Saleema Vellani is an award-winning serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, a professor, and the author of Innovation Starts With “I”.
Saleema is the Founder & CEO of Ripple Impact, which helps entrepreneurs increase their influence and impact through accelerating the growth of their platforms and businesses. She also teaches design thinking and entrepreneurship at Johns Hopkins University and is a frequent guest lecturer at business schools.
We discussed her new book, Innovation starts with I.
Here's the link to pre-order her book
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/innovation-starts-with-i#/
And a link to her 100 Coffee Challenge.
https://saleemavellani.ck.page/100-coffee-challenge
Katherine Ann Byam 0:02
Hi Saleema, and welcome to Where Ideas Launch, The podcast for the Sustainable Innovator.Welcome, and thank you for joining me.
Saleema Vellani 0:35
Thank you so much for having me, Katherine.
Katherine Ann Byam 0:37
You must be so chuffed and excited about the launch of your new book. Why don't you tell us a bit about the journey to bring this book to life?
Saleema Vellani 0:46
Yeah, sure. So it depends on how far you want me to go back. But the journey essentially started in 2014. When I decided I wanted to write a book with a friend and I ended up parking the project. But it was an idea and we wrote some Google documents and started going for coffee with my friend and I asked him to co-author with me. And it was an initial phase of my life because I had been an entrepreneur, a successful entrepreneur of the past. And then for me, it was not about being an entrepreneur, it was about having the dream job.
And when I got the dream job, I realised it wasn't the job it wasn't as dreamy as I thought it was. And so I was trying to find my inner entrepreneur, trying to help other people unleash their inner entrepreneur while I was also trying to unleash it within myself and figure out, "How do I become an entrepreneur?" Again, how do I come up with a great idea? I would spend a lot of my nights on Google trying to figure out what are the trends, what are problems, I can solve what kind of business I should go into.
And I was looking outward, I was looking outside and not looking within myself. And the very same problem I was trying to solve for other people I needed to solve for myself. And so my friend ended up telling me, he said to me, "I think you need to live a little bit more before you're ready to write this book." And he was right. It was hard to hear it at the time. But I said, "Maybe I just don't have it in me right now to do this." And then I had a whole journey which I talked about in my book - a whole transformative journey. When I went through a whole evolving into this next version of myself and there's a whole life quake, my life had a crash, and everything kind of fell apart piece by piece. And I go into detail about that in the book.
And it was only until five years later when I picked up the book project again. When I decided, people were wanting to hear my story. People were wanting to learn from me. I was already teaching at that point. I was already doing a lot of the speaking and a lot of getting myself out there to share my story. And it was then that I had the confidence. And I decided, "Yes, it's time to do it." But again, I didn't know how to do it on my own because I didn't have a co-author. And I knew I had to write it on my own. But I got stuck. And I said, “Well, I did what I do best, which is build a team and put a team together to get the help I need so that the things that I suck at are not greyed out so that I can focus on the thing that I'm great at.” But then again, I got stuck again on the writing process because who am I writing this for? How do I where do you start?
A book is not like writing an article. It's a lot of work. So I ended up deciding to interview people, I got inspired. I have this process called the 100 Coffee Challenge which I used during my life quake to go out and get a job when I was stuck. And I had two weeks to find a job that was sponsored by Visa here in the United States. And I use that same process. I use that for many different things. And I and other people, my students and interns use that process as well, to go and have 100 coffees with people. So you learned a lot about yourself through that process. I call it active introspection by going out and talking to people, you learn a lot about yourself. It's not just looking inward, it's getting insights about yourself through your blind spots, especially by having those conversations with other people. And I did that same process with my book, I decided to interview 100 people.
So I interviewed people from all walks of life and met innovators, entrepreneurs, leaders, even Arianna Huffington, Alex Osterwalder, who created The Business Model Canvas and just a lot of really interesting people. And that made me realise that inspired me to write and to put all those insights together and essentially, the beginning of the book journey was, I would say, finding myself through other people and living my story and then being able to write about it through getting inspired through those conversations.
Katherine Ann Byam 4:38
What made you want to do intrapreneurship? Why was this something that consumed you?
