Ep543: Sourabh Goyal – Make Yourself a Priority in Your 20s

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that when in investing, you must take risk, but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives to reduce risk in your life, go to my worst investment ever.com today and take the risk reduction assessment I created from the lessons I've learned from more than 500 guests, fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest syrup, go yo syrup. Are you ready to join the mission?

Sourabh Goyal 00:47
Yes, yes, I am all in the mission. All excited. Yeah, I'm

Andrew Stotz 00:51
very excited to have you with us. And I'm going to explain that a little bit about your background to the audience. So syrup is the founder of success brew, a growth marketing company, and the gold cheat club community that's focused on the personal and professional growth of its members, and LinkedIn influencer by accident and content creator with the intent of sharing his life experiences. He's trained over 10,000 people across seven countries on subjects like goal setting, personal branding, and organic social media strategies. Sora is also the CO co author and associate partner of the international best selling and golden books of the world record holding the growth hacking book number two. So take a minute and tell us about the value that you bring to this world.

Sourabh Goyal 01:45
So that's quite a great question to begin with. Right now, I think the greatest value I can bring to the world is my entire network. Okay, the mistakes I made. And I think if I learn from your mistakes, I can save a lot of time, money and energy. Right? Okay. And I think my life has been observing other people, right, beginning from my father, okay, I made a list of mistakes he made, and I decided I will never make these mistakes. Okay. And one of the biggest mistakes was to working alone, in a business for long, 35 years, not creating a team not creating a system not creating a structure, right, and running things single handedly, and what happens and having just one source of income, right? Pandemic happens, you don't have an income, right? Okay. And now he realized after like 35 years, is like, we should have multiple sources of income. Right. And we in Indian families, mostly father has a business, all the kids will go into same business, now in the entire family have a single source of income. Okay, it was a huge fight. It was a long battle to win that I need to create another sources of income, and I want to end the family business. And starting from scratch in this entire tech and econ world. I was not there, like there was no skill with me. So it's been 11 years, I'm still learning. And now, I think the things that used to change in 1020 years, are changing in six months. So catching up with all the web three, and all things coming in now is again, you can say very new excitement. So why bring to table for people as my experiences first second my community because that's again, it's open to everybody. It's open for learning, and I call it a human laboratory. Maybe you are not someone who can patiently read a book, but everybody can talk to someone ask a question and get an answer.

Andrew Stotz 03:46
It's interesting, because when I look at your bio, and I've observed you a bit, it's like everything that you do is what we all kind of want, particularly if we have small business and all that goal setting, personal branding, organic social media strategies and growth hacking. I mean, what more is there than that? I'm just curious for the listeners, let's just say listeners never heard of you. They just heard your introduction and like, oh, this sounds interesting. What's the best way for them to start to interact and get some of the value that you bring?

Sourabh Goyal 04:22
Best way to interact with me is LinkedIn. I'm like 24/7 active on LinkedIn right? either me or my team, somebody is there to respond all the time. Okay. I have all the community groups. So if you write the bocce club, th e g OALCHY club, you will find our pages on every social media platform, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and you will find a lot of content that we are creating. We are now creating a lot of growth stories. And it all started with a very small conversation with some people on the WhatsApp group about their goals. Right about how you can shift your careers So I have been a mechanical engineer, then I became a sales and marketing professional. Then I ended into coaching industry. So the first question people used to ask how do you change your profession so quickly and so nicely? Don't you feel like starting from scratch every time, I'm like, You know what, I have a set goal, anything that can take you to go, I will choose that path. So I'm not a person who will say I'm a mechanical engineer for all my life. I was an engineer, I did it, I felt good. And then there was a time I said, Okay, let's move on to something else learn something else. I'm a curious soul. And I think that's where people started asking more of it. And we created a workshop from 2000, August 18. to Now we have done I'm sorry, three batches across seven to 10 countries, a lot of people, a lot of those toys came out of the community. And to make a real difference. I created this community so that people can still be there ask questions when they're executing things. Because there are no pushes during the training. Portions come when they're executing and really implementing the learnings. And this is how we ended up becoming a family. And this year, we have opened the community for everybody to come in whether you are a participant or not. And we are doing massive meetups because now the pandemic is over. And we are physically meeting over a cup of coffee or beer every Saturday, Sunday in some city of India. And now we are planning for UK, Dubai, US and other countries as well. Wherever we can find somebody who can post on our behalf, we can arrange a meet up.

