 Sakeen. Yes. Tell us where you're from. I'm from Kathmandu, Nepal. Kathmandu, Nepal. Yes. That's not a suburb of Albuquerque, is it? No, not at all. Not at all. Yes. How long does it take to go from there to here? At least 24 hours. Yeah. Yeah. That is far. You have several businesses in Nepal. Yes. Roughly how many businesses do you have in Nepal? Roughly, I think eight. Eight businesses. Yeah. And so you just, you look young, but you're 77, is that right? No, not 77. You have eight businesses. Yeah. And not all eight businesses are technical. Yes. They are out of technical as well. So one of your businesses is an agency. Yes. Yeah. Tell us about that business. That business is more about we initially started off, there's two businesses which does agencies. It's like Catch Internet and WebExports. So they do agencies, initially we started up with ODEX, the freelancing site. And then after that we went to the referral and we have existing clients and all, so which is, which keep us giving the projects. So you've done, ODEX changed your name to... Upwork. Upwork. Yeah, upwork. But when it was ODEX, you were picking up jobs from there. Yeah. And then did you end up stopping at some point? In Catch Internet, I end up stopping. I was once doing a lot of ODEX work and even we got big clients like Mogulam Media Group and Music Business Association here in states. So we even hosted those sites in WordPress.com VIP. And at the time it was really tough. So you got projects on ODEX that were big enough to host on... VIP. And I work with Jake. He was in Nob Ten Up at the time, different company. So he was also handling the same project with me. Wow. Off ODEX. Yes. That's not normally what you think of when you think of an ODEX project, right? You think of like a $12 effort or $60 effort, but this bigger project. Yes. And I was the full-time developer for them. And we even had lots of other people working. So you built up that agency off of taking different-sized projects. Yes. And how big did you grow that agency? I'm like, if you talk about Catch Internet, we grew really big at the states that I couldn't sleep that much because there was lots of work. And that's why I took a vacation and went to Australia and had a one-month vacation. And so I thought, like, what I'd do the next. And it happens to be what camp. Melbourne, which I attended. And then I got the idea of some meeting themes and all those things. That's how the team started up. But then I met a few other people who can handle the agency's work. So we hand over those to my friends, which are running businesses. But I'm also one of the partners over there. Got it. Yeah. But that still didn't tell me how big you got it. Yeah. I'm like, now we have all the technical companies in the same building. Okay. So what we do is it's so easier to manage. Yeah. How big is that? It's 70 people. Seven-zero. Yes. You have 70 people that are all doing WordPress work. Yes. And how do you get the leads for those projects? I don't know. It would be surprising to say that ODEX gave me all the agencies. And after that, it's just referral. Like, like, more of them referral, these people, music associations, people referral, that people, that people. I was like, it was coming even, even not doing anything. They just said, like, do you want to work in this project? I said, yes, why not? So I just want you to know all these people hate you. Right? Because you're basically like, I did nothing. And then people just threw money at me. Yeah. Because I did one thing good. One project well. And that just cascaded from there. Yeah. That's the only thing that I did. Even in the theme, I did one thing good. Everything came back. I even didn't do SEO. I still haven't done SEO in my casting. Still, I think WordPress is awesome. It's doing great. So the theme, you have a theme company. Yes. And you have several themes. How many themes do you guys have? We have about 40 free themes and about more than 40 to 50 premium themes. Okay. 40 free 40 to 50 premium. And where do you distribute the 40 to 50 premium? I exclude in my own site, cast theme.com and also one theme in WordPress.com. And two themes in theme forest and various themes in mojo market place and creating market. So you have, you know, using a couple of different places to do distribution, but it's, you don't have all of them over at mojo or you don't have all of them over at theme forest. So how, how do you get the word out? I mean, obviously you haven't, you just said you haven't done SEO for your own stuff. So how are people finding these themes? It's more organic kind of thing. For cats themes, what we do is like we are in a premium business. So we submit most of the free themes in WordPress.org and some of them don't have in.org, but like we submit free themes that free themes are organically captured our users. And once when I was starting at least 10% used to, 10% used to come and then 1% used to buy it. So it was a great conversion, but now it's more saturated, but then again, it's, it's worth great in my own site. But in 2017, I already told in my presentation that, okay, we had a very saturation point like it was not growing. So I entered the marketplace and tried off different marketers and I liked the WordPress.com. It's awesome. So you have a theme company. You have a development WordPress agency. Yes. But you do more. And one of them is T-shirts. Yeah, we do T-shirts. How did you get into T-shirts? It's again, I like to thank community like WordPress community. So great. We're organizing what camp I'm the founding member of WordPress and Nepal community. And we always had a problem of T-shirt quality in Nepal. Like they were like a little rough and thick. And whenever I come to what camp you ask what camp, then I have like little slick T-shirts. And I see Jetpack T-shirt, WooCommerce T-shirt. It's a nice quality. It's not 100% cotton, but it's like mix of cotton and polishers. And so I like that. Like it can go really well, it's soft and nice and easy to carry because it gets