Vishen Lakhiani made a viral video criticizing Milo's 40% sugar content that hit 50 million views and sparked national pushback. Jay Shetty's advice on self-doubt helped him do it. Lakhiani breaks down the social-media strategy that worked.
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This is a crazy story. It's a story about how I accidentally created a social media video because I was pissed off. And this video got 50 million views. It became the biggest story in my country for seven days. It caused other countries to change their laws around food marketing and it got me in trouble with the big company, Nestle. The funny thing is, three months before this video popped, I was not really on social media. I felt underconfident. I felt too old. I remember June 2018, I was interviewing Jay Shetty. And if you watch this interview, you'll see how classy and amazing Jay Shetty is. Look at me. I'm not dressed well. I have no style, I have no experience in front of the camera. I was just there trying to learn. Jay, however, was the number one social media personality in the world. Of the 20 biggest Facebook fan pages, 19 were companies. Jay was the only human being not a company with one of the top 20 Facebook pages in the world. Now, following this interview, I pleaded with Jay for some advice. I said, jay, listen, how can I use social media? I'm in my 40s, I'm too old. I don't have your charisma, I don't have your great hair or your amazing voice. What do I do? Is this gonna work for me? And Jay explained to me in his polite, monk like way that all of my excuses were nothing more than bs. He encouraged me to try, which I did. A few months later, my video on Nestle went viral. I'm going to break it down to you so you understand exactly what happened and how you can leverage social media as well to create change in the world that you want to see. And the best part about this lesson is this. You don't have to start with any experience. This is a trainable skill. So the first thing that happened was this. I understood the importance of mindset. As Jay explained to me, a lot of my excuses were internal self doubts. When it comes to social media, you do not have to worry about your skin color or your accent or even if English is your sex language. In fact, tiny little flaws like that actually allow an audience to relate to you better. In my case, I decided to produce videos around food because I was really frustrated at false food marketing in my country. It started with this article in the New York Times. I read that Malaysia, the country I was born in and the country I was living in at that time, was the fattest country in Asia. And how companies like Nestle were actually funding the food nutrition advice from the Malaysian government. Nestle had popularized A drink in Malaysia called Milo and was positioning it as a health drink. In my video I pointed out that if you read the back of a Milo can, you will see that Milo is 40% sugar. Except Nestle uses fancy words to avoid actually labeling it sugar. Now that's when I did one of the first social media tricks which I think is useful to learn. This comes from the great speaker Lisa Nichols and it's called show me. Don't tell me. I held up a Nestle can and I used a blue marker to color the portion of that can that was pure sugar. That was the first hook in the rest of it. I shared the New York Times article, I appealed to the people of Malaysia, I asked people to question Milo and the video took off for seven days. It became the biggest news story in Malaysia. The thing is, I became the subject of crazy amounts of controversy. Nestle is the biggest company in Malaysia and because they are the biggest advertiser in Malaysian newspapers, the press banned me. I got silenced by traditional media. Radio shows that at one point were asked me to come on for various interviews completely banned me. I could no longer get on because they didn't want to lose Nestle as an advertiser. But yet, thanks to you guys, and particularly thanks to people who shared my video, Nestle ended up in a bit of a bind. While Nestle still had a strong foothold in Malaysia, the other countries like Australia and New Zealand canceled Milo's health ratings. And Nestle lost its health stars in both Australia and New Zealand. In a few days, after the video part of my mission had been accomplished, I'd raised awareness of how awful Nestle's marketing practices were. But it all started because I'd taken a plunge and decided to overcome my self doubt and figure out the workings of the social media game. Now how does this apply to you? Well, if you're a CEO, if you're a C level executive, if you're a founder, if you're an activist, know that being able to tell your story for the cause you support, for the product you support for the services you offer is essential. And if you can learn to leverage social media, this is the best way to gain leverage in today's world. So Mindvalley is putting together a social media summit over three days. It's completely free and we're bringing in many of the greatest speakers in the field of social media. People who don't just have a great social media presence that who can break down the rules of the game. Speakers like Brendan Cain who were famous for getting a million fans in 30 days by understanding the algorithms of Facebook speakers like John Lee, who is one of the top social media coaches in the world. And I'll be sharing many of my tips as well. We'll also be bringing in incredible mindvalley speakers to give you the mindset, the confidence, the charisma to get in front of the camera and do your thing. And the summit is completely free. Tune in in zoom and invite your friends. All the information is in the link below this video. Let's use social media for good causes to promote great products, to get great ideas out to the world, to help sway companies and governments towards causes that truly matter. Join us in this summit.
