AI, Organizational Leadership, and Scaling your Business, with Namit Jindal

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The solid, impact resistant design prevents cracking and the clear base and sides make items easy to find even when the totes are stacked. Find select shelving and tote storage up to 15% off at the Home Depot to organize every room in your home from your garage to your attic, visit homedepot.com how do it get more done? Welcome to the HCI family of podcasts where your source for personal, professional and organizational growth and development. We share our own original research, explore industry trends and interview executives and thought leaders from across the globe. Join us for practitioner oriented content around all things leadership, hr, Talent management, Organizational development and Change management. Maximize your personal and organizational potential with the HCI Family of podcasts. Namit Jindal, welcome to the conversation today. Yeah, excited to be here. It is a real pleasure to be with you. You're joining us from India. So it's evening for you. It's morning for me. I'm south of Salt Lake City in Utah, and today we're going to be talking about AI organizational leadership and scaling your business. A fun topic. I think a lot of people are in this space right now trying to navigate this disruptive technology and the implications it has for a lot of different aspects of their business. But, you know, today we're going to focus particularly on leadership and people management and those aspects that, you know, are challenging when you're scaling, you know, and we'll talk about it in a few minutes. But, you know, your organization is scaling very rapidly, which brings with it all sorts of people management challenges and issues. And how can you. How can you manage that more effectively? And how can this new. The new tools available via large language models and generative AI, how can it assist you? So that's what we're going to explore today as we get started. I wanted to share Namit's bio with everybody. Namit Jindal runs a software company called Aerosend IO. They help business to. Business companies send cold emails that land in the inbox. They specialize in facilitating highly personalized emails that are relevant to the audience. Um, and like I said, tremendous growth. Would you mind telling us just a little bit more about that and highlighting anything else from your personal background that you would like the audience to know about? Yeah, for sure. So I've been in the sales cold email space for like three years now. Ran an agency for the first couple of years, actually for the last three years now. And yeah, it was interesting. Learned a lot about cold email in general. Got very deep into the space. At one point, I think we were sending anywhere from like 800 to 1000 to like a million million and a half cold emails a month for our clients. So gre pretty much that was interesting. I always loved software. So we went public with the software four to five months ago, and we've been growing 100% month over month since then. Yeah, that's incredible. And, you know, not, you know, a lot of people in the audience won't necessarily relate to the business that you do. You know, everyone's received those emails and nobody likes spam emails and nobody wants things that aren't personalized. And so finding a way to have outreach and do it in a more personalized way that resonates with the receiver, obviously that's going to be so much more powerful for any organization that would be your client. And so that could be intriguing to people. But what I'm really interested in is this 100% month over month growth, which is really insane. That's hard to keep up with. So when you start with a pretty lean team, you know, a founding team, you start to add in key people with areas of specialty. You know, you wear a lot of different hats, you, you do a lot of different things. You can, you can easily influence the culture that you want to have. But when you start to scale at that level, it brings with it all sorts of potential challenges. Maybe you could start by just identifying, you know, for us, you know, some of the, the things that you're dealing with. You know, in some cases it may be challenges that you're not quite sure how to respond to. In other cases, maybe, maybe you have a good answer, maybe you figured it out and you know, you know how to scale effectively at this rapid pace. Yeah, I think like, so the way I see the team, we kind of divided into two parts. So there's engineering, which is mostly handled with my tech by my technical co founder. He's super experienced, he knew exactly who he needed to hire. So that was like lean. That's always been lean. The second part was marketing, sales growth, customer. And that was mostly handled by me. Growth is mostly attributed to cold email. I've been doing it for three years, so it's really, really easy for me to set it up. Honestly that like I spent two, three hours a week on that and like that gets 95% of our growth. Right now we've been building more of marketing and stuff and I guess that's the next step where like I'm kind of writing the playbook, but we'll have like one or two extreme, extremely smart people, basically automate 80% of the process and just focus on the strategic parts. Yeah, incredible. So that gets into this AI conversation, you know, around automation. I, I would imagine if you're able to automate 80% of, of these tasks and, and to be able to do, you know, to grow so rapidly while, you know, putting three hours in a week, you know, at something like that, obviously you're leveraging these tools and you don't have to give away all the secret sauce here, but like maybe outline for us some of your approaches and like some of the tools that you use the most or anything like that you think would be helpful. Yeah, I'm obviously happy to give all of all My secrets here to hopefully help someone, but I think it varies department by department. So I'll give you like the two most common ones that almost everyone can use and then we'll take it from there. So, and