I have something for you from a lifestyle advice perspective. I never usually give lifestyle advice. That’s not my role over here. My role is to talk about money and business, but this lifestyle advice could be important for your business and financial growth. So I just thought I should address it. Before I address something that could be extremely personal to you, I just want to apologize in advance.
I’ve been thinking about this, and I said, I have to say this, I have to get this message out. In some of the comments and live interactions on Facebook live in the webinars, I’ve seen people say that I could not stay for a full two hours because my data is out, or there was some issue accessing the platform because of the internet. Stop making excuses.
No Internet, No Business
See, the world is going to the internet. You and your business does not exist if it’s not on the internet. If I Google your business and it is not on the internet, it does not exist. So if you don’t allow the internet to crisscross through your business, you do not exist. Your business needs to be on the internet. You need to be on the internet. You do not need to set up a website and all of those things. Those can get expensive and complicated if you’re not a techie type like I’m not a techie type. It’s taken me years together to just get a basic website setup, and I don’t even refer to it because it’s not perfect. But the basic listing on Google or Facebook is free. You can do that.
You need to have internet crisscrossing through your life, through your home. In 2006, I was living in an apartment building. It was a time when the internet used to be super slow, and you could not get a connection easily. I was living in an apartment building that was across the road from a BSNL. I would go to them and say, I want internet, and they would say, well, we don’t have enough subscribers in your building. It’s only when we get 8 ports or 16 ports. It’s only when we get a minimum of 8 subscribers that we’ll draw the line from here to your building, and I was like, how much does it cost to draw the line? I need the internet. I’ll pay for the whole thing. And they would say no. Finally, I moved to a building with internet, and I got the lower one, the 64 kbps. My mentor told me why is it that I would not get 256? Which was the highest at that time. Why won’t you get 256? I said because it’s more expensive and he’s said no, it’s expensive not to have the best internet. And he urges me to ramp up to whatever the pro-rata best.
Pro-Rata Best
There’s something called Pro-rata best, which means if you are getting a fibre line for, let’s say, 250 rupees, you got 50 Mbps. Then for 500 rupees, you get 100 Mbps per month. And lastly, you get 250 Mbps for 1,800 per month. So the last one is too expensive pro-rata. The 100 Mbps for 500 per month is the pro-rata best, which means for the same rate per MB, this one is the highest. So you need to go for the pro-rata best.
Something that is not overcharging you but is the highest in that Pro-rata is called the pro-rata best option. It’s usually the middle or third last, or second last option. You need to get the best possible internet speed. If you’re a family of three or four people, you will consume 200 GB guaranteed. So you must go to the pro-rata highest, and then you want additional connections.
I’ll just give you an example, the camera in which I record my videos has two sim cards. Both of them have the 1.5 GB per day prepaid plan. Then I have another phone in my pocket in which I record my voice; this thing has got a billing plan. I pay 350 rupees for a billing plan, and there is no data limit on it. Then I have another 30 GB or 50 GB, which is rolled over. If I don’t use it, it rolls over to the next month. So I’ve got 200 or 300 GB in it, and I pay every month regardless of whether I use it or not. It’s not a prepaid but a billing plan.
Two sims in one phone with prepaid data, one sim in another phone with a billing plan. Then I’ve got internet for my bedroom because the internet of these two phones is sometimes a little crackly in the bedroom. So I bought another device for my bedroom. This thing itself is like 50 GB per month rollover, and it is 25 Mbps. And then I have another Reliance Jio, which is 100 MBPS with a 200 GB limit, and the moment I run out of limit, they send me a message saying you’re out of limit. I immediately buy another 100 GB. That’s five internet connections. None of these is used by my wife. She wants a Netflix. She’s got a separate internet.
I don’t expect you to be a fanatic like me. I don’t expect you to go all over and be a fanatic and invest all this money on the internet, but you do need to have fibre (fibre optics). Why am I saying this is because the moment your internet goes down, your learning is off. Your life stops.
I’ll give you an example. In 2016, I was in Switzerland. If you go there on those days, you get a local Swiss SIM card from the airport. The call minutes were cheap, but data on the phone was expensive. So I said, oh, wherever I go, I’ll have Wi-Fi. So let me not buy the data plan. I just got the call minutes. I got a new Swiss SIM card and got call minutes. I did not get the data.
Incidentally, on my last day in Switzerland, I lost my passport. I had to go from one place to another where the Indian Consulate was. First, find the railways, read the railway station, then go to the consulate and figure out how to fill the forms. And then they said, take a photo. To figure out where the market is and take a photo, all that without the internet, it was tiring. I was lost. All of the boards were in German, even if they were in English, without the internet, without maps, you’re finished.
I hired a taxi for the whole day to take me around the place just so I could have a local guy who could take me around to places because I could not figure out how to get to the bus. How to come back. How to go there? What hotel to stay at? I was finished. I felt helpless, and I felt the worst I’ve felt in years. I realized that without the internet, you are nothing.
So now you may be thinking that because that was a foreign country, it is not like that in India. I’ll give you a test. Leave your cell phone at home, walk around a little bit outside your house, maybe go to the Grocery, etc. Just carry a wallet, and leave your cell phone. Figure out what’s the level of helplessness you feel. Then carry your phone and leave your wallet and figure out what’s the level of helplessness you feel. The day you carry your wallet and leave your phone, let’s see how far you can go. How long you can survive without your phone. You’re nothing without your phone. You cannot survive. Without the internet on that phone, this is nothing. So it’s not about whether you appear on the webinar or not; it’s about investing in your life. Your life is going at a very slow pace. You have only so much time on the planet, so you won’t be able to achieve much.
