Navigating the Talent Visa Process: Insights from Soundarya Balasubramani

Brent Peterson (00:01.71)
Hi, welcome to this episode. Today I have Sundariya Balasubramani. And she has, she's written the book Unshackled. She has the Unshackled community, Unshackled Club. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us your day -to -day role. Pronounce your name correctly, like I've been trying to do for the last 10 minutes. And tell us one of your passions in life.

Soundarya Balasubramani (00:29.045)
Okay, okay, in that order, let's start with the name. My name is Soundarya Bala Subramani. That's what you would say in India, but in America, I guess people say Sundarya Bala Subramani the way you just said it. My nickname is Pooja, so much easier to say. So just call me Pooja from now. And I guess I would call myself both a founder and a writer. In fact, I would say a writer and then a founder.

I have been writing since I was 16 years old. I published my first blog post in 2014, I think. And I currently am the founder of Untrackled, which is both a book and an online membership community for high skilled immigrants in America to get talent visas. So it's a very specific problem that we're trying to solve. And I'd love to talk more about that if you're interested. And you asked about one of my passions.

I guess besides writing, I absolutely love singing. And I've published a few clips of me singing with a guitar a few years ago, but I have given up since then in the last two years.

Brent Peterson (01:40.686)
You have to keep going. I would encourage you to always enjoy and pursue music. Puja, I think that's a great, I'm gonna call you Puja from now on because I can actually say that. Before we get started, you have volunteered to be part of the Free Joke Project. I'm gonna tell you a joke and all you have to do is say, should the joke be free or should it be behind a paywall? So here we go. At my age, I'm getting good at multitasking.

Soundarya Balasubramani (01:48.277)
Absolutely.

Brent Peterson (02:08.622)
I can listen, ignore, and forget all at once.

Soundarya Balasubramani (02:13.653)
Okay. I think the joke is so funny that it should be free.

Brent Peterson (02:19.574)
Okay, good. That's great. That's perfect. So we were both at the CEX conference, content entrepreneurs. I meant to meet up with you, but I got there very late. I apologize. I did see your talk, so it was very inspirational. Tell us a little bit, do you have a three -minute version of it that you can kind of give your background and tell us a little bit about how you got into it and some...

Something about that.

Soundarya Balasubramani (02:50.709)
Sure. Yeah, why don't you time me and tell me if I'm close to my three minute mark. I'll do my best. Like many, many, many international students from India, I came to the US for pursuing grad school in 2017. I went to Columbia University for a master's in management sciences. And like many students, I came with the goal of wanting to get into tech and be a product manager. So I, against all odds, did that. I joined Salesforce as a product manager.

Brent Peterson (02:56.11)
Okay.

Soundarya Balasubramani (03:21.277)
Except, I don't know if this is like more students, but within the first month, I felt like something was off. That once the high of getting this new job with such a high salary, once that high faded, I was really left with doing things that I didn't care about every single day. And I suspect a lot more people feel this sense of, I don't feel like this is meaningful. My job is meaningful, but.

they don't get a chance to do something about it because of many reasons. Fortunately, I had this kind of like passion that I have to quit my job and go out there on my own. And so after a two and a half year journey with immigration, I finally got a chance to quit my job end of October, 2021. And since then I've had the fortune of publishing on Shackled. Ironically, I...

ended up writing a book on immigration, even though that's not, that was not where I quit my job. I quit my job to build a startup in the education space, education technology space, but that didn't happen. So right now I'm focused on helping more immigrants get the sense of creative freedom to whatever extent that they can within the limits of the immigration system.

Brent Peterson (04:39.502)
In your talk, you did speak about the fact that you had to go back to India at some point because of the immigration system. So there's a little bit of irony. Tell us a little bit about that part of it.

Soundarya Balasubramani (04:48.277)
Yeah.

