342.Biggest lessons from 500 podcasts w/ Amardeep

0:00Amardeep Parmar:I've now released 500 podcast episodes across five years. Some of my guests have included Mark Randolph, who founded Netflix, Ev Williams, who founded Twitter, people like Amar Shah, who co-founded Wave. I've always been through more investment-backed women in the UK than anybody else. So what have I learned over across 500 episodes? This episode is going to give you loads of gossip, loads of dirt, because I know that nobody's going to watch this episode. So because you're listening, I'm going to tell you some of the stuff I might not say publicly. So break it down, right? If you don't know, I'm Amadeek Palmer, co-founder of BayHQ.

0:35Amardeep Parmar:In this episode, I'm going to give you the three biggest things I've learned from 500 podcasts, what I'm building today, how that can help you. And then finally, if you ever want to start your own podcast or grow your public confidence, I'm going to give you tips for that too. So part one, what are the three biggest things I've learned from 500 episodes? First, so I've interviewed some incredible people, right? People that I used to look up to, people I put on a pedestal. And the reality is every single podcast guest I've ever had on, whether they've got 5 million followers or 10 million followers or they've saved like thousands of lives, whatever it is, every single one of them eats, sleeps and shits.

1:11Amardeep Parmar:I don't care how big you are. We're all human. And that's the biggest thing that's been my takeaway that's made me more successful. Because all of a sudden, when you're sitting across and in this chair, for example, like four billion has been raised by people sat in this chair. I'm sitting in this chair too. So when you're going about life, right, you look up to these people, you listen to these podcasts, you're like, oh my God, they're so inspiring. They've got their own worries. They've got their own concerns. They're worried about, are they a good manager? They're worried about, are they looking after their kids well enough?

1:39Amardeep Parmar:So when you get ahead to these people, actually it really humanizes them. And that's the thing that maybe you don't see. So when you think about you're trying to be successful, you can't be successful if you look at other people and think you could never do that. You can never be like that because all of these people came from somewhere. And obviously some of them had massive advantages. Some of them had parents who were billionaires. Some of them had like massive fluky larks, but they all just put themselves in the arena. And if you didn't put yourself in the arena because you think that these people on my podcast are better than you, then you can't do it.

2:12Amardeep Parmar:So number one lesson, and it's helped me so much in my career and everything I'm doing, is treat everybody like a human, try to connect to them on the human level, rather than trying to impress them so much. And if you can do that, then everything else becomes way easier. Second lesson is that there's so much importance behind actually being in the room yourself. And I can like pull the curtains here, right? Is that so many people who've been in the podcast and what they're saying in the podcast doesn't really reflect the reality of their actual situation. Because nobody can come on this podcast and tell the public that they hate their co-founder or they hate their investors or that things are going really badly right now, they might go bust.

2:54Amardeep Parmar:They're not allowed to say that stuff publicly. They can't talk about how they had a really bad employee who maybe tried to sue them. All these different problems are actually going on behind the scenes as a founder. You don't get to find out in the public arena. So that's why it's really important to get out there. You can listen to the podcast. You can learn stuff from the podcast. You can learn the clean path. You can learn go to market. You can get inspired by their stories. But actually, if you really want to learn and you really want to actually build something off scale and actually build your own startup, make sure you interact with people where there's no recording, where the cameras aren't rolling, where nobody's got their granolas going on, right?

3:29Amardeep Parmar:Because when you're chatting to people, that's where you get to find out there is real problems. Because so much I've had to learn about how do you hire correctly? How do you get the right people there? When you're thinking about partnerships, again, nobody can publicly say they didn't want to put themselves liable for saying that this person was a bad employee or this person was a bad partner or this person's a bad investor. But you need to learn these kind of things behind the scenes. So second lesson is about don't just consume content. Actually get out there, talk to people. And often as well, people try to have like mentorship sessions, right?

