Manish Hirapara With PeakActivity

Intro: [00:00:02] You’re listening to Innovation Radio, where we interview entrepreneurs focused on innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. Innovation Radio is brought to you by the world’s first theme park for entrepreneurs, the Leuven Center of Innovation, the only innovation center in the nation to support the founder’s journey from birth of idea through successful exit or global expansion. Now here’s your host, Lee Kantor.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:34] Lee Kantor here another episode of Innovation Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, the Leuven Center of Innovation. Without their support, we could not be sharing these important stories. Today on the show, we have Manish Hirapara with PeakActivity. Welcome.

Manish Hirapara: [00:00:56] Great to be here, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:57] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about peak activity. How are you serving folks?

Manish Hirapara: [00:01:03] We are. We’re an eight year old company, and we’re based here right in South Florida. We have an office in the Levant Center of Innovation, and we’re really an established and proven partner for companies, businesses mostly, that are engaging in an e-commerce or technology journey. And we really provide them the resources, expertise and technology they need to elevate their outcomes in their e-commerce and technology journeys.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:32] Now, in today’s world, aren’t pretty much every company that’s online doing e-commerce in some manner.

Manish Hirapara: [00:01:40] It’s you know, the lines have definitely become much more blurred than they used to be in the past. Really, commerce in general, almost in a way. We want to drop the E out of it and just say commerce is done in a multitude of channels. There’s there’s almost every every store has an E commerce presence. And every e-commerce site that is largely successful has started to open stores. So, yes, it is really, you know, pretty much anyone that’s that’s doing some something digital is is in the commerce business online.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:11] And that even goes to service based businesses. I mean, they’re looking for ways, you know, to help their customer to productize maybe something that they’re offering that’s a service, but also to make that transaction happen online.

Manish Hirapara: [00:02:24] Absolutely. And if you’re a service based business that isn’t thinking of it that way, you’re missing out on some some great revenue opportunities and great business opportunities. And I’ll use I’ll use an example lead, which is if you’re an air conditioning repair company, traditional service business, you go to people’s homes and you and you repair heating or electric. Well, you can now sell contracts online for maintenance and get people that are looking for those types of things that you’ve got a built in demand pool through online commerce that you may not even have thought possible before.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:59] So now when you’re what’s kind of your backstory, how did you get involved in this line of work?

Manish Hirapara: [00:03:03] I actually started my career as a software developer, software engineer, and I was fortunate enough to have landed a job at Office Depot, which at the time was the number two online retailer in the world. And so early on in the the growth of online commerce. Office Depot was was there people started switching from fax machines and catalogs to buying, you know, their pens and their paper and their ink and toner through through digital means. It just became a matter of convenience and help build their entire e-commerce platform and helped lead a lot of the teams there. And I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I’ve actually started 12 different companies or been involved with 12 different start ups throughout my journey. And in 2015 I had the opportunity to start peak activity really with the intent of taking all of the expertise, knowledge and trials, tribulations that had learned through growing a a $7 billion online retail operation within Office Depot and saying we can help other companies who may be a little later in their journey in the online world. And so we started really just being a what we call a fractional chief technology officer, fractional chief marketing and digital officer for companies around their online strategy. And from there it grew to to where we have we’ve got over 100 employees and helping many, many companies worldwide.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:34] Now. Is your work primarily in building that technology infrastructure that enables them to do commerce, or is it even at the point of helping them with their marketing and digital digital marketing to help them attract people into their, you know, websites so they can do more e-commerce sales or both?

Manish Hirapara: [00:04:54] It’s both. Really. What we like to start with is the strategy. Oftentimes people will just jump into something. They’ll build an e-commerce site and they won’t understand. It’s no different than any any business. You need to have the right goals. You need to have the right organization and people. You need to have the right techniques, all that in place. So oftentimes we will help a business owner or leadership team reset on their strategy and really kind of figure out based on experience, what the new strategy is from there, it’s will help them build or create that next generation experience that they’re after. And oftentimes that is the technology implementation of it. That may be some of the design work that that goes into it. And from there it’s the optimization. How do you actually take what you’ve built just because you built it? They don’t come and you’ve got to optimize it and we’ll we’ll think about their data strategy. We’ll think about how they’re running their marketing programs, and we’ll help with things like their email or SMS marketing or their AB testing strategies to really grow their business online.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:59] Now, who is your ideal client? Are they the, you know, Office Depot sized organizations that have already tried this in some garden or may be frustrated with the results? And then you come in and either kind of reboot them or just tweak what they have? Or is it can it be somebody that has, you know, one product, you know, and they have an idea and they want to just try it out online?

