Joining the show this week is a technology visionary who’s been at the forefront of the cloud and SaaS space for almost 20 years. This individual turned his family’s small business into one of the world’s leading cloud consulting companies. This leader is none other than the CEO at SADA, Tony Safoian.
Tony joins host David Politis to discuss his journey turning a small managed service business into a freshly acquired top cloud consulting company. Tony reflects on how significant it was to choose a niche early and how it helped fuel his success. Discover his insights for understanding market needs, the benefits of joining YPO, and inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Takeaways:
Establishing your business’ niche focus early is important for continued growth. When looking for a market niche, focus on underserved markets and provide a solution for that market that is scalable.
Not relying on external funding was a blessing for SADA’s growth as a company. Not being a venture-backed company forced SADA to be more disciplined with managing their portfolio and grow strategically within their market.
The art of strategic decision making is one that had to be mastered over the years. Being able to identify and say “no” to business streams that spread the company’s focus thin is a major factor in being able to effectively specialize.
Leaders must evolve with their company. It is crucial to be able to recognize environmental change and be willing to adapt to it. It is equally crucial to actively seek out growth opportunities that allow you to better align your knowledge with the market and clientele that your company is working with.
Meet new situations with enthusiasm. SADA’s acquisition by Insight marks a transition from operating as a private company to operating as a public company. It is important to be excited about the challenges and use them as growth opportunities.
A company’s early success can largely be attributed to the dedication of its employees and the culture that they work in. Focusing on hiring driven employees over experienced employees allowed them to grow with the company and become the experts that SADA needed.
Quote of the Show:
“Nothing is as bad as it seems and nothing is as good as it seems. So just make the most of every day.” - Tony Safoian
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/safoian/
Website: https://sada.com
Ways to Tune In:
Spotify:
Apple Podcasts:
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00]
David: Today's guest is a business and technology visionary who's been at the forefront of the cloud and SaaS space for almost 20 years. He took his small, his parents small managed services business and turned into one of the largest and most successful cloud consulting companies in the world. His company has been named to the Fortune 5000 list 14 times.
He's been named partner of the year by Google multiple times. He recently sold his business for over 500 million dollars. Please welcome CEO at SADA, Tony Sifoian.
Tony: [00:01:00] complimentary, man. Thank you. Thanks for laying it on thick.
David: Well, welcome. Um, we're going to jump right into the first question. So, What's the one thing you've done at SADA, big or small, that's had the biggest impact and that you'll absolutely do again if you're CEO of another company in the future?
Tony: Oh, it's a tough one. You know, there's so many things you make hundreds of decisions. It feels like every week. Um, but I would say the thing I would absolutely repeat foundationally and fundamentally is focus. I'm a big believer in, creating a category, picking a niche, uh, focusing on something that's underserved.
To create a natural disparity between supply and demand in the market. And obviously that has a lot to do with timing and anybody who's done anything big, you know, you, you included David, I'm sure you would include, uh, luck as part of everyone's story. So it helps to get lucky, [00:02:00] um, as well as working really hard and making the right bets.
So. Picking the right niche, I would say, I would repeat over and over again.
David: I, I, I love that because I, the number one thing I'm seeing with early stage company, early stage companies I'm working with is lack of focus. Um, because they feel like, They have to attack the whole world to big, to build a big business. So when you think about, you know, um, your experience, how do you choose what to focus on, you know, and you've been doing it 20 years.
And I would argue, you know, over that time, you've evolved the business a lot over that time, but let's just go early days. Um, how did you really choose what to focus on?
Tony: I think in the very, very early days, especially in the services business. It's completely natural to say yes to everything and to try a bunch of things to see what, uh, what sticks, what the market, uh, truly, uh, [00:03:00] needs. You want to discover your own talents as a company or as a leader around what you have a natural affinity for, a passion for, that you can provide exceptionally better than everyone else.
So I think, you know, that's, Okay. To start that way. And actually recommended to start that way. We certainly tried a bunch of different things, uh, from, you know, NET application development to web design, to, we talked about, you know, voiceover IP. Things that were very early and not yet well established, we kept trying.
And I think in the process of trying to find the right technology niche simultaneously, we're trying to find the right business model at the same time. And ultimately it led us to, uh, fall in love with, uh, things that were scalable and distributed cloud. For example, it's a service delivery model that solved a lot of problems relative to what we saw early in.
On [00:04:00] premise, you know, systems and servers and, and platforms. Uh, we saw those, you know, full of holes and full of problems, full of challenges, but also business models, you know, we fell in love with, um, a way to charge customers that had their best interest in mind around, you know, managed services, fixed fee engagements, uh, recurring revenue.
We fell in love with those things. Anything that depends on a customer failing for you to make money. To me is bad. For example, break, fix, you know, it services early days. It was like, we're like literally waiting for like, I hope a customer gets a virus. So I can go charge to like take the virus off. You know, uh, that didn't make much sense to me concurrently that provided no predictability in terms of revenue.
It's like, well, you know. Well, if a customer, you know, if a hard drive crashes, then I have a job to go do, to [00:05:00] go, you know, uh, fix the hard drive. So early, early days, we, we, we knew that that paradigm was, was flawed and we very quickly moved to what was very novel at the time, which is like, well, let's make Let's prevent these things from happening, but charge for that preventative maintenance.
