Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

You can learn more about Shaan’s company, Prep Expert, on their website: https://prepexpert.com.

Shaan’s book, going into further detail on his strategies, is Self-Made Success. It’s in paperback at https://amzn.to/3QAhTFC, and as an audiobook at https://amzn.to/4abXeP9.

For his insights on the SAT, check out SAT 2400 in Just 7 Steps. It’s in paperback on Amazon at https://amzn.to/44Gp2KE, and the Kindle version is https://amzn.to/3UsK1vE.

Our host, Maureen Metcalf, posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI. Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane. Hardback (https://amzn.to/48Doh6j) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/48YCRF4)
• Nerve: Lessons on Leadership from Two Women Who Went First by Martha Piper & Indira Samarasekera. Paperback (https://amzn.to/3tOtzg4) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/41OYdT5)
• Jilly Truit murder mysteries by Beverley McLachlin:
  • Full Disclosure – https://amzn.to/46TxW6Q (paperback) https://amzn.to/46VDL3Q (audiobook)
  • Denial – https://amzn.to/46YCbhs (paperback) https://amzn.to/3GJc0AA (audiobook)
• Women and Leadership: Journey Toward Equity by Sherylle J. Tan & Lisa DeFrank-Cole

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Dr. Shaan Patel completed his Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree at the University of Southern California, Master of Business Administration (MBA) at Yale University, Medical Degree (MD) at the University of Southern California, and dermatology residency at Temple University Hospital. He is a board-certified dermatologist who practices teledermatology, and as the Founder and CEO of Prep Expert, Patel closed a deal with Mark Cuban on ABC’s Shark Tank for an investment in the company.

Transcript
(auto-generated)

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Being a natural born leader is a myth. In reality, leadership is a journey, acquiring the skills and mindsets to guide a team to its goal. Some people acquire those early, so it seems natural. Our guest in this podcast, Sean Patel, started his journey early after achieving less than stellar results on his sat in high school, Sean figured out a better way to prepare for the test and achieved perfection the next time. He then founded and became CEO of prep expert to help other students test well, he didn’t stop there. He shares his continuing leadership journey with us, including lessons learned from Shark tank’s Mark Cuban those mindsets that make your leadership seem like a natural are core to the framework of the innovative leadership Institute’s coaching and coursework. Check out the ways we can help you on your leadership journey at innovating leadership.com

Unknown Speaker 1:04
it’s a lot less stressful than defending yourself on Shark Tank.

Unknown Speaker 1:14
This is innovating leadership. CO creating our future. I’m your host. Maureen Metcalf, the founder and CEO of the innovative Leadership Institute, where we help leaders be future ready, helping us on this mission. Today is Dr Sean Patel, founder and CEO of prep expert. He’ll be sharing his leadership journey, including closing a deal with Mark Cuban on ABC Shark Tank. Welcome Sean. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here before we jump into the conversation about leadership, tell us a little bit about your Shark Tank experience. Yeah, Shark Tank was a life changing experience, not only for my personal life, but also my business. Of course, I went on Shark Tank in 2016 I pitched my company prep expert, which is a test preparation and college admissions consulting company for an investment I was lucky enough to close an investment deal with Mark Cuban. We did a deal for $250,000