Soundarya Balasubramani (04:55.349)
Yeah. By the end of 2022, I was working on a part -time H1B at a small startup, just part -time, and the founder was very supportive. They let me do whatever I wanted outside the job in terms of researching for the book and so on. So when I got the grant to actually work on my book towards the end of 2022, I felt like, okay, now is the time to...

actually do something with this. You know, so far I had this idea of writing a book and maybe I wrote one or two chapters, but that was it. I wanted to finish the book, but I knew I couldn't do that from within America because even if I finished the book, I would never be able to earn money from it. And I wanted to do much more than just finish a book. I wanted to set up a community for immigrants and I wanted to do this full time. And so that was the reason I decided to...

leave the US and go back to India. I gave up the part -time job, I gave up the H1B and I just took a really long sabbatical and went back to India. And nine months later, I still remember on September 12th, 2023 is when I got the approval for my O1. And then it took another five, six weeks to finally get this stamping on my passport. I think it was like October 17th, 2023.

That's when I got a stamp on my passport with the O1 talent visa as the CEO of my own company.

Brent Peterson (06:31.31)
Yeah, you also talked about that. Well, you gave a very specific emotion during your talk about when you got the text that says you didn't get approved. And I think we all, everybody in the audience was, I could feel my own self just like, I mean, I know what it's like to get that sort of message in the middle of something and then you just feel deflated and you can't do anything more.

but you've found the energy to get over that. Do you feel maybe as an entrepreneur, there's something that makes us want to keep going even after there's some defeat?

Soundarya Balasubramani (07:13.525)
At the risk of sounding like I know about this too much, because even I'm a new age amateur entrepreneur, I got the, just to get some context for your listeners, I got an O1 denied in 2022. That's what you're talking about. So I applied for the O1 twice. I got it approved the second time. The first time they denied it. And that process was horrible because it's...

took one and a half years of my life, $15 ,000, hundreds of hours. And most importantly, as I mentioned in the talk, there was a sense of hope that I had that was lost with that denial message that I got. You asked whether we, it makes us want to keep going.

Soundarya Balasubramani (08:04.149)
I almost think that most founders, their best ideas come from their worst moments when they feel that sense of utter defeat, that I am now at rock bottom in this path of my life. And for whatever reason, which luck is also a part of the whole equation, we get that perseverance and motivation to keep moving forward. And thank God I did that because I would not have written on Shackled.

if I didn't get the O -1 denied. I mean, I might have written a short article on immigration and moved on from it. No way would I have spent the last two years dedicating my life to working on this project.

Brent Peterson (08:46.382)
I do want to make a comment about that you are a new entrepreneur. And I don't think necessarily there's a difference between a new entrepreneur and an old entrepreneur. I think maybe the only difference is that I've made a lot of mistakes. And I've only the only reason is that I have a lot more time to make all those mistakes. At some point, you would hope I would hope that I would that I would learn from them. But, you know, maybe maybe we do learn from them and we don't remember the time that we did it twice. But.

Soundarya Balasubramani (09:14.069)
Red.

Brent Peterson (09:15.726)
Tell us about how you, when you got back and now you've started this, now you have this community, tell us kind of the underpinning of that and how you got rolling with both your book, your community, and there's a third part of it, I can't remember right now during your talk, but you did, yeah, go ahead.

Soundarya Balasubramani (09:36.701)
yeah. There's actually four parts now. The third part is the newsletter that we send out. It's a free newsletter that goes out to 15 ,000 high skilled immigrants. And the fourth part is something that we're building right now. It is, you know, to use the most famous word in 2024, an AI tool that we're building to help more O1 visa aspirants from STEM fields, especially scientists, founders, engineers. So.

That's just the fourth part that we're building. So there's four kind of tentacles under the Unshackle umbrella right now. You asked about the community specifically and the underpinnings of... This is how the community started. When I launched a crowdfunding campaign before, you know, I even started writing the book, we had to think of the different tiers we could add there. Like Kickstarter asks you for different tiers that you can add in there.

One tier was a paperback of untrackle, one was a hardcover copy. And then we were like, hmm, what do you do with the rest? What else can we add? And I thought, okay, let's add a community. I didn't even think that much back then. I just wanted to add a few tiers so it looked like this was a real project for people. And so that's how the community was incepted back then. But as I was going through the process myself for the O1 visa, I realized just how much...

guidance and information that I lacked. I didn't know other O1 recipients I could go talk to, who are also CEOs and founders. I didn't know who are the trusted lawyers. I didn't know how do you improve your judging criteria, because the O1 is given to people based on satisfying three out of eight pillars that the US government has. And so there was so many unknowns in the process. And so when we launched the community, it was bare bones.

