EBW || DAY 1 || MY STORY

Foreign.

Personality himself on the stage. How to invest in MVM and how can you generate more business from mvm? So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the personality, the man himself. We are on stage.

Thank you so much. I love the energy. I walked in in the morning and I saw on every single piece of knowledge that was shared. All of you were clapping and loud and all of that. I was like this is an engaged audience. This is an audience which travels from all over the country, all over the world to be able to learn something, to be able to make an impact. Welcome to the three part series. I am going to be your friend for the next three days. Chapter one is my story. This is how I introduce myself. If you've seen my business cards, they're all over the place. I'll hand them to you. My name is ABHI Arya. Father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet moguls. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is my story. On the 29th of October that just went by, I turned 42. But the story I'm about to tell you here is when I was 18 years old, born and brought up in New Delhi, All I wanted to do as a youngster was to race streetcars. I used to race streetcars in the middle of the night. My dad used to go to sleep. I used to put his car into neutral, take it out and race. A lot of fun. People started joining me. People from smaller towns started coming in and I started organizing streetcar races for them. It became so much fun and plus I started making some money. So in my 18 year old head, I was a business person. The term entrepreneur was not very commonly used back then. So. So in my head I was a business person, very happy. But guess what? My dad didn't think so. So one day I remember my dad calling me into his office. I walked into my dad's office. There was a red carpet on a wooden floor. There was a smell of incense. Agarbatti, he'd just finished his prayers. And there were two landline phones which were off the hook back those during those days there were no cell phones. Landline phones off the hook. Now ladies and gentlemen, my dad's phones were never off the hook. I knew there was a serious conversation happening. I was nervous, I was scared. And I come from the generation where you didn't look your dad in the eye. So I'm looking here, down, I'm looking everywhere. That's how I remember how the room looked. And My dad sat me down and he said, son, I've got two options for you. A, join my business from tomorrow morning. B, get out of the house now. Option B came like a bolt of lightning to me because the ego of this businessman was hurt, right? Because in my head, I was a businessman. I was like, nobody talks to me like that. So I stormed out of the room. Typical Hindi movie story. Guess who was waiting outside? My mom. So I spoke to my mom for a couple of hours, you know. After a couple of hours, better sense prevailed. And the very next morning I found myself behind the reception of my dad's small 40 room hotel in New Delhi. I learned housekeeping. I learned how to take care of guests. We had a small restaurant, which I took care of. But I also learned that my dad is doing a fantastic job of running his hotel. Now I'm thinking to myself, if he's doing such a great job, where does that leave me? I needed to prove myself to my dad. An international tourist came in and he checked in and he paid us in Dutch gilders. Many of you people might not remember what Dutch gilders was, but this was pre Euro days. There were no euros. They were Dutch gilders. So I'm assuming the gentleman was from Holland. We converted the Dutch gilders. It was almost double the Indian rupees. And I realized that if I have international guests coming in, I bake more money. I'm able to double the revenue, double the family income, and become a star in my dad's eyes. Because the biggest dream that I had. So I was like, how should I get more international guests? I know more international guests will come into my hotel and give me more money, but how do I get more international guests? Came through one magazine which said, there are some companies overseas. And one of the things that struck me about the company was it said, we help you connect with your customers globally. Connect customers globally. I was like, I want to call, call these companies. Call them. No office in Delhi. Call them. No office in India. Call them. No office in Asia. Finally got to know that they are exhibiting at some conferences overseas. I begged, pleaded, somehow convinced my dad to be able to let me go overseas. That's when my dad says, you want to meet some travel agents to promote your hotel? Sure, go. I was like, they're not travel agents. They're saying there's some technology companies. There are no technology companies. They're only travel agents. Go meet them. Fine. So I got my first ever business suit done and a huge suitcase full of brochures. I didn't need the brochures. I was not meeting travel agents. I didn't need a suit because I was going to meet a technology company. But I said yes to everything because I wanted to leave. I went there, I met these people. They said, Mr. Arya, we will list you on our website. List and website. I was lost. Went like a bouncer over my head. So they said, just like the yellow pages, we will list you on