Mikhil Raja

Full transcript: Mikhil Raja on London Real

0:03 I’m here with Mikhil Raja, recent graduate of the Business Accelerator. Mikhil, tell us about you. Where are you from, what did you use to do, or what do you do? So I’m from India originally. I came to the UK when I was nine. I got a tennis scholarship here. My brother’s actually professional tennis player, as the first came here and scholarships, and it’s cool, kind of boarding school from nine to 18.

0:28 Went to Emory University after that, graduated and joined Deutsche Bank in the UK, Investment Banking team, like yourself. Oh, and the start of the year, quit to start my own business. And my journey to the Business Accelerator was really part of going from trying to start a business to feeling confident in starting that business and managing people and really becoming a CEO, effectively.

1:00 And I think London Real and the Business Accelerator particularly gave me that confidence to go from “I’m my startup co-founder” to “I’m a CEO and I’m going to create something real.” People assume that just ’cause you work in banking on Wall Street that you have the confidence to go ahead and then, like, lead a company, and they’re very different types of confidence. One, you have a big team behind you and a brand, and the other one, it’s all you, and they’re very different skills.

1:25 What would make you leave investment banking? It was two things, I think, and it was the same two things why I joined the Business Accelerator, actually. One was learning. I just wanted to kind of learn more, as much as I could, and I’ve always been kind of, I just want to learn as much as I can, and my learning curve in banking, it kind of flattened.

1:51 And the second, I mean, potentially more importantly, I wanted to change the world around me. I was kind of a passenger in what was going on, so things would happen around me, and things that happened my team and things that happen in life, and I would watch and be there and contribute when I was. And I wanted to change my direction to being active, not just from a work sense but also all around me I wanted to.

2:21 And that’s why for me, the business I started is within recruitment, within the non-LinkedIn or blue-collar space. And that just has changed my life, because we get people who really can’t get jobs or find it difficult to get employment, and we get them jobs. We get thank-yous and we get kind of real praise for that, and that is more impactful than all of the money I was making before, and when I feel like I’m actually changing things around me.

2:56 Now, why London Real? I think was the first… I think I saw you and how you had really transformed this from broadcasting, and then sometimes you still refer to yourself as a broadcaster, and I have to admit, I find that odd. I think of you much more; you’re not a broadcaster, you’re a CEO. I think there’s much more to that than broadcasting.

3:21 And I think that was my… just seen the way you kind of transformed this business from broadcasting to a global business almost single-handedly, and I think that was hugely impactful. And then all of that, what you do on a day-to-day basis, how you spend your time, how you really create, make this media company. And one thing that you said quite early on, which is every business is a media business, was kind of so true.

3:55 You know, that’s the ear… I don’t care whether you’re kind of building houses, bricks and mortar round the corner, but every business now is a media business. The only way to attract people is through social media and through webinars and through networking and all that sort of stuff that we learnt in the Business Accelerator.

4:11 And why take the chance to join our Business Accelerator? You had to invest money and it was time. What made you actually go ahead with it? It was about kind of where do I invest my time. When I joined, we had a team of 10 people, and we thought, so we had a team, we’re done, all right. When I joined, we had seven hundred restaurants and bars in London that use our app; we now have over a thousand. So it was not in bad shape, but I still struggled with where should I be investing my time to maximize returns.

4:51 And I didn’t quite know the answer to that, so I was testing various things and obviously learning on the job and doing my best of just trying everything, but I didn’t quite have the IP of what I spend my time on to really maximize my game. And then once you start, I mean, you give us the IP, but then you just got this whole community of people that are just beating you. You fail, you should do a webinar, and they do six webinars.

5:19 Usually, you should do… follow on Twitter, and then they give you kind of ten other sites that actually can do that, will help you on that to maximize. And it’s just, suddenly you’ve got this… everyone’s kind of beating each other, sharing IP and really kind of driving each other. Yeah, I think I would say an obvious choice now looking back, but I guess, yeah, potentially a risk.

5:42 One more… when I started, you had ten employees, you already had seven hundred restaurants signed up. A lot of guys in your position say, what am I going to learn from these guys at London Real? I already know how to do marketing, I actually know how to lead people, so why would you join? I think just to do it better. I could see that you were doing it better than me, very simply, and I was getting a chance to learn from you, and that was as simple as that.

6:15 And it was an investment in myself to be a better leader, and I knew that that money would be well spent, because I would invest myself, and the skills I learned would be with me for the rest of my life. Talking about those first two or three weeks on the course, what was the experience like? Yeah, brutal, because the thing is, as soon as you start the course… I’m very introverted by nature, so I’m not comfortable kind of shouting or screaming about things I’ve done or things I want to do.

6:49 We have to get vulnerable very quickly, and the first two or three weeks you have to kind of talk about things you wouldn’t talk to your friends about, things you might not even talk to your family about, and it’s so empowering once you start doing that. And I remember the vlogs. For me, doing a vlog, I mean, I’ve never been on video, so I always kind of thought, okay, someone else can do that, someone maybe more attractive or more willing to be kind of out in the open.

