Welcome to The Spark Show! In this episode, I talk to Satya Purna, a business strategist and mindset mentor for service providers looking to create six-figure businesses - without burning out.

Purna has coached and consulted with hundreds of entrepreneurs around the world, helping them scale their revenue and profits with ease. She is also an aspiring philanthropist and is actively involved in providing education, ending childhood hunger and empowering women-led micro-businesses in rural markets around the world.

We discuss: 

- how she cultivated a positive mindset and how it makes an impact on her business 

- what is the impact she wants to make in the world 

- why she believes having a coach is essential to success 

What She Does and How She Got Started 

"I'm a business coach for freelancers and service providers who want to scale their business to six figures and beyond," said Purna. "The way me and my team help our clients is we combine both scaling strategies and mindset coaching, because, as you know, mindset is like 80% of the battle right there. It's a combination of both business strategies and mindset principles. I started off as a brand strategist and a copywriter and I wanted to scale my own revenues. So, I obviously tried a lot of things, there was a lot of trial and error and I figured out a way that I could scale my revenue really quickly. So, after we reached that point where my business was earning like $25,000 per month or more, other people started reaching out to me saying, 'hey, how are you doing this? How are you getting these results? Can you show us how it's done?' It's funny because the first time I coached someone, I actually coached them on a one-on-one capacity. It was just me and them. It was very interesting because we went through this, eight weeks together, and of course, I could teach her a lot of the things that I knew and that I did on a daily basis. But, what I realized was that the biggest block for her was the mindset side of things, as it is for all of us. Which is why I then hired a couple of coaches who live in Australia. I hired them to be a part of my team and to coach my clients. Since that point on, the results that my clients have been getting has just absolutely skyrocketed. It's been amazing to just watch people going through that transformation."

Her Advice to Those Who Have a Yearning to do Something Else in Their Life 

"Everybody's life situation is different," said Purna. "... I would definitely say that if you are in a different life situation - maybe you have kids, maybe you're married, whatever your life situation is, I would say definitely keep that spark alive. Because, the truth is, we don't know how long we're going to be on this planet. I say that in a very non-morbid, humble way. It's just true for all of us. I think it's just so short-sighted to say, 'Oh, yeah, I'll do this next year. I'll do it five years from now.' If this pandemic has taught us anything, it's that nothing in this world is predictable. Nothing in this world is linear. You just don't know what's gonna happen and it could change, everything could change in a matter of 15 days, like it did with the pandemic. I would say, keep that spark alive, just start and let's just keep going. You're gonna get there, you're going to get there if you just start and you don't stop."

How She Cultivated a Positive Mindset 

"The first thing that I want to say about this is... you literally make smarter decisions when you are a happy person," said Purna. "I don't mean that in an abstract way at all. I'm talking about it in a very, very literal sense. If you are happy and you're positive, you will make better decisions, you'll make smarter decisions, you will be a more intelligent person. This is completely backed by science... And, if you are in a place of fear and panic and worry and anxiety, you'll make dumber decisions and because of that, that's the number one reason why you should have a good mindset. This is proven by science that when you are in a place of fear, anxiety, stress, worry, all of those things, the part of your brain that is responsible for making good, long-term decisions shuts down, it doesn't get any blood flow anymore. And, your hindbrain, which is responsible for making fight or flight reactions happen in your body, that gets turned on. So, the part of your brain that can learn new things, that can generate new ideas, that can be creative, does not work. That's the number one reason why people should 100% have or cultivate a positive mindset. That's the why of it."

"The how of it is, there's only one way that your brain really learns anything. It's through repetition. That's the only way your brain learns anything. Whether you are playing tennis or learning to swim or whatever it is that you are learning, to meditate for that matter, your brain only learns through repetition. So, you have to repeat certain sets of activities, whether that's meditation, whether that's affirmations, whatever it is that works best for you over and over and over and over again, until that becomes your new normal, the same way the complaining and the moaning and blaming, the same way that became the normal. It's literally just repetition."

