and it's removed from the rest of the building. So the folks who are staying up at night aren't bothering the ones who, you know, Want to sleep. Um, and then we found adjoining hotels that we can shuttle people back and forth. But I think what's great is what's Sunday saying, uh, what you're saying Sunday about the connections afterwards. Um, this one went so well that people are working together, calling each other. Um, when they fly into town, they're getting together, they're putting people on each other's boards. It's really freaking
Sandeep Parikh:cool. It's like you issued the challenge. You were like, Hey. I remember that at the end, you know, and you're just like, this isn't, this doesn't stop here. Like, I, I, I challenge each of you to like, meet one other person from here outside of this. Right. And you, and you just see it happening. And they, they, they check in and be like, drop a selfie into the WhatsApp chain. It was really like, as a, I'm not a big network guy. I mean, I guess I should be, cause I'm in Hollywood, but like, you know, this was really fun. And I think you led with authenticity and your heart about wanting to be a connector of great souls. And so that was the kind of the vibe of it.
Rajiv Parikh:I am dreaming up the next one. And how do we tie the last one? I thought by having your team there to record. People's presentations, it really made a big difference because then they brought their a game. I mean, they were going to bring their a game anyways. These are type a people, but now they're really bringing it because if we're recording it, we're going to put it out. And so then we created these one minute clips of everyone's presentations, Ted
Sandeep Parikh:talks of theirs about like their cool innovations, whether
Rajiv Parikh:it's platform and whether it's a Uh, talking about how platforms and ecosystems work, how AI works, um, building up a company at different levels. Um, the, the latest in go to market, the latest on the economy, it was just, uh, or even personal branding, how Kishka ended it, and yeah, that was awesome. Uh, he, uh, I was hard. Your personal brand. I really heartened where he used me as the example. And, but you know, because I, uh, one of my strengths and maybe as, as my marketing lead tells me one of my weaknesses is that I don't. Self promote enough. So, um, it was a little weird to be at the center of attention for that. But, um, it, it, the way he did it was really helpful. It's something I think about all the time. It's like, what is, what is your personal brand? What are you trying to say in the way you act? What are the three or four characteristics you want to share about yourself or you want people to know about yourself? And then, you know, Live it, be it, act it. Yeah, it was a great
Sandeep Parikh:little rubric for it. But, and I think it ultimately all just boiled down to like, well, what do you authentically care about? What is the change you want to see in the world? And if you care enough authentically about that, that's what you, like, you should, shouldn't be afraid to shout that from the rooftops and get out there and let people know that this is important. Um, Cause that, that's ultimately what they, what they will connect with. It's like, Oh yeah, I want to see that change too. And wow, you're a real mouthpiece for that. Or you're a real thought leader about that. So, um, yeah, I thought that was cool. And that wasn't the only thing, by the way, videotaping wasn't the only thing we brought to your summit. Do you remember what else? What I'm about to say. Do you mean, uh, the Dungeons and Dragons? Yes.
Rajiv Parikh:Yes. You brought, you brought your Desi Quest experience and got a whole bunch of people to experience. I got
Sandeep Parikh:a bunch of Silicon Valley tech, you know, bros and gals to, you know, drop the facade and play. Elves, warriors, gnomes, and dwarves and get into character. And not just me, but my, my, my, uh, cohort, Omar Najam, and it was so fun. And at the beginning I could tell everybody was a little bit skeptical, you know, and they were like, kind of had their, their guards up and they're like, you know, a little too cool for school, but then dude, by the end of it. Everyone was like, when do we get to play this again? Like this is, you know, they, they were so into it. And it was, it was basically like a really cool form of like a team building exercise. Cause that's ultimately, you're telling a collective story together. And it was, it was just, was it such a treat for me. I love seeing when people get it. The moment when they're like, Oh, this is special. This is fun. And I love playing with these people. And so anyway, I thought I feel like the
Rajiv Parikh:way you did it. I think it's the ultimate improv, right? It is. You're just there. You have nothing to lose. You're just sitting around a bunch of friends. And you're making up stuff as you go. And it's just, it's in a certain structure. You were probably the game master. I think, um, no, Omar was the game master. He did an awesome job. He's freaking awesome at it. And so he creates these scenarios and people play it just like they do on your show. So
Sandeep Parikh:that's the thing, that's the veil that was lifted, right? It's like, Hey, you actually are capable of being an entertainer yourself and being entertaining. You tell stories. Now, this is a group story that we're telling together. So let's all see the same thing. Let's see the same world and drop in. And, and it's, it's a cool thing. So, uh, I'm excited to bring that back next year. You got to bring that back. I think. Let's let's let's do the thing we said we're going to do, which is hold our feet to the fire. Yeah. Um, a little bit here. So from January, you mentioned that you track 15 things for yourself over the year and usually you focus on four key ones with your CEO group, right? How are you doing with those goals?