7:23 But as soon as you start doing that, you completely get out of your comfort zone, and once you’re out of your comfort zone, I like it out there. You start to stop taking yourself so seriously, and I think once you stop taking yourself so seriously, you start to be creative. I think once you start to be creative, you can then go in to reach people that you wouldn’t have been able to reach before and kind of get them to connect.

7:57 Actually, that’s where you connect. You connect with other people, whether that’s your client or other people around you. And I think that really was the first two or three weeks; it was all about becoming vulnerable and just taking myself not that seriously, just being open. Okay, I’m going to look potentially silly on a vlog, but who cares? Let me try it. And that was fun, actually.

8:21 You mentioned the community earlier, as far as giving lots of ideas, some people beating you. What were your initial reactions when you saw all these different people from all around the world, different ages, different groups, posting videos? What did you think you were getting into? My initial reaction was, what do we have in common? Right, that’s my initial reaction. There’s nothing we have in common. There’s some girl in Amsterdam, there’s some guy in the US building cages, and it’s like, really, what do I have in common with that guy?

8:51 And then suddenly, particularly as you start seeing their whys, I think as you start seeing why they do what they do, their hero’s journey, and you start to understand them on a much deeper level. Okay, I can see that guy, I get them. And then you kind of all bind together, and then people face issues and we’re kind of like, don’t worry about that, I faced that before, it’s okay.

9:22 I remember one of the other people on the accelerator was getting kind of abuse on Twitter for some of the stuff he posted. It’s like, take that on the chin, that’s a compliment. And I think that really kind of, it’s invaluable even now. I think actually, I think the next year and the years after that, we’ll be on the Business Accelerator Facebook group. That Facebook group will be active for as long as we build businesses, and I think that’s pretty special.

9:54 Biggest challenge for you on the whole course of eight weeks? I think managing my emotions, so running the business and then making sure that I had time to really focus on this and really do everything that needed to be done. I think translating some of those things to other areas. So one of my key objectives for the last three months has been raising capital.

10:37 And so a lot of the stuff that we discussed on the sales side, on the client side, taking all of that and using that to enhance, so kind of taking that knowledge and then using it for my own purpose, which was kind of reaching out to investors and really creating the funnel for investors. And that actually proved to be the biggest challenge, because I was kind of like, how do I split time doing everything, but actually finding a way to do everything as best as I could.

11:09 And then there are still things I wish I could have done more, being open, but doing everything to the best of my ability and then taking all of those learnings and using it for the purpose of the business in raising capital really helped, and I think that was transformational. And Alex, actually, the coaches that I had, everyone had a coach, was really impactful in taking the learnings and transferring them to what I individually needed.

11:41 And I think we should have some positive news in the next month on that capital raising, of course, and I’m very hopeful that that journey is going to come to an end soon. Biggest breakthrough on the course for you? Vlogs and webinar, no doubt. Okay, talking about the webinar, because you didn’t know about doing it, you did it, you hit, and then you had some really big breakthrough with your business afterward. How was all that stuff related?

12:05 How is it related? It was related because I tried different things, and what I had, a message, didn’t work out. So I did the webinar, I wrote blogs to link to the webinar. No one actually showed up on the webinar, but during that period, because I was just so kind of creative, in my element, I was also reaching out to past clients, reaching out to people that had said no before in different ways, just kind of seeing what sound bites I could give them.

12:35 And this relationship was with the restaurant chain in London. I had cold called them in February and they hadn’t liked our product. They tried it, they tried it again and thought it was okay after we improved it a bit, then they tried it a third time and again, okay. And so reaching out to them again, and then we did another kind of little trial for them, so it’s almost the fourth time that I’d kind of reached out to them and kind of got them engaged, and then suddenly it clicked.

13:11 We just hadn’t quite provided the service that we needed to provide across all of their managers and quite made the connections with everyone we need to make, and then suddenly we landed a 40,000 pound contract, which is surreal. But it wasn’t part of an intended strategy, but because I was in that zone, it kind of all fell together, and I definitely attribute the Business Accelerator to that, because I wouldn’t have been in that space.

13:44 I’d have been bogged down: okay, they didn’t want us, okay, we’ll try again, we’ll do something else. But it gave me the kind of emotional strength and also creative strength to say, okay, now let me just try again, let me do it again. That’s awesome. So you were just thinking different and feeling different, and you’re okay hearing no, because having no one show up to your webinar is just a horrible feeling. So then once you get over that, pretty much just do anything.

14:16 You’re just shooting and trying these things. Exactly. It’s great advice for anyone watching, Mikhil. A lot of people just assume dead clients or dead accounts, and they’re not; people change as well. Yeah. What do you think you’ll be using from this course, like, years from now? What do you think you learned that you’ll continue to apply?

14:32 I think it gave me a great understanding of the whole circle, so sort of that funnel process: what’s important, how do I get clients, what do I look at in terms of monitoring clients, how to keep engaging them. I think just that whole piece, and really remembering why and what, why we’re special. So one of the things you talked about was, it doesn’t matter how many life coaches there are, how many people are trying to do your thing, you will always do it differently, because you come from a certain place.

