Mindfulness in the Workplace with Ram Ganesan

**SPEAKER_1** (0:05)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Skasz** (0:18)
Hello and welcome back to the show. We are diving deep into the intersection of leadership, AI, and mindfulness. Our guest today is someone who's been at the forefront of digital transformation and customer success, should be a great conversation. I'm Stephen Skasz, here again with Mike Kluski. We are live. If you have questions or comments, send them along. Mike, introduce our special guest today.

**Mike Kluski** (0:44)
Sounds awesome, Stephen. Thank you once again and welcome also to our followers. Today we have really an incredibly inspiring guest, Ram Ganesan. Ram is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Kaboom AI. With over two decades of experience in the tech industry, Ram's journey is one of a number of different things, innovation, leadership, a passion for transforming how businesses connect with customers. From his role as the global head of digital experience at encora, to the founding and the successful exit of Sooryen Technologies, Ram has consistently been at the forefront of digital transformation and customer success. His work is a testament to his ability to craft solutions that drive value across the entire business ecosystem. And at Kaboom AI, Ram is tackling one of today's most pressing business challenges, which I know many of our listeners are going to want to hear. It's the challenge of bridging the gap between sales, operations, delivery, and finance. And he's doing this by leveraging AI to enhance customer relationships.
What makes Ram's approach truly special is his emphasis on mindfulness and leadership, which we're going to really dive into today. Today we'll explore how Ram integrates mindfulness to foster creativity, innovation, and build a culture of empathy and purpose within his teams, which we know many organizations sometimes struggle with that. So today you'll walk away with some very practical strategies on how to incorporate mindfulness into your own lives and business to ultimately improve the balance between culture, productivity, and overall success. So with that, Ram, we're thrilled to have you on the show today. welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast.

**Ram Ganesan** (2:50)
Thank you, Stephen and Mike. And Mike, thank you for the very flattering introduction. You know, my mom would be very proud to hear all of that.

**Mike Kluski** (3:00)
I think-

**Stephen Skasz** (3:01)
That's how we like it. That's the mom test.

**Ram Ganesan** (3:04)
Framing that and I'm thoroughly flattered. And you're very kind with your depiction. I think under the hood, it's a little bit clunky and messy out there with Ram and his story. But I'll take that. But I really am excited and happy to be here as part of The Bliss Business Podcast. The topic of, I would say, mindfulness and many associated emotions that go with it, or states of being, if you will, are very near and dear to me. And that's what led me to start my first business and then continue that journey with encora.
And now, freshly again, I would say with Kaboom AI.

**Stephen Skasz** (3:48)
Ram, let's kick things off a little by talking about that journey. I know if you're like most entrepreneurs, you probably had some of those key moments that led you on this journey to start Kaboom. How did the concept of Kaboom start to come together for you?

**Ram Ganesan** (4:06)
For Kaboom, I had reached an inflection point with our journey at Sooryen and encora. So Sooryen was independently run by me and our team from 2012 to 2018, roughly. Then we hit some charts out there, Deloitte Fest 500, Inc. 500, etc. Started getting a lot of inbound action for investments, buyouts, etc. We generally said, okay, we're going to keep moving along. We were interested in growing it ourselves. But then we really found a great partner with indicom Digital, which is now in Cora. In 2018, we joined hands with them.
And I think the genesis of all the entrepreneurship, for both Sooryen and Kaboom, is I would say ultimately it's a pursuit of purpose and happiness in life. And you have to be very intentful about it because entrepreneurship, especially in the zero to one phase, is hard. And it can be very anxiety-inducing, but it's also thoroughly satisfying at the end of the day, if you don't measure it just on the monetary side of the equation. And granted that the previous story with Sooryen and encora was very successful for us and the team. And I'm taking a lot of those learnings now to start Kaboom AI. At the end of the day, it was a desire to build something from scratch again, the entrepreneurial itch, the proverbial entrepreneurial itch, if you will. And working at encora, it had grown and rightfully so into, I would say, a larger, more formal corporate machine, if you will. And I think it was time for me to move on. There were some other signals from life and the universe that happened at the same time on the personal side, with me hitting an age milestone of 20 years. I became 20 years old. And I'm just kidding. That's the way of my father, my daughter's graduation from college. And coincidentally, my daughter is one of the co-founders of Kaboom AI, right? And all of that converged into, I would say, a very clear signal that it's time to do the next thing, right? But do it with a lot of the learnings and the lessons from, and the principles and the values, that's the word that was escaping me, that we've kind of formulated and gathered and doubled down on over the years with Sooryen, right? And a lot of it is essentially centered on the human pursuit of happiness, right? And we pursue happiness in many different ways, and entrepreneurship is genuinely a tool for that, because you can do it in a very independent manner, but you have to be intentful about it. And a lot of people are mindful of what we do.