ARVIND RAVISHUNKAR ON SHAKE THE COSMOS
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How can we cut through the noise in data? What does digital disruption mean to us? What does creating a business model look like? This week, Arvind joins me to discuss business innovation and the benefit of approaching the market from multiple perspectives.
Arvind, CEO & Founder of Lenz, is a Business Designer whose methods are at the intersection of astute business strategy and creative design thinking. He spent 3 years at Berkeley Business School, 2 years heading strategy at a leading design thinking firm and 8 years in corporate strategy working with C-suite executives.
Arvind’s strategies are differentiated since he digs deep to find the truth in any situation and brings to surface powerful insights that are missed by many. He approaches every project with an open mind and allows the customers, the market, the executives vision and the company dynamics to inform strategies. His open minded approach allows him to work with diverse individuals and find unique insights. He is not shy to tell you that you are heading down the wrong path or share his views on how you can shape the world.
Arvind got his MBA from UC Berkeley and his MSc in EE from Clemson University. He founded a nonprofit called Oxygen that promotes learning for MBA’s post business school.
Find him at arvind@lenzandyou.com or http://www.lenzandyou.com/. To see the two upcoming workshops (Nov 14th and Dec 11th), “An Afternoon with YOUR business model, “ sign up here
Also, did you know that you can get yourself a copy of the Shake The Cosmos Journal as part of the personal development course? Check it out here.
Episode Transcript
Abhishek: Hi everyone. This is Abhishek from shakethecosmos.com. I'm excited about my guest today. Arvind Ravishunkar, CEO, and Founder of Lens Business Innovation. And if you're listening right now, now is a good time to hit the follow button, so you don't miss out on the episodes, which are released every week. And if you're liking this episode, give it a rating that helps me in the organic search results.
And I'm excited to talk with Arvind. We met at Berkeley-Haas and I haven't done a good job of keeping in touch with him. And, I just love that Arvind is an expert on the topics of business strategy, product marketing, and product innovation. And so I'm just really excited. So thank you so much for being on the show today, Arvind.
So Arvind, can you give me a little background on what you've been up to most recently?
Arvind: Sure Abhishek. I started my own company about two years ago. It's called Lens Business Innovation. At Lens, our mission in the world is to bring strategic clarity in times of uncertainty. If you think about it, businesses routinely go through periods of uncertainty and this uncertainty arises when there's a disruption in the market; such as digital or a pandemic or uncertainty arises when you're trying to enter a new market; or when you're developing a new product, you're trying to acquire a company. And in these situations, we tend to bring strategic clarity. And the way we do it is pretty unique.
At Lens, we believe that everything begins with perspective, the way you think about something and the way you approach something, dictates your actions, and dictates the outcome of the particular actions.
And so in our strategy programs, we tend to approach strategy from the angle of perspective. We help our clients develop a perspective on a certain market. We helped them develop multiple perspectives. And through that, we make trade-offs and narrow down on the perspective that we think is suitable for that particular market and that particular company in that particular situation.
So that’s our approach. And we've been doing this for the last two years. I passionately believe in insights and perspectives, which is why I started this company. And we've been having a lot of fun. We've engaged in many different clients and different programs, and I'm excited to be here.
Abhishek: Awesome. Thanks, Arvind. Then I want to dig deeper into that perspective and insights piece. So, as I was reading your bio it said, "the common denominator in all three professions, business strategy, product marketing, and product innovation is the ability to cut through a lot of noise. And bring to the surface the most important factors and execute them."
So what is the noise and how do you cut through the noise to find the perspective?
Arvind: Sure. I think that's an excellent question Abhishek. So, the way I think about that is if you look at, if you reflect on your own life today, and people you talk to, or if you think of the lives that my clients are leading right now, there's so much data thrown at you every day in so many different directions.
