TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

Abhay (00:00)
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Garima (00:19)
it's not leadership if you can do it on your own and you can do it quickly. It's leadership if you can get everyone else to follow you just as quickly or just as slowly as they need to.

Abhay (00:27)
how has your definition of successfully pivoting maybe also evolved over the years?

Garima (00:34)
I think being from Indian descent, hustle is all we are taught all these things will happen and you hustle to kind of get there and you're always in this challenger mode.

And scaling is different, right? Building is different than just hustling. is on purpose. It is intentional. It's building a plan. saying it's not just about how do I be the smartest? How do I be the best at this? It's what is the plan to get me to the next level and how do I do that?

I'm Garima Shaw. I'm the president and co-founder of Biller Genie. And this is, trust me, I know what I'm doing.

Abhay (01:33)
so welcome everybody to this episode of Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. So every day we are finding

that while so many aspects of society, culture and industry are intersecting with autonomous technology, it's more important than ever to place human-centric leadership right in the middle. And we're all going through multiple transformative experiences in 2026 and beyond. And it's becoming more and more crystallized that the new frontiers of so many fields require integrating mechanical processes

with human positivity, human partnership and human passion. Navigating this requires a rare combination of technical foresight and a deep commitment to the small businesses that power our global economy. And this is totally no doubt the case in the financial tech and services industry. So I'm thrilled to share our conversation today with Garima Shah, a nearly two decade veteran of the FinTech and payments industry, a leader who thrives on partnership and authenticity.

a champion of finding collaboration and growth opportunities and a superb advocate for women and diverse voices in her field. She's currently the co-founder and the president of Biller Genie. And I'm just so pleased to share some time with her today and learn so much from her. Garima, welcome to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing, such a treat to have you on.

Garima (02:52)
Thank you so much. And that is quite an intro there. I got to live up to a lot there, but I'm so excited to be on this podcast. I love the title. Trust me, I know what I'm doing because I would say that on the daily, especially as a co-founder of the startup, there are most days where I'm not sure I know what I'm doing. So this title is great. Trust me, know what I'm doing. I'm going to pretend like you all should trust me because I know what I'm doing, but I have done this many times and I'm very excited to speak to you.

Abhay (03:14)
You

Yeah, you know, it's a reminder that we probably all need to just sort of hit that reset button on a daily basis, even an hourly basis. But yeah, it is so important to have that lens in mind. In this day and age when so much of our day is governed by integrated processes that are happening all around us, what are some of those daily human motivators for you?

I mean, in a nutshell, I was thinking a little bit about this. mean, what's the fun part of being a FinTech leader these days?

Garima (03:46)
I'm going to answer that probably a very generic, I would say what's not the fun part. It is, I absolutely love what I do. And I was actually speaking to my daughter's eighth grade class yesterday for career day. And I was talking about this and I don't think it's about being, for me, it's not about just being a fintech builder, but it's about being a builder, right? It's about opening things, starting things, getting to challenge yourself. And there's new frontiers that haven't existed.

Abhay (03:51)
Mmm. Yeah.

Garima (04:12)
that you get to learn every single day. then, so for me, the main motivation, my entire career has always been, how much can I learn today? How much can I grow today? How uncomfortable can I make myself so that I am kind of pushing that boundary? it's really, I mean, it's really exciting. It's why I have 35 games on my phone and I play all day. I need that, know, excitement.

Abhay (04:31)
Yeah.

I think those push buttons, right, whether they're games, whether of discomfort, whether they're the surprises of the day, you're right. I think they transcend beyond fintech or even being ⁓ in a professional space. But is it important critically to ensure that there are fun dopamine producing aspects of this on a day-to-day basis? More so because, again, it is allowing you to be

comfortable with the uncomfortable. It's allowing you to embrace those surprises. It's allowing you to be resilient.

Garima (05:05)
Absolutely. think, know, dopamine, being happy, all of those things I think are what drives success. You know, there's been studies over and over again about people who are happy in their job are over 70 % more effective than those that are not. And I have two daughters, I teach them that on day-to-day basis. We actually keep something called a happiness journal. And that is a practice that I started many, many years ago of the first thing you should think of every day is what is the moment that made you happiest? And it's not about gratitude because it's not necessarily grateful to someone else or something else, but it's...

