Game-Changing Partnerships to Help Your Brand Evolve with Nirav Sheth

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Side Hustle Pro. Today, we'll be breaking down game-changing partnerships to help your brand evolve. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Nirav, Saheth, and the EO Fire Studios. Nirav is the founder and CEO of Anatta. For 15 years, he has partnered with game-changing entrepreneurs who have big dreams, incredible products, and a desire to help people and the world. And today, Foundation will talk about creating an amazing team, about cultivating and maintaining your client bases.

0:43We'll also talk about finding the right partners and maintaining lasting success and the secret sauce to Nirav's success and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Nirav and our sponsors. The Gold Digger Podcast, hosted by Jenna Kuchar, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more. One of my favorite recent episodes is titled How I've Built an Unmatched Team Culture, an insanely important topic for all business owners to dive into.

1:18Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts. Nirav, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Thank you so much for having me here. What I believe that entrepreneurs need to have, especially in the early days, is to keep their blinders on. A lot of entrepreneurs might disagree with this because they're into networking and saying, you have to connect with the community and really get out there. But I think in the early stages, you have to have blinders on, you got to stay focused, and you got to learn to say no a lot more than you say yes.

1:54I love that, Fire Nation. You know I'm always saying focus, follow one course until success. That's not follow 100 courses or listen to 100 people. It's follow one course. And today we're talking about game-changing partnerships to help your brand evolve, Fire Nation. And one thing that I'm really impressed with, Nirav, is you created this world-class global team. And we're talking of engineers, designers, researchers, strategists. What the heck fueled your hustle to create such a team? You know, in the early days, John, the biggest thing that was as I was stuck in my parents' house in my old childhood bedroom.

2:41That's where I started my company, Anada. And growing up with immigrant parents, I had a really clear objective in front of me. Either I had to figure out how to make$60 ,000, which is what I would have made coming out of my engineering degree out of college, or I had to go get a job. So that's really what fueled me to say, hey, I don't really want to get a job. I need to figure this out and make this work. Luckily, things did work out, and I made that$60 ,000 in six months, and that really was what started my company. And during the early stages, I got to live with free rent, being at my parents' house.

3:19But the biggest thing was to figure out how to get out of there, how to make enough money to really live off of, and be able to use the money savings. because I grew up in a lower middle class family. I didn't have outside investments. I didn't take on any capital. So I used all the profits that I could make from any job I could make into hiring my first key people in the company. And that's really what got things started to making a global team of engineers, designers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and strategists, and be able to put those together in the company. And the other last part that I would mention was that I picked a niche.

3:55Being able to be in e-commerce and jumping into e-commerce first was really, really important for me. Started out in Magento in 2010, moved to Shopify in 2013, but that was really key to building a global team because if you don't have a niche, you become too much of a generalist and can't really grow from that. I love that whole concept around not being a generalist, Fire Nation. I'm such a believer in becoming the number one solution to a real problem in this world. That is a specialist. That is somebody who's chosen a niche, has identified a problem, an underserved need, and is crushing it in that area.

4:31And let's be honest, Nirav, cultivating and maintaining our client bases, this will be what actually makes or breaks most companies. So I want to hear your secrets on how you've been so successful in both of these ventures. I love the question. And it's such a challenge maintaining a strong client base. But what we've been able to do to maintain, you know, relationships that last over three, four or five years is really changed how we look at how we interact with our clients. What do I mean by that? So number one, how can we actually be in alignment with the goals of our clients versus our own goals?

5:09When our goals are separated and different from the goals of our clients, that's where we see that misalignment happening. And so what we did as a company when we started out and kind of within the first couple of years, we saw this disalignment and we said, hey, how do we make that modification? So we changed our business model. So a couple of things we focus on. Most agencies out there work on an hourly business model. So that means that the way that they can be able to make the most amount of money is to be able to increase the amount of hours. and that's not always congruent with the client who says, hey, I want to get the best work out of there.

5:42I want to get the most effective thing done. That's not always related to how many hours something takes. So that was number one. Another thing we changed in our business model was instead of, so we didn't do hours. We focused on kind of being able to do retainers and flat fees. But second, not fractionating staff members. Whenever we fractionated, what we learned from that industry is that whichever client yelled at us the loudest is the ones that we focused on. not only did we not feel that it was great, but it also didn't put the interest and the love behind the clients who were being really respectful and considerate and being able to be as fair as possible.

