The Story of the Accidental First Mover

That's why this, you know, this. My first draft of this book is called.

Ah, there it is. Man, I love books. I'm a big book.

Is that right?

I'm an avid crazy.

I'll send you one once it's ready. Thank you.

Great choice.

Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. I work mostly with hotels, so some very senior hotelier set. You need to promote yourself. And I'm like, you know what they say you're being slightly insecure when you're saying accidental. Go and tell the world that. There's a recent article that came out in a magazine in the UK or Dubai or somewhere which says the father of marketing hotels. It scared me.

And a big title.

I haven't shared that with my kids because I'm. I'm not. I'm scared of accepting that.

Right.

I told my dad because I wanted him to be proud of me.

It was. Was he?

Oh, for sure. And it's not easy to make him proud of me or whatever and that, that, you know, he keeps me on my toes. So that's his strategy. I told my wife, who's been my childhood sweetheart since we were 18 years old, and so she knows the whole journey from me being a useless nobody, driving streetcars and things. My dad will never let me marry you to now saying that, you know, this is what I. But I've never been able. I had to say accidental because it was not part of a plan. It just happened. When I see today people saying maybe today what I do going forward will be part of a strategy, of a plan, I feel I have less time because, you know, and I want to make the most of it. So. So I will say no to people I don't want to meet and all of that which we never said while growing up. So the accident is first mover in a way. I'm also giving credit to everybody around me, which is my parents and all that. And the universe saw serendipity or whatever happened, you know, And I like that. I mean, I feel things that are not in my control. I've always seen them as friends that, you know, I've always gone to sleep even now secretly telling you. I go to sleep with a prayer saying just take care of everything. And I know, like a child, I know that there is somebody who's going to make it okay. So how can I claim saying strategy of the hotel marketing guru?

It didn't happen for me like you were. Like you made this happen, like you willed it into existence.

If I did that, it would be so fake. My Book and then me introducing my daughters in the first page. No, again, the last page.

Here, here.

These are my two daughters. Eleven and nice. They as crazy as the picture. Great photo. I know. And so this one wants to become a YouTuber and this one, and she wants to take care. We have dogs to be a foster. So dog farm, at least hundred dogs and all of that. And I said, you have to pay for it yourself. This girl wants to become a rock star. And both of them want to give me 15% to be their agent, which I've accepted. But I said that, you know, you need to calculate. They thought that if they. One of the reasons for giving me 15% is because they feel they will not need to learn maths. Because I'm saying, you know what, the reason they don't like math. I said the reason you need to do math is because you know what, you become a rock star, you become a YouTuber. Brands come to you. They say, we'll give you 10% of whatever sales you need to calculate. But if our dad becomes our manager, we don't need to calculate somebody. You're taking a shortcut out. So we have a lot of fun with whatever we're doing in.

You're a very entrepreneurial dad.

Yeah. So my third book, and this is out, I mean this is out next month. This is only waiting for my. For me to stop being nervous and say it's ready to go. My second book, which is almost ready, 100 Questions from Top hoteliers across the world. Chefs, hotels, hotelier, restaurant owner, gm, general managers, all of that front office managers asking. They asked me questions and I've replied to them on social media. So that's the second book. The third book, which is about 60% ready, is called Bedtime stories for tomorrow's Entrepreneurs, which is nothing but a documentation of the 10 minutes that I have with my daughter before we go to sleep. So the bedtime story is my elder daughter is Raya and the other one is. This is Rayan.

So beautiful name. Aviana.

Yeah, she's named after me. You know, my sister called me a narcissist. Everything has to be your brand somewhere. I'm named after Avi. So she. So between Raya and Aviana, I don't know less if I've told you this. Did I tell you about the bedtime stories for future entrepreneurs? Okay, so this is the, this is the next book which comes out almost ready because it's just documenting nothing. No, this year is. Yeah, I'm on fire. So bedtime stories for Tomorrow is entrepreneurs which is so Raya. He knows Raya and Aviana. So Raya and Aviana, both of them for our bedtime stories they have a factory, chocolate factory of course because they love whatever sweets called Raviana, the name came together, Rayan, Aviana. So they make chocolates essentially. So every night before they go to sleep, the bedtime story is about they get up in the morning, they pray, first thing in the morning, very important to all of us. They pray, they go to the gym, very important. And nine o' clock sharp they reach their office. And then what happens in the office is everyday story. So this day before yesterday, last night I slept late. I worked with India so I didn't tell them a story. Day before yesterday our story was a gentleman called Paul who walks in and they call me dad. Paul has come in and he's from Walmart. I said guys, if you can get Raviana chocolates to sell at Walmart, you've got it sorted. So take care of him, show him the plant, show him how you get your cocoa and all of that. Show him the whole, this is fine. So they show him the whole plant, they show him everything. And about 2 o' clock in the afternoon they come to the conference room to negotiate. So Paul is like, I love the plant, I love everything. But 4.95 for a chocolate is very expensive. We need to cut the price. Now what will you do? So my younger one, she's seven, she says, oh, I'll tell Paul, you take it for $2. And then Raya, what have I taught you? Raya is like no, we don't compromise on the price, we only show value. Okay, so how will you show value? So they came up with different examples. Okay, we do this or whatever. So eventually what was agreed upon was that they will say because we're dog lovers and chocolate is not good for dogs. Apparently this is the only chocolate dog friendly chocolate in the world. So you can sell it to more people and all of that. And then Aviana, the seven year old came up with the fact that to emot 7 year old emotionally reach out to people, the COVID should have people when you, you know, like you're walking on the street and you look at a homeless man, you want to give him something. Sometimes you don't have change or money or whatever. Keep those chocolate and the COVID will have you running out of chocolate, emotional. So okay, fine, great, sell that. Sold those ideas to Paul, Paul said fine, 100,000 chocolates ordered, end of story. Good night guys, go to sleep. So every Night. There's a story like this, right? So it's because Les and I both believe that school and whatever is may not be teaching you, getting you ready for entrepreneurial life. Right.

