You Don't Have to Do Everything Yourself to Succeed in Business with AJ

Are you building a business or just creating a demanding job for yourself? This illuminating conversation with entrepreneur Alykhan Jetha tackles one of the most common challenges business owners face: founder syndrome.

When you're passionate about your business, it's easy to fall into the trap of believing no one else can match your standards or care as deeply about your work. This mindset creates a dangerous bottleneck where everything must flow through you, leaving you overwhelmed, isolated, and unable to take a break. AJ shares a simple yet powerful litmus test: if you can't take a vacation, what you've built isn't truly a business - it's just another job.

We explore multiple strategies for breaking free from this trap, from the ancient practice of journaling (which even Marcus Aurelius used to process leadership challenges) to finding peer support groups where you can openly discuss your challenges with fellow entrepreneurs who truly understand your position. AJ details his own journey from overworked founder to strategic leader after discovering a counterintuitive truth: there are people who can do 60-70% of your tasks better than you can, freeing your mental bandwidth for growth or personal time.

The conversation provides a fascinating look at Daylight app, a tool specifically designed to help small service-based businesses with 1-100 employees build effective systems. But beyond the technology, the most valuable insights center around the three pillars of entrepreneurial success: good people, peer support, and effective systems that let your business thrive even when you're not present.

Ready to transform your relationship with your business? Listen for practical wisdom on creating a company that serves your life, rather than consuming it. Connect with AJ on LinkedIn or visit dayliteapp.com to continue the conversation.

https://marketcircle.com

Sponsored by Nico Van de Venne CommV

Chapters

• 0:00 The Lonely Entrepreneur Problem
• 4:20 Journaling as a Business Therapy Tool
• 8:45 Finding Your Peer Support Network
• 14:52 Daylight App: Tools for Small Business
• 21:20 Letting Go: Delegating for Growth
• 25:53 Key Insights and Where to Connect

Transcript

AJ: 0:00

Here's an important realization that a lot of solopreneurs entrepreneurs. They think that they have to do everything because other people can't match their quality of work or their care or whatever. What I've found is that there are people that are better.

AJ: 0:20

They're typically better than you at these things, right, and so if you take some time and find some people, you'll realize that there are people that can do a better job than you at not maybe everything, but let's say 60, 70 percent of things and then you can focus on the 30, but then that frees up 70 of your mental bandwidth to either have some time with your family or to grow your business further in different ways.

Nico: 1:01

Let me invite you to sit back, drop your jaw, tongue and shoulders, take a deep breath and, if you wish, close your eyes for a moment and feel the beat within. In a few seconds, you just jumped from your head to your heart and felt the beat within opening up to receive even more value and fulfillment out of your business and life. And today's episode. I'm your host, nico van der Venne, confidant to successful CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs who are striving to achieve everlasting fulfillment. Before we dive into today's episode, I have a request and I ask this every time because I know that you guys kind of sometimes forget things but in any case, don't forget to leave a five-star review. But what I found more important is share the episode with somebody that you think that might benefit out of it, and you know. Thank you for keeping this support on the podcast all this time, thank you.

Nico: 1:57

So today I welcome AJ to the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast. I even messed up my own podcast name. That's a good start. Hi, aj, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me on. It's great to have you. I got one question for me For you. Wow, I'm really mixing up stuff. So have you ever heard of CO disease or founder syndrome?

AJ: 2:21

I have, in different words, but the same concept.

Nico: 2:25

yes, okay, what's your experience in these one of these two topics? Which one would you want to thank so?

AJ: 2:31

the. There's a few. One of them is uh, lonely at the top. Have you heard this, this uh term? Lonely at the top? Yeah, so that that's one thing. Another one is no family life balance. Another one is working all the time. I mean the life balance goes into the working all the time, meaning even Sundays you're working, even Saturdays you're working and you can't get away. I talk about this a lot in some of my entrepreneur articles about systems, and if you can't take a vacation, you can't go away, you can't disconnect, then it's not a business, it's a job. Really.

Nico: 3:24

Yes, a couple of good points right there. So when you talk about life balance, as they say, I kind of call it life integration as well, because job in life and life in job, it's kind of….

