100+ Crore Company In 10 Years - How I Did It

0:03 It's been the most difficult year of my life. It also marks 10 years of me being a YouTuber. This year, people said that my career is over after the latent controversy after the court case. But what people fail to understand is that it's very difficult to survive in the content creation industry for as long as 10 years. And what people also don't understand is that there's some skills that you pick up in this industry that can be applied onto any other industry. I run businesses outside of content creation as well. Monk Entertainment, Level Supermind, Skillhouse. In the last 10 years, we've created more than 400 jobs for India. If I don't have content creation as an option tomorrow, I have other businesses I could lean on. In today's video, I'm going to open up about a lot of things that I've not opened about this year especially. I

0:50 hope that young professionals, people in their 20s, young entrepreneurs, young content creators pick up a hold of notes from today's video cuz in my eyes, this is the most important evergreen career lessons that I learned in order to scale a business ecosystem of more than 100 crores. I hope that you gain maximum value from today's video. But it's also going to be one of my most heartfelt videos till date. So let's begin. This entire video is divided into four pillars that we have relied on constantly since age 22 that apply to students and professionals from every possible industry. Chapter one is also related to one of the biggest career mistakes I ever made.

1:38 Look at this room around. The theme here is team oriented. The mistake was that in my first couple of years of my career, I knew I needed a big team in order to grow towards the vision I had. I wanted to create a family environment in my offices. Now, this helped us initially. It helped keep our core teammates happy. But the mistake was that when you openly say that you have a family culture in office, it prevents the growth of individuals. A business or a team is only going to grow when the individual individuals grow themselves on their own journeys. The game should always be about creating a sportsbased culture within any growth oriented organization. Run it like a sports team.

2:24 Encourage each other and most importantly call out each other's One of the biggest career skills I learned was the way to hire correctly. The rule is that you need to have clarity when it comes to the position you want to hire for. But at the same time in the long term you need all your teammates to fit into a similar kind of vibe. What we decided across the organizations was based on sports. My favorite sports person is Virat Kohli and the core of his being is optimism, positive thinking, going for it. In the age where optimism sometimes is criticized as being toxic positivity, I actually think that the growth of most organizations happens because of this sense of optimism that runs throughout

3:09 the organization. That's pillar number one when it comes to sports mentality. Create positivity in the environment through teammates. Now, I understand not everyone wants to be a business professional in the long term. If you're a student or if you're targeting a corporate career, I assure you this one skill, being kind of almost fake optimistic can get you a better job, can get you that promotion can actually help you move forward. Because the first step when it comes to growth is actually looking at a situation from a solutionoriented mindset and looking at a long-term phase as an opportunity for growth, no matter how bad things get. Next, keep earning your place. Even if you're a leader, even if you're a

3:55 veteran, the game is to constantly ensure that you're adding value to the team by growing on an individual level, by challenging yourself at every phase of your career. That's the kind of culture you want to set in an organizational infrastructure as well. Do not think that your past wins qualify you to still get a place in the starting 11 of a team. If you want to just sustain your career, you've still got to grow. But if you want to grow your career, you have to go beyond the improvements you made in the previous years as well. A great time period to do this is through your 20s because your physical energy levels are through the roof. Perceive your career like an intellectual athletes career. Here, your tool isn't your body. Your tool is your mind. But you've got to train it. You've

4:41 got to refuel it. And you've got to soak up knowledge from everyone that you can soak it up from. Think of almost any team that won a World Cup or a really iconic championship. It's always been a combination of experience and youth. And in an era where Gen Z's constantly get criticized for their professional prowess, I think that it's an evergreen problem. We have the same narrative that the younger generation doesn't know what they're doing. But the truth is if the team's too young, you'll be very creative and very energetic but slightly unstable. And if the team is too old, you are not going to figure out how to keep your audience or your customer entertained. Every great team is a

5:26 combination of youth with experience. [Music] The next point is what I call formation changes or role changes. We see this in football and cricket where a young athlete may not be able to perform to the best of their abilities but a coach or a captain comes into their story and shifts their batting position or shifts where they play on the football pitch and then the career takes off. For young hardworking promising professionals very often it's a mentor or it's the presence of great leadership that actually shapes up their career in the long term. People need to be slightly experimental, especially when they're young or when they're old and they're getting bored of their old role. Time causes change. If you're a young professional, go seek

6:12 inputs. And if you're an older professional, help the young professionals find their new position if you feel that they're not living up to their potential. [Music] The skill of game taping is something every professional can learn about from the world of athletes. When a high potential athlete wants to improve in the long term, wants to create an everlasting legacy, they get into a habit of constantly reviewing their actual games and the mistakes they made as well as their own positives. In the process of being relentless, you are going to make mistakes, but you need to have protocols right after you make mistakes. Group discussions, reviewing what went wrong, and ensuring you don't repeat the mistake going forward. That's all that game taping is. Even in the

