From Advertising Giant to Startup Maverick: Nikhil Vaish's Journey to Solopreneurship Success

Ever dreamt of trading a steady job for the thrill of entrepreneurship? That's exactly what Nikhil Vaish did, leaving his mark on advertising giants like Amarati and Ogilvy to plunge into the exhilarating world of startups with Boost Solo. In our latest episode, Nikhil takes us through his remarkable journey, revealing why he swapped boardroom pitches for the autonomy of solopreneurship and how he crafted the resourceful service, Can I Stream It. His tale is not just about change; it's a blueprint for reinvention in the face of conformist industry standards. 

Strap in as we unravel the secrets to constructing and escalating a business from the ground up. It's not simply about grand ideas; execution is king, and we've got the crown jewels of advice. Whether it's about starting modestly with platforms like Kajabi or identifying that golden moment to expand, I lay it all out. We'll navigate the tricky waters of control, the art of team diversity, and the growth spurred by hiring blunders. If you're looking to cultivate a venture with lasting impact, this conversation is your navigation chart.

The episode culminates with a deep dive into fostering a self-reliant community where solopreneurs aren't just surviving but thriving. We dissect how to provide essential 'boosts' in areas like SEO and legal aid to bolster businesses without creating dependency. The vision? A marketplace pulsing with the heartbeat of community needs, where entrepreneurs exchange challenges and solutions under a system of trust. And for those itching to connect with Nikhil Vaish for more wisdom, his doors are open for communication and collaboration. Tune in for an episode that's as inspiring as it is instructive, a true compass for anyone charting the entrepreneurial seas.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey folks, welcome back to the growing Lean podcast sponsored by Lean Discovery Group. This is your host, dylan Burke, also known as Deege, and I'm happy to be here today with Nikhil Besh, ceo and Chief Strategist at Besh Consulting and founder and CEO at Boost Solo. Welcome, nikhil.

Speaker 2: 0:21

Hi, thanks, deege, Great to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:24

Yeah, it's great to have you on the show. So, nikhil, to get us started, can you tell us a little bit about your history and background and what led you to the point where you founded Boost Solo?

Speaker 2: 0:37

Sure. So great question. I mean, I guess I always say I have a little bit of a meandering path in terms of what sort of led me here. So my background is primarily in advertising and marketing. I worked at large agencies like Amarati Puris in India, then Amarati again in London, just sort of coincidentally, and then Ogilvy in New York, and I worked across both consumer brands like Unilever and Cadbury's, and then also B2B brands like Pricewaterhouse Cooper, as in IBM, so sort of both sides of the fence, if you like.

Speaker 2: 1:09

And then around 2008, after spending a good, you know almost two decades in advertising, I decided I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone and really do something different. Right, I felt like the industry was sort of had its head in the sand a little bit and I really wanted to sort of challenge myself. So I actually took a year off and poked around, sort of looked at different opportunities and a lot of it was the same old, same old. So I ended up then starting a company with an old buddy of mine who was an amazing programmer, who was actually a college friend of mine, so it was like five programmers, a one-in-the-web developer and me, and we have an ambition of starting. You know, helping early state startups come to market which I can tell you right now is not a great business idea because most of them can only pay you in equity but we did that. You know, we cobbled together the ones we helped cobble together sort of friends and family finances. We helped launch them, built their platforms and all that. But at the time, we also ended up launching our own thing called Can I Stream it, which was really just a tool we built for ourselves to help you figure out what's playing on different streaming services.

Speaker 2: 2:13

And, believe it or not, now, back in 2010, google didn't have that capability. There was no way to search Netflix or Apple or Amazon, as in, in one place. So we built a tool Can I Stream it which was described by Gizmodo as the kayak for streaming services, which is essentially what it did. And we'd built it for ourselves, being completely honest, and people just loved it. So you know the media took off on it. So you know I focused on building that business. We turned it into a pretty decent business, completely self-supported, and I think we sort of got a little bit of wind in our sails and decided no investors, we can do this on our own and we had a good run for about five years and then at that point we realized there were, you know, the other players that sort of all stepped into the same pond. You know, google had built their own thing, amazon were building their own. So we realized, you know, it was not something we could self-sustain.

Speaker 2: 3:04

And at that time my business partner and I sort of decided it won't go separate ways. So I started consulting and that's really what when Veysh Consulting was born, working with large holding companies, small boutique agencies, leading strategy. And that's what I've been doing until last year, where I sort of felt like, you know, I work on a lot of projects and I didn't feel like I was building anything right and also I wanted to sort of give back to people. That's kind of what my primary motive was in terms of even with Veysh Consulting. But I'm still working with corporations, albeit nonprofits, and, you know, startups and things like that.

