How SOPs Can Improve Your Business’s Growth

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Process Breakdown Podcast where we talk about streamlining and scaling operations of your company, getting rid of bottlenecks, and giving your employees all the information they need to be successful at their jobs. Now, let’s get started with the show.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, host of the Process Breakdown Podcast where we talk about streamlining and scaling operations of your company, getting rid of bottlenecks and giving your staff everything they need to be successful at their job. Past guests include David Allen of Getting Things Done, Michael Gerber of the E-Myth and many, many more, so check out other episodes.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Before I introduce today’s guests, this episode is brought to you by SweetProcess. So if your team members … And Kamyar, I’m sure this never happens to you. If your team members ask you the same questions over and over again, and it’s the 10th time you spent explaining it, there is an actual better way and a solution, SweetProcess is actually a software that makes it drop-dead easy to train and onboard new staff and save time with existing staff.

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Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I’m excited to introduce today’s guest, Kamyar Shah. He’s a strategic leader and consultant with over 17 years of remote and on-location operations management and marketing experience. So basically, he acts as a remote fractional CEO, or remote fractional CMO of businesses.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: And he has a deep management experience driving stakeholder value in large and small corporations, he helps rapid growth industries, and distressed in turnaround organizations. And he’s worked anywhere from with drone companies, to SAS, to fitness companies. And we are chatting … He’s worked in over 168 different companies in 19 different industries, Kamyar, thanks for joining me.

Kamyar Shah: Thank you so much for having me, it’s a pleasure being here.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: It’s fascinating to me what you do, and you get a glimpse into so many different businesses, so many different industries. And you bring that experience with each company that you go into, right? And so, I figured for people like [inaudible 00:02:41], how does this work? What does it look like? I figured we’d start with Triad Drones, so talk to me a little about what Triad Drones does and we could talk about what you do to help them.

Kamyar Shah: Triad Drone is a small drone and auto imitation technology firm. In its essence, the company owner, Walter Lappert is a veteran that specializes in auto imitation and unmanned mission objectives. Most of the time, it takes the shape of clients approaching Triad Drone and wanting to negate human risk factors and reduce costs by using modern technology, so it’s more of a technologies approach to problem solving.

Kamyar Shah: Most of the time, it ends up being a automated system of some sort, ground, water, or air and each project is usually customized in order to address the specific customer’s needs, wants, and requirements. The way I envision that visually is Triad Drone is a technology problem solver. It’s agnostic, it doesn’t abide by brands or methodologies. It innovates or stitches together existing technology in order to solve problems in a more efficient and effective manner.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I want to talk about some use cases, because I can see a lot of different use cases. Someone came to you and said they had a shark problem.

Kamyar Shah: Yes.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: What’s the matter with that?

Kamyar Shah: As a matter of fact, this does happen. We have been approached by overseas clients for instance, address a shark issue. And they don’t come to us and say, “Hey, listen, we have a shark problem, give us a drone for it.” They approach us and say, “Hey, we’ve seen some of your work, we’ve seen you guys being published in drone magazines, you solved this particular problem for this client, tell us how it can be at us.”

Kamyar Shah: Usually, the way it’s approaches, Walter Lappert has a amazing wealth of knowledge when it comes to technology, and auto imitation, and innovation and how to get them together, and innovate when there isn’t anything available. So usually, the scoping works much like any other projects. Finding out what the goals are, what the limitations are, what the no nodes are and what the parameters of execution looks like.

Kamyar Shah: And then, we usually go back and compile different solutions. In one particular case, the shark issue that came up, there were a variety of solutions, ranging from noise to alert beachgoers, to dropping a variety of safe or diagonal properly designated chemicals or droplets to get sharks to go away. We don’t make the decision what route should pick up. We allow our clients to tell us from those selections, what is it that fits not only the mission requirement, but also what is it that fits their vision?

Kamyar Shah: It’s one thing to solve a problem, but another is solving it to a customer’s liking. That complicates stuff. It’s not always just solve a problem, some of the clients might want to have it solved a specific way.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah.

Kamyar Shah: And that never is a problem, if it’s possible, that’s what we do. That’s what the project gets scope based on, and then as you go through the processes, it gets adjusted to meet those requirements.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: The thought of that kind of freaks me out, the shark problem specifically. I could picture myself on the beach, someone’s watching this drone footage and seeing sharks encroaching, I’m about to get into the ocean and start swimming. It’s like jazz or some movie, right? So, I hope that they use Triad Drones that help the beachgoers stay safe.