Rajiv Parikh:So for the three things, according to my original goals, I am three greens and one red
Sandeep Parikh:greens. You mean you've met them or are they still on track? I've
Rajiv Parikh:met them on track. Uh, whether it's, you know, a lot of times it's a leadership goal, it's a big hairy audacious goal. It's, it's like a, I put in like a physical goal or I put in a, in my case, I'm putting an outreach goal of how many people I reach out to because I believe in connecting great souls. That's my, one of my purposes in life. It's my purpose in life. Yep. And so, uh, I have one that's red and, uh, it's something that one of the things you do. Like anything, like, you know, when you go into battle, you create a plan, you think you've built your plan for success and stuff happens once you get into battle and then it's not about COVID or something like the ground can shift on you. People can, your clients could consolidate a division. They could, they could, uh, dramatically shift leadership. I mean, you're based, your revenues are based on those clients. And the game in our business is to have enough opportunities, enough clients, enough situations so that it doesn't affect you, but sometimes things happen. And so what I'd say to anyone who go, anyone who's been in business has dealt with this, I've dealt with this multiple times and the best I could do is, you know, we're humans. So I personally take everything to heart in a way that, that is probably could be healthier. And um, and so I need to do better with when something happens to not see it as my personal Issue, but it's something to solve and then we adjust from it. And so after taking a punch and feeling it, I did talk about this with my CEO group, they gave me a ton of help. They formed a tiger team to, they got together with me and they really, it's a tiger team. They formed, they formed a team of five people that outside of the normal, Group meetings would meet with me and push with me on plans and gas, and they would bring me suggestions and they connect me to people and they just sat in with me and really worked it. And they told me about their situations and how they felt. Some of them was like, I felt shame when this happened. And, and, uh, so. They really helped me through it and, and some of it's my, just my own resilience. I had to just dig within myself and say, yeah, I can't let any one situation affect me. I got to make the right choices for the whole team and for the whole company. And so we did and we made some pretty significant changes and frankly, that's getting us to a better place.
Sandeep Parikh:Yeah, but it can be hard and it can be painful. And then, but it's cool that you have this group. I mean, that's really the takeaway is like, who, who are the people that you can surround yourself with that you trust that are going to, that you can get into the itty bitty gritty details and, and share your shame. I mean, that's really challenging. I think for, You know, I was going to say for, for, uh, CEOs in general, but like also South Asians in general, like it's kind of not, not something we always, we usually connect with each other over our achievements and not, and not over the things that we're going through hardship over. Um, you know, so that's, that can be really challenging. So that's, that's, you know, look, maybe that should be the goal, you know, it's like, yeah, because
Rajiv Parikh:a minus is not square off. And so the advice I've gotten is, okay, the goal is what it is. Redo it. I'm still, still, it's still, um, swing big, but redo it and make adjustments to your business strategy, make adjustments to how you do it. You can still catch up. And frankly, I still believe I can catch up. I'll redo the goal. Yeah, and make the back of your head, you're like, but I think I can, I'm going to find a way and I'm not only going to hit it, I'm going to smash it. So, so it, but it took me a while to get there. And this is a person that's been running companies for 20 years now, so it's, it's, it happens to all
Sandeep Parikh:of us. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's the thing I always try to remember whenever I'm feeling like. Oh, man, I'm being passed over or, you know, this, like whatever anxieties I'm feeling about, you know, the business that I'm in out here in LA is, is that like, you know, there are a hundred other people that are in my same boat feeling the same exact thing feeling this, you know, it's like, it's, it's, it's a shared shared experience and it's gen, it's usually not personal. It's usually not really about you. You know what?
Rajiv Parikh:You know what helped me? One of the things that helps me get through these. Not only talking about this, socializing with friends, but actually our own podcast. Um, yeah. So I, then I get to meet good, amazing leaders who are vulnerable about where they are and what they're doing. And we share things with each other openly like we do on this podcast. And in this amazing medium and then you're like, yeah, I, it does, it does pump me up. It does make it when I listen sometimes when I listen, I listen to our own podcast and I'm like, wow, that was amazing. Look at that. Yeah. We pulled from this person. Like, wow, aren't we so fortunate? So, um, that's why I ask all of you to like share and comment. There you go. Let us know because when our, when I get feedback, that was funny. I was talking to this one. Um, and she's like, wait, your voice sounds so familiar. Oh
Sandeep Parikh:yeah. She recognized your voice. When my husband and I ride our
Rajiv Parikh:bikes, we listened to your podcast.
