An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Be aware of what you spend for marketing and do your double/triple due diligence to evaluate if the money is worth it.

As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rushabh Shah.

He started his career as an engineer and is currently managing strategic and tactical initiatives in the field of information technology. However, he pivoted his focus during the pandemic, creating Glish with his family. He wanted to create a beverage that his whole family could enjoy, young and old. He also was concerned with making his brand truly healthy for the consumer and incorporating ingredients that would be nourishing.

Rushabh started his career as an engineer and is currently managing strategic and tactical initiatives in the field of information technology. He pivoted his focus during the pandemic, creating Glish with his family. He wanted to create a beverage that his whole family could enjoy, young and old. He also was concerned with making his brand truly healthy for the consumer, and incorporating ingredients that would be nourishing.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

I am a sports lover and a movie and music buff, I was also good at school and very driven. Consequently, like a typical Indian brown boy, I decided to pursue a bachelor’s in engineering and eventually graduate studies here in the U.S. at Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester NY. In addition, I am an avid foodie, always wanting to try out new things

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

The famous quote of Tony Robbins: “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react.”

I relate to this as an immigrant, when I entered the U.S. as a student there were a lot of uncertainties (visa, job, stability etc.) over the past decade that I had experienced on a personal and professional level. There was a specific situation when I was working at a startup, I was deliberately being pushed to a corner and became the single point of failure for customer delivery. Instead of choosing self-pity, I chose to look at it as a challenge. I not only ensured a successful customer delivery program but also provided additional onboarding help. The customer was so happy that they let the CEO know about my work, which opened a way for me to showcase my work and come out with flying colors.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Steve Jobs’s Biography by Walter Isaacson had a significant impact on me personally. The book states the importance of believing in yourself and your gut instinct. I was inspired to get out of my comfort zone and do the unusual. Starting a new business while being an engineer and a manager, was difficult but something that I wanted to do. Like Jobs, I had a solid vision and gut instinct to create products that could impact the entire world, despite knowing little about the field I was pursuing.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?

This is a fantastic question, and yes, transitioning an idea into a commercial business is the most challenging thing an individual can face. However, based on my experience I can share some ideas on how to overcome this challenge

• Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
• Set a goal.
• Break up the goal into small tasks so you can check them off easier and keep track of all your progress.
• Do not set multiple goals, focus on each step as they come.
• Be patient but aggressive when putting your brand and yourself out there.

Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?

One should never presume that someone must have done it before. There is a saying, “you won’t learn how to swim unless you get inside the water” the same concept applies here. One should directly search their idea if it has been implemented before or not. There can be only 2 outcomes: if there is a similar idea already implemented, research it in more detail, identify the gaps and fill the gaps and see how you can better it. This forms your pathway to commercialization. Or option two, the idea doesn’t already exist and now you can make the path from conceptualization to commercialization relatively easy.

For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through from when they think of the idea until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.

Being an entrepreneur, one must be outgoing and social above and beyond their core competency. Sourcing a good manufacturer and finding a good retailer can be done in multiple ways but the few things that personally helped me are the following.

• Scour the internet.
• Going to my local stores and networking with store managers and asking them about retailers and overall functioning.
• Going to local quick-serve restaurants and speaking/networking with restaurant managers.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?

• Be aware of what you spend for marketing and do your double/triple due diligence to evaluate if the money is worth it.
• Hire an accountant in advance so you don’t have to worry about taxes, especially filing sales tax if you are in the CPG business.
• Focus on core competencies and don’t be afraid to take calculated risks based on data.
• Leverage consultants in areas that you fall short of by using tools like Fiverr or Upwork.
• Focus on the mission of your company, and make sure you align everything you do with it.

Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

• Develop a minimum viable product.
• Register an LLC/Inc and get an EIN.
• Because everything is digital, get your domain and all your social media handles.

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?

In my humble opinion, I wouldn’t recommend that. If you are personally not connected, or invested in your product you won’t be able to do justice to it holistically.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

This is situationally specific. There is no cookie-cutter method. Both are equally good ways to kickstart your business. They both have their pros and cons.

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

• We are just getting started. Glish’s mission is to bring people/families together to cherish life via our refreshing sparkling beverages that are fun and functional.
• In addition, we are trying to ensure that people are able to enjoy a lifestyle that is truly guilt free but at the same time is fun as well.

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Do not ignore your instinct. Try to follow it and see the magic unfold. This is because the guidance that your instinct gives you is 100% pure, unbiased, and true to yourself. Consequently, the success probability increases multifold.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Cavu Ventures — They build brands for a healthier world and exist to democratize healthy living for all humans.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.

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Making Something From Nothing: Rushabh Shah Of Glish On How To Go From Idea To Launch was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.