In this episode, Dave is to welcome Shinjini Das. Shinjini is the founder of the Das Media Group, a boutique content marketing agency which builds digital marketing strategies and creates live in-person as well as digital content artifacts to deeply connect your brand with target audiences internationally.
Shinjini has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, C-suite, and is an INC Girls Education Global Hero. At just 24, she has built a person brand with a social media following of over 130,000, is a global millennial influencer, keynote speaker, and is also a contributor to The Better Business Book.
She’s known as the “go Getter girl” and shares a message of empowerment and empowering self which is exactly what she shares with you today.
Shinjini always saw a destiny for herself. She visualized and dreamed about the life she wanted to live. She believed in it so much and made the leap leaving her corporate job. She started building a personal brand by unleashing very positive and useful contact. She became popular very fast to where media agencies contacted her to represent her. As she says, it was not magic, she put in a lot of time and hours and made her vision come true.
At the 6 min mark, Shinjini talks about making the dream a reality, leave her job, and what it took to not only manifest her dream, but make it successful.
- “What you think about, you create.”
- She had a very clear vision of what she wanted to build. It was not random.
- It takes courage, confidence, action, and strategy.
- She had to validate herself which meant setting goals and hitting them.
Specific actions she took:
- Compartmentalizing and sectionalizing things out with metrics for success in each area
- Having specific goals for outreach
- Social followers
- Engagement
- Features in publications and writing
- Understanding how each offering she has fits in and where and then planning for it.
- Setting targets for revenue and growth
What are secrets that work or don’t work for growing, building, and monetizing an audience?
- Have self-respect. You cannot be respected unless you respect yourself first.
- Identify your goals
- Connect deeply with people and your audience
- Have variety in your content – it needs to be fun, engaging, and not stale
- Be authentic and be real
At the 18 min mark, Shinjini talks about empowerment and how important it is the life and success
Belief gives confidence, confidence empowers you, and empowerment grows you and changes your life.
Shinjini’s Recommendations for books and influencers to read and follow:
- Adam Grant – follow and read his work on behavior
- Daniel Goleman – read his work on emotional intelligence
- Her biggest takeaway is that any skill is learned and can be learned
Advice for people just starting out:
- Have a clear direction – take time to plan and know where you want to go
- Start high, the 30,000 foot view and then go down from there
How do you get your message out and get speaking gigs?
- Start speaking for free
- Get some experience
- The first few are most difficult and you will start to find you true area of expertise
- Get on the phone and make calls and ask – many won’t return your call, but some will and you will get your first engagements there
- Show your value and make it easy for them
Biggest lesson?
- Learning empathy and how it allows you to be vulnerable and connect had made such a difference in her success.
- This allows her to better connect What transformation have you had to go through to become who you are today?
- Shinjini was an introvert growing up and in order to attain her dream, she had to become an extrovert.
- She had to learn to be outgoing, happy, engaging, empathetic
- She had to also go through a major physical transformation from getting in shape to how to dress, make-up, carry herself.
Best Quote: "It is game of resilience and a game of hustle and if you have both, you are golden..."
Misfit 3:
- Love yourself and love those around you. Love is a very powerful emotion and speaks of happiness and personal power. It also leads to a healthy self-respect.
- Make sure you have a framework and value proposition in place and that you fully understand it and plan for your success.
- Empowerment: Believe in yourself and your value. Tap into your power.