1% Better Every Day (ft. Ansh Singhal)

I'm 18 years old. I go to Capel High School. I run a digital marketing agency. In about 4 days, I'll be flying out to Japan to basically lead market an entire event over there. When I first started, actually, you don't think of it as a business necessarily. You know, it was a big passion project for me.

That's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is like what you've done at such a young age is super impressive.

One thing that I've realized that a lot of people in the older generation are a little lacking is social media and AI.

If you're not transforming your Your daily work today, you're, you're gonna be transformed hourly.

Oh yeah. Welcome to Digital Voices, where healthcare and life science leaders explore the real work behind transformation. This podcast is about people, leadership, and the conversations that move healthcare forward. Now your host, Ed Marx.

Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. So excited today 'Cause we're flipping it a little bit. We're gonna have a lot of fun here with Anch. Anch, welcome to Digital Voices.

Hey, Ed, thank you for having me today. I'm excited to, you know, hear about all the questions that you have for me, and it's just a blessing to be here, so.

Yeah, we like to mix it up a little bit. A lot of times we just have healthcare, tech, but every, I don't know, 7 or 8 episodes, we like to do something different just to add a little bit of diversity and flavor. And you and I got connected actually because of your mom and dad.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a crazy connection 'cause it's like, Our, like how I know you is literally through my dad and my dad knows, like we basically got connected through the CEO, like Daymond basically connected us, which is like crazy connections and such. So yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We were at a party together. I forget what Indian celebration it was.

It was the related to Ganesh. Yes. Yeah. Yes. It was related to that.

You know, we do it every year, so yeah, it was a lot of fun. And then I found you to be super interesting. I mean, you're, you're like a high schooler.

I am a high schooler.

Yeah, so tell us a little bit about yourself.

So I'm 18 years old. I go to Kapelle High School. Again, like he said, my name is Anshin Kaul. I run a digital marketing agency. It's called A1 Media. I've been growing it for about 2 and a half years now. I started my sophomore year of high school. And when I first started, I actually had a co-founder when I first started. So that's actually one of the biggest stories I like to tell people is like, if you're in high school and you're trying to start something, try to start it with someone because It's way easier to start something in high school with someone else because they're going to push you and motivate you to do better than trying to do it yourself. It's like one of the biggest things that I stood by at first and it helped me a lot. So when I first started, actually, I didn't, you know, with any business starting in high school especially, you don't think of it as a business necessarily. You know, it was a big passion project for me. I love taking photos and videos before even I thought about starting a company. I loved just— I had a freelance page, it was called @onchinhophotos. Funny enough, my brother actually pushed me to start that Instagram. So we were on a little family trip in Vegas and he was like, hey, you know, you started taking photos and everything, I think you should start showing this to the public.

Yeah.

And I was like, okay, maybe I'll start an Instagram. And that was kind of my step into like the photo world, the video world. Going into that first year, you know, My biggest thing was just like connecting with people and really learning the market, trying to see what I could do. Again, it wasn't in my mind that like I wanted to start a business. Yeah, it was just like, hey, this is a big passion for me. I love taking photos. So yeah, that's a little bit about me.

That's another great lesson, right? You have a passion and oftentimes, you know, you follow the passion and everything kind of falls into place. So before we get too much further, Two really important questions I ask all my guests, and the first one: What songs are on your playlist?

Songs. Okay, so I'm a big, I'm a big listener to rap music. I love like R&B and rap music. You know, just to get me hyped and stuff, especially when I'm filming and everything. My favorite artist is I'm not sure. Have you ever heard of Gunna?

No, no.

So he's a big, he's a big rap influencer. I just love his lyrics and stuff, which. I think it's— I find it motivating a little bit, but he's great. So some of my top songs, sold-out dates. I also am very big into like religion and stuff, so I am very religious. I listen to the Hanuman Chalisa every morning, so that's always on my top. That's probably the top of my playlist, actually.

All right, we're going to add that to our playlist. We do have a Digital Voices playlist on Spotify. Yeah, so we're always asking, adding new music, and one of the reasons we ask that question And then the second thing, are there like words that you live by or quotes or mantras?

