Content creation and building a business at the back of it.

Cumulatively, in the last year, my overall revenues have touched 8 figures in INR.

And guess what? We still do not have a website, we do not have a logo, we do not have a brand guideline.

I have built 20+ websites in the last year for different businesses, yet I do not have a website yet.

Imagine the trust these businesses have laid in me.

Giving me the chance to build their website and tech infra, while I am yet to have one of my own.

How do you ask?

One answer- credibility and caring.

Let me decode Content creation, and building a business at the back of it.

My attempt is not to brag about numbers though. I am still very small compared to the company you work for or you own.

My attempt is to tell you the importance of building a business with strong fundamentals.

I attempt to make you realise how a combination of a traditional mindset with a touch of modern levers is the right way to build your own business.

1. Working full-time as an employee: Back in 2013, I started working as a Management trainee in sales. I had to take what I got as a fresh MBA graduate from a tier II institute.

I primarily worked for Times Internet, Cox and Kings group and Future group in my full-time roles. The last full-time role I had was with a health-tech startup in Mumbai.

Started my career in Sales but soon moved to Digital marketing.

I started learning digital marketing back in 2013.

I enrolled for an offline course in digital marketing near my house in Mumbai.

Attended sessions from 6 AM to 9 AM and then continued the day job of cold calling, fixing appointments and making an attempt to sell.

Then attended the evening sessions as well from 7 PM to 9 PM.

For 6 months this continued.

Sleeping at 11 AM, waking up at 5 AM. Studying 6 hours a day, working 8 hours a day.

However, I went All-in.

Learned, executed, and excelled at the coaching centre.

Cracked my first interview in Digital marketing ‘like a knife through butter.’

And started my Digital marketing career in 2015. And that’s how my Digital marketing journey started.

Started my first job as a Management Trainee in 2013 and left the last job in 2023 as a CMO. All in 10 years.

2. Taking the leap: It was 25th Jan 2023, I had 74 posts on my Instagram with very low reach and almost no follower increase.

Reaching 3k followers was a big achievement for me though, I took the screenshot below.

The below screenshot was account taken on 25th Jan’2023:

I started getting a few DMs on Instagram about people asking-

What’s the best way of learning Digital marketing?

I have been there, wanting to learn Digital Marketing in 2013 and having no means apart from Neil Patel's blogs or Moz blogs.

I developed a practice in 2013, writing everything I learned or making note of a term I heard for the first time.

I have pages and pages of such notes till today.

That was the Aha moment- How about I teach Digital Marketing the way I have learned it all these years?

Paper, pen, highlighter, curiosity and drive.

Come 10th Feb 2023, I posted a reel on Mamaearth’s SEO stats on paper, pen and highlighter.

And people liked it.

The reel before Mamaearth had 8k views.

Mamaearth- 150k views. Here is a view of the insights snapshot:

Then I did not stop.

In May 2023, I landed my first client from my own Instagram for consulting.

Since then there has been no looking back.

In September 2023, I just had too much on my plate.

Full-time job, Sorted (my education brand), Content creation, consulting.

I knew I had to let go of something.

And it had to be the job.

My employer released me on the same day when I told them that I wanted to resign and focus on building something of my own. Rare, I know.

Leaving a full-time job with a family is not easy, I knew.

I do not want to glorify working 70 hours a week. But I did work for 100 hours a week till the time I was working full time.

Even today, considering everything I am into, I easily cross 70 hours a week.

However, I work on projects I want to, with the people I want to and from where I want to.

May 2023 to October 2023 was all about working for 15-18 hours a day. 6 days a week.

With a toddler. My daughter- who was 1.5 years old at the time. Thanks to my wife for being the balance on the other end.

However, I was making 2.5 times more money from my own business compared to my salary. With a very strong acquisition pipeline.

That’s when I knew, I had to leap.

3. Building a team: Very soon after I leapt, someone more experienced than me. Someone who took a similar leap in their late 40s told me succinctly- Burn your bridges.

He meant- If you thought of going back to working full-time as an employee, you would land there. There is no way back once you are in entrepreneurship. Develop that drive. That stuck with me.

All the people that work with me today, have earned it. No one has followed the conventional route of sharing the CV, interviews, assignments etc.

70% of my current team has worked with me in my full-time roles. Others just persisted.

Today, I have subject matter experts, people who are more knowledgeable and more experienced than me in- SEO, Google ads, Meta ads, Social media, Website UI, Website development, and Retention marketing and I play the role of getting everyone to work together.

Almost all the projects we have right now, are full-suite marketing projects.

Businesses that have trusted us and had patience have strong relationships with us.

In fact, a handful of businesses started with regular retainers and have moved to equity-sharing models which I cannot disclose because of the non-disclosure agreement as all the equity-based deals are on an advisory basis.

Dedication, honesty, empathy and caring are the values on which we have built our foundation.

4. Caring- I believe in building relationships. I have let go of retainers if businesses’ balance sheets are stressed, I have over-delivered on things which are not even in the client agreement, and I have done projects where I had to pay from my own pocket to keep the project on board. As long as the underlying intent is to Care.

We need to care about the work we do and care about the Entrepreneur who has trusted us with their capital.

Caring is an underlying value for us internally and externally.

As an organisation we never pick projects for the sake of it, understanding the intent, view, expectation, levers, and conditions, all of is important for us to get into it to make an impact.

You may not know the name of my company still however you know me, and my credibility is most important to me and my team.

So right from the first interaction you do with my team to onboarding to reviews to making adjustments to showing impact- all is done by caring about the work we do and businesses we impact.

If you wish to try the experience out Fill out this form and give us a try.

Meanwhile, Take the leap, build a team and start caring for the people around you.

Cheers,

Apurv