Ankur@warikoo Untold Podcast: From Employee to Founder to Creator

let's start with something light how do you feel about all the hate that you get on your ass we made 27 crores Revenue this year 100% bootstrapped up from 150% last year with a team of nine people all this in less than 3 years of existence yes what do you do with the money I was killing it professors loved me my students hated me everything that I thought would be happening was happening except the fact that I just wasn't feeling I was dead I was robotic there was no other Playbook the only Playbook was study hard get a good job get a good income and keep doing for the rest of your life there was no other Playbook there was nothing else what's with your friendship with Mr ASN oh my God that is this incredible story of being an employee to working in that freaking company as a CEO to buying that company out as a management team we went to group on global and we said we want to buy the group on India business from you it's the first time it's happened in India by the way fist fight fist oh God I'm going to lose it dude like what no are you serious you guys want to see this let's go let go 3 2 1 go oh my

God all right so anur giving you context we have uh a bunch of people from team team have taken all the worst seats and who all are the Learners can we get a cheer wow love it grow school learners that's such a lovely Lively community yeah welcome fantastic good job there good job thank you for me web was the guy who was uh killing it on LinkedIn with uh of course everything that he was doing and he understood the platform so well and then he was killing it with ads because I was like how do I get to see his ads everywhere I go which is exactly the same question people ask about me now and I was like I want to be him so I remember of course congratulating him for what he's doing I was like how do you do this and he's like I have an agency they're really good with it blah blah then I got in touch with the agency and I'm working with the same agency while you've moved on and I still remember the day you pinged me or you called me I don't remember that and you're like I'm now extending this from a oneman army I still remember your room to now a company and became growth school and now you here and it's so commendable it's brilliant man thank you these stories are always so admirable they're Goose bumpy like you haven't been part of the ecosystem for far too long to know how these things are never ever easy It Looks So Glamorous from the outside grow cool and I'm sure you also make all this content to make it sound like it's awesome but the grind is real it's it is and I'm sure the team knows this more than I have to tell you and in your head of course the it's like an opener going every single day I know exactly super so I I'll give you like uh some context right like we were just talking n uh that doesn't feel like I'm meeting anur for the first time doesn't at all because uh I'm this Shameless guy who messages anybody and everybody when he needs help I try to be on the other side as well and I have like all throughout the journey right uh I have been bothering waru all throughout I wouldn't use the word bothering but surely and uh you know starting from asking about very tactical questions of how do I build the team how do I hire if you remember uh to asking absolutely random questions saying the ones that you guys asked me also content to when we had a acquisition offer I asked him saying thatu should I take all the money and run so all throughout right he's been uh very helpful uh very supportive he been a friend Mentor uh and I'm very excited to have him thank you excitement is absolutely mutually shared man and he gave me a mini heart attack yesterday night I was in a board meeting uh 8:00 to 9:00 p. m. and he mess me messages me at 8:45 8:50 uh saying that dude bad news I'm in a freaking board meeting with my investors and I get this message I was like guys 2 minutes this is I said 2 minutes and I say are you serious he was like no dude I'm just [ __ ] around so I did the same because last because last time I actually yeah I had to I that was so tragic and I was feeling so bad and then I was like okay let me just play along with this give you a meaning heart attack and I'm glad it happened before the board meeting because then nothing could have gone wrong okay you know what let's start

with something light okay positive yeah how do you feel about all the hate that you get on your ads I love it every single day I wake up I know man I firstly apologies I'd like to start with that because that's something that I owe it to all of you it's certainly not by Design and trust me it's a it's something that my agency and I we keep talking about and um we still haven't wrapped our head around so at some point of time we would just and by the way that inspiration also came from we which was uh let's create a page which is called stop ads so that people can go in there and just literally sign up as a petition which will ultimately become a presidential order in the country that I don't want to see this dude's ad ever again and do whatever it takes to get to that point it works to some extent it doesn't uh but the big tragedy is that Google and Facebook have their own agenda to fulfill and they of course are making money so why would they ever care about this uh so I just to disturb you but it does amuse me like most other trolling to a large extent does of how something in my head potentially trivial is triggering people in a way that I could not have imagined like I do not know what an ad during YouTube's consumption could do to somebody for them to actually say you know what I am now going to shower this dude with the best choicest of expletives that I know of at 7 in the morning when everybody else is just waking up and getting ready and I will do it to the extent where I will perhaps be ashamed of all the things that I know of in fact be impressed with my vocabulary as well and I'm like how can you be so Disturbed with an ad because all of them are non-skippable uh sorry skippable and uh you can skip after 5 seconds so you do see my obnoxious face for 5 seconds and I apologize for that but it's just 5 seconds and that just tells me how the world is largely very fragile it's not a reflection of me it's nothing to do with aniku or we or for that matter anything else it's to do with genuinely where they are in life and how they just feel frustrated at the smallest of things and it irritates them and it gets them to act in a way that they perhaps will not be proud of and I've had so many instances where people have written in and if I knew of them in person because they did disclose that identity I will say I'm sorry this is what we have done explain and lo and behold after 3 days 4 days they'll come back and say you know what I'm I'm sorry for like I'm not proud of who I was in that moment and I'm sorry if you can still do something about the ads that'll be really nice because I don't have the money to do something about YouTube premium and uh yeah no it's U it's a learning curve and uh thankfully I say this often sorry this is the last thing I'm going to say you will recognize I give really long answers I'm 43 and when you've reached 43 and you've been a startup founder for 14 years and you've made all the mistakes that I've made in life there are very very few things that disturb me and these are frankly like I don't want to say this to sound all pompus and all Zen like but these things are absolutely the bottom of my disturbance frame because if at all something disturbs me it is a very high order but say is my team member he's the one who edits all the short form content but he's not the one who edits the ads so please spare himing and I think at that age you just reach a point of Disconnect but the must have been times you see I mean i' I've seen a share of this as well myself uh also for growth school and I'm also often tagged as the new waru of ads on Anonymous channels oh you are the OG of varu like like if anything I should be tagged the new he just spinning it on me new web of new cinti of ads like but uh you know like right now I think I've built that thick layer on top of me as well but it is not like there are always those instances even now after have seen after having seen this for such a long time it still bothers it is you cannot just Shug it off it impacts doesn't it no I I'll be really honest and I again I'm not being immodest here when I say this it's the true reality it doesn't impact me I do keep I will respond and I'll be very curious as what will be the back response I like just forget about it and just move on because life Man actually uh life genuinely people say how do you sound all positive and all unicorny all the time and so on and because I generally don't have anything to complain about in life I really don't I'm doing what I wanted to do I have a lovely family I have a brilliant team I'm surrounded by people who are positive I don't read any news I don't surround myself with negative [ __ ] I don't have negative relationships or toxic relationship in my life and I am anal and obsess about guarding my time and if I do all of this there will be very little that will just disturb me and if it does most likely it'll be my fault I'll own up move on like it happened like two days back and U then move on okay let's actually take it on a lighter note right now it was light only no oh this was perfectly fine but people loved it I'm waiting for their questions come in coming they're coming I know there's some really coming in how do you feel so uh like I have some curious questions right like what's your favorite brand my favorite brand clothing brand oh Nike I mean your favorite brand is growth School of course huh of course after I I imagine that yeah Nike when are you launching your t-shirts we'll give you one yeah what's the car that you drive I drive a what's it it's a Nissan magnite do you own it no I rent it uh I see where this is going I have a iPhone 13 minus 2 Edition okay I do not have any luxury brand I do not own any luxury Gadget uh my team owns a lot more than I ever can I do not have any sneakers huh please now with all of this uh can we pull that slide quickly oh damn it we have Joe Rogan style here oh this is a pick of your Tweet which said we made 27 crores Revenue this year 100% bootstrapped up from 150% last year immensely profitable with a team of 9 people all this in less than three years of existence yes what do you do with the money I uh you know it's it's funny and uh it's funny that you asked me this question and I'll answer it in two bits so my previous life of a venture funded