4:03Amardeep Parmar:They try to reach out to random people on cold messaging. But the reality is if you're just in the room, that makes life a lot easier. So for our platform, you can reach over like 300 mentors. Do that, right? But make sure there's no fireflies. There's no granola. there's nothing listening to you as you do this mentorship sessions. Those are great for other types of meetings, but when you're trying to get behind what really makes this person tick, if they're not being recorded, they can be way more blunt about what's going on and you can really get to understand things. So make sure you're in the room.

4:34Amardeep Parmar:Consume content, podcasts are great, whatever, but podcasts are just one part of your diet. The other part has to be meeting people in person and meeting people in an environment where it doesn't feel like a pedestal kind of environment, right? If you go to somebody on a panel and you're then sucking up to them, they're not going to tell you the real things that are going on in their world because you've created this barrier. You've got to be able to talk to them on the level. And the third most important lesson, I know I'm writing through these quick because I want to get to the value for you, is that so much you can see online, it's all about being the perfect founder.

5:06Amardeep Parmar:That doesn't exist. There isn't some archetype that always works. What it is, there's underlying skills here, resilience, resourcefulness, those kind of things, yes. But the other reality too is that you see the superstar founder, whereas reality, most people are co-founders. So if you're really good at one skill, but you're like another skill, you get the co-founders to balance it out. You don't need to be the best at everything. And that's where you miss out because everybody talks about, like, there's Steve Jobs, they forget about Steve Norseniak, Bill Gates, but you forget about his co-founder.

5:36Amardeep Parmar:Often there are these teams around you. And the solo founders that do do incredibly well, often it's because they're really good at hiring and getting the right people on board. No matter how good you are, no matter what people say online about one person, billion-dollar startup, et cetera, et cetera, the reality is this all comes down to the people around you. So when you think about building your startup, thinking about building your team, it's how do you get the right people involved to do the things that you aren't so good at? Or maybe you are good at them, but somebody else can be better than you at it.

6:03So when you think about how do you take these stories ahead,

6:07Amardeep Parmar:often you hear the I, I, I, and the reality is it's a week. So if you look at BayHQ, you have me, obviously, but you have Gurveh, who's my co-founder. And without him, this wouldn't work because I don't do one-to-one meetings. I don't do coffees and calls. He's the one who takes those meetings. He's the one who converts. My role is like the public face, right? So I'm the one doing this kind of thing. He would hate to do this. You can look back to episode one of BayHQ and you can see him gripping the chair, right? He doesn't like this kind of stuff, which is good because then I can do this stuff and he can do stuff that I don't like to do or stuff where he's much better at it.

6:40Amardeep Parmar:He's much better at partnerships and sales than me because I don't like to frame things in the right way. I'm not necessarily good at that part, but I can get the people in. I can get people to like us. I can get the brand going, and he can then convert. So we have that really good relationship. And also the big thing is trust. Is that often what you feel with co-founders and co-founder relationships at work is about trust. I'm not second-guessing what he's doing. I know that he's got it down. I know that he's going to do the right thing for the business, and I know that I can trust him. and he knows you can trust me.

7:10Amardeep Parmar:He doesn't know what I'm supposed to write this episode. I don't need to run it by him because he knows that I'm going to say things that are hopefully interesting to you guys and hopefully get you more involved. So let's recap. Three biggest lessons from doing 500 podcasts. Number one, everyone eats, sleeps and shits. It doesn't matter how great anybody's achievements are. They're all just human and treat them like you're human, understand what makes them tick and humanize them. Number two is that there's the importance of being in the room. You can consume all the content you want but often the most important lessons are in the bits that people can't say in public and number three is the importance of the co-founder relationship and that there's many ways and many paths to success you don't have to be the archetype of what you see online in terms of what makes a successful founder so whatever skills you can lack you can find somebody to balance you out and together as a team you can then be what all the co-founder traits you need are so these are three lessons from 500 podcasts distilled into three lessons So now let's go into BayHQ, right?