Saleema Vellani 4:45
Hmm, for me, it's how I started my career. So it's familiar to me because I graduated during a financial crisis in 2009 from university and couldn't find a job. And so I ended up going to Brazil to do some volunteer work and get some more international experience. And it was interesting because I was supposed to work in an orphanage. And then at the last minute, my boss in Brazil called me and said, "You know, before you come to Brazil, I just want to let you know, you're not going to come to the orphanage just yet, you're going to be in Rio de Janeiro. And you're going to start this language school because the situation is ingrained at the orphanage and we need to have more funding to help us run our operations." And so I was put into Rio at age 21.
And had to start the school in Brazil. And in Brazil at the time, it was not easy to do something like that and to get something started, especially a business with very few resources that we had. And the situation we lived in, we didn't have water for most days. I was living in a really cramped room with bunk beds with other volunteers that were coming in and out. And it was just a really uncomfortable situation not having the water, having the internet, all those things. I was just working all the time with the school trying to get it to be successful. And it was there that I learned a lot about entrepreneurship and all the failures as well. Because we had a business model that was like, "let's teach all these languages to these different students."
We were a bunch of foreign volunteers. But we realised that that was a model for failure because it wasn't done initially enough. And we weren't getting enough students. Our classrooms are almost empty but it was just like all our group classes were turning into private lessons. So we ended up really taking a look at what we could do. And we said, "Well, what can we do.?" And so we decided to test this idea of just focusing on Portuguese for foreigners and getting rid of all those other languages, Italian, French, Spanish, etc. And it was when we made that pivot, and we reinvented ourselves. We were like, "Wow, the school took off." And now it's one of the top-rated schools in Brazil for learning Portuguese and wins awards consistently. And it all just started with that little project. And again, I was a co-founder, but it wasn't my idea that I was executing.
And so because I started my career with that project, I learned everything, I learned how to be comfortable being uncomfortable. I learned about how to start a business from the ground up. And I carry that on with me. So when I went to Italy, that's another story, I started a translation business. And that was how I survived starting these businesses even though I didn't call myself an entrepreneur, I think probably more like a creator, whatever you want to call it, but I never really labelled it. Because for me, I was embarrassed that I couldn't get a job. And this is what I had to do. And so when I started graduate school.
I didn't even tell a lot of people that I was running these businesses because it was for me, I failed. I didn't get the job that I thought I was gonna get after college. And so it was only when I came to the United States that's when I was like, "Boom! Entrepreneurship is not such a bad thing." Like it actually sounds. I've done it before. And when I tried the corporate thing and I tried to work on a nine-to-five for a few years I was like, "I really miss that, that level of creativity, that elation, the lifestyle that I had, and the freedom it was a lot of work. And I say I probably worked a lot more being an entrepreneur but there was a certain "I could really embrace myself and my skills and being myself."
And I think because we're evolving as humans at such a fast pace. We're in this reinvention revolution, where we're trying, we need to reinvent ourselves faster and more frequently than ever before. And so, I think because of that pace of growth that we're seeing right now, I would say that I love being an entrepreneur, but I also love being an intrapreneur. So I always do both, I never just do one or the other always, I call it in my book, hybrid-preneurship where you're embracing being in.
It doesn't have to be a corporate setting, it could be doing consulting work on certain projects. But I always think it's very important to contribute to the larger organisations because that will bring value. You're learning in both areas but you're maybe getting more training and maybe doing things that you wouldn't. You're trying to upskill yourself in one of your projects, or whatever. So I think it's important to embrace both to manage that risk. And I think just so entrepreneurship is very glorified, most people can just do it.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:22
That's so true. I think one of the other things that have become more and more clear is that innovation doesn't start with intrapreneurs, right. Employees are innovators every day. And I wanted to get into that because I know that you have some great advice for that in your book. What would you say to people, employees, to become more creative to express their creativity and take chances?
Saleema Vellani 9:50
Great question. I think the first thing to do is to start looking inward and that's what my book talks a lot about. Innovation starts with "I." Even though it happens to me, and anything that I did, if I did it alone, I feel that I failed miserably. All those things I did a lot. It was only when I had a team, a community, you know, a group of people or a support network around me. And so I think ultimately, you do have to start with yourself. And if you look at some of the best innovators and look at Steve Jobs, because his journey of enlightenment or transformation happened in India.