startup founder we raised money from seoa first check of 17 million which is the largest check that seoa has ever cut in the first check itself we Then followed it up with ptms round of 17 odd million so lot of money coming in and so on and VC Journey traveling of course economy class which is absolutely okay there's no shame and shouldn't ever be any shame staying in like Budget Hotels like o plus one uh breakfast m this is after like taking less than Market salary 50% cut never doing anything like off nothing what and now I'm a bootstrap

founder and it's completely changed where most of the companies money so my wife and I who the two directors in the company we draw a salary I draw 45 lakhs she draw was 75 lakhs and this is what we get as our personal expense subscribe and we genely do not know right now what we do know is that we want to save it because one part of me says that maybe at some point of time we would want to create a full-fledged University maybe inter and if we do that it will require I don't know whatever 300 400 500 crores and I'm thinking like ISB Ashoka pla those kinds it will require an inent amount of money I don't want to be raising money for that I want to do it completely on my own terms and do it without any donors and funders to whatever extent possible andly you'll be sitting with this Corpus and what to do there are few decisions we've made we're not going to them they're not going to be funded by anything we're certainly their First Investors so most likely it'll go to a fund which will again sponsor or help with the education as a cause and we'll see what it happens or where it goes uh but that's where it is and today we spend all our money which is whatever it is uh on experiences so we travel really nice we stay in really nice not hotels but like airbnbs we travel business class for 5 hour plus flights we take almost a vacation every month wow and uh and we plan really long vacations as well whatever three weeks four weeks which is where most of our expenses go or both are my wife and I and thankfully our kids as well we're not spoiled for choice we don't engage in anything which is materialistic but experiences amazing thank you I like how this has also taken a shape of an Excel sheet like more thans if then statement it's just it's very simple when you when you design

a life which is rule-based it looks boring to others and possibly to you as well but I cannot even begin to tell you how clinically seamless your life becomes because most of life's chaos is just you dealing with decisions that shouldn't be consuming your time shouldn't be like you shouldn't have to be thinking twice about whatever the case may be and just stick to those rules and I'm being very flippant about it right now but it just really helps if you think of your life as a rule based mechanism where did you adopt this like it sounds like I know for a fact that this is the wildest thing that I learn from you or hear from you right I don't see anybody doing this uh at least of creators but I think you're less of Creator more of an entrepreneur because that's where the Cadence comes from but where is this thought process like at what phase of

your time what led you to think like this I think the shift happened so I was a science student my ambition in life like most of the science students was to clear the i j because I thought that would be the only thing needed to figure out life so I started preparing for IJ and I remember I was 13 years old or so when um the idea of an IIT even emerged I don't know from where and I was I think in the n9th standard or so I started de preparing for it and I realized that I was horrible not in the sense ke I wasn't good as a student but I wasn't good with figuring out so on and so forth so I think the best thing that I did and I do not know where I got it from is I said as a science student I'm told that if you want to improve something you first start measuring it so let me start in the hope of improving my time measuring my time and I started creating a record of every single hour that I was spending and where it was going it was a notebook blah blah blah and I used to as a geek assign a value to it and the value judgment was this useful spend of my time or not at the end of the day I used to calculate what I called the efficiency ratio I kid you not this is all happening when I'm like 13 or 14 and ambition 70 to 75% efficiency ratio 75% you have done something that you feel was a good investment of your time and I got habituated to it I did that thing for 13 years until 26 which is when I graduated from ISB I had a record and I still do of every single hour that I have spent doing what and those 13 years basically taught me the principle that I have now then I locked out and I went into Consulting and Consulting teaches you how to find structure in chaos that's consulting's job and you suddenly have to make sense because you know what they know the business better than you do so you can't tell them anything they don't know your job is in The Madness of everything that hits them every day how can you still find structure and meaning so that three years of training really helped and the combination of this measurement plus structuring chaos and then startup years has over time just got me to this point

where I'm totally okay being very boring I actually have been boring all my life so I like if you ask my wife she'll be the first one to say this whereas like haircut I can eat the same food every day I can wear the same clothes do the exact same thing every single day and not get bored there is no joy in me to find what is it called when you have too many choices what's it spoiled by choice or whatever and big difference is I've been wearing the same perfume for 14 years now it's one brand I love the brand and that is it my wife has 14 different perfumes because she's like that's great that works for you I have a very different way of doing it and no funny enough saw me in the morning this is not how I usually dress like oh nice outfit because I'm just in that black T-shirt gray t-shirt blue t-shirt because he tells me EDI like t-t will be a better choice t-shirt but yeah that's what it's boring just very boring and I love this boring style because it just sets me up for a lot of action in my life I mean uh because you picked up the point of boring I think people want to do things that are flamboyant exciting uh nobody wants to do the boring stuff yeah and is

