Sharing My Story and My Life Formula's at Digital Masters Conference Mumbai

My dad told me, he said, avi, I've got two options for you. I'm going to make this very short two options for you. A, join my business from tomorrow morning. B, get out of the house on the 29th of October, which is about two months from now, I'm going to turn 43. So this is going to come with a lot of experience, lots of failures and lots of learning for you people. What I've learned over the years is there are four things that we all need to succeed. Four things. Take note. A story. We all have a story. Need to dig and find our story. A hero, micro niche, a formula. And lots and lots of micro videos. Guys, you have to talk to me when I ask you. You know there are going to be questions coming in here. So engage with me. Chapter one. Your story. Phase one. You know, when it all begins, it seems very ordinary. But it isn't. This is me when I was 18. All I wanted to do in life as an 18 year old was to race street cars. I was born and brought up in Delhi. Dad used to go to sleep, take out his car, put it on neutral gear, take it out for races. Got around. I started getting more people wanting to race with me. We started, you know, organizing streetcar races. Started making money in my 18, 19 year old head. I was a business person, a very proud business person. I was having a great time. But guess what? My dad didn't think so. So one day I remember he called me to the office. I walked in, there was. I remember as if it happened yesterday. There was a red carpet on a wooden floor. The smell of incense. Agrabatti. He finished his prayer prayers and my dad had his landline phones off the hook. Remember these phones? They were off the hook. My dad's phones are never off the hook. I knew there was something important. I was nervous. And I come from the generation that you look down when your dad is talking to you. So my dad told me, he said, abhi, I've got two options for you. I'm going to make this very short two options for you. A, join my business from tomorrow morning. B, get out of the house now. This businessman in me said, you know what? Screw this, I'm leaving. I stormed out of the room. Guess what happened? Complete, you know, Indian family. My mom was waiting outside. She was listening to the whole thing. I went and spoke to her for a couple of hours. It seemed like I spoke to her for months that time, couple of hours. And I think in hindsight today I can tell you better sense prevailed because the very next morning at 7:30, I found myself behind the reception of my dad's small hotel. A, I'd never gotten up at 7:30 in my life. B, this was a work setting. So I learned how to take care of a restaurant that he had, housekeeping, all of those things. But I also learned that my dad is doing a fantastic job of running a hotel. Now this is telling me in my mind what am I going to be doing here? Because he's such a rock star at what he does, how do I find my place under the sun? While I'm thinking of all of that, one day a foreign tourist walks in. Now this is pre Euro era. He walks in and he pays us in Dutch guilders. We convert the Dutch guilders and turns out to be multiple Indian rupees. Now I'm thinking to myself, this guy paid us in Dutch guilders. What if I'm able to get all my 40 rooms full of foreign guests, I can double the family income, double the revenue and become a star in my dad's eyes. With that mission in mind, I started thinking, what should I do? During that time there was this new phenomena that people were talking about called the Internet. In Delhi there were two places, the Maurice Shelton Hotel and the British School Library. Both of them were exorbitantly expensive for half an hour sessions, which was super slow as well, so I couldn't accept them. So while I'm thinking what should I do with the Internet? I know I can connect with the world. I'm talking to my cousins overseas and all of that. I see an ad, a computer company says we're looking for cyber cafe partners. I jumped at the opportunity. We signed up for the cyber cafe. We broke half of a restaurant, put in the cyber cafe there. And now a youngster had 24 hour access to the slowest Internet ever possible. Most of you guys don't even know how the Internet worked during that time. But I still had access to the Internet. I was so happy. I was coordinating with people from different parts of the world and I got into forums, you know, that was the thing to do. I got into forums and people said, I think you need a website. Now during those days, ladies and gentlemen, there are very few Bangalore companies which were doing websites for overseas clients. No small 40 room hotel needed a website. Somehow I convinced my dad, paid a lot of money and we got the website done. Six months of back and forth. The website is ready. Guess what happened to my business? After the website was ready in six months, I learned my first lesson in Failure and to understand that just having a website doesn't work. I deep dive back into the forum. Then I started asking people what to do. Somebody said, I think you need a. You need to tag your images. Tagging images. Then I learned how to do that. Some people said put in some call to actions, okay, I'm not a marketing guy. I mean I was a streetcar racer put into this kind of business, okay, I put in that stuff. Some people said you need to have a, you have to have different landing pages. Some people said toll free numbers. You know, people from Europe have different kinds of expectations when they come from the website. All of those things. I started tweaking around with my website. Took six, eight, nine months of learning, kept on doing things. Some things started clicking and one landing page and one query form started performing. I got four, five queries. I