And a lot of strategy today is sorting through all that data and trying to understand what's important to your particular situation and what's important for you to solve your problem. And that's what I mean by noise. Noise is all the data, the unwanted data. That hits you every day for you to process and make decisions around.
And at Lens, when we say we cut through that noise, I found early on in my career that whether it was in product management roles or corporate strategy roles that I played, I did not get bogged down by the amount of data that was thrown at me in those situations. And I was able to surface in most situations with certain insights and certain important characteristics about that particular situation.
And so that's what I've converted now into a service. And that's what I mean by cutting through the noise. It's clearing out all the data that's not needed for you to make a decision and finding the most salient points which are going to influence the particular decision you're making. So that's what I mean by cutting through the noise and developing that perspective.
Abhishek: Interesting. And so what types of decisions or problems or things, people are coming to you with, or that you lead a strategy session on?
Arvind: Sure. What's interesting right now is since we are still early in, in our formation as a company, we tend to tackle, a variety of different problems.
So I have in the last two to three years, and even in the last five years before I started Lens, I worked at Radius and I developed and ran the strategy division at Radius. So if you look at consulting, I've been in consulting for the last five years. And during those five years, I've worked on a variety of problems.
Some of the examples would be disruption based events. We believe our competitors are going digital, or we believe that that new digital technology has come to market. And we don't know what that means for our company. "How do we respond? And do we have to change our strategy? Do we need to develop a new product?"
Do we have to change our approach to how we go to market? What does that mean? What does digital disruption mean to us? A very common question that I get a lot from my clients these days. That's the first strategy type of program I work on. The second type of strategy program I've recently started working on a lot is brand strategy.
And the questions I get are, as the world evolves to digital and as the world evolves where customer's needs are evolving in terms of speed, in terms of agility, how do I position my company, for the future? That's the second type of strategy. So digital strategy, brand strategy, the third type of problem that I get are on the business model.
As you can see, a lot of innovation is happening in the last 5-10 years. Even if you look back at the companies that have succeeded, the unicorns or the largest companies, of the household brands. The business model is where a lot of the innovations happening and the business model is completely disrupting industries.
So I get questions, "Is my business model relevant in today's world?" "Do I need to change my business model?" And if so, how do I change it? So these are some of the types of questions I get. And if you look at it, the common denominator across all those questions is they are looking for a perspective on what something means for them and what decisions they have to make based on that event.
And so in that time, at Lens, we go in and I helped these companies developed a perspective on how they need to change concerning these different problems.
Abhishek: Nice. I'm just going to go ahead and ask the dumb question here.
When think thinking lot of business models and, someone let's say is listening and they have a new idea or they're quite an established company, how do you define a business model? What's your sort of definition?
Arvind: Sure. I love that question. So, a lot of people when you say business model, they immediately think "freemium" or they think subscription service, et cetera. And in reality, if you think about it, those are pricing models.
That's how you're pricing your product. This does have an influence on the business model that you're going to develop, as the early monetization methods. A Business model on the other hand is a more holistic model. It's a model of all the elements that come together that essentially form your business.
So I think Osterwalder did a fantastic job. I like his framework a lot, he did a fantastic job in trying to model the nine elements of a business. And I've used that model pretty extensively in my life. And what I found is that all businesses, most businesses, the model with which they run the formula, essentially with which they run can be broken into those nine elements. And what's interesting is the interplay of those nine elements.
So for example, I'll give you some of the elements, your "customer segments" are an element of your business, right? Who your customer is and how you interact with that customer. What the problems are, is an important part of your business. The product service or value proposition that you're offering your customer is a part of your business model. The way you deliver that value to your customer, the channels that you use, whether it's a retail, website, one-on-one sales, whatever those channels are, is an important part of your business model. The relationships you establish with that customer is a part of your business model.
The monetization methods you're using to monetize on the value proposition you're delivering through those particular channels to your customer is a part of your business model, the activities on the back end. Are you outsourcing, are you in sourcing? Have you decided to integrate vertically your entire organization, all those backend decisions finally affect your business model?
