Brain Box - The Leadership Podcast

“Industry without talent is useless. Talent without industry is exasperating.
The two together can make an artist.”
To kick-start Season 13, "The Time Capsule", I have one such #leader who has been an artist across industries to share his views on #leadership & #mentalhealth.
Dulles Krishnan is the Managing Director of Coursera & had APAC leadership roles across IBM, AWS, Salesforce & SAP in the past.

Early on in my sales career, I used to think (just like most other people) that “Sales” has a very negative connotation & used to personally prefer “Business Development”. It took me a few years before I realised that I’m genuinely proud to be a Sales guy.

So, today’s guest is Melanie Boucarut, from Sweden, who teaches coaches how to sell without feeling dirty! She's the Founder & CEO of Yes Mistress and I can promise you that her sales insights will absolutely blow you away.

Timestamps:

00:03: Conversation on the Mindset of a Salesperson

00:06: "The Benefits of Having the Right Mindset When Selling"

00:08: "The Mindset of a Successful Sales Conversation"

00:09: Understanding the Sales Mindset: Motivation Beyond Money

00:12: Conversation on Financial Targets and Critical Traits of a Good Salesperson

00:13: "Cultivating Vulnerability and Willingness in Sales Calls"

00:15: Exploring the Journey of Starting a Life Coaching Business

00:17: Conversation on B2C Sales Strategies

00:23: Biggest Myth in Marketing and Advice for the 20 Year Old Self

Ravi Nair, an LLP coach and author of Amazon's bestselling book Weekend Miracle, is the first Guinness World Record holder on Brain Box.

Very interesting discussions ensue - like:

"Can leadership be taught or if it is something that is simply innate", or for that matter "Emotional intelligence?"

Lastly, everyone operates from two zones: looking good and avoiding looking bad; how this can create issues in communication and relationships.

Timestamps:

00:03: Conversation on Leadership Development and Overcoming Self-Limiting Beliefs

00:04: Exploring Traits and Belief Systems

00:06: Exploring Self-Limiting Beliefs in Leadership

00:09: The Benefits of Being a Good Leader: Setting Realistic Expectations

00:11: Conversation on Achieving Team Synergy and Motivation

00:12: Exploring the Different Types of Personality Traits in the Workplace

00:16: Exploring the Benefits of Teaching Sales Strategies

00:17: Exploring the Benefits of Introversion in Sales and Leadership

00:21: Exploring the Power of Knowledge Transfer & Guinness World Record for Participating in the Toughest Ultra Hill Marathon in India.

00:25: Exploring the Mind's Relationship to Pain and Pleasure

00:26: The Importance of Physical Health for Leadership Success

00:28: Advice for the 20-Year-Old Self

A serial entrepreneur, Saurabh founded his first startup in the Ed-tech space in 2009, while still in IIT Bombay!

The second one in 2015 in the Agri-Tech space (after his corporate stint).

He then instrumented Swiggy's growth from six cities to 500 in a span of just 6 months!

And then in 2020 worked very closely with Sachin Bansal (Flipkart fame) as CEO of Navi Mutual Fund.

He's now the Co-Founder of Stable Money.

We discuss about hiring, building & getting the best out of teams, scaling from 0-1; 1-5 & 5-10.

Don't miss this episode.. the pearls of wisdom are right there!

In a very interesting chat with the CEO of Vosmos (aka Virtual Cosmos), we discuss a plethora of topics:

- Understanding the Metaverse (or meta-commerce, as he likes to call it) better

- Balancing innovation with risk-taking capability;

- Criticality of trust in culture;

- Importance of marketing & branding;

- Customer experience & how it could be the biggest differentiator.

I had my first guest, Ashish Wattal, in Episode 6 on October 11, 2021. He was then MD at Cisco.

Fast forward exactly 18 months: April 10, 2023.

He returns after exactly 50 episodes as Country Director at Google Cloud to kick-off Season 12!

We discuss in detail around the traits that make him a great leader of multiple high-performing teams:

- Empathy & Compassion

- Criticality of Trust in getting results from the team

- Why communication is the key in achieving aspirational goals & how to go about achieving them

- Team-first mentality

- Individualism within the team

- Importance of Diversity in the team (Not just gender, but also in age)

- How failures set you up for success

- WFH or hybrid

- Importance of discipline & how sports inculcates leadership

- Importance of 'Orzuv' (Wellness in the Kashmiri language)

- How IT & tech has transformed in the past 35 years

- Where he expects India to be going in the next 10-15

- What advice he would give the 20-year old him

I couldn't have expected a more from-the-heart leadership mantras in under 26 minutes!

Transcript: https://share.descript.com/view/zD6NIO1vTxU?t=0.05

On the Season 11 finale, I'm delighted to host Darshan Shetty - currently the General Manager at Continental, who has worked with conglomerates like Bosch in the past. He is also my batchmate from RVCE over 2 decades ago.  

Having been in a whole variety of roles - right from R&D to Project Management to Sales - he shares his leadership mantras on how to develop high-performing teams.

Being an avid sportsperson as well, we also have a brief discussion about the importance of physical health in leadership.

Abhishek Gupta has some of the best credentials there are: He's the CEO of Turbotic, ex-Partner of KPMG & a Board Member. 

My conversation with him is around some of the hottest topics today:

- Leveraging AI in Self-Driving cars

- Utilising AI & Blockchain in HR

- Fail fast-fail safe in startups

- His 5th & 6th Ps in Marketing! 

- How to build an innovative startup (He invests regularly in them)

- Importance of Feedback in Leadership

- His love for ‘polo’

If you have read any of the viral posts about “How all the sharks except Aman Gupta are suffering major losses” .. I have the source. 

He's Ankit Uttam - an author, LinkedIn influencer & a solopreneur. 

There’s a reason, though, that Brain Box is an award winning show by Spotify - we will be digging into the other facets of his life, which aren’t too commonly known - yet are very remarkable! 

We delve into "power of series", how he directed rage to something productive .. to how "Minimum Viable Product" can be applied to any product / service, what it takes to be an influencer .. all the way to his reasons for having 11k+ subscribers on his newsletter!

Customer Experience (CX) is defined as the customers' holistic perception of their experience with your business or brand. It's one of the biggest differentiators to stand-out in a crowded market. So in today's episode, our guest is an expert in CX in both B2B and B2C - Kavitha Ashtakala. 

She also talks about her solopreneurship journey, Individual Social Responsibility (ISR) and how career breaks helped shape her - both professionally and personally.