So one of the biggest things that I actually stand by, I picked it up in early 2025, it was called Kaizen. So Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy. It basically just means like continuously improving yourself or getting like 1% better every single day. Right around January of 2025, so early 2025, I was kind of plateauing. That was the time when I had realized that like, I'm transitioning this from a passion thing to like actual, like an actual business. And I had seen a vision in it. So going into 2025, I read a book called Atomic Habits. You probably know that.

Oh yeah, I have that book.

Great book. It's an amazing book. I suggest it for anyone in high school. It's an amazing book. Talks a lot about, you know, self-discipline and really being able to do something crazy in high school. So one of the biggest things in that book was that phrase kaizen. And it had stuck with me really well. And I was like, you know, this is something that I want to implement in my life.

Yeah.

So going into 2025, I implemented it and I had seen so much growth with literally just that word. And I believe like God had literally put that word in front of me for a reason. So yeah, I stand by that word all the time.

And so tell us about your life a little bit, like growing up. So are you from Dallas-Fort Worth? Where are you from? Yeah, yeah.

So I'm born and raised in Dallas. I've always lived Kapelle my whole life. Which made it kind of easy to build friends and build relationships. I love moving around though. I'm a big traveler, a big adventure guy. So, you know, going on hikes, doing all of that stuff, you know, just traveling to the beach, taking Airbnb here and there. Like, I'm a huge, huge advocate for that stuff.

All right, well, let's talk a little bit about A1 Media because that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is like what you've done at such a young age is super impressive. I mean, this isn't like, like when I was in high school, my business was I had a TP company, like toilet paper company where we would get paid to toilet paper people's houses. So this is much— what you're doing is much adding much more value to people's lives. Yeah, I mean, it's significant what you're doing. So tell us, maybe you can't name them specifically, but tell us about a couple clients and what are you doing?

So yeah, so a couple of clients, I actually just picked up one of my bigger clients just recently, Pylon Football. So they basically run 7-on-7 tournaments. It's a style of football that you can play where it's like 2-hand touch. So they basically run tournaments all around the nation. And I've been brought on as like the creative director of the brand. And this isn't like some small brand, like this is a global brand. So they're actually flying me to Japan next week.

That's crazy.

Yeah, so in about 4 days, I'll be flying out to Japan to cover, to basically lead market an entire event over there. And that's probably been my biggest breakthrough, my biggest opportunity that I've been given so far. Other than that, I work with Adidas as well. So I run a lot of the tournaments in the South region, especially on the basketball side, running a lot of those lead marketing and also just creative direction on that stuff. But I'd say those 2 are my biggest tasks currently.

Yeah, no, that's super impressive. You're like, you know, my kids, and we're not here to talk about my kids, so we won't, we're not going to go deep there, but they are surpassing their parents for sure in terms of what they're doing. You're doing the same, as great as your parents are. They're very great people. I really love hanging out with them. So that's really cool. So, and I know you're expanding, right?

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. Tell us a little bit about that.

Growing for sure. So actually one of my biggest goals for 2026 is to really build and expand my operational side of everything. I really want to grow more pillars of success within my business. So obviously we started with the media side of it. Going into 2025, I had picked up a mentor. Best decision of my life. I think Anyone at this age should have a mentor. Like that is what changed my, the scope of my entire business. And that's actually when I picked up the marketing sector as well. So the marketing sector consisted of things like website design, running SEO, you know, building Google and Facebook ads for clients, social media management, all of those different pillars of success that I had added on.

Yeah.

That's one of the biggest things I'm trying to scale in 2026. So the media side is there, you know, I love it, I love doing it, but there's a huge market within those other 4 and 5 pillars of success that I'm really trying to get into. So.

So how are you learning all these things? So you come up with all these creative ideas, what's feeding you? You're pouring that out into others and to your clients. What's coming in? Where's the source of what's coming in?

Yeah, yeah, so I would say the biggest thing, I had mentioned it earlier, is, you know, having a mentor. So the mentorship is really good because you're able to learn from someone that's potentially doing 8 times more or better than what you are. And it's just like, that's going to give you the motivation and the kind of the mindset to be like, hey, you need to, you know, you need to do better every single day.

Yeah.

So he has taught me a lot on the marketing side of like things on the operationals. So how to build and scale a team, how to build SOPs, how to run, you know, SOWs properly, all of that stuff. But it's not something of like, he's doing all the baby steps.