that why a lot of people succeed yeah I would say so that's at least my assessment you magic happens when you love the boring because it just so it's so easy to fall in love with the sexy exciting fall in love with the new but there'll be something new coming along every single day and the grind is what will make things happen so it's always going to be awesome to sign up for a new fitness program gym sign up for a new diet sign up for a new ex as it will be if you are in a new relationship or you're making new friends or you're in a new company and whatnot but two years out three years out and you're doing the same thing over and over again and you're like why am I doing this there has to be something that pulls you and what I feel people Miss which is thankfully something that I realized early on is it's not so much the joy of hitting the Target that gives me joy it's the joy of working towards the Target that gives me joy so I am a sucker for Progress I'm not a sucker for destinations because I don't have a place to be there was a time I had a place to be but even then I recognize when I reached that point much like most of us no you're working towards something G yeah you get it you feel elated for a few seconds and a few days and a few hours and then after that it's just normal again and what I realized was the drive to that destination was what I either ought to enjoy or if I end up doing I will have a lot more joy in my life than chasing these goals of this destination so I just became a student of progress and that's helped me tremendously I

think a very similar line of thought that I follow uh I think we were just talking some time back in the group with the social media team saying that I don't know if this is something that is close to uh you know like you know the classic middle class we say right the thinking of move on to the next one yeah in the process you push yourself give your 100% And the moment you get to that destination you're like done let's move on yeah when what's next that's scary that that is I played that game and which is why I know I don't want to play that game again but I would also say that in my 20s I would not have played this game that I'm playing right now so I think there is an evolution what is tragic for me is to see people stick to that chase knowing very well that chase was fake to begin with but I don't think it's tragic for people to start with that chase because there isn't any other way for you to realize it you'll go through that hustle grind and like no Old Uncle forget it 1. 5x you will just move on and then you will realize but the question is what do you do after that realization because most people still don't change they still don't they keep grinding they keep hustling because they think that that's the only way it's not easy it's not well forget being easy it's not joyous at the end of the day you will be lying on your death bed surrounded by your loved ones and you'll be like [ __ ] what did I do with my life like why was I living somebody else's life because it's just gone like in a few seconds I'll be gone and I'm like [ __ ] should have lived differently I don't want to be that person yeah I like how waru sneaked in the fact that web you're still in 20s thanks man so I mean like see like right now you're living quite a good life right living what you want to live yes how was

it before like as a childhood have zero idea quite frankly sure right were you one of those people who had the money who could buy stuff or could buy stuff but they still didn't get it because there are two sides and then there are people who didn't have the money so you still not get it yeah we we we grew up in a very humble background where so my dad was in a sales and marketing job in the Pharma industry my mom was a primary school teacher in a local school we never had enough money and um and it was a classic trying to escape the middle class curse if you will where you were just chasing all of these aspirations but you were making Cardinal Financial mistakes credit card debt personal loans wasting it on things that I shouldn't say wasting it because those were things that we were aspiring for but we never had enough money we always blamed money for our unhappiness and we always made these stupid mistakes in order to fix our life which clearly didn't fix it made it worse and uh the credit that I give my parents is despite the fact that we never had money my sister and I we got a brilliant education we were sent to really good schools they weren't expensive but they were clearly out of our league in that sense both of them went to know Convent I went to a boy School my sister went to a girl school conv education fetish convert education and uh and then the thing which was fascinating in hindsight was there was no other Playbook the only Playbook was study hard get a good job get a good income and keep doing it for the rest of your life there was no other Playbook there was nothing else there was no idea what a business could do freelancing could be there was no idea of what you would have done if you were not good at studies zero clarity everything was around this Playbook because that's the only thing that my parents knew and to their credit that was the only thing they had done and that's what my sister and I did so I was very clear I was geek I was good at my studies USD I wanted to become a NASA scientist so go to NASA become a space scientist go to Mars finally and settle there in some shape and form uh and this is before Elon Musk has come into the picture I've not been polluted by anything this is before Shah ruk Khan in the movie swades has come back as a NASA scientist none of that no pollution of Bollywood or entrepreneurial pop culture uh very clear in my goals want to go to the US to get a PhD go to NASA become a space scientist I get admission in the PHD

program at Michigan State University on 100% scholarship which was frankly the only way we could have afforded it I remember going to the US in August of 2020 uh 2002 21 years back with $400 in my pocket and those $400 were all that relatives had given because I was like I don't need any gifts I don't need [ __ ] just give me money cash yeah I just need cash and I will then convert that cash into dollars because I need that money and I was to get a stipend once I reached but that would be after 1 month so I needed money to survive one month which was exactly $430 so I got that 400 I lent somebody some $30 from my roommate and so on started my life and in two years I was killing it I was top of my class my professors loved me my students hated me I was on this FastTrack program to finish the PHD everything that I thought would be happening was happening except the fact that I just wasn't feeling it like you get up every morning and you have spring on your feet and you're like I'll win the day nothing like that nothing I was dead I was robotic I was doing well in it but I didn't know what I would do with that because I was just soulless and in that moment at the age of 23 or so it struck me that if I'm not happy doing something I can never be the best at it I don't know where I got it from but this was just something that stayed with me if you're not happy doing something you can never be the best at it and I was like to um at the age of 24 I decided to drop out of my PhD and come back to India and that was a shocking I'm sure decision because my parents were devastated they're like this is going to be the worst decision in our life um thankfully they were still supportive in the fact that you can come back a large part of that was because we hadn't paid any money to go there so it was just easy because scholarship um us USB like I was literally it was the same boring anur I used to get $1,350 per month as stien which was a lot of money exchange days was by the way 50 don't multiply it by 80 and uh of which my monthly expenses were about $500 $550 so I was saving about 600 700 I was like I have to save this money I just have to save so I did not buy [ __ ] I used to make my own food I was suddenly the best cook in town D par like if you do not know I can tell you how vinegar and milk makes paneer it will not be set as paneer but it will still be paneer and I was famous for palak paneer so every Thursday used to have palak P that was when friends used to happen so we would watch palak Pani friends and do but yeah that's a different life so anything I was in Michigan cold as [ __ ] and just stayed there for two years girlfriends I had one back home which was part of my back home in India India yeah so I I'd met RI in the year 20 when I was 20 and she was 20 and uh thankfully she chose me of all the options she had uh and I had chosen her because she was the only one that I could choose or the only one who was talking to me right like CH completely out of my league I completely lucked out and thankfully he was still here um a part of my parents belief was which I can't blame them for um so at 24 I come back thankfully I have money saved I had some five six lakhs saved which was a lot of money for a student and the first thing that I did to my parents was you 50 and you've lived long enough to now deserve your own house and let's just buy a house and the only house that we could afford was in a far-flung area called faridabad which was far away from the Delhi main Center we grew up in a rented accommodation all our life we took a loan for 4 lakh rupees which was the maximum loan that my father could get basis his eligibility and we had about 5 lakhs of cash we bought a house for 10 lakhs and that was when we moved to faridabad and at 24 I had to start my life all over again complete reset and I was confused I didn't know what I had to do and my friends were like look you're confused so why don't you do what most confused people do go get an MBA and I was about to get there I was drop out and uh and i' seen a lot of my friends go for an MBA program but I didn't know whether that was the right program for me and it just so happened and as crazy as it is I'm speaking to my mom one day and my mom is far removed from this business world she doesn't understand that and she doesn't need to as well but she tells me you're looking for a business school newspaper make business school ads again huh you that was the day I fell in love with ads and like okay and then I see this ad and it's a young school it's just launched four years back it's a one-year MBA program which is the first in India never happened before it's an insanely expensive program but their selling proposition which I absolutely loved was that if you were to get through your batchmates would be people with real work experience because all other business schools and this is 2005 that I'm talking about all other business schools in India were straight College to business school so to spend time with people who had actual work experience was so appealing for me because I knew nothing about the real world I knew nothing I was this geek just submerged in physics and that was my entire world that ad happened to be of the Indian School of Business and I decided that I want to apply to the Indian School of Business and thankfully God bless the person who saw my application and thought that it was worth it because that one year just fundamentally changed my life it just changed Hyderabad there was no mahali at that point of time and uh took a massive loan 14 lakh rupees which was only possible because of the ISB affiliation and my really good friend from school his dad was a senior member at SBI so he was generous enough to pass not just the loan for the tuition fees but also 60 more th000 which I used for my living expenses which is usually not how Education Loans work you only get it for the tution fees so he I distinctly remember sanctioned a loan for 13. 85 lakhs and that was it that was the start that one year I just submerged myself getting to know people getting to know business getting to know myself and then I joined cons Consulting after business school that three years was just fascinating and then 2009 I joined the startup world and I've been this ever since I have a question is an MBA relevant today an MBA