this, this isn't even a just good ops at this point. And like running an agency, you kind of learn all that stuff because you need to be lean to be profitable. But a like customer support. Yeah, we just wrote every single question we've gotten on a sales call on customer conversations in our initial days. Spread it into a model. I know there are softwares out there that do it really, really easily. We used Intercom for the longest time and then we built something custom. And now 85%, 90% of our support conversations are just handled automatically. You only need or someone higher up to handle the remaining 5 to 10%. And that's when there's like serious questions for the product like ours, most of the customer conversations happen automatically. That I would say, like, replaces the need to hire two customer support employees. Other than that, like, in terms of ops, you got to think about like, hey, like what is it that you do manually? Or like, it's just a repetitive process. For example, like every time anyone signs up on our platform, we send them like an WhatsApp message, a thank you email, my personal phone number. Hey, if you need anything, let us know that part. Like, I see a lot of companies doing that manually and I think about a founder's time, right? Like my time is essentially one of the most valuable times, like when it comes to growth, that's all automated. So I don't need to look at that. I don't waste time on the stuff like just check my email once in the morning, once in the evening, unless urgent notifications come up and stuff like that. Yeah. And on that note, you know, one of the things that's just so great about the customer service aspect or like this direct outreach to people who sign up immediately, it's just, it's in real time, right. So it's, it's fast, it's accurate because you're able to train, you know, the chatbot, the model that you're using to be able to respond to the common questions. And you know, so not only are you saving on people labor costs because you can automate it, but you're, it's just easier to access. So anyone having an issue, you know, they don't have to wait until like working hours 8 to 5. You don't have to have like a night shift staff, you know, to be able to respond to people in real time to the questions that they have. They can get answers at any time to anything almost immediately. And they're, and you know, for the most part it's going to be accurate and you're going to fine tune that over time. Of course, you know, if there's issues, but you know, the human error that can occur with, with a person responding to those calls, who's getting trained and is new and whatnot, you know, that's probably more likely to have more errors than, than the chat bot. And so, so that's, that's because it's efficient for you, it saves you money, but it's also super helpful for clients and anyone who needs customer support. Having automated outreach when people sign up so that you get those emails, you get the WhatsApp, you get whatever onboarding that they need. That's awesome too because like you said, you're a founder, your time is best spent doing strategic stuff. Pretty much everyone on your team, their time is going to be best spent doing more creative and strategic, strategic stuff. And any of this automated stuff, you can absolutely leverage these different technologies and the different softwares or AI to be able to help with it, at least to make it more efficient. So I think, I think I try to imagine kind of an old school agency doing similar things that you're doing, but they're not leveraging these technologies and then comparing them directly to you and the rapid growth that you're having. It simply wouldn't be possible, right, to kind of take an old school, a Luddite approach where you're not leveraging all these technologies and to be able to grow and scale and be profitable in the way that you are. Can you talk to that a little bit more? I mean, like, I think it's not just agencies at the point, right? Like it's like mostly bloated companies. It's inevitable at the end of the day. Like you can't just like, it's just so inefficient doing it with like way too many people that like companies that are doing it like are just bound to die slowly by doing this research. Like, I think like there are a lot of companies that do it way more efficiently than I do. I'm not like 100% that, but like we just have such a good strategic advantage and it helps to grow so much faster. Like I know there are certain things that will never break, whether we're at 200 customers or 20,000 customers. And it's just an advantage. We remove the human error component and yeah, and the people like that allows us to hire extremely strategic people, like extremely, extremely smart, smart people and pay them from the beginning, way over market. So let's, let's double click on that and drill in on that a little bit because you know, people in some cases rightfully so, but people are fearful of this techno technological disruption, you know, job displacement, task displacement. Are they going to be able to get positions? And you've already identified like there are some kind of low level repetitive types of positions, especially in customer service that you don't need. Right. Because you, you literally are able to replace people who traditionally would have been in those roles with the technology that can do it more efficiently, more timely, more accurately. Right. And that's true, that is happening. And in some roles there is displacement and there will continue to be displacement. But what you're highlighting is the, the flip side of the coin and that is when you free up resources from doing the mundane, the repetitive, those sorts of things. When you free up those resources now, you can invest them more strategically at high levels. And so you're able to hire people, you know, for the types of jobs I think most people want to do. Like most people don't want to show up and read a script and answer calls all day. I've had that kind of job before. I've had that a couple times when I was much younger. And those are not fun