Benoy Tamang: Charting Success – Coaching with a CEO Compass in the High-Stakes Startup World

Notes

Recorded in the Cottonwood Conference Room at Kiln Lehi

Benoy’s company: techCEOcoach.com

Download Benoy’s book The Little Book on BIG Growth at techCEOcoach.com

Book recommendation: Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean by Kim Scott

Summary

This episode features Benoy Tamang, an executive coach focusing on venture-funded tech CEOs. The discussion is filled with insights and advice that can inspire entrepreneurs on their journey.

Benoy Tamang shares his unique upbringing as a military brat, moving countries every two years, which he believes taught him how to make friends and assess situations quickly. He also shares his transition from working for others to working for himself, which happened in his late 30s. His decision to become an entrepreneur was influenced by his desire to avoid the politics and bureaucracy of large organizations.

Tamang’s work primarily involves helping CEOs navigate the high-pressure environment of running a venture-funded tech company. He supports them in making sound business decisions, improving communication, and managing relationships. He emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and the ability to work on oneself in quiet moments, which he believes are key to a CEO’s effectiveness.

He also shares his formula for effectiveness, which involves effort, specialization, and training, divided by unconscious incompetence. He believes that self-awareness and the ability to focus on personal development separate successful CEOs from those who struggle.

Tamang’s approach to coaching is rooted in empathy and understanding. He recognizes the intense pressure that CEOs are under and provides them with the tools and support they need to navigate their challenges. He encourages CEOs to work on themselves, improve their communication skills, and focus on building strong relationships.

The podcast ends on an inspiring note, with Tamang encouraging the listeners to jump in and start their entrepreneurial journey. He emphasizes the importance of learning by doing and congratulates those who are already on their journey.

Overall, the episode provides valuable insights and advice for entrepreneurs, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness, personal development, and effective communication. It serves as a reminder that the journey to success is not easy, but it is achievable with the right mindset and support.

Kyle Knowles:
Hello, and welcome to episode number two of the Maker Manager Money Podcast, a podcast about entrepreneurs, business owners, and business leaders, from startups to stay-ups, diving into the stories behind entrepreneurship and the work it takes to go from maker to manager to money, to inspire entrepreneurs to keep going and to inspire future entrepreneurs to go for it.
My name is Kyle Knowles, and my co-host is Mr. David White. Once again, we are feeling it at Kiln. That’s K-I-L-N, as in Nancy. Kiln provides hip, high-tech, creative vibe, virtual coworking, and real-world office space. Kiln’s flex office communities are handcrafted and programmed to elevate lifestyle and performance. Dave, let’s do this.

Dave White:
All right.

Kyle Knowles:
How are you doing tonight?

Dave White:
I love it. I’m here, and I am happy to be here tonight. This is good stuff. Again, Kiln is a good place. We had a good luncheon yesterday, networked with a ton of people here in house, and it’s going to be fun to continue to meet and greet these people. So it’s super fun.

Kyle Knowles:
Awesome. Our guest tonight is Benoy Tamang. Benoy is a 30-year technology executive, skilled in strategy and sculpting high-performance teams, a seven times entrepreneur with multiple multimillion-dollar exits, and an experienced executive coach with a marketing focus. I met Benoy back in 2000, zero, zero, party over, oops, out of time. That’s 1999, before the iPhone, Instagram, Teslas, and TikTok. So I’ve known Benoy with respect and admiration for almost two and a half decades.
Benoy is currently the founder and partner at Venn Industries, impacting individuals, communities, and industries by building people-focused companies with a focus on helping place military vets and refugees. He’s also the founder of techceocoach.com. That’s techceocoach.com. Benoy, we’re so happy to have you here at Kiln with us on a Thursday night. Welcome.

Benoy Tamang:
You guys are so fun. Just before we started, we had some of the music and the beats going on, and it was so lively. That was great. I’m happy to be here, Kyle. Thanks for having me, Dave. Appreciate it.

Dave White:
Love it. This is good.

Benoy Tamang:
Thank you.

Kyle Knowles:
Well, can we start with where you are from and how you ended up in Utah?

Benoy Tamang:
Happy to. But by the way, I wish you had ended with, “Is a 30-year-old,” and that would have been it, instead of a 30-year lifespan of experience. But I’m originally from Nepal, and I’m a military brat. So my mother and father had a typical lifestyle of moving countries every two years. We moved countries. It wasn’t just a state. So we had to pick up a new language, find new friends, get into the culture every two years. Ended up ultimately being a great school on figuring out how to make friends, to assess who’s dangerous.
It was great. Hong Kong, England, Brunei, Singapore, India, multiple times, all of those countries because he was just hopping around every two years. High school years were in Hong Kong, and then I ended up going to college in Hawaii. There’s a whole new story there. So all of that to say that my dad being in the army was the impetus for me to go the opposite way and go for small business because I saw this massive organization that had hundreds and thousands of people and the politics and everything else.
No, no, I’m going the other way. I said, “Dad, I’m going to be a capitalist pig.” “Is that all right?” He says, “Fine, go ahead, do whatever.” That’s how it started.

Kyle Knowles:
It’s a fantastic journey. Did you have a favorite country?

Benoy Tamang:
I actually have favorite countries. For sport years, England was fabulous. I picked up rugby. I love rugby. Even now, every night I have to go click on, make sure I’m up-to-date with all the teams. Right now, the seven-a-sides are happening. Singapore just finished, and All Blacks are in the lead right now. Unfortunately, the Eagles from the US are suffering badly again, second year in a row. So England was great for that.
Hong Kong was great as a teenager, just learning all about life and just seeing the 24/7 nightlife in Hong Kong. It was just exciting, just fun, energy. I particularly like, in the long run, the laid-back atmosphere of even Hawaii. That was just so cool. The aloha spirit has carried on all these years. I love those people. So it’s been good every year, every stage.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s great. We’d love to hear your career journey from working for others to working for yourself because that kind of came, what, in your late 30s after working for others for a couple of decades, or how did that materialize?

