Speaking and Communicating Podcast

>> Sardor Akhmedov: And then just the ability to really connect with people, right? Rapport and relationship. When I go on an interview, um, with a candidate, and I see that they're not even able to chit chat with me and establish that personal connection. Like, you know, for the first, like, ten minutes of this, you and I were talking.

>> Robert Sandleila: Welcome back to the speaking and communicating podcast. I am your host, Robert and Lela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are, ah, crucial for your career growth and leadership development. And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify. Leave us a rating and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on this show.

Sardor Akhmedov is the chief revenue officer for Jafton

Now let's get communicating. Now let's get communicating with Sardor Ahmedov all the way from Florida. He is the chief revenue officer. I think that's the first time we have one like that on the show for Jafton. And he's a managing partner as well for the app development company. And before I go any further, uh, please help me welcome him to the show. Hi, Sardor.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Hey, thanks for having me, Roberta.

>> Robert Ndlela: How are you doing today?

>> Speaker C: Doing really well.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: How about yourself?

>> Robert Ndlela: I'm doing fantastic. Welcome to the show.

The outside is too hot, inside is too cold in Florida

How hot is Florida?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: It's very hot. Uh, but, you know, it's actually very cold in here where I'm exactly at in my office, because RaC is very, very high. So that's one, uh, contrast that you get in Florida. You know, the outside is too hot, inside is too cold. You have to carry a jacket with you all the time when you come in indoors.

>> Robert Ndlela: Hopefully you guys don't get flu with all that contrasting.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Yeah, I got immune to it already in the last three years living here. But, yeah, for the newcomers, it is something to be aware of for sure.

So please give us a little bit of your background. Sure. So I'm a tech entrepreneur, I'm 25

>> Robert Ndlela: So please give us a little bit of your background.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Sure. So I'm a tech entrepreneur, I'm 25, and I've been in the US for past nine years. I'm originally from Uzbekistan, that's in central Asia. I grew up, was born there, and the age of 16, I came to the United States to study in high school. I got a scholarship last minute before I wanted to leave to the UK, my plan was to study in the UK. And then my plans kind of changed last minute. Two weeks before I was supposed to leave to the UK, and I ended up coming to the US because I got a better scholarship here, um, which was something very fascinating. There's a whole story of how in the hindsight, I realized I manifested that because I had picture of what I thought was London on my wall back in Uzbekistan.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: For a couple of years.

>> Robert Ndlela: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: That then I realized was actually Brooklyn. Only when I arrived and I saw the Brooklyn Bridge, I'm like, I thought that was London. I was just so ignorant.

>> Robert Ndlela: I thought it was the London Bridge that you had on your vision for it.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Yes, exactly. And it didn't even know. And I guess that's how, you know, my plans changed last minute without even intending to go to the US, consciously, subconsciously manifest in the US and ended up living in New York, actually.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So pretty crazy story.

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: I'm a huge believer in, uh, the law of attraction and uh, yes. Anyways, so I came to the US nine years ago and I went to high school for two years. Uh, so my junior and senior years I studied in state, uh, of Massachusetts, actually in this small town called Granby. Then I graduated, went to New York Institute of Technology in New York, NYIt for a year. Then I took a gap semester, went back home, did a little bit of a business there, established my business, then came back here studying in college in California, transferred out in southern California to Whittier college, studied there for another semester and then I ended up dropping out and, uh, getting into business that I'm in right now. A year prior to that though, I was in a restaurant business. Uh, my sister and I were managing a small restaurant in Manhattan. It was actually the first uzbek restaurant that we opened historically in Manhattan. Nobody else did that before.

>> Robert Ndlela: Wow.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: And yeah, that worked until the pandemic started and got closed down. So anyways, I've been in the sport nutrition business. I've been in the restaurant business, I've been in the e commerce business. Then I've gotten into this consulting and app development services business that I'm in right now.

So in Uzbekistan, do you speak English? You didn't have language barriers

>> Robert Ndlela: So in Uzbekistan, do you speak English? You didn't have language barriers at all?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Uh, I did have a little bit, I guess, but I already knew English. So I studied English here and there since the age of five. Had, I had a tutor that would come and teach us English.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Because when I was growing up, it was the early days of Uzbekistan, because Uzbekistan just appeared on the map. Like, was it like six years before I was born?

