Papers in a Paperless World – e61 – Hadi Radwan – David Vs Goliath Podcast
In episode 61 on the David Vs Goliath Podcast, our host Adam DeGraide interviews the Co-Founder of Getaway Ali Nichols. Ali shares the story of starting your own business and raising money successfully after receiving over “70” NO’s. Truly a David Vs Goliath story.
Adam Degraide:
Coming up today on David versus Goliath, the paperless Wonder Boy who is loaded with paper.
Hadi Radwan:
Building companies is like a muscle. The more you do it, the more you become better at it.
Adam Degraide:
The next time I hear the word mandate, I’m shutting the episode off. Papers in a paperless world.
Speaker 3:
Welcome to today’s episode of David versus Goliath. A podcast dedicated to helping small businesses leverage technology to not only help them compete against their large competitors, but win. Your host is currently the CEO of Anthem Business Software, a three time Inc. 500 recipient, and a serial entrepreneur with a passion to help small businesses everywhere find, serve, and keep more customers profitably. Please join me in welcoming your host, Adam Degraide.
Adam Degraide:
Hey everyone, it’s Adam Degraide with another fantastic episode of the David versus Goliath podcast. Today I have Hadi Radwan from Estella. I think I’m saying that right. I have no idea. These words get more complicated every single week. But we should be learning a lot about the insurance industry and the InsureTech industry in general. It should be great. Today’s episode is brought to us by automatemysocial.com, where if you’re a small business, you can automate 90% to a hundred percent of your social media forever. The software even creates the post for you so you don’t have to do the work. Automatically schedules them, gets it all set up for you. It’s fantastic. Automatemysocial.com.
Be sure to visit us online at DavidvsGoliathpodcast.com. There you can subscribe to receive our newsletter, as well as email us and apply to be on the podcast. Which is a great way for us to get to know your business. If you’ve got a great story, we want to hear it here on the David versus Goliath podcast. Well, with no further ado, Hadi, welcome to the David versus Goliath podcast.
Hadi Radwan:
Thank you, Adam, for having me. It’s a pleasure.
Adam Degraide:
It’s so glad. Now I can tell by all the papers behind you, you’re hard at work getting people insured with income insurance. And I don’t know if you know this Hadi, but I was, I’ve been in the insurance industry. I’m still in the insurance industry. My wife’s an insurance agent. My in-laws are insurance agents. They have on a huge agency out in California. And I have personally worked with over 5,000 insurance agents in a business a few years back, that I sold, called Astonished Results.
My non-compete is up, so I’m actually back in that industry now, and I’m working with many independent insurance agencies right now. So I’m very familiar with the market in general. And I was reading a little bit about your history and what you’ve done. You are clearly a serial entrepreneur, clearly a serial paper collector. And it’s interesting to follow people’s journey, especially in the insurance industry. So for the fine folks, the watchers and the listeners, tell them exactly about the venture you’re doing currently. And then we’ll back in and have some fun.
Hadi Radwan:
So I’m exactly anti paper. I don’t have a notebook next to me. I don’t have an office. We are fully remote. And our system is fully automated. And this is what we are planning to do when it comes to insurance. We want to get people protected in the most easy and possible way out there. So if you go to our platform, which is asteya.world, you can within couple of minutes get protected. And our goal at Asteya is to make income insurance accessible for everyone in the US. Specifically, income insurance is called disability, and it doesn’t go too far for that type of policy because no policy can protect your disability. This is something that could or could not happen. What we are here to protect is your income in case something bad happens to you. And less than 11% of the US population have some form of income protection. The rest, they either don’t know it exists, or simply they don’t have the money to buy it, or the means to buy it.
Adam Degraide:
Yeah, that’s fascinating. Because I definitely know that I had a situation, pretty sad situation, recently over the last few years. Very dear friend of mine, and current business partner, who’s cured of cancer now. But he was diagnosed with cancer out of nowhere. And thank God he had disability insurance at the time, because he was out of commission for a couple of years, basically, recovering and fighting his cancer. And it made a huge difference in his life actually doing that.
