Usha Boddapu

I would say success is a legacy not defined in the number of dollars you make. From my perspective, success is raising great kids. I have two kids that I've raised while running my business, and I gave them a good undergrad education. My daughter studied at Kelley School of Business in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and she's now working on winning government procurement for eSolvit. My son is in his undergrad. They both have seen myself and my husband as role models, and they help a lot. They're very good kids, and that's a billion-dollar gift to me from God. I've also taken care of my mom who stays with me. When she fell and broke her leg, we spent a year in emergency hospitals and rehabs, and my kids didn't spend their time enjoying summer holidays but went to hospitals, dropping food, sitting with my mom, and cleaning her. My mother-in-law had stage 4 cancer, and I gave my husband enough time to spend with her in India. I took the leadership financially so my husband could spend more time with his mother, and he had the confidence that I could run the business and handle the financial step. I feel like a legacy of taking care of parents, raising good kids, community service, being an entrepreneur, creating jobs for the country, contributing to economic development, helping small businesses, serving in nonprofits, and doing disparity studies to give small businesses procurement opportunities is what defines my success.

The best career advice I've ever received from my mentors, particularly from my SBDC team and Joe Harper, as well as Celia Bell from SCORE, was to be forward-thinking and visionary. Those are the two most important things as a business leader. We need to be forward-thinking and visionary, and focus on scaling the business and planning our next action moves. I also learned to listen to my instincts. A lot of people say don't do this or don't do that, but I won those contracts because I just listened to my instinct. I feel like anything we can do, there should be a solution. We need to figure out the solutions and not restrict ourselves. Adaptability is very, very important. Finding the right partners is also crucial because if we're small businesses and we partner, then we become bigger and we can compete. So forward-thinking, visionary skills, and partnering with other businesses to scale up are the key pieces of advice that have guided me.

I would say that everybody went through the same phase like them, but we all got help. They need to seek help, and they have to ask for it. Having a right mentor in life will completely make them avoid the mistakes that most of us made, and they are costly mistakes. If they can go seek a mentor from the beginning, they can learn a lot of things which they don't know. So mentorship is very, very important for anybody starting into the business. Partner with bigger companies who are already successful and go ask for help. There are amazing people, everybody got help, and people would love to help. If you don't ask, you won't get it. So ask is the most important thing. Ask for business, ask for opportunities, and don't give up. Consistency and discipline is very important in business. Consistency, like especially in government, you need to show up your face, you need to win the trust. It's a long time to win the business in government, but the trust is what they look at, the relationships. Are you constantly coming in? Are you showing up? Getting out of your comfort zone, going out of the building, adaptability, learning new things, change is important. We have to change. If AI is coming and you want to be starting doing the old-fashioned way, then people are ahead of you and you have to close your business. So change is important.

I think innovation is very important. COCP 2.0 is about innovation, blue value innovation. It means you don't need to look for the red ocean, which is worrying about your competition. You have to create a blue value innovation where you become the niche. We've already created Arctic, which is an AI hiring platform, so that makes us a complete differentiator among staff augmentation companies. In every field, we need to start creating some solutions. Understand what are the business needs of the state of Texas and start creating a solution for that. Then you become a Blue Value Innovation. Billion-dollar companies back off me because they didn't win bids, and I won bids. They're going to lose multi-million dollar contracts, and they wanted to pass through me because they didn't win and I won, being a small businesswoman. So that makes me set aside. Innovation or creating solutions is what matters for us. You need to think forward about what is the solution-based approach.

I've created my values when I did my USA Emerging Leaders program, and I put social responsibility as my very core value, which is unique from everybody else. I feel social responsibility is very important for me. That's my value. Other things are pretty common, right? Being responsive and active. Integrity is the second thing. I follow business ethics. If I wouldn't have followed the business ethics, I would have made multi-million dollars, but I follow ethics. That's the reason I don't do lobbying and all other stuff. I've seen in government so much things happen, lobbying and all, but I follow ethics. I'm very spiritual, so I see that I report to God every day. So I want to do business with ethics. I want to support others. I feel I've got so much help, so it's my responsibility to help others. We're a pledge 1% company. I've learned that from one of my USA Emerging Leaders Service Disabled Veterans, and I immediately implemented that in my company. So pledge 1% of my teams, myself and my teams do community service. I want to increase that the more I grow to 5% to give it to veterans and small businesses or socioeconomic people, to help them on mentoring services or helping them in marketing. We used to support over 36 nonprofits in the community, and we also raise funds for people with cancer through Blessing Accounts Nonprofit.