In this video Nikhil Sai (also known as Mithun Ikhalsai), a 19‑year‑old dropout who built a $1 M marketing agency in two years, recounts a full‑day mentorship session with a multi‑nine‑figure entrepreneur who grew a company to $200 M in revenue and sold it for a $360 M valuation. Nikhil shares the mentor’s key lessons and how they reshaped his own business approach. He describes his early complacency after rapid success, a failed software startup, and the realization that his core strength lies in marketing and sales. The mentor emphasized the need for a compelling, evolving "why," thinking in decades rather than years, and making bold sacrifices. Practical advice covered overcoming personal insecurities about appearing in ads (either by confronting the fear or hiring external talent), building a second‑level leadership team with C‑suite hires to shift focus from tactics to strategy, and investing cash back into the business instead of lifestyle luxuries. Nikhil was urged to avoid comparing his path to others, to become the best in his niche, to take calculated big risks, and to form low‑friction partnerships for client acquisition. He also stresses the value of seeking mentors who are at least twice the size of your business, whether through paid consulting or relationship building. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to comment for more mentorship insights.
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In this video, I'm going to share you my learnings of actually getting mentored by a multi-nine-figure entrepreneur, an entrepreneur who actually built a business to $200 million in revenue in just 5 years and sold that business to $360 million valuation for a private equity firm. I actually had, luckily, a consulting day with him for a full day, and I'm going to share you my key learnings where he was actually consulting my business and what are the things which I learned as an entrepreneur which I believe everybody else needs to learn and start implementing in their own business. So stick to the video till the end. So this was a problem, right? Like I'm young, you know, I started as an internal broke dropout. The reason I got into business was complete desperacy to actually get out of the situations which I was in, my family was in, and the environment we were living. So, you know, I made it to the top. You know, I made $1 million in just 2 years for my own marketing agency. I've helped my clients generate over $500 million in results for themselves through, you know, our funnels and marketing and automations and me actually helping them with marketing and whatnot. And after getting to a certain stage, I felt complacent. I felt comfortable and I started getting a little unclear on the longer version of where I actually wanted to go. One of the biggest reasons was I actually have a business, my marketing agency, which was generating $100,000 a month and it just almost felt, you know, cheat code to me like, oh, I'm making money so easily. So my brain couldn't accept it. So I created a different startup where I lost half a million dollars overall and it was a software-based company and it just didn't align with my actual long-term goals. So I killed it. And before that, I used to think super long-term and have these visions and all these crazy thoughts about what I want to do in future. But once I actually like lost half a million dollars in a business, the belief that I had that everything I touch will be gold, like, came to the actual truth, which it is not. I'm good at marketing and I'm only good at this. I should pursue one thing. Marketing and sales are my strength. So it kind of gave me a few steps back and I stopped thinking about bigger risks which I should take. So a different business failed, but unfortunately I even stopped because of that taking bigger risks in my current business. This actually made me complacent. This actually made me comfortable where I am, and I was always giving the power to something which I can't control. So he told me that I need to work on my strong why. Once I actually have a compelling future for myself, once I actually create a clear reason on where I should go, then the future will always show up. I will have the motivation to get the work done. I will have the motivation to do the things required. I will have the discipline to actually show up every day. And do stuff overall. So having that clear why and never losing that focus is very key. Never start a different business while you're already juggling between your actual business. Now the second thing is I actually have a lot of insecurities about myself while I'm actually running ads. You know, I'm brown-skinned, I have thick accent, I'm from India, I'm just 21 years old, you know, I have no college degree and stuff like that. All of these things are mental insecurities and I was uncomfortable to show my face on ads and run them. Even though my clients print money left, right, and center while they're running ads, they have 5, 10, 20 times ROAS while they're running ads. I know I could literally run ads and have 5, 10, 20 times ROAS as well. I'm just not doing it because I feel uncomfortable because a bad memory when I was in 2020 when I actually launched my ads, somebody did some negative comment. All I was just thinking about that was that one thing which created bad memories and then the ad account got shut down. I never reapplied for it. Kaboom. I skipped the situation. I didn't face the truth. And this time I was getting comfortable, you know, I was not marketing myself and he was asking me why. I was giving him some bullshit reasons, but he discovered that I don't want to market myself. So he told me that if I don't want to market myself, which is the situation which I was feeling complacent with, I should do it regardless of how I feel. That's the first option. Second option, on an alternate level, I could hire this person. I could hire, you know, people, you know, who are Native Americans to do the ads, which was so simple. But I actually didn't look at it from the fundamental perspective. I was masking the problem up with many more things. I was complicating the problem so I couldn't discover the truth myself. So this is why it's crucial to have business mentors. I mean, somebody who has ran a multi, multi-nine-figure business can actually spot things much better. But I'm saying no matter which level business you are in, try to find somebody who's at least 2 times bigger than you and get consulting from them, get support from them, get mentorship from them. It doesn't need to be paid every time, like, you know, the fast way. It could also be the slow way. You build friendships, you build relationships, You give value, you get value back. So few more things he was saying is building a second level leadership team and having right partners around me and actually hiring C-suite level teammates for my company. So I've hired a lot of people in my company who are operators, who kind of do some stuff and who kind of get things rolling. They give me my time back. What this mentor was suggesting was I actually need to get expensive teammates. Just building a second level leadership team will actually help me scale my