Ep 63 Legacy Into Service A Conversation with Sarthak Mittal

Welcome to Remembering the Forgotten, a space where leaders think out loud without polish or performance. No scripts, no performance, just 2 people thinking out loud. These conversations aren't about delivering insight. They are about thinking together in real time. Because there are moments where you can feel that the answer is already there, but you can't quite reach it. And then something shifts, and suddenly it's simple. Not new, just clear. That's this space. There's a moment in life where ambition stops being about success alone. Where work is no longer just about growth or scale, but about answering something deeper. Today I'm joined by Sartak Mittal. Sartak comes from a family legacy that once built something substantial and then lost it. Raised by his mother and given responsibility early, He began rebuilding from a place most people never see. What struck me wasn't first his business. It was the person underneath it. Because sometimes what drives someone is not ambition alone. It's memory. It's pain. It's inheritance. And at some point, the question changes. It's no longer, how do I become successful? But rather, what am I here to continue, restore, or make real? Because it lives in me now. And with that, welcome Sertac to the show.

Thanks, Markus. And that's a great opportunity you have given me to actually tell about me, my story, and inspire thousands and millions of people. Thank you so much.

It's a real pleasure to have you here, Sertac. So before we begin,

yes,

just notice what becomes clear when nothing is in the way.

Right.

So here's my first question to you. Where can you just be yourself, untouched by expectation or performance? Okay.

So I would, before I answer it, I would like you to elaborate this question more so that I can give a more specific answer.

Absolutely. So the question basically goes like this: where can you just be yourself? That's the first part. That's already difficult for many people, untouched by expectation or performance, meaning where can you be yourself where expectations don't matter and it's not about performance, it's about Sartha.

It's about Sartha. It's about you. It's about soul. It's about purpose. So that's the base of any very, very successful person, right? And that is also a source of intrinsic motivation, right? So just imagine that when we were kids, right, we must play that video games, right? I was the big fan. Right, and we lost the track of time. And it is not like we are winning or we are losing, or what performance we are having. But that was something that was like an enjoyment. That was something we are doing it from the heart. Similar which applies on the life. I say that work is a It's a wrong term. It's nothing about work. It's about the thing that you love to do. For an example, whatever I love to do is empowering students. I love to speak a lot. I love to change their life, and that gives me a purpose, and that gives me enough motivation to work complete night, right? So as you know that our time zones are different, but still it makes me to work because I love it.

Mhm.

No one is putting a pressure on me, and if I underperform, I take that responsibility to correct myself because that is my game, that is my expertise, and no one is going to Do it for me. And that's what I realized around 10 years back from now.

That's beautiful. So I ask this question every guest, and as you might have seen them on YouTube, I pretty much have all ages as my guest. I think you're the youngest right now, by the way. I'm the youngest. So it's a real pleasure to have you here.

Thank you.

Because we will talk about different things. We'll talk about different perspectives.

Yes.

We basically will have almost 2-generation conversation, which is very enriching.

Right.

And I always love to learn. So you put something out there which is touching for me. You're living in India, right?

Yes.

How close is the next ashram to your home?

It's approximately within 5 kilometers.

You see, and you're not going to your ashram to be yourself. You are following your purpose.

Right.

Do you know how rare that is, Sartak?

That is rare.

Most people need to go to the mountains, need to go to the sea, need to go on an island, need to go to an ashram. But you are coming here and you're saying, Markus, in order for me to feel alive, To be myself. It is serving the young people, which is my purpose.

Yeah. And I can also mention one thing that what is ashram for me? These are my ashrams. I have multiple books. I have a big whiteboard, which is kept in the left direction of my camera. And it is full of ideas. It's me. And it's, it's also inspired something by Steve Jobs. He had that 2 hours of deep ideation, keeping everything away and just you, because that's a war versus war of you versus you. And you start whenever you start conversation with yourself. You develop a mindset which solves the problem of their own things. Technically, you don't need anyone. You become a warrior. So that's, that's my everything, my copy, my pen. And that's what I used to think about different strategies to grow my business or benefit people or whatever the agenda looks like.

