Curiosity, consistency, and human skills that AI cannot replace

True business development is more than a deck and a handshake. In this EnergyGigs conversation, CEO Jason Assir sits down with Panthini Patel, Founder and CEO of GiLi Solutions, to unpack how curiosity, emotional intelligence, and practical systems turn ideas into revenue. They cover “white space” hunting, relationship-first selling, and how to keep momentum in a world reshaped by technology and AI.

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Transcript:

Jason Assir

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to Le Monde. We’re so excited for you guys to be here with us on this final webinar of 2025, this energy gigs webinar. For those who don’t know about Energy Gigs, we are an energy focused freelance and work platform, talent management platform. Connect energy companies to just in time. Talent could be people that are looking for work. It could be retirees, it could be people that have multiple jobs and are hustlers. And I’m just trying to, you know, keep, keep growing their business in the energy sector. So we’re really glad you’re here. Today’s topic is on From Vision to Velocity and we’re very excited to welcome Panthini Patel, founder and CEO of GiLi Solutions. This is a topic very close to my heart and I’m really looking forward to today’s session. So I’ll turn it over to you, Panthini. And for all those on the call, please save your questions to the second half of the webinar. Panthini is going to go through a presentation first and then we’ll have questions later.

Panthini Patel

Thank you, Jason. Hello everyone. First of all, let me start off by thanking Jason for the invitation to be here. Thank you to him, Juliana and the Energy Gigs team. It’s a topic that we’re discussing. Like Jason said, it’s near and dear to his heart. This is something that I have been doing for more than 20 years. This is something that energizes me. It fills my bucket. It’s what I’m good at, it’s what I’ve done for more than 20 years. And so what I took that and, and turn it into an opportunity where I get to lead an organization and I get to help small to mid sized B2B companies also grow and scale. So I’ll talk a little bit about that. So with that let me go ahead and share a little bit about my journey that will help us have a deeper discussion on the the topic that we’re here for. So a little bit about me. I was born in India, I moved to the States and at the age of 10 and talk about a culture shock. When I moved to the US I didn’t speak any English. All I knew was the Alphabet and started fifth grade in Chicago in the city schools of Chicago which at that time were not the best. So I did middle school, high school and then undergrad in the Chicagoland area. I went to DePaul University, got a degree in marketing and after that did customer facing, sales and marketing roles and Healthcare, banking, as well as education industries. And it was November of 2010. I was working for a very large French pharmaceutical company called Sanofi. And they had several drugs that were going generic and they didn’t have any new drugs in the pipeline. So they laid off 1200 people on the same day. And, and I was one of the 1200 at the same time. I was almost three months pregnant with my twins. So you can imagine difficult that time would be to say you’re pregnant with twins and you just got laid off. And I loved, loved working at Sanofi. However, life puts you in certain situations and you adapt. And I was fortunate, probably because I wasn’t working, that I did have a very healthy pregnancy that led to me being a stay at home mom. For the first two and a half years of my twins life, I never imagined myself as a stay at home mom. I was like, I’m gonna be home with them for three months and then get back to work once again. You know, I had a plan and, and something else happened. So I was a stay at home mom for three and a half years. Then it was time to think about getting back into the workforce. And when I was at Sanofi, I had a colleague whose husband worked at Emerson. And so I remember because he had planted the Emerson seed at that time. So I remembered his words and I reached out to him and I said, are there any sales opportunities that I could be considered for? So he helped me get an interview. Now a little bit more background. I’m not an engineer. For those that are familiar with Emerson, I’m not an engineer. I was not that familiar with the portfolio and I didn’t have industry experience. I was fortunate, I felt fortunate to be able to get an interview and went through several rounds of interviews and got an offer. So. So it was a sales position and right off the bat I got some really big accounts to work on. So I got Exxon Mobil, BP, Bechtel and Wood, two large EPCs and two large