And when he came back, he was all rejuvenated and was able to really innovate with his work at Apple. And so, I think oftentimes we focus on the final product of the invention and we don't put enough emphasis on that personal transformation during that has to happen. And so for employees, I think we need to first drop those labels of employees and entrepreneurs because I think that's why there are so many entrepreneurs that are failing, and so many employees - it's hard to retain them. Even like the intrapreneur and entrepreneur thing, there are all these labels.
Sometimes people feel like as an employee, “I'm not successful.” Listen, an entrepreneur here, at least, that was what was considered cool and successful. And then if I was just an entrepreneur that was failing, Oh it's just interesting because I think we use these labels and they have certain connotations. And so I think, first of all, drop the titles and everyone should just have their brand as an individual, as a person and be brand-agnostic around being under a company. I think we see a lot of solopreneurs who are really, really attached to their company; but at the end of the day, they get hired or they're successful as a human or as an individual. And so I think the same thing with employees, really kill it as an intrapreneur. Really kill it with your work within the company, and not just your day to day role.
See where you can give back to your community and your job or start something within and I think that's an opportunity to learn as much as possible. I think people should be in jobs to learn as much as possible so that they can be an entrepreneur at some point in their life. Or if not, start running or get their project going on a smaller scale. And I think what an important tool that's in one of my early chapters of the book, it's on finding your sweet spot. I think our sweet spots, not just something that we discovered, I think we have to develop it, we have to work at it. And that's where I think being in a job is great because you can have a little bit of room for failure and to learn, and you're not expected to always be the expert. You have a community. You have resources. You have a lot more. You have less risk, oftentimes than just being a sole entrepreneur.
And so I would say during this exercise called "sweet spot mapping" where you think about it like your four quadrants where you look at your career as a portfolio or your life is a series of projects, and not so much like what is a series of jobs, and really think about what projects you excel that so what are the projects that people and you know that you did really well and not just work projects that it could be stuff that you do on an advisory board. It could be volunteer work, it could be personal things too. And so really think about those projects that you really excelled at. And then you want to look at what are the projects that people gave you the most positive feedback on, so you got a lot of praise.
And sometimes you get taken by surprise because people will tell you things. And you're like, "Wow, I didn't know, you know, you saw that in me" or "I didn't know I was great at this." or "I didn't know I did that really well. We have blind spots, we're human. So I think really trying to understand the perspective of other people goes a long way. And then the third thing to do is to really think about those projects that you really love doing. You know, you might not be the best at them, but you love doing them. And those activities that you would even do for free because you love doing them so much. So whether you're running a podcast, or you're writing a book or doing something that you love, think about those things.
And then the fourth quadrant is the most important one because that's where we often quiet our inner voices, and we don't listen to ourselves enough. And it's the open-to-testing area. So that's the projects that you're open to testing. So some of those ideas that you have late at night where you wake up at three in the morning, and then you don't write it down, or some of those projects on your back burner that you never get to do. They are maybe slightly out of your comfort zone.
Maybe you're like, I don't have the time. But I know I really need to do this. It's those projects, think about how you can scale down and start with baby steps or micro-steps and just get them going because those are the projects that you often have to develop more skills in but they're projects or skills or things that you can be very successful in. Often times you touch on, you iterate, and you pivot in a different direction. So like for me it was, public speaking or certain things that I was very uncomfortable doing and I never thought that I would ever do and that I was always a behind-the-scenes desk person and then just trying some of those things, I got invited to some events or certain things I was like, "No. I'm just gonna do it." And it's those projects, those skills, or activities that I think we need to pay attention to. And I think we could be more successful as innovators or entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs if we take on more of those open to testing projects,
Katherine Ann Byam 15:25
I like the idea of being open to testing. Now we have a lot of challenges facing us in the world, and this podcast is rooted in this idea of sustainability. I see that we have a huge opportunity. Like, I think we have an opportunity now to reinvent a lot of things that we've taken for granted in the past. And that's opening the door for many people to step into themselves and express themselves differently. What are your thoughts on sustainable innovation? And how can we do more to lift it and support it?
Saleema Vellani 15:59
Yeah, so sustainable innovation is a whole topic of its own. I would say that there's a lot on that. I think right now we're seeing a lot of really neat stuff with the younger generations, like trying to clean up all the mess over the past few decades. There are some serious issues we have in the world that we're trying to figure out how to solve whether it's through social enterprise or corporate innovation, social innovation through companies and through different means.
