At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community. As part of this endeavor, we invited Deepa Divaakar for an exclusive interview with us. She is a Life Coach, Trainer, Entrepreneur, Mentor, Keynote Speaker, Influencer and Change Enabler . Let’s learn more about her incredible journey, her background, and her advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Deepa:
Could you please talk us through your background and your journey?
My professional journey so far has helped me cross-pollinate ideas across a wide variety of industry sectors, including International Bpo, Corporate Human Resource, Show Hosting and Training and event industry.
After my MBA from Shiva Institute of Technology from Delhi, I joined Convergys Gurgaon(International Bpo ) as a customer care executive in the US process and then moved on to HCL BPO working for British Telecom and after spending a year there, applied for an internal job posting for HR executive and joined their central recruitment team handling the recruitment of all the centers and that was around hiring 2000 employees in a month.
Even while I was working there, I was always fascinated towards public speaking, glamour, anchoring, fame and people management. I know it was weired combination of desires. I always dreamt of being an international trainer.
After I got engaged I shifted to Pune to join my then boyfriend now husband in this adventurous journey of life. I started working with an MNC (corporate healthcare company) as an assistant manager in Human Resources. the interesting fact is that when I shifted and joined this company it was 35 seater and HCL was 5000 seater per center .
I was literally shocked to see there was no partition between male and female toilets. I was super confused about sticking to the organization as it was a big gap between the two companies. I think my manager sensed that clearly and called me for discussion and spoke to me.
I told her that I am looking out for options. She convinced me that you can be a big boss in a small company and do a lot of things or just a less relevant employee in a big company with no difference. I started evaluating the promises given by her and the company and finally decided to stay there and take the company to the next level. I slogged and finally in 6 months scaled the company to 400 seater.
And I got married on Dec 2007 and we became parents to twins in 2008. In 2009 India’s worst recession started and the lady who was solely responsible for the company’s exponential growth was sweetly asked to sit at home and there started our journey of struggle.
I had lost all hope and faith in everything. I felt dodged and cheated and this feeling gave birth to the idea of being an entrepreneur. I was not ready to trust anyone. My boss kept talking to me and assuring me of the re-employment after 3 months when the market will be back and better.
I managed to pledge all my gold, borrowed some funds from my uncle, and started Humptie Dumptie baby shop in Pune. I thought it was really easy to do business than working for someone and started operating my business. The brand was growing my debts were also growing in parallel equally.
I struggled to roll working capital as I didn’t know anything about business and I was not at all a financially disciplined woman. Our struggles started there and it started affecting my family and also my personal relationships.
Our marital relationship started to suffer and I was in search of reasons to blame my husband for everything possible. We started bleeding financially and the story continued till 2014. My husband became a chronic alcoholic and lost complete focus on his career and he started losing jobs and we were in trouble. The situation reached an extent where we were not able to pay rent and even the school fees. I remember being thrown out of the house with two kids.
I did many businesses and even to the extent that we distributed tiffins. I had gone down in my life with a lot of personal problems. I decided to quit and come back to Kerala. I couldn’t understand why I was failing consistently.
Also, suffering even after I was educated and from a normal family. My husband was from a good family, well-educated engineer and an MBA holder. My kids were suffering and so finally I decided to come to Kerala after shutting down all businesses. I got a job offer from vertex India and I joined them as a HR manager in Kerala. It was really difficult for me to adjust with the corporate office atmosphere as I had become an entrepreneur.
How did you discover your passion?
After my MBA I joined Convergys as a Tele-caller thinking that I can get into human resources through internal job postings. I was truly fascinated and by a beautiful smart voice and accent trainer. I always wanted to be like her and since then I am working on myself. Over the last 20 years, I have taken up numerous projects in my areas of interest. Among those, I would simply give up on them because of my disciplined nature.
I always visualized training people from all over the world and started my public speaking and personality development in 2019. I have hosted more than 3000 shows as emcee and keynote speaker and where ever I went people kept on requesting for training them on anchoring skills.