What made you happy and reliving that moment? My happiest moment was that ice cream cone I had yesterday with those sprinkles and it was so perfect and it it made me so happy and reliving that moment just changes your response to your entire day. And if you can maintain that level of excitement and happiness and positivity throughout the day, I think it makes everything you do just so much easier.

Abhay (05:57)
Yeah, yeah, whether you're solving a problem with, you know, which sprinkles to get or the absolute tech, or the, the human relationship part of, know, building partnerships and, and cultivating, you know, those relationships and making them deeper. I saw a LinkedIn post that you shared recently that, read scaling, ⁓ company teaches you what hustle never will. And that struck me for a second. ⁓ and I wanted to ask you a little bit about like, tell me how.

and when you sort of first learn that.

Garima (06:28)
would say I first learned that probably 20 years ago in my first job. You know, because I think being from Indian descent, hustle is all we are taught very, very early. And that if you hustle, if you work hard, if you get the best grades, if you do all of these things, and if you're the smartest in the room, all these things will happen and you hustle to kind of get there and you're always in this challenger mode.

And scaling is different, right? Building is different than just hustling. is on purpose. It is intentional. It's building a plan. saying it's not just about how do I be the smartest? How do I be the best at this? It's what is the plan to get me to the next level and how do I do that?

And sometimes that requires taking 30 minutes to just think and doing nothing else and maybe being unproductive, but you just need 30 minutes to think, or you need to go play a game of tennis or do something.

to get your mind right, to start really thinking about how you plan for success and how you're intentional about your next steps, as opposed to this rigmarole that a lot of times we get on of just, let's just go. my God, we just have to go. And if we just keep running, we'll just, we'll get there. And unfortunately, I don't think that that's the case.

Abhay (07:34)
Yeah. Did you, when you were first kind of privy to that ⁓ aha moment, have you had to practice that throughout the years and understand that, you know, there may be days where it feels like hustling and to maybe look back and, get a little more of a bird's eye perspective so that you can concentrate on scaling so that it can be intentional. Do you have to practice that often?

Garima (07:58)
I think we all, and I'll speak for myself, have to practice it every day, every moment. I think it's a lot easier to do the things. It's a lot easier to do things. It's a lot easier to have a do list and just be like, I did this, I did this, I did this, I did this. And you talk about doping response. That's really exciting to cross something off, right? And we get kind of into that. And there's many times that I've told myself, I've told my management team, I have to tell my friends, hey guys, like, let's take five steps back. What is the problem we're trying to solve here? Why are we trying to solve it?

What is the impact that it's going to make if we were to solve it? So I've actually created like a little bit of a framework that I asked my team, which is specifically that, like, what is the problem we're trying to solve? What is the impact it's going to have? And what happens if we don't solve this problem? Like if we don't solve it, then does it matter? Is it, is it going to even make a difference? Cause sometimes we get in that hustle where we're trying so hard to solve something, but it really should have never existed or never been a problem in the first place. think Elon Musk says about engineering specifically that the worst mistake engineering teams can make is perfecting.

a product or perfecting a piece of technology that should have never been in market in the first place. And I think that's what we end up doing often by hustling.

Abhay (09:03)
Yeah, so true. mean, constantly asking that question of if we weren't concentrating on this, would there be a loss? Would that be a major win? What's the sort of answer to that question? That's so critical to keep asking. In an industry like yours, in fintech, that just evolves so fast, and there are so many different twists and turns to it on both a daily basis and annual basis, you and your teams have to constantly navigate through that.

when that's evolving so fast and so quickly, how has your definition of successfully pivoting maybe also evolved over the years?

Garima (09:39)
I think the definition of successfully pivoting has evolved because the stakes have always gotten higher. And, you know, when you're a small tiny startup for us, we started in January of 2020 and our first pivot was COVID. Then all of sudden we went to an, you know, remote organization and we couldn't meet our partners and we couldn't go to our trade shows. And, those first few pivots were, this is horrible. This is horrifying. We don't know what we're going to do.

our backs ever up against the wall to now where it's pivot is just part of the business. is, is who we are. And if we do not stay nimble to your point as a FinTech, if we do not stay nimble, if we don't understand what industry trends are, what's coming next, then we are 100 % going to be left behind. it's preparing to pivot as opposed to being concerned or surprised by the pivot.