Benoy Tamang:
You’ve been watching. I was 38 years old when I started off on my own, and we had just had our fifth baby. People were saying, “What are you, nuts?” But prior to that, right out of grad school, I got my MBA from BYU Provo. I wanted to go and learn how to lead teams. My siblings younger than me always said I was a bully anyway and a bossy one, so why not be a leader? That was a natural thing. So I went over.
Back then, they had a program called Accelerated Management Program at pre-AT&T called Pacific Bell back in LA. So I went to LA and worked for five years, and the first day on the job, 15 employees. Every six months, you rotated out to another division of the phone business, but you were always in a leadership position. I learned really quickly how not to lead. Like all things in life, it’s almost the pain that teaches you more than the wins.
But during that time, you may not remember, ’91, ’92, there were some riots that were going down downtown and Rodney King beatings and everything else. So we realized quickly as we were expecting our third child, we need to get out of this town. It’s a little too rough. Kindergarten kids were having metal detectors to go through to make sure they weren’t carrying anything.
That’s a strange way to raise children, and I didn’t grow up in this kind of environment. So we said, “Hey, remember that sleepy little town called Provo, Utah? Let’s go see if there’s a job up there.” So ultimately, I came back and got a job with a declining Word Perfect, spent about two years there. And then I jumped ship to a small startup company called Viewpoint Data Labs that was just magic, great people, tiny company, 20 or so people when I joined, 26 maybe, grew into 120 maybe.
It had venture funding, and increasing business was so fun because you had to wear multiple hats. Instead of big companies or mid-size companies, this was a small scrappy company, and I knew I had found my resting place, just the fact that you could grow a business and have an immediate impact. You didn’t have layers of management or underlings sort of cushioning the blow, and you were held accountable for the results. It was fantastic.
That company got sold. We took whatever winnings there were and built a house in Alpine, and that was 25 years ago. And then since then, I did successive companies, small businesses, which is where Kyle and I met up, and that was the second company right after Viewpoint. It was in the sexy world of operating systems.

Dave White:
What?

Kyle Knowles:
Free operating systems.

Benoy Tamang:
Free at that. How do you make money from that? But we learned a lot, grew it. So I’ve done successively smaller businesses because I enjoy the culture control. I’ve got my own theories that anytime you have three layers of management or more, you’re going to be prone to some bad seeds coming in. You’re going to have some insecure people coming in. So I’ve got my theory on what size companies you can at least manage that to a certain level.

Kyle Knowles:
And what’s the size? What’s the optimal maximum size, I guess?

Benoy Tamang:
Yeah. It’s almost like layers of leadership. So if you have two layers of leadership, perfect. Three is a stretch. But that’s it. So you could have a president. You could have a manager and normal worker bees. That’s manageable. But then when you have an owner and a vice president and then a director and whatever, then you’re starting to push the envelope because you can’t control who’s going to be hired and who’s going to make their way through the gauntlet.
Even if you’ve got a great culture and got great core values, you never know. So anyway, long story short, you realize how to kind of manage that. You can’t avoid it, but you can manage it, and size is one way to do it. Anyway, I ended up starting a couple of companies. And then I did have a stint with a local company here. They just changed the name from eFileCabinet to Revver, I think. So I ended up as the CMO and then the CEO.
And then seven years ago, I took off and I said, “I’m going to help all of these CEOs do a greater job after all the pain I’ve struggled through.” That’s what I’ve been doing, fundamentally working on these tech CEOs who’ve had and have a high amount of intensity in their role. I don’t want to help a dentist. I don’t want to help some low-impact area. It’s just I like high-intensity games. I just like competition, and it’s fun.
But it has to be in the smaller size. No point helping a big company. Not only do I not have the experience, but it’s not as fun. So I play in the startup, anything under 500 employees kind of a space.

Dave White:
That’s nothing against dentists.

Benoy Tamang:
Nothing against dentists. My friends who are a dentist, please, excuse my analogy. But you’re looking at the same mouth after mouth after mouth after mouth.

Dave White:
It’s good.

Kyle Knowles:
I don’t think I’d want to go to an intense dentist. It’s intense enough when I go in. He’s already holding equipment that’s pretty intense.

Benoy Tamang:
Anyway, so I just shortened it to say there’s so many other topics we can talk about. But that journey was big, medium, small, small, small, and I love it.

Dave White:
Tell us a little bit more about Venn Impact.

