Introduction to Faces of the Future
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Victoria Petrovsky: Welcome back to the startup of human potential. 

Clifton Smith: I'm Clifton,

Victoria Petrovsky: and I'm Victoria.

Clifton Smith: and together we're Faces of the Future. Faces of the Future is a startup studio with a personal development platform at the intersection of consciousness, connection, innovation, and well being. We're excited to have you join us on our show today.


Meet Chirag Sagar: Serial Entrepreneur
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Victoria Petrovsky: And today we're excited to be joined by our dear friend, Chirag Sagar. He's one of the earliest people who worked with us as faces of the future. He's a serial marketing entrepreneur and operations expert co founder of mission matters, which is a media entertainment podcast and book publishing agency.

That's for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. He's worked and built other projects to have 500, 000 monthly unique visitors and built its social media up from scratch. And he was one of the first hires at a White House recognized nonprofit called Money Think, which has been funded by Blackstone, BlackRock, and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. He's published three books under Mission Matters, focused on diversity, real estate and business leadership. He's an original contributor to the Faces of the Future magazine. And they've been creating a number of events each month as Mission Matters and Chirag has been the genius behind coordinating all those events.

So we're so excited to have you on our show. Welcome Chirag.

Chirag Sagar: Thank you so much for having me. Great to see you both, Victoria and Clifton.

Clifton Smith: Absolutely, and Maybe if you could, digest all of your accomplishments and help our, listeners understand what drives you and what got you to where you are today. Were you always as a child inquisitive about operations and puzzles or what led you to be an entrepreneur? 


Chirag's Early Life and Entrepreneurial Spark
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Chirag Sagar: Actually, so it's interesting I'm born and raised in LA. I grew up in a town called Glendale , California. Pretty close to downtown LA, but I wasn't born with the entrepreneurial gene.

I had no idea what I really wanted to do. I think, had you asked me when I was six years old, what I would have wanted to do would be to play the NBA, play basketball. And that was a dream that, Later on, a few years later, I realized I just was not going to be over six feet tall and my hopes and dreams got shattered pretty early on

, I would say the entrepreneurial bug, didn't really occur to me until I think I was 16.

Chirag Sagar: So I had out of all things, I played this game called Starcraft when I was in my teenage years. One of my favorite games that I used to play,

Clifton Smith: What was your favorite, , race? What would you play as?

Chirag Sagar: either Protoss or

Zerg, 

Clifton Smith: Nice. Anyway, we can nerd out about that another time, but yeah,

Chirag Sagar: Yeah. So while I was playing the game I met a friend Denton a while ago, who I met in real life about 10 years later, but I think we were just chatting. And one of the things that he mentioned was about how he was reading this book.

And then I just casually asked him, I was like, Hey, like, what are your favorite books to read? He's said, I love reading business leadership books. And my two favorites are How To Win Friends and Influence people by Dale Carnegie. And Rich Dad Poor Dad. And so when I was 16, those are actually the two business like two first business books that I read actually.

And I even took notes. I actually listed out all the chapters from how to win friends or how to influence friends and, or how to win friends and

Victoria Petrovsky: and Influence People 

Chirag Sagar: Yeah, tongue twister. , so that's how it started. And I think that started my track and my journey, especially after I read Rich Dad Poor Dad about being a business owner versus being self employed versus being an employee. And I got to see, cause I come from a family of jewelers. It's like five generations, family run business.

And realize that you classify it that way, then, my dad is self employed or I guess, you know, doctors and lawyers, which is what my parents wanted me to be. And I guess that's pretty typical of most Asian- based families, so, , sorry, mom, dad didn't make your dreams come true. But, I think that was like the starting point and it kind of led me down this whole track ever since then.

Victoria Petrovsky: Wow. You and Clifton have something alike in that you keep your notes to books. Clifton has a whole binder of all his books and cataloged and indexed, you know, alphabetically or by when he read them, what year. So yeah, that's so cool both are incredible books and it's so special that you tapped into them at such an early age. When we're still moldable and like a time before college when you're seeing like your model of reality for the world and how you see and interact with the world.

Chirag Sagar: yeah, I know. Super fortunate. I mean, 


Journey into Personal Development
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Chirag Sagar: it's funny because I used to hate reading. , And it's ironic because I now own a book publishing company, but had you told me that a while ago, I would have said you're crazy because I don't even like reading, it wasn't really until I started reading more business leadership, business oriented books that I actually started to like, and enjoy reading.

I was learning about things that I was interested in,



Chirag Sagar: It's one thing when you're forced to read textbooks that are just heavy, dense and

Victoria Petrovsky: English literature 

Chirag Sagar: interesting. yeah.

Yeah, so some of the books in English, actually, in high school, I did enjoy some of those, but like, some of the required reading material, it just didn't suit my interests. 

Clifton Smith: I love how you got started with books and now you're a book publisher, you know, and just the full circle journey. And that's sort of the entrepreneur side. And so now would love to understand a bit of the quanta for the quantumpreneur side, the spiritual side, did you growing up have any unique abilities or experiences?

That kind of awoke within you or that was sort of, non normal your classmates 

Chirag Sagar: Not early on, but I would say definitely much later on. I was able to notice them until I would say, until like my mid to late twenties. So it's been over really the last 10 years. I think I had more of like a normal childhood. I mean, I think one of the key differences that I grew up with my extended family. So I always say I have two dads, two moms, three brothers. So kind of had that growing up, but I think as things evolved a little bit more. Like anything pre college.

I didn't feel like there was anything necessarily unique or abnormal. What I did notice about myself, and this was more so during college when I found things that I was interested in. I just had a natural curiosity to keep asking a bunch of questions and learning as much as I could. And you know how like when you have a topic you're interested in, now you just Google, or I guess you could ask chat GPT to research for you.

Victoria Petrovsky: Keeps me up at night.

Chirag Sagar: yeah, I go down rabbit holes about interesting topics. And so I saw myself doing this a lot more in college when I was interested in certain things, whether it was weightlifting or fitness was a huge passion of mine. , Eating healthier. And I'd go down rabbit holes about like, how do you live a more fit and healthy lifestyle?

