Growing A Huge Business And Audience By Listening To What People Need

Dr. Vanita Rattan: [00:00:00] I was pregnant with myfirst baby. We lost a huge amount of money, hundreds of thousands of pounds. Itwas devastating. I'd had contingencies in place. And then when the clinicclosed, we need to diversify. We need to sell globally. I needed to make fivevideos a week on YouTube. We are able to collect data and create products thattailor specifically to what they want with the ingredients they want at theprice point they want.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And you know, it's all comebecause of social media, really. The rate of growth has blown my mind . Icouldn't be more blessed, truly.

Amardeep Parmar: Welcome  to the BAE HQ, wherewe inspire, connect and guide the next generation of British Asians. Today wehave with us, Dr Vanita Rattan, the founder of Skincare by Dr V, a cosmeticformulator. An author and your main follower on social media. How are you doingtoday? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: I'm  very well. Thank you somuch for having me.

Amardeep Parmar: So we've had a good chat beforethis, and we've talked a bit too much, now we need to hurry through thepodcast. So tell me about your childhood. When you were growing up, [00:01:00]did you ever believe in yourself? Did you ever think you'd get to where you aretoday? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So I am from the typical immigranthousehold, which I think a lot of, us are.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And parents generally were verystrict. They had a high expectation, astronomically high expectations. Andreally your whole life was about fulfilling your, the goal set for you. So I'dsay it was extremely difficult. Simultaneously, I had dyslexia, but I didn't,we didn't have a word for it at the time. I just thought there was somethingwrong with me.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: The words were jumbling up and I'dread them and I just felt slower than other people. I felt like other people.pick things up much faster than me. And if your parents, you know, they've gottheir own expectations of you, they have, there's not much tolerance for younot picking things up as fast as everybody else.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So there's some fear there, Ithink. And then you associate this fear with study. And this was something thatwas part of my childhood. Then I went on this course, which I think transformedmy life. It's Tony Robbins. I don't know if you've heard of [00:02:00] him. He,I mean, it was probably one of the best things I've ever, ever done.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: My uncle, you know, took us on itand all my cousins went on it. Actually, my entire extended family went onit. 

Amardeep Parmar: How old were you? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan:  I was 13 at the time. It wasone of those formative years, you know, where you're dying to learn somethingnew. You really want to be the best version of yourself. But, you know, you'vegot these blocks and you can't figure out.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Why you're not performing at thesame level as everybody else or superseding them when you are working muchharder than everybody else. So I learned some key things there. Number one wasdon't worry about what other people think of you. Don't worry about what yourparents think of you or your teachers.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Only you know, your fullpotential. So that like that had me in tears, . And the second thing was,whatever you want to achieve, find someone who's already done it. Read theirbooks, study them, learn about them. How do they think? How do they speak? Whatdo they wear? How do they learn their German history, English or whateversubject you're trying to learn?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And that's what I did. I found thesmartest girl in [00:03:00] class. Uh, Heidi Evans. I dunno if you're allowedto name her. Genius. You know, Mensa student. I think now she's working atHarvard as a professor and she helped me with my English. English was the thingI really struggled the most with and she would mark my essays.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: She would say, you know, tell mehow to tweak them and literally got me from a C to an A star. I did the samewith everything, history, geography. I found the smartest girl in every classand I would ask them to help me. And, you know, thankfully they did, which iswhy I think it's really important to help each other because, you know, youreally are pulling

Dr. Vanita Rattan: people up who need it and who areprobably in pain. And once I did that, then I remember I won one of the prizesat Leyden on holiday school for girls, which again was a top school. So I wasin this, it was the top four school in the country at the time, pretty muchfully Caucasian open, you know, a couple of brown people.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And so I wasn't, I didn't reallyfit in. It wasn't really my environment, but I had to succeed because that wasthe expectation. And that's why I think having high expectations of children'sreally is important because they will fulfill it. If you have low [00:04:00]expectation of your children, they will fulfill that too.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And so I think that's whereimmigrant parents go right. Sometimes not always in the best way, but havingexpectations that's just 4 to 10 percent more than what the child thinks theycan do is going to stretch that child. That's my opinion of it. So that reallyhelped me. And so then I got into medical school and at this point, once I gotmy GCs, CS and A Levels and I realized that actually I was competingnationally, you know, I got my AT Stars two as for example, and I thought I'min the N point, nor, nor 1% of the country, and you feel instantly brighterjust having that thing on a piece of paper to tell you.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: It's almost like proof in yourmind. Oh, I can actually go into any room and talk to anybody and I can readthe same books as you and converse on any topic that I want to. You don't feelslow anymore. And it's almost like you need that proof just to yourself. It'snot even that you go around, you know, showing everyone else this proof, butit's just yourself that you think I can go and talk to anybody.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: It doesn't [00:05:00] matter, youknow, how great they are, how much money they've got, what degree they have. Ifeel like I can converse with them. So that's why I think it's important to dowell in school, to really study hard, not be distracted as much as I hated myparents for not letting me go to parties and not me, let me go clubbing anddoing all the other things that all the other girls got to do.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: I think it was the right thing todo. I think, you know, you do get to do your partying and everything later on.And that really is the time to prove to yourself that you can achieve anything