Andrew Stotz 06:33
Fantastic. And out of curiosity on the online space. Where is the best place to have a community like is it? I know in India, people really use whatsapp and WhatsApp groups I can see there are LinkedIn groups, which I've used sometimes in the past. Of course, there's Facebook groups. There's also mighty networks and some other like other types of groups. And then I use Slack sometimes as a group. I'm just curious, like, since you've got so much experience in that area, what what works as far as community building.

Sourabh Goyal 07:05
So if you're trying to manage small groups, let's say a niche based group or a city wise group, or a country wise group, I think WhatsApp works best because WhatsApp has a 96% reading and responding rate. Okay. And I did ask people this question on my LinkedIn as a poll, and 72% people said WhatsApp, apart from that, yes, on the online communities and all the startup ecosystem. Discord is there, Slack is there. So Discord is the most preferred, then back comes and then there are so many other tools coming in. But we need to understand that when you are a community builder, you need to give people easy access. And today, for every tool, you need to make a new habit. But WhatsApp is something that is being downloaded 500 billion times. 5 billion times like 75% of the world population is already there, habituated to it. Okay, and the good thing is that WhatsApp is now researching and community based features in telegram is the second best messenger, if you talk about phone and ease, ease of use, they have done a great job in building communities.

Andrew Stotz 08:16
Interesting. Of course, as you and I both know, the key to building a community is not actually the platform, it's getting the engagement in the content. And, you know, I just asked one other quick thing, and that is about organic social media strategies. And just maybe you could give a tip because I know, some of my listeners are trying to promote their personal brand, they're trying to promote their business, you know, they're and they're struggling, you know, they're, they're making posts and stuff that they think are hitting the mark, but they're not really hitting the mark, what would be like one or two pieces of advice that you'd give them.

Sourabh Goyal 08:51
So when I started with this entire social media thing, and I came across this term called Personal Branding around seven years ago, during 2015, I would say a friend took a class on that. And I don't Facebook actually, and I removed all the people are already knew what happens most of the time people keep engaging with people they already know. And they don't connect with at least two or three new people every day. Right, and, and in terms of content, when we talk about a subject matter content, let's say about marketing, about finance, about anything, there's a limited content that is already circulating across social media, you can't do much about it. If we talk about social media strategies or LinkedIn strategies, right, people will have a different way of narrating it but the content is saying so, two advices to build a great personal brand, one be the person so what people are doing this, they're handing over their social media to someone else. You can do that for your company, not for your own self. In second thing I would say that whosoever you are If you are anywhere between five to 10 years experienced in life, like after college, you are in 30 to 35, you have experiences you have already made shitloads of mistakes, right? You know a lot of people, there are many instances that happened that helped you grow in life. Just learn a bit of content, writing and storytelling and share those stories with people. That is the most genuine, original content.

Andrew Stotz 10:27
Beautiful. And copy pasted. Yeah, so great advice, thinking about, you know, you need to go out in your own voice, don't try to come up with some way of getting some volume of content, come out with your own voice. Share your own experiences. And I think what I was thinking about is that, you know, you imagine a young person comes out of university, they're five years into their career. They think all but I'm not really an influencer, and people don't know me, you're not trying to influence a 60 year old man. Exactly. You're trying to influence the people your age and younger, who are going through what you're going to, or will go through what you're going to. And so take it easy on yourself. It's a lot like when young students say that they want to, they feel overwhelmed when they see the people around them that are so successful, I'm like, You're comparing yourself at the age of 25, to a man or a woman at the age of 55. It's not a fair comparison, you have to beat your peers in the workspace, don't worry about trying to beat the boss, that's very, very difficult. Well, speaking of experience, now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to and then tell us your story.

Sourabh Goyal 11:47
So I would say my worst investment ever was doing engineering the game, because it was not done by choice, it was not a conscious effort, actually, right. And it was just like a society play that, you know, they say you go to school, then you go to college, then you get a degree and then you get a job, right. And I started during 2007 and 2008, the wall hit the biggest recession ever possible. And it never came up. So during 2011, when we went out for jobs, there was nothing. And then I invested in a particular kind of a college that has nothing. So there was no extra learnings. There will be lectures and classes that are written in books. So I really lost my interest within second year of the college. And I've been wasting a lot of time there. So I'm not about talking about financial investment. I'm talking about four years of time investment in a very young age, that would have been utilized in a much better way of knowing my own self. That happened after the age of 23. That what is that I am good at. So before that I used to come down by a plateau, I have lack of confidence, right? Okay. And I can't read extra books, I can't talk to people, but then they realize then I need to just polish certain skills. And this is good because no matter even if you're good at something, it isn't it may not be polished. So you have to little bit, you know, learn from someone, you need to have a mentor in life. Okay. So that worst investment ever showed me days that sort of be good for nothing. And then I started making good investments, finding people finding mentors, okay, experimenting with life and not going with us society created structure of life.