reason. So I thought like why don't I have those kind of T-shirts. And I just search around, nobody sells that. So most people just so you know in terms of feedback, most people and they're like I like that kind of T-shirt and there's no company that sells it. They say bummer, there's nobody that sells it. But you, you're like why don't I start a T-shirt? Yeah, that's what that's like. Why don't I start a T-shirt? My first customer is Woodcamp. That's right. I will be my own customer. So how did you go about starting a T-shirt company? What did it take? I'm like I had a bunch of like two or three, three young people. They were really excited about getting T-shirt and we have designers which in team business we don't have. Our design doesn't get packed all the time. And there's really good fine artists as well. One of them made Sam's portrait, family's portrait I think. So there were three kind of things. So like I said, that would be good opportunity for them to design T-shirt as well. And then sell. So that's how I felt like. So that's the design. So you had your own staff that had some free space to design. But you have to print T-shirts, right? How did you do that? Yeah, that's what like the other partners, they, I saw them the match fields. I want this and this and the other partners resource about it and they import the match fields. And we started the stitching and all those factory, creative factory and stitching. See how it just rose off his lips? We just started a factory. Yeah, you know, what am I going to do this weekend? How about I start a factory? So I get that you import materials. I get that. That doesn't break my brain. I'm just trying to figure out that part right in the middle. The designers, I got material. No, but you have to actually, you have to make shirts. Yeah, it's like the manpower is not that expensive in Nepal. So that's always a good point. Did you have to go out and find and hire people to be T-shirt makers? Yeah, I'm like, in the first we started on with just outsourcing it. Yeah. The stitching company. Then we started in-house. Then you started bringing your house. You also have to buy equipment for that. Yes. You know, which equipment is the light equipment? Oh, that was not my part on that. No, you just gave that to someone else to figure out. I cannot figure out everything by myself. Yeah, no, no. I'm doubting that, but I'm willing to go with it. So you spin up a T-shirt company and your first client is your own WordPress community. You make T-shirts for the WordCamps. Where did you take it from there? We started targeting more corporate clients. We didn't want one-to-one customers. So first we went B2B, business to business. We focused on events. We focused on the company's own T-shirt because everyone is nowadays branding their own T-shirts and everything. So we started on that and now we have a physical store with sales. Your own designs? Yeah, directly to the personal. Okay. Yeah. That's awesome. How's that business doing? Right now it's just picking up. I don't say it's highly profitable, but it's profitable enough to run a store because we didn't have a store before. So it's profitable enough to run a store. So we just opened this year the store is live. Now just we are offering to personal people. Before that we were just B2B only. Yeah. So you got a web agency, you got a theme store, you got a T-shirt store. Supports and all. Yeah, but then at some point you decided after school programs, how did that come about? I came from a management background. I did my MBA in Singapore and then after that the education system in Nepal was not good. So I teach MBA students in Nepal back home for seven years. In your free time? Yeah, in the morning time like I was like. So from the morning seven to nine I used to teach in MBA program then I go to office and then I was working hard. Starting day job. Yeah, day job and then all those things. So I knew that there was something not working. And after I had my child I know that okay what's there's something missing again, you know. There's no after school work and I send my child to. And I said okay there is a problem again. So whenever I see a problem I try to create a company to solve that. So we are the first company to establish after school in Kathmandu. That's incredible. And that could have been enough, right? But I think you're working in a preschool now. Yeah, so from April we were starting up with a preschool and we just posted on Facebook and all that. We are now open for admissions and all. And the construction is full face. Because like the after school is mainly three to six. But those places where like our staff were free from morning. So it's like okay what do I need to do it. And also the preschools either we have to go for expansive school which has good preschool. And that's not everyone cup of tea. Or you have to go to like really bad, bad preschool. So there was not anything in between which can. And most of the people in Kathmandu is in between stays. Not that high stays. So we wanted to capture that in between stays people. So there's really two dynamics going on, right? You're always looking for what's the problem and can I solve it. We're also talking about targeting specific market sectors, right? So it may be that there's a solution for the high end or it may be a solution for the super low end. But in the mid-market you're like hey, there's a gap. And so let me go address it. And you normally are listening for those issues from your own employees. Yeah, own employees, my friends. Because like I established after school after giving birth, right? After I have my own son. Because now I have a circle of new parents. And then everyone talk about things working in Kathmandu or things not working. So that's how whenever I talk like even like there's other examples like team review as well, same thing. I was reviewing a thing and that Emile proposed me do want to own a team review company. I said why not, sure. That's slide to the script. That's it. That's right. Why