In this episode of the “Building the Brand” series, we talk to Sharad Patel, Principal and Co-founder of Patel Burica & Associates, about what it means to not be a good follower. Sharad always knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur, following in his parents’ footsteps. While creating and building his brand, he learned to trust his employees. Even though Sharad is not a good follower, he learned what it takes to be a good leader.
SHARAD PATEL: Start
(SM) Welcome back to Strong Conversations, building the brand series. I am Sam Marcoux, as always and joining me on this very special episode of Strong Conversations is Shard Patel from PBA Engineering. Sharad, how are you?
(SP) Great, thanks. Thanks for having me.
(SM)No, thanks for being here. I can barely spell PBA. So what does PBA Engineering stand for?
(SP) PBA engineering stands for Patel Burica and Associates.
(SM) Okay.
(SP) It's not a super creative name. Like a lot of other engineering firms or law firms, we kind of named the firm after ourselves, but after about 20 years in business, we've kind of rebranded it to be a little bit more generic and we're going with PBA Engineering now.
(SM) PBA Engineering, awesome. Well, I think everyone's gonna know because your name is in the actual name of the business, but what do you do for PBA?
(SP) Okay, so I'm one of the founding partners of PBA Engineering. So I'm president, chief cook, bottle washer, dishwasher, accountant, chief structural engineer, pretty much anything that's needed and necessary I get involved with, but I'm kind of the leader of the crew.
(SM) You are the leader of the crew. I, you know, when we were talking on the phone a couple of weeks back, one of the things that you said that stuck with me, stuck with our mutual friend, Nate Johnston was, I am not a good follower. Those are your words and I can I can tell you in talking to you and getting to know your story. I would agree with you. I think you have an extreme personal sense of ownership and that certain things need to be done and the only way to make sure they get done is if I can be involved and get them done, so we're going to talk a little bit about that, but I'm fascinated by people's origin story and how they got started and how that may have molded them into who they are today as a leader in our industry. So let's start with your origin story. You were born where?
(SP) I was born in London.
(SM) You were born in London, England?
(SP) Yeah.
(SM) How long did you live there? [02:07]
(SP) So I knew nothing about London because I was about this big when I was brought over here. I was probably less than a year old. So really, I was born in London, but I'm a Southern California guy.
(SM) Right and your parents are from where?
(SP) My parents are both from India, like a small village in India and my dad, you know, he studied engineering with the objective of kind of making something and getting away from the village and so forth. So he got a degree in India and then he went to England, got a degree there, eventually immigrated to the United States as a civil engineer in fact.
(SM) Okay, so world traveler, pretty motivated, got his own sense of ownership it feels like and sounds like. This is where I think a lot of, I mean, it's already unique. I mean, I was not born in London. How did you grow up? But tell the story of what's unique about your childhood.
(SP) Well, like I said, you know, I was born in London, came over here at a year old, and my dad, he was a civil engineer and he was working for various companies during that time. But because of his history and background and our culture, the Indian culture, he had an objective to kind of work for himself at least to some degree and at that time in the Indian community, particularly from the location where I'm from, the hospitality business was a big thing. Indian folks would come over and either lease or purchase hotels or motels and oftentimes they'd band together by loaning each other money with a friendly handshake deal and so forth. So eventually my dad pretty quickly after coming over, he got into the hotel business.
(SM) I didn't know this until I was talking to you, but this… apparently, the Patels, you know, your last name, are huge in the hotel, motel, hospitality business here in the United States. I had no idea it was so prevalent, but if you were to Google that, you will see there's documentaries about it, there's newspaper articles, there's all kinds of information that sort of documents that journey to the United States and that ownership on that part of what we do. I had no idea that that was the case. So growing up, this is your, I guess, norm, right? I mean, kind of seeing this being in the motels, but you were living at the motel?
(SP) Yeah, absolutely, yeah, and it is a big thing, particularly for people from my dad's part of India, the district called Surat, and what you'll find is that throughout the United States today, I think the number is roughly 50 or 60 % of hotels and motels are owned by folks from that particular region.
(SM) Just that one region
(SP) That one.