the website. I came back very excited. My dad said, what happened to the business? Did you get a letter of intent? Did you get something? I said, no, nothing. They put promised business in the future. My dad, like he wasted time and come back, came back. These people asked for forms, pictures, all of that. I sent it to them. Nothing happened. I had limitless potential to be able to connect with people all over the world. Somebody said, you need a website. So then I started looking at websites. Now ladies and gentlemen, during that time there were only very few companies in Bangalore which were doing websites for foreign companies, Indian companies and small hotels. The budget hotel never needed a website. So when we went to them, the first quote back then was more than two and a half lakh rupees. After a lot of negotiation we got it down to 2 lakhs. Hats off to my father. Somehow we paid that money and we got our website done. Guess what happened after the website happened to our business? Precise zero. Nothing moved. Just by having a website, nothing moved. I learned that the hard way. I went back now. I'd taken a foreign trip and I'd got a toolkit website and my dad is breathing down my neck, he's not seeing anything. But I felt the pressure and I'm thinking, what should I do? And so I went back into the forums. People said, why don't you put some keywords or tag or put a, put, you know the overseas customers are looking at toll free numbers or put a query form. All of these things I started doing and results started coming in after a few months. I put stories and I put stories and those stories connected with people and people started coming up. I picked them up from the airport, they came and paid us in US dollars. I checked them into the room and I remember sitting down and saying, this works. There were only four rooms but this works. I put in all my energy onto the Internet then started learning more, implementing more, learning more, implementing more, started getting more queries. The Internet became slightly bigger in India. Big things started happening. After a year of practicing we started getting lots of queries and there was a time when we started getting almost 50 to 100 queries a day and personalized responses. We were converting more than 30, 40% of those queries. Ladies and gentlemen, mind you, I told you that my dad's hotel was already doing well. It was one hotel, it was already doing well. We had so much business coming in in the next two years that we bought the hotel next door. We just bought it. There's so much business coming. Very excited. The business continued. The Internet kept on fueling us. We were the only hotel with on which we had 5 to 7 keyword positions on every single page. Delhi Hotels. First 5 position. Hotels in Delhi. First 5 position. 3 star hotel in Delhi. First 5 position. Guess what? Because nobody else in the budget hotel industry was even looking at the Internet, there was so much business coming in. We bought another hotel and then another hotel. Ladies and gentlemen, my dad took 40 years to build his first hotel after we discovered the Internet. My dad took 40 years to build his first hotel after we discovered the Internet. In the next four years, in the next few years, we built four more hotels. And that completely changed my life. The revenue we were making and my relationship with my father. Now the person who wanted to throw me out of the house was having strategy discussions with me every morning. Everything changed. I was having a great time. Now we realize that a lot of people are coming in now. I had, as a youngster, I had four hotels, four full of foreign guests. And all of them knew be knew me by name. And so they're asking me questions, Avi, how do I go to Agra, Tan Mahal, Jaipur? All of those questions. So I started building websites to answer those queries just for efficiency, so that I don't have to answer to everybody. They can go to the website, start redirecting them. The traffic built up. The traffic just, just only from my four hotels. And some SEO traffic built up. And some of our sites started doing very well. And my mom had to join the business because the travel agency took off. A lot of people were asking for ticket queries. I looked at all the analytics and I built a few websites. Some of them were cheap air tickets India, cheaper tickets Bombay, all of those that started getting traffic. So one day I got a call from this company called Yatra and then subsequently a company called make my trip. We were all new in the ecosystem and I said, yes, I've heard about you. They said, we love the traffic on your website. We see that can convert on our site. Would you be interested in an affiliate model? Now what? I didn't know what an affiliate meant and I didn't want to sound like a fool. So I said, can you just email it to me? I'll get back to you. In the email they explained the whole thing, how the affiliate model works. They said, we'll give you a couple of hundred rupees on the conversion of every ticket. I said, that sounds fine, why not? So I read, I directed the traffic. We started booking some 50 to 60 tickets every single day. Ladies and gentlemen, in that time that meant 50 to 60,000 rupees every single day from an affiliate model. So what happened as a, as a person? What happened to