Meet Shikhin Argawal, founder of StatsLateral, who shares a slice of his life as a seasoned entrepreneur in the relentless world of startups. Hear his powerful insights on navigating the tech industry, combating burnout, and the necessity for companies to keep pace with technology's ceaseless march. Shikin's honest tales from the frontlines of startup life are sure to resonate with those treading a similar path.
Our conversation extends beyond business, delving into the crucial element of balancing work and life. Together, we discuss how to judiciously manage energy levels, plan our days to strike a balance between work and family, and create boundaries for a healthier personal life. We also examine the nuances of top-down and flat organizational cultures, providing food for thought to every listener. This episode is a treasure chest of insights for anyone attempting to find their balance in the startup world and life.
Do you have a successful business, but struggling family relationships? Then sign up for a FREE strategy session where we can help you develop a new future, plan, and processes for your family so you can enjoy spending time together and create meaningful moments for your children and spouse.
Meet Shikhin Argawal, founder of StatsLateral, who shares a slice of his life as a seasoned entrepreneur in the relentless world of startups. Hear his powerful insights on navigating the tech industry, combating burnout, and the necessity for companies to keep pace with technology's ceaseless march. Shikin's honest tales from the frontlines of startup life are sure to resonate with those treading a similar path.
Our conversation extends beyond business, delving into the crucial element of balancing work and life. Together, we discuss how to judiciously manage energy levels, plan our days to strike a balance between work and family, and create boundaries for a healthier personal life. We also examine the nuances of top-down and flat organizational cultures, providing food for thought to every listener. This episode is a treasure chest of insights for anyone attempting to find their balance in the startup world and life.
Do you have a successful business, but struggling family relationships? Then sign up for a FREE strategy session where we can help you develop a new future, plan, and processes for your family so you can enjoy spending time together and create meaningful moments for your children and spouse.
Hello everyone, Welcome back to the Emotional Man podcast. Today, I'm really excited to have with us Shikin Argawal, who is the founder and CEO of StatsLateral. He's also been part of seven successful startup teams, including two as a co-founder. He's also a father of two daughters and a dog. Welcome to the show, Shikin.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Joseph.
Speaker 1:Tell us a little bit about StatsLateral. This is a company that you founded and you're the CEO of. When did it start and what's its purpose?
Speaker 2:StatsLateral is about three year olds now. I provide product strategy and management consulting service through StatsLateral. We are leveraging my experience in the tech industry, specifically within the product management function. That's the higher progress to my career throughout my career. Then we have a smart team which helps companies solve some of the hard problems through technology.
Speaker 1:Okay, what was the idea? Why did you start this in the first place?
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the benefits of being in startups is so there's a benefit in the company, but it all adds up to why I started StatsLateral. It's a very fast-paced industry, as you can see on my profile, which is in public, say on LinkedIn or something. I've been part of six to seven different startups, except for one of them. they all successfully moved to the next milestone, got acquired, and so on and so forth. With that, i'm able to run with that pace and acquire new knowledge and skills very quickly. That's definitely very rewarding, something I really enjoy.
Speaker 2:On the other hand, it's not similar to a large company, a corporate job, where you can find the stability of the job in the business for five, 10 years. That's the downside. You're constantly. for some people it could be stressful. For some people it's part of life. With that in terms, when I look at StatsLateral, it's obviously applying those modern skills, specifically business strategies and technologies. Then it is also the fact that things will continue to move as fast as they have seen over the last 10 years or 20 years. Companies need help, enterprises need help in terms of keeping pace with that change. That's the genesis of StatsLateral.
Speaker 1:Our audience. They're all business owners or business leaders, either small businesses, startups, corporates all different kinds and sizes of companies. For those who aren't very familiar with the startup life, can you share with them what's it like to be part of a startup, especially a tech startup? How many hours are you working? What does your day-to-day life look like?