Unknown Speaker 2:12
in exchange for 20% equity in the company, and he’s been an amazing investor advocate and partner for the company ever since, since airing on Shark Tank, the company has really taken off. We 10x revenue the following year, and been kind of on that hockey stick like growth ever since. So it’s been very, very exciting. On the surface, this sounds like just a smooth journey. Tell us a little deeper. So you were a med student when this happened. You grew up in a public school and low college rate, and you weren’t a wealthy kid. So there’s a little bit more backstory to what got you here, given the struggles that you had as you hit those bumps in the road, what kept you going? I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, not exactly known for its excellent education system. So I went to public school there. It’s one of the worst school districts in the nation. At the time I was in high school, we had a 37% dropout rate when I was in school. I didn’t know the first thing about college admissions, test preparation, scholarships, any of that my parents didn’t go to college in the United States. I grew up in their motel, but I knew that I wanted to get college paid for. I knew that I wanted to become a physician. On the very first sat that I ever took, I barely scored above average. I then spent hundreds of hours in the library self studying for the SAT and was able to raise my score 640 points to a perfect score, this opened up life changing opportunities for me to go to top colleges and win half a million dollars in college scholarships. And so when I got to college, I developed prep expert, which is the company that exists today, to train students based on my methods and my curriculum, to change their own test scores, to change their own lives the way that I did. I’m really proud to say we’ve now helped over 100,000 students improve their test scores, get into top colleges and win over $100 million in college scholarships for themselves. The bumps in the road have been plenty, and many, one of which we’ve already kind of touched on, which was going on, Shark Tank. Shark Tank wasn’t as smooth as maybe a lot of people thought. I went in there very overconfident, thinking I was going to get an investment from multiple different sharks. However, what ended up happening is they became really concerned that at the time I was also in medical school and I was the CEO of prep expert, and they didn’t think I would be able to do both. Luckily, Mark Cuban gave me a deal anyway, and I was able to finish medical school. I still practice teledermatology, but really, just to keep my diagnostic skills and licensing up, I spend the majority of my time as the CEO of prep expert and continuing to grow the business.