Right. So that was kind of the early days of, uh, what became kind of the de facto standard, which is managed services. But,
David: Let me ask one question about the focus because I think you you've built the business into such a big business over time Did you think that by being focused you could get to this big of a business?
Tony: I don't think, I don't think I could ever predict kind of the size that we got to, or that was not in the realm of possibilities for me, you know, me and my friends, entrepreneurs, we talk about the, uh, we talk about this all the time. It's like very hard to build something. You haven't. Seeing a friend build or a family member build or someone in your community build or someone in your circle build.
So it's very natural to be kind of [00:06:00] limited to what you've seen, you know, so we didn't really envision that, but we, we saw so many other advantages to focus, like the ability to be the best in class at something, um, to have a market that is, uh, you know, yours for the taking, right. For like a market that was fast growing, but not well understood.
I just think, you know, and you're right. We've done that over and over again. And when we've expanded beyond our core, it's always been in adjacencies, things that were close to what we're doing. That's complimented what we're doing. But, and we've gone back and forth. Like first it was like, we're really going to focus on manage.
We're not going to do, you know, voice over IP systems. We're not going to do, we're not going to do web development. That's becoming commoditized. We're like, okay, we're going to do cloud. And even there, you know, in 2019, the biggest bet we made [00:07:00] was we're actually going to sell the well established, well understood part of the business, which is the Microsoft business.
And that was, that was crazy. So at the time it was perceived to be crazy by a lot of people, but we're like, oh my God, like, how can we narrow even further, right? Like that was a big gesture and focusing even further on one of the hyperscalers, not all. And actually the smallest one we saw, you know, the future of where a lot of, you know, a
lot mean, when you made that decision in 2019, so just for everyone's context, there was a Microsoft part of the business, Google part of the business, and you were a large partner for both. And when, when it was announced that you sold the Microsoft part of the business, it was, I think a lot of people were, including myself, were, were very surprised.
David: Um, but From what I can tell from the outside your growth actually accelerated After that back to this idea of focus I want a key in here because it's [00:08:00] it's literally a topic that I talk to people about I would say daily Now and every time people say no, no, no, there's not enough of a market. I got to do all of these things I got to sell to security IT and the CFO.
It's like I You know, and, and versus, and you made that decision. Um, and, and to your point, actually, as you got bigger, got more focused, which is kind of a, uh, a ballsy move, frankly. Um, but that does seem to have paid off.
Tony: it did. And look, it was not that, you know, Microsoft's, especially under Satya Nadella, cause he was already there. Uh, it wasn't that like, we didn't think that was a viable play or vibe. No, it was like an incredible business. It was a, we're very successful at it. It was profitable. Um, And sometimes like the hardest things to stop doing are the things that are also working, you know, so it takes a tremendous amount of discipline.
But what we saw in ourselves is that we were running [00:09:00] two very different types of businesses, different models, different capabilities were required. We had to actually silo and sort of replicate sales organizations because of the competitive pressure between the two platforms. It felt like two companies.
Um, so that was like, Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't like, Oh, it's failing. It's easy to know it was actually, it was doing quite well. We're winning awards. We're on the main stage, you know, with Judson. Uh, uh, inspire. And so I think that's, it's, it's way easier to start doing things and stop them. And, uh, but I think over and over again, it's proven that it's the right thing.
And sometimes it's stopping them. Sometimes it's actually cannibalizing the things that you. Do, which is long term, very difficult. That's sort of the innovators dilemma, classic case. Now there's tons, you know, books as a book about it, very famous book. Uh, how do you stop doing certain things that are successful?
And then [00:10:00] over time, how do you cannibalize the old business? Um, old models, old revenue streams yourself before somebody else does. And I think that's the old, that's the continuous tension that exists, especially over very long periods of time. And another thing I'm sure you're coaching, um, your, your, you know, clients and friends, et cetera, on is just like, things take a very long time.
And the true test of almost any business is, uh, withstanding and growing over not what you do in one year or three years, I mean, five years, like what's a 10 year view of what you're trying to do.
David: One of the things, I read your long LinkedIn post about your reflections on 20 years that you wrote a couple years ago. Um, and you talk about the cannibalization in the early days when you were moving to selling cloud email, cloud productivity suites. Um, I like that part a lot because, I was curious how everyone [00:11:00] felt about how did your parents feel about that?
How did the team feel about that? Like you were literally saying we have a business. We've been doing it doing it Well, and now we're just gonna get rid of that actually by selling the number one competitor to that that business Like can you just talk about that cannibalization? moment
Tony: Yeah, it was a very, you know, based on the very basic way we're charging, you know, X dollars a month to Maintain email servers that were sitting in an office and we're like, how would you like to get rid of this thing? Right, uh, we will get rid of it for you and no longer be able to charge you x dollars because now that's living, you know Uh at google that that functionality is that living at google and later living with microsoft and I think uh part of the reason we were able to do that is Uh, we were small ish relative to the competitors, you know, big established competitors have a very difficult time doing that.
I think the [00:12:00] preeminent example of that right now is like what Rackspace is having to do and navigate, right? They have a profitable legacy business and trying to build a cloud business. They've been trying this balancing act for like 10
David: Yep. I was gonna say for a decade. Yeah. Yeah.
Tony: us, it was a little easier as far as like.