Sandeep Parikh:Hey, there you go. Your first fans. I love it. Yeah. They're sweet. Well, that's great. And so this actually leads me to my next question about your, you talked about a little bit about your goal of connecting great souls. We talked about it in the growth marketing summit. Is there any kind of nugget or something you've learned about, because I love that goal. I think it's fantastic. Is there a process behind that? Yeah, I think it's first
Rajiv Parikh:acknowledging that that's a, that's my purpose. And then not just writing it down, but then saying, well, okay, then what does that mean? Like, yeah. And do you really believe it? What does it sound cool? But then, yeah.
Sandeep Parikh:Is it in your, does it really, yeah,
Rajiv Parikh:so I like it, I like the feeling of it, but what does that means. Um, I'm going to reach out to a certain amount of people every week that I normally wouldn't reach out to. That means to that event that I wasn't going to go to because I'm a tired and I, something happened. I want to go. No, I'm going to go. I'm going to go. I'm going to get, I'm going to throw myself out there, uh, to that person that I may not have, well, asked out for dinner or come to this event. I'm going to just take a shot. Worst case, they'll say no.
Sandeep Parikh:But then, so that's like connecting you to these great people. But then do you think about like going to those events? Like I'm wondering, do you go to those events and go like, well, this is not about me winning business. This is actually me about, about me hearing. Meeting new people, hearing what they're interested in, what their pain points are, whatever's going on in their lives, making an authentic connection. And then whether it's me or whether it's someone else that I actually in is in my Rolodex.
Rajiv Parikh:And that's, and I think that's, that's the part of the conversation I enjoy the most is when someone shares about an issue or a problem or something they're trying to solve and I can pull up a name, I can like hyperlink a name. Oh, I know this guy, this guy can help you. And so then I can learn more, and then I come back and I'm like, okay, let me go connect these two people together. Or I'm at the actual event and I see this person and the other person that can help'em, and I can put 'em in the same room together, introduce them and let them get started. Or even facilitate a dinner or an event or something where all these people come together. So like, or the growth marketing summit. Yeah. So like when we, yeah, so when we even throw events through the year in the Growth Marketing Summit, I'm actively looking for how I can. Take someone I care about or know and connect them to someone else that can help each and they can help each other. And I feel, I feel fulfilled when I hear about people who I've, who I've come through my network that do business together. So one of the guys, one of the people that are in our, went to our growth marketing summit over the last three years, uh, is now just got funded by a, uh, a VC that went to one of our events. Two years ago and they met now enough times through this and the network that we've established that they, they actually are working together in a fundamental way. Cause like, you know, as, as the, he mentioned when you, in one of our episodes, he now mentioned of a storm, storm ventures, he mentioned like, you know, when you're investing in a company, you're looking at 10 years. At a company. So you are literally tied together for a long time.
Sandeep Parikh:It's like, that's right. It's like whenever he was talking about Kamala picking a vice president, uh, the, the thing that I kept hearing was like, remember this is like, you don't just pick someone because of the state, they can win you or whatever. This is a person you're gonna be having lunch with like once a week. They're gonna be in all your meetings, . You gonna hang out with this persons around,
Rajiv Parikh:they're in the, they're gonna be in the situation room with you. They may be making the last comment, and you gotta be comfortable with them. Yeah, representing a diverse point of view, but a point of view where they're truly trying to help you and not just themselves. Right.
Sandeep Parikh:A hundred percent. I
Rajiv Parikh:think part of the connecting great souls is that level of fulfillment and measuring, measuring it, not in a, like a, I must connect 10 people this week. Uh, but it's more that I'm going to, I look at it as I'm going to reach out to this many people that I don't normally reach out to, to enable those connections because that's the first thing I'm looking for less than me doing business with them. That I think comes out of just the general conversation. Right. If somebody really expresses a need, then they'll. They'll literally, they'll bring it up. And I think
Sandeep Parikh:it's when you can truly, because like there's still a little piece of you in your head always where you're like, well, I hope I do win business though. And I think when you can quiet that voice enough where it's, you really do find the joy in people connecting. No matter what, that the stuff starts to come for you anyway, like the, the opportunity to start to pop in any way in surprising ways, rather than being like, Oh man, I didn't really actually get it, you know, whatever it is.