6:18So fractionating resourcing was a big challenge in our space and we stopped fractionating. And then the third thing is in terms of business model change is that traditionally agencies hide how they go about doing the work. And we said, what if we made that transparent? What if we actually showed the client what we were doing. And by doing these things, we were able to integrate so deeply into the businesses that we work with because our goals and their goals were exactly aligned. If they wanted to go after conversion rate change, they wanted to go after profitability, they wanted to go after revenue increase, they wanted to reduce expenses.

6:51Great, we're on board, let's all do the same thing because we're paying a flat retainer with dedicated staff part of it. And that allows us to be deeply embedded into the business and the business goals and not be on the outside. And that really sets us up to becoming a partner for the brands that we work with versus just a traditional outside agency. So there's a lot of reasons you were successful with your partnerships. But I mean, your average tenure of your partnerships lasted over three years, which is so important to a business because churn will kill a business more than people realize.

7:25I mean, it's unbelievable how painful that can be for a lot of businesses. So talk about maybe one thing that you think was so key and having that average tenure be over three years? You know, really, it comes down to that alignment that I spoke about. But when it comes to alignment, let's talk about what our clients are really needing. If they see an ROI that's positive from having you a part of their team, they're going to want to keep continuing to go further. So when we get to do our best work and when we are truly serving as partners, we're able to raise the overall gross margin we're able to create growth and so when that's roi positive every single time and you'll be able to show the results it's a no-brainer for clients to say hey of course we would love to keep you a part of the team and keep being a partner to us because you guys are aligned with us and when you are helping us hit our goals therefore you're part of the team so let's make this happen as the founder of anata your goal has been to find partners rather than be viewed as just an agency.

8:27So how do you accomplish this? How do you structure the initial conversations through all the way to that partnership so that this happens? It's a really big differentiation between what a partner looks like and what an agency does. And not to speak ill of an agency in any manner, but there's traditionally agencies work as doers. They take orders at face value because the old adage is the customer is always right. So let's go ahead and if the customer says to do something, we're going to go ahead and do that. And when we truly are serving as a partner and when we're looking to take on a client and be able to really be able to accelerate them, we have to bring in two things that really make a big difference.

9:08One is strategy and second is a point of view. If we have the strategy for success or at least have a framework for our strategy to be able to implement with a client, that becomes extremely helpful. but along with that, sticking to our guns and having a strong point of view. And when I said that, that doesn't mean we always have to hold on so tight, but to actually provide a point of view so that our clients can really be able to see a viewpoint that's not only just different from theirs, but that's allowing them to see the business angle of it. And so with Anata, we're in the trenches with the brands we work with.

9:42We're helping their team get out of the weeds. We're not saying yes to everything. We're actually saying, hey, maybe that's not the right course of action. Maybe there's a different approach for it. And so strategy really, really matters. And the way to go about doing this is actually being able to waking up and going to sleep towards the brand. And really, that comes back to us not fractionating our resources. I truly feel people do their best work when they're dedicated and solely focused to one thing. and when you're running an agency and you're running a partner group like we do where we apply and we supply dedicated staff to the brands that we work with that really allows us to pay attention and focus and really really be so embedded in part of the company that they were truly a part of their team that's what's going to help move the needle and that's really what helps us becoming a partner because when we're dedicated we're not fractionated we're paying attention to the goals, we're able to help achieve those goals, become ROI positive, and then be able to really be able to provide a strong strategy and point of view the entire time.

10:49This is Powerful Stuff, Fire Nation. I really hope you're understanding the value in approaching every partnership in this direction. We have so much more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors. If you're anything like me, then you're looking forward to a lot of outdoor time this summer. I'm talking about hitting the pool, going on epic hikes and maybe even getting in a few pickleball matches. But in order to do all that, you and your team need to work smarter, not harder. That's why we're so excited about HubSpot's integrated AI tech. It's helping teams automate the more tedious parts of running a business.

11:25With AI-powered tools built into HubSpot's CRM, you can do research, pull reports, and write copy in a flash. In fact, recent research shows that marketers are already slicing time spent on manual administrative tasks in half thanks to AI from five hours to 2.5 hours a day, which amounts to almost four weeks of saved time per year. And with four weeks of your time back, you could be enjoying a lot more pool time, hiking, and pickleball. So what are you waiting for? Learn more and get started today at HubSpot.com. Nirav, we're back and you work with more than six direct-to-consumer industry leaders?

12:05I mean, we're talking titans like Athletic Greens, Rothies, Molecule, True Botanicals, Dollar Shave Club, Brunt Workwear. How do you create these partnerships? And as importantly, maintain lasting success. Creating these partnerships has been, you know, working purely from referral basis for the last 15 years in business. We just celebrated our 15th year anniversary And we're so proud about the work that we've done to help work with, especially these strong DTC industry leaders. And the way that they've been able to work with us and find us has been through our referrals by just doing really amazing work for various clients and then being able to see that and say, hey, I want a piece of that.