is relevant today if you don't know what you want to do it's irrelevant if you and you're just getting it there an MBA is terrific if you want to work an MBA is not that great if you want to create something on your own an MBA is brilliant if you want to build a network an MBA will suck if you just want to go there sit in the classes do your assignments get a good grade and get a good job because you can get that anywhere else so it has it pro and it has it cons i' certainly believe that if you go to a good school it tends to help a lot more than it doesn't but if you go to some random varu Institute of Management you're better off not going which is not going to be the name of the University we set up clearly we will see no it'll be too pum like School of Management Facebook P three reasons you should join W IM there you go I got the name I know W no but okay this makes sense right like and I totally uh agree with this but what is your take I mean somebody asked me this as well while we were just chatting before you came in uh thanks to the Bangalore traffic sure that uh they were like what is your take

like uh what about these online degrees now I can get a ISB or IIT or a im certificate without ever actually going there what is your take on that I I don't see any challenge with that at all I genuinely believe that if the brand is willing to give that then you should be smart enough to take it however don't make the mistake to believe that because of that stamp things are going to happen for you because the world is smart so the world recognizes that the reason why an i or an IM or an ISB or for that matter any other school of repute is because of its selection not because of what happens in the school because frankly nothing happens extraordinarily different from what it would be at any other school but the fact that it has a stringent selection process then gets you a certain crem dala that you would then go after as a organization or as a brand and someone but if you can just get in because you can pay money then you will be looked at exactly the same way so there will be nothing that will qualify you ISB online certificate what fancy huh nobody's going to say that ever uh and don't trick yourself into believing then the certification serves a very different purpose in my opinion it serves the purpose of you getting a structured coherent exposure to a curriculum that you will struggle to create yourself or consume yourself it allows you to self-pace your learning still be part of a community that you may not have access to and it allows you to while having a job or a income stream get upskilled which is the need of the hour for you which is why I'm assuming you're considering it in the first place

what's your take on future of Education how do you think five years from now education is going to be like years yeah but I I'll the way that I'll explain this is something fascinating that Elon Musk I think about four or five years in an interview said so this was around the time when the Dark Knight had released and how many of you have seen the Dark Knight yeah so quite a few of you it's a brilliant movie highly recommended better than open Heimer but that's up for debate so Elon Musk is somebody asks him his point of view on education and he uses the Dark Knight as an example he says Imagine The Dark Knight and the Dark Knight at that point of time was the best movie or close to the best movies ever made says Imagine The Dark Knight and has a certain script but instead of Christopher Nolan making that movie The Script is taken and then distribute it to people who want it and they said you know what go ahead and make the movie and make it your way right so you have your own budget audience you have your own theater you have your own actor you have your own actress you have your own Supporting Cast you have your own music go ahead and do it the script is exactly the same which is the Cornerstone of that movie however you can imagine how disastrous an experience that would be for everyone HSR layout and everybody's having a completely different experience bases the same script he said that's exactly how education is Newton's law is exactly the same our constitution biological study is exactly the same the chemistry is same everything is same however the big difference is how it's imparted because basis the teacher basis the curriculum that is adopted bases the tools and Technology use bases the infrastructure of the school bases your own network and your classmates your experience is widely different for the exact same curriculum so he says and I completely believe in that as the future of education is that education will have to go down the route of movie making where imagine a growth school and growth School says we want to create the finest course on say digital marketing and it will be shot like a magnumopus it's not some trivial HSR layout office on the fourth floor production it is kickass to the level that nobody able to even differentiate whether it was made by a newbie or a venture funded company and so on it has Immaculate production it has everything that goes in and the world then gets to consume that standardized piece of content at their own section skip totally your call but somebody has done the hard work of creating a magnum office of a curriculum at Global Production levels that's the first stage of delivery which I call the primary delivery now that primary delivery will be then led by the need of a secondary intervention what is the secondary intervention the student may say but something else now there is no two-way Communication in this because Christopher noan movie but there will be forums which is what we do we go on Reddit and we go like hey what did this scene mean and what was the significance of that spin at the last scene of inception does it mean that he's in a dream or does it mean it's real like we'll have these debates we'll have these conversations and that will only make your understanding richer may also leave you confused but that's perfectly fine it's enabling a community of people who are actively debating And discussing the same thing and then is the tertiary one which is you actually need help because there's something that you need to figure it out so imagine there's an apartment complex anywhere and basement May somebody trained by growth school is conducting classes on digital marketing not to teach because that's already been done but to clarify and that happens in person it happens one-on-one if you need it happens one to many if you need that it happens at regular frequencies it happens at predetermined times it happens at common schools and infrastructure so imagine and this is my future for the education World Imagine common centers there is no need for every College to have its own Auditorium in own class own cafeteria own heres when you have to replicate that the replication needs to be around delivery of Education not around infrastructure so you have a common infrastructure and call it the varu infrastructure tomorrow and it's this big ass place where several universities and indiv idual instructors SL creators come to take classes and there is a magnum oppus that continues to run on a runtime basis it's like a sports Stadium makes a lot of sense interesting that's a very interesting thing yeah wild let's

