As part of my series about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Successful Service Business,” I had the pleasure of interviewing Bimal Shah. He is on a mission to deliver breakthroughs to entrepreneurs by reaching their three-year goal in one year through customized systems of coaching, planning, & accountability that provide Security from Enemies of Prosperity. Rajparth Achievers, LLC. is founded on three platforms: Thrive, Transform, and Transcend.
Bimal’s story began when he came to the United States 20 years ago from Bombay, India …though coming from an affluent family, he worked five jobs to pay his own out of state tuition, graduated from UF with decent savings, chose to start his own business instead of accepting offered jobs, and has been a thriving entrepreneur ever since.
During more than 16 years in the Business, he has helped make a difference in the lives of more than 1000 families & businesses to preserve their assets, increase their income and reduce their taxes.
He is a lifetime member of Million Dollar Round Table®, MDRT. And also a member of Top of the Table®. It is one of the highest levels of recognition in the financial services industry. He has been awarded the Global Corporate Award in 2014 for being one of the best in the life insurance category. Recognized in Who’s Who, as well.
Rajparth Group has been named as one of the Best Small Businesses in Boca Raton in the Investment Category. He has been a Recipient of the National Ethics Award. He is a recognized speaker with presentations at several professional business associations, conferences, & meetings.
Bimal has also done several speaking engagements with organizations such as NPI, BNI, The Millionaires Group, Health Care Round Table, SFHHA, SFTA.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I was born in Dayton, Ohio and went back to India when I was two years old as my parents got divorced. I was raised in Bombay (now Mumbai) and came to this country back when I was 20 with $20 in my pocket. I worked five jobs to pay my own out of state tuition and graduated with close to $20K in Savings. Got more than a dozen job offers and rejected all of them to start my own business in the financial services and have been helping entrepreneurs thrive ever since. Have been married to my lovely wife Ami for 22 years and have two beautiful daughters after which I named my current company. I am on a mission to make pioneers out of entrepreneurs by helping them achieve their three-year goal in one year. My business is founded on three principles- Thrive, Transform, and Transcend.
What was the “Aha Moment” that led you to think of the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?
As part of helping entrepreneurs, they asked a lot of favors. These favors led to coaching, consulting, training, management consulting. One day in 2014, a client of mine said you do more for me in one hour than ten meetings discussing money. In my head, I went ten meetings for 3 years and so asked him out of curiosity as to what it was worth. He goes to his office and gets a checkbook and cuts me a check for $3,000. I didn’t have the company formed but I had a check. That was the ‘aha’ moment.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
Answer: The funniest mistake I ever made was to take on a client (a divorced lawyer), who just wanted to vent out her frustrations in life and wanted to pay very little. There was very little talk about business. The money was also not much but I made an empathetic decision. Eventually she couldn’t continue as she didn’t have the money to pay. This was good and the lesson learned is be very selective about your clients and always aim to get better clients. This also taught me to say No in life. Every time you say yes to something you are saying no to something else in life. You have to discover is it more essential to say yes to something when you are saying No to something else.
Thank you for that. Let’s now pivot to the main focus of our interview. Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven business” are more successful in many areas. When you started your company what was your vision, your purpose?
I believe the world evolves because everyone is unique and different and so are entrepreneurs. My purpose is to make pioneers out of entrepreneurs throughout the world by helping them achieve their three-year goal in one year- What I define as next level growth. That is also my tag line and I want to do whatever it takes to achieve that result. I wanted to do that without them worrying about how much to pay me. This is why I created a unique model of acquiring Grants for business for them to work with me. To do so, I have to wear all the hats in all the functions of the business to achieve that result- whether it is being a grant writer, recruiter, marketer, sales trainer, project manager, management consultant, financial consultant, business coach, business consultant, business accelerator, marketing, operations, Software trainer, motivator, or leadership coach or something else.
What do you do to articulate or demonstrate your company’s values to your employees and to your customers?