It's definitely not right. It's definitely not right.

So I was just being a slightly. I was.

It's like the. You. Your bedtime stories are like essentially like a bedtime mba, right?

Exactly.

Bedtime case studies.

Exactly. So my.

Which is. Which is like a great preparatory course.

Right.

For entrepreneurship.

My thing was that, I mean, I hope I'm with them for as long as possible, but if I'm not, they move out of the house or if I'm not around or whatever. Whatever they do in life, this training remains with them. They want to go to Harvard maybe. They say, I don't want to go anywhere, I don't want to study. Whatever they want to do, this training will live with them forever. So this is what we do. Every night when I'm in town, I try to Skype with them from when I'm traveling. But when it's 9 o', clock, I have to be in the office and at 9 for them to sleep here. So I can't. So that's it. That's the next. I won't call it Venture, but it's. It's Rayan Aviana writing a book and I'm co authoring it. And guess what?

You're guiding. You're guiding it.

They, they negotiated with me. If the stories are coming from us, why should your name be there? Okay, I like that. Let me fight for my position in the book. So we, you know, we're having fun.

While very unique family dynamic. I know, super unique. I know by that it's really cool.

But I'm, you know, in a way, you know, we apples don't fall far from the tree. And my, my dad brought us up that way. He's like every time I said, you know, why don't you. Because I'm the biggest video game junkie. You know, even now till date, if I my long, my long distance flights, I'm looking forward to playing a game or two. So I used to my dad, how come every dad plays video games and you don't? He used to come back and give me a story of what he did at work all day. And I'm like, that's amazing. So this customer came and he didn't like the room, so he upgraded him and all of that. That's what I'm trying to do. Again, like I said, I fail to fight Take credit for what I'm doing. It's, you know, I think it's all. We just do what we are, you know, in the, what our ecosystem. And for the large part of our life, we don't even control the ecosystem.

Yeah, no, you have no control over the ecosystem. And I think, like, ultimately, like you and I think most people are the same, you have a very little control over the things that you didn't control when you were young.

Right.

The things that end up driving you, the purpose that you're.

And when you tell that as a story like you did about. And what's. What's sticking in my mind because I'm just renovating my house is, oh, my God. Award winning and changing homes. Because I keep on telling my wife, if you want to make money, we need find value, change the house. And she's like, no, I want to get settled forever. So what you said was like, oh, my God, I need to get this back to my wife. That, you know, this is how you, you know, this is how you grow. Well, and this is what a lot of Indians believe in. And I think any entrepreneur find value, move for it.

Yeah. And move quickly.

And move quickly.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Do you do that as well?

I would move quickly.

I mean, invest in real estate.

Yeah. You know, I'm like, I'm less like a real estate guy. I'm more an entrepreneur. I'm like, really interested in things that, you know, are more like social in nature just because of, like, who I am and what I drive for. So I'm like, more interested in the concepts that I pour a lot of who I am into the business that I have with the social concierge. And it's a very tough business. Like, from an economic perspective, events are very, very challenging. I know people always say that restaurants are the worst business in the world. And I always say, like, well, you at least you have 365 days in a restaurant to operate with events. I love that one.

I love that.

So it's one day every day.

I love that.

And so we need to.

I almost want to do this in slow motion next time. Yeah, one day.

We have one day a year. And to make a business model work. And it's a very, very challenging variable, you know, hard to control, difficult scenario to like, to really like.

And there's no formula to getting it right every time.

Very few, even the same event over and over. The formula changes as you grow. And so, yeah, it's as you grow.

And the audience around you, of course.

Changes and, you know, people get older, your core audience begins to have kids, and then all of a sudden you need an audience that doesn't have kids because it's an event that appeals to a younger demographic. It's a constantly changing environment. So for someone like me, like problem solver, it's a constant flux of problems to solve. So it's an endless well of place to put my energy. So, yeah, it's exciting.

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