Entrepreneur in Spotlight: My Emotions Matter: Hidden Importance of Emotions
We took a short interview with the Co-founders of “My Emotions Matters” Sagar Satyal and Bhawana Shrestha. They are in a mission to make as many people aware about the importance of Emotional Intelligence and how it plays a vital role in our daily life.
Can you give us a little detail about “My emotions matter” and what are the services you provide?
We like to call ourselves an education company. We promote the idea that emotional intelligence is a learnable life skill. It is an important aspect of our daily life as it helps us to become more aware of ourselves, we are more intentional in our relationship and our choices and we are more purposeful with whatever we want to do with our life.
We conduct various sessions in individual and personal level as well as in professional level in which we tie up with various organizations. We also conduct independent sessions time to time.
What did you do before this startup? Can you give us a little background story?
Sagar : As a student I had always been academically strong. As my academics were good my family thought I would do well in my career. But I felt very disconnected with what I was doing. I didn’t really know what to do next after graduation. I realized that, the skills that are most important in life are emotional resilience. No one ever taught me or said anything about this. Nothing happens by only complaining so; I started a mentorship program in Kings College on March 2016 with 3 students. My first 3 students thankfully liked the program and recommended 6 other people and so on we have been growing since then in the similar pattern. While conducting sessions in Kings College I came across Bhawana and we had similar vision and we were getting good feedbacks. So we took this to a new level and started it officially by naming it My emotions matter on March 2018.
Bhawana : I started my career as a journalist and in that journey I felt that I wanted to do something as a journalist but felt it was a very slow process. I had a drive to make a direct impact in somebody’s life. In this phase of searching, I got together with Teach for Nepal. This project included me going to rural area to teach the kids there. I was pretty confident before I went there that I would be able to perform very well on teaching the small kids. But when I started teaching the students I realized that not every student is the same and they did not understand what I was teaching even though I used the same method to teach every one of them. Understanding the emotions of the students was important to understand them and teach them accordingly. I was a full time faculty in Kings College until I started working together with Sagar.
Who were in your team when you initially started? And how many people are there in you team now?
As co-founders it was just two of us. But there were other people in the team in the beginning. Currently, we have 6 people in our team.
How did you come up with the name “My emotions matter”?
Emotions play a critical role. Emotions drive people and people drive performance whether its learning or decision making, the way you treat other people or the way you treat yourself. “My emotions matters” denote people will take ownership of how they’re feeling. The way you’re feeling will impact they way you decide, the way you treat other people and so on.
People though we were crazy to keep this name. Many people said that this name would not work. People though that they should not express their feelings, if they express they will be perceived as weak person. But we wanted to break that out and decided to let try out this name.
How did you officially start the sessions?
Sagar : When we officially launched, I was conducting a corporate session on “How Emotional Intelligence Impact in recruitment & in company’s policies.” And Bhawana was giving a presentation in a conference in Vienna on the same day. Formally, we conducted a group session called Start Here targeted for age group of 18–25 years old in which 10 people participated.
What has been the biggest challenge in this startup?
People usually link training with lecturing. They think we just lecture the participants but that’s not how we work. Emotional intelligence is not common and not something people usually talk about. So changing those misconceptions and making the people aware and transforming that into sales has been our biggest challenge.
Adding on, as we are an education company we should be focusing and spending our time in educating ourselves and widen our content matter. But those times are cut down by the administrative works in which we have to run to tax offices and complete many paper works. So taking out time and dividing those time properly has been another challenge.
What did you do and are currently doing to make people aware about your service and reach the target audience?
Our primary sources from which the participants come to us are from recommendations from our past participants. We have increasing number of interested participants from only word of mouth. The past participants who had attended one of our sessions have recommended other people and so on we have been reaching other people.
We used to conduct monthly free session for 2 hours in the beginning in which people can come and experience before investing in our sessions. From this session they used to have the idea of how the session would be like and come and join us in our actual session. Many media have luckily approached us from the very beginning through which people are coming to know about us and we are able to reach to a bigger mass. We also use social media to let the interested audience know about our future events.
We are now running weekly podcasts in which people can tune in for free. Its link is available on our website, Facebook and YouTube.
Why do you think is emotional intelligence important?
