Transcription:
oh wow the first podcast… exciting and nerves at the same time ….
Hello everybody , My name is Jatinder Singh Palaha and welcome to the digital rapport podcast.
With this podcast I’m on a journey, a journey to learn on how to truly connect, influence and persuade in the digital age.
One of the main questions on your mind may just be who is this Jatinder bloke, whats he all about and how can he add value to my life?…. And thats a fair question to ask if you’ve never met me or connected with me in any way shape or form….
So in order for you to get to know me a bit better and if ok i’de like to share my story with you as to why and how I got into serving the business and personal development industry and how I now focus on helping people turn their skills and knowledge into a profitable authority business online and one of the key factors around this is all about understanding the why and how things work online in order to build what I call digital rapport… hence connection, influence and persuasion…
So here goes…
From a young age, I’ve always been into computers and I had that feeling that computers would have something to do with my future and as a result I went down the traditional path of going to school, get a good degree and get a good job etc a typical household story.
My dad (one of my inspirations) was one of those guys who came over from India with like £10 in his pocket and he worked so so hard to build a home and family away from his motherland. I grew up watching his hardships of him not knowing the language, working day and night to make a living and support his family. I remember this one time the bailiffs come knocking and my mum and I hid so they would not know we were home.
Then, those random moments when my dad would say something like “Son, what would you like today? I’ll get you whatever you want!” …
I have this cool memory of when my dad brought me my first computer : a BBC micro with floppy discs. I was in awe because we used them in school… and now I had one… I learnt how to program on that thing lol. I remember the Endless nights of games such as “Reptile” and “Space invaders”, something my dad loved playing too.
Along my journey, I’ve had some key moments that changed the trajectory of my path in life. The first one, as already mentioned, a keen interest in computers and technology, wanting to be a coder or graphic designer.
The second happened during university. I signed up to do a degree in information systems and during my final year, I had to do a dissertation project. When we choose what we wanted to do I boiled it down to 2 projects. I can’t even remember what the other one was but the one I chose was interesting because the description was all about how to measure for something called EQ in students by businesses so they have skills to work with others.
At the time I had no idea what EQ was! I was doing a degree in IT so I thought it was something to do with AI, artificial intelligence… oh boy was I wrong…
That key moment was when I was doing some research and I came across a book talking about the brain, and how the brain had a left and right hemisphere and described how they functioned and what they controlled. My jaw just dropped, I had no idea… I didn’t even know I had a brain lol.
This was mind-blowing information for me… together with future understanding that emotional intelligence was about regulating your own and other peoples feelings and emotions just opened up my mind to a whole new world of possibility.
The 3rd key moment was a little later in life. I was working for a Fortune 500 company at the time and I had furthered my knowledge of human behaviour by learning NLP, hypnosis, being involved in personal development events learning from people like Paul McKenna, Richard Bandler, Micheal Neal, Tony Robbins, Les Brown, John D Martini… bit of an endless list
But I was wondering .. what am I doing with this information, why has it come into my life, why am I so drawn to it, what am I supposed to do with it?
I just was not sure where this was taking me or what I was supposed to do with all this new and exciting information.
One day, I was at a showing of the movie called “The Secret” and I bumped into a friend who asked me what I wanted to do with all this new found knowledge. He asked me If I was thinking about becoming a life coach. It was something I was considering because I knew I loved learning about personal development but was just not sure what I was going to do with it.
What my friend said to me next stopped me in my tracks, shocked and surprised… He said “Did you know… Most coaches are broke”. .. Silence …
My jaw dropped … and I thought, “really but they are so cool at what they do”.
He then basically said, “they are lovely people but most of them have no idea how to make money”. This friend was a business mentor. His experience was training and education and public speaking. He had been doing it for years so knew his stuff and he saw the state of the industry. It was bluntly said… Not to discourage me but to make me aware of a problem. I understood that it was not the case with all coaches as a generalisation but in most cases, they were just about surviving.
It really hit home. I got thinking, and it kind of made me feel sad as it was one of those moments when you know you’ve been told a truth because he was so sincere about it. I’l felt empathy for the coaches …. He said, “if you are thinking of doing this make sure you know how to make money from it too…”
That conversation left me wondering… It was not dishearting but a really profound moment that took me into a deep internal space. It got me thinking…” really…all those cool people are suffering a bit because they don’t know how to market themselves and make a living from this industry”… So this question was left open, it kept me thinking. I kept asking questions such as, “why are these coaches broke? Why personal development, why do I like this stuff, why am I learning it, what do I want to do…I was so confused and lost, kind of hitting a wall and not knowing my next steps …. Pondering on what I was meant to do with this all. Did I want to be a coach? What am I to do with this, why am I doing this?