AJ: 3:37

Yeah, I'm not sure about this word balance. I don't like this word balance.

Nico: 3:41

Yeah, it's an awkward thing, I think you have to juggle these things already and then have to balance them out. It's like let's integrate, yeah, but on the other hand, do you also link it towards um having that one person that you can talk to about anything about business?

AJ: 3:58

so though I, I'm an introvert and and typically I have difficulty having honest and open conversations with somebody. There are a few people. Unfortunately, they're no longer here, so then I now resort to my journal. Okay, so my journal is my therapist and for me the act of journaling is very calming and it helps clear my head. And you know, I've tried even typing but I have to write. Oh yeah, right. So if I write, like even voice that? You know, people told me we should voice journal. Maybe that doesn't work for me.

Nico: 4:48

Typing doesn't work for me, but writing, actual writing, works yeah, well, I do understand it's kind of it's kind of unique to each person, isn't it the way you kind of do these things? Is there anything that you picked from you know having the conversations from the people that used to be close to you into your journal, that you know kind of structure or anything like that?

AJ: 5:11

No. So one of the things I did with the journaling that really helped me was I read a book called the Road Less Stupid, and this Road Less Stupid was about asking yourself the right questions. And what I did is I integrated those questions into my journaling process. So I would ask myself, well, how would I solve this, how should I solve this problem, or what if I did this, and what would be the repercussions, et cetera. So I asked myself these questions I, I don't get an answer and like it's just like you know nothing really right, like like I just gibberish, and then other times the answer will come like I'll ask myself the same question. Yeah, so I used to think also that when you're journaling, asking yourself the same question was a problem. But I found out that, uh, marcus aurelius, you know, had many times in his journals the same question or the same topic, or the same, uh, same thing. So it's, it's uh, I think it's normal yeah, yeah, I, I would.

Nico: 6:21

I would say so as well. I I've stopped journaling for myself. I kind of pick it up in my mind. These days, it's really a point where I, right before I fall asleep, I do a couple of very specific things, and one of those is just asking the one question what was best today? Something? Like that it kind of iterates in different forms, but it's basically coming down to that, and then I go over all the people that I love, even people that I work with, that I have a conflict with I was I always say that I love you, thank you, because the conflict enriches, you know, and that's that's why I sent them the love.

Nico: 6:57

But, right, um, but in the journaling, I always ask myself you know what's what's a good thing today? What happened, that went well, and then go from there. But yeah, it's so amazing, isn't it, that we've been doing this for 2,000 years and more. When you talk about Marcos Aurelius, yeah, and not everybody's doing it, which is for me, it's like why not, right?

AJ: 7:23

Well, I think some people. So before I was journaling by hand, I would have still conversations in my own head uh, and I used to say that your subconscious will solve your. Your subconscious, uh, solves problems. You just got to ask it to do so and and, uh, I would that. That's something I practice. Actually, I still practice. I'll be like when I go for my walks we were talking about walks I'll ask myself some questions in my head, obviously because I'm not journaling at that moment in time and I don't necessarily get the answer, but maybe the next morning it comes.

Nico: 8:03

Yeah, it's true. It's not because you asked the question today that the answer comes today. It's never really. You know that pinpointed in time is like okay, I asked the question, now I'm going to have to wait like 15 minutes and they'll come to me. Yeah, sometimes it comes right away.

AJ: 8:20

Sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it takes a while, but your subconscious you know that. That saying that your subconscious actually uh works when, when, when you aren't, is I've found it to be true yeah, I do believe so as well.

Nico: 8:36

Yeah, so well. You talked a little bit about the loneliness at the top, um, did you have any experience with that?

AJ: 8:44

So, yeah, I mean, within your company you're the leader. There are situations where you're frightful, you're stressed, you don't know what to do. For example, unknown situation. You've never been in this kind of situation before and anybody in the organization. Typically you do not want to kind of show panic or anything like that, because there is a notable negative effect when that occurs, when a leader doesn't know what their, what the road forward is, doesn the troops go to speak, their morale drops and their energy drops. Then them finding certain solutions and problem also kind of doesn't happen then Right, though it's a multiplying effect. So when you are in those situations, what do you do? Who do you talk to? Um, and I used to. I used to talk to my sister, my.