6:59 recent controversy, one of our first protocols was a group discussion to simply figure out not just what went wrong, but also all the other decisions that led up to that one major mistake. So whether it's a huge mistake or a tiny mistake, your protocol has to be to remain stoic, to review what happened, and understand that even one bad year doesn't define your entire career's legacy. Remember, good times don't teach you much, but your bad times will be your lifechanging career lessons. Embrace your own mistakes without any guilt. Just don't repeat them again. Sport is the first pillar that all my organizations are built upon. But the second very crucial pillar is everything

7:44 we learned from the military veterans who appeared on TRS. You see this, your thought processes and your work processes need to have this kind of fabric of thought. In the long term, you're paid for how often and with how much consistency you can deliver results. And that only happens through military style systems and processes. Here's what I mean by that. Ownership mentality also related to the skill of delegation. This is what a lot of young entrepreneurs struggle with. And ownership mentality is what a lot of young professionals struggle with. Often if you're asking yourself why you aren't getting a promotion or as a business owner, if you're asking yourself why your business isn't growing, it boils

8:29 down to the same ownership mentality concept. When we began as young entrepreneurs, we were very very focused on our first 15 or so hires over the 2-year period. We'd only hire if we had lots of clarity, if they fit our sports mentality vibe, and if we felt like these 15 people, all of them are leaders. Remember, if you're a business owner, only hire people that you would be happy to work for. And as someone who's looking for a job, only work for people you inherently have respect for. That's what creates healthy team environments. And the teams that run more like a military organization and less like a corporate organization or just a startup are the ones that actually flourish in the professional

9:16 world. And if you're a young professional, know that leadership is a skill that you can learn. But it begins with a sense of ownership mindset. That's how you fetch the fastest promotions for your own career. If you've joined an organization, you've got to treat it like your own baby. Work like that. You will get noticed by your seniors. And if you're in an organization that doesn't promote promotions because of ownership culture, switch your organization. As for business owners, you've got to be a coach to your early team members. Your core team has to simply receive a bit of feedback if they make a mistake, but you've got to give them room to make mistakes so that they groom themselves into being leaders. The best organizations are built out of people who are built within the organization. That's what Zomato's followed. That's

10:02 what our organization has followed. And most big tech startups in the world up till a certain point allow the initial set of hires to become the pillars of the organization. Often in media industries, people only notice the glamour aspect of it, the shiny highlights showcased on Instagram. All I want to say is that to produce content regularly, you need systems and processes. And a few content pieces taking off lead to trophies like this and all the moments that find their way to Instagram. But it's all built first and foremost on SOPS. Very strong protocols that we have placed within our organization because we want to make it system dependent and not person dependent. If a part of your

10:49 organizational work is based on one person's capabilities, then you're placing yourself in kind of a dangerous position. And if that person falls ill or they leave the organization, that part of the organization gets shaken up. A bit of a nostalgic backstory, but when we were growing Monk Entertainment, we didn't have a business degree. We didn't know how to manage our systems. We were drowning in chaos, especially between team member number five and 50 where a small organization with a lot of work coming in. At the time, HR was using spreadsheets. The finance department was using another tool. The sales department was using another set of softwares. It was very confusing. We've been using ODU for a very long time in the organization now to smoothen out our processes. It's an all-in-one business platform that

11:35 connects all of these different verticals. HR, inventory, sales, finance, you name it. All of them are linked through this one business software. The more organized your back end is, the smoother your work ends up happening. So if you are an ambitious professional, if you're a business owner, I highly recommend you check out ODU's community day in 2025. It's happening on the 13th and 14th of August in Mahatma in Gandhi Nagar. More than 200 entrepreneurs and influencers will conduct talks on this day. There's going to be live demos by experts and business owners will discover practical solutions, not just theories. The best part is that there's no entry fee. This is much better value for money than a random business conference that you pay

12:22 a lot of money for. I'm going to be there on both the days. And to register, the link is given in the description box. Which is why the military mindset matters. most specifically seeking feedback ferociously and not being afraid of intense feedback. The leadership rule is that when you're imparting feedback to anyone, you're supposed to mix in good feedback at all times along with some negative feedback. Even the founders require feedback regularly. If you're surrounded by people who challenge you at least once every quarter, I assure you growth will never ever stop. Don't try cutting someone off while they're giving you inputs. Open your ears and just listen

13:07 to what they're saying. Think about it. Even if you don't agree to it completely initially, you've got to sit with that feedback and view it objectively. The last and most important sub point is something that you can see in any military veteran's body language. You know that it's a soldier simply by how they stand, by how they carry themselves, by how they dress. An officerike appearance, an officer like projection. You've got to project yourself like a professional, but you've also got to focus on your own sense of professionalism. Few sub points within the subpoint. Punctuality, presentability, being well-groomed, being welldressed, etc. Repeatability, presenting the same quality of product or service repeatedly. That's what you

