In this introductory episode of the Secret Sauce video series, Parthiv Shah declares himself the "best telemarketer in the world" and backs the claim with a personal story from 1991. While watching a family VHS of his cousin’s engagement, he notices a girl named Deepa, pauses the tape, and immediately initiates a series of phone calls to his aunt and uncle to identify her. Using only land‑line phones, handwritten letters, and physical address exchanges—no email, social media, or cell phones—Parthiv orchestrates a courtship that culminates in a proposal to marry during his family’s upcoming trip to India. He frames the successful arrangement of a dual wedding as the biggest deal he ever closed over the phone, emphasizing that he needed no script. The video ends with a teaser for a follow‑up episode that will explain why telemarketing works so well in America.
Chapters
Hi, this is Parthiv Shah, and thank you so much for joining me in the Secret Sauce video series. Before we get started, I'm going to make a big, bold claim: I'm the best telemarketer in the world, and I have a story that can substantiate my claim. But before the story, I want to tell you something funny. My son, now he's 18, but we are talking about when he was about 8 or 9 years old. Rahul once came up to me out of the blue and he asked me this question, "Papa, are you a telemarketer?" "Yes, Rahul, I am," I said. And then I chased him down and asked him, "Hey, Rahul, what's a telemarketer?" And he looked at me with a straight face and answered, "A telemarketer is someone who tells a marketer what to do." Yes, I am very good at that too. But in this video, I want to tell you a story of my life. So take yourself back in time to February of 1991. We received a package in the mail from India. It's a VHS tape. It was a home video of my cousin getting engaged. So we are watching the, the video. It comes with an invitation for the family to come to India in December, November-December, to attend her wedding and stuff like that. So I'm there lying down on the couch, everyone's coming, going in and out of the living room, and we are watching this home video of my cousin getting engaged. And then I see this girl sitting next to the bride. I think that was the first time I hit the pause button on the remote. That's the first time I found the pause button on the remote. And I pause, and then I call my mom. She's in the kitchen. Hey, Mom, who is this girl? And my mom's like, "Ah, I don't know, probably a relative." I'm like, "Can we find out?" And my mom says, "Sure, when we call your aunt, we'll ask about her." And I'm like, "Can we call her now?" And okay, so now I had my mom's attention. So I— we call and we talk to my aunt and my uncle and we ask, "So who is this girl sitting next to the bride?" And they were, first of all, completely taken off guard. So, they had to think for a minute and then they said, "Oh, that's Deepa." Well, who is Deepa? As it turns out, Deepa is my aunt's best friend's daughter. And as luck would have it, Deepa's grandmother and my grandfather both were like 5th, 6th generation cousin or something. So, the families knew each other all along. And so, we finally exchanged phone numbers. We're talking '91. No emails, no Facebook, no cell phones, no nothing. We exchanged addresses. We did exchange telephone numbers, desk phones. I have a desk phone. She had a phone in the building, not in her house. So, I had to call the neighbor and say, "Hey, can I talk to Deepa, please?" And they will go go fetch her, and 10 minutes later I got to call her back. We wrote handwritten letters to each other, we sent pictures to each other, and then we decided that when the family comes to India in November, we will get together and decide what we want to do next. Now, fast forward to June, June, July, yeah, June, and I tell her, Hey Deepa, when we come over, we are going to meet and we are going to decide what to do. But if we plan our wedding now, we can get married in November around the same time when we are coming in for my cousin's wedding. And then we can have both the weddings together. What do you think? Would you say yes to that? And she said, "Yes." So if you want to have a claim that you are a better telemarketer than I am, beat that. So that's the story of my life. The biggest deal that I closed right over the phone. And you know what? I didn't even need a script for that. I didn't even need a script to record this video. I just told the story. All the fun aside, in the next video, I'm going to tell you why I think telemarketing is working so well in America. So please head on over to video number 2 and let's talk about why telemarketing works. I'm Parthiv Shah and I'll see you in the next video.