You don't know why I smile. Especially here in the Western Hemisphere, right? Yes. It's all about God. It's— for other people, it's the universe. For other people, it's whatever. And you're coming here and you're saying, Markus, it is all about me. being with me. For you, it's the most natural thing, right?

Exactly. According to Indian mythology, we have chakras. And that says that the God is inside your soul. So why are you looking around it? Let's check inside.

Tell me more about that. Because I have heard so much about chakra, but I've never heard it in a way you just put it.

Right. So yeah, I got this information from my mother. While I'm not proficient into that, but I can say whatever I know. So in our body, there are 7 chakras, right, from— and I think they, they are all present in our backbone from here to this. This is known as sastrara. And what my mom taught me, that it is not essential that you worship idols, not essential to you go to ashrams, but it is essential that you be true with yourself and worship the God within you, because you are going to do karma with your body. This is the tool. And this is the administrator. And God is the controller. The Divine is the controller, and everything is within the body. So that's what the knowledge I know. Well, my mom is into spirituality. So she understands this very well. But yeah, that's what I know.

How old were you when she taught you that? Yes. How old were you?

7 years.

Wow, that's incredible to grow up like this, huh? And to wake up like this, because it must have been a waking up for you to understand these things.

Yes, and it was not a formal training, right? It wasn't just like she was doing that spiritual practice. And I was always be like a mama's boy, right? So I always try to mimic what she's trying to do. So if she is sitting and she's doing the mantras, okay, I take the mat, I sit near to her, and let's try. Okay, let's do it. That's, that's, that's the thing.

How was that for you when you first began to meditate?

I was doing without any purpose, just I was doing it. I was feeling so sleepy, honestly. But yeah, since Mom was doing that, I did it.

That's a beautiful thing. Do you remember? Because I told you when we first met that if somebody had told me that you are in your 50s before I saw you,

Yes.

I would have believed it.

Right.

Because there's something, there's something old soul in you, which is much further than you are. And at the same time, I assume it had to do with how you were brought up.

Exactly.

How did how you grew up impact your life? And your personality, what would you say?

Every personality has something. It's a set of collections of incidents, or which makes someone something, right? So it all started with 1907. My great-grandfather GM Mittal were— they were industrialists and they started from scratch, right? Even it's like $0.001 and they created a small garage and they started that metal, all that metal-related things, and from that they created an industry. Over 50 to 60, 70 years of their lifetime hard work, and that created a great inspiration. Or it's like an entrepreneur inherited blood. What I can say, I can, I can never. That's all their credit, right? Once this family splits happen, we lost everything. Right. And later, after 2003, in 2015, approximately, we'll say my life, my entrepreneurship started indirectly.

When I— that moment.

Yeah.

How old were you at that moment?

So young, I was studying in school. It's, you can say that 13, 14 years, not much.

Okay, wow.

Yeah, not much, not much. But, uh, yeah, I have to— I was inspired that, wow, what a history, whatever we have is because of them, and they are such great people. Then I thought that they are my family members. How can I become like that? Okay. Now, when the family split happened, there were 4 brothers. Out of one brother, he was my grandfather. He's my grandfather, is currently there. And remaining 3, they, they were the brothers, so they flourished. They flourished. It's like Rich Dad and Poor Dad philosophy,

right? Mm-hmm.

So my grandfather, we lost everything, and we have to create from scratch. And I always used to ask from my grandfather, That how they made it, what is the what is the way to make it, how it is possible. So from there I got that kind of fire, which made me to think again and again how I can do it. Now I have zero financial support, zero knowledge base, everything zero. where to start. Right now, that was something which was instantaneous. And it goes for 3 to 4 years with no execution. It was— that seed was growing inside the brain. And it just required an insight. It just required a direction. I was directionless. When I was being asked to Prepare for the joint entrance examination. This is considered as one of the toughest examinations of India, and this is for engineering exams, IIT, right? So I was asked to crack that. I hate mathematics, and still I hate finance, right? So I started with, uh, the preparation because that's a peer pressure, and if you belong from a middle class family You have no option either to go for a job. So I was into a typical path created by the society, and I was.