There's not a lot of, um, you know, sacred cows or big established things that were tangled into this old business, but not easy from the standpoint of like, I know I have to give up revenue short term. I think that's easier to do when you have deep conviction. on the model. Like it was actually abundantly clear to us as practitioners, as doers, that that's, you know, path A is the future and the current path is not the future.
So again, we could try to build both, [00:13:00] but it's like limited resources focus being so important. It's like, let's just better put it all on the future because we have that much conviction that You know, that's correct. And I think, uh, one of the, one of my statements on the reflections piece is like, try to be in the right, try to be on the right side of history,
especially when it comes to technology.
David: let, let's talk a little, you've built this business with, if I'm correct? No, outside money.
Tony: Well, if you count like my parents, you know,
second mortgage, you know, back in the early 2000s. Yeah. But outside of that,
David: And so what, what, you know, a lot of the people that I've interacted with, obviously for my last 10, 15 years, venture backed companies and, you know, private equity backed companies and, and you've done it without that for, for a long time. What trade offs do you think you've had to make because of that?
Tony: I think, look, uh, services companies are very different, like [00:14:00] have a very different, um, investment, you know, payback horizon, cashflow needs. Um, so, uh, I don't know if it's possible to do that in any product business, for example. Right. But let's assume we're talking about certain kinds of businesses, service companies have cashflow sooner, they can kind of manage the growth.
So I think that, um, Obviously, uh, there are a bunch of services companies who have raised money, uh, who start by raising money. And often that money is used for things like acquisitions. They kind of cobble together a few smaller MSPs or SIs and to kind of scale quickly. We didn't have the benefit of that.
Um, we didn't make, uh, we've only made one acquisition and that was off the balance sheet, very small, like three years ago, uh, ended up being extremely strategic to have offshore capabilities. We bought a small company that a friend of mine started in India, but outside of that, It [00:15:00] was, uh, it was not a possibility for us.
So I would say, you know, had we known exactly what we're doing and has all the timing of everything else worked out, of course, if we had raised money, I think we could have maybe scaled more quickly and grown more quickly. But, you know, I don't, I don't always, I don't necessarily believe that's always a good thing.
I think when you raise money, you tend to, Potentially be a little careless with your, you know, investments, your portfolio management of your, of your, of your, um, of your cash, for example, or your, uh, your, your stack of cash. I think being organic creates forces, a certain level of discipline in focus in portfolio management of investments in how you grow to different markets.
You know, like the first time we grew really outside of the West or SoCal, SoCal. I literally sent one [00:16:00] person from LA to New York and said, you are opening the New York, you know, business. Right. Uh, cause I didn't know anybody in New York. This guy knew what he was doing cause he'd done it here for many years.
I'm like, that's how we're going to do it. I'm going to get you this corporate apartment and you're just going to start selling in New York. And you know, you're our first guy in New York. Um, and you know, companies that raise money don't do that. You know, they do some study and it's like, Oh, that's a good market.
They like, great, we're going to put 10 people there and see how it goes. And of course that can work and has worked many times, I'm sure. But there's something to be said for having constraints in cashflow and investment capacity that Hmm. Now, we have again been good, you know, very good about managing money.
A lot of it, thanks to my mom, who's still, by the way, post acquisition, just sitting right there, works in finance still. Uh, she was our CFO for a long time, very good with money. [00:17:00] So we were always able to make small bets like that and more than one at a time, but no bet that we ever made was in the category of like existential or Whatever, because we're just very, very careful with that.
So there's also this element of when you raise money, you have a lot of opinions. You have maybe a, a dissent of some kind between board members, shareholders. Certainly me and my parents didn't agree on everything, but what I'd say is we, Always agreed on is like, there's no debate about the futurist cloud.
Like my dad got that from day one. I didn't have to convince him or that partnering with Google was a good idea or that Microsoft cloud was better than Microsoft exchange on print. Like none of those like strategic things we disagreed on. And I think most importantly, we never fought about money. Like it was never about, I need to get my money out or,
you know,
David: That's a big deal. That's a, big
Tony: way.
Right. Like there was no, there's [00:18:00] somewhat of an unlimited investment horizon. I think that's, that's a very different set of decisions that you get to make if you're not like, well, I got four years and we got to do this. And, you know, so we could, we could make whatever types of investment decisions we wanted.
We could take as long as we wanted, as long as we were growing, as long as we're, um, uh, able to reinvest into the business, et cetera, et cetera. And they were also. Just very frugal by nature. And I think for a very long time, the way we competed vis a vis everyone else who started with us in these certain markets is because of the ownership structure or maybe the philosophy around, is this a lifestyle business or is this a business we're trying to grow as big as we can?
Like people are just taking, you know, they're seeing some success and just like pulling all the cash out of the business. Like my parents never really did that. We kept reinvesting back. And that's something, again, you get to do when you're organic and self funded. That's also luck. Yeah. Like that's also luck that I got to do this with them Yeah. Yeah.
David: It's amazing. I mean, [00:19:00] that's, um, one of the things with the services business in my limited experience with services is people basically is everything, right? Because there is the product is the people. What is the number one attribute you look for when you're hiring people for the
Tony: and I'll explain why. And, um, and again, this is nature of being self funded and working in markets. People didn't understand being a company nobody had ever heard of. Like a recruitment. Capability was not really world class, I would say, until maybe six years ago. Uh, we were fundamentally having to hire people that we knew usually that were very young, that, uh, we knew that, you know, had like the drive and the discipline and the hunger, wanted to do great things.