AJ: 10:04

Unfortunately, my sister passed away, so I had to find another outlet, another way. So I joined even, even actually when, when my sister was around, I joined a group of CEOs that. So so there's a organization called CEO Global, I, I joined that group, um, and and you know, within that group you have a smaller group, which is your core group, which is about six to eight to 10 CEOs of other companies that don't compete, right, and then I left that one because the range was too wide. Like, I left that one because the range was too wide. Like you know, I have my business and then in my group was the CEO of Ricoh Canada, which is, you know, four or five hundred million dollar a year business. He doesn't have the same problems I have and I don't have the same problems he has Right. So after that I joined another group called EO right Entrepreneurs Organization. I'm not sure if you're aware of that. Yeah, I joined another group called EO Entrepreneurs Organization. I'm not sure if you're aware of that.

Nico: 11:07

Yeah, I know them.

AJ: 11:09

And so that group is eight of us we're currently eight in what we call our forum and we're similar sized businesses, a little bit different, but not that much of a gap and so that group has been instrumental in. I can talk about any number of problems, uh, and you know, between whether it's personal problems or whether it's business problems, um, we can have like honest conversation and we can get advice. We can get what we call uh sharing, like like know experience share, where I'm not telling you what to do, but I had a similar situation. This is what I did, yeah, right, and so that's been tremendously helpful for that lonely at the top issue.

Nico: 12:11

Yeah, I feel, I feel him, I feel that I've got the same thing him, I feel that I've got the same thing.

Nico: 12:21

Um, we have this um well networking group uh called etion. Entrepreneurship is kind of their, you know, their their way of uh bringing it out there, and it's always I meet with different people. It's not always the same, uh little quorum or uh people, but it's so. It's so much more interesting to to put a problem on the table and getting different perspectives or even sometimes, you know, a little smack in the face of saying why the hell did you do that. Yeah, it really clears up some things, doesn't it?

AJ: 12:50

Yeah, yeah, it's a necessity. It's a necessity, uh, so any entrepreneur that I I kind of run, uh, run into, uh, I, I, you know, if this comes up, I'm like, yeah, you need to find a peer group. It doesn't have to be EO, it doesn't have to be CEO global, but you need, you need to find a group of of folks uh, men and women doesn't matter Right that are in a similar situation that you're in that you can bounce ideas off that you cannot with other people, because even your friends, your friends don't, you know, they're not necessarily CEOs themselves, they don't understand either.

Nico: 13:30

It's kind of like, you know, telling your family about your business. Yeah, it's very difficult Mom and dad, or aunts and uncles or brothers and sisters. I always find it funny when I talk to my brother about my business. So how does that work?

AJ: 13:48

Yeah, you know they're not in the same domain. Right, it's a domain, they're not in the same domain. Now, if you do have people in your family that are in the same domain, then that that can be helpful. Yes, uh, so. So my son, for example, he's, he started his own car detailing business, okay, um, and, and you know, he's doing various, uh, various things, entrepreneurial things, and so now he's, he can come to me and ask it a lot of times he'll come to me and he'll be like what about this?

AJ: 14:21

like how do you handle that? So it can be helpful if you have family, uh, that that's in the same domain, like meaning business, uh but if you don't which most people don't, right, uh then then you gotta, you gotta find some other outlet.

Nico: 14:35

Yeah indeed, sometimes it's even more of a struggle when talking to your family about the. Then you've got to find some other outlet. Yeah, indeed, sometimes it's even more of a struggle when talking to your family about the details.

AJ: 14:41

Yeah, because they don't understand.

Nico: 14:44

They just don't understand yeah indeed, you were talking about your own business. What exactly is the magic that you bring into the world?

AJ: 14:52

So we make a product called Daylight, daylightapp, so D-A-Y-L-I-T-Eapp, and what it is is a you know. Going back a little bit, my love is for small business, right. So I believe that small business is the machine that actually makes the world turn, not these big, big, big, huge businesses. And I mean even those big, big, big, huge businesses started as small businesses Of course, yeah.