We have a little bit internet issues.

So where are we?

Welcome back. So you were telling me about going the traditional path in university, which is pretty much typical India, right? You said you came from a middle-class family, would not have had a chance to go for a good job. So you went for finance and math.

Yeah. And which was really painful for me. And the life was become pathetic. Now I was, I was in very high pressure. I need to either be a good child. And study as my parents said me, my grandfather said me. He take— my grandfather always take the responsibility of my education, right? So I need to answer to my grandfather. The second way is to listen to myself, to listen to the legacy, right? So I choose the legacy. So that time I used to pretend that I am studying, but Technically, I don't. Practically, I never studied. I was— I want to become YouTuber, so I started a YouTube channel, right? I started creating some content, and initially I would admit that that content I just used to copy from some Chinese websites and I used to put there.

Mm-hmm.

Which got me some subscribers. Later, I realized that it will not work for me. I started creating some real content, and what was that real content? Introducing myself.

Okay, fascinating.

Nothing much, but one day my. Aunt know about this, and they informed this to my grandfather, and I was not allowed to do that. After that, I have to keep my YouTube channel away. I have to stop that. Now I was in reach. I was questioning myself. I was questioning society. I was questioning everything. I was questioning God too. That why? What's what's my mistake? Now I become more rigid, and now I said that I will try something else, right? So from there, an entrepreneur emerged at a deeper level. From YouTube, I learned basic skills. Like what is basic digital marketing, how to edit videos, how to show it to people, how to deliver messaging, which is the core root or the seed of branding, the messaging, how people perceive you. Those concepts I learned from there. And then I jumped to e-commerce. I was working on some platforms like Amazon or some famous e-commerce markets in India. My mom is amazing in making craft and spirituality, both things. So I was selling those paintings on those platforms. Though I failed multiple times, I failed at the end. No success this time too. Why not success? Because artwork is not valued in India because it's enormous. It's, it's a lot of quantity. Right now someone suggested me that, sir, the US is a market where you can sell this art because there the demand is high and supply is less. I can't make it because for that I need an imports and export license and I need that company setup to be done. I don't have money to do that. So that was just a checklist, part of checklist, but which I achieved after some years. But from that, I just want to know that, uh, I understood that I have to do that particular thing. Then the, uh, time goes like that, and COVID came in India. It was a wave 1 and 2 both struck, and everything was devastated. Being a middle-class guy It was difficult for me to actually cope up with that. I was the only child that have to take care of the family, prepare for the examination, and also think about some kind of business because I have no other option.

So you stayed at IIT?

No, I have— I failed to crack that examination.

Okay.

Yes. So I, uh, I somehow passed my examinations and my schools were ended. Right now I was being asked to pursue something as a professional degree, either an engineering or commerce or something something. I was labeled by the society as the dumb guy. Because why I am, I was termed as dumb because I was underperforming in my academics. I was doing something which they don't expect to do, but I was doing something which I always expected to do, right? So my expectation, society expectation never matched, and it should not be because I am, me is me, Sarthak is Sarthak. So from there I get into I obeyed my parents and my relatives because if I don't, I would be not being included in the society or I would be treated not well. So I pursued engineering and I was in college, but the miracle was, and this is known as luck, that I love computers from beginning of my age. Right? When I started my life, computer is something which I always love to explore, and I went into the computer engineering, fortunately. And for the first time, I loved about coding and all. Good, amazing, I love it. And I was so engrossed in coding that my life has now become coding. I forget about the entrepreneurship.