Now, when you’re creating your company, are you creating, is this a program? You’re not the carrier. So my instincts tell me, and this is just because I know the industry pretty well, that you’re basically a gentleman that sees a need, gathers the carriers together, and then creates a program that is affordable for the insured. And you go to market and you try to get mass scale. Do you work with independent agencies at all? Or do you have a direct to consumer model right now? And is that an accurate description of what you’ve put together here, so far?
Hadi Radwan:
Absolutely. So we are an MGA, where basically we have the experience to underwrite, we have the experience to run a business, we have the experience to build technology. And then we go to people who have capital, like big carriers who says, “Okay, identify for me a need in the market. And I want to deploy my capital where I can get the most return. And I don’t want to do it myself. Because there’s experts out there, like Asteya’s people, who can identify an opportunity, who can underwrite it profitably. And then we have the technology to make it more efficient and lean. So that’s where we are.
We are an MGA. And our model is exactly opposite to a direct to consumer model because we believe if you want to go direct to the customer, especially in the income insurance space, you need to educate everyone out there. Because more than 50% of the US population don’t know what an income insurance is. They don’t know it exists. So if we were to go to every one of these people out there, to convince them, to build trust with them, that takes billions of dollars. And we don’t want to do that. We don’t want to waste anyone’s money.
Adam Degraide:
It exactly $1.5 billion to build a brand. Exactly. Maybe now, with inflation, it’s more like $1.9 billion.
Hadi Radwan:
It’s a lot of money. So what we’ve done is, we understand the value of the independent agent and the intermediary, specifically in this industry. In other industries, probably the middle man you can get rid of. But in the insurance industry they’re key. Because it’s a complex product to sell. It’s a product that needs trust to be built out. And I believe we have partnered with each and every of these independent agents to tell them that our products are geared to fill an income gap. If there’s a gap there in the market, it fills that gap. And then more importantly, our platform allows them to become more efficient in selling. And these are critical pain points in the market that has hindered the growth of disability.
Adam Degraide:
So basically, for my watchers and listeners that don’t know the intricacies of the insurance base. Many of you that watch and listen are insurance agents, so exactly what Hadi and I are talking about. So basically, Hadi is an expert in underwriting. He’s an expert in putting together carriers with big capital. And carriers are the ones that actually insure you. So they’re the ones that have the money, they’re the ones that are taking the risk on the fact that you may not or will have a disability in the future. They’re weighing those actuary tables to see if it makes sense for them.
They then package a product that they believe is affordable to the insured, and also effective to for them to make profit as well, too. And at the same time, Hadi then puts the program together, brings it to his network of independent agents, provides technology assisted selling tools to the independent agent to help them distribute this product in an effective and efficient way. And everyone wins. The insured wins. The independent agent who currently has the relationship with the insured wins. Hadi wins, because he put the program together and made it simple for the independent agents. And the carriers win, because they don’t have to worry about managing the program, because that’s exactly what Hadi is doing.
And I guarantee you’ve never been in a podcast where somebody understood that world better than me. I know that for a fact. Because a lot of people don’t really understand what it takes to do insurance. And one of the things I’ll tell you, man, I do think back to that time. We were scrambling. We, as a company, wanted to support our buddy who was going through his cancer. But that became a burden to us. But we would’ve done it. And thank God he had insurance to supplement it. Because it allowed it to be more affordable for everyone and he was covered. That’s awesome.
So we’re going to take our first break, Hadi, from one of our corporate sponsors, Automate My Social. And when we come back we’re going to have more fun talking about insurance, talking about technology, and the independent insurance agent. I’m Adam Degraide. Hang on, we’ll be right back.
Speaker 3:
Do you own a business? Do you have or need a social media presence? If you are like most businesses, you spend either no time, or too much time and money, on your social media strategy. Spending thousands of dollars per month only to get mediocre and inconsistent results. This leads to frustration. And in some cases, sleepless nights. Introducing automatemysocial.com. Automate 90% of your social media, and never have to think about it again. That’s right. Automate your business’s social media posting and strategy like forever. Automate the essentials, and customize only what’s needed.