(SM) And they're owning it, wow, that is incredible.
(SP) So the kind of strategy or objective was that, look, everybody needs a place to stay and a house or apartment is expensive. So we would get into the hotel business and actually live right [05:19]
at the hotel and then these were not like your Home Too or Holiday Inn or anything like that. You know we're talking about, you know, Motel 6 and smaller kind of places and so the Indian families would just lease or purchase with borrowed money because the community was so tight and they all came from an area of the world where they were accustomed to working for themselves, but working very hard for themselves and as a community. So just on a handshake deal, I'd say, hey, Sam, I need $20,000 to, you know I'm getting $20 ,000 from five or six different people so I can lease this hotel over here and on a handshake deal, that would be done and of course, it would be done amongst lifelong friends and whatnot and so we, I grew up in a hotel environment from childhood through college. I never lived in a house.
(SM) See that is fascinating to me. So in my childhood if we went to a hotel is because we were going on vacation it was kind of like a reward or a treat like this is exciting it's different than being in the apartment or the house you had the almost the exact opposite and these hotels like you said they're not you know they're not the Marriott they're not you know the Hilton or anything like that. We're talking probably some hotels that aren't necessarily in the best neighborhoods right? This is Buena Park and Anaheim, California, correct?
(SP) Right, right. So I grew up mostly in Anaheim. We moved from Buena Park to Anaheim when I was in second grade and because the business was at home, the business was all the time and I grew up in it. So as soon as I was able to do anything that would help contribute towards the business, I was doing it. So at the age of 10 years old probably, I was vacuuming rooms when people would check out, cleaning furniture, doing the laundry, things like that and then eventually, before the early teens, probably early teens or so, my parents are very social. The Indian community in general is very social. So they might have a social event, they might need to go somewhere and say, "Hey, Sharad, you got the front desk." and actually, there was a book written about this. It's called "Front Desk."
(SM) Really?
(SP) Yeah, and it was written by an Asian American lady. I can't remember the author's name right now, but the book is called "Front Desk," and it's about hotels and motels in the Anaheim area and kids growing up in them. Well, I was one of those kids.
(SM) So growing up in that environment, again, maybe not the safest environment in terms of what is happening at those hotels and motels, but you were working at a very young age. You're obviously seeing your parents working and taking ownership and the pride of ownership. So you're molded by this on some level, motivated maybe not to do the same thing as your father, but what did that experience teach you at that age?
(SP) Well, what it taught me is that you, as a business owner, it's your duty and objective to make sure that everything gets done. One way or the other. Whether you're doing it or somebody else is doing it, you know, there wasn't a task at the hotels that I didn't, you know, tackle from sweeping [08:34]
the parking lot to cleaning the rooms to renting rooms and then all the way to things like, you know, making bank deposits. I remember going to the bank with my dad when I was a really young kid, and I thought it was really cool because we got to go into the special business area.
(SM) Oh, yeah, yeah.
(SP) Behind a door and stuff, and then I'd see my dad make the deposits and whatnot, and there was, at that time, people still used cash. That's like, I have to ask now, if I go someplace, can I use cash? I don't know kind of weird, but so I was exposed to all the different aspects, the labor components, the handyman components, even doing plumbing and stuff, and banking, and loans and renting rooms and hospitality. So I kind of learned to be responsible for all parts of the small business.
(SM) Completely understanding the business as a whole, not just one part of it. Seeing the whole thing. Outside of working at the motel, working with your family, you had a number of other jobs growing up before college, right?
(SP) Yeah, well, I was pretty motivated because you know when I wanted something when I was growing up, it wasn't you know, really available. So we owned the hotels, but we didn't really make that much money in them because it was a struggle first of all. I mean there was you know the seedy parts of town. There was drugs. There was prostitutes. It was all kinds of like weird stuff going on and business just wasn't that great. So when it came to Christmas time and stuff, you know, if I wanted a pair of Nike's and stuff It was no let's go to the payless shoe store and get shoes from there. So anything I wanted, I kind of had to earn myself. So from a very young age, say 12 years old or so, I started working and back then it was very normal to have a paper route when you were 12 years old. So I would wake up at five o'clock on Sunday morning, fold the paper, stuff them with all the fillers and everything, put them in the bags and both bags were stuffed and I loved it. I loved it because I knew that the better I served my clients, the more they would appreciate what I did for them. So I delivered papers to trailer parks, and there were a lot of older folks living in these trailer parks. So we got a list, and on the list, some of them would say porch, and that meant we had to porch the paper.
