Piyush Patel has had many roles in his lifetime: student, entrepreneur, author, speaker, teacher, counselor and most recently the owner of a wine vineyard. Though these roles are all very different and distinct, the one aspect they all have in common for Patel is that they are a passion.
Growing up in London, Piyush Patel’s father and mother sought to follow the American dream, landing them in an epicenter of opportunity, El Reno, Oklahoma when Patel was in elementary school. From there, Patel’s family would open a small hotel that perched itself right at the intersection of Hwy. 81 and Rt. 66.
As a student, Patel found school to be very difficult. Both of his parents didn’t finish high school, which led Patel to rely on his teachers in school as mentors and problem solvers during his struggles in learning. Not only did these teachers help him learn, but they also helped him develop plans for his future away from El Reno.
“I had some really good teachers that put me under their wing,” Patel said. “Something in my brain told me if I ever get to pick my own career, I’m gonna be a teacher.”
After high school, Patel enrolled at Oklahoma State University and received his bachelor’s degree in elementary education. However, Patel took his first teaching role at Northern Oklahoma College, teaching visual effects and multimedia for the film and video game industry.
While he loved teaching and problem solving, Patel had two gripes with the teaching profession, the lack of income and the long hours. Patel taught an abstract structure designed to speed up the education process: 42 credit hours per semester, class Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and no holidays. He also lived directly across the street from the lab, so students could come visit him in his home for any questions or problems. Then, Patel got life changing news- he was going to be a father.
“When my wife was pregnant, she told me that these kids aren’t going to be able to come knock on the door at 10 o’clock at night,” Patel said. “So, I started recording my lectures and they stopped coming.”
Patel then began to start posting his lectures on the internet which led to his journey as an entrepreneur. In 2001, Patel, with just $54 and no investors, started his company called Digital Tutors. Combining his love for teaching and video game development, Digital Tutors was a way to teach the everyday person how to make movies and games through video-based learning.
“At Digital Tutors, we were teaching advanced computer graphics to artists, that’s no different than teaching math to a first grader,” Patel said. “You ask what two plus two is, they will respond two twos. They don’t know it makes a new abstract called a four.”
While entrepreneurship is a stressful and arduous field that weeds out 99% of those who try, Patel was in the 1%. At the beginning, Digital Tutors provided DVDs full of specific training content for visual effects software specifically for movies and video games. Patel noticed that there was no company providing instruction for that community and became the main company of that niche.
“We would have left millions of dollars on the table if we would have just taught Excel, Word, and Gmail, we would be a generalist,” Patel said. “There was too much competition in that space and nobody in the video game and movie space.”
Eventually, Patel and a team of two owners were able to grow the company to a $10 million evaluation. At this point, the digital programs reached companies such as Pixar, NASA and Dreamworks who would use the Digital Tutors software to teach their employees video editing and graphic design techniques.
Despite all of the success and profit that Patel was churning out, he was still committed to coming to the office and finding motivation in the product.
“I wasn’t motivated by money, I wasn’t motivated by a pitch deck, I wasn’t motivated by who was going to buy my company one day,” Patel said. “I was just going to make great training and take it one customer at a time.”
Finally, Patel received a phone call that would validate his 13 years of work. In late 2014, Patel was asked to sell his business to the company Pluralsight. Patel’s response?
“It’s hard to buy something that isn’t for sale.”
However, Patel realized that the video education space would begin to become cluttered with other companies that saw how successful Digital Tutors was. This led Piyush Patel to sell the company he started in his own basement with $54 for a whopping $45 million.
“When I made the decision to sell the company, I thought of my wife and son,” Patel said. “I had a health scare and that pushed me to make the decision to sell, and the deal was done in six weeks.”
While many others would take this money and relax after years of hard work, Patel isn’t like many others. Patel gave back much of his acquired wealth to the employees who were the backbone of Digital Tutors. Patel also stayed on the board as the Vice-President of Creative Content at Pluralsight and according to him, “was paid $500,000 a month to walk around the office and show face.”
Despite this being a dream job for many, Patel didn’t like to “show face”, and instead preferred to be a contributing member of any project that he was involved in.
“Our core value was to do the right thing, even if it hurts,” Patel said. “They (Pluralsight) told me you don’t even have to come to the office, but that’s not who we are. So, I had to make the right decision, even though it hurt.”
This attitude towards business set Patel apart from other entrepreneurs. Patel believes that culture, a shared set of beliefs by members of a company, is what attracted so many towards his business and why it was so successful.
“Core values matter to us, and they are not aspirational,” Patel said. “They are really who we are as people and that’s what we use to draw people in and let people go.”
According to Patel, Digital Tutors in 14 years and 542 employees, only turned over 12 people in that span, highlighting the desire and success that came from collaborating with Patel.
After walking away from Digital Tutors and Pluralsight completely, Patel invested in over a dozen companies and even bought a winery in Napa. Again, Patel wanted to still be working and helping people in need. Eventually, Patel found a group of people that he could exclusively assist with, business owners. Specifically, Patel wanted to help with business owners that were struggling through mental health issues.
“Having a background in building companies and culture, I realized that I can help these people build out their culture,” Patel said. “What I quickly realized was this growth of a company stops when there’s some mental health issues that happen to the founder.”
Patel fully dove into the idea of counseling business owners and is currently nearing a finish in his PhD and almost has a second master’s degree to get his Licensed Professional Counselor degree.
One of Patel’s longest tenured employees, Account Executive Danielle Domina, has been working with Patel for over 14 years. Domina has seen Patel’s drive for helping people and is a major reason she has stuck with him for such a long time.
“For Piyush, I think he just has a passion for helping people,” Domina said. “I think it is in his blood and his DNA, and I don’t think it will ever change which is one of the reasons he’s amazing to work for.”
Patel also wrote a book called “Lead Your Tribe, Love Your Work”, that described how he built multiple successful businesses through his business culture. Through his style of autonomy and lack of micromanagement culture, Patel was able to become a figurehead for businesses around the globe and give over 100 keynote speeches.
Piyush Patel is a helper of people, and a major reason for that lies in his motivations. Patel believes not in money or in fame, but in passing along what works for him in hopes of a better society.
“It’s not take my chips and go home, but hey, I made my chips, let me show you how I did it, so you don’t repeat the mistakes that I made all that time ago,” Patel said.
Patel’s Big 3 Tips for Young Entrepreneurs
- Don’t Settle for the Hobby of Entrepreneurship
One of the biggest trends that Patel sees from young entrepreneurs is that they believe that if they create a pitch deck or get one investor that they are successful. However, Patel says you must have a customer that wants your product, and is willing to pay for it, and until that happens, you have a hobby.
- Don’t Become an Entrepreneur For the Title
Many young entrepreneurs yearn for the title and money that comes with being a successful entrepreneur. Instead, focus on letting others eat, and yours will come with time.
- Find Your Niche
As an entrepreneur, creating an idea may be the most difficult part of the journey. Look for problems in any niche that no company is helping fix. Then, create a solution for that problem.