Kamyar Shah: We hope so too, it’s daunting. Some of these tasks … I mean, just literally, you jump on a phone call, we have an appointment. And it is always really no say wherever the conversation is going to go. It could start with, “We need a LiDAR drone, we need to scan and measure a bridge or a hurricane hit area.” And then it evolves, it can go in all kinds of ways. It can suddenly go from, “Hey, we are a near Beach City, but we also may want alert beachgoers to whatever.” The conversation always starts with a objective. However, people actually find out what is realistically possible with today’s technology, there’s no telling where those conversations go.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah, it’s fascinating. And this bridges across different industries, you were mentioning agriculture too.

Kamyar Shah: Absolutely, it’s incredible, and for someone like myself, that is agnostic to the industry, it is mind blowing, mind blowing. How many different industries are either a potential or are actively using drones or are in process of using drone? Agriculture has immense use cases for drones, from spraying, to measurements, to scanning, to inventory even. When you think agriculture, it goes way past their traditional items. There is everything that a human can do, or close to everything a human can do, now, this can be automated.

Kamyar Shah: It’s incredible what you can do for a farmer in terms of just oversight of his crop, or catching disease early, or scanning the field for known or unknown … Or even just being … You have 100 acres of, let’s say, public use that. That doesn’t have any agriculture. Even the preparation for any kind of action can be done so much quicker, so much more cost effective. The only problem these days is lack of imagination, because it’s not too widely known, or it’s not being too widely used, but it’s amazing what can be done with drones.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: One of the things I’ve seen you talk about, write about and do is you talk about growth and scaling in a remote environment. So, when you first go into a company like Triad Drones, what do you do? How does it work?

Kamyar Shah: Oh, I am a bit rigid compared to some of my peers, but I’m a systems guy. I am by training, by education, and by practices a systems guy. The first thing I look anywhere I go, is do they have systems? Do they have procedures? First thing I want to see are SOPs. I have no interest in anything until I see SOPs, because genuinely, in my mind and out of … Is almost 20 years, this is one of the few little factors or smaller factors that tend to have an outsized impact on operation and on the bottom line.

Kamyar Shah: And then I see they are SOPs, there’s something I can work with, there’s something that can be changed and have more immediate impact. Of course, on the other side of the coin, is when you walk in, and there are no SOPs. When everyone knows you-

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: [crosstalk 00:11:46].

Kamyar Shah: Again, something that most of my peers don’t like admitting, but that’s the norm actually. In my experience, you are way more likely to get into a organization with without SOPs, or with very few, then you have organization that have a well thought out, well expressed, and designed and tested SOPs. Rarely does that happen.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So you come in, and you’re like, “Let me see your SOPs.” and you start there. And then if they go, “Well, we …” They’re not really that built out, or they don’t have them, then what?

Kamyar Shah: Well, then there are some fundamental discussions to be had. I am not in my mindset … I try not to be rigid. There are rare cases in which not having the SOP may not be an issue, let’s say, one or two out of a hundred. So, I come in with an open mind, I ask them, “Why isn’t there? Tell me a little bit about how you operate, and why it was never deemed necessary to have those, or don’t have them complete.”

Kamyar Shah: The answers are very standards, “We’re putting out fires every day, we’re keeping up with production.”

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Too busy.

Kamyar Shah: Yeah, too busy. Those are the businesses I call drama businesses, they’re running around trying to put fires out instead of running a business. That inherently is that chicken and egg problem, they don’t have SOPs, that’s what they are putting out fires, but they don’t have time to get it [crosstalk 00:13:35]. That’s the same reason they need it.

Kamyar Shah: And then the other side, Doctor, it is you have a professional operations team, you have a CEO, you have a director of operation and you have project managers, where everything is tied, you get handed a … I don’t know, five 600 page PDF for every department, including down to actual tax.

Kamyar Shah: Those are easier to address, because it’s easier to troubleshoot existing SOPs, because you can observe. You can watch those SOPs being translated in actions and you can draw conclusions both from what you see, as well as historical data sets they have.

