Please introduce yourself (name, countries where you lived, your passions, and hobbies?)
Hi! My name is Dhiraj Deshmukh and I’m from India.
My passions include traveling, content creation, branding, marketing, mindset, entrepreneurship and spirituality.
In my free time, I enjoy staying healthy by practicing Calisthenics. I’m also very social and enjoy meeting all types of new people!
When did your passion for entrepreneurship first begin and what was your first entrepreneurial project? My passion for entrepreneurship began during my college years.
My mentors told me that I had a flair for marketing and suggested that I could develop the skill of understanding people and helping them solve their problems.
They noticed this especially when I started closing sponsorship deals for college fests.
That recognition is what prompted me to understand that - Yes! I want to be an entrepreneur!
It is definitely for me. The beginning of my entrepreneurial experience was quite humble.
When I was 21, I had a sales job that allowed me to closely observe how my boss built and ran a sustainable business.
Soon, I started taking initiatives on my own and came to a level that I like to call - pseudo entrepreneur.
A pseudo entrepreneur works like an entrepreneur, but doesn’t carry the monetary capital risk involved.
A pseudo entrepreneur also functions on someone else’s resources. During this experience, I took some initiatives in the business and worked in it as if it were my own.
I covered all the digital marketing operations in that firm and learned many lessons along the way.
What are the biggest lessons you learned (achievements vs. failures) in your first entrepreneurial project? Achievement:
When I quit my job and started freelancing, I Instantly tripled my income.
I went from freelancing to starting an agency model in about 4 months.
The lesson learned here is: be consistent and be 100% genuine!
People value genuineness and honesty in this world.
When I went above and beyond for my first client, she got so happy with my work ethic that she passed me a lot of leads which helped me in my business till the very present.
Failure:
I don’t consider anything as a failure in my entrepreneurial journey.
Setbacks are simply sending us in a different direction where we’re supposed to be.
My journey is amazing, but something which I can currently get better at doing is managing time and keeping up with so many tasks at hand.
What is your current entrepreneurial venture?
“The Social Persona” - IG Page and Marketing Agency
This is my agency which stemmed from my freelancing work.
The social persona helps coaches, consultants, and entrepreneurs show up authentically on social media, build an engaged audience and monetize it - without feeling burned out.
In this coaching space, I teach and advise clients how to optimize their business with everything I learned in my 1 year of freelancing and building a business.
What are its mission and vision? After working for over a year in the coaching and consulting space, I saw the power of social media and how it can make or break a business.
I also saw some coaches who were so authentic and dedicated to their mission - they didn’t care about the vanity metrics of social media.
At the same time - I also witnessed people who were more concerned with the numbers than authenticity.
This made me realize there will always be people with questionable methods of doing business on social media.
I would have to choose my authentic tribe and thrive within a community of genuine people.
So it became my mission to help coaches, consultants, and freelancers leverage social media and grow their business in the most authentic and genuine way possible, without selling their soul to icky social media trends.
My vision is to help as many people as I can in my journey and emerge as a thought leader in the coaching/consulting space.
What are the values of your corporate culture?
Integrity | Authenticity | Service | Humour | Self-development
What does a normal workday in your business look like? A typical day in my workday looks like starting with all the simple tasks.
I dedicate business and marketing activities before lunch.
I have a team meeting around 2 pm, my team joins and works with me from 1-6 pm. I dedicate the rest of the time to client work.
My team is very close-knit. We are like a family and we have lots of fun while working together.
My rest of the day is dedicated to taking time off from business and focusing just on myself.
I’m very spiritual and enjoy meditating and reflecting about many different things.
What does spirituality mean for you?
Spirituality for me is a deep connection with yourself.
It is so simple, yet so profound.
It is an inner awareness about all of us being a part of something which is inexplicably bigger than us.
It is a deep realization that the birds that chirp and rivers that flow; the people smiling at you, and the barista making the coffee right now, as we do this interview - all of them being connected to a single and very powerful source.
It is simply a state of being where you're connected to your higher self in a very natural way.
What is a popular myth about spirituality you want to bust?
When I say spirituality, everyone imagines a monk sitting in the monastery or a yogi in the Himalayas. WHY? I believe that’s because of the mainstream media.
A normal human being who is scrolling through reels or listening to, for example, hip-hop music CAN BE a spiritual person too.
Again. It is not defined by your clothes or what you do for a living.
It is more about how self-aware you are about your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and beliefs which are gradually shaping you into WHO YOU ARE.
So the myth buster is that spiritual people don’t necessarily have to wear certain garments or meditate in the mountains.
Do you believe that spirituality is connected to entrepreneurship?
100000% yes!
