Pejman Ghadimi wants you to succeed.
He’s surprisingly more helpful, deeper, and more thoughtful than you’d expect, which came across with the authenticity of a successful, effective leader when I spoke with him for my podcast last week.
I say surprisingly despite having been on his podcast years ago. As the founder of the community to develop entrepreneurs, Secret Entourage, he appears with luxury cars and watches. While I don’t begrudge entrepreneurs motivated by money and bling, since I’m motivated by helping others, that image didn’t resonate, so I didn’t look further.
Turns out I missed a lot. More than anything else, Pejman helps others. His passion is teaching.
The first clue beyond the cars to Pejman the teacher, came reading his latest book, Radius, which shares his personal journey of a destitute immigrant discovering his expertise, baring his flaws and failures. The conversation revealed more.
Having Inc. readers passionate about developing themselves entrepreneurially and as leaders, I asked him to share more.
Joshua Spodek: When you talked about business, you spoke personally, about growth and learning. Your books and community teach, but not what school teaches. Can you give us an overview of what you people learn from you?
Pejman Ghadimi: Yes. Every business follows a cycle of specific elements, regardless of its success or failure. My goal is to help you understand why things occur as they do, so that you have a more clear vision of your own personal road map.
It is important to understand that pushing our limitations starts in our minds. Understanding how the process and its components enables one person to disrupt an industry from both a business and an entrepreneurial angle.
I see five core pillars in the evolution of business and entrepreneurship: People, Product, Business, Brand, and Empire.
JS: Empire… that got big fast. Let’s start at the beginning. What do you mean by people?
PG: People are perhaps the most powerful pillar, yet neglected by most business owners and entrepreneurs. They miss that, without people, there is not business or success. People–you, your team, and your customers–are the foundation of business.
Most businesses fail within their first year from the owner misunderstanding himself, his customers, the target market, and those around him. You need to understand the wants, needs, and motivations of these people to address them effectively.
Many businesspeople say they are not people-centric or don’t understand people. But it is not your misunderstanding of people and their behaviors but your lack of understanding of yourself. You need self-awareness to grow. Limiting self-awareness limits your success and ability to scale your business. There is no shortcut to understanding people. It is a skill that develops with time and experience.
JS: Can you give an example?
PG: Costco is notorious for having mastered this skill, internally (the team) and externally (the customers). Everything Costco does is about selling, based in the psychology of people as shoppers and consumers–how they interact with each other and the products.
The big box retailer understands the customer’s need to save money and knows exactly what products they will pay for. More importantly, they understand their employees enough to create environments to foster their talents and become better employees by connecting to customers better.
Giving their employees authority and the environment to uphold such responsibilities enables them to connect customers to employees and employees to the brand. This people-centric approach has helped them grow and become a global brand.
JS: You mentioned brand, but earlier said product came next. What about product?
PG: Yes, regardless of what you sell, the product (or service) is the core of why and how you survive and grow. You must forever improve and adapt it to an ever-changing environment.
The product isn’t always perfect and may not even be good in its early stages. Products that solve problems hold more value to the masses, but even the best products often start as the worst.
The point of a product is solving a specific problem. People who try to fix mass market problems tend to lack road maps or data to understand how people will interact with or accept their product or its variations. Their products may amaze in ideology but are often terribly executed from the lack of data.
JS: Can you give an example?
PG: Before the smartphone was the personal digital assistant. In 1993, Apple launched the Newton, to massive failure because people didn’t see its need.
In 1997, the Palm Pilot showed the value of a handheld electronic device, which the market embraced and which paved the way for the iPhone smartphone in 2007.
While smartphones existed for years before the iPhone , their features were limited. Unknown to the public, carriers (e.g., Verizon, AT&T) inhibited their development, not manufacturers, by blocking non-revenue-making features.
Apple may not have created the perfect smartphone, but introduced a solution–the app marketplace–that, over the years, sold the most phones. The phone had its flaws, but the marketplace allowed iPhones to connect to more possibilities and overcome carriers’ greedy restrictions.
JS: Okay, next was business…
PG: The right people coming together with a compatible idea for a service or product creates a business.
A business forms when a person understands people, product, and their compatibility and connects them. Then a business becomes profitable and thrives. If people and product are incompatible, the business fails.
Compatibility catalyzes the business’s growth and survival. When a business fails, we blame either people or product, but not rarely analyze how the product and people interacted on all levels at the root of the failure.
The optimum connection occurs when people believe and understand the product and it solves a problem, enabling a business to rise to profitability. A business’s growth stems from how well the product and people evolve within the its dynamics, which adds a powerful variable: money.
People and product must effectively collaborate to grow an industry, but don’t forget that appropriately factoring in money is necessary to allow the business to evolve into a brand.
JS: Let’s talk brand then. What’s a brand and why should we care?
PG: When a business has mastered executing its product and connected it to people seamlessly, the company reaches a new a level of profitability above and beyond a simple business. The idea of significant profit prompts the entrepreneur to look back and connect the dots.
Understanding the path to success enables a business owner to look forward with something powerful–a process: understanding how people, product, and business intertwine. You can duplicate a successful process with new products and new people, in new verticals, or new commodities.
When the process has made the company successful, people accept it, and the company has duplicated in multiple verticals, the consistency customers feel becomes trust. People feel comfort in the traits that make a brand trustworthy.
Three traits you see working across every item or vertical (store sales are a vertical) are reliability, simplicity, and design. This trio makes Apple a super-brand from which millions will line up to buy new products, knowing that Apple will meet their expectations before even understanding the new product or its functionality.
A brand forms when a company masters a process and duplicates it properly over various verticals. People accept and trust brands when that process becomes obvious, even subconsciously.
JS: You mentioned an empire. Few entrepreneurs think that far ahead or on that scale. What do you mean by an empire?
PG: When a brand expands through so many verticals that it has earned trust, the brand can become an empire.
By empire I mean an entity that dominates every vertical in its space and sometimes outside its space. Facebook is trying to become an empire by acquiring every social network it competes with, offering various types of social reach all under one brand. Apple is too by entering finance with Apple Pay.
To make a brand an empire, the people running the business must be confident that their users will follow them across any platform. They must have mastered their process enough to know it can work in the new space.
Beats Audio started as headsets company but has expanded into cars. Since Apple bought it, beyond accessing a broader tech industry, Beats is also bringing Hollywood and Silicon Valley closer, enabling Apple to expand again.
An empire is powerful. It creates significant influence. It can give birth to innovation or kill ideas in seconds. It is the ultimate reach in business. It is engineering a perfect system to dominate the marketplace.
JS: Thank you.
PG: Thank you too.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.