Kamyar Shah: When it comes to billing, like billable hours or project-related budgeting, it’s easy to turn on your BI and look where your assumptions or where your observations are matching the data. Or the other way, the data disproving your hypothesis. That’s why it’s easier, but it’s less exciting, because you have to do that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah, when you say growth or scaling immediately people jump to and I jump too. Well, customer acquisition, marketing, and you start with the foundation of making sure the operations are running smoothly as far as kind of the foundation of growth and scaling, it sounds like.

Kamyar Shah: Oh, you have taken those words right out of my mouth. Growth and scaling cannot be feasibly and reliably conducted before you have a functioning operation. Yes, of course, you can go get more clients, but you end up either with unhappy client, you will end up with sub-quality product or services.

Kamyar Shah: Growth and scaling relies on your ability to be consistent, to acquire customer, onboard them, service them, off board them and leave the customer with a good experience, if not a great experience, with the matching products and services. That is virtually impossible to do if your operation is not function. And I cannot tell you, this week alone, we are on Tuesday now, right? I must have gotten eight inquiries about, “Hey, we need someone to come help us grow. Talk to us about your customer acquisition methodology.”

Kamyar Shah: And that just shows the mindset, you’ll get more customers … Traditional wisdom is you had to get more customers in order to grow your bottom line. But the problem with that is that most of those old way of thinking doesn’t take into account or minimizes the cost of getting customers versus keeping customers.

Kamyar Shah: Anyone that has been more than five years in business can tell you, you don’t even have to be a data scientist or academic and keep up with all the papers to say, “It costs substantially more to get a new client than upsell your existing customer.”

Kamyar Shah: A happy customer’s lifetime value can by for supersede new customers, someone that is happy, knows your services and product, there is much less selling to do.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah.

Kamyar Shah: Okay? You’re not selling, the whole argument about pricing becomes almost irrelevant. Once you are able to deliver a product at a high quality, many of those objections you hear during sales process are non-issues, the customer is much less likely to argue with you about the price, when you show them the last 100,000 they spent with you, and you get your SaaS product was to your satisfaction and is not producing ROI for you.

Kamyar Shah: I have measurable ROI shown to customer, the question on money becomes way less significant. Most objections become less significant when they know you. That’s not even business thing, it’s just a simple logic of what to do, how to upsell within your existing customers. And to me, growth and scaling doesn’t start there, it starts with making sure, what I call you having a drama-free business, okay? Drama-free business being you not needing to deal with things that should not need dealing with. In main language, everyone needs to know what to do, how to do it. Everybody does it the same way, you can’t-

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. I love that because, it’s like if your boat is sinking and you got to plug the holes up, before you actually get new customers or new clients. And so, I want to hear about your methodology a little bit, so you come on, you’re like, “Show me the SOPs.” You look through the SOPs, what are some of the things you do next when you come into a company to help with the growth?

Kamyar Shah: I like to go to frontline. One of the least paid attention factor is feedback from the people that are doing the job, okay? You hear that in even five-man shops to 500 shop man. The best intel you can get if the work is being done correctly or effectively is talk to the people that actually do the job.

Kamyar Shah: SOPs can look great on paper, but they can be highly ineffective or inefficient. And there is no way unless you are a subject matter expertise in that particular industry, you are guessing. I have found the approach of going right, if you’re working for a restaurant chain, you go right talk to the cook, you go right talk to the waitresses or waiters. You want them to tell you as someone that has been doing the job, “So, what are we doing wrong?”

Kamyar Shah: Okay, you don’t have to guess. This is one of the least utilized methods especially in midsize to large businesses, their feedback loop is not there or if it’s there, it’s being choked by lower level managers.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: It’s not getting up the chain so that people can make appropriate changes.

Kamyar Shah: Exactly. I have gotten with some of my best changes into SOPs by speaking to frontline employees, it gives you an immense insight, not only because they are doing the job, but what their reaction of the customers are. What are the customers complaining about? Is any of these processes that work for us make their life more difficult? What is it? What are you hearing from the customers?

Kamyar Shah: That gives you an insight that, if you listen to half of what those people have to say, you already are winning. You already are winning, because they will tell you, “Okay, I’ve been doing this job for five years, processes work for us, but it makes a customer’s life a living hell.”