AJ: 15:20

Right, so so. So small business is, I think, very, very important. It's important for quality of life, it's important for innovation, et cetera. Because a lot of bigger companies they don't necessarily you know they have their machinery working. They calcify around that machinery and then the innovation doesn't typically come from that. I mean, it does occur, but not crazy amounts. Innovation really comes from smaller businesses, people that are willing to take risks, etc.

AJ: 15:50

So I love small business, so my I end up building up a tool. There's a long story behind this. We don't have enough time. No, it's fine. That helps small businesses grow, and that's what Daylightapp is.

AJ: 16:06

So what is that? First of all, first layer is productivity, so your calendar, your tasks, your contacts, et cetera. The next layer is what we call the people layer, which is, you know, companies, other people, users, et cetera. And then the layer on top of that is getting new business in, because any small business needs customers, no matter what kind of small business. And then, finally, whenever you're talking to somebody and you make a deal, you've got to deliver on whatever it is that you've asked them you know you've made the deal on. So that's the crux of what Daylight is, and our audience is companies 1 to 100 in size.

AJ: 16:54

That's who we target. Typically it's companies that offer a service, so either they're servicing bigger companies or they're providing services to other small businesses so lawyers, consultants, designers, photographers, etc. And we cater to the Apple ecosystem. So our application is native Mac, ios, ipad, with local data. It's not a web app. It's backed by a cloud and all that kind of stuff. We do all that behind the scenes stuff, but you, as the user, use a native application with local data so you can be on an airplane, do whatever it is that you need to do, and when we reconnect we synchronize the data and it's all good. And that's for multiple users, up to 100.

Nico: 17:52

Okay, so what was the trigger to create this app? What kind of triggered?

AJ: 17:58

it. So when I started this company, I didn't start it as what we're doing now. It was a dot-com that I tried to raise some money for and build a dot-com. But my timing was wrong, because by the time I got to the vcs in silicon valley, uh, the bubble, the internet, you know, that dot com bubble was bursting. So I had to kind of do something else to survive and that was consulting. Uh, and for consulting, you know, these are it takes, these are bigger deals.

AJ: 18:33

I was doing programming, consulting right, like I was programming, and so some of these are $50,000, $100,000 deals and it's not an immediate close. People need to kind of look around and you know this kind of stuff. So I'd have to follow up. And when I did follow up, if I didn't forget, I'd forget where I left off the last time, you know. So, basically, the sales process in terms of, you know, locking the customer in. So I started building Daylight for myself and initially what we did was we showcased it as a technology so that you can see, you know, you can gain confidence in our ability to code Right, and then people convinced me to sell it as a you know for them to use, and that's how it became a product okay.

Nico: 19:23

So it's kind of the trigger was a necessity of your for yourself, and then, yes, you know, 100 left kind of brought you to the point that you supply to customers outside of yourself. Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of a main story for a lot of these small businesses probably. So that's probably why they understand mostly why you're doing this. So in those customers that you work with, do you see the same patterns coming up with the leaders that they have these issues that we just talked about?

AJ: 19:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I read some of of those articles, also some on linkedin, um it. I see the same patterns, right, like uh, they over, they, they don't have systems in place so therefore they can't um, take a vacation. That's my litmus test. Yeah, they don't necessarily have like a peer group to talk to. So the ones that you know, the ones that are succeeding, like the way I see the success is they're adding more people, like we've had customers.

AJ: 20:30

We have actually one customer that like 150 users, but they started with us when they were like under 10. They were like 8, I think, and now they're this big. So you know that that kind of business is. They're doing the right thing. The owners are spending time on the business rather than in the business. But there are other customers that are stuck and when I talk to them like I try and talk to customers I love talking to, I talk to them like I try and talk to his customers. I love talking to customers, in fact, because I get so many insights it's crazy. And so the smaller ones, the ones that are more single user, two user, three user for a long period of time when I talk to them, they're the ones you kind of hear about, which is they're working all the time, they don't have many systems in place and they can't take a vacation. Yeah, right, so I see that pattern, yeah, and I think you're calling it founderitis, or.

