Chris LaFay / Anil Gupta 1:1

Chris LaFay: It's. It's just me.

Anil Gupta: Hey, Chris.

Chris LaFay: Good afternoon. Where is my. Oh, I gotta turn. I gotta get my AirPods connected here really quick so I get all this echo.

Anil Gupta: I don't. Take your time.

Chris LaFay: I see that you set up your office exactly the same way that you had prior.

Anil Gupta: For the time being, yes. Yeah, for time being. Colleen and I were looking into some sort of, like, IKEA or something like furniture. What I want to do is.

Chris LaFay: I.

Anil Gupta: Have a really small, square office, but I have a nicer wall in front of me than behind me. So we are going to. I'm planning to put, like, a big. Like, a bookshelf. You know, put some books and some artworks in the background, and then probably one of these will also go into. Into that bookshelf. Not as, like, just a wall piece, but that's a. That's a project for later. Yeah. And right now I'm just too busy. Too busy with a lot of other stuff.

Chris LaFay: Oh, the joys. Oh, the joys. I. I like. I'm not good at. Not great at consistency that are. I like new in general. And so the fact that I haven't toyed around with this.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: For, like, two years is a testament now. Do I want to. I do, but I also know how much work it would be to actually do the way that I would want to. And I'm like, I.

Anil Gupta: Right.

Chris LaFay: I. I don't want to spend all that time doing it. I think that lighting bolt's a little bit too big. I wish I got, like, one of those, like, le. That's like a LED rope light that I manually, like, put up there. I wish I would have gotten, like, off of Etsy. Like somebody just creamy. Like a little led. Like a neon. It's not neon, but, like, those faux neon LED lights based off an svg. Because now there's, like, three holes in my wall because of that stupid thing. I wish it was a little bit smaller, but I wish I could showcase some more books. Like, my lighting on my Legos aren't. Isn't great. So you can't really see the Legos. Yeah. So I kind of wish.

Anil Gupta: Oh, yeah.

Chris LaFay: See those as, like. Because the whole point is, like, conversation starters with new people.

Anil Gupta: It's all right.

Chris LaFay: You see a couple of books, you see a couple of Legos, you see the guitar. Like, there's some things that you could hook in on and be like, oh, tell me about that. But you can't see some of those things now. But anyway, I digress. That is a. A pro that if you decide to switch up your background to where it's not literally the most minimal thing ever. Put a handful of things that you like talking about in the background so that people have something that aren't as, you know, talkative. They have something to ask you a question about, which hopefully dialogue.

Anil Gupta: That's what my plan is. I think I. I have stuff and things that, you know, are very special to me. But. Yeah, it's just that when we were in Austin, you know, as soon as we got there after a year, we're like, oh, we're not sure if we're going to stay here that longer. So that's like, I don't want to build the whole thing. And now we moved here and then.

Chris LaFay: You're not even at the place yet. Like, you're like, you're in a temporary spot right now, too. I forgot about that.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, no, now we have a place. Yeah, this is our new house.

Chris LaFay: Oh, you bought.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, we bought the house. Yeah, we moved it and bought the house. Didn't I tell you?

Chris LaFay: I don't. I thought the place that you were moving into was gonna be like, temporary for like six to eight months. And then you were gone like that whole time. Like in India and Australia. I thought right in Europe after. I didn't realize you bought something in between all of that.

Anil Gupta: No, you're right. I think. I know we had like so many different variations of like, you know, how are we gonna move into Virginia? Which I shared with you, so I don't blame you. You know, I. We had so many different strategies. So we. We were thinking about renting, and then we thought, we will buy it. And then in the buying, it was taking a very long because we couldn't find what we wanted to buy. So, you know, we're getting impatient. I was like, all right, we'll just rent it. And in between that time, we found there was this house came up in the market, we flew here, we looked at the house and be like, oh, this is good. And we made an offer and we got the house. Yes. So now we bought the house. And now this is most likely going to be a kind of like our temporary, permanent place. At least for five, ten years.

Chris LaFay: Permanent. Just.

Anil Gupta: What I was looking for.

Chris LaFay: Well, words and sentences should do this where they come together nicely and they form together. They shouldn't do this.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, no, the word was shocked and permanent. It's not long term permanent.

Chris LaFay: Oh, my gosh. Long term temporary. There it is. That's.

Anil Gupta: Oh, there you go. I think that. Yeah, that sounds much Better.

Chris LaFay: So basically once, Once the. Once. Once Aiden gets into like, you know, elementary school and fall finally makes some friends at school and is old enough to like actually have relationships, that's the time where you're gonna be like, bye, gone. We're gonna go somewhere not to make you feel terrible, but to make you feel terrible.

Anil Gupta: Exactly. He's one and a half. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Anil Gupta: No, the reason why I said the temporary, because I think this is still like 100 year old house. They did some renovation, but still old. And that's how we, we decided that we'll buy this house. We live here for, I don't know, five years, six years. And at some point, you know, either we'll renovate these or maybe tear this down and build the new house. But most likely we will be here or there is a new house that comes down to this neighborhood which is recently built and kind of like has better, you know, so we, we sold on this neighborhood. We're not never going to move out from here. But housewives, I think it's still not, it's 100 year old. So we just wanted to see how it feels for living here for a couple years. If you feel like, okay, this house gives us a more problem than, you.

Chris LaFay: Know, went from seven years to five years to a couple of years. Like the, the timeline is now. Yeah.

