Your Network Is Your Net Worth

Garima Shah  ·  Biller Genie

Prepared for Deevo (The Brand Lab)  ·  March 2026

Somewhere in your phone right now there is a list of people who already know you, already like you, and already have some idea of what you do, most of them have never heard your pitch, because you have never given it to them. Garima Shah built a company on the bet that those people are where growth actually comes from.

Garima is the co-founder and president of Biller Genie, a SaaS platform that helps businesses automate their accounts receivable and get paid faster, she leads a team of more than 90 people, and the culture she has built around them is as deliberate and unconventional as the growth philosophy that built the company in the first place.

This conversation on The Brand Lab covered a lot of ground: relationship capital, the real cost of acquisition, why elevator pitches are dead, what Biller Genie's five core values actually mean in practice, and why Garima believes the word no might be the most underused tool in business. Here is what came out of it.

Why the Cheapest Growth Is Already in Your Phone

The number that anchors everything Garima does is simple, it costs up to 60% more to acquire a new client than it does to retain and grow an existing one, most businesses I know area already aware of this number, or some version of it, and then build their entire growth strategy as though it does not exist…chasing the next deal, the next list, the next funnel, while an entire database of people who already trust them sits untouched.

Garima's point is that most companies have an entire layer of growth sitting right in front of them, and they never look at it because looking at it feels like maintenance, so then you see that the businesses that figure this out tend to ask a very simple question: when was the last time we reached out to the people who already know us?

“I guarantee you, in your own network, in your own personal space, there are people who don't even know what you do and how you do it. And if you just start telling your story and activating your network, things change.”  — Garima Shah

This is a different way of thinking about where opportunity actually lives. The fastest path to growth is usually the one sitting closest to you, the one you have been too busy chasing the horizon to notice.

The Ten-Year-Old Test for Knowing What You Actually Do.

Garima has a test she runs on every new hire, she asks them to explain what they do, in two sentences, in a way their parents would understand, if they cannot do that, in her words, they should not work there nor anywhere else.

It sounds harsh, yeah, but the logic underneath this is about clarity, if you cannot explain what you do and why it matters in language a normal person can follow, you do not actually understand your own value yet..and without that understanding, anyone else that you try to reach out won’t understand it either. The elevator pitch, in Garima's view, was always the wrong frame, because it treated communication as a performance for strangers instead of a test of your own understanding.

“We ask our new hires every day, how are you going to explain to your parents what you do? Because if you can't tell your parents and your friends what you do in two sentences, you shouldn't work here. You shouldn't work anywhere.”  — Garima Shah

She takes this even further with her own kids…she mentioned that the real test is whether a ten-year-old can hear your explanation and then repeat it back to you correctly…you achieve that, then your message is delivered in the right way.

Get Shit Done, Catch Up, Own It: Five Values That Actually Mean Something

Biller Genie has five core values, and none of them sound like the values most companies put on a wall, if you ask me…they are Get Shit Done, Catch Up, Own It, Class Shines, and Belief in the Genie, as you can see, Garima is very direct about why most corporate values fail: words like trust and integrity are not values, they are table stakes, real value is something you can either be winning or failing on, visibly, in a way everyone in the company recognizes.

Get Shit Done means exactly what it sounds like, Catch Up is about pace, instead of speed for the fun of it, but the expectation that if the company is moving fast, everyone moves with it. Own It includes something Garima calls fuck up of the month, a recurring acknowledgment that mistakes happen and the only unacceptable response is hiding them, which I think is pretty genius if you ask me, Class Shines covers integrity and a zero-tolerance policy for anything that feels even slightly shady and last, but certainly not least, Belief in the Genie is belief in the company, the mission, and the people in it.

“A value is something that you either are failing or winning on. Our number one core value is get shit done. We expect you to do your job and we expect you to do it right, because when it's wrong, we're gonna say, yo, that's value number one.”  — Garima Shah

What makes these values operational rather than decorative is that the company actually uses them, either with kudos, prizes, recognition, and yes, the fuck up of the month, all built around these five things, that way, nobody has to guess what the values mean, because the values show up in how people are praised, corrected, and talked about every single day.