Like what types of food should I be eating? What type of. Nutrition should I be having or supplements should I be taking? And researching as much as I could or reading about it. So those are things that I noticed where whenever I had a passion or curiosity about something, I would go down these rabbit holes and research and learn as much as I could about that topic. then you can find people that were experts in that area to , ask them questions or maybe seek them out as mentors over time. So those are things that I noticed, but a lot of this didn't really spark. I call myself a late bloomer. I mean, a lot of things that I like started to do, I didn't really do certain things until much later on.

Like, I didn't really have my first proper girlfriend until like my mid twenties. 

I feel like a lot of things I've allowed myself to just grow organically at my own speed. So, nothing from childhood youth, but I would say more spiritually activated over, like, more so the last 5 years,

Victoria Petrovsky: So once you um, explored and went down the rabbit holes of fitness, physical well being, what kind of sparked your interest to start you know, researching or looking into other topics, like did you then become interested in personal development or mental well being? That's a trend we see in a lot of people that we work with and in general, like you, you kind of, you nail the physical layer of what you're working on and then you're like, what else is there? There's also mindset and then emotional intelligence, and so on. So what sparked the interest to continue working on yourself beyond the physical layer?

Chirag Sagar: That's a great question. So physical. And then I think personal development, especially like my curiosity with the two business books, me realizing

that, Oh, what is this business owner? I want to be a business owner. And I, started progressing through college.

And so had you asked me when I was 18 years old, what I wanted to do, I would have said, Oh, I want to get into finance, possibly accounting. And I think I want to own my own accounting firm. I did my first internships in my first accounting internship. My. Sophomore year of college and realize over the summer, realize how much I hated it.

Victoria Petrovsky: Mm hmm.

Chirag Sagar: Is that the office job important skill sets, right? Very important to run a business. You have to know the accounting in and out. I just learned pretty early on. Fortunately, what I would not be doing, and I would rather hire the experts that are good at it and

passionate about it versus me having to do it all myself.

But I think it was important for me to learn the fundamentals of at least running a business, and that's kind of how I saw it. And so it kept my interest kept peaking. I kept reading more and more books on business leadership. I ended up going to USC where I graduated part of their business program. And I started taking on more internships. And so my interest in fitness was taking off. 'cause I played high school football. I did track and field in high school and just throughout my childhood I was, playing quite a bit of basketball. We used to swim quite a bit.

I think I learned how to swim before I even learned how to walk actually. my mom had videos of me swimming and I'm maybe not even a year old yet. And I'm in the pool in the floaty, like moving around with mom. So, fitness was always part of my entire childhood and growing into my teenage years and beyond. And even today. . And I would say business itself, when I read the first couple of books, I just, my interest just kept piquing.

So, personal development became huge. I started reading more blogs and books, like Tim Ferriss, for example. He published his book, 4 Hour Body, and then he has his 4 Hour Work Week. So it's a hybrid, right? of fitness, biohacking, life hacking, as they call it, and there was such a strong interconnection between the both of them. So I would say it started with both of those building up around the same time. 

Clifton Smith: that's amazing. So then once you absorbed a lot of knowledge down the personal development side, where did you go as a late bloomer, you're starting to wake up to these possibilities and do your own research that's driven by your passion.

And you've established that you want to be a business owner, not, work in an accounting firm. Help us go down those rabbit holes. Where did you go next? 

Chirag Sagar: So right around I think my, one of my first jobs I was working in insurance. And so I actually did that throughout college. I was insurance licensed. I even got my series six and 63 in personal finance. I started learning about investment banking through college and I figured maybe that could be an option and I realized that lifestyle is not something that would suit my interests.

And funny enough while I was going down that accounting path and the finance path. a friend of mine from high school told me about this nonprofit he was starting called money think the program was basically going into inner city high schools, teaching 16, 18 year olds. The basics of financial life skills and money management, it's like, how do you open up a bank account? How do you get a credit card? How do you apply for a loan? These are critical life decisions that high school students or even a young adults are going to be making and unfortunately are not really taught in school. I was fortunate because I had an amazing government and economics teacher. Mr. Levering shout out, if you ever this he actually set aside about two, three months to teach us about personal finances. So I actually learned about opening up Roth IRA account. The difference between a stock, bond and just like the fundamentals of 

Victoria Petrovsky: Mm 

Chirag Sagar: your basics of money. And

Victoria Petrovsky: Things they don't really teach in school that you read in Rich Dad, Poor Dad instead, right?


Joining MoneyThink and Nonprofit Work
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Chirag Sagar: yeah, that's exactly what sparked that. My friend from high school told me about this program and I brought it to USC. I was one of the founders of that program, teaching financial life skills to high school students it was volunteer run. We would train. The goal was recruit and train college students provide them the curriculum and then place them into high schools where it's basically like an older brother, older sisters program, college students teaching high school students. And teach them over the 10 weeks build enough of a relationship.

So they have someone that they could ask questions to and provide them resources that, you know, us as college students would have. And so I was building out that program, on the side, going to school, and at the same time, taking on internships, trying to figure out what I wanted to do thereafter. And that summer, when I wrapped up my junior year, going to senior year college, I ended up teaching English in China.

So I was actually minoring in Mandarin but I realized 

but I realized pretty early on if I wanted to learn Chinese, you gotta be in China 

Victoria Petrovsky: What made you interested to study Mandarin in the first place?

Chirag Sagar: I saw the growth of China. So this was something that I learned and saw in college. 

Victoria Petrovsky: I knew you were going to say that.

Chirag Sagar: yeah, so this was, 2008, right? And so this is when China was becoming a world superpower. And I realized there was going to be a lot of opportunities there. What better way to learn the language, right?

It kind of piqued my interest since I was minoring in the language. I figured, you know what, let me go teach English there. They pay you really well. And I had one of my aunts who was living there. She, helped guide me. I ended up applying to her program for like a summer job for those three months and so I was living in China for a few months and that was my first time actually traveling and living on my own and just exploring. This is where I really got to understand myself. And I think that's where my interest in travel just completely piqued.

I fell in love with it. I knew that traveling was something that I wanted to keep doing throughout my entire life and fortunately, I've been able to do that.

So while I was there, I spent some time backpacking across different parts of China. I did one trip to Hong Kong. I was staying with a friend who was doing an investment banking internship there. And so I grabbed some dinner with him, and I caught up with another friend and they both were doing investment banking internships. And we're, they're talking about life post college. Cause we were now entering our senior year and they asked me like, what do you want to do?