Rajiv Parikh:Yeah. And I think, I think that is a, that is something I've gone through over time before it used to be just about, Hey, how can I get more business? And it is very freeing now to let that go. But at the same time, I am one of the reasons I'm so excited about what you could do with AI is I could serve. We could serve more people and get them more value and get them more, get them to where they want to go. And that's because I see us as an enabler for their success through the creative innovation. And while we have to innovate as well as part of getting there. And I also look at it as, well, I got to help my, my team's got to succeed. They got to get paid. Well, they got to go back to their families. There's a lot to do here. Yep. Uh, the, my investors have to win. Like. I know I'm going to get my earliest investors at least a 50 X return on their investment. So they've stuck with me forever, not forever for quite some time. And they're going to get a great return. And even the more recent ones from, you know, just a few years ago, they're going to get a spectacular return. So that you got to deliver and that's part of the connection. I think that's a, that's the ultimate win is when you get that. And there's a lot of inter, uh, overlapping interrelated relationships. So I think we talked about this in one of the episodes, like the cool part about Silicon Valley is that, um, The friends that you may work with or help out can also people that you hang out with and you like to be with. So the same person that I'm playing pickleball, racquetball, uh, skiing, hiking. I can help them in the workplace too. And I can also help them in life or they can help
Sandeep Parikh:me
Rajiv Parikh:and so there's, there's these multiple, there's these multiple factors or I can help this person raise more money for their fund. Right. Um, I could put this like, Oh, we're trying to evaluate biotech companies. You know what? I have this great biotech resource that can look at biotech companies and help their kid get like their first job. Well, everybody wants, like, there's no better way to someone's heart than to. Helping their kid get that internship or their first job. And it's really fun to look out for that. Like something really satisfying is this, this kid who's a friend of my youngest son, amazing, brilliant guy. And for whatever reason, hasn't found a job. Like he's just so smart. He graduated college a year earlier, is doing neuroscience. And I bumped into this and he was sitting there in our house. He takes care of my daughter's cat. It's craziest thing. A coolest thing, actually. And, uh, And I was like, Oh yeah, he's talking about AR, VR. Oh yeah, this guy I walk with every Saturday. He was mentioning how he's a top IP expert in this field. Let me put those two together. Yeah. Right. Great. He can help them find that do have that one leg up with this big interview that he has,
Sandeep Parikh:you know, one thing that I employed, I don't know if you do this, this would be my, uh, advice to say young founders out there. Um, and maybe you can give yours real quick, which is, uh, I started, Taking notes on my, uh, after I have a great interaction with somebody, I immediately just jump onto my phone real quick. I had a great conversation with somebody to say at a convention or whatever it is. And, you know, we had a good, whatever we talked about, it doesn't matter what, what it was. And I just write real quick, you know, okay. Jim Bloom, uh, had a really funny story about his tattoo on his arm, you know, uh, you know, related to his dad. Did a, just like, real quick highlights of that thing. And then when I do the follow up. You know, with them, I, usually I'm thinking of something that I'm noting the stuff that I sincerely connected with. Right. So it's coming from a sincere place. It's not just a gamification. Uh, but then, you know, you can reference that or call that back in your followup conversations, right? Like, um, it's, it's a way to sort of be like, yeah, listen, I'm, I actually listened to the things you said as a human being, not just the things that I think are going to get me the, you know, the gig or the job or whatever, um, you know, and that's. Because that's ultimately what matters. Like you talked about, these are people that you might be working with for 10 years after this. If I sell a show to them and they're at the WB or whatever it is, like we're going to have a relationship for many, many years.
Rajiv Parikh:I think that's a re, I think it's a really smart idea to jot down in some place.
Sandeep Parikh:Yeah.
Rajiv Parikh:Couple things and your mind doesn't want, my mind doesn't want to do that. I want to go off to the next thing. I want the new, new. And I think one of the things I learned from our friend, Sean Jacobson, who did an episode, he's a mega connector. Um, that's the first thing he does after he meets, he jumps onto their CRM system and puts down a few notes. Yeah. And so that's what I do in our HubSpot system or our CRM system. Sometimes I'm like, I can't connect to it. So fricking I'll just put it in every nowhere. I'll put it in some, on my contact list, some note there. I'll just jot it down on a, on my, I have the, I have that, um, remarkable, uh, electric notebook system. Just write something down.