Unknown Speaker 5:00
Which I really have a passion for, being a leader, being an entrepreneur and a CEO. As a young person, you’re living in your parents’ motel. I’m assuming your parents worked very hard to run the operation, so you had, in that way, exceptional role models for commitment, drive to succeed, care for your family, and they supported you in continuing to study. Yeah, absolutely, I think you hit the nail on the head in that, although the education system in Vegas was not great, the value of education and the role models I had within my family were amazing. My dad worked two jobs. He worked from 5am often to 10pm he worked as a pharmacist during the day and then ran the motel at night. An exceptional role model. I’ve never seen anyone work as hard as him, and so I think that really rubbed off on me to work really hard, both in school as well as an entrepreneur in my life. To your point, one of the things that I learned through that self studying for that sat in high school, are those traits of determination, hard work, self control, time management. And I believe those skills continued on to lead to my success, not only academically in college, in medical school, in business school, but most importantly, as a CEO and as an entrepreneur, I think those are all skills that are highly translatable and very necessary to be a successful leader. As we think about the mindsets of innovative leaders, one of the things you and I talked about before the show was this idea of inspiring followership. What is it that we do and don’t do as leaders that encourages people to want to follow us. Part of what we explore in the podcast is, as the world is changing, what does the leader of the future look like? And you’re in an industry that’s changing pretty quickly. So tell us a little bit about how college prep is changing and how that’s causing your leadership approach to change. It’s really important to be an effective leader, to lead by service and lead by example. So that’s one of the things that I really do at prep expert with my company. No task is too small for me, and I show that to my employees and my management team by doing the littlest things and getting really into the details. The other thing that I think is really important, specifically with AI and the college prep industry, is, just like any other industry, actually, AI is a huge threat. So for example, there’s a large company in the college prep industry called Chag that does K through 12 tutoring. I believe their market cap got reduced by 80 or 90% last year, and the reason for that was largely due to the advent of chat GPT, allowing students to essentially tutor themselves. And so I think it’s really important that leaders in this new economy, in this new world of AI, continue to lead by example, by learning about AI, integrating AI into key components of their business, as well as you really have to serve as an inspiration, as you said to your management team and to your employees that you will navigate this challenging landscape because they are looking to you to weather the storm, whatever storm that may be, whether that’s AI or Some other black swan event, or covid or something like that. I think it’s really, really important that leaders maintain an optimistic outlook and look for ways to utilize new technologies, rather than shy away from them. A couple of things. You said, no task is too small, and yet I want to counterbalance that with I personally need to be careful of not stepping in where my team has the ball and overstepping and so the balance of inspiring and creating opportunities and giving space, tell me a little bit about how you balance that, because I assume you’re not following around behind people doing their jobs? Absolutely. Yeah, it’s really a delicate balance as a leader, the amount that you need to empower and delegate your team and the amount that you need to actually do the important stuff yourself. For me, I don’t have a perfect balance, probably as every leader needs to always kind of ebb and flow. But for me, I try to focus on the really important tasks that I think it’s most important that it comes from me. So, for example, curriculum development at prep expert is very, very important to come from me, because I am the face of the company. I’m the person who created the original content and curriculum. Sure I could hand it off to one of my tutors. However, I think it’s really important that parents, students, employees, know that this was actually developed, that this was actually created by Dr Sean Patel, and that’s really important. So I think for leaders, it’s really important in your organization to understand what are the really key tasks that need to be done by you. Maybe.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
It’s recording a podcast. There’s no other hosts that could do it, right? Maybe it is writing a quarterly letter. Whatever it may be that the CEO or the leader really needs to show up and do, even if it’s the hard task or the hard thing to do. You know, I don’t love writing curriculum. It’s not easy to do. It would be easier to delegate it, but I think it’s really important that you do the important things, and of course, let your team shine, empower them, delegate and inspire on the other things that you may not be the best person to do. Thank you for sharing the nuance there, because I want to be clear that the most effective leaders do what’s theirs to do, and we each decide what’s mine based on your company and phase in the life cycle, and all of that you mentioned in the AI space, an organization that does tutoring that they’ve had an 80% drop in market cap. I just point out that there are large, successful, well run companies that will drop in value because their leadership didn’t anticipate and pivot quickly enough, and they may have been brilliantly run. I don’t know them, so no commentary. The equation I talk about right now is pre covid. We had leaders that were really effective at implementing change. The world was moving slower, easier to predict what was happening in the current space with AI moving so quickly, and other things like covid and whatever is the next Black Swan, we as leaders need to prepare our organization for the less knowable change. How do you compete with chat GPT? Why are people still coming to you rather than the free or $20 a month chat, GPT option, one of the things that I think that leaders can get caught up in is becoming too in their own way of how they do things, and not being nimble or agile enough to adapt or change. And so I think that’s really important from a mindset perspective for a leader, but that then extends into your organization. I take the mindset that we are very nimble, very agile, very ready to change, and that then extends and permeates throughout my management team, throughout my organization, etc. To give an example, one adaptation we are making at prep expert to adapt to AI I had a young team of entrepreneurs approach me with a brand new startup they’re creating that allows video based solutions to math questions on SAT problems that are AI generated. I could have said, well, you know, this isn’t exactly what we do, or, you know, this is competitive to us, but I approached it as this is a great partnership or investment opportunity. We would love to use this in our organization. And I think that’s really the mindset or the perspective that all leaders should have, whether it’s AI or any other new technology or platform. I think it comes from, and it starts from having that mindset that you need to be agile, you need to be nimble, and you need to adopt new technologies when they’re presented and see if they can fit into your larger mission as an organization. Are you also in search of those, or right now waiting for them to come to you both, I have been looking. I’m always looking. So when I’m doing curriculum development or high level strategy at my company, AI is now on the sheet. So I look for AI enabled technologies that can help us do what we do better, more efficiently, lower cost, whatever it may be, this particular example I gave you, they came to me, but we’re also actively searching. So I think it’s important for any management team to do both. Sean, as you mentioned, your strategy. Is there something else on your critical path that you’re really looking to create in the AI enablement space? Yeah, absolutely on my dream list of AI tools that we have not come across yet, but hopefully in search of now and into the future is the ability to really recreate the experience of a one on one tutor for a student that is as good or similar to a human. So right now, with generative AI, chat, GPT and other interfaces. It’s really a chat based interface, but when you think about how a tutor interacts with a student, I really think a lot of the magic happens with a face to face interaction, whether that’s zoom or in person, and that’s really where our tutors shine. Now, if there’s an opportunity to recreate that in an AI generated avatar that can answer questions just as well as a human based tutor. A lot of companies may say, Well, you know, this is the end of our company, but I would probably say, how can we leverage this? How can we utilize this to expand and.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
Our company to heights that we’ve never seen before. I love that right now, we’re using an AI based version of me to deliver some of the content in our program, but it is pre programmed. It doesn’t recreate itself by itself, fed with chat GPT and especially because the avatar just makes weird sounds periodically as if my body kind of had intestinal distress or something. It just kind of makes weird avatar sounds. So not ready for prime time yet, but I can imagine a scenario where maybe you have a two tier option, a lower cost product based and a higher cost one on one human base, because my assumption is there are still people who will want a human tutor, and that’s what we’ve found with parents, especially that is our target demographic, parents of high school students, is that they typically want the human whether it’s in the past or in the future. I think humans will not go away. There is a certain magic that happens in human to human interactions that I think will not be replaceable in any business, whether it’s a tutoring business like mine, or a much larger organization like many of the leaders in this audience. I think what you said is really powerful in that perhaps there can be lower cost tiers to the AI solutions, and then you can offer a premium version for the human based versions, which actually puts more value on the humans and the employees in your organization, and could actually be a great revenue generator as as a leader or CEO as well. So the mindset that CEOs and leaders should have is that AI is not a threat, but an opportunity, and if you take that mindset, the sky’s the limit for you and your organization. I love the idea that we have kind of the human hybrid, or human machine hybrid, augmented intelligence. Kind of idea. In our latest book, we looked at the skills leaders need. In your case, the same skills tutors would need so number one is communication skills.

