BIO: Sampark Sachdeva has 12 years of corporate experience across Asian Paints and other businesses.
STORY: Sampark let the security of his corporate job distract him from building a business out of his love for training. It wasn’t until COVID struck and he found himself without a job that he decided to work on the plan. The business turned out to be a huge success.
LEARNING: Nothing good comes easy. Don’t let job security restrict you from pursuing your entrepreneurial dreams.
“No matter how bad your situation might be, the victim card can only be played once. You can’t keep playing that card again and again.”
Sampark Sachdeva
Guest profile
Sampark Sachdeva has 12 years of corporate experience across Asian Paints and other businesses. He was awarded the best digital coach of 2021 at the India coaching awards. He was a TEDx speaker in 2020 and won the LinkedIn Spotlight Award in 2019, recognizing him as one of India’s top content creators. Paul Ryder and Oracle also awarded Sampark as a top marketing and sales professional in 2019.
Sampark has trained over 20,000 people across 125 sessions across 10 countries. He has over 125,000 followers across social media channels.
Worst investment ever
Sampark had an excellent corporate career. He was with Asian Paints, India’s largest paints company, for over five years. In 2015 he moved to Ola, the Indian Uber, and was there for three years. Then he moved to Oyo, the country’s largest hospitality brand, for another two years. Sampark won the Top 100 Marketing and Sales Professionals Award during this career journey. So yes, everything was going well on the corporate side.
On the passion side, Sampark had been writing on LinkedIn for close to six years. He’d posted over 2000 posts in 2019 and won the LinkedIn Spotlight Award. Everything seemed rosy, and Sampark felt this was the time to take off.
In 2020, Sampark moved into a new role in the same organization. But that’s when COVID struck. He was in the hospitality industry, leading corporate events. He had just been in that role for a few months when the lockdown occurred. In one day, everything stopped.
Sampark sat down with his family, and they looked at their savings. They could survive for a couple of years with what they had. Sampark decided to explore a plan he had put on the back burner. Sampark loved training, and after getting the content creator award, he consulted his mentors on how to make something out of his love for training.
They all advised him to work on the plan for the next three to four years and then look at how to do it long-term. But when the lockdown started, the three-year plan became an overnight plan. Sampark decided to give himself four months to execute the plan. If it didn’t work, he still had a corporate career to return to after the lockdown.
At the end of four months, Sampark did a review and realized the training business was going better than he expected. He gave himself another four months, and it was still going well. He continued doing it until April 2022, when an old boss offered him a job. Sampark turned down the job because his business was doing well. He had trained close to 80,000 people and had a lot of clients in the pipeline. Sampark’s only regret is having waited for so long to start his passion venture.
Lessons learned
- As a corporate professional, you’re restricted by your own thoughts and the false sense of security.
- Running a business is a hustle because now you have to do everything alone.
- Networking is crucial. But remember, it’s not about transactional relationships; it’s about giving and genuinely investing in that relationship professionally.
Andrew’s takeaways
- Nothing good comes easy.
- Always have a plan B.
- Recognize the role of luck in life. Sometimes the world accelerates your plans, and sometimes, it kicks you in the ass.
Actionable advice
Always have confidence, be positive, and leave your comfort zone. Keep reinventing yourself, learning, and upskilling.
Sampark’s recommendation
Sampark recommends two online courses on his website:
- Becoming a Champion of LinkedIn: teaches you how to use LinkedIn to build your personal brand and how to build a network on the platform.
- How to Be a Rockstar at Work: teaches you how to upscale your career and fast-track your profile even in a job scenario.
No.1 goal for the next 12 months
Sampark’s number one goal for the next 12 months is to go full throttle into corporate training across three verticals: personal branding and LinkedIn, sales and marketing, and employee capability building.
Parting words
“Be positive. Be confident and keep building on your brand. Trust me, sooner or later, you’ll reach where you want to go. I might be a little later due to whatever obstacles that come by, but you’ll reach where you deserve to be.”
Sampark Sachdeva
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