(SM) What does that mean, porch the paper?
(SP) That means that I got really good at throwing the paper right to the front door, because those folks couldn't come out to the driveway and get it or whatever, so they had to be porched and then at Christmas time, you get a little envelope full of $5 bill or cookies or whatever. So I really started to appreciate the value of giving good service at that point in time.
(SM) How did you collect on the paper? Because I had a paper route, and the paper that I had, I had to go knock on the doors like once a week and collect and a lot of times, people are like, "Sorry, I'm not paying," and you're just kind of like, "Okay." And then you had to move on and then he had to [11:16]
answer to the actual paper that you actually didn't collect money. Was it that that way or did you have kind of like, did the paper give you money?
(SP) I definitely don't remember an experience of having problems with collections. What I do recall is that there was a group of kids who were sort of managed to buy an adult and maybe he had something to do with the collections and so forth because all I remember is good things about having the paper route. I just remember the tips.
(SM) Yeah, I had to throw the papers and then go back and be like, "Can you pay me now?" and they were like, "No!” Alright, I guess I'll just move on." Okay, so we've gone through the childhood. Avery unique experience I would say and you're growing up, by the way, I mean, you said Anaheim, so you're growing up in the shadows of the happiest place on earth. You got Disneyland, you got Mickey smiling at you from the other side of the freeway there. What was that like growing up?
(SP) Well, I guess it gets old a little bit quickly, right? I mean, look, I saw the fireworks over the summertime. I'd see the fireworks from our second floor exterior corridor hotel. I had one of the best views in Anaheim for the fireworks. So people thought that was the coolest thing, but probably after one summer, it's like, you know what? All I hear is like, it sounds like gunshots outside all the time, right?
(SM) Yeah gunshots or fireworks? Which one was that. It's a fun game.
(SP) Yeah, but, you know, Disneyland was, you know, living down the street from Disneyland was convenient if you could go there all the time, but it's not like we were able to go there all the time.
(SM) Yeah. It's almost like, I mean, I don't know (inaudible) but you're like, man, it's right there and that's where everyone is traveling from around the world to go there and I'm this close and I can't go there all the time.
(SP) Well, we had the privilege of probably going maybe once a year or so, because I think, you know, they would run some promotions for the hotels and whatnot and back then they had the little, you know E tickets and so forth, which means nothing to anybody but back before you couldn't go to Disneyland and just ride all the rides you had to have a particular ticket to ride particular rides and an E-ticket was the highest denomination of tickets.
(SM) I hope my kids are watching this or listening to this He had the privilege of going once a year, so I don't wanna hear it out of you children. Okay, let's move ahead a little bit because we've kind of set the table and we wanna get to, I wanna get to what has made you you in this industry here, but you go to college. First of all, where did you start college?
(SP) I started college at University of California, Irvine.
(SM) Okay. [13:40]
(SP) UC Irvine?
(SM) Okay, so not too far from where we are right now.
(SP) Not too far from here at all.
(SM) Awesome. Did you, you had, I'm reading the notes here. You had the Indian options.
(SP) Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, look, you know, I was a pretty decent student in high school and, you know, growing up in an Indian family, you know, Indian parents are sort of very goal oriented for their kids. They want something better for the kids and whatnot, and as I've grown up, I've realized that, hey, there's no knocking that. It's fine. But when I grew up, there were sort of three options that I was allowed to consider and nothing else ever occurred to me. I just knew that, first of all, I wanted to live in a house. So I didn't want to stay in the hotel. So I had to have a good job, a professional job, where I could live in a house. That was like a big dream for me and there were three careers that my parents sort of approved of, right? And, you know, right at the top of the list was medicine.
(SM)Yeah.