Speaker 2: 3:38

But I started seeing sort of a rise in solopreneurship. So you have, you know, generation Z, which all of whom want to work for themselves, and then you have people on the other side of the spectrum who are being pushed out of the workforce the moment they turn 50. So they have to work for themselves. So I see this as sort of a major global trend, over the next decade at least, and I felt like it was a really underserved population and I also, being a one-man show and a solopreneur, I felt like this was the audience I really wanted to help and I started to think about how can I bring all these skills that I have and, as I said, it's a pretty varied background and really help this audience. So that's kind of what Boost Solo, as the name says. It's to boost solopreneurs, and I can talk a little bit more about that, but that sort of hopefully gives you an idea of my background, even though it's a little bit of an error.

Speaker 1: 4:26

Awesome, awesome. No, I love that. Thanks for that Awesome background you have. Can you tell us a little bit more about Boost Solo? What's your strategy for that, and kind of like a roadmap for the next year or so?

Speaker 2: 4:40

Yeah. So what? I, as I said, I wanted to kind of figure out how can I build something that's helpful, right? So first I looked at who's serving this market. Now you can go to an agency, but I think the problem there is that it comes with a lot of overhead and it creates dependency. The other side is you have options like Fiverr and Upwork and freelance platforms, which mitigates the cost issue and the sort of the long-term contract issue.

Speaker 2: 5:04

But what I found is they're very hit or miss, and I did a fair amount of research. I spoke to over a dozen entrepreneurs and almost all of them had horror stories of like going in and getting being promised something and either not being delivered or not being the quality or the level that they expected, or even not the expertise somebody claimed to have. Right, it was missing. So that was the niche I realized I wanted to solve. That was the problem rather, I wanted to solve, and I also realized that, you know, being a solider, your revenues sort of fluctuate. They're not necessarily consistent, at least in the first five years when you're sort of setting up the company. So it had to sort of fit into being able to deliver the expertise in a bite-size way. So that was one part of it. The second is trusted and consistent in terms of who you're getting and what you're getting right. So that was the second piece that I wanted to deliver. And then the third thing I actually spent time trying to figure out. I also wanted to make sure that the outputs were tangible. So it's not like fluff and theory, because when you talk about things like brand strategy, you know you can do it at 30,000 feet, which is great and wonderful if you want to read a book and sort of be an academic, but not really helpful if you're starting your business and you're like what do I do with this persona? So I actually experimented.

Speaker 2: 6:12

I spent last year working with three different solopreneurs and refining the system. So originally I started off with simplifying some of the tools we use in marketing and advertising. You know competitive maps and personas and stuff. And I realized, you know, while the solopreneur appreciated it, he didn't really know what to do with it and didn't know how to sort of execute and implement it, which I understand, because if you're not steeped in marketing and you don't have a marketing department, these things aren't necessarily the most you know versatile tools in terms of how to build stuff or create stuff.

Speaker 2: 6:43

So, as a result of those experiments, I've actually landed on four coaching sessions you can call them, and what you end up with is a brand story on a page which is essentially sort of the. You know, I say I help you answer three questions who are you, why do you exist and why should anyone care? Which I think are sort of the fundamentals of any business. Right, we are vision, mission, values, really being clear about the problem you're solving, not four or five or 10 problems, and then being very clear about your audience, as in the one audience that you really wanna serve, at least to start with.

Speaker 1: 7:15

Okay, amazing, that's super exciting. And can you tell me what is the, what's the platform gonna look like? Like, if I'm a solopreneur, how am I gonna find you and what is it gonna look like for me? What does the process look like? Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Speaker 2: 7:32

Sure. So you've got me at sort of the ground floor right now. So right now it lives as a page on my website, boost Solo. It doesn't even have I own the domains, just to be clear and I've launched with what I've calling the brand Boost, which is essentially the three questions I talked about, and what you end up with is a brand story on a page.

Speaker 2: 7:48

And the way it works is we start with you go to that page, you sort of look at what you know, what I just described to you, and then you can book a discovery call with me. So I also wanna be very clear that we sort of it's the right thing for you, because it's not, you know, it's not for people who are just sort of doing it as a side hustle, who are sort of just trying it out. This is more for people who spend at least you know, typically and I've found my sort of my niche audiences or my core audiences people who've worked for at least a decade or so and have some expertise or skill that they wanna turn into a regular paycheck and sort of wanna get out of the corporate world. So that's typically the audience. So we start with a discovery call. We make sure we're sort of the right fit. And then, if the you know, if the answer is yes on both sides, then we basically set up the four sessions. It starts with a founder interview and then we do a, which I conduct. Then we do a competitive.