Benoy Tamang:
Yeah. So I got to tell you a story first that shows you why I did what I still do. A long time ago, I was on vacation with Mom and Dad. I was maybe 11. I remember this distinctly. We were vacationing in a very, very remote and very old colonial part of India called Darjeeling. Mom and Dad have family there. I noticed that Dad was all dressed up dapper. He had a Burberry coat on, overcoat, with a cravat tie, the whole works.
I said, “Ooh, Dad, looking spiffy. How come you don’t dress like that when we’re at the base?” In that case, it could have been England. It could have been Hong Kong. It could have been Singapore. He looked at me and goes, “Son, don’t you understand?” I said, “What?” “Don’t you understand I can’t dress like that amongst my British peers?” I said, “Got it, Dad.” I knew immediately what he meant.
Now remember, I’m an old, old guy. Back then, like you said, pre-internet, everything was and everything still continues to be a level of pecking order, if you haven’t already seen that. Particularly, I now owe all of my success to my British education. But along with the British influence also comes the accompanying negatives. In that case, oh, the soldiers who aren’t white are beneath us. So even if they can afford was, there better not be anything comparable to us.
So in the unspoken order of things, Dad knew that he had to have a step behind, a head lower sort of a position in the social rank. He said, “Son, don’t you understand? I cannot dress like this.” I knew immediately what he meant. I’ve always been the one who always took care of the underdogs and whatever. In me was an unconscious belief system that said, “Don’t ever be bullied. If you have to, bully the bullies,” which ultimately is an oxymoron.
So back in Hong Kong, we were driving in the military Land Rovers, just Dad and I. I was about 14. All of a sudden, we saw a crowd of angry Hong Kong locals in a melee, almost fighting. We said, “What’s going on?” Dad notices that there was another military Land Rover on the site. He says, “Oh, maybe this is someone in trouble.” So he parks, “Let’s go find out, Son, what’s going on.”
Somehow or another, we just pulled all these people apart and we went to the center of this maelstrom of activity. There was this young, say, mid-30s British soldier who was being pummeled by the locals. Somehow or another, Dad grabbed him, and he said, “Son, help me.” We grabbed him and pulled him out, put him into our Land Rover, and we took him out of that and took off.
But then those guys were so angry, they got into cars and started chasing, and it turned into one of those movie things. “Let’s go, Dad. They’re coming up. They’re coming up.” They were so mad and yelling and screaming and fighting and shouting, but we made it through the gates before and said, “Hey, let us through.” Made it through the gates so that the rest of the locals couldn’t come in within the confines of the barracks. So it’s safe.
Forever, whenever we met this young soldier officer, he would always say, “Hey, thanks for saving … Hey, guys, these are the guys who saved me.” And yet again, in my young mind, now 14, I said, “Oh, even the bullies get bullied.” Think about that. So I’m answering this question about Venn Industries, Venn Impact or anything else. It’s all about I root for the underdog. I want to help everybody.
I even said to you guys the other day, “I’ll help you.” I love the underdog role. If I don’t know who’s playing in the NBA or who’s playing in whatever, I’ll say, “So who’s the underdog?” I’ll just root for them. It’s just an automatic belief system in me. I want them to succeed. So Venn Industries came about because my partner, Dave Hinckley, and I were sitting down, and we said, “Hey, great to meet you. What do you want to do? Da da da da da.”
We came to the common theme. We hate bullies. So why don’t we build a business? Why don’t we help create a system in which the underdogs get to hire more underdogs? Wouldn’t that be emotionally satisfying? So we focused on the blue collar construction world, and specifically we went to electrical. So now we have a couple of companies under this umbrella called Venn Industries in which we’re going to continue to invest in, acquire, and instill in them the software discipline of systems and processes and scalable whatever.
It’s working. It’s working. At the same time, come on, let’s go get people to come in. Everyone’s getting lured by the shiny IT and technology lights, but we need plumbers. We need electricians. We need handymen. So why not continue to serve the underdog industry by making them stronger, giving them business acumen? I just met with the president of this electrical company in our portfolio, and he has the results of Q1. March just finished.
They’ve already closed books, and he has a [inaudible 00:17:40] dashboard. Who does that in the electrical world? Isn’t that cool?

Kyle Knowles:
That’s awesome.

Dave White:
That is amazing.

Benoy Tamang:
That’s it, right? So here, again, helping the underdogs. Don’t like bullies. Let’s see if we can help them and grow the business and all these families and all them children. Part of this group is growing and growing. So that’s what I do.

Dave White:
That’s incredible. What a great story.

Benoy Tamang:
I love it. I love it.

Kyle Knowles:
Can you tell us what your clients can expect from you as an executive or CEO coach?

Benoy Tamang:
Yeah. That’s also just so satisfying because, in a way, they have the most intense job. I focus primarily, although I’ll help some others, but I primarily focus on venture-funded tech CEOs because they’re in a vice. They’ve got the top-down squeeze now. They’ve taken money from investors. They’ve got to have, if they didn’t have one, but they now have a professional board that they are held accountable to. Never mind customers and even reporters and analysts and everything else. They’ve got this top-down pressure.
And then money has been given. “Okay, now we want you to use that money.” “Yeah, well, I haven’t.” “Well, hurry up. You got to use the cash. That’s why we gave it for you. Clock’s ticking. We want an ROI.” So they then have to go and hire an executive team, many who are more mature, more experienced in their lanes of expertise when that CEO used to do everything. You see that, right?
They got it to 10 million, 20 million in revenue all by themselves with their people and their friends, and now they’re going to have professional leaders put in place. They have to establish core values. They have to have systems and procedures and data stored not in multiple Excel spreadsheets, but in different systems. Then that pressure is coming from below and squeezing them.
Who do they go to? Who can they cry on? Whose shoulders can they talk to? I had one particular memorable call, “Benoy, my new VP of HR has set up appointments with a CFO, and I have interviews starting tomorrow. What’s a CFO do? What questions do I ask?” He was so sweet and sincere. I can talk about the difference between coaching and mentoring, but at that moment it was like, “Dude, I got you. Okay, hold on. I’m going to pump out some questions and use that as your template to ask. I’m going to go from strategic to very micro.”
I just typed them out, sent it to him. He came back, said, “Thank you for saving my bacon.” But they’re squeezed in this high-intensity pressure cooker, and they have nobody else to rely on. Who do they go to? They’re supposed to, in general, pre-Silicon Valley, it was all 100 million in less than four years valuation, so there can be an exit of 10x what the investors got.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s a lot of pressure.

Benoy Tamang:
That’s a lot of self-imposed and external bullying going on. Think about it in that context. So I want to help them. I’ve gone through that multiple times, and I go, “Oh, let me help you.” So when you say, “What do you do for them?” Primarily, you can say three things. Number one, they get help in the ability to make sound business decisions without them running on fear all the time.
Number two, hopefully they get to learn how to have great communication. The clarity of communication increases in need as the organization gets larger, where multiple layers of telephone tag won’t do it. You’ve got to be so clear that people get the vision and understand what’s going on. Number three, it always comes down to relationships with people and how to best manage and almost amplify inherent talent of everyone coming in.
But you’re the only man at the top, so you’ve got to somehow make that prevalent throughout the entire organization. So those three things, number one, they get to be able to have decisions made in an informed and scalable manner that they otherwise wouldn’t have with a coach. Number two, communication is key. Number three, their relationship abilities and capabilities have to improve.
You can have a great business as a solo man, great, super. But anytime you have to scale a business and more customers, then you have to work through people. It’s always through the people side that most founders struggle because they primarily have a strength of they may be technical wizards. They may be super finance guys. They may be great salesmen or product gurus. They just love their product, know it inside and out.
“I don’t want to talk to him.” Or, “I don’t know how to berate this person. You deal with it.” That’s the hard part. It breaks down what the people say. Dave’s smiling, knowingly.

