Making Something From Nothing: Hemant Varshney Of DigiCom On How To Go From Idea To Launch

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Success to me is taking care of the people you work with, taking care of your client and ensuring that you provide high quality work.

As a part of our series called “Making Something from Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Hemant Varshney.

For over 10 years, Hemant has played a pivotal role in all aspects of digital marketing. Starting out as a media manager, he continued on to become a consultant, Head of Growth, and executive at a hyper-growth agency, managing a team of 30+. Outside of work, Hemant loves to travel and has been to more than 40 countries (and counting).

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

My childhood story is one of a lot of travel. My father owned a garment manufacturing company producing clothes for Macy’s, Sears, Belk, Dillards, Calvin Klein, Tommy Figure etc… His factories were in India, China and Bangladesh while his sales offices were in London and New York. So as a kid, I had the opportunity to travel a lot and learn business early on.

My mother is a doctor who went through schooling in the British system. When I was about 12, we moved from Asia to Canada then to the states. My mother went through med school again to get certified here. Watching my parents persevere the way they did while immigrating is inspiring. It’s helped me develop my drive and determination to build businesses.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Wake up, crush life. A friend of mine said this to me once, and I adopted it as my motto. There are a lot of challenges we will face everyday. And that’s ok… It’s imperative that we keep our head on a swivel and continue learning and solving these challenges.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Yes, I have a few:

• The Lean Startup — Eric Reis (Taught me a lot about startup life)
• Creators Code — Ed Catmuel (Opened my eyes because it show cased how to many parameters limit creativity)
• Principles — Ray Dalio (Taught me about people and management)
• How To Win Friends and Influence — Carnegie (It’s not always what you’re saying but how you say it)

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?

At DigiCom, we work with startup founders that are all different sizes. Our goal is to help them grow. This means that we have to test the viability of their services or products. The way for us to do that for our clients is to see if they can push any sales from their products or services. If they can prove out that people are willing to pay, then we have a baseline to work off of. With this information, we hit the ground running developing creatives, tuning their website, and running paid ads.

If people are not buying their products, then we do a deep dive and dissect it to determine the purchase barriers. Is it the quality? Is it the price? Is it the positioning? We have to understand where the roadblock is, then come up with ways to solve for it. Once we think we have a solution then we go back to the market once again to see if users will buy the product or service.

Most entrepreneurs have ideas. They want it to be perfect before going into the market only to find that there are challenges. I say get to market fast, test fast, fail fast and learn fast. Then iterate, rinse and repeat.

Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?

Google it. See what’s out there. Figure out how you’re different or what you have to do to deliver something better.

For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.

• Search the idea, who’s doing it and what are we doing differently? How are we going to be better?
• Go to Alibaba, thomasnet, indiamart to see where you can source the product from.
• Get in touch with suppliers from the sites above ^^
• Order samples from a few suppliers to select who you want to work with.
• Order some products, small quantities, then go try to sell it to friends family.
• If you’re selling a service, see if you can partner with them to sell the service.
• Get feedback from them.
• Improve the product if you can.
• Simultaneously build a website (shopify is great for that).
• Create a marketing plan for organic and paid ads.
• Run some ads, see how the products sell.
• Continue to improve on all the steps above.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?

Failure is not a bad thing. You only fail if you stop learning. I’ve tried to start multiple businesses since I was in high school. I made so many mistakes. The one thing these mistakes taught me was how to be better on my next venture.

Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

Same as above^^.

Search the idea, who’s doing it and what are we doing differently? How are we going to be better?

• Go to Alibaba, thomasnet, indiamart to see where you can source the product from.
• Get in touch with suppliers from the sites above ^^
• Order samples from a few suppliers to select who you want to work with.
• Oder some products, small quantities, then go try to sell it to friends family.
• If you’re selling a service, see if you can partner with them to sell the service.
• Get feedback from them.
• Improve the product if you can.
• Simultaneously build a website (shopify is great for that).
• Create a marketing plan for organic and paid ads.
• Run some ads, see how the products sell.
• Continue to improve on all the steps above.

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?

Try it on your own first, make a couple mistakes and learn from them. It’s important to learn and understand the process, it’s also the most fun part of building a business.Once you’ve figured some things out and missed on others, then consult.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

Try to keep your company private as long as you can until you’re looking to scale.

You should always have a goal for what you’re doing with the capital you’re raising, don’t raise money just to raise money.

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

Success to me is taking care of the people you work with, taking care of your client and ensuring that you provide high quality work.

This means, pay north of fair, expect north of fair. Take care of your team, ensure they are happy and treated well.

Charge what is fair, but ensure your product quality is top notch quality. Listen to your customers, make adjustments from their feedback.

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

The world has many great places to visit and many challenges to overcome. I would create a program that allows for continuing education or travel for those looking to expand their horizons. This way we create the next generation of problem solvers.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.