I believe in giving results first with accountability. The after effect is that people and employees have already seen the value and it is easy for them to take the first step as it doesn’t require a lot of thought. After seeing me focused on delivering results and leading by example, makes the team focused on results. I also believe in eliminating risk for the customer, so it makes it easy for them to make a decision. With the team, I focus on how we can make things easy for ourselves and for that many times you have to work hard and fast on smart things.
Do you have a “number one principle” that guides you through the ups and downs of running a business?
I have one solid principle that guides me throughout is to never ever give up — face life head on with all challenges and keep on going no matter what it throws at you. There is always light at the end of the tunnel. It may be delayed, but it’s there. I always believe in finding a way and figuring it out. I spend more time improving, finding a way, and figuring it out than proving.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
I have been through many hard times in my life and it has been full of ups and downs. First my journey in the US started with nothing, working five jobs to pay out of state tuition, taking a greyhound bus from California to Florida as had no money for a plane ticket, leaving a business and moving to south Florida as result of aunt’s death and starting back from scratch, taking a kind of a one-year sabbatical at the wrong time and having to start over again, and consistently innovating and improving till I got what the market wanted.
So, how are things going today? How did your values lead to your eventual success?
Things are going great today. The key things I have followed during the Pandemic are adapt, change, pivot, improve and leverage. As a result, the business has continued and continued to grow in this current environment. I have been more busy and optimally productive than before. One of the values that I strongly believe is to keep going in life no matter what happens. Never give up on life and always seek help and collaborate. You can’t do everything by yourself and work with others who are experts in what they do. I am a student first.
Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a founder or CEO should know in order to create a very successful service based business? Please share a story or an example for each.
I would first like to make the difference between important and essential. Many things are important, and they don’t get paid attention to. Essential takes it to a new level. When it is essential, it is something you can’t do without. So instead of the important, I would like to focus on the essentials. The five most essential elements a founder and CEO should know are:
- Get Better Clients: The most essential element is who you are going to serve. Who is your target audience? Knowing your target audience and aiming to get better clients is key in a service business. Who you are providing service to makes a world of difference. One story I can share is targeting a list of companies that I wanted to make as clients and directly reaching out to them online and offline assisted me in exponential growth of my business. The same is true of clients that we assist in building a 5-star prospect list.
- Standing out from the rest: No service business can succeed if you are not clearly showing as to how you are standing out from the rest. If you are just another service provider, you become a commodity where the only measuring stick is your price. For example: I have stood out by building a unique process to achieve your 3-year goal in one year and even found a way to get a government grant for the same.
- Disrupting yourself: You need to find out how you can be disrupted before someone else disrupts you. This way you can sustain yourself to changing environments. For example, I have digitized a lot of my knowledge and made it available from upwards of Free to books, online courses, Webinars, systems, and creating so many knowledge products.
- Build an “A’ level Lean Team: You need to have a team, even if it is outsourced on demand or on payroll. You cannot build a business without a team and you cannot do everything alone. For example I have a lean team of Associate coaches available on demand and three employees on payroll.
- Eye on Cash Flow Daily: As a service provider, you need to keep an eye on cash flow every day and that is why I am always closing deals. I know the CEO of Modernizing medicine had a goal of a grand a day in sales that led the company to $100 million.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I am very grateful to Seth Godin. I read his blogs every day, his books, and listen to his podcasts. One of the things he mentioned is to solve interesting problems and problems that others don’t even dare to resolve. So I used the same to solve an interesting problem in my business. I wanted to grow the investment each client made in me. This is when I tied the Grants model to the training that allows clients to work with me without worrying about how to pay me
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I dream of one day of a world that gets the education from The finest expert from around the world in the topic or thing that they want to get educated upon on their fingertip. I want to build a university where the child from inception could be taught on what they are curious about and build. I hate the memorize and recall education system and want to see a curious and build education system where the student is in the teacher’s seat and there are a lot of teachers in the student’s seat overcoming all the curiosity the student has.
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