customers. But the conversations were much more strategic and lot less tactical. And so that was a really, really good fit. And I actually always joke that on paper I should have never been hired. However, the folks there saw potential in me when I didn’t see it in myself. And that’s something I will always be grateful for. So after that I did that role for four years and then every two years after that I was given new opportunities and new challenges. So after doing the sales role, started getting into more strategic global roles. I worked with Chevron globally for digitalization. And then I worked with ExxonMobil and then had an opportunity to do something very different, more internal to the organization. It was product development and product management, leading a global team of product engineers based out of Houston, Italy as well as India. And then that made me realize what I love is being with customers. What I love is having those strategic conversations, building relationships, building partnerships. So I had an opportunity to take a sales role, which shifted to a growth focused role. And towards the tail end of my time at Emerson, actually specifically was summer of 2020, few months into the pandemic. You know, there’s so many of us that are really questioning a lot of things in life. And I asked myself a question, I said, what is. What is one thing that scares me. And the first thing that popped in my head was going back to school. Now I was never one of those, like when I graduated from DePaul, I’m like, thank God I am not going back to school, not interested in, in getting further education. And, and maybe that was part of the reason why, you know, what is that? One thing that scares me was going back to school is the first thing that popped in my. I did a few things in parallel. I was looking at UT Austin, Rice as well as A and M, so started understanding their programs and in parallel had a conversation with my leadership team at Emerson to get their support in me going back to school in a part time capacity. So then I started the executive MBA program at Rice from 21 to 23. So that’s a connection Jason and I have that we’ve Both done our MBAs at rice. And what Rice taught me was to not be afraid to take risks, to not be afraid of failure. Like that is my biggest takeaway. Of course a network is a big part of that, but from a learning standpoint, that was my big takeaway. And entrepreneurship is not something I come from generations of entrepreneurs, but I was never one of those that’s like, I can’t wait to start my own business. My husband always jokes, at least he did before I launched GiLi Solutions. And he’s like, you love corporate world. And I did. Like, I loved working for large organizations. I love working in a global capacity. So entrepreneurship is not something that I thought about. But it was actually a year ago, November of last year, I was on the phone with one of my Rice classmates and I was telling him about a meeting I had and he asked me a very simple question. And I feel like so much of a lot of new things I do really start from simple questions. And he said, well, you do this for Emerson, why don’t you take what you’re good at and do it for yourself? And then that got the wheels turning. And I, every, every evening after dinner I would sit on the sofa to research, understand the market gap, would have conversations with one to two people to validate that. And the clarity that came to me was that there are small to mid sized B2B firms that struggle with business development. And I don’t mean just giving them a strategy, I mean actually doing the execution. And so that led to me getting to a point of maybe, you know what, I could do this. Maybe it’s time for me to take the leap from corporate world and start my own business. So if that is not tough enough in parallel, my family and I decided after being in Houston for 20 years to move to Philadelphia. So, you know, before we joined, Jason asked me, is it cold here? Is it snowing? It’s cold, but we don’t have a lot of snow today, which has been, which has been kind of nice. But it’s, there were several different factors that played us moving and we absolutely love it up here. I do miss a lot of aspects of Houston, but it’s been really great. And I resigned from Emerson at the end of August and then launched GiLi Solutions a few weeks later. So one thing Jason wanted me to talk about is really what specifically does GiLi Solutions do? And he was actually just joking as well because as we were preparing for this webinar and on this topic of business development, he’s like, well, you’ve given me some free consulting. And I was like, oh, it’s good to know. I’ll have to, I’ll have to keep that in mind for next time.

Jason Assir

There’s a bill coming my way soon, I think. Yeah.