8:09Amardeep Parmar:So if you don't know, hopefully you do know if you're listening to this podcast, I'm Amadeep Parma. I'm the co-founder of BayHQ. BayHQ is the UK startup ecosystem for Asian founders. What does that actually mean? So we've gone through so many iterations to get here. Obviously, in the 500 podcast, when we started out, we were like, we're going to do everything for everybody. And there's been so many mistakes along that path. Now what we are is much more clear. We run an accelerator once a year. that accelerates about getting the best Asian founders venture capital backing. That's an eight-week to 12-week program.

8:41We're going to adapt that over time. But of the founders who went on the program this year, they've raised 6 million since, and that's about three months ago so far. And we expect all of them, or many of them,

8:50Amardeep Parmar:to do exceptionally well, and we're really grateful to be part of that journey. We also have our event side, right? And that's the community side. So by the time this episode comes out, 16 ,000 people will have been to our events and talks. and we do those with the likes of HBC, NatWest, Dell and so many others. So we work with these massive brands and all of our brands are completely free, which means that you can then interact with the people that we get to know and we can connect you in. We also have the media side, so we've got the podcast. So this podcast now, this is actually my third podcast.

9:21So Bay HQ, this should be episode 342, which is insane, right? And we then have what I have the previous podcast I did, which Entrepreneur's Handbook, which had 90 episodes.

9:32Amardeep Parmar:And that's where I interviewed Ev Williams, Mark Randolph, Greg Jackson, who fans of Oculus Energy, and some of the biggest VCs in the world. And I had another podcast I just started with called Mindful and Driven. So that's the content there. But for BayHQ, it's twice a week. We have venture capital partners and principals on here. We have founders who've raised at least, say,£3 million or$3 million. And we're constantly getting these people in the room to give their advice and their insights for you. We have the book, so everything's over there. So startups are outsiders. So it's like you can buy on Amazon.

10:02It's like 50, I think it's 50 reviews of five stars. If you buy it, give me a five-star review. Thanks. We also have our report, which is the data behind the work we're doing, right? How much funding is going to Asian heritage founders. I can now reveal two about BayHQ Ventures. BayHQ Ventures, if all goes to plan, will be investing sector agnostic into the best Asian co-founded companies where at least one founders of Asian heritage at the early stages. And we built this massive community. how do we now turn that into actually directly investing people and really backing them and making things happen and that's a longer term plan for this because if we do that well and do that right then we can then pump more money into our grassroots programs and help more people and one of those grassroots programs is youth startups so now there's over 100 students have

10:46Amardeep Parmar:been on that we had the final at VaynerMedia a couple weeks ago completely free for the students completely free for the schools and work in schools in East London where I grew up and what that then does is enables these students these kids to be in the room with some exceptional people they met Saishiv already who co-founded Niobolt so when we recorded the episode he was sitting there I was sitting there and the students were sitting behind the camera where you're seeing now they got to meet a guy who built a billion dollar company they last year the people got to meet Wave co-founder Amashar they get to meet these incredible people just in the room and we want to do more of that kind of stuff and to do that we need drawbacking but also in the longer term, how do we make ourselves more sustainable so we can keep doing incredible things?

11:27We have the platform. So on our platform, you can find the 300 mentors, you can connect with each other because it's not a real community if you're all just messaging me, right? The real community side is you guys helping each other out. So I really advise you for listening to this right now to listen to that piece of advice and help each other out because there's a limit to how much time I have. There's a limit to what I can do, but I can be the catalyst and BHQ can be the catalyst and go they can be the catalyst to get you together to help each other out and that's

11:55Amardeep Parmar:where the real magic happens one other thing i'm building right and i'm just giving you all of the goss now because i don't know who's listening and it's probably the super fans listening to this right so thanks for supporting us i'm also building a game right now right and a game we're going to go into schools and we're going to help students to learn how to build startups what information is but try and make it an enjoyable and way that they keep returning back to it right That's going on in the background. We have so many other things going on. We have like tons of events going on We've got the report and so on.

