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Hi, my name is Pavan Prakash Badllani. The name
of my company is called Inspire Me. I am a motivational speaker, handwriting, and signature analyst, an international NLP Practitioner, author and personality development coach. I have been in this space for the past 11 years
now and I have worked with over 10,000 people.
Through handwriting and
signature analysis, I can tell people about their love life, financial life,
health issues, relationships, success rate, past, present and future behavior
to name a few. I started speaking on stage at the age of 16 and since then I
have always loved the idea of addressing people and sharing my thoughts and
ideas which can positively impact and inspire people to live their life to the
fullest.
2. How did you come up with this idea and go
about executing it?
After completing my studies in junior college,
post the 11th and 12th standard, in 2009, I wanted to be in the field of mass
media and get admission for Bachelors of Mass Media, but due to my low
percentage/cutoff I wasn’t getting admission anywhere. I had 3-4 months in
hand and my father suggested that I should learn handwriting and signature
analysis from his friend, Mr. Anal Pandit, who had 35 years of experience in
graphology. And I was told that through handwriting and signature analysis, I
can improve my personality and guide others as well as to how subtle changes in
their handwriting and signature can bring about massive improvements in their
personal, professional, and financial life.
It was a 1 and a half month program
and since then I started offering free and paid consultation and conducting
workshops & seminars with various corporate organizations. As I completed
my graduation and post-graduation, I did various jobs as a celebrity manager,
digital PR executive, celebrity sales executive, event manager, stand up comedy
to name a few but I was confused between Nov 2014 - Jan 2017 as to how should I
find my career and how do I go ahead & create a business. In my mind, I
always knew that I was a trainer and a coach, but the business idea of coaching,
hadn’t seen the light of day.
In Feb 2017, I started my Youtube channel, where
I used to post small inspirational videos which spoke about stories which
everyone could relate to, and I started connecting with celebrities whom I knew
from the days when I was a celebrity manager. In the same year, I wrote my the first book as well called the “Win-Lose Situation” which sold more than 1,000
copies in the first 6 months and I got my very own tv show as well for
handwriting and signature analysis, so that helped me change my branding, and
along with that I made more than 500 inspirational videos in 2017. And with
that, people start taking notice of my work like handwriting and signature
analyst, speaker, author and personality development coach.
3. What has been your biggest challenge that you
faced and how did you overcome that?
My biggest challenge that I have faced as an
entrepreneur is to gather an audience in the very beginning as a trainer. Back
in 2017, I had launched a series of 10 personal development sessions in Bandra,
and only one or two people would turn up for my sessions. It was incredibly
demotivating for me at that point, as I had to put hours and hours of effort
in preparing the content but in spite of making the creatives, posting it everywhere
on social media, people didn’t take an interest in the sessions. It is when I
learned digital marketing for my coaching and training business, I learned how to
run Facebook and Instagram ads, and target audience all over the country, sell
my coaching programs over a 1 or 2-hour free webinar session, create an email
list to market my coaching products and grow my social media following and
create an omnipresence for my brand on various social media channels. Today
more than 70 - 150 people attend my webinar sessions on a regular basis. And I
also run free workshops and keep providing valuable tips through my content and
videos on social media.
4. What do you think are the most important
qualities of a successful entrepreneur?
According to some of the most important
qualities of a successful entrepreneur are one who can be decisive, action
oriented, passionate about their business, have a high amount of self
discipline and is very clear about the direction of their organization and
thinks about how he or she can provide the highest value by being ethical with
their offerings and not compromising on values and quality for profits. Because
you can always make more money, but when you break the trust of your consumers,
it will be hard for you to regain their trust, no matter how hard you try.
And another exclusive quality of a successful an entrepreneur is quick execution and less of boasting about how amazing their
ideas are, because ideas sometimes may not be as fruitful unless it is put
into action. So always learn how to adapt, restrategize and learn from what is
going wrong, be updated with the latest happenings in one’s industry and to
keep reading books & watching content which helps them grow in their
business.
5. What are some of the most important factors
for running a successful business?
Some of the most important factors for running a
successful business are as follows.
