Are you drowning in dashboards but starving for clarity? Sara Wyman, founder and CEO of Stackpack, joins Melinda Lee to expose the dangerous gap between vanity metrics and what actually drives business performance. In this eye-opening conversation, Sara reveals why most companies are measuring the wrong things, and how that's quietly bleeding their margins dry. A must-listen for any leader who's ever felt overwhelmed by data yet uncertain about what truly matters.
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
The Vanity Metric Trap
“We typically choose to measure what's really easy to count... but it doesn't tell you if it's actually working.”
Why "80% AI adoption" sounds impressive but tells you nothing about whether your business is actually winning; and how activity metrics can lull leaders into a false sense of progress while the real story hides beneath the surface.
Permission to Simplify
“We believe that more measurement equals more control, but this is often not the case.”
Escape the dashboard overload, and give yourself (and your team) the relief of focusing on what actually moves the needle.
Communication as Infrastructure
How to apply the same discipline to communication that you apply to metrics, defining the purpose of every channel, distinguishing discussion from decision, and creating institutional memory that survives stress and chaos.
Metrics That Evolve
“Quarterly resets aren't a failure; they're a necessity.”
Learn why what got you here won't get you there, and how building flexibility into your measurement system keeps your company agile and aligned.
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“If I get specific, I'll lose customers.” “If I say no to some, I'll miss out on others.”
Sound familiar?
When you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to no one. The businesses that win are the ones willing to go deep, get specific, and own a corner of the market.
Check out our blog post, “Niching Down Is the Smartest Growth Strategy,” to start defining your true ideal customer.
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About the Guest:
Sara Wyman is the CEO and Founder of Stackpack, building the financial control layer for modern companies and the AI that powers them. She spent 7 years at Affirm leading multiple business lines and strategic partnerships with Shopify and Stripe that created billions in enterprise value. Prior to that, she built Payments at Etsy from the ground up and oversaw Finance and Operations at Reformation. Now she's tackling the next frontier: helping finance teams see, govern, and forecast AI spend before it quietly impacts their margins.
🍁 She grew up in Vermont tapping maple trees for syrup every spring.
🎤 She was once the lead singer in a cover band.
🙉 She can't whistle.
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About Melinda:
Melinda Lee is a Presentation Skills Expert, Speaking Coach, and nationally renowned Motivational Speaker. She holds an M.A. in Organizational Psychology, is an Insights Practitioner, and is a Certified Professional in Talent Development as well as Certified in Conflict Resolution. For over a decade, Melinda has researched and studied the state of “flow” and used it as a proven technique to help corporate leaders and business owners amplify their voices, access flow, and present their mission in a more powerful way to achieve results.
She has been the TEDx Berkeley Speaker Coach and has worked with hundreds of executives and teams from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Caltrans, Bay Area Rapid Transit System, and more. Currently, she lives in San Francisco, California, and is breaking the ancestral lineage of silence.
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Transcripts
Melinda Lee:
Welcome to the Speak and Flow podcast, where we help CEOs and leaders to speak with more confidence, clarity, and purpose, so that they can move and grow the business together.
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Melinda Lee: I believe that communication is not just a soft skill, it's how you move people and how your company grows. Today's topic is all around
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Melinda Lee: The questions every CEO needs to ask themselves before they scale, there is a lot of times we are so busy and not stopping to really consider the important things that we need to ask, before things start to break.
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Melinda Lee: And so joining me is an amazing leader. He has a wealth of knowledge. He's, his name is Kishore Rajshapal.
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Melinda Lee: CEO and founder of Rapidius. He turns data and, you know, into smarter decisions. So we have so much data out there, and things get quite complex, but taking all that into smarter decisions through AI pricing, market intelligence, he is targeting the RV market.
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Melinda Lee: His perspective to me is especially unique, because alongside with the technology and strategy that he brings, he also teaches yoga and meditation, and so he brings all of this and turns it into business growth and human potential. Welcome, Kishore.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Thank you so much for having me, Melinda.
