Episode 119: Helping the Helpers Grow Their Personal Brand with Divian Mistry – Transcript
Rennie Gabriel 00:00
Hey folks, welcome to Episode 119 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast. This is where we talk about money tips, techniques, attitudes, information, and provide inspiration around your business and your money. I'm your host, Rennie Gabriel. In past episodes, we spoke about how to understand the numbers from your business, how to measure the level of pleasure based on where you spend your money, how to track your money in 5 to 10 seconds, what determines how close you are to Complete Financial Choice®, and how to run your business without being in your business. And last week, we had Burke Franklin, talking about his business plan templates that fit every business, from the startup to the large, successful businesses that want to evolve and get additional funding. Today, we have as our guest Divian Mistry. Divian is a marketing expert for personal brands who want to grow their business using proven time-tested strategies. After starting his first business at age 14, and now he's 16 - ha ha ha . . . He became known as the "ticket master" at university. He helped clients create six months of income within just three weeks, tripled event ticket sales within 24 hours, and quadrupled event registrations within one month. He raised 5000 pounds for the Make a Wish Foundation at a charity event he hosted with keynote speaker Kevin Green from the TV show, The Secret Millionaire. And Divian, you know, I'm sure Kevin has been featured other places, and Divian has been featured in two business books. Divian, welcome to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast.
Divian Mistry 02:09
Thank you so much for having me, Rennie. I'm really looking forward to sharing this episode with people.
Rennie Gabriel 02:13
Terrific. Well, let's get right to it with some questions. Okay, it sounds like you build websites. Why?
Divian Mistry 02:22
Why? That's a great question. I actually built my first website when I was 13 years old. Taught myself how to code, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, and CSS. But that's not the reason why. That's just a bit of a history. The reason why is because I actually ran a business where I was an expert myself in that particular business. And we had online courses and masterminds and we did a load of marketing. And one of the things that I realized - I'm quite tech-savvy - but I logged into Infusionsoft, some people call it confusionsoft.
Rennie Gabriel 02:53
Yes.
Divian Mistry 02:53
But I personally love it. I love it, I think it can do a lot of stuff. And the first time I logged in, I was like, I just want to send a broadcast email. And I was like, I don't know how to do this. And it took me about half an hour to figure out how to send a broadcast email. Which I'm tech-savvy, so if it took me half an hour, somebody who is not tech-savvy, that could have taken them three hours or four hours or a long time. And so . . .
Rennie Gabriel 03:21
I would have given up long before that.
Divian Mistry 03:24
Yes, that's the other thing. I've also had clients and people I know in the past who said, they've literally started crying because they can't figure something out. And then someone comes in and does it within a short space of time. So the reason I do what I do, because one thing I very much realized in the last few years, is I feel this calling in life, to be the helper of helpers. And so I love helping people who help other people as a way of creating a ripple effect. And I just happen to be good at technology. So why not help them with the number one challenge that personal brands experts, speakers, coaches, probably struggle with? So why not help them with that. And that's really why I do it, because I love helping people and helping people who help people just aids my mission to help people.
Rennie Gabriel 04:16
It's beautiful. Thank you. And as you probably know, I donate 100% of the profits from the online work that I do to charities - animal and veteran charities. Tell me about your favorite cause and what they do.
Divian Mistry 04:31
Sure, it's definitely I'd say that my favorite cause I raise money for in the past is Make A Wish Foundation. And it's because they... So that's the big event that I ran a number of years ago with Kevin Green as a keynote speaker. And I actually first heard about this charity when I watched the episode years before that of Kevin Green on the Secret Millionaire and his charity was Make a Wish Foundation. And I love what they do, because they basically help kids and families who, where the kids are terminally ill and they're past the point of actually being able to recover from it. And they give them life experiences that they might not have. Going to Disney World - if that was their dream or something like that, where the family definitely wouldn't be able to afford to do that. They allow them access... they give them the financial support, and not just the financial support, but the actual person support, you know. If your child is in a wheelchair, you might need someone to come with you to help you in that process of taking them around and create that experience for them. And for yourself, so when they do pass, you've got them wonderful memories. And it's, I don't know, kids generally are very dear to my heart, probably because I still am a kid myself. But just the thought, you know. I do actually have people in my family who, like had babies, and then they passed away within a very short space of time after being born. And it takes a toll, but it's nice to think that these people are then looked after and able to have memories that they can remember for the rest of their lives when the child is no longer there.
Rennie Gabriel 06:21
Yeah, I can't even go to what it might be like, because that is so, so tough. And I do remember seeing an episode where a little boy wanted to be a fireman. And, you know, he was 5, 6, 7 years of age. He goes to the fire station. They actually had equipment manufactured to his size. So he could have a helmet, and he could have the uni... you know, the firefighting protective clothing. I'm having problems thinking about, it's just too tough for me to go there. So let me move on to an easier question. Tell me who are the people you support primarily? I'm going to guess coaches is one of them.