And I was trying to tell them, I was like, I'm on this journey right now. I'm trying to figure out what my next move is. Cause you know, we're graduating in a year and they're like, you know, you really love this program Money Think. I was like, man, if there's a way you could do Money Think, that'd be awesome. So I was like, that would be great. I was like, you know, I actually would love to do that. I think that'd be an awesome first job out of college, I don't think there's an opportunity to go full time here anytime soon. Anyway, funny enough, I come back to LA, so I wrapped up my time and I'm about to start my last year of college. And I caught up with my same friend that introduced me to the program. One of the co founders, he was about to leave to Chicago to finish up his last year of college. And he told me that he was planning to go full time with the nonprofit and he was going to figure out over the whole year, like incubate it at university of Chicago and see if we could get some funding because it's a nonprofit.

It's a 501 C3. So he wanted to see if we can get some grants. When he told me that, there's like a sense in me, there's like a calling almost that said, wow, you just talked about this with some friends, like 2, 3 weeks ago. And now you're finding out that he's going full time with this.

Maybe there's a way for you to go full time to this too. And so I remember we ended up doing one of those MMA training, workout things. And I dropped him home and I told him, I was like, listen, I think I'm going to go full time with you and I want to figure out how to do this.

And I'd love to go full time and figure this out. It was awesome. He basically connected with other co founders and then over that year, we figured out how to make me go full time with him. And we did, so it kind of planted the seed and then follow through on it throughout the year on what we needed to do.

Victoria Petrovsky: A true, Quantumpreneur moment of creating something out of nothing, creating an opportunity from, , inspiration and, your friend who had just done it and finding a way for you to stay engaged in what you're already interested in working on. Super cool.

Clifton Smith: yeah, I mean, it's very clear that you're very analytical logic minded individual,

And we're even dealing with finances, which can be very logic and analytical. But then this opportunity that you're sharing just, as Victoria said, kind of came out of nowhere. You were just talking about it and then you flew home and you met with the person.

There's a bit of, that serendipity. Right. And a little bit of that magic, even in a potentially very analytical approach. How did you know that you wanted to, go work at money? Think what was it inside of you in that conversation?

Chirag Sagar: I knew I want to do the entrepreneurial thing. When I went to USC, I did an entrepreneurship concentration. I mean, it's cool because USC was actually, I think, the first college to launch an entrepreneurship program. And I think they had just celebrated their 40th year anniversary. It's a top three program that's been around for a while. And so I took three or four classes in the entrepreneurship program at USC. And one of the things you get to do is you get to incubate an idea. It's one of the things that would have been cool if I could have taken advantage of, cause I didn't know that I was going to do Money Think full time.

So I had a couple of other ideas that I didn't go anywhere with, but I knew entrepreneurship was part of something I wanted to do. And the moment that , I got an inkling and that opportunity arose where, Hey, if he's going full time, you can't do it alone. You're going to need a team. So I was like, well, why not me? I knew this is what I wanted to do. I built up the program from ground up, so. I knew about the program. I knew what it stood for. I'd been there kind of since the beginning. I wanted to sink my teeth into it and I, knew timing wise, it would be the best time for me to do it because as you get older, right?

You have family, you have responsibilities. Also it's a nonprofit, right? So you're not, it's not like I'm going to become a millionaire for running a nonprofit anytime soon. So I knew if I was going to do it, then would probably be the best time to do it. Cause I don't know if I was going to have another opportunity like that again

Victoria Petrovsky: I hear your whole reasoning and logical process

for every decision moment in your 

Clifton Smith: but ultimately it came down to, you wanted to do it,

Victoria Petrovsky: your heart wanted it.

Chirag Sagar: it was the best decision for me and emotionally I was already tied into it. So it's what

I wanted to do. I'm very introspective to the point where like more so if I know I want something, I'm already emotionally and spiritually attached to it. Logically, I need to now figure out logically, does this make sense?

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah, you gotta talk your way through it, huh?

Yeah. So emotionally and spiritually, I'm like, okay, I know I want this

now. I need to understand, does this actually make sense? 

Clifton Smith: Or, or another way of saying it is, how can I logically make this make sense. So how does it make sense? 

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah. Let my left brain 

Clifton Smith: figure out ways, cause even in what you said, you can't really start your startup life, later on, I mean, where, you know, what, 10, 15 years in your entrepreneurial journey and you're still doing it, you're still doing 

Chirag Sagar: Yeah. 

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah. 

Chirag Sagar: You don't know what you don't know. And that was, I think the best part about it if I knew everything that was going to happen with money, think would I have joined it. Right now I can say yes, because there's so many stepping stones and lessons I learned running that program that I don't make the same mistakes, I've learned some successes that have been helpful in a lot of the things that I'm doing. But when you're going through it you're like, Oh, would I have done this at that moment in the middle of it.

I was like, I don't know. Sometimes you're better off where you just don't know what The path is unchartered, so you don't know where you're going

and you don't know where you end up, right? And you can do whatever you need to try to navigate the entrepreneurial waters, if you want to call it that. But, at the end of it, the circumstances are always going to be different and unique to your situation.

Clifton Smith: After going through this process for several years what would you say is your unique beingness that you contribute to business or just to life in general?

Chirag Sagar: A lot of what I've learned is I've got a really strong intuitive sense. And I just learned this about myself that I don't really question, like, when I get a feeling about something, 

Victoria Petrovsky: Mm hmm. 

It's almost 

Chirag Sagar: usually pretty accurate. Like, it's like a weird sixth sense where if someone if like my gut tells me. Hey, there's something wrong here. Like, don't go left. As of this point in time, I don't question it. I just listen to myself and I'll go right. Because I don't need to go left. And I've just had so many instances throughout my life where , it's like that gut instinct that's just been kind of spot on and right. And then it's more so, okay, I'm going right. And then what's the next move? It's not necessarily that I'm second guessing myself. Sometimes I'm trying to understand where is the path headed, though? Because , like in entrepreneurship, like this thing, I think what the Wayne Gretzky quote is, where's the puck headed? So sometimes like my gut will say, okay, don't go left. You need to go right. But okay, when I'm going right, where do I go next? And I think that's where I'm at right now, which is I listen to myself and I don't question myself. And I think that's probably the biggest thing that I've learned.

Victoria Petrovsky: How did you learn to trust your gut? Just happened overnight? Was it a 

Chirag Sagar: process? 

