Life Update

So it’s been a good few months since I last wrote curate.

It’s ironic that I love writing more than anything, and maintaining consistency with a newsletter is one of the hardest weekly tasks for some reason.

Knowing that this is one of the best sources of accountability for myself, mainly because:

• I have to write weekly

• It has to be interesting

• It needs to have value

• It needs to be worth the time for the reader to spend 8-10 mins reading it.

For this, I need to:

• Progress in real life

• Put effort in all areas that I talk about

• Learn consistently so I have takeaways that readers can use

It’s not easy to do haha.

Most weeks are similar. I don’t really spend much time in courses or books currently. It’s all relentless execution.

One of the biggest things I never knew I needed, was putting my phone away completely while working.

And of course I could never do it. If I am not scrolling, I was just blindly switching apps.

Sagnik suggested me to download Opal, I immediately got it’s paid subscription. And it has changed everything.

I physically cannot use any app on my phone for more than 1 hour during the day, and it gives me access only after 1am daily. I cannot uninstall or do anything.

Kinda made me focus more on life and I can’t be happier. I’ll share more about it soon.

Current focus:

• Scale the agency.

• Grow the brand so I can have more opportunities with my products and building awareness about what I do overall.

• Work on Journey Club with Akshat, as this is a completely new project for us, with quite a lot of resistance.

• Work on fitness.

• Prepare for a creator’s trip to Bali for 2 weeks next month.

Since the year started, well, my 2025 started on January 23rd after I spent 3 weeks at my sister’s wedding.

One thing that happened, which opened my eyes quite a lot, was the fact that even if I wasn’t working during that time,

• The brand kept growing

• Agency service was delivered consistently

It’s all because of great team members. I even took a week off almost during Holi, and still the same. Everything was great.

The effort put into building and nurturing the team is finally showing results after 1 year. Yes, 1 YEAR OF CONTINUOUS EFFORT, FAILURES, FUCK UPS and everything that could go wrong.

Made me think that people have such short timelines with everything, it’s insane. Take this from me. It takes time. More than you think.

Fitness wise, everything has been well. Even after 2 breaks from jiu jitsu, I maintained good fitness, while bulking and feeling good about work.

Even tried on a nose strip, and I felt more oxygen go into my lungs than I ever did lol. Might buy a whole packet for daily use now.

Overall, these past 2.5 months have been amazing, teaching me all about self doubt, confidence, focus, belief, progress, humility, and what not.

Let’s go deep into all my current projects, and I’ll share more than I ever do, for each.

Important lessons from 2025

Metro Media House:

My baby, my main focus. Firstly, I don’t want to be a creator who gets some success in a service business, build false perception about the work I’ve done because I have the audience and leave my primary thing for a business built on a weak foundation.

I openly document my failures and wins.

So, since the new year, we let go of 4 clients. Good ones for sure.

Main reasons being:

1. A strategy only client, could not keep up the work and I ended the agreement as the timelines were always stretched. The work of 3 months, took 5 to complete, so overall it did not make sense.

2. An end to end client, a big creator with close to 1M on tiktok, and over 100k on IG. Had to end the agreement after 3 months from the total of 6 because he didn’t follow what we created. Every single time. So the project would never yield results, and learning from past mistakes, I don’t want to offer refunds for projects where we didn’t get what we needed to make it work. (Had to pay off 4.25 lakh back to a previous client and it hurt haha)

And some others, I’d rather keep confidential.

At this point I’ve gotten too selective with who I want to work with.

Reducing the deliverables, and increasing the ticket size with the best partnerships is the only focus.

The clients are gaining consistent results now, which is a relief, because it took some time to develop a signature proof of concept for what we do.

And getting increased results is the best part. Cashflow is a by product, getting client results is the priority.

A virtual end to end personal branding agency is one of the most difficult models to execute because there’s a lot that you can’t control, and it messes up the whole MRR model of the agency.

Resulting in unpredictable cashflow.

This past 1 year and 9 months of experience running MMH has taught me one thing, I won’t grow it past the $50k a month mark.

Best to have it generate a lot of consistent cashflow, make it sellable in future than to focus on only this in place of other highly scalable projects like software, or info products.

Growing the brands:

My brands will be my most important projects for decades to come. And any day I am not working on growing them is a day wasted.

Currently, the main focus is:

• Grow Whysaksham, a lot faster than it has been. It’s a difficult problem statement as I don’t create massy content, so I am still finding that angle to reach a wider audience within the niche I am in.