Unknown Speaker 17:12
Give me the

Unknown Speaker 17:14
sunshine. Give me my

Unknown Speaker 17:20
crash,

Unknown Speaker 17:26
grab some friends and an Ice Cold Mountain Dew today. Mountain Dew,

Unknown Speaker 17:33
if you’re struggling with chronic congestion, sinus infections or snoring, who evaluates you first matters at Ohio ENT and allergy physicians, your initial visit is with a board certified ENT physician, not a shortcut and not a standardized script, because real answers take real diagnostics and real experience. Ohio ENT and allergy physicians offer the full spectrum of sinus and snoring care, from in office treatments to advanced surgical options when needed, personalized care, local physicians, long term relief. Book your appointment now at Ohio ENT and allergy.com you know, people say when they start planning a remodel, they say, I don’t even know where to begin, but that’s where we come in. At simple bath and kitchen design is the fun part. We walk you through styles, colors and layouts right in our showroom so you can see your new space come to life, and once you love the design our team handles the rest on time, on budget and with zero pressure. Beautiful designs, smooth process. Visit simple bath and kitchen.com. To start your design today, we make it simple for you.

Unknown Speaker 18:34
Second is growth mindset. How is my leadership team embracing with curiosity? What’s possible? Yeah, I think that’s a growth mindset. Is a really important one, because the creativity and the imagination that you need to have as a leader often gets undervalued. And in this case, when there’s a new technology emerging, like AI, you really need to have creativity. You really need to have imagination to see the future, because many people do not have that ability. That’s what makes you valuable as a leader. In my opinion, that’s a beautiful illustration, because you are in a business that could lose market cap, like the example you mentioned earlier, when people can go to a much less expensive AI version that you’re integrating AI and creating tiered solutions, seems like it would protect your revenue. Yeah, it has. And what’s been good is we haven’t seen the same dip that I had mentioned earlier from other tutoring companies. We’ve actually seen an increase in revenue this year, which is really telling. I think that one of the things that people are going to be looking more for with so many AI tools, especially consumers, is what we had mentioned earlier, which is that human interaction, that human touch. I think that’s what’s really special about my company, a prep expert, is the interaction with me personally. There’s no one who is Dr Shah Patel. You can make an AI avatar, but for now.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
Wow, there’s none very similar or that can answer your questions yet. So I think in this new creator economy with personal brands, these humans that have these personal brands, I kind of say you are the niche, right? And so you as the leader or the CEO or the personal brand, can really leverage that in a way that signals out all of the noise with AI, because AI is kind of this generic thing which people are really gravitate toward their people in a lot of ways. So I would say that that’s a great business strategy for any leader out there who has an organization to leverage your people, leverage the human interaction, because I think that can have lasting power as well as, like you said, keep your revenue and potentially even grow it at the same time, know where to offload the tasks that AI can do more efficiently. So I can also really amplify the value and power of the humans to do human to human contact. That’s a really important point, because AI will not necessarily replace jobs, but it’ll act as a new tool that will allow you to do more things, more efficiently, lower cost and higher revenue, and then the humans can do the Huber stuff. For example, a lot of photographers were really worried when Photoshop came out, and now they just learned Photoshop, and there’s plenty of new jobs to do Photoshop, etc. AI is very similar in that sense that it’s going to be a new tool that people can leverage for new jobs, new economies, and hopefully do things more productively at lower cost. That’s certainly the hope. I started my career in finance when we still worked on mainframe so old when we started to use desktops, we all thought that that meant we would work more agreeable hours done with the 80 hour work weeks, and that did not happen. We just did more analyzes. We generated better results, but we didn’t work fewer hours. My hope with this is that we leverage the opportunity to reclaim a bit more balance in life. There’s certainly the opportunity there. I mean, can you imagine if an AI is able to do 90% of your emails, how many hours you’d be able to save, right? And that’s just a tool we haven’t seen before. So I think there’s gonna be a lot of tools like that that that will help CEOs especially and leaders especially, to save time and hopefully achieve that balance that you were talking about. And with that will require significant change, I realize I try to keep up on AI tools, and I could spend full time and still not be up to speed on the rate of change, and yet, I am certainly regaining hours, probably an hour, every day, using some kind of AI enabled capability. I would say I’m in the same boat, you know, I’ve been able to leverage AI in a way that it saves me time. I will say that I have not