No, no, no, no, there were a lot of factors that came into this. I mean, part of it was like, when we did the coaching session, right? We spent a lot of time, 

2021 was spent, like, reassessing a lot of my life decisions and I think I got to go back and see how did I feel in a lot of these certain situations. And like, what was I going through? Like one of my reactions, I can recall. Is like a smaller example, one gut reaction I had was I was going to an event. As I was about to leave I saw something that piqued my interest that someone was doing, and so I was like, I really just want to go, but I'm like, for whatever reason, I'm, this thing is pointing me out, I need to go talk to this person,

Victoria Petrovsky: hmm. 

Chirag Sagar: one last person. If anything else, worst case scenario, let me just exchange business cards and leave. So I went up, I started just chatting with the person and then found out that we had a bunch of mutual friends in common and then ended up, we exchanged information, followed up and realized it ended up becoming a client of mine later on, and that was actually the best person that I spoke to it's a small little, situation, but it was something said, no, you need to go talk to that person. There's something here. And I just followed that.

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah. And that's something Clifton and I talk about a lot with our clients is that, you don't have to network with a hundred people if you're in alignment and the intuitive sense is on, you just talk to the right five or 10 people. And then those can convert to opportunities for you, for clients, for collaborations, dating, whatever.

Chirag Sagar: Everything. So that was like one of the last times where I had that inclination.

Victoria Petrovsky: That's awesome. And you know, a few moments ago, Clifton asked about your unique beingness and your unique essence and something you said about Money Think that I know you've done repeatedly is build things from the ground up. You come in early on to different projects and companies and you help scale and miracle grow the opportunities and kind of Kaizen the operations , and just like bless the companies.

Chirag Sagar: Yeah. I did that early on with Money Think following on 


Transition to Social Media Marketing
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Chirag Sagar: that did the same thing with another company called Destination Luxury, which was my next move right after I left Money think I was trying to figure out what the next move was and it wasn't like a rushed decision.

I left MoneyThink in the last couple months of the year, 2013. I took some time off. I did a little bit more traveling. I remember going to Cancun. I went to Texas for the first time. I was in Austin and Houston. my brother celebrated his 21st birthday in Vegas, met up with family.

So I took the whole month of November just to, decompress. Cause I was just in that entrepreneurial grind mode that I think is kind of prevalent in tech culture of like work hard and keep grinding and then like sleep minimal, I was just in that hustle mode and I realized I never really had time to smell the roses and to really enjoy where I was at in the present moment. I took some time to decompress to kind of figure out what I wanted to do. And I knew that social media was going to be the next stop. I just didn't know how or in which way. So I took my time to figure it out going into November, December. And then I realized I kind of wanted to get into social media marketing. And one of my mentors, Jason Akuma, actually shout out to him. I did a three month internship with him. I actually just reached out and said, Hey, look, I'm trying to figure out what my next move is. I know you do a lot, like you run a social media coaching program, executive program. I'd love to do an internship. I was like, I don't care to intern for free. Like I'm totally down to do that. I just need to learn how to navigate this and how to create a business around this. And so, learned quite a bit about social media marketing.

And , that was like my initial impetus of getting into it. And then as I was learning about social media, that's how I transitioned into connecting with the friend who was the founder of Destination Luxury, which is his portfolio company. And so just as a friend, I was trying to help him build this out. And then within six months, we took this platform non existent to reaching 20 million people a month. And so as that company started, you know, as the platform started building, We needed to turn it into a professional company, created opportunities for ourselves, and then became a partner eventually.

Victoria Petrovsky: Wow. 20 million a month. 

Chirag Sagar: 20 million a month. That was our peak. I think that was one of our record months that we had, we had like six record months in a row 

Victoria Petrovsky: Mmhmm. 

Chirag Sagar: and that's where I really got into the weeds and really understood how the algorithms worked Facebook then implemented their algorithm, messed up a lot of marketing initiatives for. A lot of companies how they were impacted by the algorithm. And so I learned that you kind of have to be. Omni channel, meaning you have to create content on every social media platform on and at the end of the day, you have to own the data. So you have to get everyone's email information and email.

Email newsletter lists are important. But you wanted to get as much direct information and direct access to the people that you're building the community for.

Victoria Petrovsky: Mmhmm.

Chirag Sagar: yeah, Destination Luxury was from the ground up Mission Matters.

Again, ground up I've had probably like another five, six, seven ventures in between that were ground up, but didn't really take off, , the entrepreneurial thing always interested me. I knew that I always liked building things from ground up. I realized I think growing up, one of the things that I later on became aware of is that I just don't take as kindly to I guess, it's not like nagging, but I don't like being told what to do. I

Victoria Petrovsky: Those are the people who end up being entrepreneurs.

Chirag Sagar: I just, I really don't like people telling me how to live my life. I think I've got a good enough head on my shoulders to figure it out.

Like I want to design my own life. I want to live the life that I'd like to live. And I don't think school doesn't prescribe entrepreneurship.

Victoria Petrovsky: No.

Chirag Sagar: And the way that life is structured. And even in most cultures, even like in the Indian culture and American culture, it's not too, especially, I guess, Asian culture too, it's not necessarily to become an entrepreneur. Right. I think just became a little bit more prominent because of pop culture.

And I'd say, I honestly, I think it's because of the movie, the Social Network, where like, once that started entrepreneurship became a little bit more of a trend, but I

Victoria Petrovsky: More sexy rather than risky.

Yeah. And to touch on your human design for a moment, for our listeners. Chirag is a manifester..So manifestors tend to be trailblazers. They like to initiate, they like to spark things and have other people keep doing the operations. They like to create movements and they kind of are like the producers of any new initiatives. So I remember when we talked about that with you, that really resonated for you,

Chirag Sagar: yeah. I mean, it resonates now too. It's funny because that's actually what my role at Mission Matters is. It's basically growing every single, like, usually the way that we built this and the way that my co founder Adam and I built this company was us two building out like the first, like book publishing side of our business, which is all we did. in the very beginning. And so I think two, three years later, we ended up hiring someone to take over that whole division. And then we launched our podcast agency division which, we had someone who kind of handled the operational side of things like customer service and making sure that clients are taken care of while I did a lot of the sales side of things. And eventually we grew that out just enough where he could take it over. 