Speaker 2: 8:37

You actually have to go and do homework. So I give you, I assign you, homework to go and really study your competitors. I sort of give you a roadmap, give you a template, how to do it, what to look for and then also category and trends and really start to dig into your audience. And then we come together, we do a whiteboard where we go through the homework, we pull out insights, what's relevant, what's of value.

Speaker 2: 8:59

And then, session three, I do a live interview with either a customer or a prospect and kind of show you how to really talk to your audience to sort of really understand and dig up, because ultimately you and I can say whatever we want, right, if it's not a peer in the audience, it's kind of of no value. So then I make you go and do nine more interviews and you share those notes with me in a structured way. And then I put together a brand story on a page and we have another session where we interrogate it together and then you're really off to the races, because the brand story on a page literally gives you sort of your mission, your purpose, your beliefs, your creative positioning, your reasons to believe, and then underneath it is sort of clarity on the opportunity, who your audience is, what their mindset is and really the problem you're solving, and then finally your story right, the inspiration of why you're doing this.

Speaker 1: 9:47

Okay, amazing, amazing. Thanks for that, and Nikhil. So this isn't the typical way we do these podcasts, so I wanna shift the conversation a little bit. Can you tell us you're an entrepreneur, you're a serial entrepreneur, you've done many things in your life, so can you draw us like a roadmap for entrepreneurs, like what they need to get started, what they need to get going and what they need to get growing? I'd love to hear your view on that, because you seem to know what you're talking about there.

Speaker 2: 10:20

Well, I hope I can deliver. That's a great question. So here's the three things I will say right? One is that a lot of people have a lot of good ideas right, and that's great. There's nothing wrong with that. But the two things I find and I've been victim to this, I've fallen victim to this is one is that you're always looking for sort of the perfect opportunity or the perfect time to start or to launch it. There is none right. I always say today is the perfect time and the perfect day to do it. So that's one is just start, no matter what, how half baked it is, get it out there and try it.

Speaker 2: 10:53

The second part of it is don't go full scale, like I'm not even looking to build a platform in year one. Right, there are enough things like Kajabi and stuff where I can deliver, sort of like the training or whatever modules I want to set up. Use tools that are already available. Don't go and spend $100,000 building a platform, but test it. So find people who are willing. You know I network with solopreneurs. That's pretty easy to do. I found you know that's what I did. I did a beta test. The first one I did for free. Then I did at price point X, then I did 2x and then I did 3x and I'm sort of working my way to the price point I believe is the right price point. So that's the second thing. But I'm also refining the system, so there's a value equation on both sides, right, you're getting something at a much lower price than I would normally charge, and I'm learning as a result of your experience. So it works both ways. So that's the second thing I do.

Speaker 2: 11:43

And then the third thing I'd say is understand at the point at which you can't necessarily do this on your own right. That's the lesson I learned with Can I Stream it. Whereas where we thought, you know, and I'll be honest, when Netflix actually shut down their private API, they gave us access there, I mean their public API, they gave us access to their private API. Now, in our minds we were like, oh, where we're, like you know, the hardest thing ever. Now, now we can go to this on our own, which is not true.

Speaker 2: 12:06

At that point I would have probably gone and gotten investors if I go back and turn the page on Can I Stream it. So that's the third thing I say is understand the point at which you know you can only take it so far as one person, no matter how brilliant you are, or two or three people, understand when you need to go and get some investment or some resources or even outside expertise and help right, because everybody needs help. So that's the third thing I'd say is, when you're ready, when you reach that point where you've sort of got you know I hate the word product market fit because it's just so overused but I'll say when you've, when you've realized you've created value for the audience that you were trying to create value for right, that's the point at which you decide you want to scale, make this bigger, and that's the third thing I do. So I'm not sure that's, but that's sort of the three step roadmap is what I would say at a high level.

Speaker 1: 12:53

Does that make sense? Okay, yeah, no, 100%. And on that first point about executing your ideas, I can felt like a bit of a stab to me because when I was younger I had such like I've always had great ideas. I run a bit of an entrepreneurial mind and when I was younger I thought about, like I saw these people were scanning barcodes and you could like do cool things with barcodes. I was like it'd be so cool if we could just scan a barcode and pay for our dinner or our food at the groceries or shop with the barcode. And then I just talked about a little bit. I was like 16 at the time, so I'll give myself that I was really young.

