The Positively Remarkable Forum with Guest, Hema Mathew – Podcast 49
Hema Mathew
CEO & Creative Director
Bijhem DevOps
Positivity Servant
Transcript
Cys Bronner: I’m Cys Bronner. I have the honor of being your co-host today. I am not just a BNI person, which I enjoy immensely as an Executive Director here in Los Angeles, but I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, my title here is Gratitude Evangelist, which I have been for more years. Then I can count and when I met Norm Dominguez who hosts here usually, I was also a Gratitude Evangelist and through the years and carrying on this relationship, I’m honored to be here with all of you as that to thank you so much and I’m excited to get started today.
But here’s the moment I’ve been waiting for. And that is our guest today is Hema Matthew. I know her through a chance meeting in my BNI world. She is the CEO and Creative Director of Bijhem DevOps. She’s also a positivity servant. I would love to go on and on about her, but I’m not going to.
As much as she touches my heart and is probably my new favorite top positivity people in the group that I know. I want you to meet her and have her speak to her and her topic today is Show That You Care.
Hema Mathew: Thank you, Cys, for such a warm welcome and introduction. I just adore you. So, thank you.
Thank you, Norm, for having me. I am just honored to be here among other positive servants.
You all are fantastic, and I feel like I’ve missed out all these years not knowing you all. So I’m so happy to be here. So, my name is Hema Mathew. I’m the CEO and the Creative Director of Bijhem DevOps.
I have a business here in San Antonio. We do web development, digital marketing and mobile apps, web apps. We help small businesses get online presence and grow and scale. So that’s what we do.
So, a little bit about me. I was born in India. I was raised there in Chennai till I was about 10. And then my dad started his university here in Oklahoma and was doing his MBA. So, he just moved the entire family over here. So, from then we’ve been in Oklahoma. And I went to school at the University of Oklahoma, and I met my husband there at the tender age of 18 on the very first day of college, in the very first class. And he was this talkative guy and just extremely serious. He was a chemical engineering major, so extremely smart. We just hit it off right away. And we’ve been, we dated for 10 years and then we got married, and we’ve been married for 24 years, and he got recruited to the University of Texas here in San Antonio because they were trying to take small business ideas and take it to the market. And literally they’ve been looking for someone. To just come and help them do that. And they were looking for two to three years and anyway, they tracked him down in DC, so they made him an offer.
So, we moved here, and it’s been a blessing for our family. We love it in San Antonio. I love the city. I love the state of Texas. We had three small kids. No, not small anymore but see sweet kids. Our oldest is 20 and he’s studying biomedical engineering. He’s hoping to go into medicine. He wants to be a surgeon so and he’s one positive guy. So, I I would love for him to join us one of these days because he’s so positive about health about God and. And just inspires everybody around him. So, he’s studying biomedical.
Our second son just started his mechanical engineering this fall and he’s doing great, and our daughter is in 8th grade.
Something that I love so much in my life is volunteering at my church. I just, I’ve been in different roles for the past two. Two decades, yeah. So, I’ve been a videographer, treasurer. I just love everything that has to do with volunteering and serving others, because I think that’s one of the reasons I’m put here on this Earth.
My background is in microbiology, so I worked as a researcher for decade. And when I decided to have kids, I just didn’t want to be gone 10 to 12 hours a day because I felt like if I’m going to do a job that’s very important, which is parenting, I should physically be there. So, I just decided to leave the field. And I decided to change my career and I was thinking, what is that I would like to do that would benefit other souls’ humanity? How can I bring more positivity to the world?
And I was thinking, well, my entire undergraduate, I basically worked in IT. I was in computers. 1000 marketing side thought, let me just go get my degree in Internet technology. So, I became a Webmaster and I thought, I love marketing because I love helping other people do well, you know, in business. So, I wanted to do something in that field. So, I decided to open up a web marketing firm. In 2012. And honestly, before the pandemic, my business was going great. I had eight employees. It was perfect. And then the pandemic hit, and I was like, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I just trust God. And so, I can. I’m happy to say my business has grown so much in the past three years, and I’m so it only grateful.
So, my topic today is Show That You Care.
You know, I love this quote from Doctor Ivan Misner; “People don’t care how much you know Until they know how much you care.”. It means so much to me because caring is such a fundamental emotion for other souls, other people. Our life has so much to do with helping others. We feel good about ourselves when we help others, and we are kind to others. And when we need help, we appreciate someone’s kindness towards us. So, I’m always thinking about caring as human beings, even having no benefit, you know, no personal benefit. Can we still care for others? Can others still care for us? And that’s where this positivity world comes in, because it’s like, it’s really coming down to caring, you know, just coming down to caring. And Doctor Misner is also, again, very right that by caring you just have good relationships with people. And when you have good relationships with others, they want to promote you, they want to help you, they want to say good things about you, especially in business, it translates into really high productivity, high referrals, increase sales and I mean just growth in businesses like that, but in personally. Feel just good, you know, when you care for others. So I love this, I love this topic so much. It’s so dear to my heart.