Amardeep Parmar: And with medicine. Was that theexpectations or was that you really wanted to do it? Or where did that comefrom? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Well, I remember at 13 years old,I was watching Richard Branson.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: He was my idol and I was like, Iwant to do business. 

Amardeep Parmar: He has dyslexia as well. 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: He has dyslexia as well. Hewas my idol. I just, just loved everything about this man. And I want to dobusiness, but business is, has high risk. And, you know, Asian parents are notgoing to say go and do business when they've put all these money to education.So they say, we came to an agreement which was [00:06:00] 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: you have to do medicine, but wewill fund your first business. And so we came to like a nice understandingwhere I was like, okay, fine, then it's like a win-win situation. And that'show it came about. Having said that, I think medicine was the best degree Iever could have done. I love the degree. It was, I mean, there just isn'tanything like it.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: You get, anyone can come to youwith any ailment and you already have a good understanding of what's happening.You can read clinical data and studies. You can figure out the best treatmentsthat are available to you. I mean, what's better than that for me? So I thinkit's just the best degree. 

Amardeep Parmar: So  your first business isactually very different to what you do now, right?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: My  first business wasmedical education. So the first business I did was at the time there was noYouTube. Imagine this is how far back we were. There was no YouTube. Soimagine. You had to go and do assessments on patients, but you haven't seen thatpatient before because we didn't have a very good teacher to patient ratio whenit came to 400 [00:07:00] students at UCL Medical School.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So there was no video, you know,on say how to assess someone with pulmonary fibrosis, for example. And so whatwe did is we created a video library, the first ever video library of everypatient that could come up for finals that were then assessed by a registrarfrom that field that didn't exist. And that was my first product.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: It did very well touch wood. Andit gave me confidence to think, you know what? I can see where gaps are in themarket. I can bring my resources together. I can create something that peoplelove. This is my first ever project. I wonder what else I can do with thatability. So it was always, again, proof to myself, proof of concept that I cando business, that I can help people in areas that other people aren'tnecessarily looking at.

Amardeep Parmar: Yeah. And then, so you mentioned tome before you also had a restaurant in the early days. 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Yes.  So then my secondbusiness was a restaurant. It was a teppanyaki live food restaurant. And thatwas a mistake for me because that wasn't my area of [00:08:00] expertise. 

Amardeep Parmar: Yeah. I was about to say whyteppanyaki? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Why teppanyaki?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: I think we fell into the classicentrepreneur trap where you think, because you've had something that'ssuccessful, then you think you can almost do anything, you know, and I can dofood and I can do this. But what you forget is in every area you have differentplayers and you really want to find an area of business where there are highbarriers to entry.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: It's difficult to get into, youneed to have certain set of skills in order to do it, and there has to be aneed, the need needs to be enough that is worth pursuing. Now, with fast food,even though it's an expensive business to set up, the barriers to entry arequite low, and so then we're competing with a huge number of people that areprobably much better than me at cooking, probably much better than me atsourcing ingredients at better prices, you know, they're just much better thanme at [00:09:00] putting a restaurant together.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And that wasn't my area ofexpertise and maybe, you know, it was a very humbling experience to realizethat actually, you know, you can't do everything, you know, you're not going tobe great at everything and you're going to fail. And learn from this, neverever get into a industry where these are the conditions and they're workingagainst you.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So, it was a difficult lesson at28 years old. I was pregnant with my first baby. We lost a huge amount ofmoney, hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time where you're desperatelysaving to buy property and you're desperately saving to give financial stabilityto your children. It was devastating. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, but Ithink it's something I definitely had to go through.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: To be more prudent now.