Abhay (10:28)
back in those days early on, it sounded like survival was really the name of the game. And now as it, those pivots become integrated into your work, you have to, in a way, train your workforce differently because of that? I mean, is it a different mindset overall? Forget about whether it's the pandemic or not, but is that a set of values that you really have to instill that, pivots happening are happening all the time and we need to embrace that.

Garima (10:54)
So one of our core values is actually catch up. And the reason why we say that, and I even say this to people in interviews, I'm like, hey, look, if you're looking for a position or a company where everything's gonna be stable and you're gonna go linearly and you're just gonna know what's next, this isn't it. I'm telling you right now, this ain't it. If you're looking to be in a place that is fast moving, growing, changing, and you enjoy that and you wanna embrace that change, this is the right spot.

And again, it is hard and it's sometimes, especially now with our workforce, at three people it's different. We're at 90 people now. So getting 90 people to pivot is different than getting three people to pivot. So there is a communication layer that is so important and how integrated and how comfortable people feel in speaking to each other about those changes and keeping all those dialogues very open is what allows us to be able to pivot very quickly. And we do have to train our workforce on the style of communication.

on the fact that things are gonna change and it's okay. We even talk about mistakes because when you pivot so quickly, you will absolutely make mistakes. You're gonna hit a wall, you're gonna fail, you're probably gonna break something. There's law of unintended consequences that happens all day. We're building something new that's expected. And so telling people that we expect that, you know, we have an award called Fuck Up of the Month. And the reason we do that is because we want people to own those mistakes and be open enough.

and vulnerable enough to make those mistakes because if they don't make those mistakes, they're not gonna grow and we're not gonna be able to pivot or change.

Abhay (12:16)
I'm going to totally come back to fuck up with the month in a second, but I wanted to ask you about one part of that, which is, you know, leaders sometimes will have a particular speed that they're operating at in their head. And a lot of times it takes either a while for the rest of their teams to come up and calibrate to that speed.

Or for that matter, leaders, other leaders who they are collaborating with who don't even exist in their ecosystems are operating at a completely different speed, maybe even faster than that leader. So for you, how do you have to constantly level set with that and understand that others around you may not be operating at that speed, or you might be actually slower than the speed that say a prospective partner is operating at?

Garima (13:00)
think sales taught me all about that. Always having to mirror the people that you're around and maintain the same speed, whether it's the way you're speaking, whether it's how quickly you're emailing, whether it's how quickly you want the deal to be closed. I think that sales has really given me that skill. And I always say that my first job was an outside sales door to door sales. My parents were not proud. But that being said, I think that that is probably one of the most defining parts of my life because it did teach me that

I needed to be able to mirror every kind of business, every kind of owner that I was speaking to. If I was going to get their business, I had to meet them where they were at. And I think as a leader, that EQ portion and knowing that you have to be able to take people along, it's not leadership if you can do it on your own and you can do it quickly. It's leadership if you can get everyone else to follow you just as quickly or just as slowly as they need to.

Abhay (13:50)
I mean, it's a reminder, right, that empathy and that EQ is absolutely vital to making successful relationships really blossom and make them sustained.

In a world where agentic AI is growing and you have a front row seat to how there's perhaps a democratized financial power that...

builds, especially for small businesses. But now previously, that governance was handled by big institutions and policymakers and in a very traditional sort of hub. And they held responsibility for governing that. But does that role for creating governance and gatekeeping in the kind of new agentic AI world start to fall more and more on startups and leaders like you who are really doing this?

at the, not only just the grassroots level, but building it.

Garima (15:49)
think it falls on the startups. I think it is a very shared responsibility. And I think it's a responsibility of society. And it's not just because we can think about it from a fintech lens and we can think about how we as stewards of fintechs and how we are going to build upon AI, how that there's a lot of, there's an awesome responsibility there, but it's also our children are utilizing it. It's in schools, it's in everyday practices.