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Melinda Lee: Absolutely, delighted.
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Kishore Rajgopal: to be here.
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Melinda Lee: I'm excited to have you. This is gonna be such a fun conversation. Again, I think there are CEOs and leaders out there are so busy, and they just don't have the time to really sit back and think about the questions that they need to ask as they're scaling and growing the company.
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Melinda Lee: And so, the first question I'll ask is, there is someone out there that is busy, and they actually stop to listen to this podcast. What do you hope could change in this person's life if they truly take everything into account, what you're about to tell them?
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Kishore Rajgopal: Thank you, Melinda. And what we've seen, you know, I founded 5 companies before this.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And when you grow, there are things that work at a certain level.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And as you keep growing, the same things that work at a certain level, they don't work anymore at the next level.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Right? So, and so you have to constantly recalibrate your strategies, because otherwise, it just doesn't work. So you're growing, you're growing, you're growing, and then you gotta step back, you gotta sort of…
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Kishore Rajgopal: you know, you gotta step back, you've got to go in back into your creative space, and you've got to figure out, why is this thing not working anymore? If you don't do that, you simply exhaust yourself, spend more resources.
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Kishore Rajgopal: More money, more budgets, and it's just not working the same level of effectiveness. And you're not really attentively figuring out why. But if you step back and saying, this strategy is no longer worth working effectively, lead gen.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Was working at that time. It's no longer effectively as much.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Maybe Google Ads was working and is not working as effectively. Maybe another strategy works out more effectively. So you've got to figure out all the strategies and which is more effective for you at this point of time.
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Kishore Rajgopal: That's… that's what is important for you. So you've got to step back and figure out what's, you know, what's changed, and how you need to change your strategy.
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Melinda Lee: Yes, yeah, I love that, and this is what this episode is all about, so I'm really appreciative that you're mentioning that, so if you haven't taken anything else.
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Melinda Lee: Take the moment to step back, is what Kishore says, right? Before you keep on using and wasting resources. And so, for the audience, can you share more about what you do and what you're excited about today?
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Kishore Rajgopal: Absolutely. So I spent almost 10 years in corporate, in the corporate world, worked, advising, retailers and brands.
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Kishore Rajgopal: You know, with strategies like, you know, space optimization, you know, pricing optimization, JCPenney, Publix, Nordstrom. I lived in Dallas, Texas, spent almost 10 years.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And then, of course, my calling to be in the startup world and build technologies that serve retailers, brands, and other companies.
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Kishore Rajgopal: The last almost 12 years, I've created 5 startups, with varying levels of successes and failures. There were 2 sort of successful companies and 3 glorious failures. You learn more from failures, honestly.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Now, this company is really servicing the RV sector, the recreational services sector in the US.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Wherein, we help them price their units in a more effective way. Price, stock.
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Kishore Rajgopal: the effective… and order the units in a more effective way. That's been my background, and honestly, you know, it's been a delightful journey. If I can go back and look at what's been the most effective
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Kishore Rajgopal: What's been my learning is…
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Kishore Rajgopal: as a startup founder, is I started broad, And it didn't work.
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Kishore Rajgopal: But when you narrow your market, when you create… when you target a niche market, it actually starts working out more effectively. And then, once you have a niche under control, then you get to the next niche, the adjacent niche, the next adjacent niche. Then you're able to build a…
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Kishore Rajgopal: A big… a nicer… a bigger company.
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Melinda Lee: Mmm.
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Kishore Rajgopal: If you listen to VCs, and VCs talk of large TAMs, total addressable markets, you actually get misled because of that. So you've got to sort of start small, narrow, and be really deep and in-depth in that market, and then, from that success, build forward from there.
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Melinda Lee: was that one of the things that you learned in the beginning, that was tough for you?
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Kishore Rajgopal: Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah.
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Melinda Lee: It is easier said than done, though, to be narrow and niched.
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Kishore Rajgopal: I… I actually don't think so, because…
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Melinda Lee: Really?