get into something uh little controversial yes want some controversy everybody wants it what's with your friendship with Mr ashn oh my God I did like I don't know it's like did you preempt it's the audience that preempted me I we do not okay I do not know him I don't think he knows me because we've never met and I have no idea I have genuinely no idea and it takes the unless asked he occupies the least possible space in my heart and mind for no offense to him because I'm sure he's doing some wonderful things that he wants to do in life but for him to say he likes you quite a bit he loves me clearly like so I uh I do not take that love lightly at all I'm completely in awe and uh always humbled but yeah I I've never met him and I have no idea that

gets me to a point right which is crazy and why this happens not at the level of Ash for me but a lot of people who don't know me who have never met me you know there are all these Anonymous forums that started to pop out this's clear negativity uh from a few set of people who don't even know me theyve never met me they've never seen me why does that even happen like it's crazy it's wild I I think the there are two reasons behind this in my head one is the belief that most of us grew up with which is that the world is a zero sum game that if somebody's winning that means I will have to lose or the only way for me to win is to hope that somebody else loses it's a it's a mindset with which we used to walk into an examination and I don't know how many of you were the second and the third rank in class often never smart enough to be the number one but good enough to be in the top five and you knew that the only way for you to become number one was the number one dude got diarrhea while the examination was happening cuz that was the only way like you literally had to Hope in hell that he or she would have some Calamity that would make you eligible for the top spot and uh and that's the world we grew up in with no fault because our parents taught us that world and that was the world that they grew up in India was a land of limited opportunities massive number of people seeking those same opportunities and it was true to a large extent that if somebody won that meant you had lost so when people see other people winning some part of their subconscious minds tell them I'm going to lose because of this so that's triggering because is why should somebody else's success lead to my defeat the second one I believe is just natural envy and we all feel it we some people have a better way of dealing with it some people don't and uh and that's perfectly fine and a third part of it which is at least something that's helped me a lot is that if I were to abstract myself from the tonality of the message and truly spend my time thinking of what is it that the message perhaps means then it may help me so here's an example and I'm going to say this for the first time ever Ash Grover does not know me however he knows what I've done which is buil nearby and he knows what he has done which is build a fairly large and maybe success is questionable or not but let's say fairly large Financial giant right and if people were to compare him to me he like don't compare somebody who is running a small outfit to me who's run a really large outfit raised a lot of money got to a certain point in scale which was envious and very few people in this entire world would get to which is by the way a fact it is a fact undeniable fact so if I were to take out the tonality of what anyone would say and just focus on that message I wouldn't disagree with that message I certainly wouldn't it's a fact it's not an opinion don't compare me now what words I used are immaterial L why the F would somebody write a stinker to me at 7 in the morning saying bsdk stop your [ __ ] ads because my ads are irritating if they exceed a certain frequency limit that's a fact so yeah he said it in the way that I wouldn't to anybody else but he's stating a fact so just get your emotions out of the way and focus on the message and do something about it will only help you of course have all rights to dismiss it at all points of time because it is your call but you at least get to understand what the center of that messages that really helps me a lot and I'm a sucker for that feedback and I said you know I'd love for you to be polite in that feedback but even if that doesn't come naturally to you or you don't know how just give me feedback because if I choose to do something about it and I do it I become a better version of myself it's brilliant that everybody here irr of whether you're a Creator or not or a public figure or not everybody here gets feedback for free you don't ask for it but you get and you can take offense all you want but if you were to genuinely stop and pause and say forget the tonality and just absorb the message and if it makes sense work on it is only going to make you a better version of yourself somebody is giving you that for free you don't even have to work hard for it you sit and the world's throwing [ __ ] at you and now it's your choice of whether you want to convert that into something meaningful or like doesn't work yeah superb uh I want to give 15 minutes throw into the crowd for 15 minutes as well because everybody wants a picture the pictures are only allowed if there's growth scool in the background FY no just kidding but we're not done yet

we'll get there so uh I mean I think I know the story but I think it is not said enough okay and I don't know why you don't say this enough while you say a lot of things that is this incredible story of being an employee to working in that freaking company as a CEO to buying that company out tell that story man tell that story more often I know the story I you remember the last podcast uh we had and that was that is what still gives me chills like it's a superhero story for me as an entrepreneur thank you no that that was a fascinating point though for context to what weab is refering I was running group on India and Groupon APAC as a business and Groupon is a US company it started in Chicago in 2008 it went public in 2011 and once it went public it frankly did not have a very good journey it was always in some tumultuous State of Affairs or not never really setting up to the success that it had prior to it and because of that for all the right reasons the management was intently focused on us and Europe which were the two largest markets for Groupon and naturally because of that the attention they could devote to a country like India was limited minuscule and we were a very small part of the entire group on portfolio but when you're living that opportunity day in and day out that's like 100% of me it's 1% for them but it's 100% of my world and that's where I think there was a difference in context and we wouldn't get the technology investment we would get the money investment we wouldn't get any other investment so early on I think mid of 2014 or so after running group one for 4 years um as a management team we went to group on global and we said if you can't do something about group on India that we want to so we want to buy the group on India business from you and we want to make it into an independent entity and their first reaction was what are you talking about you were 100% subsidiary of a publicly listed company listed in the US this thing has never happened before and I was like well that's not the reason it can't happen and it took 9 months of convincing and we partnered with seoa capital and in August of 2015 incidentally the 10th of August and we just celebrated our anniversary in that sense 10th of August 2015 is when we bought the Groupon India business from Groupon made that into an independent entity that became nearby. com and it started all over again new brand name new business model new tech stack the only thing that was old was the team none of them left because it was just a passion that we believed in and it was a brilliant culture that we had built we were like this high performance team that loved each other challenged each other grew with each other and uh and that's what we did 2015 we started and it's the first time it's happened in India by the way it never happened before and we were so thrilled that it happened and uh till date it would remain one of the boldest things that I have done I'm sure yeah it's crazy it is it is thank you how many of you knew the story before you see I told you don't talk about this enough well repurpose first scene on grow School Town Hall I know but uh post this uh you exited yes 20 2019 you sold it to patm and then exited or before that no so the PTM investment happened in 2017 so it became a patm company and then after 2 years at the end of 2019 I stepped down as the CEO I remember reading an