Anil Gupta: In couple years we'll make a decision whether we want to renovate this or continue living maybe five to ten years later. We will decide around that time frame whether, you know, we want to tear it down. So there are all different milestones. We're going to make a decision in two years. Because I was telling Colleen, I was like, what do you think? What should we do? And Colleen's like, let's just live here in this house for two years. Then we'll decide whether we need what we want to renovate, what part of the house we don't like, and we'll start getting some codes off maybe. So we have two goals. One is like very minimal. The changes where we could just renovate, change a couple of part of the house and make it workable, or we do a major renovation. So those are the two things we'll decide.

Chris LaFay: How many square feet do you guys have?

Anil Gupta: I always get confused on that because in India we use a very different metrics for the house.

Chris LaFay: Right.

Anil Gupta: It's like square feet, a square yard or so. I don't know, there's something weird.

Chris LaFay: Wait, wait, India, Wait, you're saying India doesn't use like meter, like square Meters. Thought everybody else used square meters than in the US was the weird one that used freaking feet and yards and miles.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, I think we. We use feet probably to like square feet or square yard, not yard. Yeah, I forgot about it one second. Let me check the. This house is 4,750 square feet large.

Chris LaFay: Oh, dude. Oh, you got a. You got plenty of room to. Yeah, like that. So s. It's really going to be more the. The idea of like whether you want to renov. Like do you want to actually renovate versus having something that's already ready to go and. Yeah, that's. Are y' all want. Are y' all wanting to have more kids?

Anil Gupta: Maybe one.

Chris LaFay: Maybe one more.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Oh, then you got plenty of room. Like if you have.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: If you have this much space.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, I think. Yeah, the house is big enough. It's just like old and they. They had very old 100 year old house. They're innovated and added a couple parts in the house. So it's like a half modern and half old. In. In. In inside. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: So dude, this is a lovely place. Did it come with all. I have a memory saying that it came with some of this furniture that was in here. Am I not remembering? Actually, no. This looks like AI generated images. Surgery. Never mind.

Anil Gupta: No, yeah. It can be any formula.

Chris LaFay: Okay. This is a great. I love the layout. This is such a. See the thing that you get with an old house is like very unique layouts and stuff. Like you have all these like bay windows like in the. The living area you have like that curved. Like it's not one window but there's like doors and stuff. Like you don't that.

Anil Gupta: And we love that. Yeah, because so much like bright light we get in the house and we barely has to turn any lights in the house.

Chris LaFay: And like the master bedroom with like the circle window kind of above the bed and again like the bay windows as well too. Like that's so. Oh, dude, the master bedroom's huge. Holy.

Anil Gupta: It is huge.

Chris LaFay: I saw a different angle of it. Like the first angle was like just of the bed and that little bed area didn't look very large. And then a different angle. I was like, oh, there you go. Can you can stuff.

Anil Gupta: No, it feels really nice too when we wake up, you know, it's just like if we leave all the curtains open, it just feels very nice because all you see is like tree and skies. It feels like you are living in a daily like you know, in the nature.

Chris LaFay: Dude, this is. Oh, and you got a Basement too. Oh, dude, that's a big old basement. Dang.

Anil Gupta: It's a very big old basement.

Chris LaFay: You could live down there. Like it has the whole setup.

Anil Gupta: They have a whole setup.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, I know where I'm staying next time that I come. I'm just kidding. Get a bed in the basement, please. Oh my God.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, I know. It is really nice. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Okay, this is, this is, this is cool. I like this. This is awesome. Very nice. Okay, now that's only about a 10 minute walk from where I'm gonna be. Where I'm gonna be staying.

Anil Gupta: Yes. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Yeah. All right.

Anil Gupta: Should we jump in?

Chris LaFay: Yeah, let's. Yeah. Sorry, I. Yeah, I got, I got distracted.

Anil Gupta: I have a hard stop, you know, after this. So that's why I want to make sure that at least we connect.

Chris LaFay: Gotcha.

Anil Gupta: This is what I was gonna suggest to you that. Yeah, you put some. Three agenda items. I was thinking we can talk about my stuff for 15 minutes because I did what I remember last few times when we talk, we just talk about my stuff. And I'm consumed by that. I also wanted to kind of like. Yeah, I wanted to take a break from that as well. When you're here, we'll talk more about it for sure. But I also wanted to see what's going in your world and things like that. So you good at that?

Chris LaFay: Yeah. I also have a new item to add as well. For me as well too. That'll be a very fun topic of conversation that I did not prep you on at all. So here we are. So. Yeah. So tell me what's all, what's all been up over the last probably what I guess week and a half or so with negotiations and things like that. While you're telling me this update, I need to go fill my water bottle up. But I have you in my ear, so.

Anil Gupta: Okay, sounds good.

Chris LaFay: Talk to me.