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Kishore Rajgopal: As a startup, let's talk of price optimization. Okay. Or demand optimization.
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Kishore Rajgopal: We said retail. And retail is very broad. There's convenience, there's, you know, there's fashion, there's groceries, there's so many aspects of retail. And you can't do all of them with the same level of depth. You've got to choose one of them and do it. And if you can't make the choice, you actually fail.
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Kishore Rajgopal: But what happens as a startup founder is, you think, oh, let's try all of them.
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Melinda Lee: Yay!
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Kishore Rajgopal: And one of them sticks.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And that's actually counterintuitive. It actually doesn't work that way. You bet on one of them, and succeed in that, and then you can choose another. And this lesson takes a while for us to understand as a startup founder.
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Melinda Lee: Right, right, right. No, it's true, because you want to be able to serve so many people, so what you're saying is just really niche down, pick one thing, and stick with it for a while.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Your go-to-market improves, the ontologies improve, your solutioning improves, you know, the kind of depth you build in the industry knowledge, the industry, you know, data models, all of that improves once you're niche to a hyper, you know, hyper, you know, clearer area.
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Melinda Lee: Clear. Clear. I like it. It's clear. That's what it is. It's not just niching just to make you feel like you're not doing well at all and other things, it's just being clear right now.
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Melinda Lee: And then so, I mean, that's what we want to teach people, that's what we want to teach our teams, too, like, when you're talking about what it is that you do well, because in order to do something really well, you gotta be very clear and communicate that to your market, to your teams, and be intentional with it.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Absolutely, yeah.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah, and so when…
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Kishore Rajgopal: Your language also improves, your KPIs improve, your communication improves. You see, a lot of things improve once you are clear and your niching is clear.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah. And so earlier you talked about what once worked, so let's say we're clear, you're starting to make money, and then you hit the ceiling, because you said what once worked before doesn't always work to the next level. How do I know if I'm at that… going to the next level?
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Kishore Rajgopal: Yeah, so,
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Kishore Rajgopal: Once you figured out a market, and you know the size, you figured out your total addressable market, and you sort of started, sort of, you know, maxing it out, so to speak.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Or, you know, you're sort of growing well, then that's the time you can address in, like, for example, power sports, or marine, then you can start addressing those markets.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Right? So, in that… in that sense, and the niche number two, the niche number 3, you can start addressing those, and you can still build a reasonably good… a reasonably large company.
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Melinda Lee: And then how do we start to build a repeatable company, where things are repeated? Because now, you know, if you're going to another… a little… a different niche, or a slightly different adjacent niche, you want to have the original systems in place.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Yes, yes.
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Melinda Lee: How are… how do you, have you done that before? Like, how do you recommend…
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Kishore Rajgopal: Repeatability is so important in any business for that matter, as important in a startup. So you find there are so many roles, right? So if you look at, for example, lead generation, if you look at outbound, then you look at, you know, demo and closure, then you look at, for example, any paperwork, any legal, then you look at, obviously, you know, all of the, you know.
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Kishore Rajgopal: example, if there's a, if there's, if there's any, you know, onboarding, for example. And then, if there's any support.
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Kishore Rajgopal: You know, then, all of that, right? Then, and then…
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Kishore Rajgopal: you know, if there's any bug fixes on an ongoing… if there's any support on an ongoing basis. So you've got to make sure every one of them is sort of… sort of taken care so that it's scalable.
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Kishore Rajgopal: every one of these functions have to have scale built in, because if you don't, then you suddenly find that you're sort of breaking there, you know? That's a portion that starts breaking, you know? So you've got to make… you've got to map each one of these functions and make sure that you've got scale built in, that each one of them is sort of built in for scale, you know?
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Kishore Rajgopal: Then, of course, we are not even talking of, you know, the engineering side. The engineering side, obviously, has to be highly scalable. Engineering, support, the data side, you know, has to be highly scalable, highly, you know, highly competent, obviously, right?
