Tech Stories For New Age Entrepreneurs - Gary Bizzo [Interview]

Gary Bizzo is the CEO of Syphon Nanotech, and Bizzo integrated marketing corporation. He was listed one among the top 25 businessmen to follow. Bizzo has an International reputation as an 'Agent of Change' using Social Media. He is the Adjunct Professor of Integrated Marketing, MBA School of Business, New York Institute of Technology.

Just a quick intro of PeopleHum. peopleHum is an end-to-end, one-view, integrated human capital management automation platform, the winner of the 2019 global Codie Award for HCM that is specifically built for crafted employee experiences and the future of work. We run the peopleHum blog and video channel which receives upwards of 200,000 visitors a year and publish around 2 interviews with well-known names globally, every month.

Aishwarya

Welcome, Gary. We’re thrilled to have you.

Gary

Thanks for the introduction. I'm impressed with your credentials, too. It's very good.

Aishwarya

Oh, thank you so much. And it's a pleasure to have you.

And I'm really curious if you could kind of tell us about your journey and about experiences that kind of, you know, shaped your thoughts and led you to this wonderful place you are today?

Gary

Well, I've always been looking for a challenge all my life, so a lot of my careers and I've had many careers. They've all hinged around something I thought sounded cool and interesting. Like, I became a photographer back when I was a young boy. I always thought that was kind of cool. And then, I went to work for the government, became a parole officer working with criminals. I started an arms dealer company, where we resold weapons of mass destruction. Maybe not the best job right now, but we only sold to licensed people who could buy our stuff.

I started an ad agency with my marketing experience. I even started an aircraft company. So all the kind of things that I've worked at has a sort of been exciting. I thought and took me through to the next step in my career. And I guess about 15 years ago, I started falling in love with entrepreneurs and startups.

So I ran two business incubators, which gave me a lot of joy because I was working with young people like yourself. And as you can see, I'm a little older. I'm really only 30 years old, but entrepreneurship makes you look older. So, that's pretty much where I am today.

I wanted to do two things in my life as I grew older, and one was to teach at university, and I was talking to a friend and he said, That's like a great idea. I'll introduce you to the dean of my university. So the next thing I know, I'm a professor at the New York Institute and funny enough, all the students we have are from India. I'm overwhelmed and overjoyed that they are because I've never run across such polite, caring individuals in my life and the second thing I really wanted to do was to write.

So, I'm now on my fourth book. Three are business and one is fun.

"So, I think what you do is, you have to find your goals and you have to live them instead of putting them off and waiting for someone else to show you what their goals are."

Aishwarya

That's just fantastic. And I think it's just, you know, inspires me so much to do something, where you can really be passionate because I think a lot of people stop following their passion or do not realize the value of following your dreams or chasing something that you are passionate about.

And it's a reminder, that you know why we kind of lose ourselves in doing things that you're not even cared about. We must really look at these things in perspective and try to chase things that we think would be fun or would be something that we are passionate about.

Gary

I think that the most important thing is passion. Like, do what you love and you're never too old to be an entrepreneur. I was doing a lecture to a group of people at a mosque. And this lovely woman sat in the front with their arms crossed for the whole hour and 1/2 lecture and at the end, she said, I'm 93 years old. Do you think I'm too old to start a business? And everybody leaned forward in their seats wanting to hear my answer because it sounded crazy.

And I said, Well, let's check this out. Do you live in a neighborhood with children? She said, Yeah. Do you have a home or an apartment? She said, A home, I said, Are there any younger children in the neighborhood? She said, Yeah. I said, Well, why don't you take two or three for after school? You know, 7,8 or 9 years old. So they're not a big effort and see how that goes. And she did.

“And I always wondered what happened to her because she said, I'm too old to do this and I said, No, nobody is too old. I'm starting new businesses every day. And I'm in my late sixties.”

Aishwarya

That’s just amazing, very inspiring and you know through all your experiences and through your learnings, what have been the core values, the core principles that you always follow?