Dave White:
Very much so. Very much so. Oh, man.

Benoy Tamang:
It’s almost always like that. Does that help answer?

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah. Yeah, it does. What do you feel like separates those that become successful and those that can’t do it? Is it a personality thing? Is it work ethic? What separates those who can navigate through that with you and those that maybe call it quits or someone else is hired or they just can’t make it happen?

Benoy Tamang:
Almost every one of the CEOs, I never have to ask them to work hard. So effort is not the key. Nobody gets to that stage by being a sloth. Their effort is not an issue there. In fact, let me tell you my formula for effectiveness, which is where you’re going. How can a CEO be effective? Here’s my formula. It’s a theoretical construct. Number one, you can be more effective if you put more effort. Think of it as a effort times.
The next element is specialty. Don’t have a CEO who’s a finance guru be the sales evangelical face. It’s not going to work. So stay in your in lane. Even if you are the CEO of a bigger organization, stay in your lane. The more you specialize in that, the more effectiveness. And then the last multiplier is training or specializing and getting more and more capable in whatever aspect.
Training, specialty, and the gifts and effort multiplied together, divided by what I’m calling unconscious incompetence, this divider, denominator, and you know the math. If anything below there in this theoretical construct is more than one, oops. If there was a way to measure unconscious incompetence and the number was a three, oh my. It doesn’t matter what you do up top. You’re dead.
I’ve worked with so many people. I’ll say, “So how did the pounding of that boardroom table go with all of you VPs? How did it work out for you?” Invariably, they shake their head. “They clammed up. No one spoke.” “Oh, really? I wonder why.” In that moment, all of the work, all of the preparation was completely nuked by the unconscious incompetence that emerged.
So stay with me. To answer your question, what makes an individual, a CEO, improve better than others? Self-awareness, and here’s the hard part. Number two, the ability to convert that effort that they’ve always … I can do this. I can do 25 hours a day, all of that to really working on themselves where no one can see the effort. No one can tally the face time or, “Look, light’s still on in the CEO’s office.”
The hard part is to do the work in the quiet moments, in the moments when you’re just raging. It’s effort focused on that, along with the awareness. I’m doing it again. I’m going to go a Hulk. I’m going to go green. You guys are laughing because you know this is real.

Dave White:
We’ve all seen that guy.

Benoy Tamang:
We’ve all been that guy. We’ve all been that.

Dave White:
Yeah. I would say so, for sure.

Benoy Tamang:
Right? We’re looking in the mirror. But ultimately, the journey is so rewarding when what used to be micromanagement, everything has to go through that singular person. You see where this is going, right? To I can take vacations and really, really unplug. I just met with the very president of the electrical company. He just came back from a couple of days off for spring break.
I said, “How’d it go, Mike?” He said, “It was great. I’m planning another one soon.” Yes. He used to have what he called the blanket of death. Before we entered into his domain, his way of managing the crushing weight of the business that he had was to go home and put a blanket over his head.
When Daddy went and put a blanket over his head, Mommy would say, “Don’t go near Daddy. He needs his time alone.” So sad. Now he’s grinning. His numbers in the two and a half years, it’ll be three years, went from three million in that first time that we met him. We’re doing three million a quarter in just that short time, and this year is going to be even bigger and being maybe profitable.
We’re at about 10% and pushing. He’s doing it effortlessly. He can take vacations. He’s a good man.

Dave White:
How long did it take for you to get him to that mode? I mean that’s a lot.

Kyle Knowles:
To vacation mode, yeah.

Dave White:
I mean seriously to have-

Kyle Knowles:
Vacation mode, right?

Dave White:
… much time. That’s a lot of coaching, right? Maybe not.

Benoy Tamang:
No. No.

Dave White:
Tell me what-

Benoy Tamang:
No. By the way, that should be the mantra. What’s the benefit of working with the tech CEO coach? You can take real vacations.

Kyle Knowles:
You can really unplug.

Benoy Tamang:
That’s cool, huh? That’s a good one. Thank you.

Kyle Knowles:
We’re coming up with some taglines on the spot right here.

Benoy Tamang:
I love it. Dave, there are two elements to that. Every individual has their own rate of increase and their rate of improvement. So if everyone was lined up and they had the same sort of DNA and personality and chemistry, I’m sure they could all do that in a similar rate of incline velocity. What I have noticed though is behavior change takes longer than a two-week stint or a five-week stint.
Behavioral change requires sustained effort and a redirection. So I guess the accurate answer to that is, Dave, I don’t have engagements less than a 12-month, one-year engagement minimum because I have to help. After a while, the self-correcting, self-healing, self-improving. My longest client has been over four years. I average two plus because this is a high-intensity game.
In the case of the tech CEOs who’ve been venture-funded, their dynamics change because they’re growing so exponentially fast that it’s not a, okay, you’re done, bye, sayonara. There’s a new mountain over the next mountain. Now, I have helped other companies, of course, other industries that don’t have the same pressure, and there it can be a little less intimidating. The improvements can be sustained for a longer period of time because the environment doesn’t change as quickly. So does that help?

Dave White:
Oh, of course. Yeah. I’ve paid for some career coaching myself, and after a while I crave it because they start giving me results. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, what they said to me actually works.” So I want to go back. So I can only imagine your clients. That’s why they’re at least 12 months, at least a year because you start to see those improvements at that mark.