But in the last nine months since we've launched it, we've added a ton of resources, information, and mentors and lawyers in there who could help people and guide them through the O1 EV1 process.

Brent Peterson (11:43.726)
In the community, and I'll ask some India specific questions because I used to have a development company and so we had an office in India. And one thing that we had to do and not had to do, but we helped our developers when we had to travel and we would always, they would travel to Europe or they would travel to Central America or they traveled to the US. We'd have specific instructions on how you can eat or.

What things are offensive to a certain cultures? What foods you can eat? And if you're from Gujarat, you're probably vegetarian. So how to find food to eat in going to countries. And we've sent people to Bolivia. So it's hard to get, it's hard to find vegetarian options in some of these places. But you can always find rice and you can find tortillas. What I'm trying to get to is there a cultural aspect of helping them learn how to live in another country?

culture? Because, and I'll make a generalization statement. I feel as India is so big that not a lot of, there's no reason necessarily to learn about another culture. Like you don't, there was no reason unless you're interested to learn about the Mexican culture. So there's no reason to go to Chipotle where you could buy, you could actually get a completely vegan meal that would be pleasing if you were to try it.

Soundarya Balasubramani (12:57.781)
Hmm.

Brent Peterson (13:09.358)
Do you have the, do you think or do you have this sort of help when they're traveling and they're coming to America and they're worried about the food and all the other things?

Soundarya Balasubramani (13:20.821)
Hmm, that's an excellent question. We don't, and that's only because the people we're helping are already in the US and are acclimated to the culture here. These are people who stayed here for at least three, four years, and only then they actually joined the community. However, if we were to target people outside the US, in India, China, and other countries, I think what you said makes more sense. And...

What you're saying makes more sense for universities to do in terms of helping students acclimate better when they join the university. We had a few orientation sessions when I joined Columbia, but no session really taught us the things you just mentioned, which is, you know, the right accent that you have to use to say certain things, or how do you show courtesy?

what does etiquette mean in America. Those things were just learned from making mistakes.

Brent Peterson (14:24.302)
Yeah, and I hope I wasn't, you know, I'm trying not to be stereotypical, but I, you know, those are the things that I experienced. And so I think that a lot of times it was always a challenge. And I think the food thing, you know, I used to travel as well in Europe and I would always meet with my Indian friends and sometimes it would bring along an entire suitcase full of food because they didn't know they could eat food. But anyways.

Soundarya Balasubramani (14:47.157)
yeah, Indians do. I mean, I did that and a lot of my friends did that because I'm vegetarian and so it was not easy to find food. And even if we found food, it's expensive here. Everything is expensive here. So we got, I think Indian students would bring three suitcases when they come to the U .S. and two of them will just be food and one will be for clothes and other things.

Brent Peterson (15:15.182)
All right, I feel like I got a sidetracked. So let's get back. So let's talk about Unshackled. Tell us a little bit about the community and the sort of what people get out of that community.

Soundarya Balasubramani (15:28.693)
I think of it as people get a direction of the first 10 steps they have to take. I think the best ideal case scenario for joining the community is you are two years out of college, you didn't get chosen in the H1B lottery, and now you have a year left, and you want to take a shot at the O1 visa, which is a great alternative because it doesn't make you go through the lottery system. It is uncapped.

And there's other benefits as well, including you can renew it forever. So of course, the caveat is that it's meant for people at the top of their fields. So I think when people join at that stage, they're very motivated to make use of the resources in the community because they have a year left in the country. And so they, I would say, you know, they come in, we have a course that people can take when they join that guides them through the talent visa, different talent visas out there and what it takes to get them.

And then we have a case study library of past recipients of these visas. And we have interviewed them in depth to create like an entire case study of how they put together their application. So you'll get to understand how other people did it. And then we have a discussion forum to ask questions. They can book free calls with past recipients who we call mentors. And whenever they're ready, they can get a free profile evaluation from our lawyers.