not? Because an opening will go after it. Yeah. And that's how you have eight companies. Yeah. How many total employees do you have? All around. I cannot count because like I just overlook on the management side and both sides. But in the IT only I look around because I'm in the same building working. So that's why I know 7 to 75. But it's hundreds. I think yes. It has to be hundreds. And I'm really glad that I could make that changes to Kathmandu. Because that was the only reason I flew back to home so that I can at least contribute something to the community itself. Otherwise I would have stayed here in states or in Singapore. How often do you make it back to the US? I come here at least once a year. Yeah. Yeah. But it's easier given all the different stuff you're running over there to live out there? Yeah. Somehow I got to manage. I started learning to manage that. Okay. Now I can leave. And last year I took two months vacation. This year I'm taking one month vacation for US. So I'm trying to love like taking more vacations and checking out if they can do it or not. And I'm flexible enough. If they can't do it I'll fly back. If they can't do it I'll just relax back. What are you learning as tips in terms of how to get it so that they can take care of it without you there? So I'm giving them more of a leadership kind of thing. So they try to like if someone's looking at the operations I'm trying to make like a design team, operation team and also like we have our own kitchen team. So everything is more operated. We have operation team and we have production team and design team. So it's more like functional. Everything is working smoothly on that scale. So nowadays only for like if they have any discussion or measure confusion then I need to be there or I can do it virtually nowadays. So that's easy. I talk with them once a while even when I'm here. So I talk with the leads like are you doing okay? And even if they don't call me I just make sure and I just talk with them and say is everything okay? Do I need to help on anything? I keep asking them and thanking them like okay you are doing great job and I'd like to thank you very much. And so do you need anything from here? And you have partners that are in some of these businesses right? Are they active in any part of running it or are they only financial partners? No they are active in running as well. So there's several of you running all of these companies together? Yes. How did you find those partners? Oh that's a tough question again. Find the partners like the education partner I find while I was teaching and all. So I have a group. A t-shirt is like the same like my friends circles. And for the IT is like more about what camps. So I went to the work camps. I organized the work camp. They have more trust in me. And then they said okay okay I can do great with you together. So it's just like they really trust me and so I'm so thankful to them. Whenever I said I want to start this time everyone gets excited. Okay let's do it. Wow that's nice. That's good. That's good. Do you have any people in your world that every time you come up with a new idea to start a new company that they go, hey slow down this is crazy? I haven't faced that because I don't tell people unless I'm really prepared. Unless I have a really good idea and I draft them I try to. First thing I always explain to my wife like okay this is the thing I'm excited about. Do you think it works? And she's very supportive and she said I think you can try. Otherwise there's always options. There's nothing months to lose because we already have businesses going on. And so and then after I get convinced with that then I talk to them. So after it passes the wife test then you take it to some friends. Yes. But you also prepare for those meetings right? It's not a crazy idea. No no no. You're actually doing some research and work. Yeah yeah because that was taught to me while I was studying in Singapore. Like you have to have a proper business plan to show it to the people before starting any businesses. So I have a proper plan. So what's next? What next is again a big question. Next I was thinking of bringing in organic farm because Nepal is very good at farming and we have a lot of good natural herbs and everything. And even my sister-in-law they have just established Nepali tea traders which import tea from Nepal and sell it here in the US. So I was thinking like maybe I'll go on like I got the idea I'm getting so excited like maybe farm organic kind of farms or something like that. But that's just going in my mind. I haven't prepared at all. Here's good news. I heard it from Sam that he wants to potentially stop working on a map and just live on a farm and run one right? So there's a potential business partnership there in the making. Yeah yeah and what can be great for all those farmers. That's right you find partners. Did you want to be in a Nepali farm? Well I can bring you some great tips. So in the midst of all this right? Are there ever quiet moments when you get nervous about everything that you're building? Any insecurity that seeps in and nervous about anything? Yeah I had nervousness about the catch themes like whether it will go on downsides or like whether it will go more on sets because it was in saturation point. Right you started seeing it get flat and no growth and that starts to worry you. In those moments what do you do to get through it? I scratch my head first of all. I was like what's wrong with it? You know when I developed like in 2012 I just developed I think two or three themes. And it gave me like a whole year of profit. And I was like wow that's a great profit. But now it's like I'm making every month one theme and still getting. A year's worth of profit total. I'm like what's happening you know? And that gives me really worried and that's why I concentrated with different people and from the WordPress community itself. And then we changed from development centric theme to design centric theme. So in mid of 2017 we started