To live is to make choices. We have to make choices everyday no matter how small or big. It’s difficult to make choices when you don’t know what your values are. Choices affect relationship and our work. If you don’t know yourself it’ll be very difficult for you to communicate what u want what you need. If you can’t communicate other people can’t understand and reciprocate accordingly. Emotional Intelligence helps us to make choices with awareness, intention and purpose.
EI has various factors and is related to our daily life in many ways. Everyday there are many distractions in our daily life. Small matters that we go through in our daily life can impact us and lead to much dissatisfaction within our self. So we should know the meaning and purpose of our existence. Why we’re doing what we’re doing. Hence, EI teaches self- awareness, self-motivation, and regulation
What is the mission of your startup?
Our mission is to contribute to a world where people are self-aware and are intentional, purposeful and empathetic.
As an entrepreneur what has been your greatest challenge?
Bhawana : I started working early in my life. I always used to earn money and send it to my parents. Suddenly that source of income came to a pause when I left my job at Kings College. During that phase I had to take big decisions, I had to leave a good amount of income and a job for this startup, which were a dilemma as well as a big challenge for me.
We used to go for a sales pitch in various places; people did not look at me and talk. They used to look at Sagar and answer the question that I had asked. I used to think because I was a female people didn’t used to take me seriously and only talk to Sagar. The more I talked with other people I realized that maybe that used to happen due to the uneasiness of talking to the opposite gender as most of them were male. Hence, overcoming the truth of Social setting has been another challenge in my initial days.
Sagar : As an entrepreneur the first challenge has been finding a team member who shares the same value as myself. As a startup, we’re not trying to be very fancy. There are many ups and downs in startups. The revenue stream is not consistent. Even if we find people who share the same value as us its hard for us to retain them. As our startup is a new concept, their parents have many questions. It’s hard for them to explain their work to them. In addition, parents want their children to work in a reputed company and have a good source of income. Being the co-founders we can wait but it’s hard on the HR level.
What do you think is the most important factor for a startup to be successful?
In our opinion, we think the most important factor is a good team. If you have a strong team, you can overcome the obstacles together as a team. On our journey we came across many people who believed in our idea and have contributed in their own way. Those people who have been and are in our team with us are the foundation of our startup.
Likewise, the parents of cofounders are also an important factor for a startup to be successful. Both of our parents have been very supportive of our work and us. If we had to fight them before the world we would not have gone a long way. So, parents play a very important role in a startup.
Who has been your biggest influence?
We are each other’s biggest influence. We are always together and spend a lot of time together in whatever we do in this startup. Even before this startup, we have always been friends and we always know that we have a partner to fall back to. Due to which we think we are each other’s influencers.
Do you have any quote that you have referred to which has been a spark in your life?
Bhawana : My mom and dad have always been very supportive and influential to me. I’m very thankful for my parents who have given me a very good environment to be raised on. My mom always advises me about financial dependency that,” If you don’t earn on your own either you’ll never know the value of money or you’ll always feel dependent and can’t do anything full heartedly.” And my dad used to teach me about respect and empathy by using a metaphor, “Wherever you reach always remember that the fruit which is the essence of the tree is always faced down.”
Sagar : “When you know how you’ll die, you’ll know how to live.” Death makes us real and our choices genuine. In the end of life they’re no hiding. We can leave anytime. Whenever I’m confronted with dilemma, I always remember we can do these stuffs that we do only when we’re alive and for our satisfaction. We are making our life meaningful by doing what we do. At the end of my life I’ll look back and say that was something that I really believed in and I worked for it.
Anything that you want to tell to the reader?
Sagar : Feelings affect our life in various ways. “How you feeling?” don’t ask this question for formality but search for its answer in depth as this simple question can help you transform your life. EI starts with understanding this question in depth.
Bhawana : “If money was not necessary or not that important what would you be doing? If everything was free?” This question has always helped me in my life. This question helps us to find our passion and career path. Being entrepreneurs is not that easy as fancy as it sounds. Initial it’s very difficult. If you don’t know what drives you to do the business it’ll be difficult in long run. So, do what you love and keep asking yourself this question.
If you would like to know more about their company or their services please visit their website http://myemotionsmatter.com.