And

now I was On the way to become a corporate rat, and one day it again struck to me. I was traveling to the Western India in Mumbai, and I saw skyscrapers, big buildings. I questioned to myself that, "Hey, Sarthak, the corporate rat, tell me." how you can buy this? I said, I can never buy this because I can't make money in my entire life, nor if my generation work for that, I can't make it. So again, I was in system and I thought that now I am a fool. I should change my mindset. Now, earlier, the guy who was trying to become a developer who want to develop the IT-related stuff. Now my mindset shifting of hiring the developer and creating the company for me, getting the employees to work for me too, so that I can build that building for me.

And

I still want to. So from there, I started my first IT business. I came back from that Mumbai and I came to home and I started my IT business. Nothing but, and I labeled myself CEO. No information about CEO, no information about—

Isn't that amazing? You travel to Mumbai, you see the skyscraper, basically you are, you know, converted. You say, you know what, no, I will never get it. So I'll rather hire those coders, they code that stuff for me. And I'm the CEO.

So that was the only term I know that, that time about corporate. So I created my brand from there, CEO Sarthak Mittal. Right? Because it matched with my personality. And that really inspires me. And I was living the life of a CEO having $0 in my bank account.

Tell me more about that.

How

does that life look like?

It was amazing. I was so happy. I was the happiest person in my class. I was the happiest person in my family. I was doing what I want to. I was respected within my community, right? I started my IT company and I hired— we actually got 7 friends that started that. I collected those friends. Let's start a company now. It's like a tribe. Okay, we started a company with seven co-founders and all. We got some revenue. We fought with each other that who will get how much money, and it was again dissolved. But I developed. I earned one skill from there. That is. The art to talk to people and the art to network. And I understood that at Sartak, if you just network with people, congrats, you make it, right? You can create unlimited opportunities for you. And from there, I get to know about consulting. That Sartak, you consult people and the coders will work for you. Wow! So let's start a consulting company now, right? So the crazy part was startups were doing bad, right? Because they don't have a good strategy. So we started badbusiness.in. That was the name of the business. Bad business. Bad means breakdown, analysis, and decision. We break the problem, we analyze it. And we do the decision-making and we make them good. That was the branding behind that. So I started that, I got some clients, we got— we made some good money. And I was being recognized by small businesses that this guy is good. And from there, the flow of opportunities started. But again, as you know, my crazy mind, something again struck to me That Sarthak, this is good, but you are not getting something which, which is impactful. This is done by a lot of people. We can find millions of businesses that is doing that. What makes you different? Still zero out of zero, zero out of 10. Sorry. Now I was thinking What problem I can solve for people? I thought, Satat, you are the problem, right? So the same problem which I felt, the friction I got from the society, the friction to pursue the passion was the problem. And I started my community. That was my problem. And if this is my problem, this is the problem for millions of students which is present in the world. Tell

me a little bit more about that friction.

The friction is, if you are into a system, you are not allowed to think. For an example, If I want to become the world's best cake maker, I want to start a pastry shop. I can't do that in India, or I can't do that because my parents will think me that that's not a right job for me. People are deciding. People are deciding what I want to do. Why someone can decide what I can do or what? I should do. I should be one to decide that, right? So that is not a freedom which was given. And if you want to get such kind of rational approach, you need to understand yourself. And where is that understanding? Who will give that motivation to understand that? Who will give that the way to understand that? So from there, I started my student community. I collected my friends in my college and we started a community of 100 people. Again, that was a small thing. Fortunately, I was promoted as a Microsoft Student Learn Ambassador program, and I was now the partner. I was thinking about how I can get the community onboarded on my platform, and I started marketing within the Microsoft community, and I got their 1,000 people out of my community. Now within a few months, I expanded in Nigeria, Pakistan, India. I got all the people around that and I started promoting myself, workshops, coding. I started teaching them, I provided— started providing value to them, and it worked for me. And slowly, slowly, people started marketing about me. They started discussing about me that there's some guys who do this or that, right? Slowly, slowly it worked for us. After that, uh, uh, this IT consulting part, it was going good. I was making some money out of that. Now I was having the money in my pockets to spend. And after that, I went into a background of HR consulting too. Now I was working with the HR company in India, having 3 offices in different other countries while working in college, right? And I was recruiting people for them. And what if— now I thought that, what if, if I can get the entire youth a job, what will happen? If I get everyone employed, what will happen? Now here is the limitation, that is not practically possible. But still I thought that, okay, let's think it. So from there I think about a universe that supports the students. So the Bad Business becomes the badverse.in, bad universe. And the website is still up. There are thousands of students on that platform right now which are supported. And we got a WhatsApp group of around 20,000 students.