12:25So there's loads of exciting things happening

12:27Amardeep Parmar:And there's a hell of a lot of work that you can probably tell from my face And if you want to volunteer to help us out you can do that for the website too one other exciting thing right this year we've done loads of regional events and We want to expand out. So this is a working theory. So I probably shouldn't say this, but I'm gonna say anyway We're thinking about doing BayX events, right? Which is where community people in the different regions can then organize their own events. We'll give them a slight budget. They can then organize those. And they can keep the community together, even if me or Gervé can't be there.

12:59And longer term, this is great, right? Because we can then have events constantly throughout the year. You guys get to meet each other. You get to meet the people who can potentially open doors for you. They can make a difference to your business. They can inspire you.

13:10Amardeep Parmar:They can suffer with you. because obviously part of it is that too, right? It's like, I love a rant, right? And you can probably tell that from me speaking now. But through that, you get to meet those people who can understand your pain. They can understand the journey you're going through. If you look at my backstory, right? I founded Bay HQ in 2022 with Gerver. And a big part of that was related to my own journey. So I was a good boy. I got good grades. I went to a good university. I worked in consulting. And I never really considered that I could ever do a startup or do the kind of things I'm doing because I didn't have those kind of people around me.

13:43Amardeep Parmar:I was very lucky that when it came to time for me to quit my job, that my dad believed in me and my family believed in me. They encouraged me to quit my job. And I know that's not the case for many of you listening. I know many people have family or friends who are kind of like, it's called like Nazar, right? The evil eye where those people are wishing badly on them. Like when we started Bear HQ, my dad passed away around that time. And for me, Bear HQ really does have that impact drive. This is very much trauma bonded to me. I know it's a weird thing to say, but this comes from that place right of i'm exceptionally lucky to have the kind of dad i had right who believed in me it's not about money it's not about him they didn't pump money into the stream like that but what he did do is tell me that i'd be able to figure out and i can't explain like how big an impact that has on you when the people around you who love you the most tell you that you're gonna be able to figure this out this will all go well there wasn't like oh but what by this what about that they're like nah you'll you'll be fine because they just had that trust in me right they had their belief in me and i know many people don't have that so what we hope as we build bay hq as this continues to go forward so as we've been a generational organization can bay hq be the kind of organization

15:00Amardeep Parmar:hello hello quick interruption to let you know a bit more about bay hq We're the community for high growth Asian heritage entrepreneurs, operators and investors in the UK. You can join us totally free at thebayhq.com forward slash join. There you'll get our CEO structure in your inbox every week, which is content, events and opportunities. You can also get access to our free startup fundamentals course by joining. Let's get back to the show.

15:36When people who don't have somebody like my dad, they can come to Bayescu and have that supportive community or people who believe in them, people who push them, challenge them. But there's people who will tell them, if you work hard, if you do things right, you can build your dreams. And that's what this is about, right? Because we're not about the small ambition. We're about helping people who really want to change the world. They want to make the world a better place. They want to transform their industries they want to create jobs they want to like make things better for everybody right and they don't put a limit on themselves they don't put a ceiling on themselves because i said earlier every single person who's been on this podcast eats leaps and shits and so do you so why can't you be on this podcast someday why can't you be somebody who's raises a ton of money to take on a new industry why can't you be the kind of person who builds a massive business tons of revenue why can't you someday be the kind of person who's head of an investment fund who's making these decisions to then invest in the best companies and to open up those doors and create that surface area for the world to be a better place.

16:36Why not, right?

16:37Amardeep Parmar:That's a bit about BayHQ and what we're doing there. And as I told you, so this podcast, we've got three biggest lessons we had, so if you remember them, we've got a bit about BayHQ and what we're doing today. And the next part is if you kind of want to be like me, which is again, it's a bit weird to say, but if you want to do this kind of thing right where so 500 podcasts ago my first ever podcast was released the month after I quit my job and I did that on purpose you might not realize this now because of the me talking to the camera and me being able to be silly or whatever like that but I was very insecure right like I was freaking terrified of this crap where if you told me five years ago I could do this or get to 500 episodes I'd think you're just like delusional I started the podcast because I didn't have the confidence to speak, because I didn't feel like people could understand me.