Entrepreneurship is about stepping into the unknown and bringing your vision into reality.
It is staying so faithful to your vision, that you bring it into reality with your unwavering faith and aligned actions.
It is recognizing your purpose and working towards it every single day.
It is tapping into your intuition and taking the right steps at the right time.
When you begin an entrepreneurial endeavor, the journey is going to pop up with lots and lots of challenges!
You will get defeated and feel stuck plenty of times.
But at the same time, you see some things just magically working themselves out.
For example - the content idea coming to you, the right phrase you said during the sales call which got the deal, the leads popping in to work with you - without you pushing too hard to work with them.
That’s alignment and living in sync with your purpose.
All of these things happen when you’re mentally and energetically so sound, that your inner world starts pushing itself out, and you start realizing your vision into reality.
I like to call the flow state.
The flow state where everything is just happening effortlessly, and no one has to tell you what to do next.
Practicing spirituality or having a spiritual lifestyle can put you in the flow state more often and serve as a compass guiding you through the journey.
How do you usually achieve the flow state?
The flow state - this is the state where challenge meets skill and amazing solutions or innovations take place.
It’s a sweet spot, and people do achieve this voluntarily or involuntarily.
I usually achieve it by doing practices that make me pause and let my conscious and subconscious minds come in alignment with each other.
A great analogy could be the horizon (where the land and sky meet), the conscious and subconscious come together and work in complete harmony.
There is no such thing as confusion or doubt in the flow state.
The universe flows through you, and things feel auto-telic.
To achieve this flow state - you can practice simple meditation, scripting, journaling, prayers, etc.
Practices that make you PAUSE and LOOK DEEPLY WITHIN YOURSELF without any judgment or having any emotional reaction to your thoughts.
The keyword here though is CONSISTENCY. Choose one technique and do it regularly.
Make it your habit and a part of your daily lifestyle.
What is the biggest advice you can give other entrepreneurs based on your experience in the business field? START BEFORE YOU’RE READY (I know this is a cliché, but this advice has helped me a lot). You won’t be able to figure out everything in one go.
You just have to figure out your next best step.
You can’t connect all the dots looking forward, you’ll connect all the dots only looking backward.
So start imperfectly, and keep optimizing on your way up!
Entrepreneurship is literally about stepping in the chaos and walking towards simplicity while allowing the cycle to continue.
Every time it feels overwhelming - just breathe and get back to your WHY.
What are your favorite biz apps? (social media apps, graphic apps, networking apps…?)
My favorite biz apps - Google office, Canva, Asana, Trello, & Zoom. Trello and Asana have been lifesavers to work virtually and finish up tasks with ease - even when I am traveling.
What projects do you have in mind for the future of your business?
I am working on and optimizing my current program which helps coaches and consultants own their social media presence! It consists of 4 modules - branding, marketing and sales.
I wish to add a mindset module too - to include some practices which helped me tremendously and gave me results.
Sharpening my skills as a funnel launch expert, and learning adobe spark AR, are also on my list of things to do.
Which entrepreneurs, historical figures or family members do you look up to and why? I look up to the musician Russ.
Russ talks a lot about manifesting and how YOU are enough to achieve and conquer all your dreams. His lyrics:
“Moving to the rhythm of my intuition, anything I want I speak into existence… that's how I’m living, that's how I’m winning''
have inspired me a lot.
He is a self-made artist and an entrepreneur and I can closely relate to everything he is describing in his music.
I also look up to my mother for being an extremely strong woman and facing difficulties only with a smile on her face.
I appreciate her for exploring and doing things beyond her reach, but still winging her way in somehow. She has been a provider in our family when I was very young and when things were financially very difficult for our family.
Please list your favorite books, podcasts, songs, or movies (does not have to be business-related) and explain why you love them Favorite Books: Psycho Cybernetics, The Power of Habit, To Sell is Human, The Powers of the Subconscious Mind. These books have helped me tremendously in my personal and professional growth. Podcasts: Insights and Perspectives by Joseph Rodriguez.
This podcast has been a game-changer!
It explains to you how spirituality is closely related to entrepreneurship and how all the answers and explanations are present deep within you.
Follow The Social Persona by Dhiraj down below:
Social media - Instagram - @thesocialpersona_
About Dhiraj:
Dhiraj is a social media strategist, based in India. He has helped many coaches and consultants build their personal brand which reflects their genuine identity. Dhiraj is passionate about helping coaches monetize their social media with their unique skill sets and experiences. His main approach has always been 'how to monetize your small audience' without feeling ‘icky’ or ‘salesy’. Dhiraj is also a traveler, fitness enthusiast, and a curious researcher in his free time.
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