And then I moved on to the next. Department that we built out and it's happened, I think,

Victoria Petrovsky: You get the ball rolling and then pass.

Chirag Sagar: basically,

That's like over the last, I guess, seven ish, eight years or however long we've been running this now that's kind of what's happened.

It's like, you know, for 1, 2, 3 years, I'm running one part of it and then we'll find someone else to take it over and then to perfect it as much as possible. But here's the thing. It's not that I just leave and it's forgotten. 

My role has evolved where I get the holistic picture on, and I'll give you an example, like we launched most newly a Personal Brand Accelerator for over eight weeks. We walk people through step by step to build out their personal brand, whether they're a corporate leader or they're a corporate executive trying to climb that corporate ladder or become a board of director one day. You know, we help those people out, whether they're a doctor or a lawyer and they're competing against other doctors and lawyers. We help them establish their brand or others that are founders of companies raising capital. We help them build their brands out. Those are the three types of people that we've been helping over and over again. 


The Importance of Holistic Brand Building
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Chirag Sagar: Step one is brand establishment, but then part of that is you need to become a further thought leader.

And so the way that we see the cycle is publish a book. The next evolution to that is you need to create constant content. It can be through social media or I think podcasting is probably even better because you can cut this up into shorter snippets, and now you have social media content, endless pieces of social media content that you can repurpose many times over. Then you get video content, audio content, written form of content, because you can transcribe this, turn this into a blog post. The next evolution to that is then you can do a little PR. So you get some coverage in a top publication and speak on stage, you know, at events. It's just a natural progression of building your entire brand from start to finish, but seeing how the pieces are all very aligned in what you do.

And like entire progression, right? Eventually speak on stage. So it's providing all of the resources that everyone needs to build their business. Because publishing a book, which is how we started Mission Matters is still very much part of that process, but we've then evolved it further, which is what can we do to help our own, authors out, build out their brands further, because that's what they wanted.

That's why they started writing the book in the first place. 

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah, so I'm hearing that having a view of the whole chessboard zoomed out and doing more of the strategy is what excites you the most, kind of seeing how all the pieces interrelate and how to keep staying relevant with changing times with AI, with, algorithms dictating eyeballs, 

Chirag Sagar: spot on. Yeah. I mean, it's seeing the whole chessboard and then being in the trenches and never losing the feel of what it's like to be on the ground and not losing sight of what's actually happening in the trenches either, with each customer. So I'm still very much involved just as really the whole team is involved in even one on one conversations with each of our customers every now and then.

Of course, I can't be on every single call. But I'm still overseeing every now and then whenever I have time, just because I can't ever lose sense of that. I think the moment you lose sense of that is when you start losing sight and when you really start losing sense of the culture and you start losing sense of the relationship with your own customers and you start getting bad customer service.

Victoria Petrovsky: Mm hmm.

Chirag Sagar: Or when you're not able to deliver because, you know, as an owner, you kind of don't even know what's happening in your own company.

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah, it's not very relatable. Mm hmm. 

Chirag Sagar: And so that's the part that we wanted to always understand and have everyone on our team understand of what's happening on the ground. And if there's any issues, what's happening.

So, at any given moment, if we have someone that leaves, someone else can step in or naturally, people get sick, you know, people have babies, and so naturally, we want to make sure that someone else can take over and they understand what's going on at all times. And so, it's not just us, but it's making sure the rest of our team is equipped with what they need to know so that they could also then take over other people's roles and responsibilities too.

Clifton Smith: Nice. Did you learn that in a book? Or through the school of hard knocks. What are some of those lessons or those stories that you went through that, you know, back up the statement, because you can pull, top tips and lessons from chat GPT all day long, right? But what was your experience to really embodying that lesson?

Chirag Sagar: these were definitely school of hard knocks. I mean, these are just things that I think are universal. Like you'll read about it, right? Like, How do you build a personal brand, right? I mean, you could pull it up, we can pull up ChatGPT, and it'll give you a list, right? Publish a book, launch a podcast,

join on TV, spend money on marketing, and it'll give you a laundry list of different ways to build your brand and credibility. But you go through, and I think a lot of it, I tested a lot of it out. I mean, at this point, we're fortunate because we've probably been able to help 800 plus people. their brand. So, eventually you start seeing what's working, what's not working, and then, cut out the fat from this and then start doing what is working.

I what's cool. And I think very unique about our model. Is that everything that we were trying was 1st on ourselves. So, meaning my co founder Adam was the face of Mission Matters. We got to test and try everything on building out his brand. So, whatever was working, 

we would then be able to. 

Transfer that to our own clients and be able to help them out and realize that, Hey, we could actually help, we could build a business around this that makes sense. So it's fun. 


Scaling the Mission Matters Media Brand
---

Chirag Sagar: It's Mission Matters, which is now what I do. If I were to explain, I kind of mentioned, or I hinted at this agency that we have, which is our personal brand builder, which is book publishing, podcasting PR., helping people get on stage to speak. That's half of what we do. The other half of what we do is we're a full media brand. So think like a Forbes or like a Business Insider. Our platform, we reach about a million people a month. Now we create tons of podcasts, interviews, video content, articles, like you would see on any other media outlets, but then we also host in person events and virtual events 

so I think we're doing anywhere from four to six events in person a month. And if you include our virtual events, maybe close to 10 a month. And then we're building a community around it too. So we want to connect not only our clients from the agency, but people that are following us so that they could, you know, connect with one another, whether it's virtually or at our events. And so a lot of the things that we tried in order to build out our own company, we always tried it on ourselves first. And there's a lot of things that we did that didn't work which we then cut out and stopped immediately. And then there's a lot of things that we continue to do. As we were building up our brand especially with the books and then launched our own podcast, we realized that a lot of people wanted to launch their own podcast too.

And it's one of those things where synchronicity, I think timing's always important. We were doing podcasts pre COVID. And we got lucky and rode that whole podcast boom, like when we were doing podcasts, there were only maybe half a million podcasts in existence in 2017 in 2020, before COVID to March 2020, there were about a million podcasts in existence.

Victoria Petrovsky: Mm.

Chirag Sagar: so for two and a half years, right, it took two and a half, three years for just the industry to double. But it wasn't substantial we were wondering is there enough of a market size? And enough of demand for podcasting services for this company to even exist.

We tried, We had two, three clients where we were helping on the side. So we're like, okay, we're making a little bit of money. And looks like we can scale this up, but we didn't know if it made sense or not. 