Anil Gupta: So last few weeks, what happened is I think last Friday we got a response from Muslims attorney or his counsel. It looks like he has hired someone from Delaware and they basically declined the offer of my offer to buy Aslam out. Instead they come to the offer to buy me out and suggested the. To do the accompany valuation, you know, buy a third party company which. Which nothing surprising this all that I think they were telling, you know, so that's where they, where we are. When I talk to my attorney at the Blue sky, you know, that you suggested. I feel like, you know, they are suggesting that like it's just a very textbook, you know, the negotiation tactic where they always do a counter, you Know, something like that. So this is like textbook negotiation where they will continue to counter no matter what we do. So that's where we are. It's frustrating that it's not moving anywhere, you know, but next step is the valuation, which I'm not so not against it, you know, I think, you know, we should do because my always my goal was to fair, you know, the value of the company and I wanted to pay a slim fair value for the company. So that was always, from the very beginning, my stand. But recently, yeah, the way custom has been kind of like being a problem in all the daily communication, different decisions that we try to do in the company. He's just becoming more and more kind of like challenged. And I don't blame him, you know, in a situation like that, I think he's also scared, you know, so he's trying to just jump in. Everything I try to do, he just connects like, oh, this, is that an intention behind this? You know, so he just basically gives a little bit more hard time. And not to me, but other team members as well, which is. Which is frustrating and also makes things a little bit more complicated. But yeah, I think my reflection is I was hoping that will be get, you know, sooner, like without going to the attorneys and court, you know, we can figure, we will be able to figure this out between us. I don't think so. That's happening and I think on now, next month, my. On my part, the thing is that he has hired an attorney which is, I think the bigger law firm than the. The Blue sky, you know, and they're also primarily based in Delaware. And my recent interaction with Blue Sky, I feel like they are good for like general advising, but I don't think so they can help me, you know, if this litigate to Delaware Chancery and all of that. I don't think so. They can represent me. But also their whole stand is like just basically, you know, you know, try to negotiate. But I feel like, you know, the Aslam Council, the way they kind of like gave us, because last time and I talked to Andy, we didn't have an official response from them. So we got an official response and officer response. Looks like, you know, it's when they're preparing for a fight, you know, in a way. So this week I'm connecting with a couple other attorneys in Delaware and. And kind of like you're going to retain a Delaware attorney and then that's number one that I'm going to do. Not number one, but that's my next immediate action. Second I reached out to Aslam to meet in person because I feel like now we both have shared what we wanted to share, I think, which we can make some progress and find out some solution if we both meet in person and discuss about. Through all the details to which he is afraid to meet in person. You know, I don't know. His attorney said it was very. I was like, custom. You cannot ignore me. You know, we are meeting. We are actually meeting every week on our work calls. You know, this is something that we have to figure it out. There's no. Any way you and I can ignore each other. But he's gonna meet his attorney this week, and then he will ask his. He's gonna ask his attorney's permission. If his attorney's permission. I mean, attorney confirms that. Yeah. You know, you can meet until there is no any harm in that. And most likely, I will go to Canada next week, you know, in the next few weeks.

Chris LaFay: Very. Yeah, okay.

Anil Gupta: Yeah. Yeah. I want to get it done quicker because the longer all of those things stays, you know, you're just gonna linger. So. Yeah, that's where we are, man.

Chris LaFay: How are you doing with all of this? Meaning, like, you're what I would assume is one of your best friends. I'm sure that's whittled down a little bit over the years. You're going through all of this with one of your close friends. How are you dealing with this? Are you. Are you emotionally over it and because of how much of a pain in the butt it's been, you're just, like, it is what it is. It's okay. Or is this on the other side, like, tearing you up on the inside? I don't mean this to be, like, an overly negative thing. I don't mean to, like, bring you down into a state of depression. That's not my point. I'm curious, though.

Anil Gupta: Yeah. Yeah. I think the. What I'm going through right now is, like, mix of a lot of different emotion. You know, one is like, I'm angry, You know, one that he. Yeah, I'm angry at myself. I'm angry at him as well. I'm angry at him because in last 17 years, there are so many different times where I told him, like, hey, things are not working. Things are not working. He accepted that, you know, and still I continued to kind of, like, you know, give him. Treat him as an equal partner, respected him publicly and all of that. So it's frustrating when the. Finally many times comes in when I'm telling them, like, hey, you know, this is not working. He's. Rather than take. Accepting that or taking an ownership or acknowledging like, hey, I understand, you know, that, you know, some of these things were. I was not like, whatever, like, you know this. I just, I was expecting that he will be a little bit more. What is the word for this? In a situation like this where, you know, he would be a little bit more open minded. Ethical. Open minded and ethical. Like, okay, you know, yes, I know that, you know, I have not been an equal partner, you know, something I don't know, not equal. I don't want him to officially accept anything, but at least, you know, he would say something. So that's kind of like part where. And more angry, I think, you know, where he's kind of like trying to counter it. You know, where I was like, I'm gonna buy you out. And all of those things is kind of like just disrespectful, knowing, you know, my contribution, the company and stuff.

Chris LaFay: Yeah.

Anil Gupta: But I'm angry on myself because I was like, I had so many opportunities in the past where things were really bad and I could have actually done that something or that time, you know, so it's like, I don't know, you know, it's a relationship to. When you go back, look back, it's like, oh, I already knew that this is not gonna work wide waited this long. But also there are like, yeah, so many different ways. You know, I could have in the past and I could have actually fixed that, figure this out. If I had been a little bit more strategic in the timing. I think this time, timing wise, I just, it was just maybe not the right timing. Not right timing. But I feel like, yeah, like, you know, there are, there are some of those things in the past when I was thinking I was like, I could have done that if I would have done this a year ago, things would have been different. You know, things like that. Just from the structural perspective, because Delaware, we are in a deadlock. But before we started at Delaware, in the. The company in India, you know, I have a majority, you know, so things like that, you know, like, oh, I could have actually raised that concern because it would have given me a little bit more leverage. Right now it looks like he. And again, I know that I think I told you that Aslam himself is not strong and smart enough, but I think the attorneys, the way he guiding him, you know, it's like I think he's gonna just follow that without. And that's what my challenge is with meeting in person too. He's not willing to not he's afraid to meet in person because he's like, if I'll say something wrong. I was like, not, no, we're not going to record anything. It's just like having two partners and two friends having a conversation. How we can resolve it. You know, you don't have to agree to anything. You know, you're free to go to take it. All those things we discussed, talk to your attorney and then we can make a decision. But it just feels like, you know, he's not equipped to kind of like process this through on his own. And that is my challenges. Because in this situation, for example, if my attorney tells me like, okay, let's do this, I would know, like, I don't want to do that. You know, that that's not something that they will ruin the company, they'll ruin the culture. In case of Aslam, I don't see that. Like he is very less. He's not emotional person. That's what my another challenge is like not emotional at all. So he takes all the decision purely based on the logic and reason. So if somebody tells me him that, like, hey, if you don't do this, you know, Anil may, you know, whatever, litigate you and fire you and take over the company, he will not think like, no, Anil will not do it. He's my good friend. He will like, oh, yes, if you're telling Anil can do it, then let's fight Anils. And then he will try to do the first. That kind of like where it's like, okay, I have all the good intention, you know, but if the attorney on the other side, they don't know me, they don't know Aslan, they will basically just know like, okay, to partner in a dispute, you know, Anil is a CEO. He has a more power, you know, we should, we should act first, you know. And that is what I sense and smell in their response letter where they are trying to build a case to get rid of me, you know, some. Somehow.

