Feature: How Reading Turns Into Leading? w/ Vikrant Shaurya

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:37Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs powered by Action Coach Growth Partners. You likely went into business to have more freedom and flexibility so that you could spend more time with your family, do more things or travel or enjoy your hobbies or whatever it is that you like to do in your spare time. We're here to help you find better ways to make more money, build better teams and get that time back so that you can have that freedom and flexibility. We'll help you simplify things and make sense of business, investing, and wealth building so that you can be epic and achieve all your dreams and goals.

1:10And now, enjoy the show. Hi, my name is Vikram Sharia, and I'm the founder of Authors on Mission, where we help business owners, entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, and thought leaders turn their book ideas into best-selling books through our done-for-you book writing, publishing, and marketing services. And thank you so much, Bill, for having me here. Hey, it's great having you, Vikram. How did you get into this in the first place? Yeah, long story short, I'm a college dropout. My first business failed after I dropped out of college. I had no money to pay my bills, so I had to discover making money sources.

1:51So I was searching online how to make money online and discovered self-publishing. This is where the journey began. So initially, I started writing books for me, for myself. it became profitable. And then I started helping other people with my coaching and consultations. Then gradually we moved toward the service sector. And now we offer this done-for-you book writing, publishing, and marketing service at Authors and Mission. Nice. So how many books have you actually written? So under my name, there are two books. Right. But you learned how to do the self-publishing and the done-for-you self-publishing essentially is what you're doing.

2:34Is that right? Yeah. So under my pen names, there are more than 20 books. But specifically for my name, there are two books. But yeah, I know the process. We have done it more than a thousand times, including our own books and the client's books. so are you so as a business person the the books still make you money i'm guessing the ones you wrote is the business gotten to be what what does the business look like now between your books and the done for you publishing business is it like 90 10 50 50 what is it yeah so it is actually 100 is to zero means oh 100 okay yeah so we specifically just focus on uh clients books now um when i see the need like i only publish the book then like i just don't publish the book even when there's no need right so um so so yeah like when i find that it's now time to write and publish the book for myself then only i do it but that's my personal project it's not a part of the business the main business is focusing and helping our clients get the result.

3:46And the result is becoming best-selling authors. Best-selling authors. And you said you've done this a thousand times. How many are they? Do they all become best-selling authors or what's the, how does it work? Yeah, it depends on exactly what type of services the clients are going for. If the clients are going for just the book writing service, then of course we deliver that. But those people like who need the marketing services and they also need the best-seller services, whether it is Amazon bestseller or Wall Street general bestseller, we have delivered it 100 % of the time. Yeah. One of the things that I learned when I wrote, I've written one book, when I wrote the one book, The Coach Approach, was that just writing the book wasn't enough.

4:34There had, you had to, because the book is marketing in itself, at least a nonfiction book is. But what I learned was that you also, as an author, have to market the marketing. So you have to market the book. And that was a big deal. So when you're offering the full services, you're offering everything. Exactly. And I see book or my team sees book as a business itself. And you are not just an author. You are an entrepreneur now. So when you launch your own business for example your website is live you can't expect to have clients somehow find you and then buy your product or services it never happens all you also have to focus on the marketing along with the product right so once you have the product ready then you have to focus on the promotion as well the same thing applies over here as well once you have the book ready as an authorpreneur, your job is now to do the marketing, the book, get sales, get reviews, get the word out, get on podcasts like yours, and reach out to more and more people to spread the awareness about the book.

5:44And that is the goal of an authorpreneur. You're not just an author, because if you'll try to become just an author, your book won't be performing really well. So you have to become an authorpreneur. Yeah, I think it's really important in writing a book to have a goal for the book. Like, is the goal to be to make money from the book or is the goal to use it as a business card? Is the goal, whatever the goal is for the book. What are your thoughts on that? Definitely. Like the moment when any client starts working with us, we have this outline quadrant. Basically, this outline quadrant has these four elements.

6:25The first is the book idea. The second is why. why you want to write a book. The third is the readers and the fourth is the hook. We'll cover these three points later maybe but the second most important element is the why. Exactly why do you want to write a book? What is the purpose of yours? Like what is the goal of this book? And this is going to define how do you want to craft the book? How the angle of the book is going to be? So for example if your goal is to get more speaking gigs then the way you have written the book is going to be different from if your goal is to generate leads or clients using the book.

7:01So how you structure the book is completely going to be dependent on what's your goal with the book, what's the purpose of the book. Awesome. Awesome stuff. Well, let's dig into your business background a little bit and what you've learned along the way. The title of our podcast is Epic Entrepreneur. So in your mind, what does it take to be epic? Yeah, so for me, you can't become an epic entrepreneur if you don't have a good team, right? If you are just playing without a team, or maybe the team is completely dependent on you, or they're not leader, they're just employees, then maybe you're just a solopreneur, you're not an entrepreneur yet.