15:09 And I think that’s, again, super powerful, because our space is quite competitive. Recruitment is competitive, but I feel like if I can continue to focus on my vision and where we are and how creative we can be as a group, and inside of me, then we can produce something amazing, and that’s all I am now focused on. I’m not worried about what competitor does or what anyone else does. I’m just focused on me, and if we can execute on that, then I think we will.

15:43 So I think, yeah, it’s a lot of kind of high-level things which really came from the basics, from the nuts and bolts, came a kind of high-level understanding of, okay, this is what I should be focusing on, this is my strategy, and really having the self-confidence to execute those two things. If you bumped into yourself on the street, the Mikhil that didn’t take the course versus you now, how is that other guy different?

16:06 It was very strange. I bumped into an ex-colleague of mine, because, as I said, we’re raising funds and I’m reaching out to my ex-colleagues, etc., and he said to me, “You’ve changed so much.” I was like, “Really? I haven’t.” He’s like, “You would have never reached out to me before, and you would have never reached out to our old bosses before, and you would have never just gone for them and said, look, I’ve got an amazing business that you should invest in.”

16:39 “You’ve been trying to raise money for ages. Why, like, what’s happened?” And I was kind of like, oh, I’m always confident. Okay. And that kind of hit me. Actually, I have changed. I’m more willing to go out and put myself on the line, whether it’s friends, families. My aunties know we’re raising money, my ex-colleagues know, and that has the risk of failure. If you don’t raise money, then everyone thinks, oh well, you failed.

17:11 But I think the accelerator taught me, well, you won’t succeed unless you do that, so just go for it, and if it fails, it fails, and you’ve learned a lot in that process. And I think that self-confidence I didn’t have, to really put myself on the line and really risk losing in order to achieve winning, and just focus on the winning.

17:29 Yeah, I know that mindset, because if you’re from that space, the last thing you want to do is go back and ask your former banking colleagues. But then again, if you reframe it, it’s like, well, why wouldn’t you? You’re giving them an amazing opportunity; if they say no, who cares what they think? So sounds like you’ve really gotten over the fact of people caring what they think of you. Vlogging does that a lot, because once you just throw yourself out there, it’s just like, well, whatever, it’s out there, and who cares, this is what I’m doing. Now sometimes I forget how empowering these steps are.

18:01 If someone’s thinking about taking this course and they’re not sure, what do you tell them? What advice would you give? Go for it. I think you don’t realize at the start how impactful it is at the end, so that’s obviously always going to be the case. I would say go for it. I think it’s an investment in yourself, and I think it’s important that you invest in yourself always.

18:27 I think as you get older, people tend to think, okay, well, I invested when I was in university, I invested when I was in school, I don’t need to keep investing. And I disagree with that notion. I think you need to always invest in yourself and always invest in your learning, and this is the perfect place to do it.

18:43 Finally, you had more of a business-to-business play. Some of the students have more of a business-to-consumer play, or at least it looks like that at first; they will probably morph into a business-to-business play, like we did as well. But how did the course look through that lens to you? It sounds like you found a way to just use a lot of the lessons anyway. Yeah, I think they’re so comparable. I think all businesses are in social media.

19:12 You forget, because people run businesses, their own businesses, and so targeting those people at the businesses, you can do it the same way as targeting a normal consumer. And really that’s what the lessons I was taking on Twitter, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on the blogging: you have to change your audience, you potentially have to change your tone, it’s a bit more formal, but you work around those specifics.

19:37 And in the end, a lot of what the Business Accelerator teaches you, you need to translate for yourself in order to make it super impactful, and that’s just the way every business is going to be. But it’s important that you learn those lessons well, and then you can kind of tweak them to what you need. How do you think you’re going to be interacting with your classmates over the next year? I really want to beat them all and build the best movements of the world.

20:10 I think, look, I think what’s really nice is we all celebrate each other’s successes and we will help each other in the failures, and I think that’s crucial. I want to share the good news and the bad news and all that sort of stuff. And I think likewise, we’re actually doing the bi-weekly calls, I don’t know if you know, but we’re doing the bi-weekly calls still on a Tuesday at 7pm. Whoever can join will come on the call, so that’s very nice.

20:42 And we’re also keeping on the accountability document, and it’s a document that actually serves you well. And so the aim is to keep it on and hopefully come back to you in a year’s time and say, look, built this really cool business thanks to you. And maybe we can help other people build businesses as well, so hopefully build that ecosystem out. Yeah, you might be the first one on my hall of fame. I think it’s a little bit early to speak of. And also these classmates could be potential investors as well.

21:21 Yeah. Mikhil, loved having your energy on this course. Love your energy right now. I can feel your passion, and I think if you continue to push yourself and get out of the comfort zone and try new things, you’re gonna be really successful as a business. So thanks for coming on the course. Thank you. Cool, man. Thank you, thank you.