Manish Hirapara: [00:06:23] But really, our ideal client is somebody who is is looking for help. And typically, you know, typically it’s not that Office Depot XYZ Corporation because they usually have large teams. And, you know, you’re one of many in a big in a big pond there. But what we found is most of our clients tend to be that that mid-sized company, they’re not so small that they’re startup and just trying to, you know, try to make ends meet and bring a product to market. But what they’re doing is they’re seeing this this gap between the haves and the have nots. The gap is if you’re embracing technology for embracing digital, you can move faster than your competition. And they those types of organizations know the the climb is steeper than it’s ever been. But you’ve got to be a digitally minded organization. You’ve got to really, you know, overcome that that challenging competitive landscape and really go faster than your peers. Um, a lot of our clients like to to think of themselves as technology companies, even if they might be doing things like selling furniture. Because if you don’t, if you don’t embrace the technology, if you don’t embrace the e-commerce piece of it, you’re going to be left behind. And that’s that’s that’s the last thing that we want for any of our clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:42] Are some of your clients have they never been in this space or are not as deep as you’d like them to be in this space? And this is the first time they’re kind of putting all their chips on the table and saying, okay, we’re going to go all in with digital. You know, we might have done it with ads or different channels previously, but this digital, we have to be there. We have to be you know, we have to kind of dominate that space if we want to be successful or else we could be out of business. I mean, that’s the that’s the stakes in this, right?

Manish Hirapara: [00:08:13] It absolutely is. I think it’s shifted over the last few years. And the Covid 19 pandemic changed things quite a bit where a lot of that e-commerce demand got brought forward solely because it had to. Right. So we saw a huge bump in 2020, 2021 where companies were were pressed to move quickly into new technologies, new tools, new ways of engaging their customer. That may have been a little uncomfortable for them. So anyone that goes into a restaurant now, you’re used to the QR code menu, whereas in 2019, 2020, you might not have been. So I do think it’s shifted a little bit now where people are saying, okay, I get it, but it’s not optimized for my business results. And a lot of what we’re we’re really focusing on much more so over the last two years has been a lot of people are in the space, but they don’t know exactly how to get the engine working like a fine tuned machine. And they know that the opportunity is there in front of them. They know they need to embrace the opportunity, but they don’t necessarily have the know how or should expect to have the know how. Internally, there’s a lot of presidents and CEOs who say, I get it, I know I need to do it, but I got to do it the right way. And I don’t want to I don’t want to waste money failing multiple times until I get it right. And that’s really where we see the opportunity for for a company like ours.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:36] Now, what are some of those symptoms that a company is maybe dabbling? Maybe they’ve had, you know, a little bit of a bump, but they could be leaving money on the table if they don’t partner with the right expert like you and your team. Can you talk a little bit about what are some symptoms of maybe a digital strategy that isn’t, you know, where there’s room for growth that they may not you know, they’re seeing some success, but there there could be a ton more if they would just tweak a couple of things.

Manish Hirapara: [00:10:05] Absolutely. If you’re if you’re a data person, just look at your your conversion rate or how often your cash registers ringing and almost every company, even Amazon will will test their way into getting their cash register ringing more often. And you’ve got to be able to run those experiments. You’ve got to be able to to use data in a way that provides you meaningful insights. And I think if you’re a company and you’re saying, you know, we’re just effectively not doing that, we’re not running experiments, we’re not thinking about our customer journey, well then you’re leaving money on the table. And so the truth is very few companies have this perfectly dialed in. But there’s the majority of the companies that are out there that could be gaining, you know, with a little bit of investment, a lot more return. And and so I think it’s really important for companies to identify that this is this is a journey. This is a never ending stream. This isn’t something you do once. You don’t just build your e-commerce site. Yeah, in 2020, I invested and I built my e-commerce journey and off we go. It’s something that you’ve got to be working on every single day. No different than if you’ve got a house and it’s, you know, facing the ocean and the ocean’s, you know. Breezes eat the salts eating away at your paint. You paint it every two years. You got to keep painting your your experience. And as customer behavior shift, you’ve got to keep up with them.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:33] So if it’s not, it might be a yellow. Maybe it’s not all the way a red flag. But if your team aren’t running experiments on a semi-regular basis, that’s kind of a yellow or red flag, right?