Chris LaFay: That's. That's rough. I don't even have words for that because I, I can, I can picture, I can picture that type of Persona, though I don't know him at all. I can picture that Persona just kind of digging in his heels and just kind of basically being a, a copy paste person. Oh, the lawyer said this, then I say that. The lawyers say this, then I say that. Like not being their own human, making their own decisions about things and whatnot. I can, I know people like that and I can just, I can gosh that's rough.

Anil Gupta: Yeah. And also, like, he's kind of person where he doesn't. Can't think, you know, long term. He just like, okay, right now I have to fight this. That's it. But he's not thinking that. Yeah, well, if I fight this, let's say if he takes the company from me, you know, he's not looking at, like, how other people are gonna respect him and work. And that's what I'm thinking about. Like, okay, what about client people? All of that. Like, yes, you won, you know, you will win the case. You know, I'll, I'll be out. But how you're gonna run the company. He's not thinking about all those possibilities that it can go wrong.

Chris LaFay: And then basically you're just sitting on this, you know, a leaky bucket at that point.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Like, it might survive for another two years because it has momentum and it has consistent clients and all that kind of fun stuff. But like, yeah, if you're leaking people and you're leaking clients and you don't have a way to go put people back at the top of that. Oh, it's. Oh, man. Can he actually buy you out? Does he actually have the money to buy you out? Like, could he go and get a loan and buy you out?

Anil Gupta: I don't know. I think he can maybe get a loan probably, if he want. But we, again, we don't know the true value of the company. Right. So once we thought we do the third party evaluation, then we know the actual number, you know, then we will. I think he will also know and I will also know whether, you know, he has the money. I would say, let's say from the money perspective, you know, he will figure, probably might figure this out, figure out somehow get a loan or something. But I don't know, it will be very big. Big because he's not a US Resident, you know, he lives in Canada. I don't know. There are a lot of those things that can be. And if he's trying to buy and own. He cannot get a small SBA loan in the US he has to find SBL loan option like in the Canada. I don't know if the Canadian company will give him a loan to buy a US company. Those are like some of those things that I don't know think about. I don't. He doesn't think. Because I looked into that. Like, I was. I looked into the SBA loan options. I have a fund, you know, that I can also pull it. So things like that. Where. Yeah, There are a lot of those different stuff that could be a challenge.

Chris LaFay: Would you have to get a loan if you were to buy him out completely, would you have to get an SBA loan for it? I'm assuming for some of it.

Anil Gupta: Some of it, yeah. It depends on the valuation too. Like if the evaluation comes down to, I mean, ideally the option is, which I think normally in this case, both lawyers suggested, where usually it's like you give 20% down and for the rest you can pay as a seller credit or the four, three, four years to the, to the other party. So then basically pay from the company's future profit as a seller credit. So that's kind of like also something that is another way of loan, you know, where I pay the 7, whatever the 600 interest to Aslam rather than the loan, you know, if I'm buying him out. But I'm not gonna accept that terms from him because I don't know if he will be able to pay me out, you know, three, four years later. Like I would, yeah, I would need all the money.

Chris LaFay: When, when I considered selling the business last year, obviously I did not go through with it. But the option that Daniel gave me, my developer, the one that's going now, which I realized my business is not worth very much, Like I, I fully.

Anil Gupta: He offered you to buy you out? I didn't know that.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, I, I asked him if he wanted to and my thinking was that if I could get my ma. My brain was in a different space then, but I was like, if I could actually get 4 or $500,000 cash today out of it, plus a little bit of, you know, recurring payment over the next few years that would give me enough of a base to go out and try some different things out. Like my, my thought would have been like, could I go and do some, go and go to like four or five different agencies that I knew and offer to do like some very like consulting esque things for a very nominal amount of money so that we would keep the risk very low and basically just like try on different shirts if you will and give myself, you know, plenty of time to be able to do that and also enjoy some time off the business wasn't worth that at the end of the day. Like I, I, I understand that. Yeah. But basically his offer to me was like, I'll basically pay you not your salary, but basically your what you took home from the business, which is about like 150k a year. I'll pay you 150k a year for the next 5 years. And I was like, I don't think this business exists in five years without me. That's not. And I'm still going to be beholden to you. And he was like, I can't. And he told me, he's like, I cannot take out an SBA loan. And he said something along the lines of stuff happened during COVID to where I am not eligible to take out an SBA loan. So the only way I could do it would be a seller financing. And I'm like, he's like. And I would personally guarantee the whole thing. I'm like, you, you, you're telling me that the hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year that I pay you is barely putting food on the table for you and your family. How am I gonna trust you with another $150,000 plus line item on your expenses, right? Where you have no sales experience at all? Like, no, absolutely not. I could make that $150,000 back next year by laying you off and backfilling your position with somebody else, downgrading my pricing and putting into like you know, a sales AKA all the things that I did like.