This went on for a while. Then one day I was on a workshop which was designed for coaches. A lady called Janet Switzer was presenting. Shes the author of a book called Instant Income…… and she was sharing content on how to package your knowledge as a coach and use online methods to do this. She was talking about internet marketing, squeeze pages, sales pages, information products, online courses etc etc
This is it, this is what I was looking for. The Penny dropped.. I had one of those in-the-moment profound feelings and saw all the pieces of the puzzle falling into to place. My mind said …. “I get it now, I know how I can move forward”… the path was clear in my mind…
“I’m going to bridge my passion for technology and personal development and serve this industry. I want to become the go-to-person for subject matter experts and help them get their message out to the world. I’m going to combine my passions and become a top provider of IT services to this industry.” This is what was going though my mind at the time.. I was buzzing…
At that moment I saw my self as a catalyst to help these amazing people get their message out to the masses and by doing so I too would be indirectly helping people grow and benefit from mastering their life. I thought right this is a way I can help any new, struggling or existing expert to grow online. I felt a moment of clarity, a eureka moment…
However, at this stage, I had no plan, just the idea of what I wanted to do. What happened next was like magic… A friend’s mother had organised, without consulting me first, to go meet this supposedly amazing business mentor about one of her projects. I had looked online to find out more about this person but there was not much to go on. I attended this meeting and the first thing I said was “your site is rubbish” … oops did I just say that out allowed? I had hardly built any rapport and just basically said this guy needs to get his act together online. To my surprise, he started to laugh and said, “I think you and me need to have another conversation, lets arrange a meeting”
Days later I went and had a meeting. I had no idea how I was going to take my vision forward but I was excited and ready to see where this went. This person was Ron G Holland. He is the author of the first ever business related NLP book which was written in the 80’s. Ron had an Idea of what he wanted to achieve. As I had recently come into the understanding of funnels we set out to create and re-work one of his projects. I had no prior experience with internet marketing funnels just web design, so there was this short period of learning and implementing. Ron had an idea of what he wanted to do and I had an idea of how to build it out. We would chat every day and take action steps to create this funnel.
After a short period, we had built our first squeeze page. The challenge then was how to get traffic to this page and getting people to sign up. We hustled, hard. We reached out to people telling them about this amazing ebook. Slowly people started to give us their name and email in exchange for one of Ron’s written books in ebook format. The list started to grow and off the back of this, we started to sell product and promote Ron’s workshops. We got it to a stage where we were having paid monthly workshops and off the back of that, we would secure web projects and mentoring clients for Ron.
I remember the first payment that came in from PayPal for a digital product, it was mind-boggling. This digital product, created once, but could be sold over and over again. Wow!
We just kept on refining the message, the positing and improving upon the product and started to repeat this for other products too. Showing the social proof and results with consistency made it easier to sell online. It was becoming apparent that its all about connecting with your audience not just offline but online too…
Shortly after this time I started working with other authors, mentors and coaches.
That key moment I had about serving this industry was now in motion and sense of gratitude came over me as I had figured out a way to help subject matter experts….. , I felt like a super hero thinking “no longer on my watch did they have to be broke but could implement a similar strategy to help them grow online”.
These sequence of events set my current mission in motion, something I really enjoy doing. At the time of this post I’ve been working in the personal development and business space for over 10 years.
So now im basically expanding and sharing on this further as its all about rapport and if you can understand how rapport works off-line then theres ways that it can be mapped into the online space too.
Theres allot of other things that happened along the way, but for the moment I think this gives you some background on myself.
I hope to be of service and bring you valuable and inspiring content so you too can implement change in business and life.
Thank you for listening to the digital rapport podcast. If you have any questions or would like to find out more about what I’m up-to then make your way over to www.digital-rapport.com also check out www.authoritydojo.com where you can find out how to turn your skills and knowledge into a profitable authority business online.
Digital Business Coach | Web Revenue Strategist | Award-Winning IT Consultant | Author
Transform Your Skills, Knowledge and Experience Into a Thriving Online Business
Get Expert Guidance and Bespoke Growth Strategies, Meticulously Crafted to Align with Your Individual Journey as a Subject Matter Expert.
With over 18 years of industry experience in business and personal development, I’ve successfully been working with coaches, consultants and authors set up the right systems and implement strategic content strategies to start, grow and scale their businesses online with automation, digital products and services. (To work with Jatinder – click here)