Yeah.

He's not making me do any of this. He's like, hey, I'm giving you the asset for this. It's your choice to implement it. If you actually want to do something amazing, you have to be willing to actually put in the work and make something happen. Learning by experience is a huge thing for me. So making mistakes and understanding where I'm coming from, from those mistakes, That's a huge thing for me.

Yeah. What about creativity? Like, do you think you were just born with it, or what are some other things that happened in your younger self that helped you to be creative and be the way that you are?

So the creative side, that's actually, that's a great question actually. So on the creative side, I would say I picked it up really through, I actually love playing the drums. So yeah, so in middle school I played the drums for 3 years of my life. And I enjoyed it so much. Like, I found a lot of passion and just like, you know, with the marimba, there's so many different keys and stuff. And you have to be so creative with that. Even if you had descriptive music, like, you had to be able to be creative on how you would get to those notes, how you would be able to, you know, influence people with that music. So I feel like that's actually kind of where my creativity had spanned out of. You know, it's kind of crazy from something like drums and stuff, but—

Yeah.

I would say even before that, I loved, I've always been in like the sports realm. So it doesn't have anything to tie into like creativity necessarily, but like just, you know, being with sports and such, I feel like I found a lot of like enjoyment in that. And just like that kind of helped me find a passion in certain things. So yeah.

What about parents? Are there anything your parents ever made you do that you kind of rolled your eyes? Now that you're 18, we can, you can talk more freely. That you kind of rolled your eyes, but kind of like in hindsight now as you're growing up and building this business, you're like, I'm glad they sort of made me do that.

Yeah. 100%. Like, I mean, I couldn't have been in the position that I am without my parents. Like, that's just like a God-given gift. Like, genuinely, I don't— what they do for me is like more like, it's, it's amazing. It's, it's so blessing for someone like me. And I, I appreciate all the opportunity that I have. So I, I, you know, I'm, I'm a huge advocate for school and such. Obviously they want me to do the best that I can in school, but just me being a 17-year-old doing the things that I am, I had a little bit of an ego and it was just like an arrogance thing.

Yeah.

Nowadays I understand where they come come from. But, you know, I kind of wish I hadn't. Obviously, I wish I didn't have that arrogance and stuff.

Yeah.

But it was just like a thing of like, oh, like, obviously I'm gonna do good in school. Like, I'm gonna get as good of grades as I can, build the relationships that I can, do all of that. But it's just like, I really want to build this business. Like, I'm just so passionate about it. I love it so much. So that's probably the biggest thing is they just made me stay grounded on the school and stuff. And that really helped me, you know, understand how to build discipline and Do all of that. Really good stuff.

So, you know, oftentimes we talk about mentoring. You mentioned quite a bit. I'm also a big believer in reverse mentoring. So, this is the younger generation mentoring the older generation. So, let's just say that I, or a prototype, someone like myself, is your mentee. What are some words of wisdom when you look at the kind of the next generation above you that's, you know, older people? What are some words of wisdom you might drop on them?

Oh, that's a great question. So, That's a great question. I would say one thing that I've realized that a lot of people in the older generation are a little lacking is social media and AI.

Yeah.

I'm a really big believer in building a personal brand. So building a brand around yourself, even if you have a business, I think building a brand around yourself is a huge thing. And I feel like a lot of people older than me, you know, they don't understand that part of it. They're like, oh, you're building A1 Media. Why are you trying to build Anson Hall on top of it? You know, isn't that too many things to cover? That's a huge thing, I feel like. And I feel like a lot of people around y'all's age kind of lacks that. That and also AI. I think learning AI is just like a must-have at this point. I mean, I feel like you're going to fall behind if you don't. So that's something that, you know, they kind of just have to incorporate in their life, whether they like it or not. Like it's just kind of has to happen.

So. Yeah. A lot of people were sort of raised in this, I call false humility. And so you can't talk about yourself. You can't build a brand. They would never use the word brand, build your brand. Because that means that, you know, you're all about yourself. But those same people are the ones that are a little bit of trouble right now.

Yeah.

And so there's always a careful balance. So I'm a big believer in building your brand. What's next? Like, you're building your business, you're expanding, but like, if you could look out even further, like, you know, you're 18, like, when you're about to hit 30, what do you think your work might look like?