But ultimately, I think that we need to have more conversations with the different stakeholders. So I think coming together and really embracing diversity, I think sometimes we hear like, great minds think alike. And I really think that great minds think differently. And so I think we need to bring different minds together to solve that. I was actually just in a conference this morning on food security in Cairo. And it was interesting because it was virtual. But it was interesting because it was all these different stakeholders from different countries that were coming together to discuss these things. And I think even especially now in this virtual world, we need to have more of those conversations with different stakeholders, and make that a thing.
And so I would say for sustainable innovation, I say that the first thing to do is if you're like an individual that's trying to figure this out, and you do something, whether you're a leader in a company or you're a business owner, and you're trying to figure out how to incorporate that, I would say that first start with yourself. And again, innovation starts with "I." So do some self-ideation. So really look at your passions, what frustrates you. So your values, your skills, your experience, and try to figure out how you can inject your uniqueness into the world.
And I would say that’s the first. The second thing to do after you do that self-ideation is to start adding value to people wherever you can. So whether it's through some volunteer work, some expert hearing, going to a different country or virtually helping other people however you can really try to bring your expertise and your value. I think that goes a very long way. I think we need to prioritise giving more, and we learn a lot about ourselves. But we also get some really great ideas when we do some of those activities that are just giving value to people.
And then the third is to really embrace failure. I think that if more people embrace failure, we would see more innovation happening on the sustainability front because a lot of times it's their big, big hairy problems and how do we solve these things. And we do have to go through cycles of iteration and learning to get to that point of a good idea becoming a great idea. We don't start with great ideas, usually. So pivoting when it's time to pivot and think. Oftentimes, we don't know when it's time to stick or like to evaluate the risk and all this sort of stuff. There's just so much to really think about and to also listen to our inner voice. And then when is it time to pivot because a lot of times we just give up where we say this is not going to work. And sometimes we just need to have the right conversation, or we need the right training with the right skills or technology. And we let go of those ideas, or we let go of those projects. And so, I go through that four-step process.
Katherine Ann Byam 19:12
Yeah. That's interesting. You just touched on pivoting. And I guess my question is, what would be your criteria for knowing it's time to pivot?
Saleema Vellani 19:23
Great question. I actually interviewed Doug Galen from Rippleworks Foundation. They do a lot of connecting with social entrepreneurs with Silicon Valley mentors. And so they have a really interesting business model. But he mentioned to me that it's important to evaluate what are the three critical risks? What are those three critical risks and really think about those three critical risks?
Then you would know when you do that analysis. Is it time to stick and keep going as a time to let go or is it time to pivot so really thinking about the risks, and doing some coming from the economics world probably doing some cost-benefit analysis on that front as well? If there's a way you can kind of evaluate, is this the path? What are the risks? What are the benefits, and in doing that analysis, I think that can go a long way? If there's a way to simplify it, I would say do a 100 Coffee Challenge as I mentioned. Go and talk to 100 people.
Talk to people from different walks of life, different cultures, different industries, especially not just your own industry. I think that gives a lot of insight so that you're not just putting all the weight on yourself for making that decision. And especially talking to industry experts. I think, oftentimes, we need to have a diversion and talk to different people. But I also think that there's a certain level of, especially if you are trying to innovate and you're trying to scale your business, there's a lot of lack of mentorship that's really connected to industry expertise. And that's something that actually Rippleworks Foundation is trying to tackle by connecting those industry expert mentors and stuff. So I think really thinking about that is key, if I could simplify it.
Katherine Ann Byam 21:16
Perfect! How can people find out more about you?
Saleema Vellani 21:19
Yeah, so they can follow me on social media. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So I think you can put in the show links, my LinkedIn URL. I'm also active on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. The handle is at Saleema Vellani. And the book is called Innovation Starts With"I" and as you mentioned, it's going to be released later this spring so people can pre-order it already we had a successful Indiegogo campaign last year and we're still taking pre-orders and so those are the different ways where they can visit my website saleemavellani.com and subscribe to the newsletter. That's another great way to stay in touch.
Katherine Ann Byam 21:56
Perfect. Thanks so much for joining us on the show, Saleema. It's been wonderful hosting you.
Saleema Vellani 22:01
Thank you. Thanks so much, Katherine for having me.