to the design centric theme and that paid us well. And then two of our themes which did really good like ferrity in WordPress.com and photography in WordPress.org gave us like really boom to ourselves. And that got me excited. So part of that dynamic is you have a group of people you can go to to talk about your head scratching. Yeah I'm like there's lots of good friends in WordPress community. I just scratch and tell like what's happening. How do you know which, like do you develop a core set of friends that you talk to? Do you just ask the questions to everybody? How do you figure out that support group to help you run your businesses? I know some of things are instinct. Like I just because like I was trying to do the dot-com stuff and that was like targeted. I wanted to David. I wanted to contact David exactly because he's handling WordPress.com premium theme. I was not instinct. I was like precisely I want to meet him. I want to network with him. I want to talk to him. I want to find the solution to go to dot-com. And even I talked with various people but he was the one. You had a target of whom you want to talk to? Yeah I have to make it to him. So I followed him. I talked with him. And then in 2016 I was a WordCamp US speaker. At the time speaker dinner was a great moment to talk to him. So I talked with him throughout and he gave me good idea of design centric theme. And I would like to thank him. Like we got in dot-com and we are getting good themes after his feedback. That's the thing. But taking people's feedback means you also have to potentially change what you're doing. Yes. Is that hard for you? I'm not that resistant to change. Especially if revenue is flat. Yeah I'm like... Yeah when your business is going flat... Try something. Change something. Yeah I changed something. You know the cash theme was the one of the main cash cow for my business. It was giving me a lot of money. When it goes flat it was really a serious problem. So I had to reach out. But all the business are really picking up slowly and everything going good. But now I'm more confident even cash theme will do okay then I'm fine with it because other companies are picking up. That's one of the things when you're talking to business owners. That diversification so that you're not relying on one revenue stream but having multiple revenue streams. You can use the one to help start the others off. But you want the others to grow so that you're not relying on one. Ends up being a very very helpful model. Yeah I do that. And as earlier I talked about I used a community based model for cash theme. But now with my studies and everything I'm trying to mix around with the management style. So I've now free some of them on for the operating. And even if I go for a loss for like one year I should be able to survive. Those are the things now I'm making senior replanings and all those things. Before I was like so confident like okay I can do anything because it's still rock on. But now it's like okay I need to plan this. I need to plan that. Yeah creating contingency plans. Yeah. Yeah no it totally makes sense. We have time for a question or two. Does anyone have a question? Yeah right there. Mr. Pierce I think you said it but I missed it. The t-shirt you know we never really knew the company. Do you market that only in Nepal or also here in the US? Or where is your market? Currently only in Nepal. We are not that big enough to market here in states. And secondly in terms of potential businesses have you thought about travel agencies? Yeah there are lots of travel agencies. I didn't find a problem in travel right now. If I find a problem in travel definitely I will start. Because like there are lots of online businesses which is I think destroying the existing travel agency. And I don't think I can go on that segment. Maybe planning travel trekking sections can be a good. Like trek and a proper guide kind of things. But not on travels because it's more it's like online businesses. It's like taking everyone put in. It's booking from XPD booking from TripAdvisor Lonely Blind School. Well I was thinking more travel within Nepal. Yeah within Nepal also they are doing that. Oh no XPD. They're trying their growth too. XPD is like they are even doing it within the cities and within everything. Even I booked everything from XPD over here. So it's like okay. So I'm like those are the big players already playing in there. I think it's not a good idea for me. At least I'm not convinced about that. We had a question over here. Yes. You said that you know your themes are several different markets. Was that right design? Or was that just being at this halfway point? So did you when you put your some of your themes in different. When you put you know Summon and Vato and Summon. We're putting a common Summon mojo. Was that on purpose? Were you trying to put some in different places? Or was it by for some other reason? Right now I'm trying. It's an trial phase like I'm trying different markets. You're doing it on purpose. You're trying to see get feedback on what's going on. Yeah I'm trying to see which type of theme sells where. Yeah. So I'm looking at what looking at WordPress.com. What type of theme is needed there. I'm looking at theme forest. What type of theme they are looking for. Somehow find out like okay WordPress.com needs very niche theme. Very focused designs and very very good quality design. But if you go on theme forest they just need visual composer. And 10 and 15 pages of home page, different home page. And I'm like oh my god otherwise you will not sell. If you are niche then you are already 10 cells for one theme. So I found out what are they. Every marketplace has their own market. So it depends on what you focus in. If you have to choose the marketplace. I think you shouldn't sell it in all the marketplace. But I didn't know which one to go. So I tried it all the marketplace. It's awesome. Let's give Sakina Ham. Good stuff. We're going to take a little break and then we'll be back with John.