Andrew Stotz 13:41
So let's go back in time to that time, and just think about a lot of young people. You know, they're making some choice about their education, whether they should maybe they didn't get into the top school. And, you know, some people are saying, Oh, don't even go to school. You know, it's not valuable, based upon, you know, what you learned during that time? You know, what would you say to those people?

Sourabh Goyal 14:06
I would say the first thing you should do is think. So, if we hear Earl Nightingale was one of the greatest coaches on this planet, he says the biggest problem of the human kind is they don't think. Right? And see, initially, if I talk about two decades ago, when social media was not that prominent, we were only influenced by our peers, family, teachers, us very small circle. Now we are being influenced by millions of influencers across the planet. Right from Elon Musk to Gary Vee, to Grant Cardone everybody is influencing everybody and all these influencers have a very strong belief system about things they believe in. Right? And they are trained to make us believe in those things. That's what they want to do actually, right. Okay. And if We have seen the movie social dilemma, okay, it's a Netflix documentary, it talks about how social media has created everything to influence you, and D influence you on what you already know. So I would say, for once, for once, maybe an hour, two hour, okay? Just remove all that influence think that nothing exists in this world, you are the only person with your family, and think what is the most important thing for you? Right and jot down whatever comes to your mind. Because we can earn shitloads of money on social media today, money's not a problem, you can connect with anybody on the planet. At the end, if you're not happy, if you're not sleeping with a smile on your face, nothing is worth it. So if you go to college, go for your happiness, not to show somebody that I am into Ivy League or something like that, like for your learning, right? So make yourself a priority in your 20s. Building yourself your happiness, your learning your career, your growth, irrespective of what is somebody else doing?

Andrew Stotz 16:18
That's great advice. It's so hard to do when you're young, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna kind of think about some of the takeaways that I get from your story. You know, one of the things he said, a young people are under so much pressure these days. I mean, first you got social media, number one. But if you look around the world, we just had an illness that swept the world, mainly, mainly killing older adults, over the age of 60, and mainly over the age of 80. And yet, young people were restricted from a huge amount of activity, even though the risk of them, you know, being seriously influenced or impacted by this disease was pretty small. And young people had to kind of take it, what were you going to do? You couldn't fight back? And so on the one hand, I would say, I want people to find their own destiny. But I would also say that the forces working against young people these days are very strong. Yes, yeah. And between social media, and let's just say, pressure. And, you know, if you go back to I was born in 1965. And, you know, in 1970, and 73, you know, in those areas, there were Vietnam War protests, and it was really young people realizing that the old politicians were sending them to war to be killed. Yes, no reason. You know, when I go to Vietnam, and I look at, I think, what was America doing? And there was a resistance to fight back and say, No, we don't want this. And eventually, it was those protests that caused the politicians to stop. But I just noticed that it's harder to protest. Nowadays, it's harder to fight back. It's harder to disagree. And I'm just curious, like, from your own experience, what would you say? You know, about how hard it is for young people? And how do they shape their destiny under the pressures that they're feeling?

Sourabh Goyal 18:28
I think India is a young country today. The average age of India is like 28. And it's 65% of the population. Okay. So there are there I would say there's two school of thoughts running in India paddling nowadays. Okay, so if I take my generation, I'm like, 32. And then my parents, okay, who are in 60s now. They have kind of given up on us Keoki whatever you want to do. Now you arrived, okay. After so much of a fight they've given up of thinking like allowed, okay, and they have so I think the pandemic made them realize that we need something different. Right, we need the way of working that can that doesn't have a shopper soul. I belong to a family where it's hardcore shop and showroom businesses. So they used to think if there is no shop and showroom is good for nothing. It's not business. Internet is a scam for them still date, right. But now because of pandemic they have started using online banking. So it took them that it took a pandemic to meet them comfortable with internet. Right, and they want parents who are now into 4045 They have given that freedom to their kids, okay, if you don't want to go to college and just want to learn digital marketing and build your career into that. That's okay. They have started understanding that content marketing or content writing or content creation can make you a lot of money, and you can live a free life also. So that career initially was like only, okay either URI engineer, lawyer, doctor CA, CS, finance guy, banking guy, something like that. But now there are a lot of opportunities opening up, for example, community building as a service. So if you are a big brand, you want to build entire community around your brand, we help you build that community reach out to right people, right target audience, you bring all the people in, we create content for you. Right? Okay. But when I recently added that part into my trademark, our government said remove this, this cannot be a service. Right? And this is a very new skill.