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: I was born in 1998 and then 1991, actually.

>> Speaker C: Okay.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Seven years prior, Uzbekistan even just appeared on the map. Got broken out from Soviet Union. So the trend of learning English started right in the early nineties. So as a kid, my parents really stressed on me learning English. So I knew English when I came since the young age, so it wasn't that big of a problem. Obviously my English wasn't as good, but yeah, I didn't have a language problem.

>> Robert Ndlela: Fresher. That's good. It's almost like every time we hear these stories of I dripped out of college and now I'm a businessman. Should we all just drop out of college at this point?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: No, actually, it's, uh, there's a difference, right. Between correlation and causation.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So the success in business is not a causation of you dropping out of college. It's rather a correlation, I would say.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So my take on this is, even though I did drop out of college, I'm not successful because I dropped out of college.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: It's just because I had started something that was already making money. You know, I took a semester off, like I said, after my first year in college to start a business. And at that business ended up working out, I started making money. And then I just couldn't help myself but run that business while I was in college. But it was getting to the point where me staying in college was taking away the time from the actual business that was making money, if that makes sense.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So I just couldn't physically allocate time to finish college, so I had to drop out. And I would say that's the only reason people should drop out from college.

>> Robert Ndlela: Right. Um, because you are already building something while there. And like I said, once it starts to be successful and it's rolling, you can then realize, you know what, there's something here. I need to invest my time.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Exactly.

>> Robert Ndlela: Because that's what Mark Zuckerberg did. He started in college.

>> Speaker C: Yes.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: And he took a semester off, you know, and I think he took three semesters off. And the reason, the only reason he dropped out is because he wanted to always come back to Harvard and study the same way as Bill Gates as well.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: They never wanted to drop out, but the problem was they just couldn't physically keep extending semesters off. They, they had a limit on two or three semesters off and that's it. And then they had to drop out because they just couldn't physically allocate time for college.

>> Robert Ndlela: Right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So to me it was like, you know, kind of used up my one semester off that I could. For me, it was enough to know that I don't need to be in college.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So.

>> Speaker C: Mhm.

You've always identified yourself as an entrepreneur, including running a business

>> Robert Ndlela: So you've always been an entrepreneur, including running a business with your sister. You've always had this thing of, I always want to create something myself instead of going around looking for a job.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Correct?

>> Speaker C: Yes.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: For as long as I know myself, I've always identified as an entrepreneur, you know, and I, uh, wanted to make money even before I knew the word entrepreneur. I mean, my dad has been a businessman himself, an entrepreneur. So I would look up at him. I guess that's where I got the inspiration. But I started making my first money with a business at the age of ten.

>> Robert Ndlela: Wow.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Yeah, yeah. I, uh, was selling video games the middle school I was in, I think, fifth grade.

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: I would sell, um, actually pretty creatively. From phone to phone, I would be able to send video games. So back then, the Internet wasn't really widely spread, right? So as kids, we didn't really have mobile Internet. We had, like, only the desktop, uh, Internet on our computers when we came home, right? So it was a wired Internet. It was limited, it was slow, but it wasn't like today where you have an App Store and you can just. Kids, uh, they won't understand it. My nephew won't understand this hover. But you couldn't just download. Yeah, right? You couldn't just download a game on your phone. So the only way to do that was to download a game on the computer and then upload it with a cable to your phone, right, so you.

>> Robert Ndlela: Can sell it to the kid who's buying it from you, right?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: But how would I bring a computer to a school, right? So I couldn't do that. So the way we used to buy these games was right next door after school, there was this grocery store that capitalized on that. They put a computer, they downloaded a bunch of games, and they would sell the games to kids. Like, they would just plug in your phone to their computer and they would sell, you know, local currency was 500 films back then, right, which was an equivalent of like, buying a hot dog and a coke, right? So like a whole, like a meal price. And then, uh, what I did is I undercut them. I figured out how to send a game from phone to phone, right, through bluetooth. Bluetooth was just a brand new thing back then that just came out. So I figured I'd send a game, uh, from phone to phone. And then I used to just sit in school during the class and tell the kids, hey, I can just sell you this game cheaper than you, you'd buy there, right? And I would send these games and charge them only 300 sons, which was almost half price. And, uh, I used to make good money as a kid, you know, like all my pocket money.