Save time, save money, and get better results. With automatemysocial.com. Our patent pending technology gives you the ability to automatically create your social posts and distribute them immediately, like in seconds, across all your social media platforms. Stop the madness of paying someone to create posts and manage your strategy. And let our software do the work so you don’t have to. Oh, and if you’re an agency or social media manager, you too can let our software do all of the work and you can get all the credit. It will be our little secret.
With automatemysocial.com., You can have it all. It’s easy to use, never complains, and never asks for time off or more benefits. See this amazing new software application at automatemysocial.com. If you own a business or manage client social media, and want to save time, energy, money, all while increasing your return on investment, then let’s get this party started at automatemysocial.com.
Adam Degraide:
And we’re back with our second part of the podcast today with Hadi. It’s awesome to have you. It’s great to find other people that love insurance as much as I do. And it’s interesting, because I got out of it for years, Hadi. I built, and I worked with 5,000 insurance agents. I worked with MGAs. I helped them with their marketing and that. I’m now doing that again. And to come back into it so many years later, I had a brief stint of about eight years working with plastic surgeons and cosmetic derms, waiting for my non-compete to run out. And it ran out. And now I’m back in this space.
So it’s a lot of fun. And you know, you said something that was really impactful to me, because it’s dear to my heart. My in-laws are independent insurance agents. Many of my friends that I still have to this day, because when you work as much as I do, your friends are the people you work with, are independent insurance agents. Tell the watchers and listeners a little bit about how you, as an MGA, educate independent insurance agents as to what you offer. And how you get that message out to that market.
Hadi Radwan:
So we put ourselves in their shoes. And we’d like to think what they’re thinking. So from an independent agents, there’s two things that they care about. One is to service their customer, to make sure they advise them on the proper products that they need to buy. Because this is how you build trust. You want to sell a product where it fills the gap for a customer. And in the case of your friend, it was fortunate for him that probably his advisor gave him the right product. And unfortunately, outlier events happen, and you buy insurance for those events. You don’t buy insurance to get a return on your investment. This is just, as we say, it’s an insurance plan that we hope you never use it. But if you use it, it’s there for the unforeseen circumstances. So once we put ourselves in their shoes, we make sure the products we’ve built for them have exactly all the features that they might be looking for.
So we identify every product, what type of target customer it’s best for. We give them rates, we give them exclusions, we give them how the specimen of the policy looks like, so that they read the fine print. And as they’re advising their customers, they would say, “Hey, look out for this clause in this particular policy, because it might mean 1, 2, 3 for you.” So we try to be very transparent on this. We don’t want to hide the clothes in plain sight. Because we know for a fact customers do not like to read those fine prints. But the brokers and agents, if they’re well educated on those things, they can think of who should benefit from this clothes and who shouldn’t. Now we are against anti-selection as an MGA. We don’t want to show up and say, “Here’s a clause that would benefit someone who possibly has preexisting condition.” And then they come and buy it. And that would create a loss.
The idea is it’s transparently there, and we are going to underwrite it. And hopefully we underwrite the sum of large numbers so that some of the good risk will subsidize the bad risk. And that’s how insurance companies make money.
Adam Degraide:
Yep. That’s how we [inaudible 00:14:44]. Yep.
Hadi Radwan:
But from independent agents, from an independent agent, is the type of product you offer. Who is it best for? How to sell it, and what’s the price for? Because this is important when the agent can quote out there. And then the second layer is, how can we deliver this to their end customer in a seamless way? So historically, disability insurance took two to three months to get a policy out to the customer. So if you’re an agent, you want to make money, you want to live. You want to make sure that there’s a sustainable stream of income coming. If you want to sell disability, and it takes you two to three months to close a policy, you might say, “You know what? I’ll sell life insurance, or car insurance, or health. It’s much faster. “
So we thought about this pain point. And we said, how can we shrink down the sales cycle to minutes? And that’s what our platform offers. The platform says to the agent, go advise your customer, make sure that this is a right fit for them, and then give them an enrollment link and let them handle the administration part themself. They sign, they put their credit card. And now you get your commission much faster. Because you move to the next agent… Sorry, the next customer. And then you do the same.