I [00:20:00] think that was the common set of attributes. But that didn't know anything about what we're trying to do. And we could spend, we could afford to spend five years getting them to like three to five years to like best in class, best in the world of, you know, what they, but that's the only people we could hire was like 30, 000 people or 40, 000.
That's all we could hire. And I, we laugh about this now, cause last five, six years. You know, we can, uh, you know, afford to buy the, you know, pay for the best talent in the world was like, that was just, uh, you know, I thought great people were so hard to find. Yes. If all you have is 40, 000, but you need an 80, 000 person or, yes, they're very hard to find, but as you can afford to pay for top talent, you suddenly like, wow, like actually there's a lot of great people on the market.
But I think fundamentally. And that has to do with my, I guess, my work style is I just need [00:21:00] like drive. I need obsession with customer, uh, service with outcomes with, I just need that high level of activity and, uh, thoughtfulness, uh, people that don't, uh, don't accept themselves making like unforced errors, mistakes are fine, but unforced errors, like I don't have a high degree of tolerance for it.
So those are like the attributes we would look for. I think. Later on, when we're in a certain position where it's like, we got, you know, more well known, this affiliation with this amazing brand and technology, which is, uh, very attractive to work in with Google and, and even Mike, you know, Microsoft cloud technology, uh, became Easier to attract the talent. And then I think that, uh, those qualities still, you know, remain my executive team, all of them work exactly like I do. They're all driven. They all want to, um, do [00:22:00] transformational things. They all want to wow customers. They all want to. Being there for each other, you know, that's really important. I hate teams that feel like they're competing with each other or whatever.
I think that's ridiculous. Um, really work for each other, add service to each other as much as they are to customers. That's really important. But longer term, what it became like, you couldn't just hire people that just, you know, loved the mission and loved you and your family and wanted to work their ass off for you.
I think it's very important. And I'm so grateful we figured this out as a self funded private company. It's how do you actually align incentives the right way? And I think that's one of the hardest things to do well, but it goes way beyond sales teams, which is maybe easier to do, but how do you make sure that much like with your customers?
If your customers win, you win. How do you make sure that if you're winning your people are also [00:23:00] winning? Should something happen, the people who helped us build this thing will also be tremendously rewarded.
And I think If people know you're in it together like that, especially your leadership team, but really downstream, a lot of our people made, you know, did quite well. If you, if you were here, like if you were here in 2016 or before, And it doesn't matter what level you're at. Like you did really, really well from this.
And I think that's just really, really important.
David: Wow. You change people's lives. I mean, when you do that, you know, that's um One, one thing that I've, I've seen from afar, you know, I've known you for, I don't know, 12, 13, 14 years is to your point about the types of people, very different people, early days versus later days, right? Early days, I don't think you could attract someone from a Google or Microsoft to come work at SADA.
And, and then over the years, [00:24:00] actually. I think when from talking to a bunch of Googlers, they wanted, they, they were, uh, itching to come work at SADA, which is kind of an interesting, um, dynamic. My question to you is, do you think if those people came from the big companies, not just Google and Microsoft, but the big companies, you know, um, if they came in the early years, would you still have made it to where you got to, or do you think having those people grinding it out, you know, you know what I'm at, you know what I'm trying to ask?
Tony: totally. Totally. No, I think there's absolutely this factor of forget the fact that 10 years ago, we were not the most attractive place for someone who has a great career at Deloitte or Microsoft or Google, but, and forget about the fact that we can afford them. Um, no, it's a, it's a very different type of DNA, I think.
And. We had to get to a certain size and complexity for their talent experience of some of these people to even be a match. And even to this day, you know, we've seen a lot of partners try to [00:25:00] replicate the SADA strategy and some of them were like, Oh, it's easy. You just hire from Google. It's like, no, no, you don't just hire anything like anybody from Google, right?
It's like, you work at Google, like, no, no, there's a, Yes, that helps. But, like, all those other things have to be true. You still have to be fast and nimble and, and engaged and hungry and, and, uh, Process is good, but you should be able to work outside the process. You know, you should be apolitical in your work life.
Like, all those things still have to be true. And I actually think, Certain very big company people still to this day wouldn't thrive, you know, in this environment, although we've needed to, and I think we've done a really good job of bringing on those larger company experience people over time. My executive team is to this day, a composite of people that have been here, you know, 11 years and people that got here in the [00:26:00] last three years, you know, and that mix is really, really important.
But the timing of when they come in It's super critical. And by the way, not everybody that came 11 years ago was also like still meant for this team. Um, we had a pro, you know, product spun out of the company, um, like a quarter ago, and that's now co owned by, you know, a couple of our OGs that were here 11 years ago, but they were no longer, You know, for this role to run sales at SADA, for example, no, Joe needs to go and like do something else.
He's going to have a lot of success with this product spin out. But, um, you also have to be willing to do that, like change some of the people out. If the people are able to grow and push themselves, like I try to do every day, like be a little better, learn a little more, be a better CEO, better leader, better strategist, whatever people are willing and able to do that.
Yes. They can also rise, you know, with the role. Uh, as the demands of that change and [00:27:00] become different and more complicated, but not everybody can. So you have to be, I think, as a leader, you've gone through this with your own leadership teams. I'm sure many times it's like some people are great for two years.