Why is electricity/power Important
The other thing is power or electricity. We are all living in cities, including Pune, where electricity is a problem. Sometimes the power goes out. It goes on for two hours, three hours, or four hours. Ever since I remember, I’ve had an inverter. The moment I started living alone, I came out of the hostel life. I’ve had my own inverter and battery. And the battery covers at least four hours. So, you need a battery and inverter because the internet, the fibre won’t work if you don’t have power.
A good setup will cost ranging from 15 to 20 thousand rupees. The batteries last for five years. The inverter is a one-time investment. If you don’t have a power back up in your house. I don’t know how you’re surviving.
I’ll tell you another story. In 2007 when I first bought my internet in my house, I felt so good. I felt liberated. I got the inverter. I got a wire coming into my house that gave me the internet. When the power went out, the internet also went down. So I called the company and said, well, it’s a fibre, it’s just a wire. So, when the light goes out, how the hell your thing goes out? They said no, the wire is coming from your Society terrace. So, we are delivering the thing from these. So, if your switch is out of power, you won’t get the internet in your house.
At that time, my apartment was 9500 rupees a month. I invested 7200 rupees in a small inverter and battery. Then I gifted it to the society to put power in that terrace point because I wanted my bloody internet. It was almost as much as one month of rent for me, but I wanted the internet so bad. You don’t need to get as crazy as I am, but you need to have unlimited data. You need to have the internet on your phone. There is absolutely no excuse for your data going out for you to have slow internet.
There are some providers whose speed is slow in your house. So get all the other providers. The internet cannot be slow. You cannot do this.
I’ll tell you why I’m giving you all this hoopla advice. The game that we are playing is the market that has 10% telecom providers. Facebook is number one and is 40%. Then we have players like you and me. We have 50%. This total market is worth $25 Billion in India alone. Its potential is growing. It will be 25 billion by 2025. So we got a five-year window to position ourselves to make this money. Not all of it is ours because hundreds of thousands of people are playing in this, but there is one Mark Zuckerberg. He’s playing in the 40% market alone, and 50% of this market is ours.
Now, what game are we playing? That’s what you are losing if you don’t have that internet and inverter. Don’t be cheap on your road to greatness. In that 50%, there are levels of influence. There are level 1 influences. There are level 2 influences. There are level 3 influencers. There are level 4, level 5 influencers.
Income levels
If you reach level 3 and level 4, income levels are between 5 to 15 lacs a month. When you reach level 5, income starts at one crore a month. This whole game is 50%. You can get there in two years.
Let’s come to the 40% that Mark Zuckerberg holds. That’s because the number one demand generation platform in the world is Facebook, not Google, no YouTube.
At every other level, there are other players. The bigger players. They’re level six players or level seven players. If you get into this game (that 50% part), you can reach at 1 crore a month income status after two years. Now you want to get to the next level. People get into this stuff, the platforms; they make five crores a month. We only know Facebook because of our limited vision. A limited small middle class educated vision that does not accommodate any more information than that.
I know a guy who makes 20 crores a month. None of these people has big business houses. They don’t have a big building with 500 employees. They have maybe one or two employees. They work with a lot of part-time employees and freelancers. They don’t even need the people. They just like, my time is too valuable. So I gave this other stuff to that guy. You can get into the platform game after 2-5 years, and this thing starts at five crores a month. Now, what I’m providing you is the opportunity to play all of this stuff with me.
What do you need to have?
There are only three things that you need to do. You need to do a selfie video. You need to create a community that believes in you. You need to build trust with that community as I have built with you. I do a lot of selfie videos everyday. Then I build trust with this community. The third thing you need to have is an ecosystem. You need to have an ecosystem where people can learn and exchange information and products. This is an ecosystem-level game.
We’re going to play this game. So, I’m trying to go with this particular blog because I’m not trying to motivate you. My message is very simple. I’ve got the 50% figured out. I know people who got that 40% figured out, but this stuff, the 10%, none of us have figured out. You need to figure out this 10%. It is connectivity. So this whole game is going to be played on the internet. I cannot help you with this 10%. You need to have your power back up. You need to have internet crisscrossing through your house and your life. Don’t worry about the internet. Nobody is going to steal your privacy.
This is a big game. And all you need to do is you come in that 10% area. And if you’re the right player, we can play this other game if you’re in the right game. I’ve got all of my dirty fingers and lazy, greedy fingers and toes into all of that 90% stuff, but the 10% stuff that I cannot help you. If you do not have the inroads for wealth to come into your house. Then I cannot help you. Internet is a road that brings wealth and education into your house on a daily basis. You need to invest in your own education.
My mentor told me in 2007, the internet is not expensive; it’s the lack of internet that is expensive. So you’re losing money. You’re wasting your time on this planet if you’re not using heavy amounts of connectivity and the maximum internet that will cost you 1900 in any town. You have to invest this money. Do not buy a new car, do not buy a new bike. None of that is going to help you. What will help you is education and exchange of information and building trust on the internet doing all of these things, selfie video, community and ecosystem. And the only thing you need is the internet and your own personality and humanness, and that’s it. You don’t need anything. You don’t need a building, no employee. You need the internet. There is no life without the internet. If you’re not on the internet, you’re not alive.