Find your authentic voice - to succeed on LinkedIn

Stories of Role Models

I came to Mumbai in 2005, looking to train as a CA. I had grown up in Jamshedpur and my brother was already here.

25 K - a big amount for us - and 3 months later, I knew I could not do this for the rest of my life. It did not matter if I was good in accounts. 

I dropped out of the CA race. I continued with my B.Com. With time to burn in the evenings, I explored what I could do.

Vijay Sales - an electronics stores chain - hired me to sell TVs, in their showroom. I worked from 4 to 9 every evening, after college. 

I was a shy introvert. But I listened well. When I spoke, it was always with honesty. Maybe that is why customers trusted me.

I learnt to read customers and tailor my pitch. The heady rush of closing a sale prompted me to look further towards a sales career.

I went off to do a MBA in 2008 to IMT Nagpur. I was clear from day 1 - I was headed into sales and marketing. 

I continued to be the shy me, until I went to France, after 1st year, for a 4 month exchange program.

Burgundy - the place ;) - stretched me way past my comfort zone. First surviving then thriving - I found a new Sampark inside me. 

Friends found an extrovert, when I got back, though I would count it more like an ambivert.

When I finished the MBA, the financial crisis was in full shock. I did not land a job out of campus and came to Delhi instead. I worked for a friend’s father.

Next year, I cracked the Asian Paints interview and it was a big step up. 

At Asian - I grew in sales roles. Starting from Siliguri, promotions took me to managing the East India (part of) Company. I tasted the gamut of sales roles too. 

Next, I wanted action in marketing - that too from the driving seat. So, in 2015 I joined Ola and worked there for 3 years. This was a time when Ola and Uber were fighting pitched battles in every Metro. My marketing meant, making it to Mumbai’s mindshare.

I also started writing on LinkedIn to give vent to my thoughts. Earlier too, I had kept a blog, but on LinkedIn, I found readers. Their feedback spurred me on to post regularly. 

But to me, first and foremost, the posts were for me. 

If I was feeling sad or anxious - I could not just ramble on, because of the word limit on a post :). A short burst of dark thoughts later, I would conclude on a positive note and it would rub off on me. 

I found, I could write myself, a new mood.

In 2018, I moved to Oyo. The writing continued. 

From time to time, people would congratulate me about my posts. I tended to dismiss it because work-wise I was on a hiring spree. ‘Maybe, they just want a job!’, I would tell myself. The writing continued.

In 2019, I had about 25K followers, when LinkedIn put me on their LinkedIn Spotlight list. It was an august shortlist, with the likes of Ankur Warikoo and Manu Jain (Xiaomi), on it. 

It was a big boost to my confidence. I told my wife, if LinkedIn is recognizing me, I must be doing something right. Maybe, I should do more of this for the next few years and see what happens. She agreed. 

Later that year, I walked into a sales call, full of strangers. Someone asked me, ‘Are you the same sampark-se-sampark?’ I did not have to position myself after that. His question had already done it for me.

The writing continued.

Covid took away my tentativeness around social media. All of us would have read the writing on the wall about impending layoffs at that time.

I read the writing, to plunge full time into ‘sampark-se-sampark’. 

I have thrived as an entrepreneur, since then, because of the trust I built for myself, in the previous 5 years of sustained writing.

The writing continues.