So, I’m gonna brag a little bit. I’m just gonna have to because at recent example I would say the past three or four months of someone who has shown genuine care for me. As a friend, is Cys. And I’ll tell you why. Because you know what? I I grew so much. My business grew so much in the past three years. So, I was like, OK, God, tell me what my next step is. And then I was like, OK, I need to expand. You know, and need to expand in a city where I’ve had a lot of clients in, you know, and these are the top cities that I’ve had clients from besides San Antonio besides Texas in general. So, it’s DC, it’s Orlando, it’s Los Angeles. I was like, OK, you know, first. I thought I’ll try DC because one of my BNI members said try DC, that’s better. So, I contacted six different networking groups, spoke with so many leaders and you know, I was a bit shocked.
Honestly, I was a bit shocked of how they were so standoffish. I mean, this is a networking group. We’re talking about the leaders of the networking group. So, it’s like standoffish and not very welcoming. Some of them would just not follow through with my phone calls or call late. They don’t even know enough about their own network. And I was just like, this is so much more difficult than I thought. I was gonna be surprised because I thought most leaders in networking groups would be more welcoming and more loving. And I just didn’t see that till I spoke with Cys, and that changed everything for me. Because she stayed back after work. I kid you not. I called her late, she stayed back after work and she spoke to me, and she said, what is that you need? She gave genuine care and compassion and kindness. And that’s what I needed at that time. And she’s so knowledgeable, so helpful. And she said, OK, why don’t you make a visit, you know, to the Culver City chapter. Why don’t you come and see us? And she invited me, my sister and I. We went there. And my sister dropped me off and I went there. She was so warm. She brought me breakfast. She introduced me to everybody. That whole group is fantastic, and I just felt at home. And her kindness mattered a lot, and her care mattered a lot, and you all know this so basic. But she’s new to me yet she’s not new to me because I feel like I’ve known all my life. So, because of her we’ll be opening our first branch in Los Angeles because of my experiences sees Paulina is my new hire. So, she has been to the Culver City meeting twice again, very warm, very loving. And I feel like she did all of that without any expectation and that’s what touched me the most. You know, she didn’t know how it was going to turn up, but she did it anyway. So, thank you, Cys.
So, I’ll give you an example of a time where I feel like I have shown care to others. So, what happened was when the pandemic hit, nearly 30% of my clients could not afford my service. They were like, we are, we don’t even know what this is. We don’t even know they’re going to come out of this. So, they were like some of them were second and third generation businesses in San Antonio and they were ready to shut shop because they were like we’re going to give up because the pandemic from what we hear in the past is like it takes years. You know, to recover from it. And we are brick and mortar stores, so there’s no way we can’t even see people, you know? So, I just got on my knees and I prayed and I didn’t know what was happening in the pandemic either. But I was praying to God, like, please help me to help them because they’ve been so faithful to me. They’re my faithful clients and they’re my friends. So, I’m like, please just tell me what to do.
So, I decided to work for free and my employees, I requested them to work for free for them and thankfully I have wonderful employees that they said of course. So, we all worked nonstop to get every one of them online. And they just exploded their business in terms of sales. They just grew, grew, grew, grew. And I told them you don’t need to pay me till you’re actually out of the pandemic because I want to make sure you’re OK. And by the grace of God, we were provided for. So, I was fine. So, they all got through it and they made huge money. Now they. Have two sources of income online and in person and I feel like my gift to the world, which is marketing and web, was actually put to use and made a difference in someone’s life and I was grateful. And once that happened my client started talking about me to everybody. And just the referral starts pouring in And I just grew this grew like crazy and so carrying does produce heart results. And I wasn’t expecting anything because I couldn’t even promise them anything. I don’t know anything about the pandemic, and I didn’t know how long it’s gonna last, what’s going to happen. But everything worked out so well and I’m so grateful to be.
Expanding now with the help of Cys and I’m just happy to be part of this group. I’m planning to show up every Monday morning. You know as long as I can. I just adore you all. Thank you all so much.
Cys Bronner: Thank you so much, Hema for being here.
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In networking: The more memorable (positive and helpful) you are, the better the results.
Questions? Feel free to call Gratitude Evangelist and BNI Executive Director, CRO Cys Bronner 866-889-3466 or email her at Cys.Bronner@BNI4success.com
Her motto: BNI, Making word of mouth marketing work for you
Click for more information or to join a BNI chapter in the Los Angeles area
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