Nico: 21:37

CEO disease, right? Yeah, indeed, it's founderitis. It's like one of the tipping points for me. You know, I don't have employees, I'm a solo business but I do have a lot of virtual assistants. Okay, it's just a strategy that I've hooked up for myself and saying you know, I like working with other consultants. I know how their mind works, I know how they love things to be communicated, the independence and so on, so I decided to go that way. But it is at a point where I think more than a year and a half ago yeah, more than a year and a half ago I was indeed stuck in that same position. I was doing everything from administration to development of things, and one of my strengths is talking. I love talking. I can be very expressive, I'm very open. I can be very expressive, I'm very open. But writing and structure I'm great at creating structure from chaos by talking, not by writing, right right, right.

AJ: 22:43

That's how your brain kind of works.

Nico: 22:45

Yeah, got it. Yeah, indeed. So then you come to a point where you're like people really need to get these things written down and then find somebody who can translate the talking from that one into a paper-oriented process or SOPs or something like that. That was a tipping point for me where I said really I need help and not just any help, very specific help that's out there. So I kind of found a small company that has all these different vas that I work with now and and I have other evas that I found somewhere else and that's like because there's kind of a two-part there.

Nico: 23:25

They're also solo entrepreneurs, so you can talk to them about what the struggles is as a solo entrepreneur. But then you see the other side as well, where I came from, of deciding to, you know, outsource things and it's so prevalent and so very much alive that letting go of your business's processes it's like the next step. It's a big one, but I do understand. If you kind of create that in a software perspective, people are tending to letting that go a lot more easier. I think.

AJ: 23:58

Well, I mean the software part of it is more about unification of data and about things like reminders. Right, you still need people. Here's an important realization that a lot of solopreneurs entrepreneurs. They think that they have to do everything because other people can't match their quality of work or their care or whatever. What I've found is that there are people that are, you know, better. They're typically better than you at these things, right? Like you mentioned about the writing, right? Uh, there are people better, right, and so if you take some time and find some people, you'll realize that there are people that can do a better job than you at not maybe everything, but let's say 60, 70 percent of things, and and then you can focus on the 30. But then that frees up 70% of your mental bandwidth to either have some time with your family or to grow your business further in different ways.

Nico: 25:11

Yeah, yeah indeed, that's some beautiful insights on that level and thank you for that. So if people are, you know, triggered what we're talking about today, what? Let me put the other questions first. So what would be the message that you want to send out there today for the audience?

AJ: 25:32

for the audience. That number one good people. Find good people to work with, either, as you mentioned, vas, or whether they're employees or not, like subcontractors or contractors. Having a set of good people to work with is life-changing, to be honest, right. Then another one is a peer group, a group of people that are in your kind of situation, where they're owners and you can have honest conversations about that Again. The second one is people, and the third one is basically systems. Right, systems and vision would be the other one, but you don't have systems. Your litmus test is can I take a vacation? If the answer is, but you don't have systems, your litmus test is can I take a vacation? If the answer is no, you need systems and people need them.

Nico: 26:21

Yeah, indeed Indeed. Thank you for that insight. So, AJ, where can people find you? What can they do to reach out to you?

AJ: 26:29

Yeah, so two places. So our website daylightapp, so d-a-y-l-i-t-e dot app, and then on LinkedIn, my full name Ali Kanjera. Just look me up there and connect with me, and I'm not even there that frequently, but I'm there more than any other social media.

Nico: 26:51

Yeah, it's kind of becoming the social platform for businesses to find, you know, a nicely structured environment, instead of all the photographs and what's it called, those calculations and so on that people make with animals and numbers and so on.

AJ: 27:06

I'm like what the hell?

Nico: 27:11

So thank you very much for your time AJ.

AJ: 27:12

Thank you for having me on. It was a nice conversation, I enjoyed it. Yeah, for your time, aj. Thank you for having me on.

Nico: 27:15

It was a nice conversation, I enjoyed it, yeah, yeah indeed, indeed, and thank you listeners once again for joining us on the Everlasting Podcast. Have a good one everybody. Bye-bye.