>> Robert Ndlela: That is awesome.

You were the youngest member of the Forbes business council at 22

You certainly have been an entrepreneur, for sure. And then you were the youngest member of the Forbes business council. How did that come about?

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So how old was I back then? Uh, 2020? That was 22. I, uh, joined in to a, uh, Forbes Business Council invitation only panel, basically of like the experts and the Forbes Business council list. So this one is not based off of like the net worth or anything like, not like a millionaire.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: On the Forbes list, but for sure, hopefully, yeah. But, um, this is, uh, more of a kind of a merit based list of experts that contribute, uh, to Forbes articles and are also recognized on the Forbes council list, where we have networking events, we have mini, uh, social media inside for the members as well.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: And, um, to get there, your company has to have a certain amount of revenue and certain amount of achievements.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: They have a whole criteria, and if you hit that, they will selectively reach out to you and invite you to join. So I was one of the people that they reached out to and I, uh, got invited to join.

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: That's how I got into it at the age of 22. And I realized nobody else was this young when they joined. So, yeah, I just happened to be an executive at the company that qualified for this.

>> Robert Ndlela: Right. The company being Jeffton?

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Robert Ndlela: Yes.

The CRO chief revenue officer is responsible for growing the company's revenue

Tell us a little more about it and explain what a chief revenue officer is exactly.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Yeah, sure. So it's just a fancy word for head of sales, right? Uh, in a way. Although now that I look at it, I realize revenue involves a little more than just sales. It's more of a strategic role as well. But the end of the day, what the CRO chief revenue officer is responsible for, as the name said, is the revenue.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So every business has to rely on revenue to survive, to grow and everything. So my role as CRO is to grow the sales, which is what my strength is.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So this comes back to my story of how I even joined Jafkin. So I got into this company in a creative way, not by starting it from scratch, but rather. So my business partner today, he's been my mentor first, or when I just met him, he's been mentoring me in tech. And that was back in 2017 when I just met him, I was still in college. And then I joined in initially as an employee in the business development and sales department. And then the time the company in 2019 was much smaller than it is today, it was like 1015 people. The revenue was lower.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So I joined in to help grow the sales and basically I built up my ownership in this company through sweat equity.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Instead of basically starting it from scratch or, you know, buying an equity, basically, yeah. That's how it happened today. Me being the co owner, but the CEO is still the original founder of the business.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: But it's, we're, uh, business partners, basically. We make the decisions together. And it's just that my core strength is in the revenue side and growing the sales, which is what I've been responsible for for the past four and a half years. And, uh, that's how we were able to, you know, through new contract, we were able to grow the company from 15 people to 120 now. And revenue wise, we've, uh, grown, I think, like six or seven x, which.

>> Robert Ndlela: Means, you know, exactly what you're doing when it comes to growing revenue or sales for the company. Uh, how do you develop a strategy to say, this is what I'm going to make the market realize this is the value we add and so they should buy whatever it is we're selling.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So basically, how do you convince the customers? Right. I mean, first of all, you have to find customers who already need it.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: My approach is actually, I have a very lazy approach, I would say I, uh, try to always get something that's more on the surface and more of a lower hanging fruit and try to reach something that's up there. So what I'm trying to say with that is in sales, there's two ways you can secure the contract, right. In sales, it's either outbound or it's inbound. So outbound is when you go and you knock the door and say, hey, do you need my service? You know, and you go door by door, basically. I used to do the door up to door sales at 14. That's how pretty much you create demand.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: You go knock the door and they may not want your service, and it's your job as a salesperson to convince them that they will need your service.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Or a product that's a harder type of sales.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: I mean, it's definitely a proven strategy. It works, uh, when you use the right words and you're confident and you.