Anil Gupta: Right.

Chris LaFay: And make that money twofold and actually make a profit. Whereas the last five years I wasn't making a profit. Anyway, I digress. It was a terrible deal and so I had no intention of accepting it. And he got his feelings hurt.

Anil Gupta: Makes sense. Yeah. So yes, I think that's kind of like a situation I am into. Like, you know, I don't have a trust that he will if he buys me out. I don't think so. I don't ever trust that he will be able to run the company for more than a year, you know, and then, you know, I will never get the money back. But again, that's not even like I don't have that option on my card, you know, Unless like I'm being forced out for some legal reason, then I have to take an offer, you know, I don't have an option. But it's not like, I mean my attorney and I, we both have been telling Aslan, like I'm not in a position to, to, to be sold. You know, it's unit to out. Like, you know, it's your performance and your role which has been questioned. So anyway, so that was kind of like that. That also leaves me the side question which when you were sharing about, you know, that like, like as I like my. I still have a strong interest that I want to continue on TDOTs, you know, and leading that and I want to find A way to buy a slum out. So that's all. Still, I have a goal, you know, unless like, you know, I'm being legally challenged or I don't have any other option than, than selling. But I want to do this. A fun exercise. Maybe when you meet, when you and I meet in the next month, that's one of my agenda is like if we both have to start over, something like, you know, if we are forced to whatever, like AI forced us out or whatever web or like if we are starting a new company today, you know, new business today. Not today, but this year, what it would be, what it will be look like, you know, it's kind of like a thought experiment. The I always share a podcast that somebody actually did that who has been a business consultant for a long time. And he did this exercise like, okay, if I was something happens, you know, and if I will start all over again. And then he documented like all those different things, like what kind of company it would be, where it will be, whether I will have a business partner or not, what services it will offer, how I'll price. There are like some bunch of different things that he did as a part of the thought experiment. And I thought that would be cool just to do it because both, you know, like, we don't know, one year, two years later, you know, we are maybe forced out by AI. Like, all right, this is not working. We'll find something out.

Chris LaFay: Yep. I. I have thought some about this. I haven't actually. I haven't put a lot of thought behind it. My. My core, my core piece that I go back to is I think that agencies in general, web marketing, any. Any name. Any of them. All of them.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: I think we're going to see a fading out of the midsize agencies because a lot of the work, like traditionally speaking, midsize agencies are birthed from a handful of senior people that grow and grow and grow. And what do you do? You add in junior people underneath them to do a lot of the grunt work and the easy work. And then the senior people become directors, managers, what have you. And you're able to then charge higher prices because you have a larger. You have more experience, more team members, more processes, more overhead, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think that goes away because, and I'm seeing it right now in a very small microcosm of my own company. I have a lead developer. His name is Andrew. We've talked a lot about him. Whether you remember the name or not doesn't matter. He's been with me for 15 years, the dude cost me 90 bucks an hour. And the last three years, he's worked maybe eight to 10 hours a week at most.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: This year he's working 35. And it's because my junior guy takes four or five hours to do something, and it takes him 30. With AI, it takes him 30 minutes, and it's done well. And so all of these little tiny things that we were shipping to a junior literally don't make time sense from an hours and days perspective, and they don't make it cost sense. Like, if I was paying somebody five bucks an hour, I could then say, you know, you could work on it for a day versus the one hour it would take my senior guy to do it. Like the. The economics of that work. But when I'm paying this guy 35 an hour to be a junior. Yeah, the economics don't make sense. Now, again, small microcosm of a tiny, tiny company. Me, I get that. But I also know a lot of senior folks enjoy getting their hands dirty in the work. Not the. The monotony of like the great grunt work stuff, but the creativity part of it. So I think all of that being said, I think what any new thing, new company, new whatever is gonna. Would look like is two or three ridiculously smart and talented people that are talented in different ways. Yeah. Working together.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: That's what I think. I don't know what the product will be. I don't know what any of that would be. But I think we're entering an age to where the. I think there's a big. I think there's a potential secret sauce that could be made where between three people, they can make a very easy million to a million and a half.

Anil Gupta: I agree. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: By themselves. Where the books wouldn't necessarily have to be about equity splits. It's more about like, hey, I'm gonna do this work for this amount of money. You do this work for this amount of money, and we all just take our own, you know, portion of the pie home. Not from an equity standpoint, but from like a project percentage standpoint.

Anil Gupta: Right.

Chris LaFay: We're gonna bid this out at 30 grand. I'm gonna take 10, you're gonna take 5, and this other person is going to take 20. That math doesn't. Math. I didn't do it. I think that's the way forward. I don't know what that is, but I think that's. That's the thing.

Anil Gupta: Right. And that's kind of like where my head is to where, you know, I think what I want to figure it out is like when I started multidocs, you know, it was very clearly there was an open source web, you know, and then we switched to WordPress because there was a huge demand for the WordPress and I think it will be there, you know. But now as we are into the enterprise space, there's a lot of discussion that happening around implementation versus strategy. So what I have, what I'm getting, you know, from the other mentors and the people who are in this space, they don't care about the implementation as much like care in the sense like they're like I'm not gonna build in if I have to start all over, all over again. Like I'll just build a strategy team. So I'll have the, the for the enterprise and I'm talking still from the enterprise market, you know, where like I will have a one UI UX expert, you know, one strategist, you know, and the one strategist in maybe industry wise, let's say financial or whatever, financial services strategist, AI strategist and like have a team of 10 to 12 which are all strategist. And what we will offer primarily is a strategy services which they can take it and hire, do it internally or hire someone else to implement it, you know, and, or they will also have like implementation contract by other companies or other team but they would only focus on the strategy. That is something that I learned recently that some of the companies are also looking at as how they will. Yeah. You know, try to be a little bit more resilient in the future of the AI AI game.

