- [Announcer] What if success is closer than you think?
The CEO of Kingston Lane
and a sought after keynote speaker Sharran Srivatsaa.
Sharran has taken his company Teles Properties
to $3,400,000,000 in five years.
Dan Lok interviews Sharran Srivatsaa
on the three things you need to focus on
to achieve success in your industry.
- Now 21st century is really a war on talents.
- 100%.
- People - 100%
- Not customers. - No.
- The best people will win
and attracting good people, retaining good people,
what are some of the things that you do to,
first of all, have the great culture
and also to attract talents?
- Yeah, so to me I love the topic of culture.
To me culture is, everyone thinks
about culture as this ethereal thing.
- It's not.
- To me culture is very mechanical, it's cadence.
Culture is totally about cadence,
and I'll give you a very specific example in our company.
Every single Sunday night I write a kick-off e-mail,
and my kick-off is just
I believe that I need to lead from the front,
and I take an idea and it may be celebrating our successes,
it may be giving back,
it may be something that we're doing in the business,
but it's just to my internal team,
and they, it's almost like concentration,
but I'm poring out my belief system into the company
on Monday morning, every single Monday.
On Friday evenings, my COO wraps up the week,
and he posts our 10 biggest celebrations from the week.
'cause we have this saying internally
that says you get what you celebrate.
And then in the middle of the week, on Wednesday evenings,
we have what we call a culture call.
- Okay
- Which is someone on the team
gets to run a Zoom video meeting,
and they get to talk about whatever they want.
They get to teach - Interesting
- So, Dan comes on, Dan teaches x topic.
Sharran comes on, Sharran teaches Star Wars,
and so now each of the team members
are sharing their personal,
kind of what's important to them, and
- Is that on a weekly basis?
- Every single week
- Okay, for how long?
- 30 minutes, okay so it's one e-mail on Sunday night,
one e-mail on a Friday to wrap up the week,
and 30 minutes on the Wednesday,
and a daily huddle every morning.
- Mmm
- So, the team's constantly plugged into the belief system.
Otherwise, if they can't keep up, they just self select out.
- Yes
- But culture is cadence.
I mean we, I always talk about this
which is in the 15 years ago
when you and I had our first offices and first teams
our team members came into the office to work with us,
and so the office was a physical,
cultural space that we could create.
Today, it's culture in the Cloud.
They wake up in the morning, they pick up their phone,
and the first thing that they see is their Slack messages,
their text messages, their telegrams, and their e-mails,
if that can't empower and empathize with them
on the powerful ways of connecting with your belief system,
you missed an opportunity there.
- Right - And so
to me, if we can just lay out the cadence.
People will just rally back into that belief system.
- That makes sense.
It sounds so simple, four or five major things that you do.
Same thing, I went to morning huddle, weekly meeting,
culture, weekly, the memo,
and then I brought in of course my integrator, right.
We had the visionary - Yeah
- It's amazing how similar.
- And, if it's okay with you, I don't
There's a few CEOs that I mentor
that I actually add my weekly e-mail
that I send to my internal teams,
and if your audience wants it,
we should just give it to them.
I can, I'll give - I'll put a link somewhere.
I'd really appreciate that.
- It's sharran.com/kickoff.
They can download it.
They can see the exact e-mail
I write to my team every single week
and maybe that serves as an inspiration for them as well.
- I appreciate that.
If you were to give someone a piece of advice,
let's say someone who maybe got bullied in school,
maybe couldn't speak a well English, maybe an immigrant,
tough beginning, trying to still find directions in life
or wanting to be successful,
wanting to make something of himself or herself,
what would you say to that person?
- Yeah, that almost makes me think back and...
Two things, one don't suffer in silence.
Just I think a lot of times what we do
is we suffer in silence.
We let the problem in our head get bigger in our head,
and the easiest thing to do is, it seems cliche,
but write it out, get it out of your head
because fear has no place on paper,
right, you just get it out.
So number one, I would say don't suffer in silence.
Find somebody, either get it out
or find somebody to talk to.
- Yes
- Number two, I still go back
to those words that my dad used,
transformations don't happen in isolation.
Right, so you don't have seafood and nothing's happening.
There's a reason why you and I
spend money on mentors, coaches, masterminds.
There's a reason why we do that
because when you're inside the bottle
you just can't read that label,
so I would say be really brave about
finding that mentor, finding that coach.
If you need to pay for access, pay for access.
It's a very, very small investment
to catapult your success.
So, number one, don't suffer in silence,
get it out of your head, and number two,
transformations don't happen in isolation.
Even if you do nothing else,
just watch every single Dan Lok video,
just at least do that
because you get, it's osmosis right Dan.
At least I would rather have your story playing in my head,
your advice playing in my head,
your scripting playing in my head
than the crap that my friends are telling.
And so, when someone tells me,
"Hey I don't have a mentor."
I'm like, "Have you looked at YouTube."
We live in such an amazing generation,
so take advantage of that and go deep.
The last thing I'd say is don't be an influencer junkie.
- Yes - It's not like
You're not, stop following me, you want one person.
You pick Dan, you go deep on Dan,
you'll start to realize the belief system that there is
and how he came from nothing to what he has right now.
In every video, I love watching your videos.
No because it's, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that's my friend."
And then I'm like, "Ah, that's a really great idea,
"I'll forward it to my team."
But there is, I see your warmth, I see your humanity,
I know where that's coming from,
and I don't think you can just get that
with one video or one podcast.
I think you gotta go deep,
so I think we live in an amazing generation now
where you can go deep with people.
- 'cause sometimes when you follow this person,
you follow that person, follow that person,
you watch that person,
there's contradicting advice - Totally
- And then you get more confused.
- Yes (laughs)
- I use a martial arts metaphor all the time.
Imagine if you, okay this week
I'm gonna go learn one karate class,
next week I'm gonna learn one boxing class,
and then I'm gonna learn a Brazilian jiu jitsu class,
like how good you gonna get?
You don't go deep with anybody.
- You know from a tactical perspective, I've given people,
I tell the CEOs that I mentor this.
The more successful people get,
the more influencer junkie they are
which is really weird to me right.
I say, "Listen, pick one person for the month of July.
- Yeah
- Every podcast, if they've written a book,
every YouTube video, subscribe to their blog,
just have them in your inbox and your life every day.
It will be, I will tell you this,
you sit with Dan for one month,
you are guaranteed to up your skill set,
upgrade your capabilities, upgrade your thinking.
You're guaranteed!
And, it's all their for free which is amazing
and no one realizes how much time, money,
resources you invested to create that.
Sure, has it helped you, of course,
but 99% was you wanting to put that out to give
because you know that contribution is so much more powerful.
So my gift for you is number one don't suffer in silence,
number two transformations don't happen in isolation,
number two go deep because it can do some amazing things.
- That's so awesome.
Thank you so much for being on my show.
I hope you hear this story.
It doesn't matter my background, Sharran's background,
it's possible. - Yeah
- It's just possible that if you want it bad enough,
if you go for it.
Don't give yourself the excuse,
"Oh, I'm not ready, I don't speak English,
"I don't have the background, I don't know how this works,
"I don't know the right people."
Don't let that stop you.