Where is that information going? How is it getting there? So what is the governance? What's the compliance? What's the privacy? But I also think that we are so early in the AI phase. We are so early still. There's so much more coming. And just like every other major technology change that we've had, whether it be the internet, whether it be electricity, whether it be cars, we're not going to figure this out soon. I we're still making traffic laws and we've had cars since the 1920s.

Abhay (16:40)
Yeah, yeah.

Garima (16:41)
So I don't think that we are going to know yet everything we need to do, but I do think that with the advent of AI, think it's truly about an agentic AI specifically. think it's the more people that we can get to utilize it, embrace it, be part of it, the more we'll start seeing, hey, there's something here that we need to think about, or there's something there that may be a problem. But if it just becomes this.

that is only used by this elite few who are the startups in the tech space, I think we'll miss that window of opportunity.

Abhay (17:13)
Do you have a responsibility as a co-founder, as a leader, as a president of a company to ensure that not only are you at the table when that policy and that governance and those conversations are happening about guardrails and how to really ensure that, but to also scale the, not only just the education of it, but the utility of it, right? So in your industry, across industries, so many more intersections actually happen, do you feel that kind of

I don't even know if motivation is the right word, but is that a responsibility that you feel is important for you?

Garima (17:45)
No.

I think it's absolutely a responsibility to champion and advocate for the industry that you're in because again, we have no idea what this technology can do and how it can do it and how quickly, and it changes every day. mean, we'll start using an LLM and two weeks later, we're my God, we can also do this. They just made an update. And so I think that there is absolutely this need to champion for your industry.

what it is that you're doing, why it's being used, and also ensure that there's utilization and that it is, to your word, democratized, because it does level the playing field quite a bit.

Abhay (18:20)
So, like you said, you start a process and 30 days later you start discovering more and more about that process and how much more power it maybe has. And I wanna ask you a little bit about, if you go away from the governance part of this or the responsibility part of this, in the end, because so many things change so rapidly and the pace of this as a leader, you really, really have to be mindful of, what if you maybe had to unlearn about yourself

in order to enjoy some longevity as a leader and longevity that you prospectively are looking forward to.

Garima (18:56)
It's a tough question. Something I'd unlearn about myself, I would say, you

the need to be part of everything as a leader, especially from startup. You go from a startup, you're a builder, you are doing everything. You're the janitor, you're the chef, you're the caterer, the babysitter, the everything. And there's no scale there. Because you only have 24 hours a day, no matter how much. And you're a founder, you know how this is. No matter how much you try to extend the number of hours in the day, it just doesn't get any longer.

being okay with at the beginning, well, five people doing this at 50 % of what I can do is still 250 % of what I can do. And that is something that it is very hard to unlearn. And as we scale, we're having to do that. Now with AI, even more so, you're relying on technology to fill some of those gaps and to give you some of that efficiency and some of that time back so that you can do all of these other things. And whether that's scaling your business more, whether that's just spending time with your family so that you have that moment.

Abhay (19:29)
Mm, yeah.

Garima (19:52)
And all of those things are important, but it's really understanding that you can't do it all. And as much as you want to be a superhero, it's probably not going to happen in this lifetime.

Abhay (20:00)
The superhero part hopefully will happen in other ways. yeah, I mean, I think it's sort of like understanding both limits and also where the accelerators of success may be. But I love that, right? That like we always have to understand and see what not only we're capable of, but those around us are capable of. And lifting boats to their levels are always important for all of us too. Your name Garima in Sanskrit.

Garima (20:02)
You

Abhay (20:26)
actually means greatness. And I was thinking about this because aside from our names, I'm always asking this to people of what makes them who they are. And so aside from your name, what else is it about your Indian Americanness or your South Asian Americanness or your identity as a woman of color that kind of anchors you on a daily basis or anchors your work or your persona?