Amardeep Parmar:  How did you  cope at thetime? Because obviously lots of people talk about failure and it's a big reasonwhy a lot of people don't start the business right. They're scared of thisfailure, [00:10:00] but you've been through that failure. Then you continue todo things afterwards and especially being pregnant, like you said, and all ofthe money as well.

Amardeep Parmar: But then how did you get throughthat pain or like even to then have the belief in yourself to then startsomething else afterwards? Because like you said, before you started, you're oncloud nine, right? We're amazing. We can start this business. We can dowhatever we want. We can start a teppanyaki restaurant.

Amardeep Parmar: And then afterwards you're like, ohwait, now there's a very real risk that if we start this again in the future.What about that same thing happens again, and then how do you get out ofthat? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So I think  because I'dalready proved to myself before that I can be successful, I had that to fallback on.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Had I not have had my firstbusiness be successful or had I not have done a very difficult degree or, youknow, achieved in my mind, then maybe I might not have bounced back. Numberone. Number two, I'd say I'm. I'm optimistic. I'm an optimistic type of person.I feel even now, I feel like I can do anything.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: I have to bring myself back andgo, no, actually you can't do everything. But I think I am quite that type ofperson. And my dad's always said, pray for [00:11:00] the best, assume theworst. And so I just protect my downside more. And so there was protection,even with the restaurant, the downside was that we weren't going to bedestitute.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: We weren't going to be on thestreet. It was, yes, we would lose our life savings. But I also at the sametime had my medical education business, which was, which was keeping us afloat.And at the same time I was working in the lab at the weekends. So we were quiteclose to opening up the clinic as well. So,  Uh, even though it looksterrible and we did lose a lot of money, it was painful.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: I'd had contingencies in placethat if, you know, we were going to be okay, you know, we're not going to loseeverything. And I would always say that to anybody, any business you want tostart, never put yourself in a situation where you could lose everythingbecause you need to have enough in the tank to come back again for,

Dr. Vanita Rattan: you know, in case it doesn't workout, I'd also say the big mistake I made here was because it was withWestfield. We were, we had to use the most expensive materials. And that was a[00:12:00] mistake. We, you always want to start scrappy, start cheap. That'show you start a business. And so we made that big mistake as well.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So, I think I think, I thinkthat's how we got out of it is just, at the back of my mind, this was always,this could potentially have always failed. And even now, like, I think any ofmy business at any point could potentially fail. Do I have contingencies inplace? And I do. So, you know, for example, my first property wasn't, you know,let me go and buy my house.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: My first properties were, how dowe buy high yield investments that if my business fails? That we have income,another stream of income, and that is unheard of. Like normally people will goand put all their money into their home, whereas we have a small home, but Iwanted to make sure that we had another stream of income in case, you know.

Amardeep Parmar: Yeah.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Business goes under. So I thinkit's just a different way of thinking and planning and preparing in case ithappens. 

Amardeep Parmar: And then with  the clinics,obviously that was your main business for a while. 

Dr. Vanita Rattan:Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: How did [00:13:00] you apply thoselessons to making sure that clinic was successful? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Uh, so clinics, I think we have,that was a very lucky situation because even now to this day, there still isn'ta treatment designed for hyperpigmentation and specifically for skin color,even to this day.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Okay. And this was, this was 10years ago. So we were full, like we could not cope. I think we were actually, Ithink our biggest mistake was that we were too full and we were working likeover time. And, you know, we didn't really need to put contingencies in placein case it didn't work because, you know, it was, we were working flat out.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So I think we were lucky then atthe same time, I still had my medical education company at the beginning justto make sure that there's, there's. you know, the clinics were going to besuccessful. So I think that's how I, we buffered the situation. 

Amardeep Parmar: And what made you so passionate?Like, obviously now people who see Instagram or your TikTok, they can see howmuch you care about skincare, but where did that come from?

Amardeep Parmar: Why are you so passionate aboutskincare?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So my parents owned a cosmeticcompany called Pharma Clinics and it [00:14:00] was their lab in which I waslearning. I became an apprentice in their laboratory before I built my ownlaboratory for the clinic now for skincare by Dr. V. 