We started and crossed more than 700 people now. I was still struggling on the personal and professional front and this went on till 2021. I was down with 50 lakhs and life was not good. I was literally struggling to meet my ends and debts were rising. I could not communicate with anyone about my problems and not even my husband.
Fear of judgment and multiple failure patterns was killing me from the inside. I had to go through some serious employee issues where I was even hit by one of the employees and this triggered me to stop everything and sit inside my house. I was thinking to end my life as I didn’t get out of my house for days together. I literally locked myself up for days together.
Couldn’t figure out and gather the courage to commit suicide. I loved my kids and my family and ending my life was difficult for me. I could not think about getting insulted in front of people who had to get money from me.
I used to pay little by little by doing shows and talking to them to give me time. Life had come to a stop point totally stuck from all sides. I knew one thing that I liked training and I wanted to be a trainer. But did not know how to restart my training academy or how to get funds for the same.
How do you manage to keep going despite the challenges? What drives you?
Initially, it was very difficult for me as I was stuck from all ends and finding a solution was not easy. Once, I started Empowering and challenging the myths, stereotypes about my wellness journey to have self-awareness and courage to do their own therapy to live a life of respect, dignity and treat others with the same ethical principles my drive to work in this field.
I believe all people are capable of change. It is important to understand people are shaped by their experiences and circumstances. I think I got the courage to deal with my situation because somewhere or the other secret book was hidden in me and that gave me this confidence that it will work.
Who do you believe has been the biggest source of motivation in your daily life?
My life changed around when my life transformation journey started and god gave me the courage to trust in myself and move forward.
To be honest, I love my husband as he is one of the best human being I have ever met. I was one difficult person to handle and never submissive. I would say none other than this gentleman could have handled me ever.
He is my biggest strength. He has since become my safe spot and anchor. He has always been there for me at all points when I needed him for paying of my bills and also w hen I needed him emotionally. He was a great critic but at the same time never came into my space and became a hindrance.
What are some of the strategies that you believe have helped you grow as a person?
There are a few:
>being mindful
> Always being resourceful
> Taking extreme ownership and responsibility for my actions Courage
> Realizing my mistakes and financial indiscipline
> Ability to take risks & venture into uncharted territories.
> Maintaining consistency in the law of attraction practices and doing conscious thinking.
In your opinion, what are the keys to success?
I will say it straight that there are many factors but if you really have to have the key elements then to me these are the ones:
– Accepting & Loving myself.
– Responsibility for my actions
– standing up for myself
– resourcefulness
– Curiosity
– positive attitude
– Taking massive action (execution) with consistency and belief
– Being grateful
– Unconditional love for others.
– A healthy morning routine
What are your recent achievements?
My achievements now in these two years are:
> Successful public speaker and personality development trainer.
> Successful life transformation coach
Could establish myself as a successful entrepreneur of a established most demanded preschool brand babies day out with two branches
> Just released a YouTube channel for unfiltered life talks and celebrity chats named unfiltered coffee time with Deepa
What advice would you give to our readers?
Only when you show courage in the face of adversity, you will change your life and others. Try try try try try & feed your mind with only ideas of success and from failure just take only the learning.
Life can be hard and business can be challenging but it is very important to be always moving forward in life. I have failed multiple times and have been branded as a failure by everyone around me.
I never gave up instead I took the opportunity to understand myself and make my relationship stronger with my own self.
Last but not least, what about your journey makes it satisfying/exciting?
Getting great feedback from those who have been inspired through my social media content, through my coaching sessions/programs amps up my energy to deliver more value to them. Seeing shifts in them and in their journey makes it satisfying because I see their success as my success and their breakthroughs as mine.
Receiving positive testimonies from people who have done well after attending our life transformation process gives me a lot of confidence and satisfaction that I am finally able to give back to society.
I could personally shut a lot of people’s mouth who judged and insulted me and today when I stand here in my life I feel that those experiences made me stronger.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