Garima (20:52)
I would say the number one thing is the gratitude to my parents. And I think for all of us, the way that they taught us, I'm a first generation American. I wasn't even born in the States. I was born actually in England. And my parents went from India to England, to the United States to build a better life for me. And I think that most of us have that same story. I have anxiety about moving 10 minutes away. I can't imagine moving to a different continent in a place I didn't know.

in a economy I didn't understand, in a currency that was so much more expensive, and raising children I feel that there's this daily, again, responsibility that we owe it to our parents, we owe it to them to make the most of everything that we do because they sacrificed it all to give us these opportunities. And if we're not able to do that, so I think that most of us carry this load of

We have to make ourselves so much better and so much greater and achieve those levels of success that they expect from us. Or maybe they don't even expect it at this point. But fulfilling those dreams of you did this for me, let me make the most of it. Let me make sure that it wasn't in vain. And I think that that's definitely what drives me and makes me me on a day-to-day basis.

Abhay (21:53)
Right, right.

Does that make you more of a brown woman on a mission? Does that drive that? Yeah.

Garima (22:08)
Absolutely. Yes,

absolutely. Absolutely. It makes me on a mission every day. And that's why we started that organization.

Abhay (22:14)
Yeah, it's so interesting, right? We have this reverence for the past, for whether it's the work of our parents, the courage that it took to actually be an immigrant and then find both success and actually, again, like really, really grind to get to where they are and actually to put us in positions where we are. And yet at the same time, right, there was not necessarily this great acceptance of vulnerability and

giving grace to oneself and those kinds of things, right? So I mean, I'm gonna circle this back to the fuck up of the month part. You know, I have to tell you that that's one of the things I most enjoyed in getting to learn about you a little bit. And that article that I read about the fuck up of the month round table, that's not something that we have been inculcated with, right? Like to really embrace that. So how do you marry those worlds together a little bit, right? So embracing vulnerability, building courage,

Garima (22:58)
Okay.

Abhay (23:08)
and culture. Is that a surprising thing for some to really grapple with? Or is that something that you've been able to integrate really, really well?

Garima (23:16)
think I've been able to integrate it really well because of who I have always been. I am not your typical, you know, I went to school and my degree is in advertising and I ended up in sales. And so I've never been the, let me follow the traditional paths that were expected of me. And I've always kind of had this, I'm to do this, I'm going do this, I'm going do that. And it's always random. And I think that my family and friends now just expect that of me, that I'm just going be doing random crazy things. And I might walk into a wall because that's just who I am.

And so that embracing the fuck up of the month, a lot of that was for me. A lot of that was me saying, it's okay. Like you may not know the answers and in order to make an omelet, you got to break some eggs. Like you have to break things. You have to fail. Again, going back to this career day, the first slide I put up there was, you know, Mike Tyson's like, life has a plan until you get punched in the face. And I told every kid in that class that you will fail and you will get punched in the face. And it's

It's inevitable. don't care who you are. It will happen. And I think not having that vulnerability sometimes holds us back because we don't know how to learn. We don't know how to get up from that. We just learn that, this is just what happens. I've never failed before. What do I do? But if you have given yourself the ability to fail, the ability to fall down and you can get up quickly, that is so much more resilient. And you are such a stronger human and usually more successful because you embrace those.

those mistakes and everything about that.

Abhay (24:41)
Yeah, so true. And such a great reminder. I'm thinking about you being a parent and giving this sort of talk in a school. And I'm wondering how much has parenting taught you about patience in an industry where patience is not always first and front and center in the kind of rooms where problem solving.

is happening. And so, you know, has parenting given you any dimensions of clarity about patients and why that's a characteristic that maybe matters?

Garima (25:18)
Yeah, I would say I have none. My first, my daughter's, my oldest daughter's name is Sahana or Sahin Shakthee, right, Sahin? And so we think about patience. We named her that to hopefully make ourselves more patient. And it didn't work. I will say that I parent the way I lead and I tell my kids and my staff that I am not patient and I don't believe that that is something that is going to change. I try to. And I think that's something we all work on, but

Abhay (25:24)
Mm-hmm.

right right

Garima (25:46)
I understand patience is a virtue. I always say it's just one I don't have. And you know, we don't all have to be all have to be all virtuous and have all the virtues. So I think that I think parenthood has taught me a lot about just life in general and like expectations and how to coach and train and lead and make sure that you're taking people along with you because you have no choice, right? Like with the staff, with the team, if it doesn't work and you have a choice with your children, you don't have a choice.