Wow.

Different WhatsApp groups. So that makes me shine. And the universities where my parents dream that I should go and study, those universities were inviting me as a guest. That's how you come and you deliver to our students, you teach our students. And the results you can check on my LinkedIn profile. All the, all those credentials have been mentioned just for the proof. So I was teaching those students rather than I was being the part of those crowd, those elites. So from there I see an exponential growth in my career. I started a lot of traction on my LinkedIn followers. And within few months I gained 15,000 followers on LinkedIn, and which keeps me growing so fast on LinkedIn. And within 2 to 3 years it becomes 36,000 followers. And that made me to think again, Sarthak, where is the legacy? You have done a market differentiation. You are now Somewhat outshining in the market. You are making money. Here is the legacy. Where is the alliance? Where is the GoPro business? Where, where is you? Where is your soul? And that introduced Mittal Alliance, the master, right? So this is the company we brought and It started the legacy, and we started doing the consulting within this. So I started with IT consulting. I get a person that do an IT consulting for me, and that now the IT consulting is entirely automated. I don't have to do that. Then I got a branding consultant. I taught him. Now he become the branding consultant later. This is the art which I learned in the 2 years of my recent— 2 years of my career. That is the art to build a team, the art to build a business that works without you. You keep on earning whether you are working or whether you are sleeping. It should work.

You said something interesting. You had one person who you taught, and that person was then doing the business. You did not hire 50 people until you said, now I go out, now I do branding. So you basically had one person whom you could hand over the job, and you were able to basically stay in management, or whatever you want to call it. And you did something else.

Exactly. That's, that's the way. And that was incredible. That was the most expensive art which I learned. And from where this art came is from that teaching skill, which I learned from that community, which I built. Because I was teaching earlier the students, later I was teaching the corporate to corporate-related concepts to the executives. So train them, deploy them, make them to work, compensate them well so that they become happy. And who are those people? These are those people where I have a very, very high level of trust. I know that they will not betray me, right? So I started creating this systems. And from there, a new art came. That is, after IT, after branding, the new art came, that is operations. I identified that every business in USA, UK, Canada, Japan, Dubai is facing 3 common issues. These 3 common issues are they don't have money to spend on employees. They don't have time to invest over those employees because they are so engrossed with their own business that either they earn or serve their clients, or either they think about the social media marketing. They don't have time for that. And then we have the third thing, which is the strategy. For an example, that Marcus could be good in finance Well, Sarthak could be good in marketing. So Sarthak can build a marketing-related strategy for Markus, right? I, I'm not good in finance, but my team people are. And why I learn finance then? I should learn sales that can get more clients. So these 3 problems we solved. With a strategic execution service where we were the strategic partners with them. We work with them as a team. We build that strategy and we implement that strategy, right? And we were the market disruptor because we provided this in $8 per hour initially. Strategy also, implementation also, which makes founder free from that particular stuff. And we created approximately 73 different pipelines or 73 different capabilities so that we can work for those businesses, whether these are very expensive or technical tools, whether they are basic management problems that they are facing. And from there We hired students from India to work for us, and we generated an employment for them.

