Everyone has to deal with problems in their personal and professional life. A less-experienced person can feel more confused while dealing with their issues. The lack of problem-solving skills can lower confidence, which is a must for tackling every challenge in day-to-day life.
In such scenarios, Mentor can guide a person through all their ups and downs. With their experience gained over the years and their positive and optimistic approach, a mentor acts as a friendly adviser, role model, and guide. They can help identify strengths and weaknesses, such as leadership skills or knowledge of business protocol.
The understanding and expertise offered by a mentoring counsellor can be useful and help set goals related to professional and personal growth, build confidence, and discover solutions to challenges. Such comprehensive mentoring and counselling have been offered by Santosh Sunar, who is serving his mentees with precision, integrity, and truth through his company BeTheGuide® Indian Mentoring Academy Private Limited.
Santosh Sunar, the Founder and the Director of BeTheGuide®, has been a driving force in taking the company through various milestones and leading from the front during the Pandemic.
Santosh conveys, “Every company should have Dedicated Motivational speakers in their arsenal to enhance their corporate lifestyle.”
In an interview with Insights Success for its edition of ‘India’s 40 under 40 Brightest Business Leaders, Santosh Sunar discussed the story of his business, values, qualities, uniqueness, and future visions.
Please tell us about the saga of BeTheGuide® since its inception.
BeTheGuide® Indian Mentoring Academy Private Limited, formerly known as BeTheGuide® Motivational Coaching Organization, is an ISO 9001:2015 accredited solution-based Start-up Motivational venture.
We are a reputed and recognized visionary enterprise based out of Shillong, Meghalaya, which takes pride in being the first and the only motivational Mentoring Company in North-Eastern India.
The journey for the organization since its inception on 15th February 2018 has been a remarkable one. We have been felicitated with many Local, National and International Awards for our exemplary work from 2020 to 2021. As a company, we have completed more than 3000 trainings in four years, and over 500 sessions were completed online and offline during this year.
It has been a terrific journey despite the double whammy of the Pandemic. We didn’t terminate any employees, nor did we cut down their salaries but to everyone’s surprise we doubled their Salary which is one of the Greatest risks as a company we took, and it paid off well. Leaving employees during a time of distress is not called leadership.
Here are a few of our Achievements and Credits as a company:
- Felicitated with Global Choice Award as One of the Best Motivational Coaching Centers in India 2021.
- Awarded and Featured in Business Fame Magazine as One of the Best Innovative Start-up to look for in 2021.
- Featured and Certified as India’s Fastest Growing Start-up by CIOLOOKINDIA an International Magazine 2020
- Felicitated with International Teaching Award for driving excellence in Educational Field 2020
- Felicitated with Indian Leadership Icon award by BrandOpus India 2020, for being the Best Motivational Coaching Center in Northeast India.
In terms of the director’s achievements, I have been:
- Recognized and awarded as one of the Top100 Entrepreneurs in Meghalaya, in a Chief Minister’s Business E-Champion challenge 2019.
- Awarded a National Award for being the Best Motivational Speaker of the year 2021 organized by NEBA, Hypedge Media and ICAN Foundation India.
- Featured and Certified as one of the Top 100 Inspirational Educators in India by Journey Magazine in association with CodeBharat, in 2021.
- Felicitated with the Champions of Change Award 2021 by CIOLOOKINDIA and the Most Inspiring Business Leader to follow in 2021 by Business ICONIC.
Apart from his speaking and business engagements, Santosh is also strong on the literary front. He is the author of the Best-Selling E-book: “Public Speaking: A Step to Become Rich” and an internationally recognized poet.
What was your inspiration behind venturing into the business arena?
North East is the region in India largely untouched by the govt of India, where we don’t have big well, known and branded companies which can provide employment to the youth and most of them, they migrate to metropolitan cities to get a better jobs and live life according to their free will. Because of the rise in unemployment, they fall into wrong hands and take a step which proves fatal for them and their families.
Thus, I thought a Mentoring company in North East India would be a great and an exceptional idea backed by the belief that I want to create my own Brand as well providing mentoring at the highest and the deepest level, help in giving them direction and provide jobs, create an army of positive thinkers who can fight with negativity and unethical human behaviour, and thus making free and happy India.
I want Meghalaya and India as a whole to be known as the happiest place on Earth. People live under high stress, anxiety and depression due to various job pressures and personal dilemmas, If I can contribute little to make them happy at least I would feel that I have done my part in creating a harmonious environment.
Our organization mentors the youth and working professionals to understand the root cause of their problems and provide practical solutions to enhance their lifestyles both professionally and personally.
What were the initial challenges that you had to surmount to ensure your business’s success rate to reach greater heights?
To start as a new company with a new vision and mission is itself is one of the biggest challenges anywhere and hence, we had our share of problems too. We are a bootstrapped company to date, so we need to ensure that the marketing and selling must be at their best always. Getting a selling Team was the biggest problem because freshers, students and working professionals do not want to sell.
Hence, we used the Free social media marketing Techniques and ensured that our marketing paid us off, we were able to get at least 50 clients during the first three months and then we never looked back, and we got teams who were good at influencing, and we trained them day and night.
By doing that, the customers were also mentored positively, and we were able to solve at least one of their problems with our service pitching tactics. These clients became our representatives, and thus, word-of-mouth advertising became effective.