Benoy Tamang:
When you have to have, and I mean it, have, when you have to have almost a mock simulation … We play simulations. Okay, so you’re going to talk to that board member about what? Okay, let’s just go through this. Let’s just figure this out. So we actually role play. We have to go through that. Later on, they won’t need it. But once they get that practice going and the flywheel keeps moving, then it’s easier. They get it. “Oh, yeah. Based on that, okay, got it.”
They’re not alone. They’re not alone. They don’t feel alone. You know this. Anything at work is severely affected by home life. So I always say, “Hey, I’m happy to help you. But if you are going to say, ‘We’re only going to talk about work,’ I’m not taking you on. What you do outside of work affects you here. So if you’re game, I need to interview your partner.”
If you have certain goals, and the goals even includes being a better human and a better dad or a better mother, then how do we know it’s working unless I get to do a 360 on your oldest child and your spouse? We go there because we want long-term gains. We want long-term behavioral improvements for the right reasons.

Dave White:
I’m sure it’s always appreciated, too, on the back end.

Benoy Tamang:
Oh, you should see the amount of texts that significant others send me, “He needs to do this and …” It’s funny. It’s funny. Oh, it’s funny. I’ve got lots of stories. That’s for another day.

Dave White:
So you work hard. You work hard, but you love it. It inspires you. But you play hard, too. I’m dying to ask the question, you play on Everest. Tell us about your expeditions in Everest.

Benoy Tamang:
That came out of nowhere. I was visiting family members in Nepal. A distant relative, family name, we call him Bobby. Bobby says, “Hey, why don’t you come and go on one of our trips?” I said, “I don’t like camping. I don’t like anything that has a hard ground. If there’s no mint on my pillow and the down isn’t X many layers of whatever Egyptian cotton, I’m not going to do it.” “Come on. Come on, let’s go.”
So I brought some friends with me, and I got hooked. I have five children, and three of them have gone with me one at a time. Some of the girls didn’t want to go. One girl did. It’s just fantastic because it’s a chance to also unplug. Back then when I started, there was less internet everywhere. Now you can get Wi-Fi signals anywhere near the top. It’s ridiculous.
But it’s such a fantastic experience, especially when you take a loved one with you. It’s like if you love Disneyland and you know somebody wants to go and has never gone, let me take you. There’s so much excitement. “Come on. Come on. Come on. Look who’s over there.” That kind of excitement is why going to just base camp Everest is so fun. I’ve taken hoards of neighbors and friends and whatever.
As you know, there’s an old formula that says, if you really, really want a tight family, a beautiful family, go camping. Why? Because something bad will happen. Something bad’s going to happen. When that happens repeatedly, stubbed toe, a cut, cold weather, rained on in the tent, whatever, the family has to coalesce and help each other against an external foe. When they do that, the family learns to lean on each other, to trust each other, to follow Mommy and Daddy’s advice.
Ultimately, it just binds them together, repeated over and over. This is not about a money thing. This is about just doing something that exposes them to potential harm, whatever, interruptions. Of course, nowadays that doesn’t happen. Everyone’s like this on their smartphone or whatever. Got to get rid of all that. So when we go to Everest, those memories last forever.
I’ve got one. He was about 22-year-old son of a friend who came with us, Sean. At 16,000 feet, approximately 16,000, we go up to 18 and a half, but at 16,000, he had a lot of respiratory issues with the altitude. At 18,000, by the way, it’s 50% oxygen of sea level. So even walking is hard. We had to put him into one of those bubble tents and pump oxygen into him. His dad was so worried and whatever.
Long story short, I helped out this and this, and now dad, Jerry, is forever grateful that we did something for his son against the adversary, which happens to be high altitude. Can you see that? Tight binding. Another friend of mine in Alpine, Hunt, who has been mayor of Alpine twice, twice helicoptered out. He had a blood oxygen level of less than 30% at one time, and he was in my tent and couldn’t get him up. He was making so much noise throughout the night. I was getting irritated at him, but he was having difficulty breathing.
I just thought he was just snoring like a bear. It was horrible. In the end, the porters, by the way, little side tidbit, everyone hears about Sherpas taking you up at the Mount Everest, right? Sherpa is their last name. So my relative, Bobby, he only hires Tamangs, people from the Tamang villages. So the Tamangs took Hunt, strapped him on his back.
Bobby told me, “Go ahead. Go down to [inaudible 00:37:36] where there is a little medical unit. Usually, we have an American doctor who is there for high altitude training as part of his, her, whatever credentials.” I was feeling pretty proud that Bobby asked me to go down first and pave the way, and I did. I booked it down. He came and we put oxygen on him. His oxygen level just wouldn’t go up. So we said, “Get a helicopter in here.”
We got him a helicopter. When the helicopter pilot landed, I looked in, sure enough, helicopter pilot also had oxygen up his nose. Got to make sure that the evacuation rescuer doesn’t have any issues. He went down. Soon as he went down, one night overnight in Katmandu, which is about 5,000 feet, same as here, he was fine. He took off on a lower altitude, different experience. So many stories. I have so many stories of what’s going on up there.
You get to be tight with the people because there’s always something that goes wrong, and it’s fine, but always something that goes wrong. So it’s part of the experience of enjoying the journey of life. Yeah, we want to build businesses. We want to take care of family finances. But if all you’re doing is drilling the end goal, and I’ve had some people on the Everest base camp trek, all they want to do is get to Everest base camp and they stay in their tent.
Get out. Come out. Look. They’re always at the front, pushing, and I have to have the front guy make sure that he keeps everyone back so that it’s not too much of a big stretch between last and first. I’m always the last guy. I always bring up the rear, scout training. You got to enjoy the journey. I’ve had instances where I had lost so much money. I didn’t know how to make payroll. And yet, I went on a trip. I had to for my sanity. I had to for my sanity.
You come back and go, “You know what? My life is still good. I have health. My wife still loves me. Kids are here. We can tackle it.” But before then, you’re just frozen with the anxiety, and the tunnel vision is down to a tiny spot in the tunnel. So when I’m talking to these CEOs and they’ve got this death grip, I say, “Dude, just loosen up. It’s going to work out. Just loosen up. I know exactly where you are. I can see it in your eye.”
I had a second mortgage on my house just to make payroll and such. Eight months I went without paying mortgage. I’ve gone through a lot. Now, there are others who have gone through a whole lot more than me. But just that whole journey allows you to kind of appreciate that if you put the effort and this and that and whatever and just keep a long-term view, it works out.
It helps when you’re almost turning 60 next year to kind of have a different perspective at the same time. But you get these lessons coming from you from all angles, but you cannot get these lessons isolated in your death grip and you can only work. No, in fact, I can tell you that’s one way you will definitely increase your chances of failure. I’m a scuba diver, too.
You’ve just went and purged all of the oxygen from the tank in two ways, by breathing too fast … and then unconsciously hitting the regulator and all the air is going out of here. You’re not even conscious of that. That’s what happens when you’ve got that intense grip. Anyway-