13:54 get paid for in the long term. In the same way that you can spot officers in the crowd, you can also spot great professionals in an office environment. And in the long term, all forms of career growth are based on your sense of professionalism. If this is an office, one of the main rules that we follow, no gossip, intense punctuality, and most importantly, calm. We don't want talk to happen within these walls. After office timings, you go, you have fun, enjoy a drink, but once you come to the office, have fun, create, enjoy yourself, but also be a top quality professional. The next pillar is what we call divine

14:40 profitability. Spirituality is a part of business if you perceive it that way. The biggest money lesson I ever learned is that money is energy. But let's understand this deeper from an organizational perspective. If I had to teach my kids one lesson about careers, I'd tell them that hey, money is a spiritual tool. If you have an excess of money, rather than spending it on your own luxuries, spend it on the welfare of the world that you live in. Give back to the society that gave you the money in the first place. And if you feel you're not yet ready to give back to society, if you don't want to go about your social work yet, at least give back to the team around you. All forms of charity begin at home and

15:26 within your office. But if possible, at all points in your career. Keep about 5 to 10% of your total income aside for the sake of the community that raised you for the sake of the earth that is providing for you. It's one of those spiritual outlooks on money that keeps the money constantly flowing in from an energy perspective. People see the fancy studios without understanding that it's taken years of hard work and what we call the galabased mentality. Gala is a word I picked up from the Marwari community of India which is known as India's most prolific business community. Your gala refers to

16:12 the money that's left in the drawer of a small shop at the end of one day of work. Basically means selling price minus cost price leaving you with profit. You need to focus on profitability from day one of your journey. This is what the gala mentality is. In year one, when I couldn't make money through content and businesses, I trained people for a living, made a lot of money and reinvested it into YouTube, but only switched over completely into content creation when I felt like I'll be able to still generate profits by giving up on fitness coaching. This has always been the mentality. Your selling price has to be greater than your cost price for you to grow your business. And once you've got a cash surplus, that's when the fancy studios come in. That's

16:57 when the large teams come in and only after you've reinvested well in the organization and you have a predictable kind of income coming in. That's when you can spend on luxuries and personal dreams. But first and foremost, respect money like it's energy by being professional and at the same time remember to focus on the gala mentality. The final chapter of this video is all about the martial arts mindset or the samurai mindset. The best thing that my parents did for me when I was little was that they put me in judo and taekwondo classes and I pursued it between the fifth and 10th grade. What it gave me

17:42 was the need for a discipline oriented process for the rest of my life. So at age 16 when I stopped practicing martial arts I had a need to adopt some process for the sake of just living life. Initially it was going to the gym regularly and being serious about weight training and once college got done I made my career the martial art that I adopted. When you founded any organization, when you're the leader, you have to lead by example. Which is why you can never let go of your own student mindset, of your own ability to be a lifelong martial artist. That's why the organizations have grown beyond 100 crores. You know, think of Bruce Lee and the way his body moved. Think of Leonel Messi

18:27 and the way his body moves. Think of Raindra Jadea and the way he feels. What's common is agility, the ability to change your direction really quick. But that's an outcome of years of training and practice to create your base. Once you put your body and your mind through discipline, then after a point, agility becomes a superpower. That's how the best professional careers work as well. You need to absorb knowledge. You need to practice professionalism and then after point be able to change your direction really quickly. Be water, my friend. Practice agility based on the feedback you receive from your customers constantly and ensure that the student within you is alive that your mind is ready for change at all times.

19:16 When I was in college, I had a professor who taught me computers and I asked him a few questions which he made fun of. Because of that, I never learned how to code in my life. I got discouraged at that moment. The lesson for me was never be afraid to ask the stupid questions. And the organizational lesson because of which we've built all of these profitable organizations is that we've created a dojo mentality. A set of students all studying together, asking each other the tough questions, the seniors helping the juniors, and an environment where no stupid question is discouraged. The only thing that's discouraged is a pause in your journey of growth. That's the kind of dojo that I'm actually proud that I've built. And that's the kind of mentality that will

20:01 remain for the next 50 years of me running businesses. It's easy to sit back in your chair and think that hey, that person's career is over and oh my god, what are they going to do next? It's very difficult to stick to the game, to stay in the battlefield, and to rely on your own skill set and sense of self-belief to propel you forward. I look at this whole difficult chapter of my life simply as a speed breaker because I have that much belief in myself, my skill set and the work ethic that I've built over the years. I have this kind of belief, this kind of faith in my own team members and most importantly I have belief and faith in systems and processes as well. If your

20:47 pillars of thinking are right, life and careers take care of themselves. I hope you enjoyed today's video. It was kind of personal. I will be talking a lot more about everything that's happened this year very soon. Just wanted to process all of it. But what I assure you is that content on this channel will be like old school beer biceps and it's only built to add value to your life. Because yes, we've built out dojoos in our organization, but this channel needs to become a dojo for the sake of every single community member we have on beer biceps. Thank you for all your support, guys. Lots more coming your way. And make sure you check out the description box for a lot more value. Thank you for listening in.

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