Some people are going to be great for three years. Yeah. Some people can do it for 10, 15 years. It just depends. And then when you have to replace someone, it's very important to replace them with the right level of experience from the right size company. You cannot fit, you know, a, IBM strategy into Osada, typically,
you know, like it's not going to work.
David: Um, so, so you talk about this and the team has evolved over all these years and people have stayed with it. New people have joined, but you've been at the helm for this entire period of time, um, and you've evolved. A lot, um, you know, as, as a leader, I think, and, you know, how how do you evolve?
And when I ask that question, I mean, Did you go out and get a [00:28:00] coach? Did you just learn on the job kind of as you were going through it? Um, did someone give you feedback that said hey You need to do x y and z from your team Like how how have you evolved because it is very different to run what you are running to running I don't know.
What how big is sada thousand people? I'm, not sure how many people
Tony: Like 800 800
David: people like that's a completely different That's like literally a completely different job. So how how have you been able to evolve? Heh
Tony: of those evolutions right now. Cause now I work for a public company and that's totally different data. Like, let me tell you, I know I've never worked for a public company. So now I have a material PNL part of a public company, different world. Um, So I think it's, it's many, many steps, but I think, let me start with like the mindset required.
I think the mindset required is you have to have strong convictions as a leader. As somebody strategic you have to believe certain things, but you have to be willing to Let go of those beliefs as soon as better [00:29:00] information is available. You have to be consistently perennially, open to changing your mind, changing your approach, being wrong, you know, feedback.
Feedback from customers, feedback from the world, feedback from your people, feedback from the leaders you trust. I think sometimes the more successful people get, the more closed off they get. Cause they think like, Oh, like this is working. So why do I need to change? And I've even had periods where I've operated with that modality, you know, like I think, uh, you have so many years of success.
It can lead to, you know, ego can go out of control and all these things. Actually, I think it was, um, one of the, I was, I'm a philosophy majors. One of the Greek philosophers said, if you want to destroy a person, give them 20 years of good fortune, which is, um, which is can be [00:30:00] true I think that mindset's really, really important and. So if you do that, you're going to, you're going to look for as a leader, manager, individual, doesn't, doesn't matter like at any level, like, how can I be, how can I improve the game? What are the gaps I see? What do I see? And what are the other things that I don't see, but others are telling me? So, I mean, one of the first basic things I did, like 2008, I went and got my MBA.
Why? I was a philosophy major. Like, you know, love technology. I was starting to sell to larger organizations. And they're like, they all had their MBAs. Like, I didn't even speak the language of business, right? I couldn't read a P& L. I couldn't do an ROI calculation. Um, so I went and, went and did that. Then, you know, a couple of years after that, I was like, okay, like, I feel like I'm plateauing.
Um, I need to see and be around what we talked about earlier, right? Seeing what other people are doing. You have to be close to it. I joined an organization called YPO.
David: Hmm,
Tony: That was also very good for me for, [00:31:00] for, for a while where people were like raising capital. They were buying and selling businesses. They were all generally older.
So I could see into the future. I could see good and bad or like the mistakes they made, um, personal and professionally, but also the wins they had, like. That was a good learning experience for me. And at some point I kind of also like felt like I grew that. Um, and I think the way to keep it going is. Very important to hire people around you that have done things you haven't done, that have seen things you haven't seen, that have worked at bigger places, more comp, like my, I learned from my management team, my leadership team all the time. Um, so you have to surround yourself natively in that. You can't only get it, the learning from outside.
You have to actually bring it in to your organization. Uh, all of my leaders are better than, better, better than me in key areas. All of them, all of them are better than me at what they do. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't do any of what they did as well as they, uh, as well as they do. That's really important to [00:32:00] do that.
But I think. Keeping that orientation towards, um, just reading tons and doesn't have to be just books, but just reading what, you know, reading blogs, reading news, just like, so you keep your pulse close to the action. Also customers, talking to customers all the time. The leaders at these customers are generally all badasses, right?
You're going to learn from their experience. They've all done great things. You want to develop close relationships where you're not only talking about your Contract with them or your engagement with them. I'm learning from our customers a lot. And the more time I spent with the customers, the more I feel like isn't real, real life education. And then, um, uh, I recommend this for everyone. Uh, certainly has helped me. I think all leaders, all CEOs. Therapy, man. Therapy is great. I still, you know, do it. I [00:33:00] see my guy like once a month. Uh, it was, there was times it was more frequent, but keeping a level head, keeping grounded, managing stress, self care, discipline, exercise, diet, especially as you become a parent, you're raising kids, you know, that dude, it's like the energy required.
Energy management required to be a great husband, father, and great CEO. Dude, it's like, it's almost superhuman. So you have to behave as if you're training for the Olympics all the time,
David: Hmm
Tony: mentally, physically, like, otherwise you're just not going to, can't be great at all those things. And we're trying to be great at all those things.
Cause it's not, uh, it's a choice we've made. We decided to get married. We decided to have kids. We're deciding, you know, it's like, okay, we got to play these three games really, really at the top level. I think that's. Like it's a fundamental belief that we need to get better every day. So what does that require?
Open mind, growth mindset, humility, [00:34:00] and then just a set of activities, whether it's formal education, whether it's certain groups, you know, business groups, therapy, and just being a sponge, you know, all the time. That's what I think is required. But again, that is again, the 10 or 20 year mindset that we all have to have.