Dave White:
Great analogy.

Benoy Tamang:
Talked too much on that one. You asked.

Dave White:
I love it. I love it. I did. I got what I wanted, too. It was great. It was juicy.

Kyle Knowles:
How often do you go to base camp?

Benoy Tamang:
I actually told everyone I don’t want to go anymore. I want to go different places and such. It was almost every two years. All my kids are grown. They’re gone. But my in-law boys, the men who married my girls say, “Well, we want some of that experience and culture.” So there may be one more left in me.

Kyle Knowles:
How many times? 20 or 15?

Benoy Tamang:
No, five.

Kyle Knowles:
Five.

Benoy Tamang:
Just five.

Dave White:
That’s a lot.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s a lot. And what’s the elevation of base camp?

Benoy Tamang:
17,600. But base camp, you cannot see Everest because there’s a mountain in the way in terms of the trajectory. You have to go back out, climb another little hill to 18 and a half to see straight across and look up.

Kyle Knowles:
Do you do that when you go?

Benoy Tamang:
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Knowles:
So you go a little beyond the base camp?

Benoy Tamang:
Yeah. Yeah. We have to if you want to see the sights. I can tell you stories about the last trip, too, but then we’re going to run out of time.

Kyle Knowles:
You got to do it. You got to do it.

Benoy Tamang:
I’ll tell you right now, some of the other ways that I am enjoying life, regardless of intensity of work, financial situation, whatever. Kyle knows I love to play guitar. So I’ve had a band forever. I just got back three weeks ago. I was working on my tan, Dave, from Costa Rica, where my good buddy and I, he has a home there. We surf in the morning. We do our calls and remote Zoom meetings and coaching.
In the evenings, there’s a restaurant that they love us and we play in the evenings. So we get fed and tipped and paid. It’s fun. You just have to do these things and just have to go out and venture and try that out. I am hooked on surfing. I’m so glad I live in Salt Lake. But I love surfing now. It’s so challenging. I got to go tackle that. So always growing.

Kyle Knowles:
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Benoy Tamang:
I know exactly. There are many people who’ve given me many. But for business-related, Dr. Chen. Dr. Chen and Mrs. Chen drove up to church in a his-and-her convertible Rolls Royce two-door, not four-door, separately. I was, what, 25 about to have a second kid. I just gawked at them, going, “What the heck is going on?” I wanted to do my own startup. I wanted to start things up. This was when I was at Pacific Bell, pre-AT&T.
I said, “Excuse me. Can I see you at your office? I’d like to ask you some questions about how you got to where you are.” So I went to Dr. Chen’s office. It was in Torrance, California. That’s where we were back then. I peppered him with tons of questions, “Where did you start? What was going on?” He was so poor with his wife that they used to go to the dumpsters to pick out used furniture and things just so that they had someplace to have in their student apartment.
He went into pharmaceuticals, and he started formulating stuff that ultimately got to sell. As I kept peppering, he said, “No, no, no.” I said, “Okay, what advice do you have for me?” I’ve never forgotten it. He says, “You have asked me lots of questions about how to start a business and the strengths and the weaknesses and this and that and whatever. I’m not going to answer any more questions of yours. My only recommendation is go start one.”
Along the journey, as I’ve now started quite a few, he was right. There’s no other way around it. You cannot intellectually read about it. You cannot watch or listen to podcasts. You just got to do it. So when I was 38 years old and I said, “I’m going to start this from scratch,” and everyone thought I was bonkers, I was bonkers. But that was the only way to start. There was no other way to learn. It was with our good friend, Chris Cottle.
We started a business that did direct mailing into the homes of really old people, 58 and older, who were ill health, used their credit cards to get supplements. So we created a direct mail health-based newsletter that provided great advice and great health benefits of eating and these supplements. And then the backend offer was, “Hey, we’ve got this bromelain,” which is from pineapple. It’s an extract that helps you reduce inflammation. So we started to sell supplements as a backend to the front newsletter.
We learned tons. We were actually able to sell it for a neutral, no loss. It didn’t make much money, but at least we didn’t suffer. But that was my first stint at 38. I had my children in my garage, and we were stuffing envelopes with newsletters. We had two little tables. Even then, I don’t think we had Costco then that we would use. It was fun. We had to do it. The kids were involved.
So for business, the best advice was just do it. Just do it, and then you’ll learn. And then Dr. Chen was right. There’s no other way but to do it. The amount of yield in learning in that short amount of time just outweighs anything you can read, watch, or listen to, intensity of learning, the highs and lows, like a compression of the sine wave curve. It goes like this, versus the long learning. If that helps with another visual, Dave.

Dave White:
Very much so.

Kyle Knowles:
I love that answer. So what you’re saying is that you could learn more from starting a business than getting an MBA?