>> Robert Ndlela: Do it enough time.

>> Speaker C: Enough times.

>> Robert Ndlela: Exactly.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: It's a numbers game. Exactly. Even if you suck at it, if you, if you knock thousand doors, you're going to sell something.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: But my approach has been more of a lazier approach for I didn't do that. But instead, what I did is, like I said, there's already people who are looking for these services.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Why don't I just try to find them and just position myself in the places where they're already searching. Because not only do providers search for customers, but customers search for providers as well.

>> Speaker C: Right?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So. And that's where the inbound comes in.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: You focus on the inbound. All you have to do is just position yourself in the right place for you to be seen by customers who are already looking for these products and services.

>> Speaker C: Right?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So if you were, let's take an example of a brick and mortar offline business. Back in the days when we used to run a restaurant, for us to have a lot of customers, we had to secure a good location. Right? So we paid extra in rent to get a prime location in Manhattan on a good street.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: And that's how it feeds.

>> Robert Ndlela: Yes, exactly.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: A restaurant doesn't go out and tell people, hey, do you want to visit my restaurant? Do you want to visit my restaurant?

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: You just have to find a good location.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Um, so same way with the services and online businesses as well, that you can just be good at positioning. What I mean by positioning is SEO, right? Search engine optimization. It's the ads, it's directories and rankings. So you just have to reverse engineer the process of finding those places where the customers are already actively looking for these services. Because whatever you're selling, the odds are somebody's already looking for that service. And it's your job just to position yourself there and put yourself on top.

>> Robert Ndlela: There, be in the right online location for them to find you.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So that's what I focused on and, uh, to this day has been our main strategy. Now we are starting to do outbound as well.

There are pros and cons to both door to door and outbound sales

I recently started, uh, making content about how actually I've been ignorant toward outbound. And that's actually not been good for us because we missed out on some of the perhaps, like, bigger contracts that we could have secured if we did go door to door. Because the good side of the door to door and the outbound is that you get to choose who you knock the doors off.

>> Speaker C: Right?

>> Robert Ndlela: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: You only want to work with a, uh, certain type of client. That's when you have to do outbound. Because then you can filter the categories of companies that you want to work with and only reach out to those companies and people that you want to work with. That makes sense, right. Let's say you're, you're selling a, uh, consulting service. You only want to work with a woman age over 50 that are making at least $100,000 a year.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Robert Ndlela: So you're very specific in the avatar of your ideal.

>> Speaker C: Yes.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Exactly. You have the ICP ideal customer profile, and you just make that list, and you start knocking only the doors of those women who are over 50, uh, who have $100,000 or above income. Now, that is only possible if you do outbound, because with inbound, you can't really just open your doors for those type of customers. It'd be really hard to do that, if that makes sense. Uh, so there's positives and negatives for each, like, pros and cons. It's good to do both, though, in sales, right?

>> Robert Ndlela: It certainly is.

You spoke at synergy global, one of the biggest stages for public speaking

You were speaking at the synergy global, one of the biggest stages for public speaking.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Yeah, that's right.

>> Robert Ndlela: The stage with some big names, which you will mention for us. How did you first get accepted into that stage? To be one of the speakers?

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Uh, again, you know, same way I was able to position in our company, Jaftan, for success. Where I was there when people were looking for these services, or companies were looking for services, right, when they google or they find.

>> Speaker C: Same way.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: I just started positioning my m personal brand in a way that I'm more seen and more, more likely to be approached. So, in short, it was just, for me, was working on my personal brand and social media. I was very, very active in LinkedIn and, uh, Instagram marketing in 2020 and during the pandemic. And, um, I started making content. You know, I would do, like, smaller kind of speeches. I would do smaller interviews on different podcasts or different, like, radio shows and things like that. Whatever is possible, right? There's somebody who will interview you at any point. It, uh, might be a smaller show. But what happens is, if you keep doing that and you keep posting that content, you show that you're an expert, you are more likely to be seen by the synergies of the world, basically, right? So, for me, like, I kept going on different podcasts and smaller podcasts, right? The first podcast I went on was actually by my friend who started a podcast in the pandemic. It was a very small podcast. Nobody was listening yet. Didn't even consider.