jobs. You know, like I would not want to live my life doing that job for the rest of my life. It was fine as a young college student working my way through college. But you know, there's, there's more out there. As we get more experience and we learn more, we can leverage that, our strategic humanness, you know, to higher order types of tasks and, and other things that are going to help our organizations grow better. So I, I love that, you know, you're not just, you're not just taking cost savings, labor cost savings from the automation and pocketing it, but you're also reinvesting it, you're reinvesting it into strategic positions that are really going to help the organization be successful. And I think that's the mindset shift that a lot of people who are fearful about these technologies need to have one. They need to figure out how are they going to remain relevant in a world with these technologies because they're not going to be able to just do the mundane, repetitive things over and over again. All that is going to be automated pretty soon, if it's not already. You know, if they can, can gain the skills to be able to leverage those technologies. They're going to have more fulfilling lives, more fulfilling careers because they're going to be able to focus on, on higher order things and in more meaningful, creative, innovative and strategic things. And there's going to be even more positions and opportunities for those types of people, which I think is a net positive overall, even though there is discomfort as people are making that transition. Yeah. So the way I think about it, and like the harsh truth is not jobs can be replaced. Like, I don't buy into the notion that like, yes, AI will replace jobs, but new jobs will come up. And another other harsh truth is essentially like all the mundane jobs, like people who have not been working efficiently at work, people who don't want to go over and above, they won't have a place anymore. Like essentially like when you think about a big organization too, it's pretty common that about half the employees do 85% of the work. Like there are a lot of studies on that. So the other half definitely is like in somewhat of a danger here. Yes. Like people who are really, really smart will get overpaid extensively. And then you have like, and if you think about it, right, like you have like Zuckerberg offering hundreds of millions of dollars to like extremely smart engineers. So like, yes, like you're going to be getting paid what you're worth for sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean it's super interesting and it leads to all sorts of other, I mean, beyond organizations, it leads to societal, public policy conversations, societal shifts, all that, like all of that's, you know, in the water right now. And it's, it's going to be ever more present, you know, in the coming years and decades as we, as we go through this shift. For sure. But you know, in the meantime, let's, let's, it's here, it's happening, right. Like we can't stop it. You know, we can try to be responsible with the use of technology and be responsible and ethical and strategic, but, but, but we can't. You know, we're not just going to like put the genie back in the bottle. So we have to figure out how are we going to better leverage it and be effective and, and have the skills to be able to work within this new world of work, to be able to function in the new world of work. And a lot of what you're describing in your organization is highlighting some of these themes which I, I just think is super helpful, you know, where I, where I'm at in Utah. So, you know, you have Silicon Valley in the Bay Area. Everyone knows it, but not as many people know that here in Utah, you know, we have a very strong tech sector and we have what's called Silicon Slope. So it's another tech hub. We have, you know, tech unicorns. We have lots of entrepreneurial activity, lots of investment and some big tech companies headquartered here. And there are other hubs like that around the US or different parts of the world, right? Different cities that have different, you know, real active hubs of this type of activity going on. And so the reality is let's, let's dive in, right? Let's dive in. Let's try to learn how to be part of, you know, ride the wave of all this entrepreneurial activity. And you know, you never know who the next big Google is going to be. Right? I still remember, you may remember this too, but I still remember, you know, back the first time I ever did a Google search, you know, it was probably around the year 2000 or so, which I think Google started technically a little bit before then, but hadn't been widely accepted, you know, widely adopted. And I just remember, you know, the first time I did that and how quickly it started to take off and following the growth over the last 20, you know, two and a half decades or so, it's incredible. And they were a small little operation right at the time. Now they're, you know, huge and ultra wealthy and so impactful. You never know the next company is going to be, that's going to do that. And so yeah, we, we just, we do the best we can. We can't, we can't see the future but we can try to look at trends and we can try to understand past performance and how that might indicate future potential and, and those types of strategic approaches and, and areas of focus need to just continue as we move forward. Tell us maybe in, in some of the remaining time that we have, you know, some of your, your mindset and goals around the next say two years or five years as you continue to grow rapidly, maybe even expanding to other types of product and service offerings, those sorts of things. Ooh, interesting. So I think I can tell you the next short term goals which makes sense but like life changes so fast. It's like it's hard to make the next two year goals. So yeah, it is, yeah. Next six months main focus from my side is the company itself like Aerothent. I think I'm spending 95% of my time in general at remaining 5% miscellaneous and the remaining time is sleeping. So it's growth from my department. That's what