Panthini Patel

So GiLi Solutions, if you look at the middle of your screen as far as scope of services, I’ve defined it in three areas. So it’s startups, specifically series A, series B phase, that are preparing to scale. Then it’s mid sized companies that are looking to penetrate further in the existing market or expand into a new market, and then international firms that are looking to enter the U.S. so you know, I was born in India, I speak the language, I understand the culture there. I have worked with people in India and so that has been my starting point is the ecosystem there and helping them bridge the gap in working with Americans and then ultimately expanding into the US So the idea here is fractional chief growth officer as well as a business development partner and it’s the, the differentiator here is not, you know, if it’s energy gigs, it’s not. We will build a strategy for you, Jason and team and here it is. And I hope that you and your people can execute it. The idea is, is we build a strategy, strategy together and we do the execution, we reach out to the customers, we build the partnerships. So, and that’s what I’ve done and that’s what energizes me. So I wanted to make sure that that was part of what we, what we offer. So this topic, you know, before we get into business development strategies, in conversations over the last many months, one thing that has kind of been surprising I guess to me is when it comes to small to mid sized companies, there is this, this misinformation that marketing, sales and business development is kind of all the same. And a lot of the times you do have people that wear multiple hats and so whatever fire that they have to put out, they’ll get to that first and then everything else suffers. But I wanted to clarify that there is differences between marketing, sales and business development. And it’s really, really important to know that, you know, you can see kind of at the, at the bottom from a timeline perspective that also varies as well. So marketing, their job is to understand customer profile, to understand Persona and then create content and awareness and interest around that and to generate that demand. Then sales takes that. Right. It’s much more shorter term. So it’s managing and dealing with requests for quotes and it’s dealing with pricing and it’s, it’s customers that are interested but they might be considering a competitor and how do we show them the value of our solution and our company? So that’s what sales does. It’s, it’s much more shorter term. And then business development is more strategic, it’s longer term, it’s partnerships, it’s building trust, it’s with white space. Right? It’s what white space is. It’s going after areas that as an organ, as a, an organization you haven’t really focused on. It’s opening new paths and it’s much more longer term than it is compared to sales. And in a way they work very, very closely together. It’s really important to keep that in mind. In large organizations, which is where I’ve come from majority of my career, you have people that do this, they have separate roles that do that. But when it comes to small to mid sized companies, there are blurred lines. But it’s really important to know that there are distinct differences between all of them. So now kind of getting to the meat. This, this is really why Jason invited me here on the left side, it clearly says the human side of business development in the age of AI. A few weeks ago I was flipping through some things and I came across a clip from CNN where they had interviewed the CEO of IBM and this is when Amazon was talking about laying off 14,000 employees or 30,000 and that many of those jobs are because of AI and how AI is changing things. What the CEO of IBM said is because of AI, there is more emphasis that we need to put on the human to human connection, the human to human interaction. There is plenty that AI has replaced and will replace. But AI can’t read a room. AI can’t build trust, AI can’t build relationships. I is not the, I mean as far as looking at what the pain points are and asking questions, I can’t do that. Right. And so the first and what you see on the right side is just four of several components of business development that I’m touching on. There’s a lot more here that build on what successful business development looks like. So the first that you see on the top, right is your story, is your superpower. So it’s really important to, when building relationships with customers or getting that first meeting is to talk about the why. Why is it that your organization has built this technology? What problems is it solving? Who does this impact and what business impact is it going to have on the customer? And if there’s any narrative around that, like if, if it’s a safety related solution and you’re aware of another company that had an incident. And so if you can build that into your narrative when you’re talking about a solution rather than just the technical components of it. And if there’s a personal touch that you can provide, that’s what’s going to stand out. People don’t remember what you said, but they remember how they felt when they met with you. So that’s really, really key. Second, this is huge for me. Be interested before being interesting. So you know, we go into meetings sometimes and I’ll just use this terminology is like show up and throw. Talk about how great we are and how amazing our technology is. But it’s really important to ask questions. I am a big, big proponent of in the first meeting. I don’t want to sell in the first meeting. I want to ask questions, help me understand what your challenges, right? If it’s Jason, Jason, what are you measured on? What keeps you up at night? And so it’s really important to ask questions, be curious, and then you go into the next meeting better prepared. And you’ve built that trust and you’ve listened. Talk less, ask more questions, you’ve listened, and now you’re much more prepared when you, when you go into that meeting. Third is consistency creates compounding. So in business development, you send one email and then you don’t get a response back and you’re like, that person’s not interested. I’m just gonna move on. But you don’t know what that individual has going on in their week. And so it’s really important to follow up and be genuine when you follow up. And, and then after you get that first meeting, let’s say you promise something and that you’ll get it to them in a week. Get it to them in a week. And if you can’t, send a note ahead of time and say, I haven’t forgotten about you, we are working on it. Like, that’s something that was part of my DNA. Working for different organizations is if I promised you something and if I can’t get it to you in the time, I will get it. I said I would, I would let you know. I haven’t forgotten about you. And you are on my list of things that I need to follow up on. And then lastly is building relationships up and across customers organizations. So it’s not, it’s not just about chasing titles. Yeah, sure, titles are important, but different organizations have different weight on the titles. And you never know how someone that doesn’t have a fancy title, how that can help you. That has happened to me over and over again, both personally. We’re an individual that may not have the biggest title. They’ve helped me personally as well as professionally. So it’s really important. You know, AI can build out an org chart, but they can’t build the trust within the organization. So that’s our job to be able to do that. And so it’s really important to build relationships because especially in large organizations, large customers, there, it’s constant rework. Right. And so if you’ve built that trust at different levels, the message and what you’re trying to accomplish accomplish and how you’re trying to help them really, really resonates. So this is really just. There’s four areas of so many others that it’s really important to keep in mind. And I know that there are questions. So I’m going to pause right there and thank you and take questions.