And then at the same time we thought to ourself, “Okay, we are helping now the agent to increase their revenue. What if we also help them to reduce their cost? Because now they can make more profits.” Revenue minus cost equal profits. If the revenue is high, the cost is low. Now you’re making more margins. So on our platform we’ve introduced a lot of features that they usually pay for somewhere else. Like checking their licensing arrangement with third parties, doing prospecting tools that cost them like a dollar or $2 per call. Doing email marketing automation that cost them $500, $600 if they want to go on third party platforms.
So we offer all of these for free. So that if someone comes through the funnel and they don’t convert from day one, the agent can look at this and say, “Okay, let me analyze why Adam did not convert.” I can give him a call, or I can email him directly from the platform, offer him probably more products from the platform if he thinks it’s expensive. And that allows the agent either to increase their conversion rate and reduce their cost at the same time. So the agents love us because we are thinking as if we are the agent and we are running their business.
Adam Degraide:
That’s great. That’s really, really interesting. And for the watchers and listeners, what he is talking about is insurance companies don’t want to insure you when you already have the condition. And then they also create what are called exclusions. Which, in these particular scenarios, you would be excluded from receiving the benefit. So the independent insurance agent’s job is to make sure that you, as the insured, understand A, what you’re saying has to be factually true. B, here’s the things you need to watch out for in this particular policy, because it might be a problem.
And then Hadi is also saying to insurance agents, “We’ve created the technology that can take it from three months down to a couple of days in getting people insured, which means more commissions quicker.” And I think that’s fascinating. And then the marketing tools, it’s going to be interesting to see how those work. I mean, I provide marketing tools for insurance agents right now. They’re notoriously terrible at using anything that’s provided to them. I don’t know if you know that or not.
Hadi Radwan:
You’re absolutely-
Adam Degraide:
But the interesting thing is, Hadi, when you do it for them, which is what we do, then it gets done. But it’s fascinating, because I love the industry so much. Now your team, obviously you’re not doing this by yourself, hanging out in a room. I mean you have between outsource developers, and employees, and your core network of people you’re working with. How large is your current team in helping this product get to the insurance agents?
Hadi Radwan:
So we are roughly now around 80 people in the organization. And we are one of the few companies in this, I think in this year, in the InsuredTech space, who we didn’t lay off anyone. We actually increased our workforce. Because we are very lean, we run things remotely. We don’t have rent, we don’t have lavish marketing expenses that we pay to acquire customers. We are very lean. And we want to notice keep that because-
Adam Degraide:
I noticed you don’t even have a logo behind your head.
Hadi Radwan:
Yep. I have just papers and a wallpaper.
Adam Degraide:
Papers in a paperless world. That should be that actually-
Hadi Radwan:
Exactly.
Adam Degraide:
Actually, you know what’s so funny? That’s going to be the title of this week’s episode, Hadi. Papers in a Paperless World. Don’t let me forget that, TJ. That’s my producer, who’s editing this right now. Papers in a Paperless World.
Hadi Radwan:
It’s catchy. It’s catchy, for sure.
Adam Degraide:
It is catchy. It’s funny. When you create episodes, my watchers and listeners, some of them will watch the first few minutes, some of them watch it all the way through.. And it’s just nice to always have a little caption and then the trolls come, Hadi. The trolls say, “What are you two doing? You can’t make any money. You’re hanging out in the studio. And look at this dude, he’s in a room with papers all over his wall.” But they don’t know the secrets that we know, Hadi, which is awesome.
So we’re going to take another break. And when we come back, we’re going to switch gears again. And I want to talk about the vision you had for starting this, your passion for insurance in general. And then we’re going to have a little fun with it, as well, too. You’re with Hadi Radwan and Adam Degraide for the David Versus Goliath podcast. Here’s another important message from another amazing sponsor. We’ll be right back.