Sandeep Parikh:Write something down because even the act of it, yeah. Even the act of writing it or doing that. It reinforces it anyway. You probably won't actually need to reference it later. Uh, it's there in case you need it. And I just establish
Rajiv Parikh:a new neural connection. Yeah,
Sandeep Parikh:that's right. Yeah. All right. I think it's time. I'm going to jump in. This is our version of spark tank for this episode. Uh, and that's our predictions review. Let's see how we did. Let's grade ourselves. First up, Bill Belichick is Bill Belichick coming back. Here's what Rajiv Parikh said. I hope so, but it looks like no, because craft is so good at subtly putting out messages. So. Ding, ding, ding. Nailed it. That's correct. So it turns out, turns out Belichick, not back to the future. It's though he did doing TV, doing TV.
Rajiv Parikh:He's on Peyton Manning's, uh, uh, broadcast
Sandeep Parikh:and he's really good. Yeah. He's great. He's great. He's funny, insightful, poignant. I think he's like freed from being the curmudgeon now. Like, you know, it's like, it's almost like he doesn't have, you know, It's like now I can just be insightful and talk about the things that actually tickle him. It's like, Oh, he actually like the whole Tom Brady roast thing was like just watching him. I couldn't believe he was there. And then, you know, he was pretty damn funny at it. It was kind of, it was kind of good. It's kind of amazing. So ding, ding, ding. One day, one win. All right. 2024 election.
Rajiv Parikh:Oh, why this one? Yeah,
Sandeep Parikh:we wanted to decide we were gonna say who's it gonna be who versus who here? Uh, and you said I hope it's biden because I actually like his policies. I think he's more of a centrist than other candidates I believe he's implemented policies that drive for a better union Plus 40 years plus of his experience in his government. He's able to move at a rate that most people can't because he's seen so much. And I said, can he access that information quick enough to get to his brain? I guess that's the question. So on the Biden front, uh, you know, you were hopeful that it would be remain Biden. Uh, it did not, it did not. So
Rajiv Parikh:that's a yes or no. And did not, but I did not on the yes or no, but you know what? I mean, And I think a lot of us, the minute we heard him in that debate, we, we basically cast all of our hopes aside and said, Oh my God, this is not going to work because he's still good in one on one interactions. He's still good at running government and utilizing that vast database of. Connections and knowledge that he's built over the years. It's just, he just can't do it publicly on the fly anymore. He can't sell
Sandeep Parikh:the message, he can't sell the narrative, he can't tell the story to the public right now. That's really what it came down to. And the thing, and it was like the one thing he couldn't do, right, was, was really show his age at that debate. Cause that's the one thing everybody was worried about. It's the one thing he couldn't do and he
Rajiv Parikh:I'm glad his team put him up for it in June so they could get answers early. I wonder if that was the whole play. Uh, I,
Sandeep Parikh:you know, not, I don't think, I don't think that they're that organized necessarily, but it does make me wonder like, oh wow, are they that insightful about it? Like, well, if he fails, let him fail early and then we can, we can pivot. Yeah,
Rajiv Parikh:I, I think there was a, I mean, I think they saw the decline in the polls. I think they knew they had to seize the initiative. He had, he had done a couple, like the state of the union, there were hope we were, we're all hoping that he would give another state of the union like performance. And when it, what, when it was clear that it just wasn't there, um, it just made sense to make the switch. There's a lot of great reporting on it now, a great interview between Ezra Klein and Nancy Pelosi about it. I think it's really worth listening to about it is. I listened to it. It's fantastic. It was brilliant about how she changed the, the change, the discussion, um, to help him really help him and help the party. Make a great change. I'm,
Sandeep Parikh:I'm like relieved for him, in a way. Like, I'm like, I hope this man gets to like, cause I think now, especially if Kamala does pull this off. He will be celebrated for this decision instead of maligned. Like, I think we will forget that it took this long and that we were so frustrated that it took this long in some ways and that we will just remember the outcome and be like, wow, that was really brave and really bold for, for someone to give up power. Like that is really the power of someone believing in democracy over themselves and it's, it's, it's in stark contrast to what's being represented by the other side. Um, a person who's saying he'd be a dictator on day one. So I, I think that's, that is my hope for him. And I'm like, wow, I hope he gets just to kick, to kick back a little bit, take a chill pill, like, like
Rajiv Parikh:hang
Sandeep Parikh:out with your son, you
Rajiv Parikh:know, and solve a bunch of problems. He can now focus on solving a bunch of problems. He's got to take care of the Israel Gaza thing. He's got to focus on Ukraine. He's got,
Sandeep Parikh:he's got work to do until January for sure. But I'm saying after that. He gets to not be president. That's
Rajiv Parikh:right. He, well, yeah. And then he could be a senior statesman advisor. There's a lot of great things. Or he's 81 years
Sandeep Parikh:old and he can just do yoga with our dad. Like just hang out with our dude. Just chill out. It's okay to spend your final years just hanging out with your grandkids. And doing some yoga.