So the business model is a holistic way of looking at a business, understanding the different elements of a business, and understanding how those elements relate to each other. And if you truly understand your business model, what happens is that when you're faced with a disruption when you're faced with a question such as, if you take the pandemic that's currently happening and if you have to model how your business is going to change based on these input parameters as a pandemic, if you understand your business model, truly, you should be able to figure out, it's my customer segments that have to change because of the spender make, or maybe I need to develop new products or services, or maybe my monetization methods have to change.
You know, I'm going to stick to the same customer segments. I'm going to deliver the same value proposition, but the way I deliver it has to change. Maybe I need to go more digital and less, in-person sales. So if you understand the different elements of your business model, and you are far understanding how they interplay with each other, then it's much easier to answer such questions as what does digital mean or what is, disruption going to do for me, or if I want to enter a new market, how does that affect the other parts of my business?
Is my product portfolio going to change is my product going to get affected? So pretty much any business question you're trying to answer. Or, any business decision you're trying to make, if you don't understand your business model holistically, you're going to be making that business decision based on limited information.
Abhishek: I remember actually, doing this model. I think these nine elements that you're talking about for my company shake the cosmos at the beginning. And I think I am a big fan of it also. And you speak about this disruption piece and the current time we live in, of course, with COVID now people are, are having to pivot; for example, Tony Robbins is now doing all online sessions and his conferences were all in-person before.
So, what would be your advice to companies or business unit leaders trying to manage their business, in this disruption?
Arvind: So I think I would chart it out in 3 ways. First is, I would encourage them to take a little time to model out the current business. Because what I find every time is that when I meet with people and business leaders, and we sit down together and we model the business, we always find that there were certain insights, certain aspects of their business model that were true. And it was allowing them to be successful, but it was hidden. It was happening in the background, in the fabric of the business.
Abhishek: What would be like an example of something that people overlook or if you call it hidden?
Arvind: Sure. So, I'll take the example of a recent program I worked on. I loved that program. I worked on it like two months ago and it was for a nonprofit and this nonprofit came to Lens because their situation was, they wanted to affect change in their business development practice. And they had a hypothesis that the reason the business was not sustainable was that they didn't have a business development head dedicated to the effort of business development for them.
And, in turn, that revenue generation had stagnated and they were worried about the sustainability of their business. And when we sat down with them and we started working out their business model.
And we started looking at their business holistically, or started looking at the nonprofit holistically, we uncovered that this nonprofit had not positioned itself in the flow of money within that ecosystem. See, every nonprofit has a flow of money, or a nonprofit sits in a flow of money.
There's a flow of money between the people who have funds to donate and the people who need the funds and that flow of money is pretty well-established in today's world. Some foundations do CSR work. There's a clear, established way. And this nonprofit had not tapped into that flow of money at all. But they were trying to do extraneous events, etc., on the side. And they weren't tapping the flow of money. The way we uncovered that was by looking at our business holistically, we looked at all angles.
We looked at their marketing efforts. We looked at their competitors. We looked at their ecosystem and we looked at it holistically. We suddenly realized that man. It's the ecosystem angle. That's important for this nonprofit and the minute we had that insight and we started working around positioning them in the flow of money, suddenly business development, no more felt like the problem. The problem that we uncovered was they had a positioning issue, where the nonprofit world did not understand the role of this organization and why they exist in this world. And so by positioning them correctly, this nonprofit has now taken a different turn, and rather than go and try to hire a business development individual, they're now trying to hire a marketing person or they're working on a marketing effort to position themselves correctly.
So no change in the product, they have a phenomenal product or service. No change in the product or service, just a positioning exercise. And so that's an example of a fundamental shift in what they believed was the problem vs what the problem was. And some of the elements I told you is how we uncovered that.