company, who will have more strategy discussions with me so that I don't need to just spend all of my time with tactical stuff, but actually get into strategy, which will grow my business. And as I mentioned, I was getting complacent with the net worth I was actually holding and the cash which I was holding and the other things which were keeping me comfortable. And he gave me very interesting suggestions that do not measure your success by money. Don't hold it, like don't have it, like throw it in somewhere where you like can't touch it, can't feel it, or can't have the comfort of spending it. And that was a very important and interesting suggestion for me. And yeah, just spending it the right way was what I actually learned from that. And of course, he was suggesting me to become the best in the game in the marketing and sales space and take bigger risks, you know, risk it all if required. Because I'm 20 fucking 2, you know, I just don't have so much to actually lose. If I can lose all of it which I already built, I could come back 3x speed, no questions asked. So he was like, hey, take bigger risk, you will see exponential growth, but you know, don't make dumb risks, you know, that's what he said. But overall, it was a very good suggestion. Again, few things he was actually pointing out, you know, I actually enjoy having sales calls. I enjoy my time being on sales calls. So I was like over-obsessed taking my own sales calls, but he was suggesting to hire a full-time sales operator or actually like a sales head to kind of take so much off my plate and build like a proper sales team and not just me leading my enterprise sales or agency sales or coaching sales or whatever it could be. And he was suggesting me, because I have time right now and I'm kind of redoing my infrastructure, he was suggesting me to build a strong base, a strong infrastructure to build a scalable business which could actually hit 9 figures in revenue, you know, a billion dollars in valuation, all of that stuff in a very long term. That doesn't mean I want to sell my company, but it's always better to build companies which are more valuable than companies which are total shit. And an interesting learning he was actually sharing, which I actually can agree with, is I was actually still, even though I consciously want to think long term, unconsciously, subconsciously, I was actually thinking short term. I wasn't playing the 10, 20, 30-year game. I was thinking about the 3, 5-year game. Helped open my eyes up and help me understand that I should actually think in decades, not in years. That was a very good realization. And this is probably one of the most important advice everybody should actually listen to, and it was also an aha moment for me when I was actually on that call. He was asking me what was my true vision, and I was always using a different name and different person's success to attribute about my plan or to kind of explain my plan. And he gave me a very strong suggestion. I'm trying to compare myself by looking at other people and their shortcut, and I'm assuming that those are things which I need to do. Instead, I should actually focus on my business and create my own roadmap for success. So he gave me a suggestion to not compare my business or my success with somebody else's personality or somebody else's business or their success. I just need to be focused on what I am good at and just be fucking best at it. And he told me that the worst I could do is comparing myself with somebody else. And he also suggested that I never should actually think that I have arrived, which is a feeling I'm already in because I had all these crazy thoughts about hitting the 2 comma club, the 2 comma club X award, the $100 million award. I've done it all, you know, at the age of 21. And after doing all of these achievements, I, I felt like everybody I wanted to be, and I had no more like clear goalposts after that. And that's where I got complacent. Again, another crucial suggestion. He wanted me to go all in into business investments, which is investing everything into business, building better teams, better operations, better fulfillment, better marketing, better ads, whatnot, and spend on talent. And not get into crazy cars, you know, stuff which doesn't matter, or wasting money on things which doesn't matter overall. And he told me to work on my why continuously and make it more clear, create a compelling future which gets me my why much faster. So why is a question everybody needs to ask every day, and there is no good answer, no right answer, no wrong answer. It's just what you feel that day. So you really want to work towards it, and it only will change every time with time. So you want to be conscious about that. and you always want to keep it evolving and make it bigger. And one thing I really learned is if you make a sacrifice, you win. I made a small sacrifice when I was young. I made a few million dollars. Now if I want to get to 10, 100, 500, or a billion dollars, I want to make much bigger sacrifices. And because I was complacent, because I felt I've arrived, I was not able to have the right mindset to make the sacrifices. But from this call, it really helped me to understand like what I was actually not willing to give up. And now I'm ready to sacrifice. Now I'm actually taking up a challenge to sacrifice as much as possible to get there, because you always need to be in momentum. So I've not only consulted this one guy, I've actually consulted multiple other people. In case if you like videos like this where I actually share my learnings of what I actually learned by actually getting mentorship from highly successful entrepreneurs, people who have built multi, multi, 9-figure companies, I'm happy to share them as well. If I actually paid for it and I got the value, if I can share, and if you can get the value, Nothing like it. It's a win-win-win. So let me know in the comment section and I'm happy to share more videos just like this. One last thing before going, he suggested me to build great partnerships because partnerships are one of the easiest ways, you know, to actually acquire more clients and contribute to much larger revenue, especially easiest form of revenue because the friction is low. These are not cold audiences. You could just exchange lists and build rapport and build great partnerships and, you know, create much better incentives overall for your clients to come towards you. So that was pretty much what was suggested overall. If you like this video, make sure to comment down and let me know so I can know that you guys are liking this type of content so I can make more of this content. But that's pretty much it for now. Once again, this is Mithun Ikhalsai, 19-year-old dropout turned millionaire in just 2 years running my own marketing agency while helping my clients generate over half a billion dollars in results. And I am the world's youngest $100 million award winner. And no shit, you can still get complacent, so get uncomfortable, make bigger sacrifices to get better results. The one who escapes the pain can never get the result he actually wants. You always want to face it, and that's the situation I'm in, and I I'll leave it for now. Bye-bye.