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Melinda Lee: Right, right, right. And how much do you think that needs to get defined by the leader? By… does he… do you feel like documentation helps, or…
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Kishore Rajgopal: That's a very good question, Melinda. You see, to me,
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Kishore Rajgopal: They don't do a lot of documentation.
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Kishore Rajgopal: I'm just very clear on my communication.
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Melinda Lee: You're speaking my language!
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Kishore Rajgopal: I sit down and say, this is your ownership.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah.
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Kishore Rajgopal: This is what you do. Yeah.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Clarify that this is what your area is. Yeah. This is your response. Don't give them work. Give them ownership.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah.
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Melinda Lee: How do you do that, though? So you say, this is what you do, this is your area of expertise, you empower them.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Yeah! Let me give you an example, Melinda. Okay. Now, recently we hired a lady who does, who does, who does content writing.
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Melinda Lee: Huh.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And she came back and said, you know, I want a title for Brand Storyteller. I said, that's absolutely no problem, because you tell the story, you're the voice of the brand, and that's the way it should be. You're not a content writer.
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Kishore Rajgopal: You… you're the voice of the brand. That's the way it should be. And then… then the inevitable, like, what are my hours?
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Kishore Rajgopal: I said, I don't care.
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Kishore Rajgopal: I don't care.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Work whenever you want!
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Melinda Lee: Right, right.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Right? There's a stand-up in the morning, but that's an engineering stand-up. You don't need to attend that. There's a stand-up in the evening, that's a, you know, everybody attends that, so you may want to attend that.
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Kishore Rajgopal: You know, you… you know, we publish blogs maybe once or twice in a week.
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Kishore Rajgopal: You know, get in the groove.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And… and… you can look…
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Kishore Rajgopal: whatever times you want. I mean, I work at a time convenient to me, I work in the mornings.
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Kishore Rajgopal: I rest a little bit in the afternoons, then I work in the evenings to the night, because that's when our clients wake up, and I'm in India, so I have my own schedule, and I have my evening schedule with Justin, my co-founder. You know, I have my own schedule. You have your own schedule.
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Kishore Rajgopal: So, I made it clear, look, you're not here for the hours.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah.
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Kishore Rajgopal: You're here for the ownership, and that's the same message for everybody.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Don't give me this hours thing. And everybody's remote. I don't monitor them. I don't monitor keystrokes. I don't monitor hours. Nobody fills in hours. We don't measure hours at all. Right. And don't tell me you're taking off. Please take off. You don't need to… you don't need to tell me all that.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Right?
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Melinda Lee: Right, and I know there's statistics that says that when the employees and the leaders feel like they own it, they're more engaged, they're more.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Yeah.
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Melinda Lee: They actually probably work more behind when you don't even know, because when they know the direction and the ownership that they have to take the company in that direct… in that space, then they're gonna own it.
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Melinda Lee: But then it does…
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Kishore Rajgopal: You own it!
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Melinda Lee: Yeah, right, right, right.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And I'm telling you, this lady, she's been here for 2-3 months, she is top-notch, absolutely, absolutely.
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Melinda Lee: Great.
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Kishore Rajgopal: So, and it's the same with my team members. I don't… I don't give them tasks.
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Kishore Rajgopal: I give them ownership, and it's, you know, of course there are ones in a while, there are underperformance, and we coach them, and all that stuff is fine. But by and large, this has worked out very, very well.
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Melinda Lee: Have you, have you… did you find it difficult to, as you were scaling, to let go and trust your team?
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Kishore Rajgopal: I would say no.
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Melinda Lee: Oh, good!
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Kishore Rajgopal: I would say no, no.
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Melinda Lee: You just, you just, you know how to commute? What is the secret?
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Kishore Rajgopal: So, so we have, we have Slack channels, so we have Slack channels, and we have an engineering head who sort of… now, of course, now, we're not that large yet. I mean, I do agree, I mean, we… so we do, so we have an engineering head, and then we… we do have the engineering team, and each of them works in certain, so there's a… the engineering team, the UX team, the back-end team, the front-end team, and then the radar team. Each of them have the area of responsibility.