Victoria Petrovsky: Mm. 

Chirag Sagar: And actually the way that we launched it, because I think this is important to share is we actually launched the podcast school.

What was happening is the reason why we had a podcast is because I knew how to build a media brand since I'd done it once before. This was technically my second media brand that I built up. And so for every 10 podcast interviews we conducted, we actually got one book author client out of it

Victoria Petrovsky: Mm hmm.

Chirag Sagar: in marketing. They do marketing long enough. If you get those types of conversions where you're getting 1 in 10 people signing up for anything you do, that's a great like those numbers are amazing. You're getting a 10 percent conversion rate. It's awesome. imore mportantly, we're building a brand. We're building a media brand and we're getting clients at the same time. 

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah.

Chirag Sagar: We're creating our own IP and we're building two companies that are directly complimentary to one another. And there aren't that many things.

Victoria Petrovsky: The two companies being the podcasting and then the book separate? 

Chirag Sagar: So it was our media brand, which is our podcast content we were creating. And then the book publishing, it was all under the one company, right? Mission Matters. So 

Victoria Petrovsky: hmm. 

Chirag Sagar: Anyone that went on our website, they would see that we had our own podcasts and our own content we were creating, but then we were a book publishing service provider. 

we were publishing other people's books is like our bread and butter. And so once we saw that direct correlation, my eyes lit up, cause I've been in doing marketing for 10 years at this point. I'd never seen numbers like that before.

So we did what we knew worked, which is let's just increase outputs instead of doing one podcast interview a day. Let's do three to five interviews a day. 

That just means more chances to get more clients. Then we went from five to 10, 10 to 20 interviews. I mean, Adam's record was 22 interviews conducted in one day. 

Victoria Petrovsky: I can't even imagine. Clifton and I do like two interviews a week right now, and I'm like, 22.

Chirag Sagar: so granted shorter form content, right?

it's 20 minute episodes, but still eight hours of nonstop recorded content. 

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah. 

Chirag Sagar: Now, what was more interesting is that we built this up incrementally, but we scaled up our backend editing team so that within three to five days, we could edit all that content and promote it through our entire platform the way that it was supposed to be done. So we could keep up with, the recorded content, now, this is where, you know, What drew our interest? We didn't decide to launch a podcast agency. What was happening is Adam was recording so much content every week we were getting one to two inquiries from

our own guests asking us for help to launch their podcasts.

Victoria Petrovsky: hmm.

Chirag Sagar: So Adam built up a spreadsheet of collecting close to 40, 50 people on the spreadsheet. And he let me know, he's like, Hey, just so you know, on average, I'm getting one to two people a week. Asking us for help to launch their podcasts. And I've been responding to some emails here and there, giving them some tips, but look at this spreadsheet that I have.

I, it's about 40 people that I've inquired about this. 

And we looked at it. We're like, Oh, wow. He's like, I looked online and I researched it, but I don't think there's a lot of podcast schools out there that teach people how to launch their own podcasts.

Victoria Petrovsky: Mm hmm.

Chirag Sagar: So took three months and

we launched the podcast school. 

So we recorded, I think, close to 85, almost 90 videos. And created a whole program to teach people how to launch their own podcasts. So like the whole do it yourself

Victoria Petrovsky: Mm

Chirag Sagar: launched it. We promoted it to those 40 people. Common consensus was love the programming. Have no time to do any of this. know, I'm a doctor,

I'm an entrepreneur. I'm running my

business. I'm not going to sit back here and edit video content or edit audio content. Like I don't care to do this.

Victoria Petrovsky: I'll throw my hand up and say I am right with them. 

Chirag Sagar: So common consensus was, Hey, great information, no time to do it. You guys are doing, 75 to a hundred episodes a week. I'm only need one a week. Can't you just fit me in and do the work for me? And so we went back and we basically realized, Oh, you know what? We probably could it took us a couple of months, but we launched a podcast agency prior to COVID.

Victoria Petrovsky: Mm-Hmm. And 

Chirag Sagar: So, that's why timing is important because we rode that podcast wave and that's how we launched our podcast agency

Victoria Petrovsky: And just being guided by the universe from feedback, listening to clients and, podcast guests. Super cool.

Chirag Sagar: Yeah. and even launching the company Mission Matters launched by accident. wasn't supposed to

be a company, Adam published his own book and it was a really painful process for him to, you know, it took a lot more money, time and energy, double the amount of money and energy than he, than he budgeted.

Then he thought, cause he was a financial advisor in his past life. He knew that writing a book would get him clients if he used a book as a business card, which was his goal. He ended up doing that, and he actually got a paid speaking opportunity. And so, this was in 2016. In 2017, he wanted to publish a second book to build off that momentum, he's like, I'm not going to go through the same painful process to publish this book. I'm going to figure out what the shortcut is. And so we looked at Chicken Soup for the Soul. That was the inspiration. And the idea was let's bring together 15 authors into one book. And then each of us writes a chapter. Then the very first book we did, all we did was split the cost. We didn't make money on it. It wasn't a business. It was Adam approached me with the idea of what he had. I looked at it and I was like, I'm in the media world. I can scale this. I can do multiple books. His response was I'm a financial advisor. I just want to do one book a year and I'm happy. So I was like, if it makes sense, let's just do one. Let's just see what it looks like. And if we can do more great. And so it started out with us creating a solution for ourselves to make it easy for

us just to say we're published authors, that's how the whole company started.

Clifton Smith: Wow, Chirag, I really love you diving into Mission Matters, but I want to, , keep the spotlight on you and your journey , what propelled you to solve these problems? Has that always been, you know, your background is like, give me a challenge and I'll step into it or

are you seeing the macro picture and saying, Hey, this is right. In your Gut saying,, Hey, let's go in this direction as well. talk us through what you were doing through this process.