You have to bring them along. You have to teach them how to walk, to crawl, how to speak, how to study. You have to teach them these things. There is no alternative. And so that teaches you automatically to just keep hitting the wall or just keep doing the same thing to ensure that they are successful because that's really all that matters.

Abhay (26:28)
Has that embracing that patience is not necessarily one of your virtues? Does it make it so that the people around you have to not just accept the impatience perhaps, but also make sure that they're complimentary to your skill set as well?

Garima (26:43)
Absolutely.

Absolutely. Although I'll tell you that the people I'm around the most are just as impatient as I am. And I would say my children, my husband are all just as impatient. You we like to live in that, let's get things done. Let's move. Let's go fast. We want it done yesterday. And I also think that that makes us, all of us movers. We're all very ready to go all the time. Like, okay, we get it. There's a challenge. Let's run forward because we're too impatient to wait for things to happen.

Abhay (27:03)
Mm.

want to get you out of here on this one, you know, as we all struggle sometimes to remind ourselves of all of our important human anchors, whether they be patients or other sort of characteristics that we have. With more and more machine-driven solutions, I mean, we've been referring to this all conversation, but with more and more machine solutions that are all around us, how are you best cultivating trust in yourself?

in your teams, in your thought processes? How is trust, and particularly the trust in humans, anchoring you these days?

Garima (27:44)
I would say trust is probably, we talk about virtues, it's probably one of the most important and it is definitely earned. But I also have a very strong belief in humanity and in humankind. And I believe that people are generally inherently good. And so they deserve your trust until proven otherwise. And I think that that has allowed me to be a better leader and a better parent because if you believe truly that

people are not doing something on purpose to hurt you that they maybe just don't know better. whether that's in a workplace setting or in a familial setting or with friends, if you can just believe that and give that grace to everyone else, it allows people to grow and blossom and it allows them to gain your trust more. If you go into relationships untrustworthy, feeling like, my God, I don't know who you are, you have to gain my trust, you have to earn it, I think it starts off things on the wrong foot.

And I think that it makes this challenge this like, I have to game the system. have to get there versus no, no, you want my trust. Just don't break it. You have it. You have it. I trust you. I believe that you're good. I believe that you're going to do good things. I believe that you are trying as hard as you can. Just don't, don't mess it up. Don't fuck it up.

Abhay (28:51)
Yeah. Does

that, by the way, lend itself ⁓ also to the optimism that's required in a way to not only fuel that trust, but to be effective in any space.

Garima (29:02)
Absolutely. My friends call me a unicorn long before we had a startup because they're always just like, how do things always work out for you? And I think it's because I believe that they will always work out for me. And it's not about the secret. It's not about some like, believe I have some cosmic power, but I believe that everything is going to work out for me because if it doesn't, it's just not the end yet. If it hasn't worked out yet, it's not yet the end. And I'm going to get it to work out. It's going to happen. And that optimism, especially in a startup.

It's what carries you forward because there are so many tough times, the stress, the can we make payroll? Like all of that is so real that if you don't believe that you're gonna make it, if you don't believe that you are going to make the difference and that it's all gonna work out, then what are you doing this for? And so I think that optimism is absolutely what drives people forward. think that, and that does come with a pretty big layer of trust in our fellow human.

Abhay (29:55)
Well, cultivating trust in our fellow humans, staying optimistic, and of course, really moving forward in such a positive way for small businesses as a leader in FinTech and in parenting and all around, you know, really, really making things happen. Garima, thank you so much for joining us today. This was really a fun conversation and I hope we can catch up with you again down the road.

Garima (30:16)
Absolutely, you as well. Thank you so much for having me.

Abhay (30:18)
Hey, thanks so much Garima and please check out more about Garima and her work on LinkedIn. Remember to please subscribe and share. Trust me, I know what I'm doing with your friends and family. Shout out to the UCLA women for winning their first NCAA basketball championship, to Maya and Hayden on their wonderful and beautiful wedding weekend, and to the universe for letting me stay here for 55 years and counting. Till next time, I'm Mubai Dandekad.