Working as a team can turn a project into something bigger than what you have always imagined. Here is a story of two such people who brought in a team together to work towards a shared goal- spreading inspiration via stories. Just the way this interview is one such initiative. The two of them prove that you don't need to be experienced and aged enough to start something new. All it takes is some thought, initiative and eagerness to persistently work on your goals. Today, let's give it up for the Youth Magnate Organization founders and their team for constantly bringing us stories about young entrepreneurs and the inspirational youth of today because as they like to say- Inspiration is everywhere we just need to find it.✨ Here's bringing you some motivation to work on your goals, startup plans, yourself, etc. Whatever project you are onto, just keep going. Begin now!
Q: Tell me about yourselves, I believe you are two people running your page right?
A: Yes, this is Anmol Chawla (co-founder and creative director) and Soumya Sinha (co-founder and managing director)! We both are 17 years old as of now and we are from Mumbai. We started the page when we were 16 years old!
Q: What was your inspiration to start, I am curious!
A: We both have been bestfriends since we were 3 years old! Growing up together, we have always dreamt about starting an initiative together. So at the age of 16, we finally decided to start The Youth Magnate. The idea of interviewing people and learning about people around us was something that always intrigued us! As our tagline says, 'Inspiration is everywhere, we just need to find it!' Since we are pretty young, we wanted our content to be inspiring and relatable to us and the youth around us! That's how the idea of The Youth Magnate was born and we finally decided to initiate it!
Q: What were the initial thoughts on the project?
A: When we initially started the organization, we honestly didn't plan how we'll go with it. We remember the exact date! It was 21st April 2021, we decided to discuss about it on a zoom call, and without thinking too much, we made an Instagram account which we are very glad about that we did! We feel that sometimes it's better to just go with the flow and do it! Eventually as we started working on this project, we learnt a lot of things. Never did we think that we'll actually go and reach out to random people and ask them to share their stories with us and we are so happy that we did that. Now we are proud to say that we have covered more than 60+ stories all over India along with a team of 20+ people just like us!
Q: Who all do you want to reach via this? Like any particular target audience?
A: It can be anyone who we can inspire, via our page! Even though we are youth-centric, one doesn't need to be of a particular age to get inspired or inspire. :)
Q: Tell me about the challenges you faced while starting out. There must be some right? While starting something new?
A: We would say managing our time! Specially being a team of students, we had to make sure we were balancing our studies along with our work at The Youth Magnate. So maintaining that would be one of our major challenges! Initially, when we posted our 1st few stories (which was when only both of us were working on this project), we didn’t really get the expected response which was quite disheartening, however, we both kept each other motivated! As we grew and our team grew, we learnt to appreciate the little milestones. Even a comment or a repost by anyone makes us extremely happy!
Q: So now you are a team of how many people?
A: Currently we are a team of 21 people! When we were about one month into starting our organization, we had a team of 4 which eventually came to become the enthusiastic team we are now! Honestly our team has played such an important role in this journey. We have learnt and experienced so many new things from each other. We are so grateful for them!
Q: How did you gather your team mates?
A: It was actually through friends and acquaintances, social media platforms like Instagram, Discord, LinkedIn and other organizations like Internmee who provide and help hire interns.
Q: How did you spread the word around your initiative at the start?
A: Initially, We did not do much to market our page! Spreading the word about our initiative was mainly done through our friends, family and word of mouth. Specially being connected through social media has helped increase our reach.
Q: Tell me about a sweet moment from your initiative, a moment that you enjoyed the most and you still cherish, it could be about your BTS work and your real life work where you meet people.
A: There actually have been a lot of moments like these! Recently we did this small project called 'Letter to A Stranger' on Marine Drive where we gave sweet letters to strangers to spread smiles! When we actually came back home through an uber cab we decided to give the driver one of our letters too! When he received it, he very happily said "Aaj Tak mujhe kabhi kisi ne koi gift nahi diya. Thankyou!" ("No one has ever given me a gift till date. Thank you!") For us, that moment will always be close to our heart. Another moment that we will also cherish was when we went to this NGO called as Salaam Balak to celebrate Christmas with our team! The kids over there gave us this beautiful card that we will always cherish. 💗
Q: So, here we are sharing stories of each other, there is a page called Official Humans of Bombay, how do you think you will differentiate yourselves from more such pages who share stories. I would like to know about your aim to stand out of the crowd.
A: First of all, what Humans of Bombay and other organizations do is an amazing job! They are an inspiration to our organization as well! What we think differentiates us is our focus more on stories about the youth and our generation! We cover national stories and hope to share international stories very soon as well. :)
Q: How do you see yourselves in 5 years? Have you given that a thought? Because a lot of people ask this to entrepreneurs, so from that perspective, if you had to share your thoughts.
A: We see the Youth Magnate covering more stories from every part of the world and covering the youth from different backgrounds! We hope to do a lot more impactful projects and see ourselves still growing, learning and meeting new people!
Q: Is this the same as your current goal? Or are there any short terms goals you are looking out for?
A: So, our short term goal currently is working and developing our own website! And we are planning to do a big project since The Youth Magnate is going to turn a year old on 21st April. :)
Q: Behind every story there must be work. So, what is your process like? Any fixed steps to approach people or your work in general? Or any pattern?
A: So, we have a team of researchers who look for these people and reach out to them, the researchers along with the content writers interview those people and the writers through the information shared in the interview, form a write-up which we further go ahead and post it on our page.
Q: You guys would like to be perceived as what kind of an organization as you go ahead in your journey?
A: As a community page.
Q: Your Instagram journey has been good so far, in what ways will you describe it and how do you want to connect w people using your account?
A: Our Instagram journey has actually been great so far! We are so glad that we have been able to reach out to so many people which includes people who we have had the honor to share the stories of as well as those who are our followers! Its such a great feeling that we have this amazing community of people who love our mission and equally supports us! I think we would want to bring more stories which are relatable, inspiring and cover stories of people from different backgrounds and aspects! So that when our followers read them, they actually get inspired and are motivated!
Q: I would like to know what's success to you is so far and will be along the way ahead? Is there anything particular?
A: Currently success to us is having an amazing team who work for our page along with us to give today’s youth a platform that inspires people and impacts lives! Along the way, we hope to reach a lot more people through The Youth Magnate, do many more projects and keep inspiring others in every way possible. :)