We have eight lawyers in the community. And so you can see how it's like a digital home where you have all of these rooms with many resources. And we try our best to help them guide through, okay, go to this room first. Once you're done with this room, go to the room three and then room four, five, six. And so we've set up the onboarding process for people. And of course we don't handhold them.

I mean, we are looking for people who are motivated enough to come take what we have and make use of it. There are other services out there. For example, you pay $20 ,000 and there's services that handhold you by saying, you pay us 20K, we will go and publish articles on your behalf. We don't do that. Rather we say, here are all the things you can do. Here are all the people you can talk to. Now make use of this and start going and publishing articles and judging competitions.

Brent Peterson (17:51.726)
is it, so I know that there's all, there's different levels of visas that people can get. And a lot of the people that I've met are say Australians or Europeans that you invest a certain amount of money and you get a visa. This is more of a academics or not academics, but you're showing that you have a skillset and you don't necessarily have to invest a lot of money in the U S to get your visa.

Soundarya Balasubramani (18:16.309)
No money. You don't have to invest. So the O1 cost, of course, you have to pay about $3 ,000 something in just filing fees, but that's just the application fee for a visa. And then a lawyer fee could range anywhere from $6 ,000 to $15 ,000. That depends on the lawyer. But you're not needing to invest a million dollars like the EB -5 or $100 ,000 like the E -1 or E -2 visa, which by the way,

It doesn't apply to India. E1, E2 is a treaty trader visa, and it only applies to certain list of countries, and India and China are not on that list.

Brent Peterson (18:55.246)
Interesting. So tell us a little bit about your journey in how you have, you started with the Kickstarter, but now you have a regular, I shouldn't even say regular, you have a business that you're running. Tell us about some of the challenges that you've had now that you're up and running.

Soundarya Balasubramani (19:16.373)
I think the biggest challenge has been...

keeping it sustainable. I mean, in terms of having a sales funnel that works, I'm new to sales and I mean, I've experimented. So we haven't gotten to that stage yet. And so that's one thing I would say. And secondly, hiring. I myself don't really take a salary. I mean, the kind of money that I was making at Salesforce, let's just say I'm not taking that salary from the company right now.

So we have to be very careful and like some, you know, we hire people in both India and I'm currently looking for a COO in the U .S. who can come in and take over for me for all the operations. And so that has been challenging because when you find somebody in India, it is more affordable, but then they need to understand U .S. immigration. And so there's so much knowledge transfer that I have to do with them and teach them before I can get them on board. It takes months for that.

And so we're kind of in this weird in between stage where, yeah, we have revenue and we're growing, but not fast enough to hire in the U .S. We can hire in India, but then we have to spend extra time with them. So I'm just figuring that out myself for now. So yeah, those are, I guess, two challenges.

Brent Peterson (20:39.982)
Have you looked at, so I know we've been at CEX and it's a, or the content entrepreneurs. Did you find that or did they find you?

Soundarya Balasubramani (20:52.629)
good question. I went to CEX in 2022 as an attendee and someone I met back in 2022, Dave Hurtig nominated me to be a speaker this year. And Joe then went and saw my profile. He liked it. And he reached out saying, would you come back as a speaker?

Brent Peterson (21:12.078)
Did you have to join Dave's running group?

Soundarya Balasubramani (21:15.381)
Running group? Do you know Dave Hurtiga? I guess he's famous in the C -Circle. I didn't even know he had a running group.

Brent Peterson (21:16.274)
Yeah, yeah, of course I know Dave. Everybody knows Dave. yeah, he makes everybody go running. Okay, so that's interesting. Have you, I mean, I feel as though there's a difference between this conference and a regular entrepreneur's conference. I feel like this one is geared towards solo entrepreneurs and it doesn't, maybe there's not a lot of tools there for people that are trying to build a team. And,

And I think the other part that is missing or maybe not missing but not part of the conference was some of the aspects around operations and some of the aspects around sales and commerce. I think one part of what you're doing is you have to sell, feel as though that commerce needs to be part of it. Not necessarily.

commerce with a team, but commerce as a business where either you're gonna get a platform to sell it or you're gonna get a shopping cart or something. Almost everything is a shopping cart, but where are you finding now resources to help you get to those next levels?

