"No, Himanshu. Not dating but marriage. I am telling you this to thank you. We met at your meetup in Hauz Khas!"
A text read on my WhatsApp back in the day. It was from one of the attendees. She was getting married to the guy who was a speaker at our Delhi session. (Remember the previous post where I talked about the Delhi meetup scheduled on August 13, 2017? It was the same session!)
This is third lesson from a post I wrote about my learnings from building Stories Worth Sharing. If you have not checked , I recommend you visit it once for the context 7 Things Stories Worth Sharing taught me!
The third lesson was: Success is about creating value!
While building Stories Worth Sharing, I was clear on the idea of settling for lesser money but great value.
Value in terms of relationships for:
myself
my team
people who come to our sessions
I will tell you quick stories on all of these^
Myself
Take a look at this image. No words, just a photo story conveying emotion.
While the above image was in real world, in terms of people to people connection; there was another dimension to it; behind the screen, as seen in the image below. This image below was taken during a frame test before the shoot in 2019.
The value built from the content created sitting in this chair later garnered over 2m+ views and thousands of followers. Above all, the UPSC aspirants took targeted notes for their preparation from these videos.
My Team
“Do you think mentioning about this experience of SWS will help me in this interview and if I shall even mention it?”
It was a text from one of our team members in Gujarat who was then applying for an Ivy League interview. She was second in line with our leaders and played a significant role in the digital expansion behind the camera. Safe to say, her presence made a difference in western India.
"Yes. You will be a good fit! Make it a point to talk about this." I posted back
It turned out that the 'community' aspect was one of the main features of her interview. She graduated a few months ago from her dream college. How do you think I felt seeing her grad images in my mail? :)
Something similar happened when one of us from Haryana went for an IIM-A interview. His work at Stories Worth Sharing was a highlight of his interview!
(I am smiling ear to ear as I write this^)
People who come to our sessions
You heard about this couple who got married after meeting at our sessions. I have come across countless people who started businesses together, invested in some, or built a parallel platforms in different niches together; all after meeting at the SWS session(s). But the story I want to tell you is of a guy who came out as bisexual at one of our sessions in Delhi.
It was his first time speaking about it in public and only reason he could do that, in his words, "I come to SWS sessions often. I have never felt judged here and even if you guys gonna judge me, I do not know any of you. Hardly matters!”
I do not know if he spoke about it to someone else after that or if his family got to hear from him. The fact that he chose to let himself out at a place I curated is the biggest success that we had achieved and thus, the real value!
Next week, I will tell you another fun story about lesson number 4:
Internet has it all that you need, learn to look at it in the right place(s)
STAY TUNED
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