Chirag Sagar: Yeah. So similar to that past example, and I think I can build off of that. Actually, it's kind of how I live my whole life, right? Is I just wanted to find a solution that was easy to solve my own problem. That was the bottom line goal. And that's how I looked at all of the things that I've ever done with Money Think, for example, where I was fortunate and I had an amazing high school teacher that taught me about personal finances. And so I saw macro level view we're in a recession. Well, why are we in a recession? Well, part of the reason is people just aren't saving money. They're not even aware of how to save money. And I realize it's not taught in most schools is what I learned, right? I was just lucky because I had an amazing high school teacher that taught me something. And so MoneyThink was born because it was now solving a problem that a lot of people have. , Similar to launching that luxury publication, the reason why I wanted to get involved in that is because I had an infatuation with social media. So I saw that businesses were being built on social media. I saw BuzzFeed. They raised, I think about a billion dollars or whatever they were worth at one point. There's another company called up worthy. That built off of social media as well, and so I was actually closely monitoring those companies and seeing how they were built. This is my own curiosity because it was an inkling that told me, hey, you need to kind of understand this is what you want to do.

So you need to understand the 

Victoria Petrovsky: space.

Yeah. So Understanding how society ticks and like where trends are going.

Chirag Sagar: Yeah, and then also then understanding the longer term view, right? Which is, is, this just a trend that's momentary or is it going to be around for a while?

Clifton Smith: How do you know this? How do you know that it's going to be around for a long time? Because there's always going to be, publicists in every industry saying this is the next best thing. What is it within you that is like, no, this is going to be around for a long time 

Chirag Sagar: it was understanding the technologies behind it. Like I saw social media firsthand, the first time I used social media in business. Was when we invested $50 into Facebook ads for that nonprofit for our Kickstarter campaign and we got 100 back in donations. That was the first time I saw that. And then it was, Hey, this worked. Let's try this 2, 3, 4 more times, which we did. And then I was like, Oh shit, this is going to work. This does work. I can use Facebook geo target my exact audience for any product or service I want. And I realized Facebook was valued at a hundred billion dollars when they IPO'd. And I always wondered why like the math doesn't make sense. Like what's the business behind this. This doesn't make sense to me because they're not really selling anything. And it wasn't until that moment that I realized, Oh, social media is not a fad. It's going to transform every business. And I saw it firsthand. So I think I've been fortunate because I've just been at the right place, right time, and I've been doing a lot of things that are pioneering basically. 

That's what I'm hearing is like a kinesthetic learner. Like you're there, you're in the trenches, experiencing it. And then you also talked about that you're just trusting your intuition to be in the right place at the right time. And so what's next?

Clifton Smith: What are some of these trends that you're seeing that you just feel you're in the right place in the right time for and, it's what's next?

Chirag Sagar: Social media, social media influencers, blockchain, crypto, NFTs, AI, like whatever the new thing is, that people are investing a lot of time, money, energy into. It hasn't survived a recession yet. All these new technologies.

And what I'm really curious about is what happens after it survives a recession. Now, I think there's a lot of things that are timeless, which is no matter what accounting is always going to be there, right? So I think being a CFO. Being a lawyer, that's always part of running a business in marketing also the way that I see it is building a personal brand is how you stand apart. Like, how do you know one doctor is better than another? A lot of times you don't. Like, usually it's the person with a bigger brand, the personal brand, is the one that people approach. And to build a bigger personal brand, it's, you have to humanize yourself, is what I've seen. The more human that you can make yourself on social media, even if you're running a company account, usually the company account that's associated with the human behind it,

With the emotions and with the holistic approach of who is this person? And I think seeing more photos with family with not just one dimensionally seeing the person 

Victoria Petrovsky: like one category of life. 

Chirag Sagar: Yeah, if you can display that you're a full human and breathe the same air that you breathe, you know, I love Basketball or sports or music the same way that you do and this is what I'm interested in I've seen and the data clearly shows many times over that usually that's the person who gets in, who ends up getting more clients. And so at the end, I've just seen kind of what the trends are, but I try to get to the most fundamental element. Or like atomic level of what is the core essence of what's working,

If you. remove all the fat and the fluff and you get to the core thing of what it is. That's what I really tried to distill things down into is take a very macro level approach, but get down into the cellular level and figure out what are the Two, three, four, five, 10 things that make this work. And is it just this one anomaly or is it happening across the board and across the entire industry and other sectors too?

Victoria Petrovsky: Mm.

Chirag Sagar: So one of the interesting things I think being in media for the last 10 years that I've been able to see is we, I just have a purview, not only on one industry, but on every industry. And it's cool having a media brand because I always say jokingly, like I'm a Jack of all trades, but I'm friends with all the masters. So any topic, any industry. If I have interest, I can just go ask the person that's been in the trenches for 30 years working on that one particular problem. So I can go straight to the source. And I think that's something that having a media brand has allowed me to do over the last 10 years.

So it's not just seeing the macro level view, but then having access to people that can then help you know, any intuitive things that I have, I can then ask the right people about it or test it out because we have a platform that we use as like our guinea pig.

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah. I love what you shared about showing the full human behind a brand, a personal brand, like humanizing them, giving them like a 3D image of what this person is like in their day-to-day life and their family and them, in this role, in that role.


Personal Growth and Daily Practices
---

Victoria Petrovsky: So I'd love for our listeners to get to know you a little better in your other categories of life where you wear other hats or roles, maybe hear about some of your passions or daily practices. I know you have an incredible stacked morning routine that it took you some time and trial and error to tweak. And I'd love for you to share anything that you want to on that Chirag.

Chirag Sagar: Yeah, I think it's cool. One of my sayings or one of my things I learned early on when I was running the luxury publication and wanted to travel more is I always wanted to be global, mobile and nimble. Like, that was really important to me.

Victoria Petrovsky: Global, mobile, and nimble.

Chirag Sagar: so small team, no politics, right? And being able to just move fast. And try things, and if it didn't work, being able to stop it, and then try new things again. So, it's a scientific method, right? Let's go back to when we were five years old. Like, we all learned about the scientific method. You try something, if it's not working, test why it's not working, and then try something else.

I just do that over and over and over again. I never stopped doing that. It's something that's always stuck with me. Until this very day I approach that with everything. So, not only for work and for fitness and health but even like this morning routine.

So, one of the things that we were working on that I kind of mentioned to you is that I wanted to get into meditation. I wanted to get into more prayer and spirituality. I wanted to. Connect with family more. I wanted to Spend more time with friends. I wanted to build my own communities and we went through and figured out, okay, well, if you're not measuring it, then how do you know how much time you're spending into it? So we started doing that. And so I knew that I needed to spend some time into these categories. And so like meditation, for example, was a struggle for me, for like a year and you guys helped quite a bit, giving me new, different ways For it to make sense to me, it wasn't until I was at burning man and there was a moment where I was in the temple and then I did a meditation and something just clicked where I realized if I meditate number one, it calms me down completely, puts me in a parasympathetic state where I can then look at problems and see things come to me.