• Growing the YouTube channel, with better long form content. I have always preferred long form content over short form, however it’s levels more difficult to create good YouTube videos. And me being me, I want things to be effortless, so this is a big hurdle I have to cross, and I’m excited.

• Growing the newsletter, this is a big big focus, and I’ll pour my soul into growing curate. Emails are not that effective in our country for some reason and I want to make a small dent with my brand to provide great value.

• Growing the agency Instagram account, this is probably the most exciting of them all. I’ve already closed BIG clients, inbound, through my agency page. And when I make it more predictable, it’ll be game. Won’t disclose more than that for now.

All the focus is on building as much awareness as possible. No-one knows who I am, and what I am doing currently is nowhere sufficient for the overall growth.

Lots to do.

Expert Creator Blueprint:

My product business.

I am genuinely proud of the community I’ve built inside.

The best part? I never said the results will be quick. And they weren’t.

We’ve done a LOT of live sessions. Me coming in, helping people solve their problems, bring amazing guests like Moksh Vasant, Sahil Roy and more to come.

However, people inside are finally starting to grow their accounts, make money, get insane ROI and I am proud of myself, and them. For putting the effort in,

Here are some of those:

The plan for the cohort is a bit delayed with Journey Club being one big project. However, for everyone inside ECB, Journey Club will be amazing as a future project (Akshat and I are planning something BTS)

The Journey Club:

Now this, this is a new problem statement for both Akshat and I.

One big problem with the Indian audience is, it’s a low trust society.

You have to do a lot more to gain trust here. Plus, battling the overall general perception that’s ruined about online communities and courses is bad enough already.

Even with my product, ECB. There’s a very strong core group of people that show up regularly, put effort and get results.

Most of the people only buy, leave it and never do anything.

One thing we were talking about in our last group session inside the Journey Club, was that people have the wrong idea about real value of online info products.

It’s never about the modules, or the material.

Everything is secondary, the primary value point is the community itself.

Let me lay out one fact, none of what I do would have happened if I never developed connections within communities.

• My core sales mentorship group was in a community.

• I built the foundation of my communication skills with those people.

• They are some of my best friends, that I have never met.

• That community got me my referral video call closing gig, in a US based agency, as the only Indian team member.

• That community got me my DM closing gigs.

• That community got me my AOS media job.

I am forever grateful for everything those people did for me. Dan, Bradley, Aniq, Maddie, Sanskar, Jatin and Ricardo. Not sure if any of you read this, but you all are big factors behind my progress.

This is the perception that is needed for people on a wider scale.

And this is why Journey Club will be the best community of young entrepreneurs in our country.

A legit partnership business.

Fitness:

I am the fittest I have ever been. Proper schedule, good weight and amazing performance.

Plus as a by product, I can look in the mirror and be proud of how I look.

Aside from all that, I am against one of my biggest fears now.

I have always been a afraid of competing in Jiu Jitsu regularly. As a thought worker, I can’t have long term injuries or it’ll ruin my progress.

However, I need it. I need the courage from it. So I’m prepping for a competition that will happen soon.

Since my defeats last year, I’ve made a lot of progress, not just technique wise, but, mindset.

Martial arts made me too calm. I could not feel the anger. I could not channel it properly. That has been one of the biggest focus within jiu jitsu.

And I feel confident that things will be different now.

Creators trip to Bali:

I’ll be heading out to Bali for 2 weeks with 4 friends. All creators.

The last time I went outside of India, was Dubai and Abu Dhabi just before lockdown started.

I don’t travel much. In the last year, I’ve only been to the journey club retreat, and one small trip for my friend’s brother’s wedding. Aside from it, I only went home.

So I said fuck it, let’s just book the thing. Now this is beyond exciting.

Something new.

It has given me a lot more reason to make content as I travel, and work.

Will share more updates as we’re on the trip.

This will be fun.

End Note:

2025 feels like it’s going to be the biggest year of my life. In all areas.

And I’m willing to give it my all. Substitute all wasted time with maxing out personal life and work life. All of it. To the point where there’s no separation.

See you again next week,

Saksham

Here’s how I can help:

1. Expert Creator Blueprint: (Use code “2025” during checkout for a 15% discount).

   1. If you want to build a personal brand, that helps you get clients for your service business. No need to look further. This is all you need.

2. Top 3 skill stacks to make your first $10,000 in 2025.