article I think it's a tweet of yours something like that right which said that when I moved out I almost had no money uh for which because of which I had to do speaking gigs and all of this me as an entrepreneur reading it why is this guy saying that he doesn't have money after he sold the company to PTM what the hell wasen happening there and what were your learnings there bunch of entrepreneurs here by oh yeah yeah how many of you are entrepreneurs yeah quite a few of you this is this is an interesting conversation so there were two things that happened when nearby happened in 2015 by 2015 I had been a Groupon employee in the executive team or in the senior leadership team I was paid a lot of money both in stocks and in cash the stock unfortunately did not perform so well but it amounted to something so when nearby happened I was so convinced that this is what I should be doing that I put all my life savings back into nearby and I said I'm not going to just earn Equity as a Founder wasting it through for four years I'm also going to earn it as an investor on day one so I owned a part of it and to everyone's credit the management team at nearby also pulled in and we bought a fair share of uh nearby so all my money at that point of time was just invested into that one asset so that's mistake number one not because I shouldn't have done it but you don't park your money into something which is illiquid with a zero or one outcome yeah you of course can gamble with a small share of your money with that but you don't be fool enough to put 100 100% of your money there mistake number one mistake number two is I had never raised money at that point of time so my first startup in 2009 was a bootstrap startup then 2011 I ran Groupon which was an entrepreneurial journey in every sense of it but I was technically an employee and then 2015 was when I saw a term sheet for the first time and the first time you raise money lo and behold you ra7 million and that's like whoa and I'm like okay whatever this is like normal what I don't didn't fully delve into and try and understand which I do remember having a conversation with you around was how does the wec world truly work and the big fallacy that most entrepreneurs have is that when you raise money that's success well it's not it's the start of a big commitment that you've made to return that money as if not a financial responsibility certainly a moral responsibility right because you now have taken somebody's money and these VCS they raise money from they re money from Pension funds endowment funds liaving inv figuratively speaking and you can't be flipping with that money and say it was somebody's money it certainly was somebody's money and not somebody who had money to just throw perhaps somebody's life saving and the only way that you give a return to an investor who is investing in a private limited company is to continue raising forever until you get to a sale or an IPO and that means you as a Founder have technically no other job than to continuously keep raising the value of your company by hook or by crook so it can happen the Kosher Way which is how most people start out at least but then the reason why you would see corporate governance happen and people make mistakes when they are very well-meaning well-intentioned people is because it gets to even the best of Minds it does you are accountable in a big way it's like you've taken a debt that you don't have to pay but you feel the burden of your debt every single day that you wake up and I wish I knew that because I would have played the game very differently I certainly would not have raised $17 million I would have raised at best like two but when you get all this money and you feel like you're the king of the world because the first check ever s has largest tech blah blah I made some Cardinal mistakes you spend it on a lavish office perks and privileges you buy merch you do all the [ __ ] none of which has any impact on consumers life huh they don't [ __ ] care they're not going nobody cares nobody even cares about what you've done in life as a founder or anything like that so very quickly we started running into money needed again and that was also the time when the funding winter started which was at the end of 2015 start of 2016 and we then had to struggle we had to lay off people I it's not even we I bear that responsibility I had to lay off people for no fault of theirs I we took salary Cuts as founder so suddenly my income was now lesser than my expenses and whatever little savings my wife had we had started to dip into that continued and then PTM happened but PM's deal was not a cash deal it was a share swap with one of PM's portfolio company called little ah and little was the number two deals player in the market they were burning through money and we would very clearly see that they did not know how to do it well they were still sitting on a load of cash which we felt was best used if the two merged together and made that happen so we did a share swap which meant no cash was exchanged we just got equity in the joint entity now not even in patm this was little and nearby and we wanted to keep it separate so that was mistake number two which is you believe so much in your own audacity that you dismiss everything else that comes along with it if we had PTM stock or we exchange it with that the world would be very different but clearly not and uh and then we went through our grind it was like hand to mouth existence yeah I had a salary of 50 lakhs and uh and that was it sounds like a lot of money but 50 lakhs for the home Emi and the kid education and my parents and of course the family and everything blah blah blah plus because I wasn't earning 50 lakhs and I was only earning 25 for about a year I had taken personal loans so paying that amount credit card debt all of that [ __ ] Shad happened so when I left in 2019 it was a conscious call to leave because I felt that my time was up and the founders were brilliant to take it on I actually did not have any income source and certainly money in the bank I had five months of money at which was literally my Runway as you would call it in the startup world my Runway was 5 months and uh speaking gigs was what I just started to pay for that but then Co happened and that too stopped which was a sous event because I just lucked out and I said okay if that's not happening then what else could I do and I started taking these courses online to see how it shaped up and that became a thing crazy I mean I remember asking you for advice when I got my first term [ __ ] and the advice that I got can I tell them yeah please the advice that I got was try not raising money if you want to raise money because I had my own reasons I explained you and we had this long ass conversation on Zoom then he was like raise as less as you can I took all the advice in the opposite way but one advice that I did take or consider was the acquisition advice for sure right so crazy things crazy times uh but so I mean we just touch based on the Creator bit right like uh this eventuality happened you came home Co hit and uh you know started creating content on social media a lot of people think that you're a coid star I don't think you were I'm a what a coid star a Creator who has created on the time of Co are called Co Stars if you guys didn't know about this which I completely disagree to uh because but I like the name so yeah you like the name but I think it's a how do I put it a disgrace to the effort that has been made for such a long time because man I've been following you for quite some time right as I was active on LinkedIn there was one other guy who was Super Active on LinkedIn it was literally LinkedIn India has two creators web and anur varu right web would write [ __ ] he's a kid 20 one year old but varu would put out videos sitting in his office with a phone uh talking directly to the camera uh probably uh you know like in the same direction but much lower production right and You' been you've been at it for I don't know how [ __ ] long yeah right in fact in the beginning of the co when we started to chat all over again you remember right like the courses bit you still were creating content on YouTube videos on YouTube and you would get like thousand videos and you would be at it like why is this guy doing this yoube like long form videos had just started back absolutely but then two years cut short everybody's talking about you because I have a bunch of creative friends everybody what did this guy do suddenly how has he become so big oh it must be the gray hair which I also feel has a lot of take on being very Frank oh it must be the entrepreneur experience oh it must be some hack that he figured out which I don't have answer so what the hell happened for 5 years you are grinding your ass I don't know with what intent to create content because I knew that naturally you enjoyed doing it and then cut short two years things are going like crazy how many subscribers do you have right now some 4 million 3 million across yeah across I mean followers plus subscribers across uh all platforms yeah 9. 6 9. 6 that's a CR almost a CR 96 International