So how many people have you been able to to put into the job market so far?

Right now, in currently the people who are working for me, they are 25.

Okay,

right. But yeah, the people which have been worked in past in this. huge course of time, more than 200. I tried working with a lot of people. Right? I also learned about retention, how to retain people in the company. What are the ways of retaining people? Because again, a lot of businesses were facing the same issue that our employees don't stay, right? Even one of the guys said to me that He, he was— he hired a virtual assistant. He said that, Sarthak, I taught that person for 3 months and he left me in the 4th month because he has some XYZ issues. I was like, how much time you invest in training that guy? We solve that problem also because when someone is a consultant along with an executionist, it retains the knowledge. So that created a business which actually I want a desire to create, which impacts people, which impacts the businesses, and which impacts us, and collaboratively impacts everyone and creates an alliance of businesses of 150+ businesses. It's

beautiful. And that's where we are at, um, The legacy, huh?

That's what we are trying to create, a legacy. That's what we want to create, a multinational alliance with 10+ countries by 2030, impacting millions of students through that. I reached millions of students through my LinkedIn.

That's how I see you in the end.

Is whatever the problem I faced, that should not happen to someone else. And all of my businesses originates from that path. The student problem I faced, it created the student community. The operation problem I faced, It created an operations business. The branding problem I faced, it created a branding business. Whatever I felt I understood my customer, I created the same business for them. I scaled what I, I got a problem for me. I solved that problem for me and sell it to others. That's a case study. And that again gives a good example to those businesses who says that where to start. Start with yourself. Solve your problem. Show it as a case study. This, this is how I solve my own problem. I can solve it for you. Give me a chance. I will do it.

So does that mean in the end that if someone goes through hard times right now, they should actually look at what they're going through and learn from it? Because this could literally become the solution of tomorrow's problems for many people.

Exactly. You're right.

So which brings us to the last question, and that's a deep one. If someone feels overwhelmed right now, what would you want them to return to Or what you want them to remember is still true.

Okay. In order to achieve accuracy, you have to elaborate it more.

Okay. We are living in challenging times, politically, climate, everything, and many people are overwhelmed. Right now, and they wonder what's next. Is there a future for me? What would you want them to remember is still true?

One thing that I always want to see them is One skill which will always get you money, which will always get you blessings, is to solve problem for people. Or I can say directly, you have to become a good networker and you have to become a good salesperson. We got the balloons. That's the part of the natural.

Okay. It's a great gift.

Yes. So if they learn the networking, they can connect to like-minded people. Whether we evolve too much, if we connect with like-minded people, if we connect with people even that no, they are not like-minded, they can teach us because technically you can't learn everything by own. And if you start everything learning by your own, you will again obsolete from the market because you can't read 100 books. But if you— if I sit with Markus, he's experienced and he will teach me new things which he learned, which he extracted from 100 books that he read. That makes me wise. And what you will find, one thing, that all the rich community, rich people very, very rich people, they're having their belts, they're having the connections within the millionaires only because they are the supporting community. They update them with the natural trends, knowledge, each and everything. So networking will always keep you sustained. Network with every people, they will teach you everything every day. And network with 10 people every day, that's my rule. If I don't, I mark myself as underperformed for the day.

That's amazing.

You are the 12th one, Markus.

And with that, thank you so much for this conversation, Sartak.

No problem. And second thing is sales. If you learn how to sell, you can sell everything.

Everything means everything. Definitely second that. Beautiful. Thank you so much for this conversation today.

Thank you so much, Markus.

That's really beautiful.

I'm really thankful to you.

This was Remembering the Forgotten. As you move on, notice what may have been quietly remembered. There are moments where you can feel The answer is already there, but you can't quite reach it. And then something shifts, and suddenly it's simple. No force, no second-guessing, no internal negotiation. Just a clear sense of what's next and the capacity to move. If something shifted, let it stay. A few quiet pointers are waiting below.