was very excited. I was emailing them, they were emailing me back. Imagine this was a big phenomenon. You're talking to people in different parts of the world. I'm connecting with them. It was a lot of fun. Then I realized that I wanted to do more. I wanted to connect with these people deeper. I had this small camera, it was a cabin camera. I think I put it in front of me and I recorded a video to say, hi, my name is Aviarya. This handle used to be Ask Avi Arya back then as well. And I used to say that, you know, this is my dad's hotel. I can come, you know, I can help you travel to India and all of those things. And it used to take six to eight hours maybe. Sometimes I had somebody in the office who would upload the video. It never went to the other side. But the video that made it to the other side got back customers who said, we're ready not only to travel with you, but we also want to travel to different parts of India. They came to our hotel, they started paying us money. This phenomena started working. We started having guests. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 15. This became mainstream business for us over the years. Very soon I sat down with my dad and realized we have enough business on books. See, my dad's hotel was already doing well. All this was additional business. Only 40 rooms. I started getting 40, 50 more queries every single week. Converting at 40, 50% ratio because we were doing video replies. I don't know how many people are doing video replies back then. In fact, I don't know how many people are doing video replies even now. 40 to 50% confirmation rate. We had so much business on books coming in. Ladies and gentlemen, that we bought another hotel. We were sure that we got to be able to run it. We bought another hotel. The business continued. In the next few years, we were able to buy another one and then another, and then another. It took my dad 20 years to build this first hotel after we discovered the Internet. In the next few years, we built four more hotels. I still own and operate some of these beautiful properties that we built from scratch. Phase two of the business, I was asked, I again went to the forums, because forums is what is information, is knowledge. Because we didn't have amazing speakers like we have here today to teach us things, right? So they've only forums. I went back to the forums. People said, why don't you go back to analytics and see what's happening? I went to analytics and people wanted to travel to India, different parts of India, Rajasthan, Kerala and all of that. So I developed a number of websites. Tourism, Rajasthan, Tourism, Caroline, all of them. All of them started doing well because the analytics pointed me in the direction. I made the same website with the same keywords, and the results were there. My mom joined the business and we started an online travel company. Phase three of the business happened when a company called Yatra called me. And subsequently another company called Make My Trip called me and they said, we've heard about some of your websites. They're doing well. Why don't we start an affiliate program now, ladies and gentlemen, if you promise to keep it secret. I tell you, I had no idea how an affiliate program worked, but I didn't want to sound foolish, so I asked them to send me an email and I said, I'm busy, I'll get back to you. In the email, they explained how this program worked. They said, we'll give you a couple of hundred rupees for a conversion of every ticket. And if it converts, you know, you get the money paid at the end of the month. I had nothing to lose. I still didn't understand the entire program. I had nothing to lose. I, you know, I did what they asked me to do. We started doing 40, 50 tickets a day, ladies and gentlemen. A few marketing. Back then, 50 tickets a day meant 40 to 50 thousand rupees a day. So the back of the Internet, we were able to build the hotel business, the travel business, and now the online ticketing business. The word got around, and one day I got a call from a company called TripAdvisor. See, the Internet ecosystem back then. I know I sound like a dinosaur, but it has been a while. The Internet ecosystem was so small that all the big companies knew each other and the small guys were also in the, in the arena. So I got a call from TripAdvisor and they said, we'd like, you know, we've heard your story, great job, all of that. Why don't you come and speak for us? And as you can see, I love audiences. I love speaking. I jumped at the opportunity. I started speaking for them and I started telling people how what I did for my dad's hotel business and how this happened. A lot of people started coming to me and said, can you do it for us? I never thought of doing these services for anybody else. You see how the journey started. The streetcar racer wanted to prove to his dad that I can do something on my own. And that's how the journey led me to digital marketing. And then I'm thinking to myself, should I do it for. Not for them. But we have so much demand and people were like this knowledge needs to be shared. So armed with a four member company today, 2009, the 15th August, that's the print of my first business card which said born 15 August 2009. With a four member team, we started Internet vocals. Then I went on to start a journey to help other businesses find their stories. Because now I knew the stories work. The story got me to many stages. And I realized that every story needs to travel. But a story needs to have a formula. So here's a formula. Story needs to have a name. My name is Abhijit. But to connect with my audiences and connect with people, I like to use the name Avi. So you can choose whatever you want. Your family, your skills, your achievement and your vision. Simple formula. But