>> Robert Ndlela: We've all been there, trust me.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Yeah, exactly. But see, what I did is, like, I was talking to him. I said, hey, you know what? I want to do public speaking. I want to go on different, like, stages, the big stages and everything, right? He said, you know, what, do you want me to interview you? I said, yeah, of course. And so we did that anyway. Maybe five people watched that, but I took the clips and started posting on my social media. You know, people who are watching, they don't know how big the podcast is. You just see that. Oh, he's been on a podcast. Must be an expert. So kept posting that, uh, then going on different podcasts and things like that. And then I just got reached out by senergy. It was the first time also that they were hosting an online conference.

>> Robert Ndlela: Due to the pandemic.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Uh, yeah, due to the pandemic, exactly. Because they used to only do in person. Like their previous event was in Madison Square Garden.

>> Speaker C: Right. It's.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: It was huge. This time they invited very big speakers. Well, the Mike Tyson, Chuck Norris was there, you know, all these big speakers. But they did it online. Everybody was speaking from home. So they were looking for more experts, for some newer experts as well. Right here I was, I was lucky to, you know, be seen by people who are, like, looking for speakers in their team. And they reached out to me and I accepted, and, uh, that's how I got into their online stage, basically, with, with those people.

>> Robert Ndlela: Wow.

Working on your personal brand is extremely important because it creates trust

What would you say? Because you've just mentioned it as well, regarding your personal brand, how does public speaking, which we talk about a lot in the show, how important is it as an entrepreneur for your brand?

>> Sardor Ahmedov: Actually, not only for entrepreneurs, but for anybody, working on your personal brand is extremely important because it creates trust.

>> Speaker C: Right?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Personal brand is just a fancy word for reputation. You know, when you're in business, especially, what do you work on? You work on your reputation of the brand. But as humans, no matter how cool your brand is, at the end of the day, people still work with people, right? Uh, you need to establish yourself as a trusted person and as an expert in the industry, right? So whatever you're doing, whether you're an entrepreneur or you're a photographer or you're any service provider, you need to work on the personal brand, even if it's not huge, like with millions of followers. Just the fact that you'll have some content on your page when people google your name and it pops up and there's videos of you, there's interviews with you, there's no, you're a subject matter expert. That just creates trust. And customers, especially today, where almost every service is sold online now, you know, like with most of our customers, like, uh, we have 32 projects right now. The same time that we go, we do at Jafton. And guess what? I've maybe met like, three or four of my customers and personally, all of.

>> Robert Ndlela: My restaurants, everything is online.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Everything is online, right? They go on Zoom. And we don't do small projects. Our projects, all of them are almost like six figure projects and.

>> Speaker C: Mhm.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: People wire you that kind of money without even meeting you in person and it's become the norm. But they do that if only if you're somehow public. You have to show your face, you know, you have to be there. And the more you do that, the more of a subject matter expert you're perceived as then the uh, shorter the time that the people start trusting you because as far as they're concerned, you're just a stranger to them.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Why would they give you all this money if they don't know you? So it's a reputation and credibility that you built with the personal brand. And then also it works for both ends. Not only does it work for sales to bring new customers, but bringing customers. One thing then what you need is to have employees, uh, to have a team who's going to do the work.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: For me, it's also been very, very helpful actually to attract the new talent to my team. A lot of my top employees I was able to hire because of the personal brand as well. They were just about to ask, how.

>> Robert Ndlela: Do you know this is the best person to be at Jeff Ten? And I must bring them in.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: I mean, obviously there's like different roles that they get qualified differently. I usually don't do the test on the hard skills. You know, there's always like the senior people that do the, you know, test. For example, if we're hiring a developer, yes. If it's a mobile developer, iOS developer, for example, a senior iOS developer will test them on their hard skills. They're not going to talk to them. They're just going to give them a test.

>> Robert Ndlela: Like a prototype of what the daily job is going to be.