It was indeed a tough job because we wanted to minimize our marketing expenses to almost negligible, and we were able to keep it that way for constantly three years. A little bit of creativity in marketing changes the overall concept of sales and sales started happening automatically now it was easy to hire sales employees with our unique method of pitching to the clients.
Not to forget Pandemic turned everything downhill. All the profits that we incurred during our initial days now we were losing customers and business was in loss. I was running behind bills, stakeholders were haunting me, employees wanted payments on time and some of them were leaving voluntarily. I arrived at the point where I discussed many times to stop running the show and file for bankruptcy; it was total chaos. But since the company that I started is a mentoring company, I stayed positive and strong.
Everything was online. I started to be more active online and reached many customers, which led to creating our app in the Google play store. Hence, we did a lot of webinars, free sessions, and trainings. These brought us back alive in the business, and I was patient, resilient and persistent with my approach, ensuring that we waited and let the operations start offline so we could go to the office.
Once the physical sessions and trainings started, I could deliver the promise that was made to everyone. We fine-tuned our programs, and this was one of the greatest reasons behind our success. I believe that the Customers are our greatest investors if we sell it right and properly. Hence we never availed of loans as the time was not favourable. And to date, we are able to run operations because of our customers, who love our services to the core.
What professional values and qualities do you think your clients value in you and BeTheGuide® the most?
Transparency, honesty, and truthfulness in showing the right way to deal with all the problems are the qualities they value. I tell them to be Problem solvers instead of becoming Problem makers. They also like the passion and compassion that I have for bringing change in society as an entrepreneur.
Being a Most Sought-After mentor and Motivational Speaker for quite some time now I understood helping solve problems and showing them the practical solutions would make anybody a great character.
Our company has been able to solve their most daring problems and has guided many to be strong mentally and emotionally. They are trained to think positive at all times and take positive actions every time. We have helped them overcome their personal and professional problems by being with them every time, thus saving them from falling into wrong hands or taking wrong and unethical steps.
What USPs highlight BeTheGuide®’s uniqueness in the industry you are catering to?
Our USP has been better quality, affordable price, and lifetime solutions to their problems over these years. We also help them to be great Public Speakers, Professional Trainers and great Presenters, which is indeed needed at every step of our professional life. We also have partnered with various companies, schools, and colleges to help our clients throughout the year. We solve management problems, teachers’ problems, and managerial problems and help them to always become productive.
I believe every organization must have a Motivational mentor who can always bring value to the organization and help resolve the problems faced by the organization. Thus, we Reskill, Reshape and Rebuild the Career of Our Clients.
As an experienced professional, what would you like to advise the budding aspirants willing to enter the business world?
This is an era for entrepreneurs, so don’t shy away from your entrepreneurial Spirit. Future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams, hence believe in the beauty of your vision, enhance your skills, and learn the art of selling and influencing every time.
Continually fine-tune your services but don’t close the door of your business; once you close it along with it your dreams are also closed. Get a Great mentor who can provide you with real support and guidance throughout your entrepreneurial journey.
Don’t avail loans initially but find ways to take up your business ideas slowly and carefully, bank on your customers and take care of them. Provide Great Customer Service and scale your business.
Try and solve human problems because Great Entrepreneurs were those whose vision was to solve real-life problems. Lastly, remember god who helped you to overcome your biggest obstacles. Give credits to your elders and everyone who helped you to become a successful businessman.
How do you envision BeTheGuide®’s operations with the emerging technologies and automated tools that are revolutionizing the business world by enabling innovations?
Decades ago, when there was no computer, humans were employed on a large scale to work manually. But after the advent of the computer, the internet, social media, robotics and AI the perspective of the business have changed. Companies have started to depend on technologies more to get the fastest and most reliable services so that they can cater to millions in just a second. We adapted and adjusted ourselves to the new normal.
Creativity and innovation started to take place year after year. Technology computers started relying on cloud computing and some other cloud servers. The economy boomed and companies started minting money at a faster rate. However, the truth is this many people due to all these technological advancements which revolutionized the business world was left behind, and jobs with real human touch have dried up leaving a larger portion of the human population to be unemployed and only skillful people in these aspects are hired and hence we saw the rise of training institutions on a large scale.
We are a mentoring company, where we deal with human emotions and help them to resolve problems by themselves daily, which I guess any technology can’t do. We still want humans to run the show and our company will hire people who are left behind just because they don’t have some technical skills, we will train them and help them to become problem solvers in different aspects, touch human lives and be one of the greatest mentors in the history which I assume for achieving it we need to depend less on technology.
More than Chatbots and call automation in marketing and selling, we still need a human who can explain and guarantee the authenticity of the services and products. I would rather use technology for data analysis and research. Only, at least with that I can ascertain the facts and provide tentative results and employ humans, who can give me the real result and analysis on the ground. By employing people, I understand the cost will be high however the services will be better and more accurate which will minimize the risk of failing.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge my people for building BeTheGuide® into the brand it is today:
- Kalyan Bhattacharjee: Co-founder and Chief Administrator
- Gopal Thapa: VP of Marketing and Operations
- Neeetu Sunar: Advisor to the CEO
- Batkytishisha Laitphlang: VP Human Resource and Counselling
- Purnima Nongrum: Senior Corporate Experience Officer
- Philarisuk Nongrum: Learning and Training Dept Head
- Baiapyndaplang Rapmai: General manager Quality
- Jeisumkhim Halam: Placement manager
- Diamondrisha Lyngdoh Peinlang: Assistant Manager Operation