Chris LaFay: So this is my pushback to that and I'm not in, I'm not in enterprise world at all. So I can't speak to that. Yeah but I, the way that I think over the years people are. Do you follow? Oh shoot. Who are their names? Oh my gosh. David C. Baker, Carl sa. So like they're all about the, like put your big price up front. Say I do strategy, I don't execute and I don't give away anything for free. Here's my strategy fee. That's an oversimplification their mindset. I think that with as easy as implementation is becoming, I feel that you have to be able to implement something. I don't think that you can get away as much now with here's the brand strategy document because that's what people have been doing. They have been saying I'm gonna sell you a brand strategy for $20,000. You go figure out how to use it. I think that that's going away because the implementation of it is so easy. Not I shouldn't say is so easy in areas has gotten a lot simpler dollar now I don't think that that's going to be a requirement to execute on every tiny little bit but I think the idea of a twenty thousand dollar PDF file goes away. Yeah, I just don't know how you bridge that gap. Well, which is why I think there's going to be more of these like Navy SEAL strike teams of the. But it's also. That's not scalable at the end of the day like there's a. That like if you, me, my lead dev Andrew and a designer all just kind of pulled our thought processes together and we're like Anil has his enterprise dev company over here, Chris has his mom and pop dev company over there. We're going to come in and do this thing, whatever this thing happens to be right. I don't know what that implementation looks like but I think you have to have some sort of a cha. I think you have to have some sort of implementation chops to make it right. That that's the pushback that I would say that I would have to that I just don't know what that is though. Like I don't know. Your thought exercise is an interesting one because I literally have no idea what I would do. Not building website.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, that's. That's one of the agenda for our June July meetup. But yeah, that's kind of like where. And you're right, I think they. My thoughts are there Again, you know, I don't know any of those what is right or wrong because AI can also provide the strategy. Right. But then there's another argument too especially in the enterprise space where enterprise team is like, you know, if you look at that like I think the way right now everyone is thinking that strategy is something that they still rely on the subject matter experts. That's why they go to. Not Infosys, Accenture or Capgemini like some of these big tech consulting firm where they hire them for the strategy. Yes, they have an implementation team. But big enterprises we are talking about, they also have their own implementation team. Right. So basically they, for example PMC News UK that we work with, they have their own large engineering team and they give a very small piece of the implementation to multidots because they still want to control the larger part of the strategy. You know, so that's kind of like where and because of the AI sophistication And internal. The engineering team being more and more more equipped with all this AI they just have a more because the way this is what I'm kind of like getting it like News UK or these big enterprises who has a very big technical team in house. And I wanted to tell you this, like we have two types of clients. There's one client which are like very, you know, the frontline media. Like in a very traditional media and publishing company who already have internally director of technology and engineers. Then we have these non traditional publishers enterprises which are manufacturing and automobile. They have only one person in the company but they don't have a full engineering team. They value implementation more than strategy because for them we have lots of going on. They basically devalue both these big enterprises like News UK or the publishers, they have a lot of implementation. So for them what we do is their internal team. They do what they like to do and they want to outsource the work that they don't like to do, you know, so that's what where they pass it to other companies like multi Routes or some other company. And that's kind of like where I'm thinking that in next two to three years. Just what you mentioned about senior and junior relationship. Same thing. Just like you know, we are kind of like their junior team, you know. So eventually they will all the internal thing where they don't need to worry about delegating it to anyone else. They can just use the AI agents or coding agents to get a lot of those stuff done. The implementation probably will be lower the expectations or the volume of the implementation.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, I didn't think about that because you're going to get hit hard with that stuff over time. Yeah, because I'm assuming you're not charging 150, $180 for dev hours, especially when they're buying in the bulk level that they're buying right now. So Frick,.

Anil Gupta: Hello. That's what kind of like where I'm figuring it out. And yeah the answer that I'm getting is they don't want to pull the trigger on strategy because there is a lot of big implementation cost to it. So that's why they don't want to use AI just like as a strategy or they internally, you know, they use the strategy using AI and then spend millions on implementation on a bad strategy. So that is where they need a sign off by an expert, you know whether they are already industry expert in that strategy. So they want that strategy. And this is something that I hear from the one of the enterprise client who's like, hey, you know, when I come up with an idea and if it doesn't work, I lose my job. But when Accenture or Multidots or someone else, we hire them, we pay them, and they come up with a strategy. And if I fail to execute, I still have my job, most likely. But we will fire the agency. That's kind of like where they're playing. And I was like, that's why it's like, I cannot make a decision based on AI because if I use AI and tell my boss like, hey, I have an excellent strategy that AI suggested, and if it doesn't work, I will lose my job, I cannot blame A.I. You know, like, well, A.I. Told me, you know, but I can blame Accenture on the big consulting firm or a strategist firm, you know, who was like, well, they. We hired them, we did our due diligence to find the right strategist. Now if it doesn't work, it's not my fault, you know, it must still be something wrong with the strategy or the market.

Chris LaFay: Question for you. This is a little bit of a. A little bit of a turn here. Do you find. Do you find a lot of personal value, a lot of personal joy out of running a sizable agency? Like, if that were to go. Let's say that it does go away. I know I'm not really answering your question. I'm kind of pivoting with a different question. Let's say that Multi Dots, not all the. The Aslam stuff, but let's just say that Multi Dots, as it stands now as a multi million dollar agency, where you basically get to sit in the seat, CEO seat, pretty steadily, let's say that goes away in three years. Are you having to also go through a personal identity crisis with that as well, too? Let's say that you found something else, but let's say that it only really brought in to you as a human, not as a company.