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: And then that person takes, and then the senior person checks and says, okay, this person is good or this person not good.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Once that's done, then the HR does the test and everything, the psychological test and everything else. So most of the people at this point, my business partner and I, we don't interview them anymore. Uh, they just go directly through the, whoever is the senior at that position, right. There's a head of department. Like if we're hiring a QA engineer, the uh, head of QA department is who decides whether we should hire this person or not.

>> Robert Ndlela: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: We don't even get involved. Who we get involved with, the owners in hiring is only the c level executives.

>> Robert Sandleila: Basically, yes.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: For me, like, I get involved when we're hiring salespeople. I do that personally. So, yeah. How do I decide if this is the the right person most of the time, I hire salespeople. So for me, I mean, besides what's on the resume, hard skills wise, I look more on the personal level for their soft skills.

>> Robert Ndlela: Soft skills?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Yes, yes, of course. Especially for a salesperson, you know, it's soft, uh, skills that's very important. And, uh, the top soft skills is, for me, it's persuasion.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: The ability to really persuade, because that sales.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Needs that to have a presence and influence with some kind of leadership skills within it, and then just the ability to really connect with people.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: To establish that connection and rapport and relationship. So when I go on an, um, interview with a candidate and I see that they're not even able to chit chat with me and establish that personal connection, like, you know, for the first, like, what, ten minutes of this call, we were, you and I were talking.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So.

>> Robert Ndlela: And we're not talking about the podcast and this.

>> Sardor Ahmedov: Exactly.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: We're just talking about some random things about chatting. Exactly.

>> Robert Ndlela: Yeah.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: If I see that the salesperson candidate is not able to do that, well, it's definitely a no.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Because this is an essential skill.

>> Robert Ndlela: They're going to be dealing with people.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Exactly.

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Sardor Ahmedov: The people skills, basically, in short, is.

>> Speaker C: What we look for.

>> Robert Ndlela: Mhm. The people skills. And because we talk about them a lot on this podcast, and I know we sound like a broken record, but you can be so good in your technical. But if you especially going to be in a leadership position and deal with people, the soft skills, they really, really need to be there.

There's a difference between being an entrepreneur working in your business or an employee

You said that there's a difference between being an entrepreneur working in your business or an employee of your business. What do you mean by that?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So, yeah, uh, in terms of working in the business and working on the business.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So a lot of business owners, especially small business owners, what they become at the end of the day is they just get themselves another job. Right. It's just that they're their own boss. Yes, but it's a job because, because they have to come and do the daily tasks themselves. I'm still guilty of that too. You know, even though I was able to delegate a lot of the tasks, you know, I still oversee the sales team, I still oversee some of the decisions, you know, that can't go by without me.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So maybe a day or two could go by without me, uh, at Jeffton, but I couldn't go on a vacation for a weekend, just not even touch my phone. I'm not that level yet, so I'm guilty of that myself. But a lot of the business owners, they, you know, especially if the team is small, they'll have multiple roles within business. And the thing is, it's okay to have that in the beginning, but as you grow, you have to delegate.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So, uh, what I mean by that is, mostly you have to delegate and be able to. Once you delegate, you know, then you're. You're able to see the bird's eye view of the business and what's going on. Okay. How this person is performing. You know, like this. This person is not performing like this.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: And then you start thinking more of a strategy as a business owner. That's, I think, where every business owner has to strive to be. I would say I'm, like, 70% there right now. Like, I'm able to, like, more high level, you know, see everything, birds eye view. But I still. 30%. I stay as an employee within my own business, where I'm not able to just kind of relax and not work in the business and be 100% sure that everything goes by. Which is why I'm in search of chief revenue officer. To replace myself.

>> Robert Ndlela: To replace your current position.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Yes, exactly. And, uh, that will allow me to be 100% in the owner's position as opposed to the employee position. Right. Um, and I think that's where I was recently reading, uh, this Instagram post by Cody Sanchez, who's, uh, known for buying businesses and selling businesses. And, uh, she said, as a founder, it's your job to fire yourself from as many positions as possible. Firing yourself.

>> Robert Ndlela: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Because then you actually become a business owner. And that's how she's able to build a hundred million dollar business empire. She owns, like, 2030 different businesses, which means replace yourself.