Kamyar Shah: I had a video production company in UK that I worked with, they had several locations, and highly efficient company, but they had the hardest time keep customers around. Customers were happy with the product, but then after talking to some of the people that interact with the customers, I found out that they have a very aggressive model of following up. And no one argues that follow-up is necessary and required to get things done, but David calling customers like every 14 to 16 hours, to make sure if they looked over the script, in their mind, they were customer centric, they wanted to be there for the customer.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: And they were annoying the customers.

Kamyar Shah: They were annoying the life out of those guys. And senior people that were contracting those videos, they were sea level people, they didn’t have time to talk twice a day to you, or every day to you. It was as simple as that changing that one, within the six months period, they stopped bleeding customers.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. And the very reason they were doing it is because they were customer centric and the very reason it was turning people away.

Kamyar Shah: Their lifetime value for customer increased within six months by like 340 or some percentage.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Wow. By changing that one, going in the front line, checking and seeing what the feedback is.

Kamyar Shah: And as you can tell, it’s nothing innovative. I don’t take credit for it either, it wasn’t my doing. All I had to do was have a hour and a half conversation with two of their people.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah.

Kamyar Shah: And this is one of the most important things to remember when it comes to growth and scaling.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So, SOPs, they go to the front line, get feedback, shorten that feedback loop. What’s the next thing that you look up?

Kamyar Shah: What next is talking to stakeholders internally. You have to gorge … There’s no one in the business front that won’t tell you there are always pull and push dynamics. Every group has its own agenda, every division has different goals, everyone has different KPIs. In order for change management to happen, you have to make sure that the stakeholders are involved. You have to some extent protect those wants and needs of individual stakeholders to a level that makes the change acceptable and palatable for them.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah.

Kamyar Shah: Some of it is a little bit political, you want to make sure everyone gets what they want, no one feels they are left out. But it also comes down to rational conversations. You have to approach it as, “I know, this is what you have been doing, but here we are, we want to improve.” Ask them what they think is wrong, let them tell you what they think it’s wrong. And then provide them with your thought and back it up with data.

Kamyar Shah: You need their buy-in. If you don’t have the stakeholders buy-in no amount of change management, or growth and scaling will happen. Yes, the CEO or the CO can bark all day like. Okay, if you don’t have the mid-management’s buy-in, the guys that are underground, directing people, making sure things getting done according to organizational goals, you have to have their buy-in.

Kamyar Shah: It’s easy to get the C-suit onboard, because the C-suits most of the time has one single or one main goal, profitability. You show them numbers, you have it in the back most of the time. Assuming you have rational actors, the most problematic part is the mismanagement, not problematic, they require more finesse to make sure-

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: They have a different motivating factors.

Kamyar Shah: Absolutely. You have to address those, you have to make sure those concerns are addressed, while maintaining the objective in refining the SOPs, to a reasonable quantity of change management, that’s a very fine distinction to be made here. You want it not to be a shock to the system, okay? Because remember, these are actors within that organization that still have jobs to do.

Kamyar Shah: A radical restructuring will rock the boat to a way that usually can have a big impact on their revenue, you have to be mindful of how this particular changes will impact the outcome. You’re looking for the gold, you are looking how to accomplish your goals, why not reducing even temporarily the revenue or decrease customer satisfaction? So it takes a little bit of tiptoe, you start with SOP with one division. You let it play out on the ground.

Kamyar Shah: And then, if you’re doing your job properly, you get feedback. The feedback loop comes back, the same people you talk to are going to tell you, “Hey, that was well intended, but that’s not working on the ground. It takes me six to eight minutes extra to do this one particular task, and I’m upset, so is the customer.”

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah.

Kamyar Shah: Sometimes, you have to resist some of those requests, because they don’t contribute to the improvement. But most of the time, you get amazing feedback. Those people will tell you if it’s working, if it’s not working, if it can use modification, if it can. And sometimes, and fair amount of time, I would say about 30, 35% of the time, they’ll tell you things … No, let me rephrase that. They tell me things that I didn’t even think of.

Kamyar Shah: They tell me, “Hey, you’re looking at this rock, your objective is to make this faster, or to make this quality assurance that more productive. How about we do it this way?” You’ll be surprised how many great ideas come from the people, the guys, they executioners, up front, they have a wealth of knowledge, and you do yourself a big favor listening to them, getting their feedback.