Rajiv Parikh:Come, come to teachers training in New Hampshire. That's right.
Sandeep Parikh:And do some yoga. That's what I, that's, that's okay. So here's what I said. This is my bold prediction. Uh, and I think I, I think I get some points. You got half right. And then the other half is not, it's not over. It's mostly over, but it's not over. I said, listen, I was saying that, listen, something happens to Donald Trump with his convictions, he's disqualified and we get. Nick, Nick, Nicky Haley. And then, uh, something happens with Joe Biden where he has to retire early or forced retirement and it ends up being Kamala and they're both Indian. So they're both aunties and we get auntie versus auntie. And you guys have
Rajiv Parikh:a whole post on that. You have a whole clip on it.
Sandeep Parikh:And my other, and my other podcast, the ABCD podcast, if you're, if you're a South Asian and you're interested in talking about South Asian American stuff, that's, that's all we gab about over there. And so our whole thing was the auntie versus auntie watch 2024. And, and we, it was a big moment because we called it months ago. We called it months ago. It started as a joke, kind of, but it was also like, this could happen, two aunties head to head. Come on, let's go.
Rajiv Parikh:Nailed it. And, and I think, it is so much, uh, fun. Kamala Harris has, uh, really energized Democrats
Sandeep Parikh:and
Rajiv Parikh:brought fresh energy, brought fresh life and joy into the campaign and given Americans what they want. Americans love new things, new novel. Yep. You know, and she's bringing that to them. And I think that's, Really great for all of us, regardless of what the outcome is. It's she's the best challenger for the moment. And, and you got to say Biden was pretty clever at taking the post GOP convention balance and just deflating it. Defining that change.
Sandeep Parikh:Yes. So ding, ding, ding. We get the point for that as well. Economy and markets. Okay. This is an area that I'm not so great about. So this was all you were talking about that the fed cutting interest rates, I believe. Yeah. So I don't know if it was a clean and clear prediction that you said, but I think you were talking about if the Fed cuts The rates, people will feel confident. They'll start investing. They'll start buying homes again. 70 percent of the economy is the consumer. And so businesses will feel confident about investing in this.
Rajiv Parikh:We're in the middle of a soft landing. There were some concerns recently about a hard landing. Soft landing. Soft landing. And we're still in the middle of that. Stocks are doing incredibly well. Um, the rate cut that was supposed to happen earlier hasn't happened because inflation has persisted and the Fed is concerned about inflation. But then didn't we just have that report that just came out that said the inflation is 9 percent or inflation is lower. And a lot of it is backloaded because of rental rental prices. So a lot of that is. It's lagging. And so, um, it's much better than before and job growth has, is starting to wobble a little bit. And so now we have the basis for what is likely to be a September quarter point cut, which is the beginning of some cut because right now you can get inflation, get inflation down to two, two and a half percent, then interest rates, fed interest, like the federal interest rates should be like three, 4%, not five, 6%, not 5%. Should be three. So that's a couple of points and that to a lot of Americans, that's a big number.
Sandeep Parikh:All right. So we'll call this one TBD because we'll see if the, if we'll, when we do our end at year end review, we'll check in on whether or not, but
Rajiv Parikh:like our friend Sumit said at our growth marketing summit, the American economy is the most, most dynamic, most resilient economy in the world. And it continues to be. Right. And it has the most growth. I mean, China will, China and India, of course, is just going like mad. China is, uh, they're growing, but slower than expected. Big real estate overhang
Sandeep Parikh:and,
Rajiv Parikh:uh, the U S is just chugging along better than all the other developed countries in the world. So
Sandeep Parikh:it's really amazing. Speaking of China, we had a prediction about China because we, we, we asked the Is there going to be conflict between China and the U S and you said that you believed that the powers that be will want to keep the world stable and find a way to create an accommodation to each other. I think that's pretty much what's played out. So far,
Rajiv Parikh:that's, that's what we are. And I think both sides have figured that. Both sides have figured out they need to get there. China still wants to take Taiwan and keeps acting like that. But they, I think they realize it's better to be integrated with the world economy. And maybe it's a good distraction for their people, but I still am of the belief that the Chinese, Chinese folks are good people who really just want to do business. That's what I believe, uh, the cut, the, the, these economies are so intertwined that breaking them apart would hurt everyone.