>> Robert Ndlela: So, back to the skills we spoke about earlier. You will find people who, you know, if you put them in the position to replace you, they will be able to. Based on how you evaluated them, um, when you brought them into the company.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Exactly. Yes, yes, of course. You know, once you step into the owner's position, then it becomes the game of chess.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: You just pick your. Your players. You see, if this player is not doing well, you just replace them.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: And you play strategy like that.

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Robert Ndlela: Right.

When your clients come to you and say, please develop an app for us

So the work you do at Jafton, the app development, I've seen, some of your clients are like Alaska Airlines, you know, big names. When your clients come to you and say, please develop an app for us, do they have an idea of what it's supposed to do or look like? Or does your company say, oh, based on your business? I think this is how it's supposed to look. And this is what it's supposed to do.

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So by the time they, they come to us, especially because, uh, like I said, we only do inbound, right. So by the time they come knocking on our door, which is 100% of our clients right now come.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: We don't knock on anybody's door. They already know what they want. They already know what kind of app they need. Some of them know it better than others. Some of them just come with an idea, and it's a very raw idea. Uh, and when you start asking them questions, they go like, oh, I didn't think about this. I didn't think about that. Like, uh, I was telling you about the clients that we had that, uh, wanted to build something like a food stamp, but they didn't think about how it's going to work, about partnerships. They had the idea, but they didn't have the internal processes in place thought about, which is okay, because we actually offer a service for that as well, called the discovery phase, or slash technical deep dive, where we map out the logic of the project for them. All they have to bring is just an idea, but with more of a corporate clients or government clients. We also work with the government agencies. They come with strict requirements, and they're like, all right, here's like the 20 pages of requirements that we have, and we just want you to follow this and build it for us.

>> Speaker C: That's it.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: And, uh, those clients are actually very good clients as well, because they know exactly what they want. I would say they're all in different stages, but at the very least, they know the idea that they want to build.

>> Robert Ndlela: Mhm.

Communication is super important when you do tech work, right

And now let's go back to your team at Jafton. You have software engineers and developers doing different things. How do they communicate amongst each other? Because we always say when you do tech work, you're not doing it in a vacuum. It's going to feed into something else.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Yes, yes.

>> Robert Ndlela: So how do they make sure they communicate? Sorry, go ahead.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Yeah, absolutely.

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Great question. Because, uh, especially when we work on projects of the size that we work on, right? Uh, we built apps that are used by millions of people.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So those apps have to be very, very thought through. Well, and one or two people cannot get it done. Usually on a given app, we have at least five people working on it.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: It's like a factory to make one car, there's multiple types of labor that have to come together.

>> Speaker C: Right?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Multiple sides. You have to bring the engine together, you have to bring the painting together. And that, uh, everything has to be coherent and, like, you know, they have to consider each other's work. So communication is super important. Now, how we do that is multiple tools. That's the first challenge. And second challenge is that actually, uh, our team is remote, so we have a physical office, but we don't force our employees to come into office. So a lot of them prefer to work remotely, and some of them actually in different time zones. Like, we have people in Israel, and we have people in United States, and we have people in Uzbekistan, and they're all in different time zones, and they have to communicate. So we have multiple apps that we use for that, including Slack, which is for communication. It's like WhatsApp, but for work. We use Jira for project management, which, you know, you just assign tasks, you know, and then you can track them. And speaking of tracking, we use time doctor, which is this time tracking software that we use to see if the person is, uh, working on what they should be working. Okay.

>> Robert Ndlela: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So it's a little intrusive. That's probably the most intrusive software that we have. But what it does is you install it on your computer.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: If you're getting a job at Jafton, it's a requirement. You have to install time doctor. And time doctor keeps track of not just your time that you're working, but what you're working on.

>> Speaker C: Okay.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So if they go on social media, it will say, hey, you know, you're not working right now. Are you working like. And then it on Facebook? Yeah, yeah. It screenshots their computer in. It puts that in their report for their manager to see. So it's very strict, but, uh, as far as just overall communication, it's combination of slack, zoom. We do zoom calls, and then project, uh, management systems like Jira.

