Sanjay Parikh
Appearances
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
So what did you do to make sure? So you've got all the materials. You know the process of how you're going to teach these things. How were you making sure that they were doing it the same way that you were doing it?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Jalila has worked with children and young adults of all ages and recently created the Dope Math product line of various school supplies. Jalila, welcome to the show.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. You said a phrase in there and I want to dig into it and make sure I understand what it means. You said lows and grows. Explain that to me.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. So you gave that feedback in this interview at the end of the interview, like before they left. So before they were. Honestly, I think that is fantastic because I think we've all been in that place. I actually had something similar happen to me when I was doing my first startup and I was raising money. There was one particular group that we were pitching to raise money.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
And at the end, they went around the table and told us what they liked, what they didn't. And walking out of that room, it wasn't a... Us looking at each other like, I think it went well.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Instead, we were like, this is what they thought. So we know exactly where we stood. And so later on when they made a decision and it came back to us, we're like, okay, yeah, we understand. Because we had the feedback already. And that is fantastic. I don't know that enough people do that.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
And I think doing that would be just so much better for people to understand kind of why they're succeeding or failing in terms of the things that they want to do.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
So I'm excited to have you on because honestly, math is like one of those subjects that people don't actually talk about that often. They always talk about it in a scary way. And I feel like we're not going to talk about it in a scary way today. But let's first start out with you telling us a little bit about you and what got you to where you are right now.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. I think this is a fantastic area to kind of discuss with you. I love this, the things that you're doing. Personally, what I do is whenever I'm doing things and people tell me, oh, I love what you're doing. I actually ask for negative feedback. I ask them, what are all the things that I did wrong? When I do a speech or a talk somewhere and invariably people, oh, I love what you had to say.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
I actually don't care about that so much. I only care about what I did and said that was wrong and bad. Because obviously I tried my best. And so if you can tell me all the ways that it didn't connect with you and you thought it was a miss, then maybe I can make that better the next time. Right. Glows and grows, I think, is now a part of my vocabulary. I'm going to be using that.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
I really love that. let's shift a little bit and talk about owning and managing the business kind of originally as a side hustle. Now it's a full-time gig. How did you manage the stress of dealing with all of that? Cause there's a lot of stress and, and I mean, just that first summer having to work and do half days and run back and forth.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Like how did you manage the stress and how did that work for you?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. But by the way, it's only a math teacher that would talk about their reach and say circumference of their reach. I think you really have hit on your brand there by using that kind of phrasing. I don't think I've ever heard anybody else say the circumference of their reach other than you.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
I love it. I love it. It's totally on brand for you. Okay. So talking about this and balancing the business, how do you balance your business with family life and personal commitments and friends and talk about setting boundaries for yourself? Because as founders, what we do can bleed into everything that we do. It could eat 24 hours a day up if we wanted to.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
How do you think about those things and how do you set those boundaries and think about time with The people that matter to you.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
What were you before it was an S-Corp?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. Your clarity breaks. When did you start instituting those? And you view those, that's not vacation, obviously. Do you do it in the same place or do you go somewhere else?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
That's great. That's great. Okay. Let me ask you this now. You've had kind of the opportunity of time. You've been working on this for a few years. The first couple of years were tough. the summer things, and then you kind of went all in. If you're looking back at it now, is there something that you would do differently knowing what you know now?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. It's interesting. I often have the phrase and I tell founders, there's two types of founders, the ones that have never had to worry about, the ones that have had to worry about payroll and the ones that have not yet had to worry about payroll. Right. I think it comes for everybody at some point.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
And I think when you cross over that, that chasm and have had to deal with those issues that you understand so much more about yourself, about your business and about other founders. Yeah. that are going through struggles. So I'm so glad that you were able to make it through that challenge. Okay, you've now, you've been through the whole cycle. You've done the side hustle thing.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
You've turned it into a full-time business. What would you tell somebody else that was thinking about taking the leap and starting a side hustle or taking their side hustle and making it a full-time business?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. Yeah. That's great advice. Jalila, this has been fantastic conversation. Where can our listeners find and connect with you online?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Awesome. Thanks for coming on today.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast powered by Hispots. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. That's H-I-S-C-O-X.com. And if you have a story you want to hear on this podcast, please visit Hiscox.com slash share your story. I'm your host, Sanjay Parikh.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParikh.com.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. So it was really kind of a blessing in disguise that you were overwhelmed and did poorly in those math classes and kind of gave you that fire. And I think we see that a lot of times with entrepreneurs is that there's this event that happens that gives them a fire of like, I need to solve this because I don't want anybody else to go through what I did. Yep.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast powered by Hiscox. I'm your host, Sanjay Parikh. Throughout my career, I've had side hustles, some of which have turned into real businesses. But first and foremost, I'm a serial technology entrepreneur. In the Creator Space, we hear plenty of advice on how to hustle harder and why you can sleep when you're dead.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Was was starting your your mathematics solutions company. Was that the first time you've done anything entrepreneurial or did you do something when you were younger or a kid hustling, selling stuff, doing anything like that?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. Was this anything in the family? Did you have parents, siblings, anybody else that was an entrepreneur?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. So, okay. So you graduate from college, you start teaching, you go through that process. You think that you're going to be a teacher always, you're going to be an administrator. Like what was your initial thought process of what your path was going to be?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
So so what was it that made you think along this path of like, yeah, I don't want to be the superintendent and I want to do my own thing. What was it that caused that that jump?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
On this show, we ask new questions in hopes of getting new answers. Questions like, how can small businesses work smarter? How do you achieve balance between work and family? How can we redefine success in our businesses so that we don't burn out after year three? Every week, I sit down with business founders at various stages of their side hustle to small business journey.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Just on your own outside of the school? Outside of the school. Okay.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
okay let's do this i i i want to sign up for the summer camp because i want to go on a trip and learn glassblowing so it was amazing it was dope you might need to do this for adults too now i think um okay so so you did the summer camp it was obviously a success yeah was that the first like hey wait a minute i should go and do this full time was that the thing that that tipped you over so i
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
These entrepreneurs are pushing the envelope while keeping their values. Keep listening for conversation, context and camaraderie. Today, we're speaking with Jalila Frazier, the founder and CEO of Frazier's Mathematics Solutions, an organization that provides comprehensive training of mathematics teaching and learning for administrators, teachers, and parents.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. So the pandemic really kind of gave you the time to sit back and think and design. So when did you actually launch the company?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
So when did you exit your full time job then to do this full time?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
So you signed the contract in January of that year. You waited a few months to be like, hey, let's make sure they don't cancel a contract. And then you quit and went full in.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. Yeah. Cause you were able to focus all your time then at that point. So I'm sure things that, that flywheel got faster. So, okay. So you started the business, you did the things, then you got the big contract and then you resigned and went all in. In this process, was there something that made you nervous about what you were doing?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 400: Bonus: When defeat becomes a blessing in disguise
Yeah. Yeah. How many people did you, at that point, how many people did you have that were working with you?