Jason Assir

Awesome. Well, I, I guess, Juliana, if we, or if we could move to the slide before, while we’re, I have a question while we’re waiting to see if there are any questions from the audience, but if you have questions in the audience, please do ask them, put them in the chat, and we’ll, We’ll. We’ll take them in turn. I mean, I think it’s. It’s pretty amazing that you know your story of, like, that you, you know, you were in sales in pharma, and then you got into sales and energy. And I’m very curious. Just what’s the difference between, like, the dynamic between, you know, pharma and sales and energy? What, like, what would you say, Anthony?

Panthini Patel

Yeah, so, you know, I was in Pharma back in 2010, and I feel like that world looks probably different now than it did back then, but it was much more of working with hospitals and working physicians, and there were times where, like, if you’re, if you’re a physician, Jason, and we just met, and now you’re about to see a patient for, for is coming in with severe allergies. Well, maybe you’ll remember the, the. What we talked about and the, the benefits of the drugs that I am representing. And you, as long as you’re comfortable with it, all of a sudden, right off the bat, you’re able to write a script for that so that, that drug. Right. And so that was the world I was living in. There was obviously a. Needed to do. We needed to teach the nurses, we needed to teach the physician assistants. We needed to get them comfortable with the efficacy and the safety aspect of it. But once we get past that, then a lot of it was just like being in front of them and making sure that they remember because they have other options to choose from. And there’s also other drug reps that are going in and talking to them. And so what they wanted is they wanted more facetime and the difference. And on the switching over to the energy side and especially more of the strategic roles that I was in was it wasn’t like constantly in your face, but it was much more. Are we consistent? Are we sharing with them our portfolio? Do we have these customers engaged early as we’re building out our roadmap and our solutions so their voice is heard? And so it was much more strategic. And what I did in specifically the job that I had was very much like tactical and immediate.

Jason Assir

So we have a question from Stephanie. Stephanie, thanks for your question. In which industries do you currently see the most business development opportunities?

Panthini Patel

You know what, it’s interesting, since I’ve launched the conversations that I have had been across the board. So I’ll, I’ll open up and I’ll talk about the industries that I’m having discussions with. One is the food industry. So it’s about a 3 million company and they are currently B2C but they want to switch to B2B. And so that is something that’s very, very different. The other is various different consulting organizations that are looking to grow their practice. Third is very initial small engineering firm that they have one customer and they were, they’re looking to expand and scale into other customers regardless of where they are in the world. And. And then the fourth one is a technology company based out of Australia that is looking to scale. And so that’s been. And then I’ve also had conversations in, in the nonprofit sector as well because they need help scaling at a, at a certain level as well as other industries. That’s the beauty of what we do, is we are industry agnostic because this need of business development, specifically doing the execution of it is really across the board. Manufacturing, et cetera.

Jason Assir

And I guess another question that we have is it’s the end of the year and can you hear me?

Panthini Patel

Yeah, I can hear you.

Jason Assir

Okay. All right. It looks like my mic, I had an issue with mic. It’s at the end of the year. And so I guess one question I think we’ve heard and I’d be curious to get your thoughts on are, can you do any business development in December?