-
You need to have the ability to
take risks and explore new possibilities and ideas when creating your product
or service. When you see that something isn’t working in your business, you
need to be willing to readjust and strategize immediately
-
Work on getting
-
Work smart instead of working
hard on your business, instead of in the business, so that you can hire the smartest
people in your niche, who can take over the job of instructing the team on your
behalf
-
Hire people on the basis of
commissions instead of salaries, if you can’t afford to pay them a fixed amount
every month
-
Be open to complaints and
feedbacks, because if only you are romantic with your product or service and
your target audience isn’t happy with your work, no matter how hard you try,
you won’t be able to make the sale. So learn from them as to what do they want,
and then position your products and services
-
Stay focussed and be consistent
in the delivery of your products and services. And one of the most crucial
lessons is to analyze your competition, see where they are falling short and
see how you can fill that gap for that kind of clientele you’re going after
-
Have a specific target audience
and don’t try and sell to anyone and everyone. This is a mistake that most of
the entrepreneurs make at the beginning of their business. Your audience may be,
young working professionals from 24 - 30, students ranging from 18 - 23 or
middle-aged entrepreneurs from 35 - 50, so focus on only one target audience
first. This will help you build a name for yourself and then once you have a
stronghold on your target audience, then diversify accordingly
-
Learn to have an appetite for
failures and mistakes as you’re going to make a lot of them in the beginning,
so understand & analyze where you are going wrong, and get the required
help you need of professional marketers and experts in your business at the right
time. You can’t do everything yourself in business, so start delegating your
tasks. Because if you’re not delegating, you’re not an entrepreneur, neither
are you in a business, you’ve simply created a job for yourself and you’re the
boss
-
Be open to collaborating with
experts and professionals in your field, where you can leverage the audience of
people whom you aspire to be like for example, begin with starting a podcast or
you can create a chat show on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Linkedin to name a
few where you can invite these experts as guests and get tips which will be
helpful to you and your audience. For example, you can enter into a
collaboration with successful experts in your field, where they can direct
clients towards your business and you can share a sizeable amount of profits
you’re generating from that list, mutually. You can even invite them, for a
free webinar sessions and generate profits from that.
6. What are your tips for the first time and
aspiring entrepreneurs?
As you know there are a lot of thoughts and
ideas about this subject, but here are some tips for the first time and aspiring
entrepreneurs who want to build a name and create authority for themselves
in their business, through their products and services.
-
You will have to hustle a lot
if you are a solo entrepreneur, and so at the beginning for the
first 3 - 6 months, be prepared to do a lot of the work on your own. So to
solve this problem, If you can’t afford to pay a team, start finding out
software/applications online where you can automate your business and have
your work delegated. For example, Zoom for meetings & conferences, Click
Funnels for creating sales pages, GetResponse for email marketing, Calendly for
setting appointments to name a few.
-
Plan out ways as to how you can
shift your business online, and start listing your products and services on
Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart to name a few sites which can help you reach more
customers. For listing digital products and for creating a payment gateway you
can use Instamojo and Shopify, where you can create your payment gateway and
create an online store.
-
Start writing a book on the niche you want to build an authority in and create videos, blogs and relevant
posts on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin, Pinterest, WhatsApp &
Twitter.
-
Figure out ways to connect with
people in your niche to do affiliate/referral marketing. So for example, you
know someone who is in the business of selling laptops, and you get that
individual, a few clients who convert, so you can earn a percentage between
10-30 percent on each sale of laptops. And you can do the same for your own
business as well. For example, I’m into the business of training and coaching,
so the next time, I get client referrals through existing participants, and
when they convert and buy any one of my products and services or attend a
seminar session, I offer between 10 - 30 percent referral commission, depending
on the price point of the products and services. Start marketing products and
services which you believe in and are of great value to other people you’re
recommending to as well, so you can create a side income for yourself.
-
Don’t be afraid to sell and
remind your clients, that if they don’t purchase your product or service, what
do they stand to lose and what is the result that they will achieve when they
do.
7. How can one overcome a hurdle of lack of
funds when starting up?
It’s quite simple. When you are starting your
business or deciding that you want to become an entrepreneur, but you don’t
have funds, you need to start developing trust first. You could possibly offer
free trials of your products and services, for a month, 3 months, 6 months or
even a year at max, and generate positive testimonials which will help you
increase your brand visibility. Once you have even 30 - 100 testimonials, you
can pitch products and services using those testimonials as social proof,
starting from Rs.250 low ticket items and even up to Rs.1,00,000 as well where
you’re providing higher value for a selected number of clients.
You need to clear about your target audience and
the benefit you’re providing to your consumers.
Today, when we think about starting a business,
all we need is a laptop, computer or mobile, and a decent internet connection. We
should think about how we can eliminate the hassles of inventory and how we can
take our business online, where a low investment can generate up to 10x returns
in a short span of time. Examples can be a digital marketer, website designers,
social media manager, online video/photo editor, online event managers,
graphic designer, author, a copywriter for upcoming entrepreneurs, coaches,
trainers, professionals, startups to name a few of the target audiences.
Think in these terms, when starting up your own venture,
as to what problem are you solving and how deep is the problem of your
consumer. The deeper and painful the problem, the higher you can charge.
Are you helping your client with the following -
growing your client’s income, save money, build their personal brand, improve
relationships, improving a person or his / her organization’s productivity and
efficiency, become mentally, spiritually and physically fit, beauty tips which enhance your client’s
image, build their status, and authority to name a few.
These are some of the most profitable niches
which you can think about which when you design products and services.
- Interviewed by Kedar Lalwani
- Edited by Shilpy Sharan
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