Soundarya Balasubramani (22:33.845)
When you say resources, you mean the people I'm hiring or something else?

Brent Peterson (22:35.95)
or other mentors, other communities and places, or is it, are you, like I'll say from my own experience, I spent 20 years just doing what I could do on my own without really reaching out to a lot of people because I'm not very smart, but you have, you know, there's an opportunity for you to get out and learn from others.

to see what others have failed at, I think. To go back to where, what the, you know, how to get resources to get to the next level.

Soundarya Balasubramani (23:10.997)
Mm.

Soundarya Balasubramani (23:16.181)
I guess me hiring the COO and offering them both salary and equity in the company is one way to do that. It is to get somebody else who I don't know I can have as a partner because I've been doing this solo for the last, you know, since I started really. And so that's one way. I do have Rajesh who I talked about in my speech at the conference. I talked to him every single day. So he's definitely my closest confidant and mentor in the business.

And I definitely, I brainstorm specific questions with people in my network who are founders or can help me. I have a founder who runs a hundred person company, hundred person company. So it's interesting to talk to him about the challenges he's facing and how he got to that level. He raised VC funding. So it's slightly different. I'm not looking to do that right now. And so I take help whenever I feel like it's warranted. But honestly,

And I've said this publicly, so I don't mind saying it on the podcast. I think I realized my strength is zero to one, and it is not one to 10. And neither do I want to focus on the one to 10, which is one of the main reasons I'm hiring someone right now. Who's done that before? Who is passionate about doing that? Because we need someone like that for the business to grow. And so I realized my...

passion will always remain in writing. And I have an idea for a next book that I want to work on. So I'm making sure that the business thrives before I take a step back and do that.

Brent Peterson (24:55.086)
Yeah, that's good. And I, I'm also the, the, I guess, an EOS, they call it visionary and there's an integrator. So the visionary is kind of setting the goal, setting the direction and the integrator makes sure everything gets done because there is a grind to it, right? And it's hard to settle down and get everything done that you have to do when you just want to.

Soundarya Balasubramani (25:13.845)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brent Peterson (25:24.206)
come up with the next idea.

Soundarya Balasubramani (25:27.541)
Yeah, exactly. I think for me personally, the hardest challenge is to persist, even when it feels like I want to jump to the next thing. But to persist in this and make it sustainable, make it outlast you, and then jump to the next thing, because I've done the mistake of jumping too fast before.

Brent Peterson (25:51.918)
Yeah, there's a great concept called the shiny object. There's a book called Traction and it's by Gina Wickman. There's a thing called the shiny object where you get pulled in multiple directions. And certainly that's my problem where I can't stay focused long enough to finish anything. So what is your future look like? What are the plans besides trying to, besides hiring a CEO, what is it that?

Soundarya Balasubramani (25:57.749)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (26:20.654)
What are the next ideas that you're going to, if you can share them, what are your ideas now that you'd like to add in to what you're already doing to enhance it?

Soundarya Balasubramani (26:29.877)
Yeah. Well, there's two sides to this. On the customer side, the member side, I want to improve the experience for the users. Like the moment they come into the community, we want to take them to a very rigorous roadmap that is fully focused on just one thing, whereas to improve your profile to file an O1 or EB1 visa someday. Those are the two main talent visas. So I want to partner with other people in the industry. And...

Interestingly, just in the last one year, 10 new companies have come up in this space of helping people file talent visas. So I'd love to closely partner with all the other players and seeing how we can integrate all of them into our community and improve the experience of the user. And secondly, we got a grant or we are in the very, very, very, very last stage of getting a grant from a foundation to build a free AI tool.

for O1 visa aspirants to start the process. There is nothing like it out there that I know of. So I'm very excited to launch that in the next four to six months. So these are the two main projects I would say.

Brent Peterson (27:37.998)
Wow, the AI tool sounds very intriguing.

Soundarya Balasubramani (27:42.165)
Yeah, I mean, imagine, I guess that, you know what, maybe I shouldn't say too much about it right now until we publish, but it will help people fall free forever.

Brent Peterson (27:50.83)
You can say it in your TED Talk after you've launched.