12:46And I want to see what this is like. And what that means and kind of what approaches really help these brands grow and enable is being able to really work with a strong strategic partner like us to be able to see technology and brand from a business perspective. And I want to say that again. Sometimes when agencies are working with brands and you see this time and time again, they have a very clear, hey, this is how we're going to code something. This is how we're going to design something. And that's all great. But what business perspective are they bringing to mind? And why this comes up and becomes so important is that you want to choose the right technology solutions, the right brand solutions, based upon what stage of business you're at.

13:29If you're a startup, you have certain business decisions that you're going to make to say, hey, I don't want to spend as much money here, but I need to be able to move the needle in this, this, and this area. Great. So what is the right technology and brand solution for you at that stage? versus a mid-market brand that's doing, let's say,$75 to$100 million. And they have a different set of goals that they're trying to obtain and reach. So it's really knowing where that brand is at their current stage, where are they trying to grow towards, and how do we be nimble and effective through those stages?

14:00There is not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution for technology and brand in any brand that you work with. There's always going to be some nuance towards it. And when you look at it from the business perspective, you're really being able to obtain, say, how do we make this worthwhile? Where does it make sense to spend money? Where does it make sense to buy something versus build something? And how do we make those decisions so that those are critical to the financial success of the business as well as hitting their next target? I love that just thought process of when is it time to buy something or should we just build this?

14:37and actually sitting down and creating the pros and the cons list and seeing what is to the long-term benefit here. And sometimes it will be to buy it and sometimes it will be to build it, but having that thought process, having that conversation. Now, I want to end with a bang. And of course, this sounds like a vague question, but at the end of the day, you can give a very targeted response and it's up to you what that is. What is your secret sauce to success? Such a great question. And I would say our secret sauce at Anata and what has really led to our success is our ability to retain our clients and what that means for us.

15:17And it's not just a retention game purely of saying the word, but it's when you help a client grow and you stay deeply involved in their business as a partner, you build such a strong trust relationship with them that will carry through both on the business side and making sure that you succeed from that. business relationships don't have to be purely transactional. They can be partnerships without having to include a revenue share. And for us to date, we've never taken a revenue share a part of the businesses that we've worked with, but we've always given that same level of energy, time, and ability to provide that strategy to all of our clients in such a strong way because we believe in them.

15:57We want to see them succeed because when they succeed, we succeed as well. When they grow, we grow as well. And that truly has been the way that Anada has not only grown to become a sizable business, but to also be working with some of the industry titans out there. See, I love that. I love how partnerships shouldn't be looked at as purely transactional Fire Nation. They're more than that. And that whole idea of when they win, we win. When they grow, we grow. It's so true. You always need to be looking for those win-win-win scenarios. Like with Entrepreneurs on Fire, I want it to be a win for my guests, for Nirav.

16:35I want it to be a win for you, Fire Nation, the listeners. And I want it to be a win for Entrepreneurs on Fire, our business, our podcast. And we always want to have everybody winning in these scenarios. Now, with everything we've talked about here today, what is the one key takeaway that you really want to make sure our listeners get from our conversation? I want listeners to find really strong partners with them on their business journey. I think when you find the right partner and you find the company that cares and wants to be a part of the process, that's where you're going to win. People say that the best way to grow their business is by having the key hires and having really great staff.

17:13It's also by having really great partners that are going to ride and die with you guys as you business roads. Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with NS and JLD today. So keep up the heat. And Nirav, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, learn more about you and your business, what's your call to action for us today? I would say contact us today. Go to our website at anatta.io, A-N-A-T-T-A.io, and come reach out to us. We would love to be of assistance and help you grow. Fire Nation, head over to eofire.com, type Nirav, that's N-I-R-A-V, in the search bar.

17:53The show notes page will pop up with links to everything that we've talked about here today. Of course, as Nirav mentioned, head directly over to anatta.com. Connect with them, learn more about them. And thank you, Nirav, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you so much for having me, John. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Nirav for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That is why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days.

18:34And we're talking step by step. Visit thefreedomjournal.com and I'll catch you there or on the flip side. The Gold Digger Podcast, hosted by Jenna Kuchar, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more. One of my favorite recent episodes is titled How I've Built an Unmatched Team Culture, an insanely important topic for all business owners to dive into. Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts.