Find Your Next Profitable Idea With Sankeetha Selvarajha

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED [00:00:00] Diane: Hey, Hey, today's guest Sankeetha Selvarajah is an award-winning startup attorney. And with more than a decade of legal and business consulting experience, she's passionate about creating better businesses and making law accessible to business owners. When I first heard her talking about finding your profitable idea. I knew we had to hear more on the show. Hey Sankeetha are welcome to the show. [00:00:21] Sankeetha: You for having me. [00:00:23] Diane: So let's kick things off with a little bit about you and your business journey. [00:00:27] Sankeetha: So I, my current day job right now is I am a business transactional attorney that practices in the Massachusetts and New York. What that is, is I'm outside general counsel to a little over 250 small businesses and. So we advise them from incorporation all the way to exit. So we talk them through how to create a company, how to grow their company, advise on contracts, partnerships, tech, and then also we take them into fundraising and then hopefully, and inevitably the exit of the company as well. [00:00:59] Diane: Wow. So you get to see all the behind the scenes. [00:01:03] Sankeetha: I get to see all the, everything. At this point, I've also started about seven companies. My own south. I've merged two and I operate four right now, and I've failed at one. [00:01:14] Diane: Goodness, not busy at all Then. [00:01:16] Sankeetha: No. So some of these companies can operate some, like, you know, that as defacto companies. Some of them are holding companies where I put my IP in and you'll talk about strategy in that. And about one of the companies is my future company, the one that I'm slowly working towards, which is what I would want to work on my retirement company. So I have plans for certain types of endeavors. [00:01:40] Diane: Wow. so we met in , a course development program for, for everyone run by our mutual friends at Hello Audio. And the second I heard your course topic was around profitable ideas. I knew, like I wanted to know more immediately. But before we dive in to tell me all the things about profitable ideas, Because you see so much behind the scenes, what do you see entrepreneurs doing that kind of made this your course inspiration? [00:02:09] Sankeetha: it's not so much what they were doing as what they weren't doing. I've been practicing for almost 14, 15 years now. And so in that, we've seen, I've heard every idea, okay, every idea under the sun and there're amazing ideas. They're. They're funny ideas. They're inventive, they're innovative, they're simple. Some of them are illegal, so we don't want that. Okay. But legality is also a concept of time as well. So what was illegal 20 years ago might be legal now. Okay. So we have to take that into account. But generally, the big ones that are morally incomprehensible are considered illegal, and we don't. Walk down that path. But really what inspired this was about the fact that I was watching all these founders come up with these great ideas, but they wouldn't execute or they thought that it was a great idea and they spent a lot of time and energy on it. When they could have done a lot more research in the beginning to figure out whether it would've been a profitable idea enough to spend the time to pursue it. Okay. So this is more, a less a gauge or a, so a pseudo test to see whether your idea will be profitable enough and then you make the decision whether you wanna pursue your time and energy towards it. I'd rather. [00:03:28] Diane: so, [00:03:28] Sankeetha: Spend the time now to do it and instead of actually just sitting on the idea in itself, there's a lot of people that have brilliant ideas that don't do anything, and I value execution, not ideation more than anything. [00:03:40] Diane: so it's kind of twofold. It's the people. A can't get off their butts, could be motivated by seeing how profitable it could be, and the people who are chasing like every squirrel idea that runs past them, to actually just take a moment and be like, Hey, that idea might not be profitable. The squirrel that's running behind it might actually be the one that's most profitable. [00:04:00] Sankeetha: Yes, absolutely. And the, and like it or not, we all have that friend that is always chasing the next big idea or is always looking for the next way to make the next million or the next thousand or next a hundred thousand whatnot. I like those people a lot because no matter what happens, momentum and execution. Goes a, a long way and it's really about probability. Sooner or later you're gonna hit on something, right? I'd rather prefer those people than the ones that continue to have ideas and put it into their notebooks and don't do anything about it. Okay? So this is also a call to arms and saying, Hey, get the notebook out. We can give you the steps to actually start pursuing that idea and seeing whether it's worth your time, but half of it's also getting out of your own. [00:04:40] Diane: Yeah, so the people who have the notebooks and maybe the people who are chasing on, but the people who have the notebooks, how do they open that notebook and start to go? I think it's gonna make 17 billion in revenue, but they forget that it might also cost them 16 billion to get there. [00:04:54] Sankeetha: Yeah, we start very simple because I made it a simple primer more than anything. The whole course is probably an hour, an hour and 15 minutes, and it's an audio course, so you can pop me into your ears and you know, take a stroll or have a coquito and sit, sit by a fireplace, whatnot. [00:05:10] Diane: Flip through your notebook, pages, lovingly looking at all the ideas you've had over the years. [00:05:15] Sankeetha: We've also included a workbook. Okay? So the workbook is like almost 40 pages at this point, so that's your execution as well. But this is more or less that you sit down, you take a look through your idea, and first, right off the bat, we ask you to identify your unique selling proposition. Okay? Which is, what is your idea? Okay? So what is your product or your service? How will you be preferring it to the world? And then how will. Who will you serve as a customer and how will you be adding value to that customer? Very simple. My product or service gives the customer a value. One plus value two. Very simple sentence. Okay. That also doubles as your elevator pitch too. Okay. Very simple. Can be a very succinct, and you can explain it to anyone. So right off the top of that, we want you to explain how. Okay. And that in that exercise in itself is a great way to a corral your idea and start thinking about how you could a, add value, how you can actually identify your customer in the market that you're going for as well. Then we break it down into seven consecutive steps after that. And we talk through customer we talk about market, what market are you in? Then we talk about how to identify your value. So three different customers your. How to differentiate your value. And then we get into something that I really, really think is really important, okay? Because profit is a an equation that comes with a product plus the execution of your time and your energy as well. Okay? And those are intangible profit moves. Nobody really talks about it, but it is there. Cause no matter what, if you have an idea or not, if you don't have the. Or if you don't have the appropriate energy to put to words, creating this idea and making it into a profitable company, which is your end goal, actually it, you, you shouldn't be pursuing this at that point. So having a good concept of self along the way is also a great tool as well. So, concept of time. How much time do you have to put towards this and how much energy you have to actually take it to the next. [00:07:21] Diane: And I think that time and energy is so key because when I hear a new idea from someone, I always hear the most optimistic revenue possibility. I hear it'll only take me a an hour a week to run it, which never includes prep for that hour, recovery from that hour, follow up from that hour, any of those little things. But I very rarely hear development time. So actually this is gonna take me 50 hours to develop the product, to record the videos to. Come up with a curriculum to figure out who I'm gonna sell to, to write a set, like all the things that go. We as entrepreneurs, we are already living in the state where we have done the thing and it's a huge success versus actually having that like step back moment to start with. [00:08:14] Sankeetha: Agreed. So there's also a time grid that I've included in this. It's a time allocation grid because even enduring your. Your research, it's time to research. Okay? Time to actually create, so that's where you're spending a lot of that time to actually understand the market, understand your customer. That's all research. You need time to do that, okay? Then you actually actually have time to create time to create your actual product or service, or tweak your product or service from the research that you've had. Then you have to actually have time for feedback. Time for feedback includes testing it with your. So you can't launch anything without actually testing it with your demographic in some fashion. Okay? Then the last part is time to actually tweak and adjust. Now you'll always be tweaking and adjusting, and you'll always be, you know, testing it with your customer. Those two steps, never change it throughout the lifeline of your entrepreneurial journey. Okay? Actually, I'd even argue that the entire grid doesn't change as well. Okay? You're always gonna have new markets, new research, and actually new customers to actually test it along the. Especially if you're growing, in your path. [00:09:17] Diane: So the idea behind a profitable idea is really, actually, to me, it's almost like if you were a startup and pitching somebody for investment, it's treating your idea in that same way. Like, is this idea worth your investment so that you're presenting all of that data almost to yourself as if you were the third party investor. [00:09:40] Sankeetha: Yes. I'd actually take that a step further, and it's a beautiful analogy, Diane, and I'd actually say it's, you're investing it to your future self. Okay. And you're saying, Hey, future self, is this worth my time and energy to take it to the next step? Okay. Is this have, does this have the potential for profit? Does this have the potential? And you don't have to create a company. You could actually just create this idea and keep it as a hobby. No one is stopping you from that. Okay. Nobody's at [00:10:07] Diane: we're allowed to have Hobbies? no, no. no, no, no. [00:10:10] Sankeetha: hobbies. Okay, so you can take it out of the idea stage. The whole I point of this is take it out of the idea stage and start executing on it and decide whether you wanna continue it as a hobby or take it to the next level and enter it into the stream of. And create a company. Okay. Create a profitable idea off of that. And sometimes some ideas. After you do your evaluation, you'll also decide, remember, we can't tell you what to do. We can just tell you the path, and you decide what you wanna do with that. But what maybe the option is also waiting or just seeing if the market is ready for it. I'll even cite, you know, recreational marijuana. About 30 years ago, this was completely illegal. Now about, almost about 25 states within the United States have deemed. Legal. Okay. So that's just that, that the market had to, and legalization had to happen before that happened. So it's a concept of time. Also, here's another thing. There's no such thing as a bad idea, just not enough market reception, meaning there's not anyone to buy it. Okay? Or there's not anyone to actually receive it in that realm that A, it's legal. Okay. Because let's be honest, even though recreational marijuana was illegal, there was always a market for it, except it was on the black market. Okay? So we're gonna stick to, we're gonna stick to legal ideas, okay? For the sake of this, I'm still a lawyer, okay? But yeah, idea is the fact that you have to keep deciding whether you wanna pursue the idea. Maybe the market's ready for it. Maybe you have customers for it, but you don't have. So now you have to decide whether you're gonna allocate enough time. What does that mean for you? Do you have to, you know, have difficult conversations with your spouse about a, taking the kids on Saturday morning so you can work on your idea or, you know, working it out with your neighbor so that you can have play dates for them, or actually taking some time off from your job. Or automating or delegating it to somebody else for the minor task so that you can decide what you wanna do as well. Then the other option is maybe you don't wanna run the company. Maybe you don't have the time and you don't have the energy, but this is a valuable idea. You could also sell your idea to someone else, okay. To go and, you know, do it for them, own their own cells. At that point, I'd recommend you engage an attorney and an IP attorney. So to decide how. Convey your idea because that's intellectual capital at that point. [00:12:30] Diane: I think this is probably really soothing for the people with ideas full of notebooks because when you start saying like, okay, like let's get the ideas out and let's start evaluating them. That feels really overwhelming. Like, well, I have 17,000 ideas. What if 16,999 of them are profitable? What will I do? And so actually being able to say like, you don't have to do everything just because it's a good idea. You, you don't actually have to do anything with it. You can pick the best idea, I guess, from that bunch and run with that. [00:13:01] Sankeetha: And you do, and you, you just have to spend that little time deciding whether that idea's gonna be profitable or not, depending on the time that you're gonna enter it into stream of commerce. If it's like today, February, 2023, you wanna put out an idea, you have to look at the market right now. Or you're gonna say, I wanna launch it in about six months. You wanna take a look at whether the market's gonna change or you think it's gonna change. That requires research. So a lot of your time right now to see if your idea is gonna be profitable is researching current market conditions. Okay. And also deciding whether your idea has the potential to grow in the next two, three years as well too. Because even if you have current market conditions right now, you might not in about two, three years. So you, this is where you wanna see, have a good knowledge of the market you're going to prefer it into, and the customers that would buy it. Okay. Number one rule is really knowing your customers really. Okay, like spending time with them. You might actually be your number one customer, but when you test it, don't give it to people that you actually know. Okay? You wanna go to strangers, they're savage, and they'll give you the honest opinion, okay? Friends tend to be nice cuz they're gonna see you again. Okay? The fact of matters, you wanna go to strangers when you test it to see if a real customer would buy it. We're also not talking about your mom or your spouse. You need an actual stranger wanting to buy your product. Okay? That's when you know your product actually has some teeth in it. Okay. [00:14:25] Diane: I mean, my friends are pretty brutal. I'm not gonna lie when I, my non businessy friends, right? I know that if I explain an idea to them, they'll be very honest about why, where they have no idea what I'm talking about, which I think is also like really valuable feedback. But I, there are definitely some people that I don't ask because I know they'll just, oh, it's amazing. Good job. And you're like, excellent. And then you try to market the thing. You're like, yes, no one wants this. [00:14:49] Sankeetha: No one wants to. Yeah, no, I think you have to use your discernment about as to who is the best one. I, I think out of. And now Diane, I'm having an epiphany. Every single one of my friends and people in my life is brutal as hell. And they're very much like, this is, this is a crap idea. Sangita, what's wrong with you? Leave me alone. Okay? That's what you want, especially in this journey, because it's better you find out now than later because the market has no feelings. [00:15:15] Diane: Yeah, and you wanna find out fast that you can draw a line through that idea and you can like move on to testing in the next one. Would this framework also work for people who are, how do I put this? Maybe they're falling a little bit out of love with their current offer. And they're thinking about like, well, do I keep pushing? Or, Hey, there's this really sexy new squirrel over here that looks like something I really wanna spend time with, so I can see how they could use it to evaluate the squirrel. Could they also take a step back and evaluate something that's already in the market [00:15:45] Sankeetha: Absolutely. Say you're already in business and you want to decide whether you want to continue putting your. Offer or it's just not profitable anymore. That's really what it is, right? It's just not bringing all the, all the people, all the, the milkshakes not bringing everyone to the yard. Okay. Let's just say [00:16:01] Diane: Or like, or it's profitable, but it's not profitable for you in terms of those time and energy like, Don't love it like you're making money, [00:16:09] Sankeetha: Yeah. [00:16:10] Diane: but it's not filling up your excitement tank. [00:16:13] Sankeetha: Right. So at that point you wanna decide whether this is your zone of genius or zone of excellence. And there's a fine line between that in the sense that zone of excellence is something where you can do in your sleep, and you can basically do it broke, eyes closed, but it doesn't light you up. It doesn't blow your skirt up, so to speak. Whereas a zone of genius is you're alive, you lose sense of time, you're in the zone, you're in flow state, you can do this. That zone of. So that's really, it's more of a feeling about whether you wanna do that or not. Again, I'm a big fan of if you are not the right person for this, you can always hire someone to go ahead and use that idea or run that project and then you go do what you do is bad, what you do best. [00:16:54] Diane: all. One thing that I don't think entrepreneurs do enough is like separate and sell that piece of their. [00:17:00] Sankeetha: yes. yes. That's an asset. [00:17:02] Diane: it's so sad to me to when you know like you've got this offer that's been doing brilliantly and, and suddenly ad vanishes and you're like, I wonder what happened to that offer. And maybe it wasn't doing brilliantly, but also I don't think we think enough about, is this something I could sell? [00:17:18] Sankeetha: I don't think so either. I think just because people think in kind of a tunnel vision about it. And so after you created the idea part of that, the next step is really thinking through, we jump, like fast forward, we go into exit plan. Okay. We think about how do you wanna sell this now? Okay, so the idea, because when you actually think about how. Sell in in the future. Remember, you have to get past the profitable idea first. It's past notebook at this point. Okay? If you have, now you start thinking about the exit plan and thinking, how can I sell this? Or what is my exit idea strategy so that A, I can sell my company or sell this asset. Certain things, most things are considered. Okay. So if you have a project or a stream of income that can be considered an asset, if you can package it in such a way and somebody would buy it. We live in America. Everything is for sale. Okay? It's just negotiable. And so understanding that, and some people actually just dissolve it because they didn't know that they could sell it. Another side is people don't sell it. Here's the other side. The the, the evil side. The people don't sell it because they're so attached to it. Their identity is attached to it because they've spent so much time and energy on it that they think of it as their baby. It is not your baby. It is an idea, okay? That is now an asset that is now out in the stream of commerce, which means. At any given point, it can be transferred to somebody else, and you have all of the ability and capacity to come up with more ideas. Okay. To create more streams of income. Okay. So this is where people need to separate their ego and separate their attachment to their products and their ideas. [00:18:52] Diane: Okay. So from all your time behind the scenes of all these businesses, if you could only say one thing to business owners about ideas in their business, what would that one thing be? [00:19:02] Sankeetha: It doesn't stop. Keep ideating. Just keep having ideas, , Carve out time for you to be creative, even when. Get the idea. You've created the company and you're knee deep in it and you're stuck in spreadsheets and you're talking to managers and you're like, really just, you know about to pull your hair out. Set some time out for creativity. Okay, go for long walks, meditate, go shoot some pool. Do whatever it is that can take you out of that stream of continually thinking about the business or in the business and just go out and do some, go take a nap. Go do these things that actually made you come up with ideas in the first place. I think a lot of founders don't look for that or don't allow for that. Another thing is keeping observant. Also, I'm a big fan of being irritated, noting down whenever you're irritated about something. Okay? If for anything, go back to your journal entries. If you journal or go back to your text messages with your best friend and talk about, you know, Hey, this really annoyed me. You can find your irritation. Usually precedes your inspiration about certain things because I bet you you're not the only person that's irritated. And wherever there's irritation, there's a possibility for a product or service to be born. It's all there. Your Easter eggs are all in your living, waking life, okay? [00:20:16] Diane: Yeah, we'd all just expanded our idea journals with all of our irritations now. [00:20:20] Sankeetha: All of your irritations are all of your joys, all of your thing. Oh, you'd be surprised how many people also start. This idea also comes to people who wanna start nonprofits doesn't have to equate to a profit. So speak as like money. It could also be talking about how many more people they could. So it turns from monetary dollars to actual numbers or amount of people at that point. Okay. So you can actually transfer that concept that way as well. [00:20:46] Diane: Amazing. Okay, so how do people get their hands on your course and your Epic workbook so that they can take all their ideas out of their journals or ring fence their squirrels and decide what they're gonna pursue next? [00:20:59] Sankeetha: So it's an audio course. I decide to make it as a free audio course because I think people already put a lot of barriers amongst themselves as it is, so it's free. We just asked for your email address so that you can download it and get the access to the free podcast off of Hello Audio and the, the workbook is also included as well. Take a walk with us, pop me into your ear. I'll be the one narrating it, and then listen to us and you can follow along with the workbook or you can listen to us all in one shot. Go back and work on the notebook, marinate it a little, take a walk again. Okay? I myself have an interesting ideating journey, so no judgment, how you work through things, okay? If you gotta hang upside down, if you gotta go into a float tank, if you've gotta, you know, go play paintball, whatever. To get the juices going, go for it. But again, it doesn't have to be executed Today. What we wanted to do is give you the tools download it and. You know, work through the workbook and then decide how you wanna move forward. [00:22:00] Diane: I'm very excited to pull out some journals and to evaluate some 20, 23 squirrels I have running around at the moment. So to finish up, I always ask my guests the same two questions. First of all, what is your number one lifestyle boundary for your business? [00:22:16] Sankeetha: I operate three different companies right now. So I would say different days have different uh, timeframes, so those days don't mesh over. Okay. So Mondays is this day. Tuesdays is the other company. Fridays is a solid this day. I don't work past six o'clock on any day at that point, and I don't take uh, morning. I do my deep work in the morning, so that's when I know myself well, and that's where I call my CEO time. We talk about it in the course too. So I know myself and I'm the most alert, most inflow at that time. So really from 6:00 AM to about 11 30, 12. Deep work time. So all my calls, all my calls with my team, most of that is held over in the afternoon. [00:22:59] Diane: Amazing. Okay. Finally, what is the worst piece of cookie cutter advice you've been given on your journey? [00:23:05] Sankeetha: Oh, where people that have not created companies or done what you want to do, wanna give you advice. Don't listen to anyone that has gone where you wanna go. Cuz you always have the people that have, you know, had failed dreams or had bad experiences that always wanna protect you. And, and it's all good intentions, don't get me wrong. They all have good intentions, but those are their, you know, limitations. [00:23:33] Diane: This has been just as fabulous as I hoped. Where can people find you on social to tell you how amazing the course is, to [00:23:40] Sankeetha: So [00:23:41] Diane: out more about the work you do? [00:23:43] Sankeetha: So my on Instagram, I'm sanita, my first name, s a n k E E t h a dot e s q, esquire e sq on Instagram, Facebook I am offering this course through our company, the Startup Doc. So it's t h e startup, S T A R T U P D O X. And this is a business educational platform for entrepreneurs where we give legal. About 19, 20 different contracts, masterclass, and this is our free course that we wanna give to anybody that's pursuing the journey of being an entrepreneur. [00:24:16] Diane: Amazing. So everybody definitely run and download that before you implement another idea. Otherwise, we will be telling you that we told you. So. Thank you so much. This has been great. [00:24:26] Sankeetha: Thank you for having me, Diane. It's awesome.