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Kishore Rajgopal: They do give updates in Slack on what's going on, and then we have the product management team, and they have their tasks set out, and they do give their updates. They have the support team.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Yeah, so using a combination of methods, we sort of know what's going on.
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Kishore Rajgopal: That's where we are, you know? And it sort of worked till… till now. Now, I think what you may ask is.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Let's say you become 3 times the size. Would it still work? I don't know, it's not clear to me. Maybe we'll get a little bit more formal at that time, maybe we'll introduce a little bit more… one more layer of communication, but it's worked.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Till now. But to me, I would… I would… I would… I would always say ownership, and not… not tasks. And maybe we would just introduce one more layer of, sort of, sort of leadership. The philosophy won't change. It's always ownership.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. The communication across the board from, yeah, from.
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Kishore Rajgopal: ownership, goals, and that's the way it would be. Never, like, you do this, this, this, this, you start working at 9, and you can be done by 6. The whole thing goes apart, you know? Right.
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Melinda Lee: How do you, convey the vision and the mission, to your clients and also to your team?
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Kishore Rajgopal: You have the stand-ups. Stand-ups are useful. Stand-ups are short, so short meaning 20 minutes. So we have two stand-ups a day. The morning is heavily engineering and very specific. The evening is a little bit more broad, and once in a while, you gotta sort of… sort of
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Kishore Rajgopal: Look, this is where we're going. This is what is happening.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And at least once a quarter, you've got to sort of lay out, sort of, this is where we're going, kind of a thing. So you've got to… you… I, as a leader, have to lay out the mission. It's my responsibility to describe it to people, so people understand this is where we're going.
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Kishore Rajgopal: You know.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah.
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Kishore Rajgopal: If there… if there are any… if there are any happenings, if there are any challenges, if there are any goals, I sort of have to describe it to them, and they… and everybody listens to it. What I mean is, it's not like it's only sales, it's only marketing, it's only… it's only support. No, everybody listens in to all of these messages, so they align.
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Kishore Rajgopal: So the energies are aligned.
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Melinda Lee: Yes, yes, and why do you think that that's important?
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Kishore Rajgopal: Oh, it's important, because if there is a product message, or there's a next version being released.
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Melinda Lee: Right.
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Kishore Rajgopal: for example, we're saying, look, the product needs integration into the website provider, or into the DMS. That's a very important step. Everybody needs to understand that.
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Kishore Rajgopal: philosophically, whatever actions we are recommending needs to go back into the systems of record. That's a very important
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Kishore Rajgopal: shift. So everybody needs to understand that.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Otherwise, it'll become a… like a general, like a,
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Kishore Rajgopal: A general, nice, good-to-have system with the actions not flowing back into your systems.
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Kishore Rajgopal: We don't want that, right? We want to move into… these actions go back into your systems. So people understand this philosophical shift, so they all sort of move in that direction.
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Melinda Lee: yeah, no, I agree, I agree. So what do you think is the most challenging part of, scaling a company, then?
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Melinda Lee: What are the questions that a CEO needs to ask themselves?
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Kishore Rajgopal: I think… I think what we just said, the most challenging part is to make sure you communicate, you align, make sure people are… look.
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Kishore Rajgopal: It's not about people Filling up their days.
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Kishore Rajgopal: It's making sure that they're aligned, and the work they're doing is aligned with that… with that vision, and they're working in… in…
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Kishore Rajgopal: In the same energy.
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Kishore Rajgopal: That's the… that's the most important thing.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah.
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Melinda Lee: Yes. Yes. I truly believe that. Have you been with a company that has not had that same energy, and people are working on different…
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Melinda Lee: different things, different priorities, people…
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Kishore Rajgopal: Many times.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Sometimes it's happened… often it happens because people are not connected.
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Kishore Rajgopal: They are not…
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Kishore Rajgopal: They just don't see eye to eye, they have different agendas, or priorities, or the different, whatever, this set of clients, that set of clients, or this product, that product.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Things like that.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Or in a larger company, you know, that's legacy, this is new, you know, those kind of things happen. And again, you know, if it's under your control, you have to align them.
