Scaling Like a Maniac with Prady Tewarie
On today’s episode of Just the Tips, Dean and I welcome Prady Tewarie, a young entrepreneur who has really figured out a system for starting a business with very little capital, bootstrapping it, and then scaling it like crazy. On this episode we dive into Prady’s history as an entrepreneur, his method for determining whether a business is going to work, and how he’s found such success growing his companies.
Prady’s first business
Every entrepreneur has their “first business” story, but Prady’s is a memorable one. When he was a freshman in college, he began working out a lot and saw that his friends would carpool to GNC to pick up supplements. So he thought, “Why not get the supplements directly to them?” He called up a distributor, negotiated a deal, and filled his dorm room with supplements. Anytime anyone wanted to buy some, he hopped on his bike and brought them over. He ended up doing so well that as a sophomore he hired freshmen to ride their bikes while he went to class.
Product-to-market poll
One of the things Prady says on this week’s episode that may surprise some people is: “New businesses shouldn’t exist.” And what he means is that established businesses have the capital and the infrastructure to launch new products. A new business will always struggle. So if you’re going to start a new business, you need to know that your product is needed in the market. It can’t just be because you’re tired of your job and you want to do something different. You need a product-to-market poll, meaning you need to test the idea that the market is there for your product.
Never compete
Entrepreneurs are told all the time that they need to compete. They need to identify their competition, see what they’re doing and try to get the better of them. Prady says it’s the opposite. You should be looking for no competition. You should identify a problem that no one else is serving, and then serve that niche the best that you can. If you’re competing, then there’s always going to be someone who is out-fundraising you or out-spending you, etc. But if you have a monopoly in your market, then you just have to serve that need.
Scaling isn’t just about adding people
When we talk about scaling companies, a lot of times we have a very basic understanding of what that means.Usually that’s adding people. But what Prady says on this week’s episode is so great: Scaling is about implementing systems. So that means not just adding people, but instating systems that will allow anyone who comes in to pick up where the last person left off. And what that means is that you, as the founder or CEO, can focus on strategy while the system takes care of itself. This is a really enlightening episode of Just the Tips that you have to hear.
Outline of This Episode
- [4:30] How Prady scales
- [6:04] Prady’s first business
- [11:02] What is a product to market poll?
- [13:50] How to tune into a market
- [17:55] Prady’s nootropic business
- [26:00] What does scaling really mean?
- [30:05] Stop doing tasks
- [38:29] How to connect to Prady
Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