Manish Hirapara: [00:11:46] Absolutely. If you aren’t looking at data, if you aren’t digesting it and saying, what are we going to tweak or adjust, well, then that’s definitely a yellow flag to say we’re going to we’re going to end up in stasis and we’re going to eventually get outmuscled by the competition because the truth is the competition is doing those things in every sector. And if it’s not the existing competition, there’s an upstart. You know, for every for every Kmart, there’s an Amazon that’s come along and really put them out of business. And they were put out of business mainly because they didn’t continue to innovate, continue to evolve, continue to to leverage new tools. And I’ll use one simple example here is we’ve got AI based tools like ChatGPT coming out now. Every business needs to be running some experiments to say, How can I be using things like generative AI? Even though I may have spent a ton of money in 2020 bringing up e-commerce? Well, now you’re going to think about how am I going to use ChatGPT and my e-commerce experience together? So if you’re not constantly looking at those types of things, you’re missing the mark and somebody else is is going to evolve faster than you are.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:57] Yeah, I mean, I think it’s what Bezos said. Your margin is my opportunity.

Manish Hirapara: [00:13:03] That’s a fantastic quote. Fantastic quote. I love I love the every day is day one, right? Look at it that way. Right?

Lee Kantor: [00:13:09] You have to have.

Manish Hirapara: [00:13:10] That whether it’s e-commerce or not. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:11] You have to have that beginner’s mindset. I think it’s it’s a humbling profession because things change so quickly. I mean, we’re all now dancing because ChatGPT put out a, you know, a thing for us to play with. And, you know, nobody was thinking about this except the people that were the AI nerds, you know, four years ago, even though we’ve all been playing with, you know, our Alexa at home and asking it questions and they’re giving us answers, we we got kind of used to that pretty quick. But you know, you put a little chat bot, a little box there and you can ask whatever question you want and it sounds like a human answering you. And now, you know, your head’s blown.

Manish Hirapara: [00:13:51] Absolutely. Yeah. Your humans are curious in nature. Right. And that curiosity is is very, very much welcome, especially when you think about tools like ChatGPT. I always like to use the example of anyone who’s ridden in a Tesla or driven a Tesla. Tesla has been doing AI and machine learning for for 7 or 8 years. Every road that that somebody’s got autopilot on, they’re learning from it and they’re making they’re making sure that they’re adapting. So this is nothing new, but it’s just an evolution of kind of where things have been and it’s just the next step in the journey. And the journey is going to continue going on into into the night, let’s put it that way. As long as we don’t, as long as we don’t blow ourselves up and doesn’t kind of take us out in the process, we’re going to keep going and we’re going to continue to to to get better.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:40] Yeah, I mean, things move gradually, then suddenly. I mean, this has been going on for years, like you said, in the background. And then all of a sudden now it’s in everybody’s face and now everybody’s scrambling. And that’s why it’s so important to have, like you were saying, a philosophy of constant innovation. You have to be doing this every day because you don’t know what tomorrow brings. You don’t know what innovation is going to be there tomorrow. And if you’re not in it today, it’s going to be that much harder to catch up tomorrow.

Manish Hirapara: [00:15:07] Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:09] So let’s talk a little bit about your relationship with the Levant Center. What what what compelled you to get involved and get, you know, and kind of camp out inside their space, number one? And number two, how important is the Levant center to the the technology scene in South Florida and the innovation scene in south Florida?

Manish Hirapara: [00:15:32] Well, our history with the Levant Center is absolutely great. We got in and took a tour before anything had been built. And we took took a few looks out the window. One was able to see Miami to the south. Downtown’s got skyline, was able to see Fort Lauderdale to the east, and then was able to see the Everglades to the west. And I said, I mean, this is the center of everything in south Florida. I’m I want to be involved in this in one way or another. And one of our big pillars here at peak activity and even my my personal impact statement is, is that we we want to be fabrics of the community. We we want to make sure we’re we’re helping others in any which way we can. And so before the concrete was poured and before the furnishings were put up, we became members and decided we needed some space in here. We need to be part of this, this, this scene. And really the importance of this center, I think is is still yet to yet to be seen. But I will tell you personally, it is incredibly important. Um, and maybe yet to be seen as wrong or wrong praise. It’s yet to be it’s yet to be realized. The the importance of it is because of its central location. You can get there from Miami. You can get there from Coral Gables, you can get there from West Palm Beach. And we’ve brought people all the way down from from Jupiter. And, you know, it’s it’s an hour drive. No matter where you are in south Florida, it’s an hour drive. It’s it’s not terrible.