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Kishore Rajgopal: I mean, if… if it's under my control, there are two, three groups, I have to align them.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And say this, look, we've got to move in the same direction.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah, at least have some conversation. If you're not in the same direction, have the conversation, talk honestly, problem solve, and even if you don't agree, at least agree to be in alignment, right? At least agree to all communicate in the same way.
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Melinda Lee: Is what I found. Even sometimes, initially, if you don't agree, but at least…
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Melinda Lee: Right? So that everybody's on the same page when we went out and go out to message to the client.
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Melinda Lee: Because otherwise, you'll have disparate messages.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Yeah, Melinda, and… but then, again, again, you know, sometimes some of the… you know, once a company gets very large, which has happened to me, right? Once it goes to 2 billion, $3 billion, $4 billion, $5 billion.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And at that time, you know, such large divisions happen, and people have… start having different agendas, or acquisitions, and all that. And they're having different agendas.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And the conversations don't align. Yeah. And at least I found it very hard. I can't pretend that everything's okay. You find it very hard. Yeah. So,
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Kishore Rajgopal: I don't see easy solutions there. You've got to figure it out, you've got to take it to the boss, you've got to get it aligned, and so on. Smaller companies, yes, you're able to talk and resolve it. At least have an open conversation and resolve it. Look, we have one company, let's sit across the table, discuss it, and align the energies.
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Melinda Lee: Right, right, right. But larger companies, yeah, it's challenging, especially when they have different people, behaviors, personalities, they're just going separate ways.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Yes, so I don't have any magic prescription.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Right? Because I…
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Kishore Rajgopal: I could not resolve those situations when I was in that position. Yeah, the best way is to get in front, make a… the best way is make a difference, right? The way I could do it in a large company is I made a difference to their business, to their business unit, to their situation, I brought them business, I closed them deals, and they say, wow!
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Kishore Rajgopal: And then… then they… they warmed up and they spoke to me.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah, and how do you and your co-founder do that? I mean, if I were a founder, and I saw people working on different things and silos, I would get together with my co-founder, or as a founder, start to set the direction again, start to align again.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Yeah, in companies like us, there's no… there's no.
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Melinda Lee: What is she?
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Kishore Rajgopal: We just have to sit across and communicate. We have to align, we have to talk through.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And we give liberty to people. Are you experiment… are you doing some experiments? That's no problem. How long the experiment take? Okay, it takes a month, that's no problem. We love experiments. But then once you're done, we bring the experiment back. Let's see, okay, where else will you… what else will you work on, you know?
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Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Kishore Rajgopal: I think alignment. Alignment, discussion, communication.
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Melinda Lee: I like the idea of being a small, agile company nowadays, especially with so much going on.
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Kishore Rajgopal: And with AI, the amount you can get done with a smaller team is so immense, you don't need a large team.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah.
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Kishore Rajgopal: You don't need a large team, you know, there's a lot of work that can get done with a small team, right?
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Melinda Lee: Right, right. And so how do you use AI with them to help people with pricing and market intelligence?
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Melinda Lee: Miss…
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Kishore Rajgopal: So, AI is the core of what we build, the fact that, you know, we watch a lot of the market.
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Kishore Rajgopal: We index many, you know, many data sources. We also have data partners, we bring the data in, we crunch that in, we do a lot of modeling, we do a lot of machine learning, a lot of AI. We see the trends, and then we're able to give a lot of price recommendations. We have a pricing engine that we provide to our dealers. Our dealers use a pricing engine and saying, for this unit.
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Kishore Rajgopal: year, make, model, and based on their sort of preferences, hey, we want to be the lowest in the market. That's, after all, a philosophy. We let them have their philosophies. We don't take that away, right? We want to be the lowest in the market. Oh, somebody else says, no, no, not really. We want to be somewhere in the middle of the line.