How Having a Coach Has Contributed to Her Success 

"Having a coach has really just been the best thing ever for me and my business," said Purna. "Every time I've wanted to do a big uplevel in my business, there's been a coach involved one hundred percent of the time. [When] I did something that was a huge step up, for example, going from a $12,000 month to $25,000 month, and when it was going from $25,000 a month to $50,000 a month, every one of those big leaps has happened because I hired an amazing coach or I took a program where I was part of a community that could teach me a slightly different way of thinking or looking at the world or doing business, whatever that was. I'm in three programs and I work with a therapist. This is really important because you're going to need support at different stages." 

"The beautiful thing is, there's already somebody out there who spent a significant amount of time learning something from scratch so that you don't have to," added Purna. "That's such a valuable thing. For example, if I wanted to become an interior designer, why would I waste the next 10 years figuring out interior design principles by myself and making all the mistakes in the book, when I could just go hire a designer to show me how it's done? Or, maybe she's going to show me tricks of the trade or whatever it is that she wants to teach me. And, I could be a great interior designer in maybe the next two years as opposed to doing it in 10 years or whatever that time-frame is. Investing in a coach is like buying the time that they spent learning something so that you don't have to spend the same amount of time learning."

Her Work to Help End Childhood Hunger and to Empower Women 

"[Ending childhood hunger] is actually very close to my heart because of my childhood and my background in India," said Purna. "My parents have always been really, really big on philanthropy, they've always been very big on donating things. Even when I'm in India right now, if there's extra food in my house, my mother will not throw it away, she will go find a homeless person to give it to. She thinks, 'Okay, yes, I can throw it away in the dumpster, it's gonna take me 30 seconds to do that. But, if we have food, which is good quality food, which we don't want to eat, why would you just throw it away, you might as well give it to somebody who actually needs it...' For me, childhood hunger is very, very close to my heart because I know there are millions and millions of kids in India and Africa and in many parts of the world who are living with childhood hunger. It's a very real truth. It's a reality in this world. It's maybe not so noticeable in a first world country like Singapore or in the U.S., but in many third world countries, that is a very real thing. It just breaks my heart because I can't even imagine what it would have been like to grow up without enough food. I cannot even imagine what it might be like to live in that reality and how cruel it would be. How would you even learn anything? How would you educate yourself? How would you do anything in this world if you had to deal with hunger on a day-to-day basis, so it's just something I can't even wrap my head around. It is especially even more cruel when it's happening to children."

"That's one of the reasons why childhood hunger is a really big thing for me, but also to empower women because I've traveled a lot around the world, I've traveled to, I think, there are 26 to 27 countries so far," added Purna. "I love it. It's one of my biggest passions, I love traveling. But, what I also know from traveling in Asia is that literally every single country in Asia has a human trafficking problem and like 90% of people who are affected by the human trafficking problem is women. I feel like for all of these reasons, the more money women make, the more empowered women are, the less likely they will be in a situation like this or they will be forced into a situation like this. I've done a lot of research. I've done a lot of work. I worked for NGOs and social enterprises in the past. There's been a lot of education that has happened behind the scenes for me that makes me really compassionate towards these issues."

"What I am doing right now, so in India, there's an organization, which is actually in a city that's pretty close to my hometown, Mumbai, which provides meals for children," said Purna. "So, if they attend school, they can get the food. It's okay if you are too poor and your mother cannot give you a lunchbox, if you attend the school, which is also free, it's a government-run school, they will provide the meals for the children. At the start of the year, I adopted 120 girls to get their meals and they're still getting their meals, even though it's a pandemic. I really want to scale that number to 1,000 girls by the end of the year, and I would love to continue scaling it year by year. That's something that I'm really passionate about. I'm really excited. I've just started contributing, like a couple of years back, I cannot wait to contribute more and more as my business continues to grow. It's a really big part of my business." 

Listen to the full episode here: 

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Listen to Previous Episodes: 

The Truth About Follow / Unfollow

Building a Body Positive Community featuring Danni Adams

How to Create a Morning Routine for Success

How to Balance Life as a Momtrepreneur featuring Suzy Ashworth

Brand Deals 101: From Collabs to Sponsorships

Connect with Satya Purna

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