Panthini Patel

Great question. And I’m pausing because what I said a few minutes ago is business development, it’s a lot of planting seeds. Right. And so you’re not, you may or may not close business this month. Right. But the idea is how do we continue the relationships that we have? We don’t. Part of it is, and I’m a firm believer that you’re not, you don’t want to reach out to somebody just because you need something from them. After a while they’ll realize that that’s the only reason why you’re reaching out to them. So it’s continue. It’s important to stay engaged. But what you can do is take this opportunity and set something up for January, for February. And, and it’s not. There could be a semi defined agenda and that’s something that’s really important that you follow up. And Jason and I have talked about that in the past as well. But you can. Absolutely. That doesn’t mean that nothing can be done right now, but it’s about setting things up for the first quarter, having the conversations planting the seeds and then getting it on their calendar because they’re going to get busy once they get back. Right. But if it’s on their calendar, and then once you come back in January, you follow up and say, I just want to make sure we still schedule to meet at this time. And this is what we had talked about for the agenda. Does this still hold true? So that way, it’s really, really important that your time is valued just as the customer’s time. And this is something that I have always said in the past, because what I would do is I would bring in the technical team and I would say our time is just as valuable as your time. And so when we are going to be in a meeting together, this needs to be fruitful to some extent for both sides. And so it’s really important to get that upcoming meeting or meetings, put a placeholder on the calendar. And then as you get closer to that date in January, January, February, make sure that the objective is still there. And if you need the customer to come prepared with something, let them know that as well. So that way both sides leaves that meeting, making sure that it was time well spent.

Jason Assir

I mean, I love that. I feel like I’ve heard. I heard some people refer to sort of asking the client to do something as part of an upfront contract of like, let’s, you have to do something, I have to do something. If you tell me no, that’s okay. But let’s all agree that, you know, we’re going to get to some sort of decision. We’re going to talk about a specific thing that I think is. Is that that’s kind of hard for people to do because it. I think some salespeople, I mean, you tell me, like, what you’ve seen, particularly in energy, like, do people come in thinking that they have to grovel for. For the meeting and, you know, that sort of behavior. I’ve heard and seen it myself, but curious to get your thoughts on that.

Panthini Patel

So, I’m sorry, Jason, can you. Can you ask the question again?

Jason Assir

I was just. I was just actually riffing on the idea that. The idea that you’re asking the, you know, trying to agree on the agenda ahead of time. I think that might be uncomfortable for some people, you know, but I would love to hear your take on, you know, how people should be thinking about that. Right.

Panthini Patel

Further, I would say maybe when I, early on in my career, I would have been uncomfortable. Right. Asking. And as you build the credibility and then you realize how important your time is. Where I am preparing for this meeting, I’m asking these other people in my organization to prepare for this meeting. Their time is also valuable as well. And so as you build credibility and as you build trust, it’s that uncomfortableness goes away, right? Initially, sure, it could be scary, but once you start asking and you have to do in a respectful and genuine way, it all goes back to that. Like, if they see that you’re not being genuine, it’s a whole different situation. But if you tell them the reason why you’re asking them to come prepared with something, then they’ll understand, and then that actually increases how they feel about you and your time. And so then they. If they’re bringing. If the customer is bringing other people from their organization, they’re going to make sure that those people show up, that they come prepared as well. And that way, now your meeting is completely elevated compared to, you know, just, hey, let’s go ahead and just meet for the sake of meeting.

Jason Assir

Yeah, no, that’s good. We have another question. What do you miss most out of your Rice business experience? And what are you still applying in your current career based on your mba? Sounds like there might be a prospective MBA in the. In the crowd here.

Panthini Patel

So the question is, what do I miss about my Rice mba? And then what’s the second question?

Jason Assir

What do you miss most out of Rice business? What are you still applying in your current career based on your getting your MBA at Rice?

Panthini Patel

Oh, okay. So I’m going to ask a second. I’m going to answer the second part of that, but what am I applying from my time at Rice? As I said, when I was talking about my journey, one of the biggest lessons out of my time at Rice that it taught me was to not be afraid of failure and to take risks. And if there’s something that I want to do, if I don’t do it, I don’t want to have regrets as I’m older. And so that’s the biggest lesson. In addition to understanding all aspects of how organizations are run, you know, going into my time at Rice, a lot of my focus was external facing roles that my time at Rice gave me a deeper understanding of other aspects of business and helping understand how they think. And so it gave me enough knowledge to be able to ask the right questions. When it came back to the organization I was with at the time, what do I miss the most about Rice? There are several factors. The culture, having to go there every other weekend, all day Friday, all day Saturday. It just became a really strong, healthy habitat. And so to be able to be around those people. I miss my friends and moving to Philadelphia makes it challenging as well to see people on a regular basis. But I miss the connections, I miss the energy there. And I was very intentional about staying engaged even after I graduated. Actually, Emerson was not doing any recruiting at Rice and so one thing that I’m really proud of is I helped build that partnership between Rice and Emerson. And so we started recruiting for strategy roles when we were not doing any recruiting. And so then that gave me the opportunities to go back to campus and interview and interact with the students and, and learn from, learn from them as well. So I miss the people.