Anil Gupta: Right? Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Few hundred thousand dollars a year. Are you. Are you sad? Are you upset? Are you scrambling? Are you stressed? Or does that sound invigorating? Does that question make sense?

Anil Gupta: It does. First thought comes to my mind is I. I think, yeah. I'm so first is Vedic Assembly. You know, I got to got this realization that I don't like big team, big clients. I don't like volume anymore. I used to, you know, when I was starting first five years, I liked like a lot of people, big scale. I enjoyed it, you know, And I think enjoyment is like, there was a good, big energy. Now my next 10 years, 10 or 20 years, you know, whatever that looks like. You know how I'm gonna work. I want to work with a small and smart team, not like a lot of people. So that is kind of like where I'm in the process, where, you know, I want to work with a players, you know, I want to surround. And that's what gives me a true joy, that when I work with the smart people around me, you know, I know that whatever we're gonna do to do the great things together, but I just find a lot of joy and fulfillment in that. And I think that is a part of where, you know, I'm right now in the process of like, okay, who are all those people that never upgraded themselves? Aslam is part of that. There are a bunch of other people in the multidos who has been 10 years, 12 years, but they never becoming to get into that a player list. So in last. In fact, since last April, until, like, we are still in the process, we are every few months, you know, we are kind of like cleansing that, you know, we are replacing the. The old team, you know, who were not upgrading, not learning, with more like just getting rid of basically four people and hiring just one smart person. That's what I'm doing right now in last one year.

Chris LaFay: All right. I'm gonna pivot this also. Again, it's in the. It's in a similar vein. So that was the whole. That was the whole crux of my. My shift that I did in January was like, sure, I'm gonna have to own a lot more of the deliverables here in the short term, but I'm gonna get to work with my two or three people that I enjoy working with. So that sounds like fun. So, yeah, the last six months, I've been busy as crap, more so than I want to be, but I've also been having fun at the same time. Now, do I want to do this pace for a long time? Not really.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: But so this is leading into the. The topic that I said. I was like, oh, I have something new to share. I was in Florida, and I have an agency buddy that's in Florida that I know, and I had lunch with them while I was on vacation down there. And he was like, so, Chris, I have a bold question to ask you. What would it take for me to get you to come join me? Because I think that you're gonna get bored, and I think that working with a handful of a players would actually be a heck of a lot more fun than doing your own thing. By yourself in your office. He did not state it like this. It was. He basically has built his business on the kind of actually a similar, A similar thing to what you've done in the past where you've brought in like a agency owner that didn't know if they wanted to continue running their agency. And so they kind of brought him in under his wing. And then so he has four or five people that he's done this with. So he has surrounded himself with a players, all with that entrepreneurial mindset to grow this marketing agency that he has to in Florida. And it was a thought. I didn't say yay or nay to any of that.

Anil Gupta: Right.

Chris LaFay: But that started me thinking over this past week of like, what, what a. What would it take for me to do something like that? 2. My whole thing I've been saying over the last six to eight months is what you just said of I want to be working with a players. What other opportunities would be around? What other a players do I know that would, could. I actually would actually be better suited for everybody involved if I were to take the gasoline jug that I have and pour it onto somebody else's fire and we all actually benefit much greater that way. I have no idea. But when he asked me that question, I wasn't a. I wasn't offended. I don't get offended very easily when it comes to that kind of stuff anyway. But also like, what would that look like? Because even the dude was like, actually, I don't want the websites. He's like, I don't really care about websites. I think there's, there's reasons to think that the marketing structure that he has could actually expand pretty greatly. He's like, I don't really want your websites. I just, I would want your websites for right now to make sure that, you know, your base needs are covered. But like, I want your brain for events, your interpersonal communication, your, your strategy thinking, your ability to build networks of agencies. Like, I want all of that like soft skill stuff. I don't, I don't need the website piece. And I was like, nobody has ever said that to me. So no, I'm not doing this. But like, and then your question of like, what would building something brand new look like? What would it look like with being intentional about the people that you actually do it with? And not just, hey, we build websites. We need junior folks. That's how you build this thing. Like, right. What does that look like? But also not just this guy in Florida, but like, I know people, I know You. I know, I know a lot of folks that are looking for A players and I think I'm an A player. What, what would that look like to take my skill set and actually say, hey, I have this, this recurring revenue, these agency relationships, these other things. What if I took that and said, hey, let's combine this with what you're doing and lift all the ships? I don't know. I'm literally, I'm. I'm word vomiting 100 at the moment. But it's a really interesting thought and something I hadn't really considered before because why. So yeah, anyway, that's. Yeah, go ahead.

Anil Gupta: Sorry.

Chris LaFay: I know you have two things I.

Anil Gupta: Would say to that. Like first is let's, let's say, let's continue to think about it when we meet in person. We can kind of like see what options comes in the mind. But I want to run that thought experiment regardless, you know, what happens in multilogs or not. You know, even if you don't never have to use it. It will be a great blog post, you know, for us to put it down. But thoughts are, let's say. Yeah, my thoughts were, I think some of the things that you shared which I didn't thought about. So that's something a very interesting perspective about like, okay, so far I was like, okay, what I would do, not like okay what I would do that I would also enjoy for another 10, 15, 20 years. Like, you know, so that's kind of like frame that I did not have before. But when you are sharing and you asked me some question, I'm going to add that. But my thoughts are like, if we do something like another few of the additional prompts are should we ride the AI wave and find something that is kind of like built upon the current AI trend and the wave, or we completely pivot and build something that's basically a hedge against the AI, you know, So I mean, I'm not gonna go there. But if we think of like, okay, if there is AI everywhere in everything, what is the opposite of that people would be craving for and what that looks like?