(SP) Every Indian parent would love for their kid to be a doctor, you know, and then there was engineering and then I recall that being a lawyer was also acceptable at the time. So there was nothing else considered no drama, no theater, no arts, no, anything else at all, but those were the three things and I was, you know, I didn't love to read a lot and I was squeamish around dissections and whatnot and so I was good at math. So I said, I'm going to go the engineering route.
(SM) That's the one. I'm laughing at the Indian options, because we talked about this and one of my best friends in life, his name is Kabir Singh and he's got two sisters. One's a lawyer and the other one's a doctor. So he gets to be a stand up comedian for a living. Because as he puts it, my mom already won the Indian lottery. So I get to do whatever I want, because I was the youngest and they already, you know, did the other two. So I kind of know what the Indian options are, just hanging out with him a little bit, but as it turns out, I guess he could have been a structural engineer, but probably not him. All right, so you're good at math. You go back to England. Right when you're getting ready to go into college. Sorry, let me jump back ahead here. So you should have traveled back to England, where where you were born.
(SP) So yeah first actually I spent a couple of years at UC Irvine and almost kind of randomly a friend of mine says hey Sharad there's this great program, education abroad program, we can go to England for a year and I kind of knew nothing about it. I thanked him for introducing me to it and we both applied and we got in so I ended up going back to the birth land for school so I went to the University of Sheffield for a year.
[16:20]
(SM) Okay.
(SP) Yeah, and I thought it was gonna be all you know kind of fun and games and you know, I thought I was gonna hang out at the pubs drink some beer and meet some people. I met a lot of great people from Italy, people throughout the United States and whatnot and I thought I was gonna kind of you kind of almost like a year abroad is almost like off, right? And I ended up learning one of my most valued skills while I was in England.
(SM) And that's where you learned about accounting, right?
(SP) Yeah, that's right. So I thought that I would take accounting as a fun class that I wouldn't have to work very hard. I'm good in math and I'm going there for engineering, but I'll have this filler class called accounting and I just didn't realize that, first of all, I would like it so much and secondly, it's a lifelong skill that I think, personally, I'd advise anybody who wants to do anything should have a class in accounting. I mean, it just helps you in life to understand accounting.
(SM) Oh, 100%. I mean, I could probably use a refresher myself. So this part's fascinating to me. I'm reading some of the notes here. You're in England for a year. You come home and you go to visit the parents, and you can't find your car.
(SP)Yeah, so when I was in high school, between my dad and I, 'cause I had some other odd jobs in high school, I was a waiter and a busboy as well, but we ended up buying a used Buick Century for about three grand, $3500, something like that and when I was in England, I never came home for the holidays and stuff. My friends, they would go home at Christmas and Easter and stuff and my dad was like, sorry, you can't come home because we can't afford you to come home, but that's where the extended family and community kind of came in place. He just called up a distant cousin in England, in London and said, hey, Sharad’s coming over for break time and I would go over there, but anyways, after all that, the full academic year in England, I come home and I'm standing in the parking lot of our hotel looking for my car and literally my dad was there with me too and he hadn't told me a thing and I'm just looking around and I don't see my car. I go, "Hey dad, where's my car?" and my dad goes, "Well, I had to sell it."
(SM) Wow.
(SP) And I said, "Well dad how am I gonna get around?" And he just looked at me and he said, "I don't know, figure it out." Yeah, so I did.
(SM)You know, they made a movie about that called "Dude, Where's My Car?" We could make a sequel called "Dad, Where's My Car?" Yeah. Maybe that's that movie of your life right there. So the car's gone, you know, they gotta make ends meet. What kind of lesson does that teach you? You think, I mean, what was the intention of, or how did you or what did you make of it?
[19:07]
(SP) You know, I didn't realize it at the time, but thinking about it now, I realized that one of the things that it gave me was just pride in ownership, right? My dad said, "You got to figure it out" and then I had to go and figure it out and then I had something that was 100 % mine and it was earned and it was very valued by me and it taught me a little bit about trust too because what ended up happening is that at that time I was in a small band, we weren't very great or anything, but you know, it was a small band and there was a drummer named Gerald who was actually a mechanic.
(SM) Okay.
