#PodChangesLives: The Story of Bijay Gautam
Bijay Gautam, an extremely inspiring man, and the podcaster behind The Inspiring Talk Podcast shared with us his story.
Bijay Gautam is THE man when it comes to podcasting in India. Not just a podcaster, but he is a podcast coach and a keynote speaker too.
Read on to see how he stumbled upon podcasting, and we’re sure you’d be inspired by the end of the story.
What did you do before you started podcasting?
Before I stumbled upon podcasting, I was working at my first job, for a large multinational pharmaceutical company, as a research scientist.
My job included the task to ensure that the medicine that was being produced by the company, was quality medicine, that is, they meet the regulatory parameters before they were you know put out there in the market. My job was to develop those methods to test those drug products. That was the kind of work that I was doing before I started podcasting.
I joined that organization after going to a pharmacy school and I worked there for 3 years before I actually got into podcasting full-time. Sounds boring, right?
What was exactly the point when you decided to dive into podcasts?
I want to give a backstory here.
So, this is something that I always say- I have always been running the wrong race in my life. I wanted to pursue a course in biotechnology but could not make it to the University that I wanted to. Having settled with an average college, I made a commitment to be the best at whatever I do. I was an average student throughout my life. In fact, in class 12th I scored 68 percent. With the commitment to do the best, I joined the pharmacy college and in the first year of the college, I was at the top. In the 2nd year, I was awarded the best student at the college. The next year, I received a full fee waiver and in the final year, I graduated the college with an MNC job in my hand. It felt like a huge success to me.
In the first year of the job, I received considerable recognition soon got promoted too. Everything looked great on the outside. But one and a half years into the job, somehow, I started feeling that working with the burette test-tube chemicals was not meant for me. I was meant for something else. Something that leaves an impact on people’s lives.
But I had no idea what is that something. I was heavily invested in personal development and self-help space because, during college, I started attending a lot of seminars and reading self-development books. I was never exposed to those kinds of ideas. That transformation of an average kid to the best student of the college, that transformation was just possible because of those self-help and personal development books and the ideas that I learned in the personal development seminars.
I wanted to take that information out there to people and tell them, hey, each of us has got the potential and talent within us. When we tap into that potential and talent, we can bring it out to the world and become a better version of ourselves.
That was the whole idea of doing something — I wanted to do something on those lines. I don't know, I had no idea of what it was going to be. And then, I was thinking of doing it through YouTube. But with a job, YouTube seemed very demanding. Also, I don’t feel very comfortable in front of the camera.
I then came across podcasting as a medium. And that was it. I knew this is something that I can absolutely do. I can record from my bedroom and talk to literally anyone in any part of the world. At the same time, I can spread the message that I want to share with the people. That’s exactly how podcasting came into my life. And that’s how I was fascinated by podcasting, that’s my podcast discovery or the podcast fascination story.
When you look back, how has this journey worked out for you?
I can’t imagine my life doing what I was doing. As I mentioned, I was working as a research scientist. I met a lot of people in my organization who were way older than me, complaining about their jobs. How much they don’t enjoy the job or how much they hate that job. You know, living with that frustration forever. They had been working 10 years, 15 years into the job and all they had was the frustration and that’s something that they don’t want to live with, right?
When I saw those people and looked at myself, I got that first feeling that I’m not enjoying working with these chemicals and glassware. This is the question I asked myself — what can I do with the feeling I just got?
I had two choices. One, I continue to live with that feeling in my head that I’m not meant to do what I’m doing right now. Or two, to find a solution and address that thought that was going in my head. I opted for the second one to find a solution. That’s how I got into podcasting.
If I was still doing the same thing I did back then, I think that I would have been probably dead by this time. I would have lost my passion. I would have lost any enthusiasm in my life. I would just be one of those mechanical people who don’t enjoy what they are doing and do it just for the sake of a living.
Podcasting saved me and my life in that sense. Because when I started podcasting, I started getting exposed to a lot of different ideas, met a lot of exciting people, and exposed myself to these amazing ideas, and the conversations that have on my podcast, with fellow podcasters the community and at the same time after doing the podcast thing for almost 15 months.
I quit my job in November 2018, it has been good 6–7 months that I quit my job and this has been one of the most amazing journeys that I have ever been on.
It has been one of the best rides that I have taken in my life or the best decision I have taken in my life — to start a podcast. It has transformed my life completely.
Whether it’s in terms of making money or growing that network or whether it’s in terms of building relationships with the people and making an impact. One of the biggest things that I enjoy today with podcasting is when I get those messages, and I won’t say I get them every day, but once in a while I get the message from listeners — you know what I have been listening to your podcast for a while, quit my job and thought I’ll go into govt examination. Things aren’t working fine, I was depressed. I listened to your podcast and the stories give me hope, fuel me up. This feels awesome.
Somebody says that I’m going through this dark phase in my life and your podcast is helping. I get hope when I listen to your podcast. That’s the biggest reward I can get, compared to what I was doing in the medicine and working on preparing medicines for people that save lives but it’s an indirect form that you’re part of the whole ecosystem out there. But here you’re impacting people directly and you can see that. People coming back to you and saying that. This is incredible. It’s just a phenomenal impact that you can have on the people by starting a podcast.
I am so grateful and thankful for all the people who have supported this journey, but most importantly, it is that decision that we take in our lives that decides what results we are going to get. I took that decision at the right time, to quit the job which has been a great one. So, yeah. That’s the kind of difference I have felt since podcasting has happened to me.