Benoy Tamang:
Yeah. I’ve actually told that to my children, to my boys particularly. I have three girls and two boys, in that sequence. I am grateful that I married a very smart girl, and so my kids are very bright. I told them, “If you don’t want to go to school, that’s fine because I know how you are already thinking and the fact that you are learning continuously. Just continuously learn throughout the rest of your life. Don’t do your four-year, six-year schooling and then stop. You’re going to die. I’d rather you continuously learn.”
These kids nowadays know how to get answers faster than I could ever do. So, yes. Now, I’m biased. I have a lot of interactions with bright people who have industry in part of their bones. They know how to work hard so that they continuously learn. MBA’s not needed. Have you not seen that the enrollment in MBA schools has dropped? Who sees the benefit of that? By the time they come out, the world’s completely changed in two years.
If the so-called professors and experts haven’t even had industry knowledge, why are they even behind the pulpit trying to teach? Most of the young people nowadays are street-wise enough, knowing how to Google and search. They can figure out things. Go do it. I didn’t hesitate on that response. Didn’t even hesitate.

Kyle Knowles:
I love the answer. So just a couple more questions for you, Benoy. What is the book you recommend to people the most?

Benoy Tamang:
I knew you were going to ask me that question, and I thought about it. I’m going to go back to a book that I have loved forever because it goes back to dealing with people. You can build any business you want, but you’re going to have to work with people. It’s Kim Scott’s Radical Candor. It’s just fantastic. Too many people do not know how to speak directly without offending because they themselves are shrinking from that candid conversation because they are fearing their own insecurities and projecting it.
Kim just puts it out there, gives you a great framework. If there’s one book I would recommend, it would be that one. It would change so many people’s lives. Have you guys read it?

Dave White:
I have not.

Kyle Knowles:
I have not, but it’s next on the list.

Benoy Tamang:
Really?

Dave White:
It’s on the list. Yeah, yeah.

Benoy Tamang:
No, no, no. It’s so good, and it’s so basic. It’s not any high-faluting this and that and whatever. It’s practical. That’s another side of me, just practical. It’s fantastic. I couldn’t endorse it more because, in the end, it could be how to do cash flow, this and that and money. No, it’s about human interactions, Radical Candor, Kim Scott, two thumbs up.

Dave White:
It’s on the list. It’s on the list.

Benoy Tamang:
Two thumbs up.

Kyle Knowles:
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?

Benoy Tamang:
I am one of those introverts that has learned that in order to be an effective leader, it’s just a role. You play a role. It doesn’t define you in that role, CEO, evangelist. Fundraiser, VC or angel, whatever they call it. They’re all title, role. But when Angela and I go on vacation, and we still love physical books, we just take our books with us. I’m a morning person, so I get my exercise done. She gets up later.
After breakfast, our ideal vacations, sitting on the same couch, her on one end, me on the other, legs crossed, and we’re reading a book. That’s magical. I’ve already exercised and played in the early morning. I have to do that. And then we’re doing that. All of a sudden, oh, it’s 2:00. Hey, it’s way past lunchtime. I am energized with quiet time, if the definition of a extrovert is energized with people and whatever.
One-on-one, it’s fine. But otherwise being with lots of people, I need to recharge. “Bye, guys. See ya.” There are a lot of introverts who’ve built businesses, and I’ve found them. It’s great. It’s a role. It’s a role. You remember when we were in the same company. I would stand up in front of people and talk to everybody to clarify and clear and use very simple words, and it seemed to work. And then afterwards, done. It was needed for that time.
I wanted them to understand, caring enough to put that extra effort in, knowing that it was more of a drain than a normal activity. But that’s fine. That doesn’t surprise you, right?

Kyle Knowles:
It does.

Benoy Tamang:
Does it?

Kyle Knowles:
A little bit. Yeah.

Benoy Tamang:
Really?

Dave White:
I think it would surprise most people because I think there’s the thought that leading companies, starting companies, you have to be extremely extroverted. I think there’s that fear out there of taking the chance and putting themselves out there. So I think you’re a great example of that.

Benoy Tamang:
You said something that was very important. You said the fear that you’re putting yourself out there. You’re putting yourself at risk. That fear is prevalent in an extrovert and an introvert. I particularly use the definition of energy suck as one way to define whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. They all experience it. I’ve worked with plenty of extroverts. They all experience it.
That business risk that what if it doesn’t work out, everyone feels. Just because they’re a backslapping, gregarious person doesn’t negate their own internal fears and worries. It just seems different to an introvert when they’re looking at them because introvert’s projecting their own story, right?

Kyle Knowles:
Right.

Benoy Tamang:
The extrovert can have the same issues, but they’re so happy in front of people that they subordinate that fear and it doesn’t show. Even if they have it, it doesn’t show. The introverts already start to cringe, slightly turn away. The extrovert just sees a person who has a pit in their stomach. One thing that the introvert sees in an extrovert, this is my theory that supports the notion that extroverts are needed to succeed in starting a business, is that the extrovert is talking to another human and, hence, change is being brought about.
The introvert is more likely to put a little bit of a brake on that. Going back to my statement, what’s the one thing? Just do it. Start it. The introvert thinks that to start a business requires that level of human interaction. You with me?

Dave White:
I’m very much with you. That’s interesting.

Benoy Tamang:
Again, a story made up, projected on their own mirror. The extrovert has the same issues but just says, “Hey, I’m going to go talk to someone.” That’s it.

Kyle Knowles:
They make it look easy.

Benoy Tamang:
That’s it. To us, they make it look easy, but they’re suffering the same. They may not be even talking about business because they’re just having a laugh. But for us, they make it look easy. “He’s making a sale. I hate him.” You know that happens.

Dave White:
Yeah.

Benoy Tamang:
You know that happens. That’s something that people don’t figure out. Hence, that’s why, like I said, guitars and such, it’s such a release just to sit down and play. Don’t need anybody else. Got to put my hours in. Make sure my callouses are still there.

Dave White:
You got it.

Kyle Knowles:
So do you feel like the tech CEOs you work with, are the majority of them makers or managers or do you find some that can do both well? Are they usually one or the other, and is there a benefit to being one over the other?