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Kishore Rajgopal: I mean, we wanna… we wanna be a profitable…
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Kishore Rajgopal: Dealer. So, they can get their, sort of, philosophical, you know, directions, and according to that, and according to the data we see in the market, we offer them some pricing, sort of.
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Kishore Rajgopal: directions, and then they can choose that, and they can move. So, that's… that's our pricing engine that we have that, that gives them those, those, you know, recommendations.
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Melinda Lee: Fabulous, fabulous. So helpful. Can you do that for my company, too? You probably can use that same model and apply it to every single type of industry.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah, that's great, that's great.
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Melinda Lee: Well, I'm gonna ask you one last question. We learned so much, we talked about a lot, and one thing that really stood out is, again, like, taking the time to really think about where's the direction of the company, how do we instill ownership with all the teams, and keep aligned energy versus disparate changing. So, when companies really think about communication.
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Melinda Lee: As a way to…
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Melinda Lee: align the energies, align the teams, not just a soft skill. Now they're thinking about how do I use it with intention and purpose? What do you think that does, and how does that impact companies today?
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Kishore Rajgopal: Oh, I would say conscious communication, being able to be cognizant of where you're coming from, how it will be received, and doing that on a regular basis to align people, align energies, is a very important part of
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Kishore Rajgopal: What do you do?
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Melinda Lee: Yeah.
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Kishore Rajgopal: It's a very important part, and if your energies are not aligned, especially at the top, especially with you and your colleagues, like me, and my co-founder, and my, like, VP of Engineering, we have to be aligned. If you're not aligned, you'll spend a lot of time
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Kishore Rajgopal: You'll waste a lot of time and energy.
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Kishore Rajgopal: So it's very important, conscious communication, open communication, and making sure you speak things through, you articulate them, and be aligned, and once you're aligned, the journey is
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Kishore Rajgopal: Much more clearer. And then with the rest of the team, also, conscious communication is important, so you have open, and you articulate your goals clearly, and you move forward. And as I mentioned, you know, we don't discuss work.
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Kishore Rajgopal: We don't discuss content to work, we… it's ownership, priorities, and that's what is discussed, you know?
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Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah. And how does that impact the legacy? So, when you're not in the room.
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Melinda Lee: I love what you said, because you're communicating what matters, and they take ownership. And so imagine, and what does that do for your legacy? Let's say Keyshore is not available, or not around, how does that impact your legacy and Rapidius' legacy?
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Kishore Rajgopal: Yeah, hopefully things will continue to work, even if I'm not around, if I'm gone for a week or two, it'll continue to work. We have a very… we have systems and processes
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Kishore Rajgopal: You know, and things will continue to work. And so, I mean, they don't… they're not dependent on me being there all the time, or…
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Kishore Rajgopal: the head of engineering or my co-founder being there. Things will continue to work, because we have Slack, we have task assignments, we have, you know, we have things going on, so things will sort of continue to work, you know? Right, right. At least for a while, so to speak, you know?
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Melinda Lee: Right, right. So imagine if a leader really takes that into consideration, the person, the company, the legacy that they're trying to bring, and communicate that so that people
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Melinda Lee: Continue the work when the leader's not there.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Melinda Lee: That is the goal. That is where we're headed. That's the direction.
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Kishore Rajgopal: Yeah, yeah.
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Melinda Lee: Yeah.
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Melinda Lee: Oh, thank you so much, Keishore. And if there's a company out there, small business, startup, or they're looking for some support from you and Rapidius, how can this leader get a hold of you?
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Kishore Rajgopal: I absolutely would love to support Kishore at Rapidius.com. Otherwise, my phone number, you know, 650… 613?
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Kishore Rajgopal: 8522. Bay Area, area code.
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Melinda Lee: Thank you so much, Kishore. It was really fun. I had a really great time with you. Thanks for your time.
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Melinda Lee: And thank you for being here on the Speak and Flow podcast. Remember, communicate what matters, communicate it consistently, so you and your team move together. Take care. Until next time, bye-bye.