Amardeep Parmar: I can't help but think like Dexter'slaboratory in my head here.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: No, it's not that. So, yeah, wedon't need that much space. About a thousand square feet just for the initiallab. And then, and now we use contract manufacturers because now we have tobuy, you know, 10,000 units at a time. Whereas before, you know, you're doingsmall batch. So it's different. You don't need like a massive space.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: It's small. The, the informationyou need in order to make it happen. That's the difficult bit. So the beginningbit of opening a lab is very difficult because you have to buy hundreds ofingredients. Um, and they've all got different expiry dates, different kg. Youdon't use everything. You're going to have waste.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Um, you can't afford to lose toomuch money. You know, that's the difficult bit with a laboratory has to besanitized. But once you've overcome all of that, it's amazing. You know, havingyour own lab is like, for me, it's a playground. It's like I get to, forexample, the other day, my followers said, Dr. P, we need [00:15:00] somethingfor pseudofolliculitis Barbie, which is basically razor bumps that happen veryoften for black males, because 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: what happens is when they shave,they have curly hair. And when you shave at an acute angle, the hair becomessharp and it re- pierces the skin, which then leads to an inflammatory responsein the skin, which is painful and leads to hyperpigmentation. Again, to thisday, there is no product that's been made specifically for black men who haverazor bumps.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: It doesn't exist, right? So assoon as I found that out, I went to my laboratories, I started ordering theingredients that we needed. And now this weekend, I'm putting the ingredientstogether. I'm going to send it out to 20 of our followers to try, see if theylike it. Then we proceed to clinical studies, et cetera.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And then within four months we'llbe, we'll be able to manufacture. And that's based on Wikinomics. That's myfollowing telling me what they need. I've got the laboratory and the funds inorder to make it happen. And I can manufacture the thing within four months.You know, it's a very lucky situation where social [00:16:00] media works nowand having people who trust you and want to help you.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And. You know, wanna be on thejourney with you. I don't take any of it for granted. 

Amardeep Parmar: Um, were the clinics, were youalways making our own products or? Initially, so the products came first.. Andpart of the clinics. And then you said during the pandemic the clinics had toclose. 

Dr. Vanita Rattan:  Yes. 

Amardeep Parmar: Now fully the products, right?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Yeah. Some of the products, pharmaclinics were making for me, some of the products I was making. And then whenthe. clinic closed during, so during the pandemic, you know, remember it waslike three lockdowns, but at the same time we were paying for everything, youknow, overheads, we didn't get a furlough scheme.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: We didn't get any rent breaks oranything. So we were losing a lot of money. And it was a very scary time again,because at this point, this was my only business. So me and my husband had tosit down and have quite a difficult conversation, which was what do we do now?And I said, if this carries on like we don't know at this moment, remember atthat point in time with limited data, limited information, partial information,we have to make decisions on this partial information.[00:17:00] 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Plus you're trying not to let yourfear take over your decision making process. So we decided we, what we have todo is we need to diversify. We need to sell globally. Um, I'd started a littlebit on Instagram and a tiny bit on YouTube, but we hadn't really gone in, youknow, hard. So we had to then set up on TiktoK.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: I needed to make five videos aweek on YouTube. I had to. Make content. 

Amardeep Parmar: You say you needed to, right? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan:Yeah .

Amardeep Parmar: Where did that come from? Thatdesire?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: It's like, well, we had to makemoney to survive. 

Amardeep Parmar: For of people wouldn't necessarilythink from product was, okay, I need to go to YouTube. What made you go downthat path?

Amardeep Parmar: And you mentioned before how..

Dr. Vanita Rattan:  It makes sense.  like,say for example, you've got a skincare issue. What are you going to do? You'regoing to type into Google, right? Like I've got dark circles. What do I do?You're going to type into Google. Then what happens? You're going to haveeither blogs are going to come up or videos are going to come up from YouTubebecause of the way search engine works.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And If you're at the top ofYouTube, then you're going to listen to what that person is telling you. So itjust makes perfect sense to me. And instead of teaching one person at a time, Ican now [00:18:00] teach a hundred thousand people at a time. So you'releveraging your time. And plus with product, you're de linking your time tomoney.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So that's the other importantthing is in the clinic, you can only see one person at a time. You know,you're, you're selling your time for money. Essentially, that's what you'redoing. It puts a cap on what you can earn by doing that. Whereas if you doproduct, it's scalable. You don't have a cap on your, on what you can achieveand you're highly leveraged because now I can teach a hundred thousand peopleat the same time instead of one.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So it made perfect sense to me.That was like, fine. You've got this amazing tool. Like I need to take fulladvantage. I would highly encourage anyone who has something to teach if theylike being on camera and they enjoy teaching. This is the time to be doing itis to create your. community, create a following, create people that you canimprove their lives.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Yeah. I think that theopportunities are endless. I've, you know, my mom wanted to do it. I told herto go for it. My daughter wanted to do it. I told her to go for it. Like Idon't tell anyone to go for it.