7:50so you have to realize that if you want to run a successful business then and you you can check whether you are an epic entrepreneur uh like with this one strategy just take a leave for maybe two weeks don't check your phone don't check your laptop and see how your business is performing if it is still performing the way it is right now maybe the better then maybe you then then definitely you are an epic entrepreneur. But if the business, if there are a lot of chaos happens in the business, then it means that you have to do a lot of work to become an epic entrepreneur. I love that. I really love that.

8:29Like if you can leave, it's epic. If the business will run without you, it is epic. I mean, we're, you know, an action coach. We're always talking about a commercial profitable enterprise that runs without you. That's what we're helping our clients to do. So I love that and building a business. So my guess is along the way, you've had some lessons. I mean, you've probably learned as much from failure as you have from success. What have been some of your – let's go with a couple of three big lessons that you've learned along the way. Yeah, so one of the biggest lessons I learned is from day number one, you have to focus on how you can get clients.

9:13that is the biggest lesson that i've learned like my first business failed i was focusing on a lot of things like building a website or designing a logo of the website having a banner and all kind of stuff like that doesn't make sense like your goal as an entrepreneur is to focus on generating a positive cash flow from day number one and whether you can And like how you have to just somehow find out how you can get clients and how you can get paid. And so, yeah, this is the number one mistake that I made initially. The second mistake that I made was not focusing. Like I tried to scale my first business very, very quickly.

10:06what does it mean is i didn't have the product market fit business yet and i started hiring bunch of employees like i had seven to eight employees like someone was a website designer someone was a graphic designer someone was a content writer and i didn't have the product market fit means customers like were not coming to me so this was the second mistake i made again it is customer centric right the first was also the customer centric the second is also customer centric and the third is like once you have a kind of a sustainable business now you can focus on the team building and the culture and this what i the mistake that i made like i focused i thought that i could run the entire business without anyone like my second business but some sort of personal accident happened in my life where I had to just go off for maybe for I think seven eight days like and the business was doing nothing right the business was nothing without me I realized that I had to have some team members and I had to make them leaders not just employees to make it a successful business so these are the I would say the three biggest mistakes that I learned from So you mentioned culture in there.

11:29What role has culture played in building your businesses? I think it works. For me, personally, I know that some of my employees are getting way more higher packages or offers than what we are paying right now from other companies. But still, they stick to us. They want to work with us because of the culture. and there are a lot of things that matters like money is of course the primary reason because of course they have to pay their bills they have to take care of the family but at the same time like how you respect them if they ask if they genuinely ask you like hey can i take a leave they just have to give it to them if they're if they're really in need of anything you you have to see them as a family, not just a team member.

12:23Of course, you have to work as a team, but in your mindset, you have to work as a family. And this is how a really good culture can happen in a company. Yeah, you got to care. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's important. Well, so EPIC is an acronym. And I'm going to ask you what these roles of the various letters have meant to you or what do you think the importance of? So the E stands for education. So what has been the importance of education to your success? I would say that for the academic knowledge or academic education, of course, after elementary, high school like I don't think anything was worth it for me specifically right all I all I learned was like I got stuck and then I went to YouTube or Google and then I find I tried to find it exactly what's the issue how to figure it out and I was privileged to work with a lot of coaches as well.

13:36I had business coaches, marketing coaches, system coaches who helped me, took me to the next level. So again, for example, you're an action coach. So you know that most of the people get stuck, right? So these kind of education actually works way better than the academic education because these things actually matters in the real lives in in your business so for me education definitely helped me out but not most of the people like see it like how they see it for me it was kind of a vocational education like how people like you like I've learned from people like you like after watching youtube videos of top one person performers or podcasts.

14:31So I've learned from them. And this is what I see education is. Perfect. So what you're saying is that maybe the formal education didn't meet what you were looking for or your needs. It got you so far. But then the self-education has been massive. Yeah. And education. And I'm assuming if you're like the rest of us, education is a continuing thing. It never ends. Exactly. Definitely. Not for myself as well, also for our team members as well. If you really want to just upgrade them from an employee to a leader, you have to educate them as well. You have to create systems and trainings for every single thing so that they can learn each and everything and they can decide even without you.

15:22Even when you are not in there, they can go through the training that you have built and they can actually make the decision on their own behalf. Yeah, I think that's brilliant. I'm not sure that owners and entrepreneurs actually invest enough time and money in educating their teams. And so congratulations on making that commitment to making your team leaders, which I think makes the world work better. It just does. The better you can make them, the better everybody is. It's a win all the way around. All right. So moving on to the P. P stands for planning. What's been the role of planning in your success?