Soundarya Balasubramani (27:53.973)
Thank you. I doubt if that's going to happen anytime soon, but I appreciate you.

Brent Peterson (27:58.638)
Well, soon could be six months, right? But it could happen in eight.

Soundarya Balasubramani (28:03.957)
Thank you. But yeah, these are the two main ideas I have in mind. And the third would be, once again, I have interviews with six potential COOs today, tomorrow, and the day after. So I'm excited to see what kind of talent there is out there.

Brent Peterson (28:21.57)
Do you find it easier or difficult? I know you're in the San Francisco area. There must be a wealth of mentorship information and mentorship, especially for startups in that area. Or does it matter where you are in the country?

Soundarya Balasubramani (28:39.061)
I definitely think it matters. In San Francisco, every week there are dozens of events happening where you can go and meet other founders, mentors, advisors, and so on, and VCs. I definitely think that that you can substitute by being in, say, Ohio or where we were. Personally, I don't seek out mentorship actively, but that's because once again, I feel like within Rajesh,

and a few of my friends were also founders, I have enough help that I need to tackle the problems that come my way. Of course, if I take on different or bigger problems, that's when I think, for example, the next book project, I'm trying to write a fiction novel. So I've never done that before. And there I do need a mentor who's done that before. So I need to go out there and seek the right people.

Brent Peterson (29:37.006)
Yeah, and I also have some aspirations. I'm in the new book that Joe launched at the event called The Content Entrepreneur. So I have the e -commerce chapter in there. So I would also at some point love to do that. And I think there's, for me, I can say that's a little bit of, not afraid, but the unknown, especially as you get a little bit older.

Soundarya Balasubramani (29:50.421)
music.

Brent Peterson (30:03.566)
and if you're my age, they, I think maybe sometimes older people, the unknown scares them even more, even though, even though they don't know what it is, but there's a, some people, and I'll, I'll put myself in that. We, we get into that comfort of maybe I don't want to go into the unknown, but I believe in that no matter how old you are, you should always be seeking, learning and seeking, something new. And you have to change it. If you don't change.

Soundarya Balasubramani (30:23.029)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (30:32.974)
you'll be stagnant and half the population would still be riding horses right now.

Soundarya Balasubramani (30:39.765)
So beautifully said. I think just hearing it from you right now, I feel more fired up to go into the unknown. So thanks so much.

Brent Peterson (30:52.142)
Good. So we have a few minutes left, Pooja. Tell us your biggest hope now this year. And then to close it out, we'll do a shameless plug about anything you want.

Soundarya Balasubramani (31:10.293)
done. Biggest hope this year.

Soundarya Balasubramani (31:22.197)
I mean, the first obvious answer that comes to my mind is to begin work on the novel, which would mean that untrackable is in a place where I can do that, where I can take a step back. So that is definitely my biggest hope. But beyond that,

I mean, I just hope I don't forget the privilege that I have right now. It's something that I've been feeling lately is that I'm probably one of the most privileged humans on the planet. And, you know, I'm hoping you as well, because I am sitting at like the top of Maslow's hierarchy. I don't have to worry about my personal safety or food or water or shelter or even love and belonging. And so...

I hope I don't ever take that for granted. Like I wake up and the first thing I should be thinking about is, holy shit, I'm lucky that I woke up in my bed today in a safe place. So yeah, I just don't want that feeling to go away.

Brent Peterson (32:27.822)
and shameless plug now. What would you like to plug today?

Soundarya Balasubramani (32:31.573)
Shameless love. I guess if anyone listening to this is an immigrant themselves or has a friend who is an immigrant who is in America right now or wants to come here, I would just say go to unshackled .club and we have free things and paid things. So if you don't want to join the community, which I completely understand, then you can sign up for a free course we have or go through the newsletter that we have.

So there is something out there for anyone who wants to be an immigrant, just that.

Brent Peterson (33:01.966)
And I'll make sure I'll put all those links on the show notes. Pooja, it's been such a great pleasure to speak to you today. Your talk was incredible and you have a great stage presence and I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Soundarya Balasubramani (33:20.373)
Thanks so much Brent, really appreciate it.