People Who Have Coached and Mentored Me-My Story

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"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Issac Newton

If teachers leave powerful impressions on our lives, coaches and mentors transform our very lives. A teacher is constrained by the system to teach in groups and can therefore give limited personal attention. The coach/mentor understands us as an individual and provides customized guidance, thus touching our very core.

Today is Teachers' Day in India and I thought of expressing my deep gratitude to the great teachers/coaches/mentor life has always surrounded me with.

I have had great teachers till my post graduation including Prof PK Gupta (Former Dean, IMS-Indore) Prof Ashish Sadh (currently Faculty, IIM Indore) and Dr Anand Sapre (one of my MBA professors and my favourite teacher, who mentored me as my PhD supervisor). He is currently Director & Professor, IIPS-Indore. He is a wonderful human being and I shall remain indebted to him forever for allowing me to conduct research on a topic of my choice and extending a helping hand wherever possible. His dedicated efforts resulted in an interesting book, which got immense support in data collection from Prakash Hindustani and a Foreword by well known personality and TV news anchor Vartika Nanda.

Raja Choudhury, the well known Digital Filmmaker leaves me with a lesson or two as and when we meet or talk. Recently he has made a very interesting film, "The Quantum Indians" which is being released in PSBT festival after few days. Dr Karan Singh (well known statesman and thinker) who released my book, “The 7 Joys of Life” (with a Foreword by well known author Alan Jacobs) in August last year, is one person I have been fascinated with and it was a dream come true to receive his blessings. Such great human beings leave so many lessons in few hours of interaction.  

I have already written atribute to Sensei Ikeda whose teachings have transformed my personal and professional lives, and I call him only, ‘the mentor’ (while rest are worthy coaches). 

I was initiated in the world of digital marketing by Yogesh MA (Blogging & Digital marketing expert, Mumbai). Subsequently I developed interest in branding through storytelling (on social / online media)

4 Americans who changed my life

Jennifer Sertl, Anastasia A/Tara A (Global Niche team) and Michael Margolis

There is a mysterious sequence in the way they came in my life. My "Enlarge Excel Evolve" philosophy is summed up as “Enlarge as a human being, Excel as a social media being and Evolve as a personal brand.” Jennifer helped me enlarge as a human being, Anastasia/Tara helped me excel at social media and Michael has helped me truly evolve as a brand storyteller.

I connected with Jennifer sometime in 2008. Soon she emailed me her poem, "Teachers are Artists" which really touched me, since I have been a passionate teacher too. Then we exchanged few emails and she gifted me a copy of her book, "Strategy, Leadership and the Soul." I wrote an interesting post “One plus one equals eleven” detailing our interactions. She has been my personal development coach, a friend, philosopher and guide.

Anastasia & Tara combine the best of west and east being based in USA and Turkey respectively. I have always believed that we are all world class in some area (which I call as deepest passion) and Anastasia (included in Forbes Top 20 women entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter) calls it our 'Global Niche'.  It was during the Google Hangout sessions, I realized my global niche lies in inspirational storytelling. Here is the story of Global Niche.

Michael Margolis is the Founder / Chief Instigator @ Get Storied and is considered World No 1 in brand storytelling. Interestingly, he considers chocolate a food category and believes that unless we take charge of our life story, we get storied (by life). When Michael told me “Love the voice and POV that you are sharing” it finally gave me the conviction that I am now all set to be an 'Inspirational Storyteller'. His book “Believe Me” has been a strong influence on my storytelling journey.

In fact my writing style has been highly influenced by Dr Janet Warfield (Word Sculptress) and Rory Kelly Connor, Life Coach. I had recently posted on Facebook, "Great writing is like sculpting. To create great statues you have to cut the flab, sharpen the crucial points and work on refining the nuances till it becomes a masterpiece worth worshiping."

Blessed with coaches

I have talked about many of my mentors including Shailendra Verma (Sahara TV), Air Vice Marshal AS Gurunathan (Former Director, Defense Services Staff College,Ooty & Former Regional Head-ICFAI), Ranjan Kaul (MD, Oxford University Press India) and others in a post I wrote long back, “The Joys of Mentoring” 

Many of my ex-colleagues have left lifelong imprints including Prof Prriya Raj (MICA, Ahmedabad), Uday Shankar (Group CEO, Star TV), Sidharth Pandey (Chief Correspondent, NDTV), Dr M Bashir A Khan (SOM, Pondicherry University), Bhuwan Bhatt (Sr Vice President, Advertising Sales, NDTV), Sulina Menon (Advertising Consultant), Brig C. Mukesh (VP Academics, WLC College), (Late) Tejeshwar Singh (well known news anchor) and Vikesh Dhyani (Director-Marketing, Lexisnexis India).  Peter Sterlacci (Japan's personal branding pioneer) has been a great influence in my personal branding journey too.

Ratan KK (Founder-GutsGo e-Marketing & Visiting Faculty, IIM Ahmedabad) is a master of digital marketing and Pradeep Chopra (Digital Vidya) is a master of social media for sure. It was a pleasure to be trained by them.

Isn’t life teaching us every moment? Are we not here on this planet to play a drama and grow our soul simultaneously? I would like to sum up by saying, “Every moment is a teacher, every relationship coaches, life takes a master class....and in silence you find the Guru mantra. Happy Teachers Day to my formal and informal teachers.”
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Brief Profile

Dr Amit Nagpal is Chief Inspirational Storyteller and Mega Success Coach. He is based in New Delhi, India and specializes in personal branding with a holistic touch. His philosophy is, "Enlarge as a Human Being, Excel as a Social Media Being and Evolve as a Personal Brand"

To know more about Dr Nagpal, visit www.dramitnagpal.com. Contact for personal branding/social media speaking/training/coaching. If you have doubts about the power of storytelling on social media, connect with Dr Nagpal, on Linkedin or Twitter and see for yourself.