Kamyar Shah: Without their feedback, you’re unlikely to really get the most out of it, in my experience. I’m sure there have been other ways, but I have tested this over the years and the last 10 years or so, I have made that a SOP for myself. That’s how I approach it, and it has gotten amazing results.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah, Kamyar. So, it sounds like you go in, you make sure and see what SOPs people have in place. And then from there, you want to get feedback from the front line, which is ultimately coming from the client and asking them. It seems like you tap into the resources of the organization, the people, because they already have the insights of what’s going on, and what’s going wrong, and what their ideas are to fix it, and you could then talk to the stakeholders as well.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: And again, getting more feedback and implementing the change, going back to those two and getting feedback. And it’s a constant feedback loop to making sure the changes that are being implemented are being implemented, and then also making the changes and having the results that you want.

Kamyar Shah: Exactly.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: What else did I miss that would be important to point out?

Kamyar Shah: Testing the SOPs within a limited framework, think of it as a beta testing. You release it to one division or to one particular process, and try to see if it has a negative impact on the short term and how you minimize that negative impact.

Kamyar Shah: Again, change management requires modification, and this is where I have seen many projects fail if you don’t test it and implement it in a measured way. Enrolling entire new organization SOP all at once is a recipe for disaster, you’re just asking for a lot of things to go wrong.

Kamyar Shah: The measured release of those SOPs makes the whole lot difference when it comes to execution, because you want to record the impact, both positive and negative. Positive, so be it but the negative one, you need to be nimble and address quickly, okay? So, the measured release or periodic release until the entire organization is intact in that new set of operating procedures. You do these steps-

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: What would be an example of that [inaudible 00:31:04], like measures, the time it takes for something or what will be some examples of a measurement that you’ve said, “Okay, we’ve done this test as SOP, and here’s how we’re measuring it.”

Kamyar Shah: Well, you have to set parameters, you have to define what that SOP is trying to accomplish, that’s part of writing the SOP. You have already data, you hypothesize that … Okay, let’s take a specific example, like building a drone. At any given time, Triad Drone has a dozen different clients, okay? Ranging from surveyors in Texas, to Australian clients that require shark defense measures.

Kamyar Shah: Having processes that allows for this kind of clients to be all onboarded at the same time, requires some rigidity in planning and execution. So for instance, before I got there, it was done ad hoc. Clients were coming in, they were onboarded and the next one whenever they came around big … Now, a new procedures entail more detail approach to that, with resource allocation, planning in advance.

Kamyar Shah: If you onboard four clients that each one require a land drone, a water drone, and an air drone and each one has a different one, you’re allocating different resources. So you can just pick on new clients, because those resources are already allocated toward one project. Now, you can onboard other clients, whereby you have the policy of saying, “Yes, company x, we are delighted to have you, but if you engage us, we will put you on our calendar and we can get to you 90 days from now, or 60 days from now.”

Kamyar Shah: Now, that itself has created the ability to take on almost three times more clients, because we at any given time know, our boat expertise too busy? Or our team members working on an E-Sonar for a new custom boat, versus a LiDAR that needs to be mounted, or a drone that needs to be built around the LiDAR, to accommodate that specific LiDAR?

Kamyar Shah: We know where the people that are doing this are at, at any given time. That resource allocation allows us to also ramp up our marketing or our outreach. We just don’t go and spend money on Pay-per-click, for the sake of getting customers. We know when we reach a particular point where our resources are at, that’s a 80% and the 25% is for fail-safe measures, we would chant with basically reduce our footprint online. We stop our Pay-per-click, our social media promotions stop, we don’t do LinkedIn postings, making sure we keep our attention on our customers, not extending ourselves. Giving our customers the best service we can on a rapid fire delivery, and knowing when we take, can take, if I’m looking at the resource allocation plan.

Kamyar Shah: If I know Jimmy, Johns, and Mike are right now doing … I don’t know, doing E-Sonar and I see someone sending us a request. I can decide if want to engage with that customer now, or limited engagement where we tell them, “Hey guys, our calendar is booked 90 days in advance. We can engage you back in there, why don’t you send us your requirement, we have a look at it, we’ll get back to you in 60 days.” That allows me then have a targeted maximization of resources both internally as well as externally when it comes to marketing or engagement with our Mark.