Why Garima Refuses to Separate Who She Is From How She Leads

One of the more surprising threads in this conversation was Garima's insistence that personal and professional life should not be kept in separate boxes, she has gotten pushback on this before, including from a credible coach who told her that personal and professional should stay in their own silos with no crossover and Garima's response was quite simple: she does not know how to be any different, and pretending to be a different person at work than she is everywhere else would not be sustainable.

This connects directly to how she thinks about hiring and culture, the honeymoon period is also prevalent in hiring, as much as in relationships…everyone is polite for the first few months, and then the real personalities show up. Garima's argument is that you should be building relationships, with employees, customers, and partners, based on who people actually are, not the curated version they present in the first few weeks.

“Whether it's your customer, whether it's your partner, whether it is someone you're interviewing, you've gotta get behind that mask and understand who they are and build a relationship that is based upon that and based upon, again, core values.”  — Garima Shah

This is also where the romance analogy comes in…Garima compares courting a client to courting a partner: you do not spend the whole time selling yourself, you ask questions, you get curious, you try to understand what the other person brings to the table and how the two of you complement each other, I for once thought at the beginning that it sounded way too simple to be a strategy, and it is also, by her account, the entire strategy.

No Is the Most Empowering Word in Business

The most counterintuitive idea in the conversation might be this one: Garima believes that no is the most empowering word in business, and that most business owners are far too afraid to use it…Fear shows up everywhere, in hiring people who do not fit the culture, in taking on clients who do not fit the ICP, in saying yes to partnerships that do not align with the company's values just because saying no feels risky.

Her argument is that every yes to the wrong fit is also a no to something else, usually something better, that you cannot see yet because you are too busy managing that bad fit you just got, if you have a clearly defined ICP, a clearly understood culture, and a clear sense of your own boundaries, those are the tools that will let you grow faster with the people who are actually right for you.

“I think business owners get so worried about saying no, but no is the most empowering thing in a business. If you are able to say no to the people who don't fit, who don't fit your culture, who don't fit your investment practice, who don't fit your partnership model, who don't fit your thesis as a customer, you just grow miles and miles better and the velocity increases.”  — Garima Shah

This is also where Garima's boomerang culture comes from…Biller Genie has had multiple employees leave and come back, sometimes years later, because the relationship and the culture were strong enough that leaving did not mean the door closed, and that doesn't happen by accident, it happens because the company was clear enough about who it was that the people who fit knew exactly where to come back to.

Key Takeaways

• Acquiring a new client costs up to 60% more than nurturing an existing one, most companies already know this and still build their entire growth strategy as if it were not true.

• If you cannot explain what you do in two sentences in a way your parents, or a ten-year-old, could repeat back to you, then we need to work on clarity first.

• A real core value is something the company can be visibly winning or failing on. Get Shit Done, Catch Up, and Own It work because everyone at Biller Genie knows exactly what they look like in practice.

• Personal and professional are not separate categories for Garima, since the way you show up with friends is the way you should show up at work, and pretending otherwise rarely survives the honeymoon period.

• Saying no to the wrong customers, employees, and partners is what protects the velocity of everything that is actually working.

• Boomerang employees, people who left and came back, are one of the strongest signals that a culture is real rather than performed.

About Garima Shah

Garima Shah is the co-founder and president of Biller Genie, a SaaS platform that automates accounts receivable processes so businesses get paid faster. She leads a team of more than 90 employees and has built the company's culture around five operational core values: Get Shit Done, Catch Up, Own It, Class Shines, and Belief in the Genie. She began her career in commission-only sales, has been married for 28 years, and brings the same philosophy of authenticity and relationship-first thinking to every part of how Biller Genie operates. Find her at billergenie.com

Listen to the Full Conversation

This episode of The Branding Lab covers relationship capital, company culture, hiring philosophy, boundaries, and what it looks like when a leader refuses to separate who she is from how she runs a business. It is a conversation that earns its reputation as one of the most quotable episodes of the show.

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Connect with Garima Shah and Biller Genie at billergenie.com

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