So on the long-term scope, I really want to— another one of my biggest beliefs and one of the biggest things I want to get into is Philanthropy. I love giving back. Like, I just realized that how much I love being able to give value to people, especially people that haven't been given the opportunity that I have. If I can give them any type of value, whether it's knowledge-based, whether it's an actual opportunity, I would be more than happy to do that. So obviously, when I'm in when I'm in my 30s, I want to be able to really get into philanthropy in the sense of like giving out free knowledge. And I want to start that now at 18. I'm doing that now.

Yeah.

I post on social media about. different frameworks that I use. One of the frameworks actually I just implemented is called the A3 framework.

Have you ever heard of it? Yes, I have actually.

It's a great framework. It's a problem-solving framework. Just actually started implementing that. But like things like that, I want to be able to give value like that. Even when I'm 25, 30, I want to be able to give as much as I can to the people that don't have as much opportunity as me. It's just like the creative— I feel like as I'm going to get older, the creativity might fall apart a little bit. You know, who knows though? When I'm 30, I might want to sell the company and go straight into building something new and also devoting a lot of my time into philanthropy and actually giving back to people. I'll actually tell you a funny story. So I hired a video editor for my personal brand. He basically scripts all my content, does basically everything for my personal brand and just really builds it really well. I had gotten on an hour call with him. At first we were talking about how to color grade and everything, how to make the footage look cinematic and really beautiful, uh, but it got really deep. And he actually just got married after a 7-year relationship. And he was like, oh, you know, like, my wife is moving to Canada and I won't see her for a year. And like, the, the thought of— after he told me all of that stuff, he basically was like, oh, I'm gonna move to Canada in like 5 or 6 months. And I'm thinking like, I'm gonna drop the agency, like the video editing agency, and pick up plumbing.

Yeah.

And I was like, man, I was like, where is this thought even coming? You're like one of the best editors I've ever worked with. And the thought of you going from video editing to plumbing, that didn't even like shot my mind. And he had told me that and I had realized, I was like, I mean, this guy's working 20 hours a day on video editing. Like he's, he, I mean, his opportunity and obviously him living in India and stuff, it's way harder. Him telling me that story, it like stuck to me. And I was like, man, like that really motivated me to be like, If I can do something amazing in life, I want to be able to give people like him an opportunity because he's passionate, he loves it, and he's disciplined. And it's just that he doesn't— he can't grow it well because he doesn't have the opportunity, right? So like, that just stuck with me, and it's just something that I really want to do, especially when I grow older. I think giving value at 18 is a little bit— you have to be more credible. But you know, I think any type of help I can give.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's very cool. So our audience is primarily healthcare. Okay. And I know you're 18, you haven't worked in healthcare, but your dad works in healthcare.

Huge healthcare guy.

And tech. And tech. And so when you take what you do know about healthcare, what are your ideas around healthcare? How can we improve healthcare, whether it's the experience or medicine or, you know, any thoughts about it?

Healthcare. Okay. So the healthcare sector, I'm not a huge healthcare guy, obviously. I mean, I'm big into like the business and marketing and all of that. On the healthcare side, I really want to, I'm just, I would say I'm more curious about what's going to happen on healthcare, especially with AI and stuff. I'm really curious. What do you actually think? What do you think about like the healthcare sector in the next 10 years?

Yeah, well, I think it's going to completely get blown up from what we know it today. And that, you know, you won't be seeing a primary care doc to control everything that you do. I think you'll use AI. I'm already doing that. I've been doing it for over a year and I talk to other people and it's just the wave.

Yeah, yeah.

No one's gonna stop it.

Do you think it's an exponential growth?

Yeah, I think we will see a hockey stick type of spike.

Upend?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably in the next year. You know, ChatGPT, we're recording in January 2025. ChatGPT just came out with their health version, and I guess there's a waitlist. And I think as that gets better, it's kind of like Waymo. When Waymo first came out, you know, people were like, oh, it's gonna get in accidents. Sure enough, I don't remember the exact number, but you know, you had twice more accidents than you did a person driving. Now it's twice less.

Okay.