Gary

“You have to have empathy for people. And I think when I started my incubators, I realized that paying it forward was a big deal. Like, if there's someone that can benefit from your tutelage and your mentorship and that is an honorable thing to do and, I'll never get rich being the person I am. But I certainly can live comfortably and know that I've made changes for people or helped them make their own changes.”

Aishwarya

Absolutely. I think especially in these times when there's a pandemic out there, and if you do not have empathy, then you probably will not be successful with your teammates or with the organization, Right? What's your advice on that?

Gary

No, I totally agree with you. I think the world is gonna come out of this stronger in terms of caring for others and the funny thing I'm watching intently because opportunity comes from diversity. And I'm already starting to see companies springing up because of this virus. Delivery services and personal shoppers and care homes. And I just see a lot of good changes coming from this, even though it's a terrible thing.

Aishwarya

Yeah, that's great. I think humans have always come out of adversity much stronger. They have survived and they have thrived. So we have that in need, the human capability of changing the negative to positive and building on opportunities since just I think a matter of perspective. Just need to kind of hit the eye and when it's for.

And you know, there are a lot of entrepreneurs trying to get the limelight right now but it's such a struggle, even for them, in businesses out there. Do you have any advice for them off? How to kind of cope with this?

Gary

"I think you really have to put yourself out there. A lot of people will do their job, but they don't reach a critical mass in what they're doing, so they only become average. If you work hard and promote yourself in a niche that identifies you as an expert, I think that's a whole positive way of looking at it."

And the other thing is, people can't be afraid to engage with other people, communicate and ask for help.

For instance, I mentioned earlier about mentors. If I was retired, I would love to mentor people. I know a lot of my friends who are my age who have retired and any opportunity there is for someone to ask their advice, they love it because they have got nothing else to do. And there's all this wisdom in their head that is just sitting there waiting for someone to ask. So couple that with the fact that you have to be good at what you do and confident at doing it and a little less humble. Too many people are humble about what they do. So, it's harder to get your word out if you're keeping it to yourself.

Aishwarya

Oh, yes, so true. And you know when it comes to leaders and leadership, there's just so much that leaders have to focus on.

But is there something that's really lacking in the leadership focus today? Why is it so hard to build the right organization culture with increased employment, increased employee engagement?

Gary

I’ll talk about a slightly bigger company than a five-person business. As a company gets bigger, they have all these grandiose HR philosophies about what they will do for the employees and all the benefits the employee has. But in reality, they're not walking the walker, talking the talk.

So I think employees are more and more underestimated. I think this Coronavirus will open up a whole new thing for people to do remote work. And trust me, if you're working from home, as you know, you have to be very careful that you don't get taken away by all the things happening around your house, like the dishes or your favorite TV show is on. You have to be focused. I think large companies have lost how important an employee is to the company.

You know, they've reduced educational opportunities. They demand more work from you and don't give you raises anymore. So, like, what's that all about?

"As we can tell by this Corona, employees are the backbone of our business. Look at the health care workers and the the supply chain people from the food industry. I mean, how did they keep it up? And those people deserve all kinds of kudos?"

Aishwarya

Absolutely. They do. You know, there's so much hard work that's going into that, and they are being very selfless and trying to do their bit.

Gary

It's on one of my shirts. I wore one of my shirts because I came up with the same, doubts kill the warrior. Okay, if you doubt yourself, it'll kill you in battle and in business. And after I would mentor my clients, I would give them this shirt. I gave them the first shirt when I started and I gave them this one. Because success gives you the fuel to continue. So that's another one. Sometimes it takes everything in your toolbox to be able to help entrepreneurs grow and move that one step further.

Aishwarya

Absolutely. And that is such a beautiful quote. Really beautiful quote.

Talking about marketing and marketing strategies, from your experience can you give us a gist of the evolution of marketing strategies over the years?

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