Amardeep Parmar: And what's interesting is youmentioned earlier [00:19:00] how you're not of the kind of the nativegeneration where people grew up on social media, right?

Amardeep Parmar: You said you didn't have Facebook oruniversity. 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: We have a Kodak, you remember theKodak? You don’t remember ‘cause you're like oh..

Amardeep Parmar: I was a kid, I was a baby. Yeah..

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Yeah, So back then there was noFacebook. So Facebook happened. I think like off, like when I got married, Iwas 25 when Facebook arrived. So imagine guys who guys rowing up with Instagramnow, for them, it's normal. Just, oh, I want to go to this club. I want to goto this restaurant. What are people wearing? Let me Instagram it and see whatpeople are wearing.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: You know, we were calling like, sowhat are you going to wear? What are you going to do? So it was just acompletely different era. So then to figure out right now, you need to get goodon this platform. You need to be able to add value to people's lives. You needto be interesting. How do you even film?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Like, are you going to becomfortable putting your body on camera? I don't know. And how do you edit it?All these were new skills and you can do it if you have a growth mindset. Ifyou go, I can achieve anything. If tomorrow [00:20:00] there's a new platform,I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to read a book on it or some videos onit.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: I'll figure it out. If you havethat kind of mindset, you will overcome it. But if you have a fixed mindset andyou go, no, that was never part of my era, that's another generation. Uh, yeah,we don't do TikTok, then you losing on a massive opportunity, but also when itcomes to your children, you're not going to be able to relate to them.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So a big reason why I can talk tomy daughter, like things that she sees on, on TikTok, on my TikTok. She, we canrelate to it. I can actually watch her face, see what she liked about video andeven tweak it to her liking. Whereas I wouldn't be able to do that if I didn't,wasn't in that mindset.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So even though we didn't grow upwith it, I think we can adapt to anything if we want to. 

Amardeep Parmar: And with your own TikTok strategyand your social strategy now, like you're quite famous for going into differentshops and analyzing what the ingredients are and whether they're good or bad.Where do those kinds of ideas come from?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Our followers.  So I callthem, our people are called My Dr. V Stock Family and we, They just tell mewhat they want, literally what product they want, [00:21:00] I will make it.What videos they want, I'll make it, you know, and then I get to do a poll. Sofor example, with my book that we launched, we conduct the largest ever pollsconducted on skin of color.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Thousands of people responded tothese polls and that data then went into these books and now we've soldthousands of copies of these books. So we, because we have access to Hundredsof thousands of people. We are able to collect data and create products thattailor specifically to what they want with ingredients they want, at the pricepoint they want.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And you know, it's all comebecause of social media really. 

Amardeep Parmar: And in those early days when youdidn't have much of a following, how was it then? Because obviously then youhave to try to work out how am I going to get people engaged? How am I going toget people to care about what I'm doing? I'm another person, social media, whatmakes me stand out?

Amardeep Parmar: How did you plan it at this earlydays? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: I still, it changes every month,like which platforms I'm performing best on at the moment, I'd say TikTok I'mperforming the best on, which is really shocking to me. But ultimately, youknow, The one [00:22:00] that I love the most is probably still going to beYouTube because YouTube long form content are for people who really have aproblem and a need that they are dying to learn about.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: They want to know the in depthnitty gritty of that condition or that issue. And so, it's a different type ofperson you're going to meet. The questions they're going to ask you are goingto be more in depth. Um, and they probably would have watched quite a few ofyour videos and bought your book and invested.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So I personally think, yes, doTikTok if you are starting, it's fine, but don't forget, think of it like,imagine someone was walking down the road, right? TikTok is a little bit like,you don't know what you're going to see. And it's like. Are you, you're goingto find it interesting. You might even watch 10 of them, but are you going togo and be engaged with that person?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: It's kind of like a funnelingmechanism. It's a good way of getting to millions of people quite quickly, butlong term strategy, if you do want to get into social media, think aboutYouTube. And I know it takes the most amount of time, but then guess what,because it's such high [00:23:00] barriers to entry, your time, not everybody'sdoing it.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Whereas TikTok, you know, you'regoing to probably 10 X number of people on, on YouTube. Making content.