(SP) And I said, Gerald, I don't know what to do, I need a car and he says, Sharad, there's this, you know, beat up pickup truck that I can get you for 800 bucks and I go, Gerald, what if it doesn't run? And he says, don't worry, if it doesn't run, I'll fix it for you, whatever it takes. It's running right now, but if you ever have any issues with it, I'll take care of it for you. So I got this really ugly old Sanford and Sons looking truck that was easily the worst and cheapest vehicle at UC Irvine, but I drove it with pride.
(SM) Yeah.
(SP) Because I thought I bought that myself and then Gerald taught me a lesson in trust and promises made because he promised me, he said, "Don't worry, Sharad, I'll help you out if necessary" and sure enough, the truck gave out and it needed a new engine and, you know, Gerald found the parts and I only had to pay for the parts. He put everything in for me and kept it running and it was a great first experience.
(SM) Yeah, I mean, I think that's gonna come into play later as we get into the actual ownership of the engineering firm. We're talking to Sharad Patel from PBA Engineering, here on Strong Conversations, Building the Brand. Alright, we're going to jump forward here just a little bit into the professional life. Okay. So you finished college. You're good at math. You've taken the accounting classes. You know the dream is you want to live in a home, right? That's something that you identified at a young age and you know you want to own your own business one day. Like that's maybe not in the hospitality space, but you know that this is what you're gearing towards. So where do you go after college? Where's your first, I guess, job?
(SP) Yeah, so actually, when I graduated with Bachelors, there weren't a lot of jobs available and I kind of made a decision like, if I can't find a reasonable job very quickly, I'll go ahead and do a Master's. Okay. So I went ahead and did a Master's real quick. It was only a one year Master's. I got through that pretty quickly and that's when I realized that structural engineering really is the thing that I really, really enjoy doing and then again, you back to the job search and and I found a great company to work for and I learned a lot from that company but I was also a very dedicated employee, and I really wanted to excel at the company. So I was there just taking it all in learning and I ended up there for about eight or nine years before I started PBA so yeah, I've only had two real professional Jobs in my entire life and one of them I didn't own and the other one we do own with Mike. [22:09]
(SM) So speaking of Mike. You met Mike at your first job, right?
(SP) That's right Yeah, Mike and I met at the first job and in fact he had been there for maybe a year or year and a half before me and you know I came out of college and I had a master's degree and I thought I was all that and little did I know that I didn't really know much about the construction industry or structural engineering, but I could do me some math and I could do me some calculations and I remember that it was a little bit frustrating for Mike as a guy who was very practical and had experience with construction and had been there for a year, year and a half and I was like, well, you know, I got to do this footing calculation, and it's going to take me three pages to do the footing calculations and he's like just make it three foot square, right? And so we kind of had, you know, we butted heads quite a bit at the beginning and it was a little bit rough to the point where I actually decided I didn't want to be a part of that company, but the owners kind of made it work. They kind of created a separate group or department and then Mike and I would kind of lead up our on little groups and eventually Mike became a very good friend and eventually like eight, nine, 10 years, probably nine years later, we started PBA.
(SM) Yeah, I mean, he's the B in PBA.
(SP) He's the B, yeah.
(SM) So somebody you didn't necessarily get along with right away turns out to not only be a really good friend down the line, but your business partner and not just in this, but in other ventures as well, right?
(SP) Absolutely, yeah, Mike has been a trusted friend for probably 25 or more years, actually 30 probably and that was, what I described to you was kind of the starting point of our relationship, but then it just grew based on mutual respect and eventually actually, Mike was also in my wedding.
(SM) Wow.
(SP) That was fantastic and then we started the business and we've been in business for over 20 years and a lot of people have…I've seen a lot of like two person businesses, you know, split up, break up for any reason whatsoever, and I've put some thought into why that happens and why our company has stayed together, and I think it's all about just absolute trust, honesty, hard work, and you know, we just have valued our relationship.