16:07I think there was a saying called failing to plan is planning to fail, right? Yeah, right. So yeah, planning is definitely important. But at the same time, with planning, action is also very important, right? So you have planned, but the same, if you're just planning and just planning and just planning, you might go into analysis paralysis. So the moment when you plan something and you know that this is very important, you have to execute that as soon as possible. right so so i think i personally think that uh along with planning planning uh like action should be the part of the planning right so for example you plan something that hey this is this might work you don't know whether this plan will work or not until you take action on that so you take an action you see whether okay so this didn't work out and then you change that plan So planning and action is kind of a loop.

17:14It is connected, right? And that is the both balances itself. So I personally think that planning and action goes hand in hand. yeah i love that i love that i think it was general patten who said a good plan violently executed today is better than a great plan executed next week so i love that i love that all right inspiration the i stands for inspiration where do you find inspiration for me um there are a lot of people in my life like who um who inspired me my wife like who stood for me even when nobody was there for me um when I dropped out of college um every I think everyone in my life like they they were not in like I was not in talking terms with all almost all the people but my wife back then she was my girlfriend she was there to support me um and she was kind of the biggest inspiration for me uh my dad like he's also one of the biggest inspiration like when i told him that uh i have dropped out of the college um i saw him crying for the very first time uh it was very very painful but but then he said that uh he gave me blessings and said that just don't do anything illegal just just live your life that's awesome yeah yeah and that is that is inspiring yeah yeah yeah hey do something do Work, just don't do anything illegal.

18:53I love that. I love that. Perfect. Well, that's great. Those are great places to find inspiration. And the C is commitment, a little bit back to the action. So what does it mean to you to really commit?

19:10I personally think that as an entrepreneur, this could be one of the most important trait you must have to become an epic entrepreneur. Why would I say that? Because for example, if you think that, okay, so this is a business and I really want to make it a successful business. and in business what happens is like you start doing it and then maybe for three months six months nine months one year for two years three years it won't work out or maybe sometimes it will work sometimes it will not work the only thing that can keep you going is the commitment that hey okay my goal is to take the business to this specific level and you can only do that if you commit yourself, if you commit to yourself.

20:03So, and not only on the bigger level or the, but also on the day-to-day level. If you're planning your day, like for example, if you plan the day one day before, then, and if you decide that, okay, these are the things that I commit that I'm going to complete, no matter what, these are the small actions that will matter. And these are going to take you to the next level. So commitment is, I believe, one of the most important traits anyone should have to become an epic entrepreneur. Awesome. Awesome. I love it. So what last advice would you have for any budding business people, entrepreneurs, people going into business for themselves, whatever it is?

20:58What would be one piece of amazing advice that you would give them? One life, make it count. I love that. One life, make it count. Perfect. Perfect. So if we got budding authors out there, we got people that are influencers that want to get in touch with Vikron. How do they do that? Yeah. Simply, they can go to authorsonmission.com. And there are hundreds of testimonials and case studies on our website itself. if you resonate with exactly how we help them turn their book ideas into a best-selling book and if you think that this is going to be fit for you simply book a call with us one of our author strategists is going to jump on a call and they'll check they'll they'll discuss with you with you about your book and if everything is going to be fine if you're a fit then of course we'll we'll onboard you as well perfect and you work with people all over the world exactly like are actually, I'm in India, but the company is actually incorporated in States and, uh, almost all the employees that we have, um, the writers, editors, and almost 99.9 % of the clients that we get there from States.

22:09Yeah. Yeah. Or the UK. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome stuff. So, uh, well, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Um, and I appreciate you being on Epic Entrepreneurs and to all of you epic entrepreneurs out there, I look forward to seeing you next time. And until then, all the best. And that's a wrap. That's good. Good stuff. Super cool. Yeah, I'll be in touch when this is going to air. I'll let you know. And it'll be in a couple of weeks. It's not that long out. We usually are about three, two, three, four weeks out, something like that, depending on what's going on. So we'll let you know.

22:49and you can do your thing with it. So make it go for you. So that'd be super cool. So thanks. I really appreciate you being on. I really appreciate you reaching out and I'll point people in your direction when we have find those budding authors. Thank you so much for the cool stuff. Thanks for joining us for this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. Here's four things you can do. First, you can listen every week on Biz Radio Mondays at 1. Second, you can subscribe to the podcast. Hey, you get it. The more subscribers we have, the more cool things we can offer you. Three, you can also go out and give us a five-star rating everywhere.

23:33And number four, if you'd like a free copy of my book, The Coach Approach, Five Principles to Build an Epic Business, just go to giftfrombuild.com. It's your roadmap to building your epic business. That's giftfrombuild.com. Until next time, all the best. hey thanks for listening to the epic entrepreneurs podcast here's three things that you can do number one remember to subscribe to the podcast it takes very little effort on your part it's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs plus you you guys know how it works the more subscribers we get, the more cool things we can offer to you. Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach.

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