Amardeep Parmar: It's for example, my background,right, with the Medium account. So people who don't know, Medium is like thelong form, like, version of Twitter. And the biggest people in Medium have gotmaybe like a few hundred thousand followers.

Amardeep Parmar: But each of those is paying members,which is a huge difference. It's much more investment. And if you compare thatto somebody who's going to sit there and read an article, which you generallyconsider a lot of people don't really like to read that much anymore, thingslike that, they're way more invested in, in say, seeing a TikTok or reading atweet.

Amardeep Parmar: And that's where sometimes peoplemess up because they say, look at that overall big picture number of, I've gotthis many views and a million views for a TikTok versus a million views on aYouTube video is totally different. 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Totally different. 

Amardeep Parmar:  And it's saying things orimpressions on LinkedIn versus an article being read.

Amardeep Parmar: And it's the thing that I see like alot of people mess up because they're trying to compare to things that aren'tthe same.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Correct. Apples and [00:24:00]oranges. But also, what are you trying to achieve? That's the other bigquestion is what is your end goal here? Is it to have as many eyeballs aspossible?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: In which case, just do TikTok.Don't do anything else. If that, I mean, you're going to get the most number ofeyeballs there, but are you trying to teach YouTube. Or do you have somethingthat's like a restaurant or something that's aesthetically gorgeous and anexperience, and you really want people to see it on a daily basis, then youwould do Instagram.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So like pick the area that isgoing to serve your needs because not everyone can do everything. It'sexhausting. I do three platforms and you know, it's a lot. I probably wouldn'trecommend, you know, it for everybody, pick the one that is going to give youthe outcome that you're looking for.

Amardeep Parmar: And what's interesting as well ismost people on YouTube to complete places.

Amardeep Parmar: So many of them are thinking aboutthat as a way to make money themselves, like through those platforms, whetherit's YouTube for the program, Google ads, things like that. Whereas what you'redoing that's different is that you're using that as a lead generation for yourbusiness [00:25:00] in more of that way where you can have things unbiased forfree and just just getting that trust of people, right?

Amardeep Parmar: And sometimes what people are veryquick to do is to kind of use that trust to then try and sell other people'sproducts very quickly. And I think that's the way a lot of people think aboutit. The better way to do it in the longer term is what you're doing, right? Socreate your own products. If you can sell other people's products using yourbrand, then you're making them money.

Amardeep Parmar: If you're advertising, right? So ifyou're, for your Instagram platform, you're advertising, people are paying youa thousand pounds per post. Then in the person paying you must be thinking, Ican make more than a thousand pounds from that post. Otherwise it's a waste ofmoney, right? And if you make your own products, Then instead of that otherperson getting all of that Delta, you get it yourself.

Amardeep Parmar: And that's a smart way to thinkabout it in many ways, right? And if you start constantly selling otherpeople's products, you start damaging the trust you have with your, yourpeople, right? And but at the same time, you're leaving money on the table.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: I do. So I'm the, I'm one of thefew influencers who don't accept [00:26:00] sponsorship for anything.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And I've had. I've had blankchecks from like the big companies and I said, no, because the second I takethat money, how do you know what I'm telling you is correct or not? As much asyou may even like be invested in me and you've watched me every day and you'vewatched me, my kids and everything. How do you know if I really love that thingor not?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And I'm sure lots of influencersdo love them. And that's not any criticism on people who do accept the moneybecause, you know, it, it's hard work putting a following together. So I getit. It makes complete sense. But for me personally, if I was my follower, Iwould want to know that everything I'm telling you has, there is no moneybehind it.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: There's no other, uh, incentivesand is purely coming from love. And I want to be able to feel that and I wantto know it. So that's, that's the following that I want to create. That's myethos, but I'm not judging anybody else for the way that they have done it,because honestly, creating your own product is not a small thing.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: It, you know. My lab cost mehundreds of thousands of pounds to [00:27:00] get to put together the everytime I make a product, it's thousands of pounds just for R and D. So it's notlike something that, you know, 13 year old can just go and do. It's it's a verydifficult process to get right. And also you could, you could spend all thatmoney and get, go through R and D and still fail.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And now you've lost, and nowyou're in a hole. So it's really easy to say like, go and just go make aproduct. And in my head, I think it's really, let me go make a product. But thereality is anything that you do other than white labeling is gonna take a lotof time and a lot of money, a lot of resources.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So yeah, so there's a double edgedsword, isn't it? 