(SM) So and I think that trust I mean obviously you're working together you start a business together, which to me that that is so scary to be like we're gonna go out on this limb and there might not be a safety net there, but in talking to you, you weren't really scared to do that. You were determined and obviously there was gonna be some challenges along the way, but this is what you were focused on and you and Mike just get into it, not like fighting, but like you get into, we're gonna start this firm and we're gonna take care of everything side by side and that's gotta help bring those bonds in closer, right? [25:09]
(SP) Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when we started the business, it was just me and him, you know, and we knew that we were gonna do everything, sort of like the hotels, right? I knew that the family had to take care of everything. Well, the family was me and Mike and we were going to take care of everything from setting up the network, to buying the software, to doing the bookkeeping, to finding the clients, to creating the drawings, the standards, the procedures, hiring the payroll company. There wasn't a piece that we didn't do and we tried to do it all correctly from the beginning. We didn't try to cut any corners or anything like that and we actually enjoyed the process of kind of laying the foundation for our company and I think this is where, uh, you know, that phrase that I mentioned earlier came in when we were talking about this show and what we're going to talk about when you said, I'm not a good follower. So this whole process of controlling your own destiny, controlling your, you know, what, what your company is going to look like from the very beginning. Um, can you talk a little bit more about what does that mean to say, A, I'm not a good follower, but as you grow and you start hiring people and they have, they have responsibilities and tasks and you have to sort of pull back a little bit or I don't even know if he did, but how do you go from I'm not a good follower, I'm a leader and I'm going to own this, I'm going to own everything about this process to okay, now we got to hire people because we're getting bigger and bigger and bigger and I got to let go or some stuff, how was that for you?
(SP) Well, that's a very challenging process and it's still in the works today. I mean, you know, creating some sort of standards and procedures and things like that is very important to the process for me.
(SM) Yeah.
(SP) You know, the quality of our work is of upmost importance to me. So letting go of things was very difficult, but it's one of the things that I learned that if we don't let go of things, then we cannot grow both as individuals and as a company. It just became a very important part of the process and you know, I probably learned it a little bit later and you know it would have been more beneficial to recognize this earlier, right? But nowadays you know, I kind of go into the office and if I'm doing something that's repetitive or something that, if in any way I believe that somebody else can handle or manage this task, I try to, you know, teach them how to do it and let someone else take care of it.
(SM) I'm big on like tactics. A lot of people talk strategy, but the tactics that support a strategy or maybe people don't get into the weeds to say, well, you know, you got to have good relationships. Okay, well, how do you do that as a salesperson, right? Tell me, walk me through that process. So you had mentioned something where you said, I had to learn to focus on the business, but not in the business and I love that phrasing, but I don't know what it means.
(SP) Well, I trust you probably do but so working, you know, on the business instead of in the business to me, if I'm to summarize it sort of succinctly, it would be that if I'm thinking about something that affects the business today, this week, next week, even this month, I'm probably [28:33]
working in the business. I'm working on a project that has a deadline or I'm trying to get some invoices out and these kind of things. If I'm working on the business, I'm thinking strategically like who do we need to hire in three months or six months? I'm thinking at least a quarter in advance. What do our projections look like? Where are new projects going to come from? What do we need to do to expand our services? Is our quality meeting the expectations of our clients? Things like that are working on the business. As engineers, I think it's very, very common in our industry you know, to have firms that are, you know, 15 people or fewer and the principles are 100% involved in working in the business every single day, but what that makes for is a tough transition, right? When we get older, like me, you wanna have somebody who can kind of step in and take care of a lot of the tasks that you do. So that's working on the business. It’s to you know, just think three months, six months, even a year out.
(SM) Does the, I guess, definition of ownership change when you do that? Because like you said, if it's a process, if it's a procedure that can be repeated, you know, maybe it's good to let that go and have somebody else execute that so you can deal with these X factors over here, but you still have to own that on some level, right? Does it redefine what ownership is, being a little bit more hands off?
(SP) Well, I think for me, it had something to do with trust. You know, I was always focused on building trust with my clients, and more recently I realized that building trust with our staff is a very critical thing too. I need to trust them, and they need to trust me as well, right, but now I understand that, you know after some of these folks have been with us for 15, even 20 years, we've been fortunate to have staff that's been with us for a very long time and we've grown to trust them, and we know that they're doing things the way that we like them to be done, so that frees us up to do all the other things that are working on the business instead of in the business.