>> Robert Ndlela: Yes. Because, I mean, we've read cases over the years where the tech team was not communicating, and they ended up producing the wrong thing, and it cost the company millions or whatever it is. Communication. I know we just drilled this a lot to people, but it really is important.

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: And it's still work in progress. I mean, we always improve our systems. It's not perfect. You know, we have some issues. You know, especially the biggest lack of communication was in between teams. There's usually good communication inside one team, but we have multiple teams.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Especially right when the teams are split into front end and back end, meaning, uh, the sales and the development team.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Uh, so what happens is, when a client comes, the salesperson communicates with them. They gather the requirements, they document everything, and then if the contract is signed, then it's passed on to development. And that's where we used to have a little bit of issue, because, like, something that the client discussed with the salesperson wasn't documented. And then one or two months ago.

>> Robert Ndlela: It'S not translated exactly the way the client said to the tech team. So now they might not.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Then the client goes, but I told this to the salesperson, and then the developer says, I don't. I didn't know about that. And then there's a problem. Right. And it's probably one of the most common problems in agencies is that the sales team may not communicate well. So we've worked on improving that as well. We do a lot of documentation. All of our calls are recorded. Everything gets transcribed. We're using AI for that now. Like, uh, as a matter of fact, on this call, even, there's Fatimai, which is an excellent tool. It records all of your Zoom meetings, and it creates summaries and notes from what was discussed and highlights the action items. Like, if I promised you that I'm going to send you something, Fatim is going to create a task for me that I need to send you that.

>> Robert Ndlela: Thing so that you don't forget or. Yeah, because back in the day, in the nineties, when I started my corporate job, we used to have a column on the agenda saying, task, Roberta will do this.

>> Speaker C: Yes.

>> Sardor Ahmedov: Now, it's all automated with AI, so, yeah, it's still not perfect, but again, it's so much better than it used to be.

>> Robert Ndlela: Mhm.

Any last words for a tech company that struggles with communication skills or communication

Any last words for a tech company that struggles with communication skills or communication between team members?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Create systems. You know, I'm a huge fan of systems. Matter of fact, like, uh, right here, I have a, uh, portrait as a systems, right? And there's a picture of girl. Let me see if I can unblur this, actually, that is falling onto the systems. And what that means is there's a quote from, uh, one of my favorite books, atomic habits, which says, you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

>> Speaker C: Right?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: So systems right here, you fall to the level of your systems. Always. So if you create bulletproof systems, there's no way that the communication can fail. You can have the worst communicator in the world, but if the system forces them to do it, there's no way they can forget it, right? Like, part of my system is fatim. Like, even if I forget the document and take notes, I have a system right here that's going to do that for me.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Sardor Ahmedov: So my biggest one piece of advice would be just work on improving your systems so that no matter who you hire, they're going to fall into the right systems.

>> Robert Ndlela: Words of wisdom from Sardo Akhmedov, the entrepreneur, all the way from Florida, managing partner and chief revenue officer, uh, of Jaftin. This has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for your inspiring journey and entrepreneurial spiritual.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Likewise, Roberta, I really enjoyed talking with you.

>> Speaker C: Yeah.

>> Sardor Ahmedov: Hope to come back again onto the show.

>> Robert Ndlela: Oh, you must. I've had people who've been here three times. Oh, please, you're welcome to come back. And now we're friends of the show for sure. And before you go, I know you're not just looking for a chief revenue officer, but if anybody is looking to develop their app, where can we find you on the web?

>> Sardor Akhmedov: You can go on our website, uh, jafton.com, and send a request there. Or call us at, uh, 2124-9900 and, uh, one of our team members will help you out. Or you can find me personally if you want to follow me on social media, it's my first and last name, Sardoric Meadow. I'm most active on LinkedIn, so, yeah, I'd be happy to help out with any questions or advice.

>> Robert Ndlela: For sure. I'll put all those on the show notes. Thank you so much for being here today. This has been such a pleasure.

>> Sardor Akhmedov: Yeah, likewise. Uh, thanks for having me.

>> Robert Ndlela: My pleasure.

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