Manish Hirapara: [00:17:04] It’s not two hours going from Jupiter all the way down to Coral Gables where nobody wants to make that drive. Um, that’s number one from a centralization of it. Number two is in terms of its mission. You know, the economic development that technology is bringing, innovation is bringing to every facet of business. Right? You just mentioned ChatGPT and I. The Levant Center is really there to be that catalyst for companies to connect, to collide for entrepreneurs, for established companies to really have an opportunity to to gain access to talent without a resource like that in our community and without a resource that is, you know, well funded and well run and really able to drive that economic economic activity forward, we’re going to lose out to other communities who do it better. So I’m really proud of what we built with that Levant Center, and I’m really proud of the opportunities that are going to be in front of us and really embrace it. And being that catalyst to say we can be where the venture capitalists put their money in the next five years, we can be the the South Florida Tech scene hub where now you’re going to have entrepreneurs create billion dollar unicorn companies right out of out of South Florida. And I do believe the Levant center is going to be put on the map with those types of opportunities because it is a great place to to begin an idea, but it’s also a great place to to take an accelerate and really, you know, take to IPO an idea that or a company that that is mature enough.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:45] And it’s so important in a community to have that place where the founders can go hang out, interact with each other because, you know, startup, founding, founding a startup is not for the faint of heart. You know, there’s a lot of crashes and burns there. But if you have a place where you can jump after a failure or a lesson into somewhere else and say, Hey, why don’t we partner? Or why don’t we mash up my idea with yours over here? Look, I’m doing this differently than you are. Let’s combine forces here. That’s where the magic happens. And then you need. You need a place to kind of be that place where where synergies can occur, where those collisions can occur. Without that, those entrepreneurs go off, they move, You know, they’re like, oh, I’m going to somebody I know a buddy in Nashville. I’m going to go there, You know, like all of a sudden they’re gone. But if you have a way to keep them local, keep them engaged in something, you’re going to increase your chances of that unicorn forming itself.

Manish Hirapara: [00:19:46] Absolutely. And I do want to add to this. It’s more than just entrepreneurs, right? I love entrepreneurs. I’m an entrepreneur myself. For every entrepreneur, there’s ten innovators, and for every ten innovators, there’s 100 people who can contribute to economic development. And my belief is, is, you know, it’s a great you know, it’s a theme park for. I love it. But I do believe really well established companies in our community. The Florida Power and Lights. The next era is the right.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:17] You need those right. You need the enterprise level for there. And they have to be open minded to risk political capital and their own capital to to partner with some of these young firms, because that’s really where the magic happens. That’s where you can really get innovation on for everybody. It’s an ecosystem.

Manish Hirapara: [00:20:36] Requires thinking outside the box, and that’s where these companies can access the talent they need to to not be left behind, to not go into spaces, but to to think of it as every day is day one if you’re one of these big companies. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:50] Now, so let’s get some advice from you. You said you’re a serial entrepreneur. You have a lot of success over the years. Talk about like maybe each each kind of constituent. How would you recommend an enterprise level organization that isn’t involved with Levon? What what should they be doing to kind of raise their game and maybe think outside the box to to kind of get a taste of what kind of creativity and innovation is happening there?

Manish Hirapara: [00:21:20] I think the first thing I would say would be to attend an event. There’s plenty of great opportunities to to get engaged without having to to spend a whole lot of time. Right. Take a tour. If you haven’t if you haven’t seen the center, it’s just a you know, it’s a magnificent place to take a tour. Everyone we’ve brought in there, we brought in a large company, CEOs. We brought in large company digital marketers. Everyone’s blown away by the quality of the space, the physical space, as well as the quality of the people you meet. And then if you’re if you’re beyond that, if you’ve taken a tour, if you’ve come to an event, really think about where you might be able to allocate, whether it’s some time, whether it’s some money or whether it’s some, you know, some hidden need that you’ve got, you know, allocate a project that you’re saying, hey, you know what? We’re just not going to get to figuring out how ChatGPT is going to is going to help the the cruise line business or, you know, affect our banking business this year. We just don’t have the internal resources to do it. And I would I would just ask you to challenge the Levant Center staff to say, hey, can you find me somebody that whether it’s a person, whether it’s a team, whether it’s a company that I can connect with and, you know, force that collision to happen, force that connection to be made for you. And I think you’ll be you’ll be pleased and thrilled with the outcome of what you’re going to get because it’ll it’ll help you innovate. It’ll help you move faster and it’ll help you get things that you’re probably worried about that you’re probably, you know, not really prepared for. You’re saying, Well, I can push this to 24 or 25, and instead of saying pushing it to 22 and 24, pushing it to 2025. Take that innovation leap now. And I think you’ll you’ll be you’ll be really, really happy that you did.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:10] So now let’s let’s kind of pitch that entrepreneur, the person with an idea. Maybe they’re in corporate right now and they have this thing that’s been bugging them. This solution that they see clear as day, but they haven’t pulled the trigger yet. How can that entrepreneur, potential aspiring entrepreneur, get involved with Lavon? And what are some of the the reasons for them to invest some time and resource into doing that?