Sandeep Parikh:All right. Well, I guess we might as well end with the predictions that we will check in on at the year. Um, who's winning, Trump or Kamala?
Rajiv Parikh:I think Kamala's going to win. I think she's going to win by more than just a hair. I think she's going to win by quite a bit because the momentum will continue. I agree. It'll continue. It'll, it'll go up further past the Democratic convention. It'll tighten a bit, but I think in the end she's, she's new and interesting and ease from the past. And he, he hasn't really changed his message much.
Sandeep Parikh:He's the rerun
Rajiv Parikh:now.
Sandeep Parikh:He's the, he's the, yeah, he's the episode we've seen over and over again. It's old news. Americans
Rajiv Parikh:get bored pretty quickly. That, that's why it's actually why having two terms is more than enough. And no
Sandeep Parikh:one really runs three times. I almost like this idea of like, oh, letting that first president just finish the job that they were doing and letting someone else just like, Do all the running instead of wasting all their time and energy and effort and I'm trying to sell themselves again. Maybe be like
Rajiv Parikh:Mexico, have six year terms.
Sandeep Parikh:Yeah.
Rajiv Parikh:Oh, I do. Do Democrats hold the Senate?
Sandeep Parikh:Right. I haven't really been following this one that much, but don't they say that was, this is going to be a really rough year for the Senate for, for Democrats. It seems like there's more seats at risk on the Democratic
Rajiv Parikh:side.
Sandeep Parikh:Yeah, but I don't know. Maybe this newfound energy is what it affects down ballot. And, uh, You know, I don't think Trump is gonna be good for down ballot candidates. So it's
Rajiv Parikh:Montana, West Virginia, Ohio. Those are the ones at risk. It's gonna be tough.
Sandeep Parikh:It's gonna be tough to win those.
Rajiv Parikh:I
Sandeep Parikh:don't know. What do you think?
Rajiv Parikh:I think it's, I think it's really hard.
Sandeep Parikh:So are you predicting? What are you predicting? Are you predicting they're gonna do it or not?
Rajiv Parikh:I think it's 50, 50 back to the days when back, back to the first half of the term. Well, you're
Sandeep Parikh:predicting it's going to be 50, 50 and the vice president gets the deciding vote.
Rajiv Parikh:Waltz gets the tie. I think they hold on to, I'd say they hold on to Montana and West Virginia's lost. They hold on to Montana and they hold on to Ohio.
Sandeep Parikh:So next question, is the AI bubble going to pop? Is it, you know, is it, does it turn out that this is going to be like maybe crypto or the internet bubbles or whatever? Like. Yeah. Or do you think that the investment in AI is going to continue to grow?
Rajiv Parikh:The investment there's massive AI investment. It continues to go into companies. Uh, there will be a lot of companies that get wiped out just like anything too much money's chasing this environment, really high valuations will cause a lot of companies to readjust, but. A lot of the problems that normally come with disillusionment, what they call the trough of disillusionment, where it like, uh, it's not as accurate as, as it says it will be. It doesn't do, it doesn't speed up development like they say it would, or it's not as reliable as we thought, or it just eats up too much bandwidth and capacity and energy. And all those parts, there's so much money going into it, like incredible money, like, Billions and billions, like tens of hundreds of billions, almost that it won't happen right now. The big player is NVIDIA. They're eating up most of the profit pool, just like, um, Microsoft and Intel did in the PC revolution. And Apple has done in the mobile world. Uh, NVIDIA is getting that, but there are. A player's emerging, trying to get their piece of it and it'll work. It seems like it's working itself out faster. So I don't, I think there'll be some minor trough that will not like there'll be a wipe out of a budget companies, but those who invest in the application space and the key infrastructure bases, they'll do well. So, so the answer is if there's a, the trough of disillusionment will be really minor.
Sandeep Parikh:Okay. Okay. I like it. Um, then how about this? What about these? Okay. Conflicts. Can you, are we going to see some deescalation in Ukraine or Gaza
Rajiv Parikh:in the Middle East? Let's start with the Middle East. They keep saying they're close to a ceasefire. There has to be a ceasefire. It just has to happen. Otherwise there will be a broader war.