offsite what happened this is insane growth I mean I knew that you were always around LinkedIn but what happened elsewhere like YouTube and Instagram I I think people just had time to consume and uh and I just happen to be there I frankly believe that that's the that's a long and short of fit I cannot rationalize it I cannot own My Success I certainly cannot justify and uh explain it but I if I were to Hazard a guess it is certainly the fact that people had time on their hands so Co was a great help it was the fact that I had a lot to share because I was 40 and I had seen a fair bit of life and the gray hair certainly helped and the fact that I was filled with experiences that most people would love to get in a lifetime and I already had sat on them and I feel that the third thing that may have helped was the fact that I was just brutally honest with everything that I had been through and uh and to share so there was no layer of pretense there was no oh look at me I'm so cool and I'm so perfect it was like I [ __ ] up and I [ __ ] up many times and here's what I've learned and Hope hopefully it'll help you as well and that uh that that took off that there's no change of strategy in ter of content tactically one big shift that we did do which was uh in around September or October of 2020 is that we very consciously moved from English to English that was one thing uh I don't know how much of that really played a role it certainly big impact on YouTube I don't know how much of LinkedIn U sorry on Instagram did that make a difference LinkedIn has continued to be the same like I genuinely I've just loved creating content I've been doing it doing it and in form of its own but uh YouTube was certainly the move to English Instagram may or may not have helped but I think it was generally the fact that people had nothing to do and they were looking for authentic people to align themselves talk to them yeah what is your advice for me because I feel that I'm exactly in the position that you wear when you wear at nearby and the reason is uh very how do I put it uh to build distribution is the oil today uh build the distribution that will help grow school to proper Beyond dependency of ads has to go away for that you need uh distribution again organic distribution again so I mean there's a nice little team that helps me today with creating res or whatever but if you were me and you know the company that I run and we are 16170 people uh and crazy tough times in terms of funds but luckily you asked me last time all okay I was like yes all okay so what would be your advice

on how for me or any other founder would approach creating content I I I'll only talk about the Playbook that's worked for me which needn't be the only Playbook that works and the Playbook is dissociate yourself from the brand which is a big one but here's what I'm saying so web is a brand growth school is a brand yes and web does not speak about growth School ever ever and I know that's hard to consume yeah exactly right because like what the [ __ ] are you talking about I don't think except if you've taken the course I don't think most people here would even know the name of my startup anybody here name web vaa right so web vaa is the name of my startup um and I'm totally okay with people not knowing it ever because couldn't care less but that's because you are the product here so I no I I'll tell you what the big difference is you create content which is around you as a personal brand and that's your journey as an entrepreneur individual the mistakes you've made or anything else that comes naturally to you and people will then gravitate towards you as an individual and you would then acrew what I call Trust because at no point of time will they see you selling things that you have made M which incidentally and ironically and very fascinatingly has nothing to do with you selling something else so I could be talking about indd money or small case or zeroda or any such brand that I personally use and people like endorsement but I get the reason why it is but if they hear me talk about things that I have made instantly red flag clear bias it's the same thing that people feel when this join a webinar for 499 lied so people should not have that fear when they're engaging with you they should see you authentically for who you are when you acrw that trust you start to deploy that trust as against the distribution so I have a very different take I don't use for example the 10 million if I could I would not need to run my ads ever but I don't use the 10 million to ever sell my courses I earn trust because I want that trust just like SEO to flow into a direction that I will channelize a large part of that flow today is going to web vaa so the reason why we can easily make brand ads on web vaa which have nothing to do with my face but I choose to put my face on those ads is because people see me and they trust me but they are getting a ad and they know it is an ad they don't get content they can still get to see me as a content creator right which has nothing to do with my ads or my business if they see my ad they be like and they don't have any idea of who I am they be like they will go on Google and look me up and they'll see years and years of content again never trying to sell anything so I use my distribution as a trust engine not a sales engine and that is the big departure so I don't have any ambition to stop ads I in fact tell my agency because I am a negative working capital business I get money from the consumer I'm not selling a expensive course I'm selling all these cheap courses affordable courses and I get the money I have to pay Google and Facebook after a month so you can spend whatever the [ __ ] you want because I will get that money before I have to pay somebody else you just have to hold the roas and if you hold the roas go and touch the entire world and do that to a point where they don't feel irritated and we still get that and my job then is use content to only and only generate trust that's the same thing that I will tell you as well your content should never have grow School your content should like even if you go back to the videos that you were referring to Wednesday and so but that's fine but I never spoke about NE the business revenue I never spoke about the performance I never spoke about what we doing it was always about something that I thought will help people and that's the same thing that I follow great advice thank you we have a very interesting rapid

fire right so you have 10 people asking you 10 rapid fire questions okay my name is amab and uh this is a lener for you

who's your favorite Bollywood actress Bollywood actor actress actress Aliyah bat oh I quite like I think she's really

good my question is uh should we race early in the beginning of the startup or should we wait for you know like 100 200 300 CR you know like revenue and like later stage basically if you have to raise money at 300 CR then there is a problem okay what I meant was series a series B please wait as much as you can because then you raise money on your terms don't raise to survive raise to grow hi angor this is Vishnu who is your

influencer who is my influence huh wow yeah there is no one person and that'll be an honest answer I pick a lot of traits from people that I really like no you can give me the multiple oh the as well uh starting from my mom and Dad I absolutely love Brian chesy as a Founder he's the founder of Airbnb I love Elon musk's passion and intensity I love uh Jeff bezos's long-term thinking I love ratan tata's humility and just his General demeanor I love Buddha for the teachings that he gave us and uh I love naal ravikant for a lot of things that he is hi Aur big fan uh so I have a very cheesy question who was your favorite girlfriend in college favorite girl who was my favorite I only had one girlfriend in college who happens to now be my wife so no she doesn't want the pr answer I do not have any other answer I did you not hear my story I was not the dude with the multiple girlfriends who got pick and choose no I like RI did you have any crush on anyone oh I had a lot of crushes but of course they didn't know and they would never like I was this non- entity but I I've had one celebrity crush and I don't know if anybody here has heard of this series called The X Files xfiles was this cult series and uski Lead protagonist was this lady called Dana Scali who I had the biggest crush on because I was like because she was also a geek thank you will proof of work going to kill

resumes in future I certainly think so yeah I think see in my head resumes are already dead I feel it's a very stupid document it is always Pumpers I've done this I've done this I feel that your progression is far more important whether it comes through proof of work conversations whether it comes through a combination thereof I genuinely feel that'll be the way to hire for sure great question hi uh do you halogenate the G a large language model hallucination do I how do I answer that question what do you mean do I hallucinate yeah based on like if I do how would I even know no so I can answer this question in two fundamental ways I don't know if I hallucinate because if I did know then it would not be hallucination and the second one is I don't do anything to trigger a hallucination so there is no substance that I consume and there's nothing that I take on purpose to get to a hallucination point I'm very driven in life generally I'm high in high on life as it is so if that was a question Uncle what he I think he meant was these large language models hallucinate right they make up stuff that hallucination oh did you think I'm just smart enough to figure that out ah sorry please go ahead like when you are doing some content okay based on your uh this one data like do you halogenate like you go you make up some things which are not existent on the you know what part of the content piece are you referring to why don't you just be straight you know the number of people who have so I get this a lot and I usually take it as a compliment people say you look rich and I don't know what the [ __ ] that means it's a compliment they're like you look rich so when you give us these so stories of childhood you know uni Ma CH hey we just know that it's a fraud lie us and that I can't like I don't hallucinate in my content is generally I have a really strong memory of things that have happened to me in my past and I also reflect upon them a lot to know and never forget so when people say how do you know this was 22nd of July 2002p validation but yeah I don't make