I think if we're going to play the long game,
David: I really, the community one is so interesting. You said it before, you said it again, of seeing other people build and knowing what's possible. I, I, I think that is for me, every time we raised money from a new investor. And that investor maybe had a bigger network or bigger companies, you know, kind of at the different stages.
And I would be exposed to these CEOs who are doing hundreds of millions of revenue. And, and you're like, okay, it is possible. And that person is smart, good, you know, talented, but they're not. You know, some, some 10 levels above my capacity, you know, and so I think that [00:35:00] commute, the YPO, I mean, people swear by YPO.
I have not been in YPO specifically. I've been in other communities, but people swear by it. And I think it's exactly for this, for this reason that the one challenge that I've heard is usually those YPO groups are, they're small. You stay within that same group usually other than the big events and usually it's around the same size as you Versus seeing someone who's maybe five, you know, four steps ahead of you and you can really see but I the community stuff I love and the therapy stuff as I've you know People have told me they they have coaches and they swear by the coaches Actually when they describe the coach and what the coach does
It's actually therapy, you know, like
Tony: They just don't want to say therapy. No, dude. It's okay.
David: It's interesting like that's like, you know that so far everyone i've talked about coaches I ask and every person's answers. It's like oh that sounds like a therapist. Um, so, um,
Tony: And David, I don't know about you, but like culturally, actually I can assume, but [00:36:00] culturally, Certain cultures, man, that's just not a thing that our parents did or believed in or like, like, you know, it's like, um, you know, like, I'm sad. It's like, get over it, you know, like, what are you talking about? Like, what do you mean?
Um, or whatever, right? So like, I've become a big believer. It's not only myself, my friends, family, like, it's a real thing. It's like a real science behind it. The human brain is extremely complex. And, you know, for us, uh, most CEOs, founders, et cetera, dude, the personal and the business, the time, the time warp, the energy, it's so intermingled, man.
You can't even divide one from the other. And if you're trying to be, you know, someone you would be proud of in every role that we play in life, that's a very, you know, therapy, Involved, I think, science to figure out, um, and with, with, with successes or failures, you know, [00:37:00] success can ruin someone, winning too much can ruin, like, you know, all the time can ruin someone, but so can taking up taking a loss, you know, personal or professional, like, how do you go through all of that?
I'm a big believer. Um, and the community thing. Totally. I was fortunate when I was, when I joined, like, I was on a smaller side.
David: Hmm.
Tony: Uh, but at some point again, I was maybe on the, I was too big,
You know, kind of too big. So
that's like, I couldn't justify the time commitment anymore, but YPO was the first time I had a friend who sold a business for nine figures and a story.
And it's like, not about, it's not the same as you read about it. Like he's telling you the play by play of how it went down. First time I had a friend who built a digital native company who raised money, sick valuation and Also, I learned like, well, taking money from certain kinds of people is like you had problems, right?
Like, [00:38:00] um, I learned that and it was like so much more than an MBA. And it was so much more than reading about it, but you're right. I was like, Oh my God, he did it. That's possible. He did it. That's possible. How did he do it? Like you would, YPO is very open, confidential, but.
David: yes.
Tony: People tell you everything. You're never going to get that reading in a book or, or studying it in a class, but any format that takes it, other people don't do that, but they have amazing mentors, the collection of people that are amazing, you know, in their fifties, sixties, seventies that have done crazy things that will absolutely spend time with you if you're engaged with them a certain way.
It's important to do that. It's just very difficult to do things without seeing that others have done it too.
David: Hmm hmm. What is, you talk about, you know, uh, failures and, and the impact that can have. What is the biggest challenge you've ever faced at ada? [00:39:00] Did you overcome it? How did you overcome it?
Tony: I think, um, I mean, there's been so many challenges. I remember there was a year that, uh, first year ever that like we had a revenue decline year over year, I think it was like 2011, 2012. Again, we're very careful with money. So we're never extended. We're never levered. So it didn't, it was just like, that's weird, but it was like, Oh, we need to build marketing capability and, you know, source their own business.
It was stuff like that. I think there was times when, when we would approach the market with too much arrogance and that probably came from me, you know, personally like, Oh, like, like we're unstoppable and, and like, we're the shit and, you know, That kind of stuff. And I think that was more of a personal journey that I had to go through, uh, probably like seven, eight years ago.
Um, uh, that was more from me, you know, like my leadership style, my attitude, my, I became hyper competitive and I wanted to [00:40:00] win at all costs. And, uh, I was like, not a nice person always, uh, very, very ego driven. But I write about that because I think, you know, you see some of these other leaders, many of them, you know, on the news all the time and you're like, you're like, wow, they're really, and you know, they're like some of the richest people in the world and we don't, we don't know what it's like to be like them.
It's very difficult to empathize, but we can be like, wow. Like that's the. That's the extreme version of what's possible for all of us to experience when we have some success or a great success, whatever it's like, we can all get into that modality of just being an asshole and that is usually detrimental, self limiting, damaging. We've seen cases where people have done that and have actually immediately failed, you know, shortly after. So Uh, and also failed on a personal level with their kids and their families and their wives and, you know, not [00:41:00] just in their businesses. So I think it's important to, as I kind of the last things I read about in the reflections piece is like, yes, it's about you.