(SM) So we've talked a lot about the lessons that you've learned that have helped drive you to where you are today and what we call success. If you could change anything along the way of the journey, destination is the same. You're still here, you're the P in PBA, all of that's the same, but if you could change something along the way, what would it be and why?
(SP) Well, again, you know, old age wisdom, I've realized that, you know, it is great to have a mentor who is at least 10 or 15 years older than you and trust that person and take direction from that person because, I mean, I can only imagine like if I knew the things I know today at 53, when I was 30 or 35, the way that I would sort of run my life and run the business would be a little bit different, right? So really value other people's opinions. It's very difficult as a person who's not a good follower, right, to value somebody else's opinion. I think that I recognize the value of that these days because, you know, I've learned that I, myself, have become that person that I would take advice from, right? And some of the things I'm thinking today, I can almost see the response of my 30 year old or 32 year old self saying "No, I'm not gonna do that "because I can just do it faster myself," instead of, say, writing down a procedure whereby, you know, somebody else can repeat that procedure multiple times. Instead, I would just, yeah, I could take care of that in 30 minutes and I'll just, it'll be done. Well, that's not really a scalable approach. [32:31]
(SM) So I'm kind of chuckling on this because the idea of mentorship is I think much easier said than done and I also don't know, sometimes it's weird to say, like, well, you have to go find a mentor and it seems very process-driven to where I think in many ways it's almost that chemistry of, I jive with this person, older or younger, and I can help them or they can help me. How do you go about now being on the mentor side of things? Do you actively seek out people at your firm or outside of your firm to help mentor knowing what you know now, or is it something where you wait for people to come to you? I guess whose responsibility is it to start that partnership?
(SP) Well, I guess it depends on the role, right? If you're an entrepreneur and you wanna start a business, then it's your responsibility to go seek that out and learn that skill, but if you're a business owner like myself and you want to have a second generation of leaders in your company, then it's up to you to go out and teach and make sure that people are coming to you for the questions and then also that you're not just telling them the answer, like, you know, if a kid's asking what two plus two is, you don't just say four, you show them how that works out so that they can create it next time, right?
(SM) No, that makes all the sense in the world. You talked about the next generation of ownership of your company. Obviously something you've thought about if you've said it out loud. What are the long-term plans for you? I mean, is that what you wanna do is to, when you guys are ready to turn this over to somebody in the firm right now, or how's that gonna work?
(SP) Well, you know, what I do know for sure is that we've created something that's too good and too valuable to just let it pass away with one generation, right? This happens to a large percentage of small consulting firms, right? Maybe 10 people, 15 people, even 20 % firms. Sometimes when the principles are done, then the company just closes up shop.
(SM) Yeah.
(SP) So, the one thing that we know for sure is that we want PBA to have, you know, a second generation. How that's accomplished is, you know, to be determined within the next, I don't know, 10 years.
(SM) Well, very cool. I know, I get this a lot. I, you know, I'm down here in Southern California, I'm from Northern California, and I kind of picked up on the theme, oh, you know, we're down to the entertainment capital of the world and I had asked you the question ahead of time, like, hey, think about, if a movie was made about your life, what would that movie be or who would be the actor that plays you? And you're like, you know, I don't really watch a lot of movies. I'm kind of busy, right?
(SP)Oh, yeah, and I have a terrible memory as well. So, yeah.
[35:14]
(SM) So I think we workshop it right now. We'll end on this and I have one in mind. I've already said it, spoiler alert, but the story about coming home and the car is gone.
(SP) Okay.
(SM) And going Dad, where’s my car and well, it's not here anymore. I just immediately, I thought of Ashton Kutcher and dude wears my car. So if I'm casting the movie for Sharad Patel, I think Ashton Kutcher is the actor playing you and it's gonna be titled “Dad Where’s My Car”.
(SP) I love it. I think my wife wouldn't mind it either.
(SM) Well, Sharad, thank you very much for joining us here on Strong Conversations and thank you all for joining us here. Stay tuned for more conversations before too long. See ya.
[35:54]
SHARAD PATEL: END