Speaker 1: 13:30

And then a couple years later, snapscan came out in South Africa and now it's literally on everything you can. Anyone can sign up for Snapscan, can use it at the grocery store, online, pretty much anywhere. So like I couldn't agree more on that it's. It's about having an idea, verifying your idea and just getting started. Don't wait, don't, don't do anything. And on that third point as well it's a really common topic actually on the podcast is realizing that you may not, even though it's your company, you are the founder might be your baby. You may not be the best person for certain positions, like you may be good at being a CEO, but you might not be the best at sales or you might not be the best in marketing. So it's realizing that you need to hand over the reins to someone else and I think that's it's a mature decision within entrepreneurship is to understand that you need to be able to hand over to someone else and put your trust in someone else without you having to micromanage them, and that's a huge thing for people to overcome.

Speaker 2: 14:41

That's a great point, and if I could add a layer to the roadmap, then the one other thing I would say is and maybe this comes from maturity is letting go apart. I completely agree. But also don't hire people who are exactly like you right Now. As human beings, typically, we form friendships with people who are like us. We have similar things right, and that's okay. But in a business, you want to complement the skills that you don't have, not replicate the skills that you have, and that's the other mistake I see a lot of entrepreneurs make as they build their companies is hire people who are like them. You want to hire people who exactly like you said. Like sales is not my strong suit. I'll need somebody to do that, or building a community may not be something I'm really good at. I mean, ultimately, I see this community underpinning Booth Solo, and that's something I would need to hire for, so absolutely.

Speaker 1: 15:28

Yeah, exactly that's. It's also one of the conversations I had recently was you need to be able to make the right hire and be ready to. I can't remember the saying he said, but you need to be able to walk past the corpse of a bad hire because you probably your first hire is probably going to be bad and you're going to learn from it and you're going to waste some time training them and teaching them and then your next hire should be the one or the third one at least. So it's important to understand that, that you need to make the right hire and you need to fire and make the right fires as well, when necessary, as hard as it can be. That's super important for the business.

Speaker 2: 16:12

Yeah, absolutely, and you know, it reminds me, if you just kind of reminded me, of the first time I was learning to ride a bike. Yeah, and it's exactly that it's like until you get on the bike you're never going to learn. You can sort of watch people as much as you want, and you know, you can theorize, you can watch YouTube videos, but until you actually, you know, I think Roosevelt said until you, teddy said until you get in the arena, you can't really, you know, learn anything, right? So that's the thing, and you will follow them any times to your point about the corpse, and be prepared for that, because that's how you learn, honestly. I mean, if everything was perfect, you would never, you would never learn any new information, right?

Speaker 1: 16:45

Exactly, Exactly. Actually, I had the analogy on another show a couple of weeks ago. I was like entrepreneurship is it's like riding on a roller coaster You've got ups and downs, it's terrifying at some points, but once you get off you want to get right back on again because it's awesome at the end of the day and it's lots of fun. And I think if you're not having fun, you need to have a look in the mirror and re-evaluate what you're doing, Because at the end of the day, you need to enjoy what you do. I'm a firm believer of that.

Speaker 2: 17:17

Yeah, I agree, and again, through experimentation is how I always say you find your passion right. Nobody wakes up knowing exactly what they want to do or what they want to be. You know people, even you know, and at turn 50, I'm like I'm still figuring out what I want to be when I grow up, and that's okay, yeah, and I think today, the world we live in today, is you have that option right, like my father's generation had one career and that was it. You're stuck with one company for most of your life and there were no other options. But our generation, you know, the world is genuinely oyster in ways that were never possible before.

Speaker 1: 17:49

Yeah, exactly Like my dad, he only started like making it well in his late 50s, quite recently, and just showing me like never give up. That might not happen now, might be a long time, but it can happen. You just got to stick through it. Super important, nikhil. Where do you see yourself in boost solo? Let's say, in at the one year mark from now and then at the three year mark from now, what does the business look like to you?