Speaker 2:My experience at tech startups is, first of all, the day-to-day life cannot be measured in terms of how many hours one has to work. For the most of my experience, everything was very goal-driven, very KPIs-driven. It's a modern management setup. Eventually me and my manager will have, and my team and my extended teams will have an understanding of what type of objectives we are going after. what are my KPIs for the month or the quarter? With that I set my own pace and obviously I have to meet my objectives to be able to survive and thrive in these roles. At some point it can be spending like 80 hours a week and sometimes you are fine with 40 hours a week.
Speaker 2:Some of the benefits when it comes to just the work-life balance of the number of hours you're working in tech startups is that there's less of sluffs. People are at least in my experience people tend to be more direct. They're all task-oriented and resolve problems faster. You're not having meetings for the sake of meetings. Generally speaking, i would not support to set up meetings with 10 people to just provide a project update. In my experience, 8 or 9 people in 10 will prefer just to receive project updates through an email or a Slack or something to discuss, something which required the open discussion across different people, and so on and so forth. Essentially, it uses that level of formality which, in larger companies, sometimes you still have to go through. Essentially, we save a lot of time and then gain efficiency, mainly by having less sloughing than startups use. That's definitely beneficial when it comes to the day-to-day activities.
Speaker 1:We've heard a lot in the media about Silicon Valley culture where it's really easy to just be working constantly and really risk burnout.
Speaker 2:What has been your experience. I personally not experienced burnout but I would say starting my first company at the age of 24, i was near burnout at a young age because I was ambitious and I wanted to learn as much as possible and do as much as possible. It's not unheard of in, let's say, my broader circle of friends or professional network where people seal it, burn it out or whatever. It's mainly because it's a new industry that's been around. I think the most advancements have been for the last 20, 30 years, maybe 50 years. It is still very fast changing. We are all talking about brand new AI, which has come in the last six months and is affecting almost 50% of white collar workers, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:When you are in a situation where you have this unknownness and there's so much information around you, you might find it harder to actually disassociate yourself. or you basically say, okay, i'm going to work until 7pm and then I'm going to take this time, go back to my family and not really think about work. It's very hard and you constantly might end up in this loop of there's this simmering problem solving or thinking or whatever you're doing in the back of your mind after your regular work hours late in the night or early in the morning And then that obviously adds to the stress and might lead to potential risk of the burnout. And yes, that happens. I think it's largely personal and it's up to people how they manage it. Sometimes it could be systemic and some companies are known to be more hardworking and people tend to work longer, longer hours. Some are not. It totally depends on what type of employer one gets into.
Speaker 1:What are some of the lessons that you've learned from the time you were a young man to the time that you are in time now? How do you keep yourself mentally, physically healthy as a serial startup founder?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I'm in an unstructured or less structured startup ecosystem. It is stressful because I don't have the job security where I know my monthly paycheck is This is how much I make and I'm going to get that check twice a month, no matter what, until I'm no longer in that job. But I don't have that level of security. When you're going to start a startup, or even if you're a funded startup, you might have your base set, but it's probably lower than the market and so on and so forth, and you're committed to really prove your hypotheses in the market to your investors and customers. But essentially, to me, what's the best is just being realistic with yourself and making sure I'm surrounded by the people I like to work with. So, whether it's as a startup employee, whoever my boss is, whether it's the CEO of the company or, when I was a mid-level manager, whether it's the VP of product or whatever, whoever is my manager, whether I really enjoy working with them and the rest of the team, and that kind of defines the culture, not just the bullet points on the wall of the company in terms of culture. Take that as a key input over the years. I value that much more than the work content itself or the topics that I'm working on. So that is a start, because you can spend eight to 10 hours every day, every single day, with that team And, as a founder, if I'm with investors or whatever board of advisors I have, it's the same process where I'm choosing people who I enjoy working with, and so that handles much of the. It takes care of the pressure that you have on a digital basis. In addition to that, i firstly feel that taking 10 minutes off after every two, three hours of calls or work sprints or whatever personal style is I prefer to do two to three hours of work sprints, and it includes calls like this, and so you take the time off 10, 15 minutes in between, decompress, and then I truly believe in that research. I find it very useful that in that 10 minutes I would decompress where I want to do something which makes me somewhat happier, truly happy. I work from home. I have a collection of bonsais that I've created little trees I'm talking about And so I'll just go and spend five minutes with one plant, with one little plant. It just makes me happy. Or do something else, it just makes me happy. Take my, just go to my backyard with my dog and then see him just be with my dog for five minutes. It just makes me happy, especially in a work from home situation where you can do that.