Benoy Tamang:
That’s a really good question. I would say surprisingly that the majority of them are going to go in a even split. It doesn’t make sense when I say majority, but I’m actually thinking of if they’re a maker, they’re producing the widgets. Manager, they’re managing the people making the widgets and whatever. There’s a third element that I’ve noticed.
I’ll use my verbiage. The technicians who know how to make the widget, the product, engineer it, code it, whatever. They could even be a plumber or whatever. And then there are those who already are directing people to do this and that, whatever. There’s a third level that I’ve noticed over time, and they’re the ones that have ultimately had the benefit of a family of parents and grandparents who have been entrepreneurs and business owners, and so they don’t know anything but I’m just going to be doing my own thing.
It’s been surprising. I ask every time, everyone that I meet, “Tell me about your parents and your grandparents? Tell me what they did for a living, both husband and wife.” There’s a strong streak of people starting their own business because they came from a long line of risk takers. To them, they don’t see them as risk takers, they just see that as a normal course of business. Well, let’s just say the shrinking violet introvert says, “Ugh, I’m not going to do that.” They just assume that’s the way it is.
It was remarkable. They may not have any maker or manager trait. They just come with a mindset, “Oh, I’m going to be doing my own thing. I’m going to try this, and then I’m going to try that.” This is my own research, and I’ve found that fascinating. I’m sure there’s lots of experts who’ve written books and things and done all of that. But I ask all the time, and that’s why I said there’s an even distribution amongst three ways to categorize it for me, because I ask.
Now, the interesting thing for me is I also have this theory, if that’s the case, so your dad’s vocation will either keep you in that same ecosystem, it’s going to attract you or it’s going to repel you. For me, it was a repelling motion. I don’t want to be part of a large bureaucratic military organization with all those layers. Talk about layers, private, corporal, lieutenant, senior lieutenant, sergeant, captain, major. And then there’s layers of that. Colonel, general. You get it?
I was repelled. So in some cases, the vocation of your dad or line attracts or repels, and I took the repelling motion to do what I do now. It doesn’t mean I’m better or anything. It’s just I chose a different path. So that’s why I’m answering your question in that way. It’s kind of interesting how much what the family has done in the past influences, regardless if you’re a maker or a manager.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah. I just see that someone that’s a manager and then is put in that pressure cooker with a board and VC funding, having a harder time, all of a sudden, going into manager mode than someone that’s more like, “Yeah, meetings all day, that’s fine. I can do that.”

Benoy Tamang:
Everyone’s got a different hurdle, even if they say, “I’ll do meetings all day,” but they completely botch the product. They completely botch what it takes to go deep into the rudimentary elements because they’re superficially meeting. Their eyes are off the ball. Everyone’s got their own hurdle. Just like I sensed what you were saying with a little nuance, you get to be really good at catching some of the unspoken or the word choices that actually infer something else is not being expressed. Does that make sense?

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah.

Benoy Tamang:
That’s what, ultimately, I will tell you, the ultimate goal that I have for each one of these CEOs is for them to be a coach as well. The coach role allows them not to be in their day-to-day minutiae. It allows them to lead by letting them just be empowered. He sets a vision as a CEO, gets the right people in place, and then provides the support, infrastructure, resources, cash, whatever is needed.
But the coach is hands off. Let them go. Monitor with dashboards and the guardrails. I, in fact, have two clients who are now mini coaching, helping some of my friends, and that’s a win. Can you see that? That’s a win. They’re so happy because they’re now at an elevated state. They’re not in the day-to-day blanket of death world. They’re so happy, and that’s a sign for me. Okay, we’ve hit a level, an echelon of peace.

Kyle Knowles:
I love it. We just have lightning round questions for you.

Benoy Tamang:
Okay.

Kyle Knowles:
They only take 30 seconds. But let’s go through these. Favorite candy bar?

Benoy Tamang:
KIT KAT.

Kyle Knowles:
Favorite musical artists?

Benoy Tamang:
So many. Michael Jackson.

Kyle Knowles:
Favorite cereal?

Benoy Tamang:
Corn Flakes.

Kyle Knowles:
Mac or PC?

Benoy Tamang:
Mac.

Kyle Knowles:
Google or Microsoft?

Benoy Tamang:
Google.

Kyle Knowles:
Dogs or cats?

Benoy Tamang:
Dogs.

Kyle Knowles:
Phantom or Les Mis?

Benoy Tamang:
Phantom.

Dave White:
Well done.

Kyle Knowles:
Very well done.

Benoy Tamang:
Well done in that I chose what you chose or that it was fast?

Kyle Knowles:
You were fast. The only one you struggled on was musical artist, but there are a lot out there. That would be hard. That would be hard.

Benoy Tamang:
You can see why, right? It’s just this …

Dave White:
But you went with the king.

Benoy Tamang:
MJ popped into my head. Last year, there was at the SCERA Shell in Orem, the top MJ impersonator from Vegas came. I happened to have a good friend, Brian, who invited me because he had spare tickets and we were in the front seats. He made fun of us in his entire performance. But he was so good and it brought back memories. He was fantastic. Later on, I’ll show you some of the videos that I took from there. Thank you.

Kyle Knowles:
Excellent.

Benoy Tamang:
Thank you.

Kyle Knowles:
Well, thank you so much for being here, and thank you for being generous with your time. I was inspired by the conversation, literally inspired. So thank you for being here.

Benoy Tamang:
I’m rooting for you. You know I will.

Dave White:
Thank you.

Benoy Tamang:
Thank you for having me. This has been fun. Easy. I told you it’d be easy. Such a good thing you’re doing because right now you’re doing it. You’re doing it, the only way to learn.

Dave White:
Jump in.

Benoy Tamang:
Congrats. Congrats.

Dave White:
Thank you.

Benoy Tamang:
Both feet in.

Kyle Knowles:
Thanks, Benoy.

Benoy Tamang:
Yeah. Bye.

Kyle Knowles:
Bye-bye.