Andrew Stotz 20:42
Is an older generation if can't figure it out?

Sourabh Goyal 20:46
Yeah. So we are like becoming so when we wrote this book, also, the idea behind the book was bringing practical marketing knowledge what is happening in today's style, because all the books in the B schools were written, I think 40 years ago. And they're still teaching those traditional ways of marketing. Right? Where you have big holdings and big events and this and that, but you don't need that. Where is it time of influencer marketing, social media influence, you can influence people in the right way, educate them about your product, and they will talk good about you, it creates a ripple effect in marketing. And that's how many big brands have come up in India and other parts of the world.

Andrew Stotz 21:28
So let's go back to the story and think about a young man or woman out there who feels a lot of different pressures, you know, their parents want them to go to certain schools, social media is putting pressure on society is putting pressure on them. And I just wanted to think about, you know, what's one, one action that you'd recommend that they take, and you already mentioned, one, which I think was really good, which is, stop and think maybe you could explain a little bit more what you mean by that.

Sourabh Goyal 21:55
When I say stop and think I'm, I'm like, one, one thing is for sure, leave your laptops aside, think on paper, you know, right now, okay? Because the energy is channeled down, okay? And you'll be able to see things in front of you. So if you're thinking of becoming a millionaire, and you write on paper, I want to become a millionaire. The time is right, that word millionaire, your mind will start asking you pushes, okay, how are you going to do that? Do you have the resources to start something? Do you have a skill? Do you have the network? Your mind will ask you questions. But if it is a vague thought in your mind will not ask you questions, and you will never go deeper into that insight of how do you end up becoming a millionaire? Right? And today, we have so many examples become people becoming millionaire on social media within one year, two year time. So it's very much possible today. Right? It is not a matter of 30 years now, it's a matter of actually two to four years, if you really want to become and I think the pressure, the major pressure that you need to really take or give a botheration about is your parents, no one else. Right? What I am talking about social media, if you don't relate to it, you can block me easily. It's okay. And I don't care about that. If you block me, right, it's okay. I have another one and have like people following me every day, okay, so it doesn't matter. Your parents are the real people you should sit and talk to and create a timeframe with them. Okay, I have done this all my life for 2022 years. I am asking you two years of my life where I want to take decisions and make some mistakes. So you don't enroll them into a possibility that I'm going to be a millionaire. you enroll them in a possibility of I'm going to try something different that nobody has ever done in our family. Or maybe you don't relate to, but I want you to support me anyway. And support is not about giving you money or bringing you something support is all about not poking you every day about your career. Simple, right? But those two years give you a best.

Andrew Stotz 24:06
I like it because you know, I one of the things that I've learned as I gotten older is that two things. First of all, the foundation that we get from our parents, is really the foundation that we carry throughout our life. And the second thing is that life's difficult, and not ever. You can't rely on everybody and you have only a very small group of really trusted friends. But try to make sure that you never let your family go apart. Yes, when my father was one of the towards the end of his life, I was visiting mom and dad in the US and I was in the car with my dad and he was driving. And you know, I'm an older man now and I asked my father, what's your proudest moment in your life? And, you know, for me, I haven't gotten married yet. And so, you know, my proudest moment. It's probably you could say that time when I asked him that was, you know, my accomplishments in school or my accomplishments in business or friendships and my dad just said, I built a trusting family. And I think that that's a lesson for all of us is build a trusting family. And I'll give you one other example when, when my, when my sister passed away, my other sister had to really work hard to keep the family together because the family could have drifted apart. And she really worked hard to keep the family together. And now I see the benefit of that. So even though sometimes you're frustrated, or you're just crazy, you know, mad about your family and people around you that you know, are related. The reality is, is that ultimately, that's your ultimate strength. And if you can not let it fall apart, invest in it, talk to them share with them, it's going to be a long lasting strength that you're going to carry throughout your life. Yes. So let me ask you, what would be a resource that you'd recommend from your books or your groups, your Facebook groups or other places where what would be the number one resource out of all the different things that you would tell someone go here,