It's all about you, but not in the way you're thinking it's about you in that you have a tremendous amount of responsibility for hundreds of lives, for thousands of customers, families, like.
we have to stay extremely grounded and humble and grateful and gratitude about the responsibility we have to continue to execute and deliver, not just for our kids and family, but for all the ones that we're suddenly responsible for that we didn't really realize comes with being a founder of a company.
David: So I want to, I want to transition actually to a little bit more about you. Um, where, where are you from originally?
Tony: I was born in Armenia, uh, during the Soviet times when Armenia was part of the Soviet Union. So I grew up in communism, like real communism. So when people are like, Oh, that's communist. [00:42:00] I'm like, no, it's not. Trust me, that's not because, you know, I was born there. I know what that's like. Um, and my family immigrated to Los Angeles in 1987. Very fortunate. Um, not that, you know, life wasn't terrible. Uh, we had like food to eat and a place to live. And my parents had, you know, my mom stopped working when she had me, my dad had a job, but it was not at all like the land of opportunity that Uh, motivated my grandparents, my, my, uh, mom's parents to leave, you know, seven years prior to that
before. Yes. The little setup will set up, set up LA for us. We came seven years later. So soft landing moved into their house. Super easy. Not easy, but you know, easier.
David: Hmm.
Tony: And, uh, but yeah, I mean, this is the place I think my dad was meant to be with his brilliance and his, um, uh, ambition, [00:43:00] which, uh, I think definitely, uh, I inherited, uh, the ambition side.
We, you know, this is the place to do great things. That's why your family came here at some point. That's why almost, you know, all of us, like people who come to America, I hope, you know, to this day, it's always been. You're not coming here to chill, generally speaking. You're coming here to like work your ass off and do something you couldn't do from the place that you came from.
And definitely a thousand percent the SADA story only possible in America, maybe even only possible in the West Coast in some way. You know, I think the business culture is a little even more maverick out here, like Anybody will give you a chance. Like I've never heard of you, but like you do this thing.
Sure. You know, I'll hire you once. Uh, there's no 300 year family doing business with family stuff going on in here in the West coast as much. I'm a little biased there, but maybe it's true,
David: Did you, did you always know that you wanted to be an entrepreneur? You're like, [00:44:00] did you want to be CEO of something?
Tony: No, not at all. And, uh, you know, my, my dad and I still joke about this, but I'm an only child, uh, to immigrant parents. And again, much like, uh, certain cultures, it's like the expectation is that you take a very, very safe, highly respected path and become, for me, it was becoming a doctor. It was like the path that was of course, of course, doctor, lawyer,
Yeah,
forget about the fact that like I hated biology, uh, and all of that, but I was good at math, good at science, but, uh, but that was kind of sort of chosen for me. That's all I heard about my whole life, including like midway through college. But then, uh, I did a study abroad program where I, you know, year three of university, you start taking real biology classes and all this stuff.
But at the same time, I got exposed to other things like business and econ. I had friends who were studying different things. And technology is something I never really formally studied, but my dad's a [00:45:00] technologist. He was like a mainframe data center guy. He was programming in Cobalt and Borland in the military back then, which is, you know, uh, compulsory service.
He was a comms guy in the military. So I always had technology growing up, but I just loved it and learned on it. I was like, you know, That was my toy. Um, that was my passion. That's my passion. Understanding of technology just comes from being around it. Uh, I came, I came back. I just had, like, I was like, I hate, like, I don't like this stuff at all.
I came back. I told my dad that I'm not going to become a doctor. I was 21 and he just like, didn't talk to me for four months. And my, my mom was like, go, go figure out what you want to do. So I took a bunch of internships, ended up at this dot com in like 99, 2000. And, um, uh, I learned how to kind of do marketing there.
I learned how to sell there. It was really interesting, like completely new things to me. And then, you know, this is what happens, dude. I, I tell my friends who have kids [00:46:00] now, like my dad told me not to go into technology. He told me I was too nice to be a businessman. Uh, too kind and like, whatever you tell your parents, your kids, they cannot do.
That's absolutely what they'll end up
David: yeah,
yeah,
Tony: And also the irony of like, I got to do with him.
David: right, right.
Tony: that's just how the universe works. So up until five years ago, uh, we joked, he was like, he's like, you should become a doctor, but, uh, I guess now he
David: No, I think he's probably, yeah, exactly. Well, you, you Now have your own family, obviously, you know, and kids and everything. And do they get exposed to SADA? Um, you know, do they see the, or, or do you separate no, my kids, you know, my kids, uh, have been coming, you know, by the office for the [00:47:00] many, many years. My, my, my parents have pictures of them here when they were four and five and, um, they sort of understand or understood in their 13 and 11, like they're getting more now, they get more now. I also have a three and a half year old
Tony: who doesn't know anything, but, uh, but they kind of like, oh, you work, you know, with Google and, you know, they kind of like, Started to understand, but I think only in the last couple of years they started to understand the scale, you know, and also like appreciate like what their grandparents did and what we did together and how fortunate we are.
And, You know how it is. Like it's, These kids, their brains evolve a certain way and there's certain things you want to tell them and or can't tell them or trying to figure out how to tell them. And sometimes, and then like, you know, you have a, you have a 12 year old then, no, she was, she was 12, 13, she was 12, you know, um, [00:48:00] and, you know, news breaks out and, and she's like, Dad, what's this?