Speaker 2:And that I think rebalance is. If the spring's the stress level down and these are support set. If you're happier, you are able to manage stress much better, the body can cope much better. And then, and when it comes to more commitment, i'm big on playing sports So I, no matter what, i try to play two to three times some intense squash And that just let go of every any other physical and mental sets I have every two to three days. It just reset the body And next morning it just feels so different after that activity. And I do that even when I am on a business show. I would just go to San Francisco, or I was in Montreal a couple of weeks back. I'll just go to a new city and I'll make sure that I can go play my sport because it's it's very important part of my, my routine and keeping that balance.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. I suppose that takes some planning ahead of time. Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 2:It's like any other process, like you try with five different avenues and one will work out. It just like fails with my sort of it's. Like I might try a club or two and they'll be like no, we don't allow strangers to drop out, let's try somebody else. Let's try somebody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now I'm used to that process and it's it's a little bit of planning, probably 10, 15 minutes, but as long as it's, since it is important to me, i like to do that And as part of booking my etiquette or whatever, i would basically say one evening I want to really go play, i'm going to spend four days there and that long enough break it's going to be extra. I would say busy because now you're doing your regular work, in addition to some meetings or attending a conference or whatever, i'll probably drink more, socialize more and drink more for two, three days. So why don't I just take one evening and spend two hours which are really important to my mind and my body?
Speaker 1:There's often a great poll. You mentioned here that you could go socialize, you go drink, you can go eat. How have you managed to implement productive activities that help you relax? Because I find that, for a lot of business owners, where we really get into trouble is when we try to relax with something that has a net negative in our lives, whether that's over drinking, overeating, under eating, substance abuse, gambling, whatever it may be. how have you come to do something that's healthy for you, versus perhaps some of those other activities that may feel good but ultimately are not beneficial?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my keyword to that is balance. Now, let's say I just talked about squash as a sport and if I overcome it and I'm playing every day I'll definitely end up getting injured and that's going to affect my work and family life and everything. And so the keyword is balance. even though it's a healthy activity, i don't want to become a gym rat and then say I'm going to spend three hours every day because that's how you relax. The same goes with.
Speaker 2:I'm not an expert on, i'm not a psychologist, but what I would basically say is that I think the easiest way for me to find a balance is I try to net it out on. so it's, on a daily basis, impossible. I might have a great party last night and I end up drinking a bit too much, but to me now the balance is the one week ahead. Can I balance it off for the next few days? Maybe the next few days are also going to be something like that And I net it out and balance it off for that month.
Speaker 2:And so that's how I look at balance, which is you do go off balance and you're having an I call it a pleasure activity, right? So you're getting this sort of pleasure on one specific evening by indulging in some great food. and then we all have our weaknesses and it comes to I really like to say sweets, and so I'm going to indulge on that one evening and it's fun. And then I know, as part of the balance, i should avoid the same thing for the next 10 days And then 11th day I'm totally fine. And so if I look back in last one month, it balances out And it applies to pretty much everything. in my opinion, that balance is the key And to me that's the long-term strategy. You can keep rebalancing and that's much easier. You can have one day where you're indulging in whatever, but then you can. you need I need some self-control after that for the next few days to just rebalance everything.