Speaker 4:
At ISU ARMAC agency, we want to be your one responsible source for all of your insurance needs. From a rocket engineer in California to several hospitals in Illinois, our personal lines team specializes in hard to place risks and high net worth clientele. With two locations and 20 plus agents, we can write in all 50 states, to better serve our clients with needs in multiple states. Family owned and operated since 1962, and four generations, carrying on the tradition of insurance. Celebrating our 60th year in the industry, we are truly proud of where we have come from and where we are going. With over 300 carriers nationwide, our agency can offer individuals and businesses more choices and better prices. ISU ARMAC brings a wide variety of solutions to the table. For more information, visit us online at www.isu-armac.com.
Adam Degraide:
And we’re back for our final segment with Hadi and Adam, the paperless wonder boy who’s loaded with paper. It is awesome to have you on the podcast today. And one of the things I always talk about with entrepreneurs, Hadi, because our show is a little bit different. You know, didn’t pay to be on this. You didn’t pay me to be on this. I’m not getting paid to have you on. And at the end of the day, I try to let people have their time, where they can talk about their company. But I also like to talk to people about who they are as people. And so I’ll start with you in a place I haven’t started in a while. What is your biggest pet peeve in life?
Hadi Radwan:
Pet peeve?
Adam Degraide:
Do you have one?
Hadi Radwan:
I don’t have one, to be frank.
Adam Degraide:
I have one for you. It’s paper. No, it’s… You know, it’s funny. Most people when you get to that part, they try to tie it back into their business. They say something like, “Well, my pet peeve is people not being as efficient as they possibly can be, which is why we created…” And they get into their sales pitch. And tell us a little bit about your story. So what’s your background before you started Asteya? Where did you come from? And what do you like to do besides hanging out in a pink room with a bunch of papers, and write insurance all day?
Hadi Radwan:
Yeah, no, absolutely. So I was originally fascinated with people and numbers. This is how I started my career. So I went to one of the big fours. Where you audit other firms, you learn the ins and outs of their processes, and then you issue a report. I got really bored with that because it’s too good to be true. Every process is the same. You repeat things, it’s just different industries.
And then I wanted to shake things around. I did my MBA just to expand on the industries I can go after. And I met my co-founder 10 years ago, and he had a family business in insurance. And I’ve noticed that a lot of the insurance processes are the same. But they’re stale. And the reason they’re stale is because they work. No one changes them because you are in a risk management environment. You need to make sure your numbers are right because you’re… It’s a probabilistic word.
You want to make sure that you make money on a lot of large numbers. And change is hard, habits are difficult to break, especially with people there. And we thought to ourself, it seems like everyone’s going after the big, big lines of business. Like life insurance, car insurance, health insurance. There was something about disability insurance, which is around 20 billion in size, that was fascinating to us. Because our research showed that four out of 10 people get disabled, versus one out of 10 die during their career, working career.
And that doesn’t make sense that the life insurance industry is 10 times bigger than the disability insurance. And as we dug deeper, we found that people don’t know about it. People think disability is falling and breaking their leg, when actually 90% of it is illnesses, like your friend who unfortunately had cancer. So it tied all back up to also my upbringing. Because I came from a family who didn’t have a lot of money. And we were living paycheck to paycheck. And we were fortunate that nothing happened to the breadwinner.
If something happened, probably I wouldn’t have gone to school, or my sister wouldn’t have gone to school, as well. And I thought to myself, there’s more than 50% of the population in the US living paycheck to paycheck, even if their salary is high. Even if you earn half a million dollars in annual salary. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck and something bad happens to you, you’re actually worse off than someone who’s earning 50K. Because the one who’s 50K, probably, he’s living a modest life. He’s not overspending. He doesn’t have a mortgage, he doesn’t have three or four children. So we thought to ourself, this is a great mission to go after. Because primarily it’s focusing on your most important asset, which is your income. If that gets cut out, you are in deep trouble. So this is where we looked deeper into the industry, and we brought automation because of the pain points that I mentioned to you.