found an AI tool that I’m afraid of yet, which is good, like you said at the beginning, a lot of it is about mindset. And if you take that growth mindset or embrace AI, rather than see it as a threat to your organization, which AI can be a threat if you do not embrace it, and you do not engage with it, and you do not see the future vision of how it could be leveraging your organization, because you’re going to be sitting on flat feet while everyone else is running. The other mindset that we talk about is abundance versus scarcity, which I would really say is growth versus fear. Certainly some level of fear is appropriate. If I don’t change, I will be impacted by this. If I can see the opportunities and proactively leverage them, I should be varying levels of fun for those who aren’t doing anything, fear is probably the appropriate response, because your life in the future will be worse off if you’re not adopting it in a leadership role. Yeah, I agree with that. I think there’s a healthy level of fear, but I love what you said about abundance. That’s the way that I view, and I think leaders should view AI, is that it presents this tremendous opportunity for abundance, because AI may actually be the technology that allows us to increase productivity, as we’ve been talking about, in a way that we have never seen before, that may be able to grow the GDP in a way that we have never seen before. In that sense, it could be our Savior in terms of maybe help reducing some of the national debt, because if you have that much growth, the only way to reduce national debt is to reduce spending, which I don’t think the government’s doing anytime soon, or grow productivity and grow the economy, and so AI could present this opportunity, and I’m optimistic, obviously, but I think that’s the right mindset to have. I’m optimistic as well. My optimism is significantly in your space, the medical space, the Accel.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
Acceleration of quantum computing, being able to process the volume of data available, seems like it will significantly accelerate healthcare solutions. Yeah, I’m really excited about that as well. I think Eric Jensen, the CEO of Nvidia, has been very, very excited about drug development in particular, AI allows you to try millions of combinations, especially in the quantum computing space of different compounds, and then actually test them to see whether they would work. And this is a very archaic process right now in drug development and in the healthcare space of people kind of guessing and then testing and it taking years, if that can be accelerated. I mean, we could potentially see a boom of great medicines or previously incurable diseases and chronic illnesses that could be amazing for society. There are brilliant use cases and something we hit on earlier, the transition will be expensive, and by that, I mean the human cost as we, as a business communities and as a society try to navigate the workforce cost people who don’t make the transition, something you said earlier, seems crucial, and That’s how are we following trends in our industry with curiosity and then adaptability? So I see that things are changing. How do I increase the probability that I will navigate that change effectively? Yeah, that really speaks to what everyone should be doing with AI, which is learning, testing, trying the tools to make sure that you’re familiar with them. Undoubtedly, there is going to be some pain in the transition over to AI tools, and people will lose jobs. But that does not mean there will not be jobs available, and it’s up to that person to adapt, pivot, learn AI tools so that they can go to the new jobs. I don’t agree with the idea that there is some fixed level of jobs in the world. I think anytime there’s a new technology like the internet, people were really scared of the internet at first, and then the internet created all these brand new jobs that people had to learn and adapt to. I think very similar, is AI you will need to learn. And you know, the internet did displace and replace a lot of jobs. Don’t get me wrong. However, it’s not like we lost some fixed number of jobs that were always there. There was new jobs created that made up for the lost job. So I think there will be some pain, as you said, smart, hard working people will lose their previous jobs, but it’s up to them to retrain themselves on AI tools so that they can pivot to the new jobs that are created. And in all honesty, I think there will be more prosperous and higher wage potentially in the new jobs, because they will be more valuable and be able to be more productive with AI tools. You and I agree on that as the person being impacted, I still need to be paying attention to what’s happening in my field and be proactive, which is hard if I’m working two jobs like your dad did, and working from five in the morning until 10 at night. When am I going to get retrained? Just to acknowledge there will be winners and losers during the transition, and it’s a transition that’s going to happen. I wouldn’t say it’s easy by any means, but no, it’s going to take some work. It’s going to take some time. But all good things typically take they take hard work and they take time to exponentially grow into something amazing in the future. And that’s what AI is going to be. People will need to retrain themselves. There will be some pain in that transition, but there always is in any growth. Let’s go back to Shark Tank. Mark Cuban gave you $250,000

