10-days to launch of 'Small Town Bigger Dreams' paperback - Surprise

Hello everyone, welcome to day 12 of 21-day live challenge. Yes, I can't believe it's only 10 days to go for the launch of Small Town Bigger Edition. And I'm sorry I'm coming very late. I thought for a moment, should I go or not? But then I have made a commitment with all of you, so I had to come there. So thank you so much for watching this. And as you— if you would have seen, the title is Surprise, and this is about a surprise that I got when I had published the Kindle version of the book. And today I wanted to share a review video that I received. I mean, I did one of the interviews with, uh, inspirational interview with a special person, and she had done a surprise vlog for me earlier in the year. And I thought, why not talk about— and before I show you the actual video, and I, I hope I can do that with the Instagram, I wanted to really tell you that, are you doing any surprise for your loved ones? Are you doing any surprise for your team? Are you doing any surprise for your students or for your teachers? Because surprise is one thing that we all tend to ignore. Now, I honestly will say I am also very bad at planning surprises, whether it's for my family, for my team, or anyone else. But I love receiving surprises. And I think that's one thing that I would love to incorporate more as a person, that I do more surprises for people and, uh, more surprises for people and make them feel good. So now that I've talked about, let me tell you what exactly was this surprise. So this was video which I had done the inspirational interview of Narmada Kamalkannan. Narmada Kamalkannan is the head talent development for TCS UK. And we had known for a few weeks only before, before I did the interview, and I had actually sent the link of my Kindle book to her and she did a brilliant book review blog. And then she said a lot of good things about the book. So I thought, why not share that and get your feedback? I'm going to try something and please, if it doesn't work, please, I apologize in advance. Let me see if that works. I think you were one of the first one who read. Through the whole Kindle version. The paperback is still in progress, but yeah, you went through the Kindle version and you also posted a review of the book. Now I want to hear from your own words, what did you feel both as a reader and also as an author? How would you like to, you know, give a critical review, if you may, about the Small Town Bigger Dreams, the book.

Okay, so if you noticed, uh, the, the whole review revolved around, uh, Kitu, Kitana, who was also the neighborhood school kid, and our actual conversation where I gifted her your book, you know, after— don't miss this, Kitu— that way. I wanted to pull her into the interview today, but you know, it is her tuition time, and you know, there are online classes happening for her to prepare for whatever exam it is, so I couldn't Kachruddin. So first of all, um, I think going back to me as a school kid or a college kid, uh, especially when life was so much of a pressure saying that you cannot do this, all these things, your book is a, is a friend who comes and says, buddy, these are things that you can do. All you need to do is channelize these things rightly. And every time, you know, the challenges of a small town kid entering a corporate world or any other world is that we somehow get into the comparative zone. So we start comparing if I'm good enough to a kid who is from a city. Yeah. During my college, I always— I was not able to understand the jokes that the Chennai kids used to share. And I'll always be thinking, what, is there a double meaning? And they'll be like, hey, you're from a small down. And you know, it's almost a funny way of bullying as well. So a lot of instances where it pulls us down, it creates that inferiority complex. Your book is certainly— it's like the booster shot that's needed. Yeah. And every time I think if a college student or somebody who is in a corporate with 1-2 years of experience wondering. Um, I, I remember Rupa, who is, uh, who was from my batch, and the first time a client pinged her at work, she just switched off her system and she was like, she was trembling. She came and told her, I can't believe, I don't know what to do, why is the client pinging me directly? I'm not, I'm not even, I don't know if I'll speak right. And we all had to give her water. Uh, while it sounds very funny to people who don't understand this word, you certainly, you know, have brought the essence of these elements of the small town challenges. And these are booster doses where it can be in the handbag or in your— under your pillow. It's like every time, every day when you have smaller challenges, every chapter of your book is going to be, you know, very enlightening. And like I mentioned in my review, uh, your chapter about Edwise is something I really, uh, like. Apparently, I'm also talking about not to give free advice and why is it so. And that, the whole way of articulating it through your experiences was fantastic. I think you have given two examples and both I could relate a lot. So fantastic. And your book is certainly a booster course for them.

Thank you so much, man. And just for the record, I did not pay Navodha ma'am for this book review.

No, no, of course. I think, uh, when you sent me that you have published your book and this is the link, I did not even respond. I gave a thumbs up on the WhatsApp message and I thought, let me finish reading it, let me actually do a— if, if it is really good, you know, let me write about it or put an Amazon review. Because it was very inspirational, you know. Uh, I actually wrote a blog about it and sent you the blog. I, I don't think you even, um, you know, expected me to write two lines. We never— like, we both, uh, acknowledge we know each other for hardly a few weeks now.

Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, that was a very, very pleasant surprise. I did not expect anything like that. So yes, that was the surprise. And that was my message for today. Are you planning any surprise for your team? Are you doing anything for your people? Because now we feel really good when we get surprised. And this was my surprise. By the way, go and check out her blog, tigressandbutterfly.com. She's also available on all the, all the social media platforms. So do check out and I'm I'm a great fan of her writing and her blogs. She's amazing. Thank you so much once again, Haritosh Srivastav. That was months ago, but that kept me inspired for a number of weeks. If you can do something good, do some surprises for your team, for your family, for your community, or for your tribe. I'm sure you're going to enjoy that. That was the message for today. I am hoping to get some guests in coming days. I was supposed to get one, to be honest, but I couldn't. So hopefully we'll, we'll get him in few weeks. That's the only clue I can give now. Uh, so until next time, and once again, thank you everyone for making Small Town Bigger Dreams— even before it is launched, it was trending as top number 5 in personal time management and number 1 hot hot new releases. So thank you everyone. Thank you for providing me support and helping me, encouraging me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. So until next time, and thank you, Darryl. You are also very inspiring. Thank you so much for watching this far. It's great to be connected to you. So Darryl, thank you for watching this. So anybody, until next time, keep learning, keep growing and keep going out of your comfort zone. This is Haritosh Srivastav and I'm on a 21-day live challenge, and I'll be back tomorrow with Day 13 of 21-day live challenge. Until next time, stay blessed, stay safe, keep inspiring. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of the day.