Sandeep Parikh:Yeah.
Rajiv Parikh:So it, I think that's one of the things Biden has to finish off. Before the next administration and if it doesn't this thing will go on for a while and there'll be a wider war That's bad for all of us for Russia and Ukraine. It's tough tough to predict but The way if you look at Russian history Governments have fallen very suddenly After a really disappointing event, so whether it was the czars in World War One or the original Bolsheviks, you know, there's, it's like, everything looks strong and then it just breaks, but otherwise it's just going to continue there. Just no one's going to give up for years. So what's your prediction then? It's going to, my prediction is this thing keeps going for another couple of years. All
Sandeep Parikh:right. Okay. Uh, Nostradamus pun for you. Nostradragus. Um, only if I'm right, right? Yeah. All right. Okay. So then, okay. I got a couple more, some interesting Stats around remote work, 20% of the US workforce is working remotely. 98% of workers wanna work remotely at least some of the time. 60% of companies operate fully remotely. And that number is growing. Uh, do you predict that remote work is gonna continue on its trajectory? Um, or do you think that it will take a significant shift back to in-person work?
Rajiv Parikh:I think it's going to move more toward, I don't think it's ever gonna go away. And it's, you know, for salespeople and a lot of different roles, it's never going to go away. Technology enables remote work for many people, uh, for many different roles. But like you said, it's only 20%. Most people work in factories and retail stores and stuff, warehouses. That's where most, you know, construction sites. That's where most people are. We see it as remote because these are the professional classes. So, I think there'll be more return to work because from a building utilization point, having a building that's only used a couple of days a week, it's just a terrible waste of money. There's so little benefit. And I think a lot of managers are, it is very tough to discipline. Have to have discipline when people are just not showing up. It's very tough to have collaboration and yeah that
Sandeep Parikh:like energy that ping pong that it you know I will say we're like building a back office here at our place so that and I'm turning it into basically a podcast studio because Part of my frustration. I mean, I'm you know It's great because this Riverside and all this technology can bring us together even though you're in the bay and I'm down here in LA But I got, I've got another podcast I'm doing in LA and I'm like, man, these are with comedians. Like timing is everything. Like getting us together in a room, like whenever we get the opportunity, it's so much more fun. It's so much funnier. I think the product is better. So
Rajiv Parikh:when we did the podcast together in, in Salt Lake City, that's not something in Park City. Park City
Sandeep Parikh:was great. Awesome. To be in the room together. Yeah. It makes a huge difference. It makes a huge difference. So, all right. Well, yeah, we'll see. We'll see how that plays out. Alright, and then, I think most people are saying that Kendrick won in Drake vs. Kendrick. Do you, do you think that rivalry will be renewed, and do you think that, that Drake will have a comeback? I think. Sure.
Rajiv Parikh:Listen, I'm wheelhouse here. I'll say I enjoy whatever music my friends are playing.
Sandeep Parikh:Come on. I thought you were so hip. You're into Dua Lipa now. You're like, it's not just rush. And, uh, and Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd anymore, right? You're expanding your horizon. It's not just Peter Gabriel. I like,
Rajiv Parikh:I do. I do like how Ariana Grande can imitate just about any singer. I think she's freaking brilliant. Um, but I think that's considered old news too.
Sandeep Parikh:I think so. Yeah. And plus you're just enjoying that she's imitating a singer that you've actually heard. All right. With that, I think we conclude our check in. All right, well, we'll check back in at the end of the year. And for all of you listening, thank you so much. We love having you. Uh, remember, please hit that comment button, hit that like button, and maybe most importantly, share this show with somebody you think that that'll be helpful to. If you know any founders out there, folks that, you know, could use this, uh, kind of life advice and this life experience, then I think it's worth, uh, please, please, Uh, share, share, share the show that really helps us out. The show is produced by myself, Sandeep Parikh and Anand Shah, production assistance by Taryn Talley and edited by Sean Marr and Aiden McGarvey. Uh, this time I'm your host, Sandeep Parikh, but on behalf of our regular host, Rajiv Parikh from Precision Squared, a leading AI driven growth marketing company based in Silicon Valley. Uh, you know, thank you so much for listening. Come visit us at position2. com and this has been an effing funny production. But I think you can do your tagline, Rajiv.
Rajiv Parikh:Be
Sandeep Parikh:ever curious.
Rajiv Parikh:All right,
Sandeep Parikh:we'll catch you next time.
Rajiv Parikh:Play that music!