Abhishek: And then you mentioned, when someone's facing disruption, they take time to think about the business model. And then what are the other two things you were, you were talking about?
Arvind: Sure. So first I would start with evaluating your business model and I would model out the business.
When you do that, you're going to uncover insights about your business, about your customers, about your entire model. The second aspect is then trying to understand the ecosystem around you and how that ecosystem is evolving. How, how was your customer reacting to this disruption? And how has the local ecosystem around you reacting to the disruption, being able to understand those aspects, and then finally doing a gap analysis between the two, you want to understand your business model, and once you understand how your customers are evolving, you can now find out where the gaps are between what you're servicing and how your customers are evolving and in the gaps place, the strategy that you need to develop to handle that disruption.
Abhishek: And do you use, your methods on your own business? Like for like what's an insight you've had about your own business through the methods you implement?
Arvind: Yeah, actually that's a great question. Like, am I using my methods on myself? I think that's a fantastic question. Yes, the answer is, about three months ago, I ran a business modeling exercise on my own.
And, when I did that, I realized that, in the different elements of the business model I spoke to you about, I realized that my model or my business can be made or broken by the relationships that I establish with my customer. Now, in general, you would, I'm sure you would agree overall in any product or service, it's important to establish a good relationship with the customer, but there's a nuance in my particular business because I'm in consulting and because I'm in the business of generating ideas and providing ideas. If I don't develop a good relationship with my customer and if they don't trust the ideas that I'm developing, those ideas will never go to fruition because my company is not the one who's executing on it.
My customers are executing on those ideas. So the relationship I maintain with them and the trust I build and the competency I display is very, very, very important because if they don't buy into that, if they don't believe in it, if they don't see it, then they would not implement those ideas. Or, they would not look at me as a partner, and if I lose that trust and relationship as a partner, that's pretty much the end of my business. So that block of customer relationships within the business model I learned was the most important element of running a consulting business. And so I started paying more attention to the relationships and building with my customers compared to how I'm monetizing or compared to the activities or resources or partners.
The most important element of my business model landed up being those relationships and some relationships are established over some time. So that's how the whole model helped my own business.
Abhishek: So you did this activity three months ago and you're already implementing some of the changes., I'm almost thinking of a business model as an art. So sometimes I have guests on my podcasts and they're yoga instructors or artists, and I have them share a song. So I'd love to do a quick little activity. If you're up for it, my company we're podcasting here, shake the cosmos, what would be some of the questions or framework if you were to, we were doing a mock strategy here, what would you ask me? as somebody maybe who needs help with the business model?
Arvind: Sure. Absolutely. So, I think why don't we start Abhishek with, with a foundational question.
So I'm going to ask you a few questions and we'll have a conversation to uncover what your needs are. So, I'm going to start with this question on, if you're reflecting in the last couple of months on what's been top of mind for you, what's been a core problem that you've been trying to solve inside your business, or what has been an interesting opportunity that has come your way, that you are thinking of capitalizing on.
Abhishek: Yeah. So I think it's for me, it's about the top of mind comes, let's say monetization, and also just, finding, more guests and just being patient with sort of the growth that I, I will see with the podcast.
Arvind: Excellent. So in monetization, in this element of monetization, could you walk me through, who are you’re some of your customer segments today?
Abhishek: Yeah, so, in terms of the people who listen are generally, you've got no, some entrepreneurs, some professionals, sometimes, I also have people reaching out that is, just starting to starting their own business just, or they're starting their podcast.
Arvind: Excellent. So let's stick to that customer segment of entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial type personalities or entrepreneur type situations. Because an entrepreneur type situation exists in many different areas. So in that entrepreneur type situation, can you tell me a little bit about the problems they are facing and how is your program helping them solve those problems?
Abhishek: Yea. It's interesting. I, so I don't have data on the podcasts actually, I guess I do. So someone reached out, and Kimberly, for example, we went through, took my course. There's a course that I sell as well. And she took the course and then she was able to start her own business. So I think, but it wasn't necessarily the business piece, it was more of the motivation piece to just go do it, and take the risk.