Manish Hirapara: [00:23:33] Anybody that’s and I’ve been at corporate, I’ve been at corporate thinking about how I’m going to think about my next startup or get into my next startup, taking that leap of faith requires really building up courage. And it’s not something you want to do alone. You want people who have made those mistakes around you. You’re going to learn from your own mistakes. But it’s a lot easier when you’ve got the right mentorship. You’ve got access to the right capital conversations. You’ve got access to people who are going to help you with your accounting and your tax and your finances. What I would say would be if you’re that entrepreneur, really seek out the safety net. That’s even to your point earlier. If if it doesn’t work, you want to have a safety net of what Plan B is right. And we never want anybody in our network to to be sitting there overwhelmed and worried about their their security net or anything like that. So I think you want to tap into a community and that community is is already there, built the access to resources is available to you and really that know how to make you successful. I firmly believe capitalism and entrepreneurship are the two best things or two of the some of the best things we’ve got going in America. And you’ve got this great resource available to you in the Levant Center that you can you can access all of that. And it’s an incredible wealth driver from that. Right. And let’s be let’s be honest, capitalism is is great because it gives you the opportunity to create, you know, multigenerational wealth. And that can be tapped and taken into account for yourself. So if you’re sitting there on the sidelines, get in the game.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:20] Right? Take action. So what do you need more of? How can we help you at peak activity?

Manish Hirapara: [00:25:29] You know, with us, it’s always about getting the word out and it’s about creating opportunities for us to meet more people and and help more businesses. It’s simply it’s simply put, you know, how do we make sure people know about us, know that we’re here, know that we’re local in their backyard and know that we’ve got expertise that we can help them with. Right. And the last thing we want to do is, is see whether you’re a mid-sized company or a large company that you’re you’re just going to your friend Google and finding a company in Boston or San Antonio and you engage with them and you end up with a disappointing outcome, or you may even end up with a great outcome. But let’s keep economic dollars in our own community as much as possible. And really let’s let’s create synergies and connection within our own community. So all I would ask for is, is, you know, anybody that’s interested in something like this, feel free to reach out. And we’re we’re here. We’re a fabric of the community and we’re here to advance and make the largest impact we can in the communities we serve.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:37] And that’s peak activity. Dot com is the website. And if you’re anywhere on your e-commerce journey, it’s definitely worth a call or conversation just to see what else is out there. And especially if you’re local, there’s no excuse not to to at least meet you guys or somebody on the team to have a conversation, right? I mean, there’s no harm in that. You want to meet more people and serve more people.

Manish Hirapara: [00:27:02] Absolutely. We welcome anything. There’s no commitments or anything like that. We’re just happy to we’re happy to help. If you’re facing a challenge and you don’t want you to do it alone. Find find some experts who will go with you. And we always use our analogy and the peak activity way of a mountain. You don’t climb Mount Everest without a Sherpa. And so let us be those Sherpas. If if you’re considering climbing Mount Everest or even a small, small hike, we’re there to guide you.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:28] Good stuff. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Manish Hirapara: [00:27:35] We appreciate the timely. And hats off to you. This is this is great stuff.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:40] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Innovation Radio.

Intro: [00:27:45] This episode of Innovation Radio was brought to you by the world’s first theme park for entrepreneurs, the Levant Center of Innovation, the only innovation center in the nation to support the founder’s journey from birth of idea through successful exit or global expansion. If you are ready to launch or scale your business, please check out the Levant Center of Innovation by visiting w WW dot Nova edu slash innovation.