you should have two iterations of the story. A long format story like the one that I just told you. I've taken about seven, eight minutes to tell you my story. That's a long form story. And then a short story which I call the hero introduction. And the hero introduction formula is the same name. Family skills, achievements and vision. And this is how I introduce myself. My business card, my website, everything. Every time I open a conversation with somebody, here's how it goes. Hi, my name is ABHI Arya. Father of two girls, six dogs, husband two superwoman, a streetcar racer turned hotelier. Now social media marketer and founder of Internet moguls. This remains constant. This is on all my profile. That's how I'm known. And the story travels. So now look at the person right next to you and say, I will create my own story. Go ahead, do that. Excellent. Ready for Chapter two. Excellent. Ready for chapter two? Yes. Excellent. Hero micro niche. So I started doing digital marketing because, you know, that's how life led me to digital marketing. But after six months of working, I started failing. I didn't know what to do. So I tried to speak to some people and they got me connected to the heads of very large agency people. I was thrilled to have that meeting. I remember I was very excited when I walked into that meeting. He was the owner of one of the largest digital networks in the world and he sat me down and he said, avi, you don't need to speak to one industry because you'll perish. One thing goes wrong, political situation or whatever, you know, seasonality, you'll perish. Be a generalist, don't be a specialist. That's the first time, ladies and gentlemen, the voice in my heart spoke louder than the voice in my head. I thanked the gentleman for his advice and I knew exactly what I had to do. I went back and I you thank changed my business card and I said, I'm going to tell the world that we are the digital industry for the hospitality industry again, like I said, founded on Independence Day because I wanted to become a Specialist Today, after 10 years, 700 clients, more than 10 countries, we've delivered over 50 million in revenue for our clients and the teams have been growing and helping people all over the world. And some of the best brands have trusted us because you stick to one niche. So now my mission, ladies and gentlemen, and today for my today's talk especially, is to help everyone find their niche. How do you find a niche? Here's a formula. Everything has a formula, right? Here's a formula. Your passion points. Write down two passion points that you have your experiences, two experiences that life has taught you, the two audience sets that you would like to appeal to. Check out your competition and you'll make it into a business. But guess what? This formula worked for me. This was 10 years ago, now it's 2019. I think we all need to dig deeper and find a micro niche. For example, people say I want to become a gym trainer or fitness expert or open something. I'm saying how about doing post pregnancy training, just something more specific or digital marketing for hotels or maybe say, you know, I'm doing it only for restaurants and helping them fill up their weekdays. These are some more examples of hero micro niches. How to make a foster child feel at home. This is the business post pregnancy workout companies only somebody's just helping you teach Gmail, the Gmail school. It can Be as micro as that. Lessons in guitar, just bass, guitar, senior living. We all talk about Airbnb and all of those things. How about doing a co working or co living for senior citizens only. So think different. Think of a niche that you know that you can work with. Now turn to one person right next to you and say, I will find my micro niche. Thank you very much. Ready for chapter three? Yes. Ready for chapter three? Yes. Excellent. We'll give you access, we'll get these slides to you somehow. Let me finish my chapters. We'll get all these this information to you gentlemen, especially for you. I'll make sure we do get into it. Micro videos. Now we've got our story and our micro niche. But how do we get more clients? All of us want more clients using these formula. So how do we do that? So as every entrepreneur, I was impatient as well. And I thought, what do you do? Start me meeting more people. When you impatiently like I want more business, you start meeting more people. So I traveled around the world, started meeting more people. But I realized one thing which was very, very, very scary. The one thing that I have don't have control on and I have very limited is my time. And this formula of meeting people growing my business was taking, needing a lot of time, lot of travel costs. So I started doing micro videos. I started putting links to videos, sending to people on LinkedIn. You can do that, you know that, right? I started doing it on WhatsApp. Because most of the times to be able to get in touch with senior management of companies who you want to do business or partnerships with, they're on WhatsApp. It's as simple as that. I started doing Facebook videos and then I started from 2009, 2011, kept on making videos on YouTube, understood how I can reach out to people. Videos didn't stop. Guess what happened? My conversions obviously increased. But another amazing thing happened that the cost of customer acquisition decreased. We all want cost of customer acquisition to come down, right? That's why we are here. We want to learn how to get more customers, spend more time with our family and still grow our business. I was able to spend more time with my family. But then the story got around that this guy is making videos. And I started making videos and I started sending it to the biggest influencers in the world. Because I was like, if I can't