a streetcar racer whose dad was almost throwing him out of the house? Had a conversation with my mother, got into the business, discovered the Internet. Early stages. My first blog I called the Accidental First Mover. I used to make videos back then because when travel queries used to come in, they used to be three to four thousand dollar ticket items. And people wanted to have a fourteen day tour of India. And so I put a map of India at the back and I had a small cabin and I used to put on a Canon camera that I had a small one. I used to record videos saying hi, I'm ABHI Arya, this is my dad's hotel and first you go to Agra, then you're going to go to Jaipur and this is how it's going to work and I'll show you. This is my car that you want to. I used to put videos and then my poor team used to take all day to upload those videos. Because it took 10 to 12 hours to upload those videos. Some videos still never made it to the other side. But imagine those days when you were sending video replies. The conversions were just fantastic. So I realized that videos were always a way for me to take my personality to the next level. Also because I'm my dad's son and my dad, who's still my biggest mentor. My dad and I share one thing and which is that impatience is a virtue for entrepreneurs. If there is something which can happen today, should not wait till tomorrow. If there can, something which can happen in the next 20 minutes should not wait till the end of the day. So because of this impatience we were like, if videos can work, let's do videos. Because we'll get a faster sales cycle. And therefore videos worked from the beginning. People started calling me to speak. I joined TripAdvisor on stage and spoke for them in many parts of the region. And people started understanding what I'm doing. And I told them about my dad's hotel story, how I got the keywords ranked and how I did all of that, that's when people started coming to me and saying, hello, can you do the same thing for us? And I'm like, but this is my own hotel business and my own travel agency. Why? You know, small thinking. I didn't think of the future. That's when a few people talked. Some of my very good friends spoke to me and said, why don't you consider this? And so riding high on confidence, the only name I could think of was in Internet Moguls. I started a company called Internet Moguls on Paper, hired four people and started doing digital marketing for others. And today, after 11 years, we're a team of 225 people working with thousand plus current clients in more than 10 countries. That that, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of the Internet. I learned a lot. I built a couple of businesses. I had the hotel business, now I had the travel business and I had the affiliate business. And now I had Internet moguls. And now I started getting scared. First time I started getting scared, first 15 years just flew past my confidence. My dad is a mentor, but now I'm getting scared. I'm like, what am I doing? I don't know how to run these businesses. I've not got professional training. What should I do? How should I learn? That's when I started doing what all of you people are doing. I started learning. I started going to the Internet, learning and meeting people. But I was like, I don't want to buy a fancy watch, I don't want to buy a fancy car. I want all the money that I have spent and I want to travel the world and meet every influencer and learn from them. I did not just want a picture with them, I wanted to train with them. If they had a program, I bought it. If they had a mastermind, I enrolled in it. So I started traveling and I started meeting all of these people. It took time, it took years. I had to be away from my business. I started doing all of that. The one thing I realized that they and me and I, you know what? We as human beings, do we like the person or not like the person? Because we have things in common, right? What did I find? You know what? I have something in common with them. And everybody wants to have something in common with their mentor or their guide or somebody they look up to. I think I have something in common with Amitabh Bachchan. I'd make myself believe it. It comes true. You think you like somebody and you have something in common with Them. What I found something in common with all of them was that they were all creating videos. And I'll tell you how their videos helped them dominate. The other thing that I learned from them was that every successful person has two things. They have rituals and they have a mindset. Ritual could be I get up at 4am and I do this meditation, yoga, or I get up at 11, I do whatever. You don't have to copy anybody's ritual, but you can get inspired and they have a mindset. So I traveled, I met these people, I interviewed them and I made a ritual guide, success principles, which I took to corporations all over the world. Now the other thing that I found was how these greatest influencers use micro videos to dominate their lives. I was doing videos from the travel agency days, right? And I was getting conversions and I was loving doing it because it was, you know, it was a faster sales cycle. People came, they recognized me and all of that and I realized, hang on, these people who have just recently met Billie Jean, Dan Locke, all