I'm focused on. Focusing on a lot of new channels that I'm learning. So that's where kind of like personally that's the main goal here. Overall as a company I want to build a product with the best deliverability possible. So viewers might not know this. Like when it comes to cold emails, the biggest and the most complex challenge is battling Google and Outlook to make sure your emails are actually landing in the inbox. Right, but spam, right. But those of you like this is an interesting assignment actually like just go like especially if you have like some form of an executive title, just go check your spam folder once. It's crazy. Like they're gonna be like 10x the number of emails in that folder. And like our biggest battle is how do we take legit business emails and make sure they land in the inbox versus like even those emails going to spam. So that's been like a constant back and forth battle. So that's what I wanted to build the best product around that possible in the next six months to one year. We'll see after that what future takes us. A lot of possibilities in terms of like where I see, I see myself building our own servers, data centers. That's definitely one possibility. I do see a big use case when it comes to cold email in general for AI. Obviously a lot of other companies are doing this, but maybe I'll explore that depth once I've fought this battle. Yeah, yeah, very cool. And you're right, like it's so hard, you know, to plan, you know, given the rapid pace of change. It highlights something else for me. You know, many organizations, kind of the old standard was have your five year plan, your five year strategic plan. People start to realize that's good. But you know, especially if you have no strategy like that, that's a good place to start but, but it's too rigid. Like things change too rapidly. And so then people started, instead of doing like a fixed five year plan, they started to put in place like a five year rolling strategic plan. So it could you know, have having iterations and updates every year kind of a thing. The reality is we're still in too, you know, the pace of change is still too hyperactive to even do it yearly, you know. And when I see organizations, you know, that are really rigid about their, their plans, you know, and it may be an awesome plan, like they, they may have put everything into it at one point. Now they have this five year plan and they're, they're Implementing like clockwork and they're doing just, things are going really well. That's awesome. But you know, if, if you're, if you're too rigid to that, you're going to miss out on a lot of opportunities. You may implement really well what you had planned, but things change. And so there's going to be a lot of things over the intervening five years that you know, even if you were effective in implementing your plan, you're going to miss out on, you know, the opportunity costs and you're going to miss out on a lot of, of things that you could have done or adjustments you could have made along the way to help you be an even better position. And so, you know, I like the intellectual humility that, you know, that you express around, you know, the difficulty of planning out two years. It's good to have a vision, it's good to have kind of a forward looking, you know, strategy and to be able to try to look around the corner and forecast as best you can, but also just recognize and realize that things are moving so rapidly. We're going to have to revisit those plans on a regular basis and sometimes we're going to have to pivot and sometimes dramatically pivot, pivot away from what we had originally intended. And the challenge with that is to not fall into the trap of kind of going to the flip side of the coin where you're just chasing every shiny object, where anytime you have an idea you're like, oh, let's do this now. Because that also is not going to serve you well. So you have to find a balance, right? Yeah, I think it just depends from organization to organization when you're as old as like Google. But we spoke about having a five year plan. Kind of makes sense. Like you've been around for 20 years, 25, maybe even more. And like, obviously there are organizations older than loss. Like in my case, we are four months old. Five months old. Yes. We started building a while ago. So like, but at the same time, like, it's pretty pointless making anything other than like a three month plan for now or maybe a six month plan. Yeah, that was like one part of. Yeah, that's like the major part. Obviously. Shiny object syndrome, big thing, everyone has it. It's kind of like the natural thing for entrepreneurs. Once you're inside the depths of something, you just start seeing so many problems, problems you can solve. Excellent. Well, this has just been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your evening to sit down with me and chat about these sorts of themes and these, these issues. I think it was super helpful. As we wrap things up for today, I just want to give you a chance to share with the audience how they can connect with you, find out more about your work, your team, and then give us the final word. For sure. Yeah, so the best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn. I'm sure like wherever you're listening to this podcast, there's going to be a link to my LinkedIn so you can just look into that otherw. Like if you need help with cold email or anything in particular, you can check out my website, Aerocent IO. Awesome, awesome. Very good. Again, I encourage the audience to reach out to get connected. Find out more about what Namit can do for you, check out his organization and as always, I hope everyone can stay healthy and safe. You can find meaning and purpose at work each and every day and I hope you all have a great week. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the podcast. We hope you stay healthy and safe and please join us again soon. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense. Sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses. Setup required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.