17:24Amardeep Parmar:And I got so much social anxiety. I was like, let me do that exposure therapy. I'm starting the podcast to try to get better at the way I speak. Because you probably noticed now, I did not prepare what I was going to say here, right? And there's a little notepad down there, like what's the three areas? But I'm just talking. And years ago, when I grew up, I grew up in Ilford. I grew up speaking like Benang, Trungya, Raghavan. and there's nothing wrong with that. But that gave me an imposter syndrome where I felt like other people couldn't understand me. I felt like I was being judged, even if they weren't judging me.

17:57And this is a frustrating part, right? And what it is, is that people who maybe come from where I came from or people who didn't grow up very eloquent, they've got some amazing ideas, but people don't believe in them or people look down on them. And I want to change that. I want to change that mentality. And I always, like, when I talk about the ways to speak, it's not making fun of that because I want you to know that I grew up in that way. And now you're listening to me. Now all these billionaires listen to me. All of the industry listens to me. And I grew up speaking like that. So if you grew up speaking like that, then why can't you be a voice that matters?

18:29And like, we've been to the House of Lords, we've been to number 10, and I'm just a boy from Enzo at the end of the day, right?

18:34Amardeep Parmar:So for me, the podcast is about that. And when I started the podcast out, the first ever guest throwback was, well, I think the first episode was me, but then there was a second episode with Zuli Rain, who was like a writer from Medium at the time, and Nick Wolny. So those are the first two guests ever I had. And Bane HQ, the first two guests were, well, first guest was Gervé, which is kind of cheating. And then you had Jasper Eekor, who's authored a book, and then also Hassan Kubu, who also authored a book. The point of that is this wasn't like, oh, I'm so confident, oh, my friends are telling me to do a podcast.

19:09Amardeep Parmar:My friends were like, you can't speak. Like, I don't know if you can be a podcaster, right? Even when I was guessing on other people's podcasts my own podcast. People were like, oh, you don't speak clearly, you mumble. And that affected my confidence, right? I was like, oh man, like you don't want people to think like badly of you. But now if you notice, I edited the first, I want to say 30 to 40 episodes myself, maybe even 100 episodes myself, because that taught me my tells. That taught me how I speak. It taught me when I go monotone and when do I vary my voice. And hopefully it's interesting listen now because that made me a better speaker because i had to keep editing to myself when i was umming and ahhing and liking and like this and like this and like yeah like whatever i then started to cut down my vocabulary because i was one editing it so biggest piece of advice even if you don't want to become a podcast you don't want to do this stuff just practice that where you listen to yourself speak i know it's awkward i know people don't like it but if you are serious about being a public speaker or serious about having a media brand or somebody who can have a voice then like suck it up like I know it's blunt advice but edit yourself get used to your invoice get used to is this point clear get used to is this boring is this monotone because if you're going to edit yourself why should other people listen to you if you can't listen to yourself that's like just disrespectful other people's time so edit yourself to begin with number one piece of advice.

20:40If you want to do a podcast in particular, first of all, why? Because there's a hell of a lot of work and the surface areas to try and become the next Stephen Bartlett just isn't really there anymore. There's so many celebrity podcasters, the likelihood you're going to get to a million views in a month, none of that isn't there. BayHQ doesn't try to do that. We try to be the best for our particular niche rather than try to be the best for everybody. That means we get fewer views, but the people that listen to this, like you, you're ambitious people. Your people are going to make moves. We want to be the podcast for those kind of people rather than just the people who are doing it for the sake of it.

21:15So that next piece, right? So if you're doing a podcast, focus in on the why. And it can be to learn from guests. It can be built to relationships. Those are all good reasons. If it's to become famous, like just don't. Like that doesn't make sense. Guess another people's podcast instead. And have something which matters to you then makes you drive you behind this. So on the Why of a Podcast, right? And starting out as well, to get this fancy setup, right? This is our offices. Like we've built our own studio. We've got like soundproofing here. We've got soundproofing there. We've got the purple lights.