You know, cause public company, you know, it was like, Oh, I guess we got to tell them about the acquisition and what that means for our lives. So, um, but it's, it's super fortunate. I think they're growing up very different I grew up where Lana grew up and certainly the way my grandparents grew up. So we're all trying to expose them in the right way to like what all of this means.
And is entrepreneurship a path that they're going to want to pursue or not? Like they have to evaluate all these things, but, uh, they're in the very early days of just understanding money and understanding business and figure out what they might want to do with their career. And we're in the early days of trying to figure out how to grow good, ambitious humans.
who are down to earth in, um, in a very different environment than we grew up in. You
David: I think this is, this is one [00:49:00] of the things I feel like when I talk to entrepreneurs who are first generation or, you know, um, you know, that, that, and whose parents came here with nothing and built their way up and everything. It is hard because the exposure that we had, that I had to my parents who came here from Greece and from Israel and their work ethic and their approach to life and everything.
You know, then, then my kids see our lives. They don't see that experience. And of course our lives are, like you said, very different. And how do you maintain, because I don't, I wouldn't have the work ethic I have, I don't think, without seeing what I saw, you know, and, and modeling that. And then how do you pass that on when there's a, there's a different lifestyle and there's a different, you know, um, and so I, I think about that, honestly, I think about that a lot.
Tony: It's sort of the biggest risk. And it's the biggest downside to, uh, to, to the success of, you know, at any level between generations is [00:50:00] like, and we've seen it go well, and we've seen it go badly in which like. The kids like next generation, like it's lost,
you know, they don't have a strong, strong sense of identity and ambition or meaning in their lives.
And that's just very, very risky. And I think fundamentally it's important to like, I've never, like, I can't, we can't really obfuscate like, You can't like hide. You're like, no, no, no. Like we're always going to fly coach. Like, no, we're like, we're not right. We're just not, I don't think, I think you have to strip away the money from everything else.
You have to strip away money from meaning money, from ambition. Money and it's different like you and I worked our ass off early days because like we had to make money.
They're gonna have to find a different motivation that hopefully Also makes money but coming from a place of deep [00:51:00] inspiration And mission that they have to find and then if they're good at it and great at it And want to do it 20 hours a day, they can be very successful in it and make money But I think we have to Strip that away, which is not, which is not an immigrant thing at all.
David: let me ask you actually to this exact point, what is the thing that has driven, that motivates you like deep at your core? What, what is it that has driven you maybe in the early days, maybe it was, you know, making money, obviously, you know, you, you've been doing this a long time, got to huge scale, you know, I think it probably passes that like, what, what is the, what is the thing that gets you up every day now, five years ago, like what motivates you deep down at your core?
Hmm. Hmm. even measured early day success with money. It's always been impact. Can we be number one in this? Uh, what are we, what type of jobs are we able to create? What's the impact we're having on our customers? How's their life changing? Oh, the person who signed this [00:52:00] SOW and we did this crazy thing that he bet on, like, Did she get promoted?
Tony: You know what, like, it was like, just impact driven. Um, how many customers can we touch? Can we win the global award? You know, like. like, if we're playing a sport, that would be a scorecard. Now there's not a single, a public scorecard. Like you have to kind of make these up and kind of be like, what's this, what's the scoreboard that you care about? We never pursued as a family, like money for money. I never pursued money for money sake. Um, and I think that's maybe a fortunate mindset I got from my parents. Um, and I think that's what I want for them. I want something that is, that transcends. Your parents, my parents, if they didn't work their ass off and made money, we would be in the streets, okay? Our kids are never gonna know what that's like. So, they have to find something [00:53:00] else that is even more motivational, more inspirational. Now, I think, The benefit that we can pass on to them that our parents maybe didn't feel like they could pass on to you, to you or me, is they maybe have a little more time to figure it out and they can try more things. And I think that's a beautiful gift to give to our kids. They're not allowed to do nothing. They cannot be bums. But, you know, if my 11 year old, who's extremely talented. By the way, wants to see if she can get into Juilliard and end up on Broadway.
She can she can try it until she's 23. Where our parents were like, what are you talking about? You're going to be, a standup comedian. You're going to be, you're going to be a dancer. You're going to be an actor. Like get the hell out of here. Right. We would be disowned. We'd be thrown out of the [00:54:00] house.
David: one last question for you. Knowing what you know now, If you could give yourself one piece of advice at the very beginning of your career, what would it be?
Tony: It would be nothing is as bad as it seems and nothing is as good as it seems. So just make the most of every day.
David: Love it. Awesome. Um, so, Tony, if people want to find out more about SADA, Connect With You, how should they do that? Awesome.
Tony: tonyatsada. com. Try to be responsive. I can't get, get to everything and everybody anymore, but I try. And, uh, but LinkedIn is a good platform, but also email tonyatsada. com.
David: Awesome. Thank you, Tony. This, this was a great conversation. I've, I've known you for a long time, and honestly, I, I learned a lot of new things today. Um, so thank you very
Tony: Thank you. [00:55:00] It's quite an honor being interviewed by a fellow OG in the ecosystem. We grew up together in this space and I'm really proud of everything you've done. David, thanks for having me on, man.
David: Thank you. And for those of you listening, we covered a lot today. I hope you found at least one, if not many more things that you can take back and use in your roles at your companies and would love it if you shared this episode with your network. So thank you very much and see you next time for another episode of Not Another CEO Podcast.