Arvind: Got it. Interesting. So there's an aspirational element to your podcast, right? Wherein the podcast may not be solving an immediate problem for an individual or an entrepreneur. So for example, I'll tell you what an immediate problem is, an immediate problem is an entrepreneur trying to raise money and they need to understand, what channels within the Bay area, Silicon Valley ecosystem, how do you navigate that system? So that's a problem they are facing, and so that's an immediate problem. What I'm hearing is that the value proposition of the podcast is, it's aspirational, right? It pushes you to reach for the stars, it pushes you to reach for something else or learn something that could help you shape your entrepreneurial journey. If I understood that right?
Abhishek: Yeah. And, as you said, that I was getting goosebumps, so I think we've already unlocked an insight for me. (laughing)
Arvind: Okay. So, let's keep going. Do you want to spend a few more minutes talking through that?
Abhishek: Yeah. If you're okay with it (laughing)
Arvind: I love doing this and this is why I started Lens. So it's, and this is where this is way more interesting for me than talking about my company. So you have, so you’ve created a product, a service that does fill a need, right?
Because entrepreneurs, I can tell you from my own experience, being an entrepreneur is that I need guidance, I need motivation, I need someone to push me and show me that I can reach for the stars because the entrepreneurial journey, sometimes it can be lonely and, it's a pretty hard journey and you're always questioning yourself, and so in that process, having that element of motivation, that aspiration helps now this, "this service or product that you have, how do consumers realize is what's your channel, how you're delivering it to those entrepreneurs?"
Abhishek: Yeah. So I have an Omni-channel marketing approach, which is just multiple channels of marketing. In terms of how I reach the customers. I have an email list. I also have Instagram followers. I also, post on LinkedIn as well as, Facebook. those are some of the channels. And in terms of how somebody physically gets the product. So there are two products, there's the podcast, and then there's the course. So podcasts, you can listen on every single, like iTunes, Spotify, the course itself is delivered through email.
Arvind: Got it. So, is the podcast sort of, a teaser, an introduction where people listen to it and then they go sign up for the course?
Abhishek: That's a general idea. And that's how I've tried to set up the so add value right away. And then potentially if someone's interested, they sign up for the course.
Arvind: Got it. So that's essentially your, your, your business model, right? Your business model is to provide content that's valuable to someone to introduce them to the idea of shake the cosmos. And then if they're further interested, they would go into a course, and do you monetize the course today?
Abhishek: I monetize the course today. And so when I first started it, I was, I just was, had like, some beta customers. So there wasn't any money they were paying, but now they're, there is like, people are paying money for it.
Arvind: Got it. Excellent. So now let's come back to your first question of monetization, right?
What is your fundamental challenge of monetization? So you've established a business model where you have an aspirational product for entrepreneurs, and when they listen to this aspirational product, it triggers something within them, which could get them interested in signing up for a course. And then they sign up for a course.
So where within this business model, where are you having challenges with your monetization?
Abhishek: Well, I think right away, as you asked that question, the first thing that comes to mind is I'm not marketing the course at all. I always market the podcast. like, so I'm never telling the customer Arvind who's the listener, “Hey, I have a course by the way!”
Arvind: Let me ask you a question. How does someone know about your course?
Abhishek: They don't. (laughing)
Arvind: All right. (laughing) So I, I think we've uncovered a fundamental challenge in that your, your, where you're delivering value and where you're looking to monetize. The two things are not connected today, right?
So the fundamental area where you're delivering value, you're inspiring and aspiring entrepreneurs that value delivery mechanism is not connected to where you're monetizing today, which is your course. So I think finding a way to connect that I think would be super important. Of course, I think if we sit down and talk more about this, we will uncover more because we've only had like a few minutes to chat, but even looking at the different customer segments within entrepreneurs and mapping within your target audience, I'm sure some entrepreneurs are going to be more, suitable for that course you have built so understanding who they are and then finding ways to market the course, or even make them aware of the course. Right.