Speaker 2: 18:21

Okay, so I mean, this year I want to focus on brand boost. I want to also create two different, at least two different price points, because there are a lot of people who the other thing my research has thrown up is while some people prefer to say to work with me, there are others who are self learners. So I'm going to create a video module of the course which is almost like working with me, but the video version of me, so you can do that at a lower price point, because that also gives you an option at what level you want to come in at. The other thing I'm looking to build and the feedback I've gotten. Right now, my NPS and granted it's only three clients is 10 on the feedback I've gotten for the brand boost that I've done. But the question I've gotten is now how do we, can you help us, turn this into content? So that's the other piece I'm working on this year is how do I build a content boost right, and what will that look like? Because, again, if you remember, one of the things I'm focused on is also helping the solar perto build muscles right. I don't want to create dependencies, like agencies do. They don't want them coming back to me every month to say, hey, I need, you know, x, y or Z. They can use different boosts, but, as you can see, then the idea is then to add other types of boosts. Right, you can have SEO boosts, you can have design boosts, you can have legal boosts. I mean, it's sort of endless in terms of. But I'm going to let my audience, my community, sort of dictate and tell me what they need, right, I don't want to add crap that they don't necessarily need just for the sake of adding it. So that's one part of it.

Speaker 2: 19:40

The second is, I strongly believe that there is a need and again, that's another gap I found is the need for a community in the solar perner arena. Right Now. There are lots of sort of solar perner groups and business groups and stuff like that, but what I tend to find is a lot of them are the same people. So it's like marketing solar pernors or, like you know, programming solar pernors. So what you've got is, which is great, you can exchange ideas and you sort of solve the same problems, but what you're not getting is that outside thinking or that sort of whiteboarding, right? So I want to create a solar perner community where, like my first client, you know, was a fashion consultant. My second one was doing helping blue collar people find work. The third one was a coffee school. So very different sort of businesses but going through the same problems, right In terms of growth, in terms of challenges.

Speaker 2: 20:25

So I think there's there can be, a lot of serendipity in bringing that sort of group together. So that's the second thing I want to work on this year is how do you build a community, that of like-minded people doing you know, in different categories but facing similar problems, so we can actually cross pollinate. And really, because I always say you know, as a strategist, you know the brilliance comes from. Take borrowing from the diapers that I sold for Johnson's and finding you know ways to apply the same things to a CRM solution. And you can actually do that when you cross pollinate that way. And that's where I think the beauty of serendipity and businesses.

Speaker 2: 21:00

So that's the second thing I want to do. And then in year two it's really start to build out the platform right, because obviously there's only so many brand boosts I can do so. Once I codify the system, I can bring in other strategists and then it becomes more of a marketplaces, the way I'm seeing it where we just take a percentage and but the system is again going back to the level of expertise it's trusted very varied by me and then obviously the input and output is like you know, the quality of the output is guaranteed because the people are following a certain system, unlike some of the freelance platforms. So that's sort of what the vision of the roadmap is at the moment. But again, you know, as Mike Tyson, I think, famously said, that everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face. So that's the only thing I've learned is you know.

Speaker 1: 21:42

I'm sure.

Speaker 2: 21:43

I'll be a few times down this road.

Speaker 1: 21:46

Exactly. Well, I'm excited for it. I'm definitely going to be following your journey to see where this goes. That's really awesome and exciting and I definitely think it's a needed space and I've just checked the clock. We are out of time, unfortunately. But before we go, what is the one piece of advice you would like to give other business owners looking to start a business in this crazy world?

Speaker 2: 22:12

So I will say find your angels, and I don't mean angel investors, but I mean the people who will support you, no matter what right. So one of the things I always found is because you mentioned the roller coaster to create analogy there's exhilaration, there's thrill, but there's also like the pit of your stomach and there are tunnels where you're like, oh my God, did I what? What have I done? Have I taken this leap? There's no net. So have the people who will always have your back, who always know your potential, who will always be able to sort of like giving you the positivity. Have them around you as you take this journey, right, whether it's a spouse, it's a close friend, it's an ex colleague, or all of them right or a mentor. So that's what I would say surround yourself with those people, because you're going to on this journey. They're going to be on. It's a lonely road, as we all know to be an entrepreneur or a solopreneur, so you're going to need those angels around you for the days when you need to be lifted up.

Speaker 1: 23:04

Amazing. I love that advice. Summing up, I haven't heard actually on the show yet and I appreciate that a lot. Nikhil, thanks again for your time today and for being on the show. What is the best way for people to get in touch with Nikhil Vash if they're looking to follow your journey or if you might have any offers for them to take advantage of?

Speaker 2: 23:26

So I think LinkedIn is the easiest way. So LinkedIn slash I, and I think Nikhil Vash is where you can find me, but you can also email me at NikhilVash at gmailcom if you want to reach out directly.

Speaker 1: 23:40

Okay, awesome, I appreciate that and thanks so much again, nikhil.

Speaker 2: 23:44

Thank you, dj, I really appreciate you having me.