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah. 

Chirag Sagar: I realized that meditation was very important. And it was essential for me to be in my best state 

And so that led to me, then realizing that I needed to meditate every day. So, how do I add this in? And so I kind of just, again, scientific method, I tried it out at end of the day. It's really hard for me because I just get really tired. And then I figured, hey, can I do this in the morning? And I realized it worked in the morning for me, but there's some days where I couldn't do it in the morning because I just didn't have enough time because I needed to get my day going.

So then I started waking up an hour earlier and I started tinkering with it. And so eventually I created this morning routine for myself. Part of it was I wake up, do minimum 20 minute meditation which I do most days. But I don't beat myself up if I like, miss a day . So minimum 20 minutes meditation, then I usually will do some form of a workout or I'll try my best to do a workout. So in the beginning it was a morning routine. Now it's turned into a daily routine

Victoria Petrovsky: Mm hmm. Spread it out throughout the day.

Chirag Sagar: Yeah. So as long as I could get it done, like ideally it would be nice if I could do it in the morning, but usually my whole routine takes like two and a half, three hours.

Sometimes I don't have that luxury. So if I can spread it out, that's still a win for me. So like 20 minute minimum meditation. I try to do 30 minutes today. I did like 35, 40 minutes. So that was, awesome. And then I'll try to do a run in the sun. And while I'm listening to an audio book, so I can get some form of learning in.

, and then I'll usually do a proper, workout at the gym, usually like some form of gym training, weight training. I started getting more into yoga sometimes I'll substitute the yoga for the hour. Instead of the gym training and then I'll do a cold shower, hot shower, and then I do a form of prayer 

and then that

For me, that's a win.

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah, I hear you on that. When we're newer at doing something, you have to dedicate a specific container to it and like really focus like, okay, this is for two to three hours I'm doing this. And then when it becomes more integrated in who we are, you can kind of spread it throughout the day and it's just part of your daily flow cause it's already been created as a habit.

And that's something that, , especially with clients who are earlier in working with us. I love what you said about the parasympathetic and how it impacts your problem solving skills. And that's like the message we convey to people. And until you experience it firsthand, the benefit, sometimes you're just like, it's another to do that. I check off the list, right?

Chirag Sagar: Yeah, I mean, it was right. It took me like a year. I need to do this because it's going to help every single part of my life out. 

Victoria Petrovsky: to flow better. Yeah. And something else you mentioned about doing the running while listening to audio books and you're just stacking a lot of different categories of life really early on in the day and creating more joy that has a ripple throughout the day, like the more things that you can accumulate that bring you joy earlier on, get you in that peak state, that peak flow, and then it sends a ripple through your day.

Chirag Sagar: Oh, for sure. I think we would talk about this all the time, right? Stacking. So it's like as many of the things that I could stack sometimes is even working out with friends, right? Can check off two, three, four boxes. 

Victoria Petrovsky: Not for the task, but because you find enjoyment and you find the most enjoyment in doing it that way, 

Chirag Sagar: so, I had these 14 categories of life that we identified, and

some of them, naturally, I'm spending more time than others, right? Sleep is, of course, naturally just gonna be a big part of that. Work is, of course, pretty big for me. And then some other categories, I don't need to spend as much time into it, right?

Like, some of it is just, I just want to spend more time with family, which, for me, it could be, a couple hours. Maybe an hour or two hours more a week talking to family members. And so it's something that I wanted to do and it's something that I did instinctually. And the reason I bring this up is because those categories of life evolved too. Where I think there were moments where I removed categories and I was like, actually, this is no longer relevant to me or no longer serves me. Or this is something newer that I want to add to it that I'm realizing is part of this intuitive growth. So I want to make it intentional where I'm going to spend more time in it. But I want to do it because I want to do it right. I want to do it because it's making me happier. It's putting me in a state of joy.

It's enlightening me somehow, some way. Not because it's a forced something, a to do list, right? We all as humans adapt and evolve and, you know, there's things that are just that I thought were relevant and sometimes it served its time, but I've got a new interest too. And I want to move on from this.

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah. And what you're talking about is shifting your identity. And, at some point, like you said, a certain chapter comes to a completion and then a new one opens and then you're a new person in that identity with the upgrades and now there's space for something new to come in, in place of what has just left.

Clifton Smith: And that opens up our final question here for today's episode. And, What does human potential mean to you, Chirag?

Chirag Sagar: That's a great question. So, for me, I think that human potential is whatever limitations you put on it. So if you don't believe there are any limitations you can put on it, then I think that human potential is limitless.

Clifton Smith: Beautiful.

Probably the Simplest 

Chirag Sagar: way for me to answer

Victoria Petrovsky: Yeah. Very short, sweet and profound at the same time. 


Connect with Chirag
---

Clifton Smith: And where can our, listeners find you? Where can they get in contact and understand all the incredible things that you're rolling out in this world?

Chirag Sagar: Absolutely. So, very active on LinkedIn and on Instagram. My email chirag at mission matters dot com. I try my best and so far I can still do it. It's just respond to every email that comes in. So, happy to stay connected with anyone that wants to and in terms of anyone that would love to attend our events or anything else feel free to contact me via email and happy to add people to our newsletter or also to join our community too to meet some folks in person as well.

Victoria Petrovsky: and the email is chirag@missionmatters.com his LinkedIn is Chirag sagar and Instagram is Chiragdsagar

Chirag Sagar: awesome.

Victoria Petrovsky: Well, thank you so much for joining us in today's episode. Chirag, it is a pleasure dropping in with you, hearing about what's on the horizon for you and Mission Matters. Hearing your backstory. I know we know a lot of it, but hearing a different lens of how you. were looking at the markets as you were creating all the different businesses and just hearing like how you operate, how your brain ticks and how you analyze and strategize is always really fascinating for me. Like talking with other entrepreneurs and just seeing what fuels them, what drives them and what they're super passionate about. So thank you so much for bringing your perspective in for our listeners to get to know you a little better. And thank you for Clifton for co hosting this incredible episode with me.

Thank you. We'll catch you next time.

Chirag Sagar: Thanks for having me and appreciate it.