travel, my video can travel. My message can travel through videos. Many people, many people were not doing videos. So I like videos. I did a video for Gary Vee, he liked a video. He did A video back for me. I went to his office, I took my daughter with me who's here in the audience and I went again to meet them. So all the big game changers, Guy Kawasaki, Ritesh Chadarwal, all these people I was able to meet because my videos were traveling. They're your sales people. They're on the Internet. Even when you're sleeping, they're connecting with people. People are connecting with your stories. Micro videos worked. So power of micro videos help you create influence. They help you get appointments, meetings, follow ups and much more. But I needed a method for this. So the method was. Here's the method. You can take a picture, here's the method. I call it three minute video sales method. My story, three pain points, proof and offering. And I'll tell you how this works. This hotel is also a client of ours and I don't know if Veerul is here. Virat is the marketing head. And so if I was to again pitch to viral. I hope we don't have to do that again. If I were to again pitch to viral. This is how we do a regular video pitch. Hi Veeral. Thank you for. I'm going to ask you for three minutes of your time to watch this video. That's the subject line. My name is ABHI Arya. Father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a super superwoman, a streetcar racer turned Nutellian, now social media marketer, founder of Internet Mobiles. In this three minute video, I want to talk to you about three things that could be your pain points. I know that you need more direct traffic on your website when you're losing money to third parties and so you want to get more rooms through your website. I understand that on weekdays in Bombay your hotel may be having lower occupancy, lower footfalls for your restaurant business. I can help you with social media to get more footfalls. I also understand that banquet room like these need to be filled up on an everyday basis to be able to shorten your sales cycle. What if I'm able to help you with LinkedIn campaigns so that your sales team get inbound queries? If all of these things are sounding interesting to you, here's the proof of some of the other hotels who worked with us. And I show them three proofs of other hotels in the similar category who've done this work and then I give them an offering. I'm at the end of my three minutes. Biru, thank you very much for your time. But here's an offer. Click on the link below. I don't have to travel. You don't have to travel. Click on the link. We'll set up a zoom call in which me and my team will give you a 15 minute audit on what you can do in the next 90 days to increase your room F and B and banquets. Thank you very much for your time. Again, my name is Avi Arya from Internet mobiles 3 minute video done. How would you like that? Spend more time at home but continue to grow your business. Show you a short video on this. Father of two girls, six jobs, husband, tour superwoman, streetcar racer turn hotelier, now social media marketer. Hope you're doing very well with a 110 room hotel in the middle of Gurgaon. What you're seeking is another 10% additional direct revenue to your website. Value based offers which are not available on the OTAs. All the hotels are doing that on how menus are made in the morning. There are restaurant opening and closing. That's going to be interesting. It's going to be about micro video mastery. It's going to be about digital marketing. It's going to be about all the new courses we're creating. It's going to be how you can leverage yourself as an influencer. How do you get more clients? What is the most crucial time? How do the recorders get so that our teams think rooms FMB banquets all the time as the experts for wedding information and how to find your hero niche. How to grow your business using videos. Urgency about this trip was how to help hotels get extra revenue that they've lost in this month because of low revenues. So they can make up more than make up for it in the next six to nine weeks. So six to nine weeks is a very short time. What are the quick things that they could do? So please click on the link below. I've taken three minutes of your time. Please click on the link below. You'll find a calendar link which is an appointment on Zoom On Video. You don't need to travel. I don't need to travel. We'll meet for 15 seconds but my team and I are going to give you a great 15 minute audit on how you can grow your restaurant, hotel and banquet business in the next 90 days. If you find this 3 minute video useful, click on the link. Another 15 minute Zoom call where we give you a free audit by expert team and I are going to be there and we promise you we deliver to over hundreds of clients and you will not be disappointed. It's already about four minutes. Thank you for watching this video and I look forward to seeing you inside the Zoom call. Take care. Thank you very much. You will create micro videos. They work. I'm running out of time. I'm going to take my last chapter. A formula. Success needs a formula. I knew I found something. I have to found everything. I needed a formula. So I devised a formula. Ask a Vyaria video success formula. 3 videos a day, 15 a week, 60amonth. 720 a year. Worst case scenario, 10% conversion. 1 year. 70 clients. 10 years. 700 clients. Let's recap quickly. 4 things that all of you need to succeed in your business. Please repeat after me as loud as possible story Micro niche. Micro niche Micro videos Formula. Excellent. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of my family that's joined me here and my family back at home at Internet Moguls, thank you to each and every one of you for today.