Speaker 1:Talking about balance, as you strive to find that, what are some red flags or green flags that you can tell if you're off balance or if you're in balance? So I think, kind of that self-awareness, it can sneak up on you. It can sneak up on you before you realize that you're coming out of balance. So what are some ways that you determine whether or not you need to go from one side or to the other?
Speaker 2:Yeah, i think it's very personal. So if suppose I'm feeling tired at 1 pm on a given Wednesday, that's definitely is a reflect to me, as in there is something out of balance Or it's one of those. Sometimes you get into these let's call it like the sales meeting was client meetings and there is one particular person, or a couple of people who might be, who are saying a few things that's not going to right a wrong, but I end up finding them annoying, or their comments annoying. There's definitely something out of balance. There are these subtle things which will indicate to me that it's unbalanced, like why am I feeling that? Or there are bigger signs, which is, if I have any on a weekday I've trouble getting up or I've trouble going to my primary sporting activity or something. So these are all indicators of am I? there is something bothering me, there is something out of balance, and so let's spend I don't know a few minutes to just fix that, be aware of that and see if there is something that I can do to fix that And I'm talking about more trivial stuff, i guess at this point And then out situations where you might end up in a much bigger imbalance And so that might require some professional help, and that's totally if I need that.
Speaker 2:That is totally on me, like I am the best person to take care of myself, and so, again, it's something important to be aware of And I personally think it's a moving target for the right reason. Not in terms of looking at it. It's a challenge, but, yes, being in balance is always a moving target. I don't want to be, i don't want to live like a monk, give up all pleasures in life, and we are probably always in balance, but none of us probably want that. And so, in that case, this awareness, self-awareness of do I need small adjustment And maybe not eat sweets for the next four days, that's a little adjustment, whereas I'm addicted to sugar man, so I got to go find some therapist to fix that. There's a bigger step to finding that balance, but it's totally on me to be aware of that and then find a solution.
Speaker 1:I love a lot of these things that you're saying that really becoming self-aware And some of the red flags being tired at 1pm, finding that you're abnormally irritable or you find people more annoying than usual are great red flags that just pay attention to. Now I'd like to turn our conversation towards family and balance. You have two daughters. What does balance look like for you in terms of time you spend at work versus time you spend with family? How? talk to me a little bit how you have explored this area? What have you found successful? What have you found challenging?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so to just share a little more context, i have a 12 year old and a two year old, so obviously their needs are both emotional and physical needs are quite different. What I find I'm more successful with But I think it's most rewarding when it comes to finding that work, family balance and so on is the fact that I need to. It's always helpful if there is a bit of plan in terms of how the day going to be or the week going to be, and are there any parts, parts, as in there there are some limitations that I'm going to have in this. So, for example, i'm traveling for a work conference and so I'm not going to see them for four days, and so if that happens, then how do I want my next two days after I return to be so that I can be with my family, with my daughters? My wife also travels quite a bit, so the other important thing here is that travel for work. So the other important thing here is how do we make sure that there are interactions which are just beyond transactions and we are able to again find time for each other, and essentially all of that is.
Speaker 2:I'm not a super plan person, by the way, so I'm not going to be a very successful, let's say, a project manager who can really identify all the tasks and risks and dependencies, but at least intuitively and up to certain level of detail, i'm able to force myself and say okay, and then it's an incident I do make mistakes but I still want to be aware of okay. So my older well, we're all. She loves to play tennis And she also lives with her mother and my ex-wife and there is a shared schedule. So now, with all that considered, how do I make myself available both mentally and physically, and in this case, can serve my energy for the day where she would love to play with me? She is a father's daughter And so I want to have some energy last at the end of the day so that I can go and enjoy a good game of tennis with her. And she's getting good. So it's not just an 70 year old playing that you're like okay, whatever happens on the court, but I'm going to perform poorly.
Speaker 1:She's not going to like it.