Sourabh Goyal 26:16
I would say go buy the book, the growth hacking book, too, it's available on Amazon, it's on Kindle, only for $1 on Kindle, if you have a physical copy, if you still like to read a physical copy, have a library you can order on amazon.com or any of your country website, it's available everywhere. Why to read this book, because this book is a combination of three things. So we created a equation mathematical equation that was created by by associate partner it says growth set is equal to mindset plus skill set plus tools. Okay, so 1/3 of this book is all about mindset, what kind of a mindset or thought process you need to carry, right? Because I can teach you how to use a knife. But if you don't have the right mindset, you might end up killing someone. And social media is that knife today. You can do all the good you can do all the bad just by clicking a few buttons every single day to get and I think as an influencer, it is my responsibility to share something that is valid. That is proven. I just cannot share an opinion about something that I am not confident about and that can mislead some people. Okay, because the way you are getting love today, so we are now getting a lot of people called out on LinkedIn about copy pasting content, and they're great influences. One time, Jay Shetty was also called out about copy pasting content and not giving the credit to the people who really wrote the quotations, right? I think that takes your entire thing southwest. So the mindset is the most important part how you think, What's your intention behind whatever you are doing? Then you learn the skills of doing it organically. Because if you don't get your hands dirty, you will never get a first hand experience of things. Right? And sometimes the tools, right, so tools are also important to make your human effort a little bit easier. It's a machine, right? It they are software tools, right? So we have combined everything in this book about any startup or any business or any Freelancer coach, trainer podcaster who wants to grow their things organically who don't have a lot of money. So this book is a recipe book, actually, every chapter is like two three pages, and it is implementable knowledge. We cannot read entire book, you go to the index, you pick up topics that might you need right now. And you read those chapters and struggling to maintain them. The best part is every author so it is written by 100 marketeers across 23 countries write their social media links on their website is written after every chapter. So if you want to connect with them, you can connect with them, talk to them, get more answers if you have, and that is the best thing you can do.

Andrew Stotz 29:08
Great advice. I'll have a link to that in the show notes. And the benefit of getting into this book is you're going to acquire the skill set. You're going to install the mindset and you're going to employ the toolset. Fantastic. That's exciting. All right. Last question. What is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Sourabh Goyal 29:29
For the next 12 months? I'm going to really scale my community have a lot of meetups across Dubai UK us and maybe with you if we can plan in your country. Right okay, we can do some great work idea is to bring people together and build a support system for each other because this new economy there is nothing that is written in books. Everything is in everybody's mind. Okay, and so where can we see Money finance books, but the way you can teach finance from your experience towards students really want to learn is nowhere else. So it's precise, it's only with you, the network you have is only with you. Right? So I do my community is identifying people who really need support supporting them, you know, helping everybody raise their incomes. Because I think at the end of the day, our life is driven with money. We need it

Andrew Stotz 30:33
can't get away, we gotta gotta.

Sourabh Goyal 30:36
Like, you need to have sustainable income, so that you can do better things in life. It is not about luxuries, that with more money, you can buy more luxuries or show it off to people. I am saying that if you have enough, you will have extra time to do or help some more people. That's what I want to create. So idea is to bring in over 25,000 people to this community across social media channels, create meetups, and at least meet with 10,000 people across these countries in this year.

Andrew Stotz 31:09
That's exciting. Well, listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. If you haven't yet taken the risk reduction assessment, I challenge you to go to my worst investment ever.com right now and start building wealth the easy way, by reducing risk. As we conclude syrup, I want to thank you again, for joining our mission. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Sourabh Goyal 31:44
I would say if you are listening to this, it's great that you know you are listening to this you are a person who want to grow listening to a podcast, okay, because still still only four to 5% people take that effort to listening to some stranger, right and what he's saying and being open minded about it. And not being biased about age, or color or country or anything. They're all these unify person people still. So I love you for that, first of all, and if I can be of any help, anywhere, I have a network across the planet. And I love when people succeed around me. So I'll be the first person to go out of my boundaries to help you reach out to me on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram, wherever you want to. And if you have any advice for me or you wish to build a community with me in your city or country, wherever you are listening will help you grow a community build a group of people where you can meet him once a month and help each other grow.

Andrew Stotz 32:45
fantastic. And ladies and gentlemen, that's quite an offer. And trust me, most people don't take action on the offers that are made. So I challenge everybody listening to take action and reach out on LinkedIn. I'll have all the links to the books linked his LinkedIn, all of that in the show notes. And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying thank you for joining our mission. And I'll see you on the upside.