Unknown Speaker 28:53
I assume he didn’t just write a check say, Go forth, Sean and do great things and send me back money later. How did you interact with him? Now that he owns 20% of your company, it’s been an amazing partnership with Mark Cuban. So the way that we have engaged over the years, which it’s now been an eight year partnership, is typically mark, as everyone may know, has invested in hundreds of businesses. He typically likes to interact by email. But what’s amazing about Mark is he will respond to your email, typically within five minutes. And it’s not in AI, it’s Mark. So the way that he is efficient with his time with so many businesses is he is able to interact. And I don’t know if this is true or not, but I’ve heard the number is somewhere between 800 to 1000 emails per day, which is pretty amazing, because he typically doesn’t do meetings unless there’s a big event or a big panel. So for example, we just did an entrepreneurship panel for the Obama Foundation. So of course, I got to meet Mark there, but it was funny he was mentioning some of the emails that I had sent him over the past.

Unknown Speaker 30:00
Last week and said, Congratulations on this or that. So it’s not some AI that is reading and responding to emails when you interact with Mark, but it’s been amazing. Over the years, as I mentioned, we’ve co hosted entrepreneurship panels. We’ve co written books on kid entrepreneurship. We’ve co invested in educational companies together, having a mentor and an advisor such as mark for the business. On top of that, just for the prep expert business, he’s done amazing things. He’s negotiated some of our best licensing deals, opened up marketing and partnership opportunities, and he’s always willing to help us promote a new launch or new products. For all that, the value has been pretty incredible. How do you continue to grow as a leader? Because my assumption is, when you started the company 12 years ago, you were less experienced. You were still in med school. New CEO probably focused more on the product than running a business. Yeah, one of the best things that I did about five or six years ago, in addition to having mark as my mentor and advisor, was I hired a business coach and a chief of staff who has 30 plus years as an Executive leader that has made a huge impact on me as a leader, to be able to learn from someone with that much experience about What to do, what not to do, to deal with the hard things in businesses, whether it’s hiring, firing employees, company culture issues, those things have really gotten ironed out. When I’ve been able to essentially have a business coach who with that much experience take me under his wing. I’ve become such a better leader because of that. So I think if leaders listening to this have the opportunity to work with a coach, one on one, or a business advisor that has far more experience than you, that’s really what’s most valuable, and so that’s had an amazing impact on me. So you said business coach and Chief of Staff is that the same person or two different people. Luckily, it’s blended into one so same person, really. That’s what he helps most with his company culture, staffing, but also helping me grow as a leader. So it’s a little bit of everything. It’s a good value. A