Speaker 2:So it does require a bit of this. I'm forgetting the name of the author, but the proponents of it's about managing your energy as opposed to time. I like that philosophy, which is I need to manage my energy when I try to manage my energy along the time, but as much as there is energy left to do these key activities, that makes total sense. Now, just to sum it up, when it comes to the two year old, obviously her needs are quite different and she'll go to bed at seven.
Speaker 2:I do have the benefit of working from home, so there's some flexibility where I can say, okay, i'm ready to take a meeting between, let's say, five, 30 and seven, because that's the only time I might get with my little one, and so anything else that needs to happen. And typically when I work with the folks in the West Coast because out on the East Coast they are totally fine taking a call at 4 pm their time, which is seven year I'm like, okay, that's better than them setting a meeting between five and seven, which is middle of the day time for them. And so, again, some active planning and making sure that my priorities are set as much as possible. And again, it's not possible to do that 100% of the time, but as much as possible. And then B, just being transparent with people as well. I have this is my family and I would want to keep this 90 minutes extra with my family, and most often people appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Talk to me a little bit about that, because one of the a lot of the studies show that the CEO, the C-suite, the business leaders, really set the tone for company culture about what's important boundaries that you can set around personal family life. Talk to me a little about your experience and letting your associates, your employees, know the importance of spending time with your family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, As much as I can make references to our smart team at StatSatral or my previous startup ventures be smaller than 20 people, for example. In most of those cases, we end up knowing each other quite well and most of our employees know what type of a family setup we have. Typically, we have followed the policy where, obviously, people can take time off as they need it for health reasons, for family reasons, whatever is needed. People are actually quite committed to also meeting their goals and objectives, as opposed to just clocking the hours. We really discourage that type of a work culture. Actually, it's a misfit if somebody is just trying to do the job without worrying about the results and they're just working hard enough to say I'm working six yards a day and that's what I'm supposed to do, But it doesn't fit with us. But to your point, if I am with a manager or a boss who has themselves have some level of imbalance with their family and that becomes a culture, hopefully I don't want to choose a place like that to work, And it also depends on whether you are part of an organization where you tend to have a top-down culture, which I think is more traditional.
Speaker 2:Traditionally, businesses used to have a top-down culture And in some places it probably makes sense. I guess in our meat it would make sense And maybe in some other situations it makes sense to have a top-down culture, But when I look at tech industry, very few sub-industries in tech may need a top-down culture. Typically it's quite flat, though, or given the choice of making their own decisions day to day again, focus on how they're going to contribute success from their individual levels, And essentially anybody who is in imbalance is largely a personal choice. But again, it's the responsibility of the leaders to make sure they're transparent about a balanced approach to work and family life, And I think, as a business leader, I would try to be as transparent as possible and say it's important to have that balance And that's definitely a winning long-term strategy.
Speaker 2:Just, you can optimize and work like crazy for six months, but then maybe three months, maybe six months, But it's not a long-term strategy, That's not the goal, It's not sustainable And as a business leader, it's just important to be transparent about that. Even if I'm out of balance in a given month, I would still try to tell my team that look, you don't have to. I am committed to doing something and maybe I'm out of balance with my family for a few days. But you don't have to. That's not how we operate. That's not what we want to do. Maybe we are in a crunch time, so let's do it for two weeks, But beyond that let's just make sure that we are able to spend quality time with our family as well.
Speaker 1:It seems like, if I can just repeat back some of the ideas that you're sharing, being really transparent, being self-aware and really being able to communicate these different kind of seasons or periods of time that you're in is really crucial. I agree, one of the questions I always like asking near the end of these interviews is about success In business. I feel like it's really easy to define success by looking at your KPIs, looking at your net income or net revenue, or maybe the evaluation of your company, but it's a little more difficult to define what success looks like in the family. Would you mind sharing your thoughts on how you define success for your family and how do you measure that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a very hard question. So I think the success starts with taking that to me, taking a self-temperature and see, do I feel okay? I don't need to be super happy every day. I think that's impractical, but at the same time, if I'm unhappy every day, that's also concerning My first step in terms of measuring my family's success is am I feeling okay? And I have my own emotional baseline And so, based on that, i might have some stress points and so on and so forth. But am I okay? And then, are my children okay? Is my partner okay? Are my parents okay? And I think that's the.