Kamyar Shah: So, you have a optimized approach where marketing advertising money is not wasted, you don’t onboard customers that can stress your team. You have customers that are cutting you big checks, they buy-in a $200,000 drone, they expect good customer service, and they deserve it. But if you fall into that trap to say, “Okay, I want all customers to come now,” you’re not only making the customer have a low opinion of your company, because you didn’t provide them the service level you should have, you’re also straining your team, because now work is backed up. And you will have to ask him to work faster, work faster, results in more errors, thoughts get wasted, things have to be redone.

Kamyar Shah: Suddenly you’ll have ineffectiveness and inefficiencies within your operation. It doesn’t sound like much, but let’s say, if at heart they are working on for a drone motor, if something gets broken in a test because they use the wrong motor, that cost money. You add all of these things up, and then you find out that that simple resource planning, it’s very simple to do. But as a matter of SOP quarterly resource planning allows you to have your finger on the gouge. You want more client, you turn it up. You don’t want a more client, you turn it down.

Kamyar Shah: You are at the helm, you can scale as soon as your resources become available without jeopardizing your reputation, or have an unhappy team, or have a subpar product.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Kamyar, thanks for walking me through that. I really appreciate it and it allows me to kind of clearly see this methodology they go into with a company to help them with growth and scaling, and it starts with the operations. And Kamyar, I have one last question, before I ask it, I want to point people towards where they could find you online. And I know your website kamyarshah.com, they can check out more. Are there any other places we should point people towards online?

Kamyar Shah: LinkedIn. I am hours at the time on LinkedIn every day, so please do connect and I’m happy to help, and I’m happy to be just the sounding board, I consider everyone in the business community worthy of both their time and my time, to assist with whatever I can, not a question of money, I think giving back to the community is really, really important. I’m happy to assist wherever I can with whatever I can.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Thank you. Check out his website, check him out on LinkedIn. Last question coming out for you, I know that you’ve gotten multiple educations. In Germany, in the US, you went on even get your PhD and you got pulled away with offers you couldn’t refuse in the consulting business industry. But I’m wondering books-wise, some of your favorite business books or people you admire in business that people should check out.

Kamyar Shah: This is a departure from my usual answer, I’m going to justify it here.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Okay.

Kamyar Shah: If you go to kamyarshah.name and look under portfolio, you see that during the last year I have taken over 200 courses on LinkedIn. Okay, I do that in my free time. I consider further education 99% of the game, okay?

Kamyar Shah: Even in subject matters where you think you are an expert, when I help peers and what I tell my own children, books are great. Especially business books, there are all kinds of them. But it has one shortcoming, because it’s subjective. It is a matter of the person’s experience.

Kamyar Shah: Again, I’m a long-life academic. I have, I think seven different degrees. I love academia, reading is what I love. But I wouldn’t talk about books when I’m recommending beneficial actions for one’s career. I would say, the proliferation of internet has enabled you to have access, to have the world’s knowledge on your fingertip.

Kamyar Shah: Several many universities, several of them are offering the entire coursework online. Even if you don’t want to spend money, if you are on a shoestring budget, get a LinkedIn, prove up subscription, use LinkedIn learning, okay? It is a wealth of experts that come share their experience. Again, this is not something I just say, I’ll do. If you want proof, go to kamyarshah.name and go under portfolio.

Kamyar Shah: This year alone, I have taken a couple of hundred courses. Even in subjects I am pretty confident, I’m up to date, because it allows me to see things from actual practitioners in real life. It gives me real life perspective that I can use tomorrow, okay? So, I would love to name books, but I have made the mission of more talking about education itself than reading.

Kamyar Shah: And for everyone that is listening. I mean, if you are a consultant on your own or if you’re working for someone else, this is your pathway to grow it. Again, I am not dismissing books, I just happen to be on this particular track of wanting to advocate, “Use existing educational material that have passed some level of scrutiny.” And on last, a matter of the person’s or the presenter’s ideas or experience, than what is the real world required.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Love it. Everyone, check out the website, check out LinkedIn, check out other episodes of the podcast. In addition to SweetProcess, Kamyar I may be the first one to thank you. Thanks so much, thanks everyone.

Kamyar Shah: Thank you so much for having me.

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