[ __ ] up I don't so I want to know what are the best tip you can give for a beginner for starting up of all the tips that I can give I think the only thing that I would want you to know of is I'm just picking the most important one actually it'll be this the world does not care who you are when you starting up the hardest reality that will hit you is that the world doesn't care to FS about who you are it doesn't care which school you went to it doesn't care how much money you've raised it doesn't care which office you work from it doesn't care how tough or easy your personal life is it doesn't care how much salary you've drawn or not drawn for so many months it doesn't care whether you've laid off people to make the startup survive or not it doesn't care how hard you've worked on the product it doesn't care about anything it just cares about is your product working for me or not and that is very hard-hitting because For the first time in your life things are not going to happen to you because of who you are and what you've done it is only going to happen to you because you built something for somebody else that you have no idea about and I see the smartest sharpest Minds falter at this drug consume things will happen couldn't care less things don't happen because of who you are they happens all why or what you make for the others that are consuming your product there is end results matters right end result and only at the consumer end the rapid fire is turning out to be a Q& A I know not bad okay Rapid Fire H what are

your right writing superstitions my writing superstitions oh I don't think I have a writing Superstition no I don't have a I don't have any Superstition if I yeah there is there's no there's nothing that I do there's no l rumal in my pocket right now nothing like that I I'm actually fairly agnostic with these things though my question is what's one

thing that you would want the internet to forget about you ooh nothing yeah if if I had to I would have deleted a lot of things from my past my first blog post 2005 April is still there I been blogging by the way for the last 18 years and I blog every day April 2005 the first blog post my first YouTube video horrible still there my first LinkedIn post podcast still there my first newsletter still there every it's a reminder for me constantly of how far I've come along and I would not want anything to get removed in fact I let things stay so that they act as a reminder of the times that I [ __ ] up or did something I shouldn't have or just a reminder of how far I've come along so nothing good question we have something interesting for you we have to slap places okay let's play yeah we are taking

the cap Sharma route a little uh and uh this is down the memory lane we'll show you some pictures we want you to talk about them oh God uh this is Richi by the way uh my wife and this is her cousin's wedding and this was the only business suit I ever had which I was told afterwards is not a professional business suit it's a shadik suit that is me at ISB they were part of my group the study group that we had at ISB this is 18th of December 1997 I'm in my 12th grade no I read it I was like I'm not a psycho I was like are you hallucinating I am not a psycho are you hallucinating oh God this is the one who did not have girlfriend choices so now waiting for Uncle but I love that what did I do here I don't have to say anything to this is on WE fist fight fist oh God I'm going to lose it dude like what no are you serious you guys want to see this my hand is not well I'm not kidding so here is B from bampur and an from going 3 2 1 go oh my you [ __ ] my hand a little more I know W I love that I want to throw you to the crowd now right I think anur thank you so much for doing this I hope you had a good time I absolutely did thank you so much this was lovely and looks like this is becoming like a tradition every two years we do checkpoints right one before we started up and before you started up correct right uh which we did on uh YouTube uh during the pandemic days now that we are here gr School IPO I I'll come for the Bell ceremony bus your final piece of advice for me

the team because I'm a little biased towards growth school here you can clearly see it's a growth School Town Hall guys so there's so many things that I would want to but particularly to the team at growth school it's very easy to fall in the Trap of looking inwards and believe beleving that what you're doing is right and somebody else doesn't get it so they must be wrong but at the end of it as I pointed out for that question as well you're only and only answerable to one person and that is not we it is the student and that student they may have a great way of saying something rude obnoxious way of something or worse they may not even have a way of saying something but feeling it and it becomes your job to discover that out that's the only reason you show up at work every day there's nothing else so as much as you can devote yourself to understanding what the student wants from you will be in the no but the minute you turn blind and saying ye program you have just eliminated any chance of success that's the only thing i' say advice for me

you have given a lot of advice already I have so I don't know what toon it lacks context in that sense because it just feels like uh free willing advice I think the advice for you is that you have something going on which is commendable which is truly enviable which is not something that a lot of people get to play with and you've made this wonderful Journey from being a Creator to being an entrepreneur and using your distribution the right way to make this happen I uh I'd only go back to the same thing that I said as hard as it may be recognize that your role is to be authentic as a Creator because that will always have a indirect super positive loop back to growth school but if you make even your identity about growth school as much as the world will tell you that it should be certainly your investors will you will lose that edge that you have because then you become like everybody else then you don't have an edge which you had all along and the reason why growth School even came into being was because you had that edge that most people didn't because you can always run an ad to sell a LinkedIn course but the one who does it through his clout is the one who ultimately wins and that's what you have to do today as well thank you what one piece of

advice for everybody in the audience they're all Hustlers they're all Learners so one distinct thing about the growth School community uh and I'm very proud to say this is the fact that these guys are not spending their time money and everything to get a certificate because we outright say certificates are [ __ ] they're not paying money or taking the time out to like to get like a degree they purely come in put their hard-earned money to learn and to be better this is a different set of audience that you see from different people they're very aspirational they want to do stuff they want to make things happen what is your advice for them I I'd be the last person to give any advice to this kind of SE because that's exactly what I would do and if you weren't doing it that's exactly what I would have said as well the best service that you can give yourself is to know how to become a student whenever you want to and have to that's it and unfortunately that training goes away with school in college because in our mind we're like studies is over so we don't have to become a student anymore now we just earn from all that we have done but the world's changing so fast that the only hope in hell that every single one of us has is to know how to become a student whenever we want to and when we have to so if you know that you have a skill that nobody can beat you on ever that's awesome that's it for me guys thank you so much for being here you guys want to take a picture yes like not oneon-one group what's

up video got for once more 3 2 1 what's up thank you that