Chris LaFay: Which is I think part of the reason why I got so interested in design earlier this year. The thing that I designed you that I know you weren't going to actually use, but it caused your brain to.

Anil Gupta: Be actually working on now phase two of that. So phase one is done. We launched the website now our designer is working on this. The layout that you shared, he presented I think couple of the variation of that. But we are working with this marketing firm in UK and the Islam market because they are like our content marketing team. So they've been doing all our content and they have some of course opinion on how we should do you know what we should go on the homepage. So Jay, our new director of growth and him, they are finalizing it. But yes there are some of the work that you shared. It is inspiration and the foundation which we are building on top of our that as a new homepage.

Chris LaFay: Nice. And so like the thought about like that original design that I did and I've done a couple of other ones like that that are very out of the water in different. I mean and you've seen my company side like it's all video game style now actually. Have I showed you that? Have I said go to the class?

Anil Gupta: I think I looked at the earlier. Let me look at right now.

Chris LaFay: So there's like, it's like video game style. You can punch little boxes, you get little like there's fun little animated gifs and animations that pop up. You can collect coins, there's cheat codes that you can type in like.

Anil Gupta: Oh yeah.

Chris LaFay: So like if you scroll like the little, the little yellow boxes, you click them three or four times and then you punch them and then silly little animations pop up.

Anil Gupta: Oh yeah.

Chris LaFay: It's all it is is just to make people smile and to make people laugh.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: And then they collect into your like if you click the inventory button at the top right hand corner, corner there's a tab that says collectibles or something like that and the items that you have found get aggregated there. So like stuff like that. I don't think I'm gonna be selling a six figure website that's like a video game. I understand.

Anil Gupta: Right.

Chris LaFay: But also talk about this like ant like against the AI wave sort of thing. Eventually stuff like this, this people will crave in some way, shape or form. Like we're already starting to see kind of like not the resurgence of flash based websites but like those like, like websites used to look weird and different.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: And now that everything follows the same standards like so Will, I was actually talking to a friend about this today. Will websites become like women's handbags? Well, you either go to Walmart and you either buy the five dollar handbag from Walmart that everybody else has or you go to Coach or Prada or Gucci and you buy this one thousand dollar handbag. No, there's no middle ground. You, it's either five or five, five dollars or five thousand. There is no five hundred like that's a little bit of an oversimplification.

Anil Gupta: Yeah. No, I like that. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Chris LaFay: That's.

Anil Gupta: That's, that's interesting analogy. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: But it's hard to define an ROI against a Gucci handbag. Like it's just right. You're buying it as a status symbol. And do you really want to play in that ball game for website creation? No, like that. That would be a horrendous place to play.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: So anyway, I digress. It is actually past 12:30. I apologize.

Anil Gupta: No, it's all right. But no, it's a good discussion. Let's do this. We. We already have a call schedule. I still like I say I'm totally consumed right now by this thing right now. So I didn't have a chance to write down all the different things that I want to talk about when we meet in person. But I'll continue to build that inventory. I say like the one was this product, sediment, that was already in my list. But there are a couple other small things here and there that we can put together and continue to build that notes. And then you'll start putting some of those as we get closer. Maybe. What do you think about the week when you are traveling here? Maybe two weeks before? If we just connect on a call, we can decide all the different topics we want to talk about or how we want to structure our two days or two and two and three days, whatever that looks like together. Then we can kind of like create a plan for that.

Chris LaFay: Yes. What days of the week work best for you again? Thursdays or Friday. Yeah, so Thursday. Lunch, Thursday the 9th. Could you do a 9am 9th of July night then? Yeah, sorry, the 9th of July at 9am Eastern time. Because we're on Eastern time now.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, 9am Yes, I can do that.

Chris LaFay: Awesome. Okay. That sounds good. Chris and Neil plan for trip. Are you, with your son's schedule and stuff, are you gonna need to cut on both those days? There's. And Friday, are you gonna have to cut at a certain time so that you can go pick up. Go pick up a Neil, go pick up Aiden and do that.

Anil Gupta: I think him around like 4:30 or 5, but that would not be a big problem. We can figure that out. Yeah, but let's keep maybe early morning, maybe eight. You know, if you're, if you can, if you wake up early then we can. That's thinking like 8 to 4 or 4:30, something like that. We can go. Yep.

Chris LaFay: That sounds basically. Are you going to want to do dinner either of those nights?

Anil Gupta: We were actually thinking to do one dinner, either at the house or all of us together. Colleen and Aiden and all of us. So we'll figure that out. But yes, we will have a couple of dinners together for sure.

Chris LaFay: Okay, cool. The reason I asked is there's one person I know in D.C. that I might try to go see.

Anil Gupta: See.

Chris LaFay: So if the plan was to have. If we were going to have one free evening, I was going to go ahead and reach out to that person and see if they were available. It is. On a scale of 1 to 10, the importance of that is a 2. It's not that important.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, I think I was thinking that you and I will have a. Of course. Have a lunch together. I was thinking at least one dinner where, you know, you, me, and. And calling. And we all can have together too, so either at a house or maybe somewhere where outside. We'll figure it out. But yeah, at least I'm thinking about one dinner. So you can maybe plan the other one with your friend if you want. Awesome.

Chris LaFay: That all sounds good.

Anil Gupta: Cool, man.

Chris LaFay: Well, I'm gonna go grab some lunch. Have a good rest of the day. Bye.

Anil Gupta: Me too. Bye.