of these people, what are they doing? They're also dominating their own industries by doing videos. They are doing videos while everybody else is doing, waiting. I'm shy, I can't do it. I don't have the right equipment. All these things are plaguing people all over the world and these people are dominating it. I got inspired and I was like, what's that one secret sauce that they have? What's that one secret sauce? Micro videos. Short videos to be able to connect with other human beings, to inspire them to take an action that you want them to take based on whatever product or service that you have that you truly believe can go and change their lives. The three pain points that they have, it's not the same for everyone. We actually study the pain points. We see the problem that they have having. Are the rates higher than on OTAs? Are they, you know, pictures are not there, whatever. That's just one part of the pitch. And this single short 3 minute video coupled with some long format videos and all of that, every single thing we do, we have a studio in the office. And I encourage all of you people to say, who are my clients? Who am I? What is my everybody? The hero. What is my hero? Micro what? What are you? Don't do everything. Find your niche. I found my niche in hotels and now I have found my niche in videos. What is my niche? Being known for that. What is your client's problem? 3 problems every client has. Find out those problems. Tell them your story. Introduce your micro niche to Them make short videos. Don't worry about the background, don't worry about what you're wearing. All of those things can get can improve later. At this event, I would encourage all of you to take action. Whatever you're learning from all the speakers, write down the top three things you want to do in this week and go and take action. Your next week will be automatically very different. Transformation is not a keyword, just to inspire you and bring you from all over the world to this event. Transformation is I think the mission of this conference. So that by the time you go back three days, if you take action, you learn, you take action. Learn, you take action. By the end of three days, you will be a different person. By the end of one week will you be transformed. In two weeks the whole world will know your ecosystem. Your world is your ecosystem, your 400, your 500. Seth Gordon says you need 10 people who follow you and love your work and you'll be able to create a great business. One of Gary Vee's interview there was this guy who said, I've got two hundred twenty five hundred followers on my YouTube and I've got a two hundred fifty thousand dollar business. You don't need millions of followers to create a big business. I don't have millions of followers, far from that. But we've got very successful businesses running because the people that we're working with, they love us and we add value to them and they see us on videos every day. So the answer is more micro videos, ladies and gentlemen. So this is what we introduced. 21 day challenge, you know, can in 21 days things change. And I'll tell you, I'm inspired by Bollywood and all of those people because I see how hard they work. They are stars because they deserve to be stars. Because they transform based on the situation that they have. If they can transform in 21 days because they see a price at the end. You see how Ranveer Singh was in Simba versus what he became in Gazi Boy just a month later. That inspired me. How can somebody become muscular, bulky and then lean in maybe less than one month's time because he saw the price at the end. If we are able to in our mind see the price at the end, we will be able to transform. So we said 21 days is the biggest challenge, the best challenge to have. So we said micro video mastery. Who is this for? It's for entrepreneurs, agencies and digital marketers. And if this sounds like you, if you are somebody who is afraid of videos, who feels, you know, I can't do videos or my business doesn't work through videos and I want to do something different, then it's definitely for me. You. If you feel that video marketing is not for you, then it's definitely for you. The 21 day challenge actually allows you to do a lot of stuff to be able to reach your direct audience. My name is Avi Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet moguls. We help corporations and large companies, large hospitality companies create revenues for their rooms, FNB and banquet facilities during the using digital marketing. That's one side of the business. When I introduce mbm, we say that we work with entrepreneur digital marketers to be able to infuse confidence, to be able to help them find the hero micro niche and market it to the right customer so that in 21 days their life changes. They're able to make videos and make sales out of that. This is how I introduce myself because I know at a conference or at a seminar or through a video, I will get maybe one chance to make an impression. And in that impression, my pitch has to be ready, my video has to be ready and it has to be consistent. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, just in case I haven't said it enough, I'm Abi Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer, now social media marketer and part and thank you all for your time.