And it's going to keep getting less, like flying an airplane. And so why would you not want to do Waymo? And it's the same with AI in healthcare. Yeah, sure. Probably right now there's still some junk out there and, you know, you got to be careful, kind of double-check, whatever.

Yeah.

But there's a lot of low-risk things that you could do yourself now. And that, like, that's what I do. And I think a lot more people are doing it. And as it gets better and better and better, I think that risk goes way down. And as that risk goes way down, utilization goes way up. For sure. For sure. And then, you know, we talk about how healthcare has a crisis in terms of a shortage of physicians, stuff like that. Well, I think it solves that shortage, and those physicians, instead of doing mostly primary care, will do specialist-type things.

Okay.

So you always need the specialist.

Yeah.

But man, basic primary care, I could go on and on, and I don't want to steal this time from you.

Yeah.

But I'm always curious, you know, what younger people who are sort of tech-forward, you know, think about, man, because I, you know, it's kind of ridiculous the way that Our healthcare system, obviously.

Oh yeah, for sure. And I think that's just one of the things I'm curious about is like, obviously moving into, I think more specialized jobs are going to be more so. I don't think, I mean, do you think those are going to get taken?

No, no. I think you always need specialists that are going to have to get in and cut you or what have you. But even a lot of that's going to be AI-driven. Although you think so. It probably is AI-driven. But there'll still be that need. It's interesting at Arizona State University, which I think is by student population, maybe the biggest. They have a new med school, I think maybe 1 or 2 years old, and all physicians not only are getting their medical degree but also engineering.

Oh, wow.

And to me, that makes total sense.

It does. It really does.

Because you want to know how to prompt, you know, you want to know how the tech part of it.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I know a lot of colleges are implementing AI classes now too. Like I had, I remember some school, so I just got into the school of SMU, the SMU School of Business. So I'm actually just committed there. And one programs they offer is like an AI, an entire course around AI. So I'm definitely gonna take it and just kind of see, you know, how can they teach me and what are they gonna teach me about? I mean, is it gonna be prompting? Is it gonna be like what model to use? Who knows?

Like— Yeah, it'll be super interesting to watch. And again, I think it's all the evol— it's so fast, the changes.

Oh yeah.

Where in the old days, you know, even though things were definitely transforming, it would just take years and years, you kind of take your time. But like you said, you know, I think it's a great lesson for our audience is if you sit around, You'll be way passed up.

Yeah.

And it's gonna be hard to catch up.

It is.

So I always tell people, you know, try everything, all the new stuff, try it, experiment. And if you're not transforming your daily work today, you're gonna be transformed out.

Oh yeah, 100%. Especially these days, that's the biggest thing, so.

So as we wrap up, you know, we talked a lot about a lot of different things, got some new music, learned a lot about you and learned about your business that you started a couple years ago and now it's growing, growing, growing. And some of the customers are just amazing. Logos that you have, and and your whole future, and some some of your thoughts. If if you think about my audience one more time being mostly healthcare and mostly probably around, I'm going to say the average age is forty. So you can have some early career. We can have some people like me that are past forty that are are I don't want to say towards the end of our career, but you know getting into that next generation. Words of wisdom. What else would you say to them?

So one, actually another thing I would say, I think a lot of people, like I said about opportunity, I think a lot of people have so much that they could give to people my age value-wise. If people were to post, kids are all over social media. If you were to start a social media and literally just talk about something healthcare-related or something in the medical space, that is, you don't understand how influential that is for someone like that.

Yeah.

Because That's the best way to learn. Learning from someone else is so impactful. I mean, genuinely, that's what's helped me grow what I have. And that's one thing I would tell people at your age, 40 or plus, is that give value to people like me as much as possible, whether it's on social media, whether it's in person, wherever it is, just give value. You don't know what that value could take someone. It could change someone's life. You don't know.

So yeah, I love that, especially in this day and age of all the tech, right? Back in my day, didn't really have that ability unless you met someone.

Exactly.

And happenstance. But now with media, we can scale all that.

Exactly.

You're a delightful human, a great person. I've learned a lot and I know my audience did as well. Thank you for being my guest on Digital Voices.

Thank you so much, Ed. I appreciate you having me on here. So. Thank you for listening to Digital Voices. We hope today's conversation And sparked ideas, reflection, and connection. Subscribe on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify Podcasts so you don't miss an episode.