• Women Entrepreneur

She started working at age 13, by choice, because she wanted extra pocket money to buy music and other things that interest girls that age. Her craze to make an extra buck went on for nine years and with it her monthly income of Rs.300 grew proportionately helping her build up a savings bank of Rs.9 lakh. Today, at 38, Priya Kumar, CEO and Chief Facilitator, Priya Kumar’s Training Systems, has risen from tutor to motivational speaker, only because she chose to change her path at age 24. “I was always an unofficial speaker; whatever I learnt I taught,” she laughs.

With a typical middle-class upbringing in Chandigarh and working parents, Kumar’s journey has been fueled by her own aspirations to make it big. “I had rich cousins, everybody should have one person in the family who has it all; it increases your aspirations,” she quips. After nine years of tutoring, Kumar had built up a healthy savings kitty but was bored. Being a voracious reader, she had already begun to flirt with the idea of being a speaker at some conferences, and spoke on subjects that interested her like anti-smoking, relationships, as and when she was invited.

“It was a glamorous life, I was overwhelmed and so decided to do it professionally,” she says. Without a second thought she took the plunge and made her big career move from teaching to speaking. However, the next year didn’t turn out to be as glamorous; and life gave Kumar a reality check. “Nobody wanted to pay a young kid to talk,” she laughs. This one year was most crucial as it cost her everything: time, money, rejection, experience. It was a new life all over again, and Kumar had to learn everything from setting up an office, marketing herself as a professional speaker and run a business. “In India a lot of people do things without realizing they are entrepreneurs,” she points.

Back then, 1997, her firm was called Institute of Self Development and Kumar was the only employee in her own office, doubling up as fictitious secretary ‘Jennifer’ to fix appointments. “I was very professional,” she recalls. And that’s pretty much how she got her first client too, a big firm [name undisclosed], which Kumar unabashedly used since then as a promotional strategy to market her firm and bring in business.

To her liking the next six months were just that. At this juncture, she decided to get some formal training and attended every possible workshop across the globe. “I wasn’t impressed, each speaker was a bigger rip-off of someone else,” quips Kumar.

This was a turning point in Kumar’s vision for herself as a motivational speaker. Not satisfied, desirous of something more substantial she decided to take her skills a few notches higher and approached the Shaman tribes. “They carry original information,” she says. From then on her talks/workshops have been based on spirituality used in context of everyday life—business and personal. “Fire walk is a spiritual act, where you align your mind, body and spirit, I used it as a personal development tool to help people overcome fear,” she explains.

Kumar also aligned her motivational talks with stories of famous, successful people she’s personally admired from the world of business, entertainment, politics and sports. Today, she has a bagful of untold stories to narrate to her audience.

This all goes back to the time when she was teaching and took it on as a personal project. She was helping her niece deal with cerebral palsy and Kumar promised her anything she wanted provided she worked towards getting better. “She wanted to have dinner with [singer] Sonu Nigam,” recalls Kumar.

Three days before the deadline, Kumar had no choice but to keep her word. In utter panic and a few phone calls later she found out where he lived, wrote a letter and left it there. “He agreed, called me back and just like that it was done. So, if he could meet me, I felt that others would too,” she exclaims.

In eight months she ended up meeting 38 famous people. “I’ve learnt that every person you want to meet is just six phone calls away,” says Kumar.

Priya Kumar Training Systems, as she rechristened her firm later, offers motivation, team building and leadership products under the broad vertical of corporate training, all the time seeking to be the vehicle that gives corporate firms the technology to work on their aspirations.

Her training spans the entire hierarchical structure of an organization from top management downwards. “There is a big disconnect between leadership and team that follows their orders,” points Kumar in the same context.

“They are visionaries but not action guys, and a leader’s challenge is to get his people to move,” she adds. Alongside, her venture offers training workshops for individuals, key areas of which include personal goal breakthroughs, overcoming fears etc. “People in India have aspirations, my workshops help them find their own,” she explains.

Kumar’s style of training is metaphorical using examples that have worked for her personally, never head-on to a person’s situation. “My workshop is introspective. I am aiming at the period post the workshop people should use these learnings,” she emphasizes. The opportunity for such training programs, continues to grow, according to the entrepreneur.
Mumbai alone, she says, has 25 lakh companies that need training programs. “There is a big gap between training and supply. This shift has happened because people are competing in the global scenario, they need to be raised to international standards,” she adds.

Considering she is on the move 10-15 days of the month conducting workshops, with clients in 17 countries, is a good enough reflection of demand. Besides, Kumar knows she’s been clever at marketing herself right from the start, passing the word around, through friends in other countries as well as her own showcase events.

“I’m a niche trainer, companies need to afford me, so my market is already cut on one side,” she states. Her closest competition, she feels, is ‘Art of Living.’

Having come this far in her entrepreneurial journey, Kumar realized any entrepreneur’s struggles, like her own, are no different from any successful person’s struggles. “The life an achiever lives is not an ordinary life,” she points out. Recently, she published two books, [I am Another You and License to Live] and has succeeded in being the author she always wanted to be, even when her father told her to become an astronaut.

©Entrepreneur May 2011

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entrepreneur, I am another you, License to live, Priya Kumar, Training systems