Divian Mistry 07:11
Yeah, so I use the word coaches to describe a market base, but it's anybody with a personal brand. So they're maybe they're a coach, they're an expert, they're a speaker, this new term that's coming out called "thought leader", which wasn't necessarily around before. But them kind of people. People who have a personal brand. It could be a consultant. And the main core thing that I love, the people I love to work with, are the people who are making a difference in the world. So that could be either through what they teach. So they might be teaching about emotional change in some way, shape, or form, or spiritual, spiritualness, or they encompass that in what they do. So they might teach about money, and building wealth, but they encompass being a spiritual or emotional leader within their own lives, and kind of the way they share their knowledge is encompassing that - so spreading good vibes in the world. Because I think, you know, one of the reasons that's really important to me is because I've had many people come to me, who are like, I just want to make more money. And I'm like, but why?
Rennie Gabriel 08:21
Yeah.
Divian Mistry 08:21
What's the point? Like, yes, it's great to have an abundance of money, of course. Look, your brand's called Wealth On Any Income. Like, it's about, you know, it's fine to have lots of money, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're just doing it for the sake of doing it, or for the sake of having a nice car, or having a nicer car, and that's the only reason you're doing it, that's not my kind of client. Because I will celebrate you if you go and buy a Bentley or Ferrari. Great, that's awesome. But you're also doing, you're creating the money, you're in business for a reason, not just to make money. And that's really important to me. That's super important to me that they're the right kind of people wanting to make a difference.
Rennie Gabriel 09:04
Yeah. And it's very similar to the kind of clients I would turn away, as, you know, the someone that just wants the mansion or the jet or such. That's not my, that's not going to be my kind of client, either. If they don't have an intention of being philanthropic, I really don't have an interest in them. But let me ask you now, what would you say your biggest failure was, whether it was personal or business and then what insight did you gain from that?
Divian Mistry 09:32
So my biggest failure is, I set up a business in property, where we, we call it property, a property business over here. In America, you might call it a real estate agent but it's still the same thing. So I used a strategy where we would affect the sublet properties and it's a great strategy. I started using it when hardly anybody, but nobody knew about this strategy when I started using it. Now, you go to property networking events and you go to even real estate agents over here, and they're like, That's rent to rent. Like, I'm not doing that, you know. So I'm glad I got in when I did. But anyway, so I started and I started on my own, then I started working with a business partner. Don't get me wrong, I want to be really clear here. He's an awesome guy. He's one of my clients now my business, we parted ways in the business we were running. So this is not, this is just a lack of experience from both of our parts, really. So he was a visionary, a big thinker. And I was kind of somebody who was in that kind of, if you know wealth dynamics, he was like a visionary, like a creator. And I was more like a star / supporter.
Rennie Gabriel 10:43
The terms I use for that are visionary and execution master.
Divian Mistry 10:49
There we go, visionary and execution master. So I pushed into the execution master zone, but he was responsible for the accounts and the accounting. Also doing . . . There we go. Yeah, there we go. And also doing new deals. He's great having the conversations to do new deals. But then we did two at the same time, and we borrowed money to do these deals. And went 50% over budget on both of them deals. We ended up needing to borrow more. And from that, something triggered in me to go, you know what we need to overhaul the finances. And so we did. And when we did I find out our cash flow projection sheet kept coming out wrong by a bigger amount than I was happy with. And then we figured out why. And in the end, it was because there was some things like our advertising spend - which is essential, you can't run a business without advertising spend, especially in that world -that weren't allocated. So there's a couple of learnings from this. One is do not give accounting to a visionary. Full stop. End of story.
Rennie Gabriel 11:55
Right.
Divian Mistry 11:56
Love him to bits, but not the right person for accountants. And that was demonstrated in, we had a bookkeeper and he'd go to the meeting every month. And one day I decided I'm going to turn up when we did this overall. I turned up, and he sat across the room from this bookkeeper, and she was on Xero, the accounting software, going, What's this for? And he goes, Oh, let me just reconcile that. And then what's this for? Well, I'll just . . . And I'm like, Dude, we're literally paying her to tell you what you need. Right now we're paying her to tell you what to reconcile. And what's the point in that because the list is already there ofwhat you need to... what are we paying for? I don't understand. So I ended up overhauling that process. But... so that was the first learning, visionaries and detail stuff do not go together, so don't try and make that go together. I think the second learning out of that was, and part of that, further to that learning is it doesn't matter even if you have the right person on the numbers, you as the business owner or one of the business owners, if there's more than one of you, need to know your numbers. Doesn't matter who you are in that business. Even if you're not running low, you could be the salesperson, Sales Director, owning an equal share of that business. In my opinion, like you should still know the numbers that you need to know. You should still have an overview of the number. You might not know you know, how much the HR department spent on you know, paper last year. You probably don't know that. But overall you should know we're roughly bringing in this, we're roughly spending this on people, and that one on, etc etc. So that was the other learning. And the learning that just came to mind actually is when you do... back then I started that business because I wanted to get rich because if I got rich I could buy a nice house, have a nice car, go on lots of nice holidays, have a good-looking wife and I'd be happy. That was the plan.
Rennie Gabriel 14:08
Yeah I get it and external validation.