And they were sitting in plain sight. But many people weren’t attracted to that industry because they thought it’s small. Actually it’s not small. It’s just that the market, the current addressable market, looks small. But the potential market is everyone in the US who makes a living. Everyone who earns a salary should have some form of income protection. It’s not mandatory today in the US. But I hope if we have someone listening to your podcast who actually goes and changes laws, to make this at least a mandatory thing for employer. Because other than health insurance, this is more important than life insurance.
Adam Degraide:
No more mandate, Hadi. We can’t take any more mandates. The next time I hear the word mandate, I’m shutting the episode off. I’m not a mandate guy. There should be no mandates for anything. People should buy what they want. But I hear what you’re saying. And if I was in Hadi’s shoes, mandate income insurance. But I mean at the end of the day, I totally understand what you’re saying in regards to that. Because I think what’s happened unfortunately, is that we have a tendency to want to mandate things
that haven’t been properly educated. So what do I mean by that? So you’re making a really good point. Life insurance has done an amazing job telling everyone they’re going to die. Because the reality is, Hadi, the death rate is one per person. And we’re all going.
It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. So that is an absolute surety that I will die. You will die, watchers and listeners. And you will die, Hadi. There’s no doubt in my mind. What we haven’t done a very good job, to your point is, what happens if you stay alive and you’re not well? That’s another whole thing. So Aflac has tried to do a little bit of that, as you know. And so there’s been that bedrock that’s been laid for the independent insurance agents.
But I think for the life and health insurance people, as well as the P and C carriers, this is a really important conversation to have with your potential insureds. I mean, it really shouldn’t be an afterthought, especially if they’re working. And if they’re not disabled already, you should at least mention it to them. I’m going to ask you again, and I want a straight answer, what do you do for fun? Because it’s not insurance.
Hadi Radwan:
Yeah, absolutely not insurance. My insurance is my work job.
Adam Degraide:
What do you love to do?
Hadi Radwan:
So I’m actually fascinated with the human body.
Adam Degraide:
You’re a biohacker, just like the lady I interviewed last week. She’s an [inaudible 00:28:43]biohacker.
Hadi Radwan:
I’m not a biohacker.
Adam Degraide:
No. So tell us a little bit about this.
Hadi Radwan:
Yeah, I’d like to experiment a lot of things that help you live a healthier and better life. And these are things like going out and doing cold plunges, or doing a trampoline jump, or climbing some form of artificial mountains. Things that keep your adrenaline up a notch. And I think these are essential because we live in a world where we’re, a lot of people are remote, we are sitting inside our houses. It’s the same environment. And now we are meshing our family life with our work life when you’re remotely sitting there. So it’s important that you take breaks to go out, enjoy life, have fun, experiment with things out there, and then get back to work. That’s fine. You recharge, you’re good to go. You’re clearer in mind. And it has done tremendous for me and for my team. We’ve moved, three years ago, everyone remotely. And no one wants to go back to work anymore in an office space.
Adam Degraide:
It’s funny, it’s funny you mentioned a cold plunge, Hadi. I’ve got a buddy of mine, who will remain unnamed. He bought a cold plunge for when he drinks too much. He gets up the following morning and he cold plunges himself back into existence. Now that is a little extreme to me. That may not be the healthiest lifestyle. But it is definitely in a use. And it definitely gets your adrenaline going. There’s no doubt about that.
Now when you mentioned that you met your business partner 10 years ago. When you guys got together, and you decided you were going to start a business, a lot of entrepreneurs listening to this show, or potential ones, they’ve either just started a company, they’re still very scared. They have a great idea, they haven’t started a company. That takes a lot of courage to do that. And to say, “I’m going to go ahead and make this a reality.” What was the intangible for you, Hadi, that said, I don’t want to work for somebody else. I want to go do my own thing. And try to live, go back to that very first day, where you did that. How did you feel when you started your first business?
Hadi Radwan:
It’s full of anxiety when you start your own business. Because suddenly you are moving from a defined responsibility. When you’re in your nine to five job, you have this scope of work that you sign when you get your contract. You’re an accountant, you do debits and credits. You know what you’re going to do at the end of the day. And then you move to a place with uncertainties. You have people who rely on you. You have families who rely on you. You have customers, you have suppliers. And if things go wrong, you’re the first one to blame. So suddenly you are from a defined scope to a full uncertainty which create these layers of anxiety. There’s an adrenaline rush here. So if things go well, the upside is unlimited. If things don’t go well, some people don’t recover from that. Because they’ll say, “Okay, I failed. I failed not only myself, but I failed other people.”