Jason Assir

So we’ve got another question from Parminder. What do you see as the biggest business development challenges and opportunities moving from the corporate role to your own business?

Panthini Patel

Hi Parminder. Great to have you on the, on the webcast. So the biggest, biggest challenge is, you know, when you’re working for a large organization, there is, there are, there’s great aspects of that and there’s challenges of that as well. Right. And you’ve got a lot of resources and you have made connections. You get to work regularly on a, on a global capacity and work with people from diverse backgrounds and that’s already part of the day to day and there’s a lot of resources. And so when you shift and you start something on your own, you have, you have to think about it, right? I mean, the reality is, is, is you, you give up the paycheck every two weeks. You have to be okay with that for a while if you’ve got a vision and if you want to do something bigger. And, and so for me, it’s the business development I was doing working in corporate world. Now I’m doing that business development for my clients and for, for myself. So it is difficult because an entire day can go by and I’m like, well, what did I do today, right? Did I devote as much time as I wanted to do GiLi solutions or did I do other things? And so there’s, there’s nobody holding you accountable. You have to hold yourself accountable and being disciplined. And for us it’s like the big move from Houston to Philadelphia has also played in the complexity as well. But it’s also forced me to create a network up here in the Northeast, get involved with, with the startup community and with the, with the ecosystem, which I would have never done. And so it’s, it’s, for me it’s been the combination of leaving corporate world, the big move, starting my own business and then creating A new network up here as well as staying engaged with my network in other parts of the world.

Jason Assir

Oh, that’s, that’s wonderful. So I think, I know we’re at time, but if anyone has any last questions, you know, we can maybe take one more question, but if not, I do have one last question and we’ll leave it there. I think, you know, you mentioned that consistency creates compounding and I’m very curious, like in terms of your experience working with sales teams, leading sales teams, why do so many biz dev professionals fail to show up consistently or fail to prepare ahead of time and be consistent in their work?

Panthini Patel

Why do so many business development people fail to be consistent? Well, I think part of it is maybe or maybe not. It’s being okay with the no response or rejection. Right. I always say a no is not a no forever. You can’t just. If Jason is not interested in working with GiLi solutions, it’s not a no forever. It’s just right now, he just can’t.

Jason Assir

You’re not a bad person. You’re not.

Panthini Patel

Right. And so to be, to be okay with it, to grow thick enough skin and say, all right, let’s just stay in touch, Jason, and hopefully we can work together in the near future. And so to be able to be okay with that and then kind of going back to the follow up. Right. Like it’s, that’s where you’re building your credibility. If you’re constantly not doing what you say you’re gonna do and you’re asking for things within, after a while there, you’re not going to get a response from them.

Jason Assir

Yeah.

Panthini Patel

And so I think it’s really, really important to know that it’s important to continue follow up and don’t accept silence as they’re not interested or know as they’re not interested forever and then be consistent.

Jason Assir

No, that’s great, Great, great parting words. So, Panthini, thank you so much for sharing your time, your insights, your pearls of wisdom, I would say. I mean, especially in the age of AI where, where everyone, everyone throws things at AI and you get inbound messages that are complete garbage half the time. I mean, I think the four points are, you know, your story is your superpower, being interested before being interesting. Consistency creates compounding and build relationship ups and across the organization. Those four, I mean, it’s just gold. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. Is it okay if we share your contact information with anyone that wants to get in contact?

Panthini Patel

Okay, absolutely. Yes. Yes.

Jason Assir

So thank you so much again. Thank you to all our guests. Much appreciated, everyone. We look forward to seeing you in January when our first webinar is on safety as we start the year off with the Safety webinar Focus. But until then, we wish you all a happy 2,025. Happy New Year 2,026 and any holidays you have. Thanks again, Panthini, and take care everyone.