Unknown Speaker 32:14
colleague of ours, quite experienced and quite successful, joined a younger company as their COO and was absolutely in charge of culture hiring that organization has excelled because of the partnership. Yeah, both people were important, yeah, and I could say very similar things, which is, when you’re a startup, you know you don’t have that company culture, you don’t have those processes in place. You need to figure that out at some point and go from just a product based startup to a professional organization that inspires, as we’ve talked about, but people want to work for they show up for that has a great company culture. Those are all, if not, more important, potentially, than even the product itself, sometimes, especially for employees working for you, yeah, and that’s why he’s also the chief of staff, exactly. You know, it’s really, really important, I think, for the employees to see that, because if you don’t have the right staff in place for any organization, it really doesn’t matter what the product is, it’s not going to succeed. And that really starts from the leadership team and the management team. That’s such an important message for entrepreneurs, because it’s easy to fall in love with our own product and think that it’s the crown jewel, when in fact, it’s the combination of the product and the culture that continues to generate it. And without that pairing, the crown jewel can get pretty dusty, yeah, and that’s what I love about being a CEO and a business owner and entrepreneur, is there is this balance, right? You have to balance the product the organization. We talked earlier about balancing delegation and knowing what to work on. That’s probably the most important skill as a leader or a CEO, is prioritizing what you need to work on and figuring that out. And because you could work on 1000 things in the business, it’s figuring out which 10 are the important ones in which 990 is your staff best suited for brilliant the humility I hear in you is really a nice trait to amplify. It sounds like you have continued to grow consistently during your tenure as CEO, from pitching lots of sharks before you got the financing, pitching lots of publishers before you landed your first book deal, that humility and the tenacity to continue has been a pair of characteristics that really typify the person you were, all the way back to the high school kid who needed to raise his SAT scores. Thank you. Yeah, I definitely think it all ties together, and it’s a personality trait I have, which I think is an important one for all leaders and CEOs. You know, the game of business is to stay in business. You can’t win.

Unknown Speaker 35:00
In at business. It’s a it’s not a winnable game. You just continue to ride the waves, work hard, lead by example, and adapt to new technologies and new trends, as we’ve talked about after AI. There’s got to be something else. It’s important that leaders, CEOs, adapt to the next new technology as well. And you will never win, you will never lose, but you have to have fun through the process, which is something we didn’t talk about. But I love the wrap up of where to focus, and that there is no winning and losing, staying in business, and I would say making an impact, which I hear you doing, and what a huge impact you make. Thank you. Yeah, that’s my favorite part about running prep expert is we get to do good and do well. What I mean by that is we do good for parents and students by helping them lower their cost of college. And everyone knows how expensive college is now, with student debt hitting almost 2 trillion in average cost of college around 200,000 it’s getting unaffordable for many people, so we help them reduce or eliminate their college costs through merit based scholarships, raising their test scores. And that’s my favorite part. Is when parents and students email us saying, you know, my student just got a quarter million dollar full tuition scholarship or $100,000

Unknown Speaker 36:13
scholarship. This is life changing for us, and so we get to do good and do well. And that’s my favorite part of business. Sean, thank you for being such a beautiful role model on so many levels. Where would our listeners learn more about you and your company? Head over to prepaxpert.com you can find out all about our SAT and AC T online courses. We help students raise their test scores with the most effective test prep curriculum in the world, and you can find out about that at prep expert.com Is there a way they would follow you? Because not only is the company interesting, but you’re interesting. Oh yeah, of course, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m just at Sean Patel, spelled a little bit differently, S, H, A, A, N, last name, P, A, T, E, L, and if you do want to hear more from me, I do have another book that’s more around entrepreneurship and for business leaders. It’s called self made success, 48 strategies to live happier, healthier and wealthier. And you can find that on Amazon. Thank you so much, Sean for sharing your information and for our listeners, thank you for the impacts you are making in the world that at this point in time of significant transition, each of us have a valuable piece to add to our global economy. Thank you for having me. This has been fantastic. Marie. Appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 37:42
You Hey, Columbus, it’s Jenny and Bill from simple bath and kitchen. Are you thinking about updating your bathroom or kitchen? Don’t call some big out of town franchise. We’re local, top to bottom right here in Columbus, we know our city, we know the homes, and we always treat every project like it’s our own, on time, on budget, zero pressure, so you can actually enjoy your home visit simple bath and kitchen.com today we make it simple for you that simple bath and kitchen.com simple bath and kitchen.com still using an analog stethoscope. That’s like sending a fax instead of a text. Echo modernizes your stethoscope exams with 40x amplification built in ECG and AI powered insights. Visit Eko health.com/upgrade,