Speaker 2:It's a very simple approach that I'm just taking that temperature, which is, yes, there are. Everybody has their own concerns, their own emotional baselines and so on and so forth. But are they okay? Are we? don't have any unusual struggles or something we really feel concerned about? If I look at children, are they largely able to do what they enjoy? My older one if she likes academics, is she comfortable with that And she wants some help or attention from me or from somebody else. Is she able to do that? She doesn't feel like it's all about books and she can't have fun on her iPhone. That clearly should not be the case. So again, i think that understanding is driven by just taking first the self-temperature and then making sure that the family members, each family member's temperature is okay And then, end of the day, it's like I don't have to be the secret sort of I would say amateur psychologist, but it's essentially just having that conversation which is I can have.
Speaker 2:I do ask my brother or and say, hey, you okay, do you need anything? Do you want to hang out or are you comfortable with maybe a homework or your last and his game that you lost All of that, and it's in a way motivates her to take her own temperature and share that information with me, and then that's a very important output. Same thing goes with the can do the two-year-old. But same thing goes with my partner, with my wife, and say how are you feeling? You fabled, what do you need? And so there is definitely a certain level of empathy and so on. But that feedback is important to me for families health, mainly because my baseline for empathy is different from you or from somebody else And the more information, or at least the basic information, i have and regularly I'm able to get that information I'm able to take that temperature and say, okay, what the family is doing, okay, we don't need to do great every single day. That's impractical. We don't need to have it blast every day. It never happens like that.
Speaker 1:So that's how I approach it. One final question one of our previous guests there was on was talking about this idea that to be super successful let's say to be a Jeff Bezos or to be Elon Musk it's not possible to be that successful and to have a super successful family. How would you respond to that idea?
Speaker 2:I don't know. The part of the comment is probably just the numbers game of fortune publishing how much a person is worth in terms of dollars And that's. I guess that's what I'm hearing from you, but the whole idea is that families is just that. I'm not sure what's the baseline of happiness or unhappiness, or a billionaire. I'm not one of them. In my experience, i've seen several low-income families in India and in the US who seem to be seem to be happy, and at the same time, i have seen a few well-to-do families who are not so happy, and so I don't think these are correlated.
Speaker 2:The bigger question to me is do you want a happy family? Do you care about it? And some people may have a different viewpoint on it, and that's totally fine. And some people really spend a lot of time to make sure that their family is happy and, for that matter, they may not seem as ambitious as compared to some of these household names, and that's fine. It's a very personal question. It's a very personal. It's a highly personal choice, yeah, and so what matters to me most is, again, it's like would my startup ever be a billion dollar startup? Maybe not. It has nothing to do with my family happiness. Yes, there will be some conveniences. If you have more wealth you can buy some more convenience. But would that be the only criteria to be happy? No, on the other hand, i do know the practical side of such comments, where, if you are not able to provide decent healthcare because of lack of means or education and so on, yes, that does make you less happy or maybe unhappy.
Speaker 1:And that's a practical reality. Shikin, i really appreciate your willingness to come on the show to share your thoughts about balance, about family success and just generally your overall experience in establishing a healthy culture in your startups. Thank you so much for your time and the wisdom that you've shared today.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for having me. I hope this is meaningful and it adds value to what you're working on. I appreciate all the hard work that you're putting for it.
Speaker 1:Appreciate it so much. Everyone again, this is Shikin Argowal, founder and CEO of Stats Ladderall. Thank you so much for coming on the show today and we will see you all on the next show.