Adam Degraide:
Yeah, I failed my family, I failed my employees. I failed my, yeah.
Hadi Radwan:
Exactly. Exactly. So there’s a lot of pressure when it comes to this. So that’s important when you want to take that step to be prepared. And I was on a previous podcast, who asked me the same questions. What does it take to jump from the nine to five job to the entrepreneurial journey? And I shared with him five things that I’ve done pre starting my first company. And one is building the skill set. Make sure you have a plan B. That’s what I tell myself. I don’t follow the other advice. Burn the boat and then jump into the new venture. That’s not the smart thing to do. You have to have a plan B. So get your skillsets in place, so that if you fail here, you can jump to another one with full enthusiasm. You know that you’re going to do a better job because you’ve learned.
The second thing is make sure you learn not from successful people, but from unsuccessful people. Because the successful people will tell you all the wins they’ve made. They wouldn’t share the losses. The unsuccessful, the losses are-
Adam Degraide:
Well good successful people will share their losses.
Hadi Radwan:
They will. But the ones-
Adam Degraide:
I’ve been very successful. And I absolutely share my stories of my losses as well, too.
Hadi Radwan:
Correct. But what I’m trying to say is the ones who have failed, they have the failures ingrained in them. And they passionately would share it with you. They say, “Okay, I went into this partnership with my friend. And now I’ve lost my friendship because of this.” So you learn a lot from them.
The third thing is, solve a pain point. Don’t build a nice to have, build actually a pain point. And the fourth thing, get the right strategies to build product market fit before you go all in. And I have a podcast called The First 100, which I host. And it tackles exactly this. Because I’m very curious to learn how other people have actually jumped from zero to 100. Which is the hardest part, by the way. Because a lot of customers, a lot of companies fail here. They build something, and then no one buys it. So that’s the fourth thing.
And the fifth one, once you build all of this, you need to have the grit and perseverance to know that things will not go always in the right way. And failure is a privilege. Making mistake is a privilege. You actually need to take these as free lessons. They’re not free, actually, you’re paying for them. But they are things that you can learn from. And then eventually, you will definitely not do that mistake later on.
The only thing that I’ve missed, and that’s why I’ve added that point, which is failure, is I never had a mentor. If you have a mentor who can actually guide you from mistakes that they have done, or that other people that they know have done, that also would cut down that low probability of having anxieties during your career. And building companies is like a muscle. The more you do it, the more you become better at it, the faster you can grow to the front. I’ve phased 10 times.
Adam Degraide:
That’s so true, by the way, it’s so true. Because we’re coming to the end here. What Hadi said was very important guys. He said the zero to a hundred is difficult. What I always say, Hadi, is you can’t get to 10 without getting one. Once you get one, you get 10. You get 10, you can get a hundred. You get a hundred, you can get a thousand. You get a thousand, you can get 10,000. You get the point. The point is, you’ve got to start somewhere and you got to have the grit and determination to do it. Great advice. Great five tips. I love it. Paper in a Paperless World with Hadi Radwan and Adam Degraide on the David versus Goliath. Have you had a good time being on the show today?
Hadi Radwan:
Amazing. Thank you for having me, Adam. This was a-
Adam Degraide:
I’m so glad. I’m so glad you came. How can people find you?
Hadi Radwan:
So I am available on LinkedIn. Just type my name, Hadi Radwan. Probably I’m the only one with that name. And just shoot me a message. Add me. Go to my podcast, The First 100. Go to my website, ww.asteya.world. Get your income protection. That’s the most important asset for you. And we hope we added value to all your listeners.
Adam Degraide:
Yes, you did. It was awesome having you. It’s another amazing episode in the can here on the David versus Goliath podcast. You never knew who we were going to interview. So stay tuned next week. We’ll see you then. Have an awesome day.