I think there's going to be super important, but we can talk through that more offline, Abhishek, but this was fun. I'm glad, you thought of this exercise. I enjoyed
Abhishek: If someone else is listening and they’re going through similar problems or it's really, you're the questions that, there were multiple times I was getting goosebumps from your questions. So thank you.
Arvind: Yeah, I appreciate that. It's true.
It's interesting. The questions you ask uncover that perspective. And maybe, I'm going to circle back to the first question you asked me, which is Arvin. How do you clear out the noise and, and maybe that's the answer Abhishek?
I'm having an insight now as I talk to you and my insight is maybe it's the questions, asking the right questions, cut through the noise, and get to the heart of the matter. And I think maybe, the motivation to ask the right questions is to cut through the heart of the matter and get to get to the, get to the crux of what's going on. So it's the motivation and the questions, I guess I’m circling back to your first question.
Abhishek: Totally. And, I mean, I only got a teaser of, what you do and your expert at. I know you have, as we're wrapping up here, you've got, several, couple of workshops coming up where people can sign up and take advantage of this. Can you tell me a little bit about them?
Arvind: Thank you for asking about that. I have a program that I run once a month and it's an afternoon. As the program says the program, I invite 10 to 15 executives or CEOs or anybody who is in a position where they have to make a strategic decision, right? A business decision. I invite them into the program and it's a pretty well-structured program. We end the program. We review business models that are coming in and the last 5-10 years, business models that have evolved how these business models have evolved.
What is business modeling? Right. How do you even think about business modeling? The role of business modeling? We walk through some of that in the beginning, but that's just to lay the foundation says everybody has like, you mentioned in your, in your question, we all have different ideas of what a business model is.
And so in the beginning, we level set on what a business model is and how it affects your life and your career. And then comes the interesting part. I invite the entrepreneur or the executive to bring a business model that's of interest to them. And we work it out similar to just what we did in the last 10 minutes, we spent two hours taking apart the business model you are interested in. So you learn to take apart a business model, diagnose where the strengths and weaknesses are of the business model, and develop deep insights about your business model that are actionable. And in the last hour of the program, it's a four-hour program, the last one is super interesting. You then pair it up with another executive and you brainstorm that particular business model. So what happens is by the end of the four hours, you internalized business modeling and it's one thing to learn something, it's another thing to know it. By the end of four hours, you learn you internalize and you'll truly understand what business modeling is because you've gone through the theory of it. You deconstructed a business model and you've also tried to teach someone else what you've learned. And when you try to teach someone else what you've learned, you have no choice. But to understand that deeply. So I, what I guarantee is by the end of those four hours, you will truly understand what a business model is.
And you will understand what your business model is and you'll understand insights about your business model. Does this then lead to really interesting possibilities and the possibilities are endless right from how do you adopt change and evolve that business model to handle disruption, to how do you evolve that business model, to grow your business to how do you evolve it to get into a new market?
Any question you have about your business can then be tackled in these, once you start going through this program. So that's the program Abhishek, I run it once a month.
Abhishek: That's great. And, if you're listening right now, I'll include the links for the upcoming, an afternoon with your business model Thank you so much for being on the show today, Arvind.
Arvind: Sure. Thank you so much. And I encourage you and the listeners of the program to think deeply about perspectives to take a few minutes of your own time, whether it's a part of your day or whether it's once a week to reflect, on where you're going with your business and even in general, where you're headed in your, in your life. It's always good to sit back and reflect, it does wonder to spend a little bit at a time. Thinking about your strategy, and so with that, I would like to thank you a lot for this interview. I had a lot of fun.
Abhishek: Hey everyone. Thank you for listening. Please hit the subscribe button. We'll be back next