Divian Mistry 14:12
So 22 years old, straight out of university, go on a 12-month mastermind. That's the goal - done. Happy. None of that went to plan. Epically it went the complete opposite way in the end. But the big learning from that for me was - you got to do things with a purpose because all I did that for really was to make money. And it's okay sometimes to do things to just to make money. But if that's the only thing you're doing, and you're not doing it for any purpose and you're only doing it to make money, it will crumble at some point. Like it will just crumble because when things get tough, which happened. I stuck in there because I'm a stick-to-it type person. But I didn't, I wasn't really trying to like, figure out how to rejig, like, I was just figuring out how to pay the debt off. I wasn't figuring out how to pay the debt off and grow it because I was never there in the first place, too, because it had a purpose. I used to get these, you know, I was in charge of maintenance was one of my responsibilities. And I know you're in property as well, like maintenance, I'll get a ticket from the tenants. And be like, Ah, here we go again. I just like, I only worked four hours a week back then, about half a day a week, because I got it down to half a day a week.
Rennie Gabriel 15:40
Yeah.
Divian Mistry 15:41
And every time there's a ticket, I was like, You just, it's just so you know, what are you doing to me? Why are you using all my time off with this silly thing, like, someone's put their milk on your shelf, like, go and deal with it, or whatever, you know. Like, you're adults. Why do I have to get involved? But because there was no purpose to it for me, whereas I've got friends in property where they have deep purpose to it. So then conversations are okay for, they're okay with them. They're happy with them. They will do them conversations. But I didn't. And so for me, that was the biggest learning is you got to have purpose, because in business, things will get tough, and when they get tough, you have to have that drive to want to continue doing it and get out the tough spaces, have them tough conversations, and still keep that love and care and joy for your clients or your tenants or whoever they are. I'd say that's probably the biggest learning for me.
Rennie Gabriel 16:33
Yeah, and I want to validate what you're saying, Divian, because through the entire pandemic, and we're going two and a half years already, I've had 100% of my tenants pay 100% of their rent, without exception - except for one person and the state of California came in and covered her rent, and then she moved on - and it's because the purpose is I provide housing where people want to live and be happy. And they are, and they pay me for that. And so you're right. When I get a ticket that something needs to be done, it's taken care of with joy, because I'm making my tenants happy. And that's a part of my purpose and that's why I didn't lose $1 of rental income. And I don't know too many other landlords in the United States that can say that. So I completely agree and validate what you're saying is you need to have a purpose beyond just making the money. Now, let me ask you, you know, another question. And thank you for that one. Well, if people want to get a hold of you and learn more, do you have some valuable resource that you can offer?
Divian Mistry 17:45
Yes, I have a guide. And I'm going to probably butcher the exact name of it.
Rennie Gabriel 17:52
Well, I'll tell you what, the website, the link is that you gave me, and it said, elevenstrategies.com? Is that it?
Divian Mistry 18:02
Yeah, there's a specific link for your guys, just so that I . . .
Rennie Gabriel 18:05
Yes. And I see that. And it looks like it's "ren" something. And rather than trying to get people to write it down while they're driving their car and listening to a podcast, it will be in the show notes. They can click on it, and they'll be able to get right to you.
Divian Mistry 18:22
Yes. And so just to share what it is, it's called, The 11 Most Effective Strategies to Capture More Leads From Your Website In The Next 60 Days, Without Spending More On Traffic. And the reason I created this is because I talk to a lot of people about websites, big surprise, one of the things I find is, you know when you start a business, most people go, What do I need? A website. They don't really, and trust me, I've done this myself, I've started a business going, I need a website. I don't have a clue why. And I just build one. And the reality is that it's not an asset. A lot of people, websites are not an asset in their business. That could be because the way they've designed it, could be because of the words that they've used, could because of the layer or the flow, so many different things. And so I'm really, I'm really on a mission to help people turn their websites into actual assets, things that actually help them grow their business, not just something that is on the expense sheet. But something that can actually sits on the balance sheet as an asset, not on the expense sheet as this money goes out every single month, and aids them in creating more business for themselves. So that's why I created this. And I also reserved this exclusively for when I do speaking gigs like or come on the podcasts. So it's not something that you can just find on my Facebook page. It's reserved exclusively for interviews and speaking gigs that I get.
Rennie Gabriel 19:52
Beautiful. Thank you, Divian. Thank you for being on the show and the value you contributed to my listeners.
Divian Mistry 20:00Thank you. I really enjoyed coming on here and sharing the things I've shared.
Rennie Gabriel 20:05
Thank you, Divian. And to my listeners, thank you for tuning in. You can listen to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast on your favorite platform. And please rate, review and subscribe. If you'd like to know how books, movies and Society programs you to be poor, and what the cure is, then log on to wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. You'll hear my TEDx talk and can request a free 27-Page Roadmap to Complete Financial Choice®, and receive a weekly email with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or your money. And if you'd like to see how you can increase your wealth, and donate to the causes that touch your heart, please check out our affordable program, Wealth with Purpose. Until next week, be prosperous. Bye bye for now.