Amardeep Parmar: I  think it's also a long gameversus short game, right? So if you have the money to invest in creating yourown products, then you can go for the long game straight away. But a lot ofpeople don't have that, right? And that's where. They can do the shorter game,but it's making sure you don't see the short game as the long game.

Amardeep Parmar: Because then you're always dependenton other people's brands. You're always dependent on other people, right?[00:28:00] But once you get your own product, you still need to be dependent onpeople because you need them to buy your product. But it's more in your controland you can make sure that you're giving a product which you believe in, ratherthan needing like, oh, okay, I need to make money this month to pay mymortgage.

Amardeep Parmar: Do I accept this person that I don'treally believe in or not? In the long term, you don't want to be in thatposition. But at the same time, in the short term, you can understand whypeople do that because it makes sense and it's. Also a lot of people are doingthis on the side of their jobs and things like that and it's, it's a differentgame in the position where you are, where it's your full time income, you'vegot a family, all these different things, where you can invest, you can playthat long game.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: You're right. I like it Short termversus long term. 

Amardeep Parmar: I think that's one of the things alot of creators and people on YouTube, TikTok, whoever needs to think about isthat, do you want to be doing what you're doing now? In five years time, or ifnot, like, what are you kind of doing to sow the seed for that future where youare more in control?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Agreed. Like taking on from thatpoint, I actually think a lot of us are quite reactive, uh, and we almost on aday to day are living based on what's going on around us. I think a lot of usdon't strategize and think, okay, 12 months from now, [00:29:00] what do I wantmy life to look like? Five years from now, what do I want my life to look like?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And really get into the nittygritty of it, like. Do you want to be in a relationship? If so, who would thatperson be? Or where exactly would you live and what would your house look like?And what would you be doing on a day to day basis? You know, like really mapout your life. I'm a big strategist when it comes to my own life and I woulddefinitely advocate it so that you're not a victim of what's happening aroundyou.

Amardeep Parmar: You've set yourself up for the nextquestion. You know that, right? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan:  Oh gosh. 

Amardeep Parmar: So usually I don't ask people what'stheir five year plan because I'm going to ask you now, because you say, youknow, your five year plan is. So where do you want to be in five years time?Where do you see your products being?

Amardeep Parmar: Where do you see Dr. V being? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Do you know what? The rate ofgrowth has blown my mind. I, I would love to say that I think linearly I'llhave this many million followers and I'll, you know, be having this manyproducts in five years, but the rate of growth is exponential. And so whatevernumber I'm going to give you, I, I [00:30:00] truly believe it'll be 10 timesthat number.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So what I'm going to, I actuallyhave to flip it on itself. And what happened for me was the most importantthing for me was financial abundance and independence. And then the secondthing for me, very important for me is giving back. So actually where I seemyself in five years is probably giving the majority of what I have away andgetting maximum bang for my buck.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Meaning I want to help the mostnumber of people with the resources that I have. I'm probably going to befocusing more on girls. And children, because that's the, it's an incubator atthat point. And if you, I mean, we can talk about the patriarch is what we'vehad our conversation on the way, but yeah, I probably going to be focusing alot more on, on helping and educating girls and doing everything I can in thatspace.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: I've got some really excitingprojects that I can't talk about yet, but. Yeah, I think this is, that'sprobably, that's where I'm going to see myself five [00:31:00] years from now.So it's not really going to be a financial goal because I feel like Touchwood,I've pretty much, I'm happy with, with the way the work is going and businessis going, but now I just want to take that money and put it back into thecommunity and back into children.

Amardeep Parmar: Are there any exciting projects youcan share that are coming up soon? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Oh, there's some really big ones,but I can't really talk about it yet until I've hashed out all the details andyou know, I don't want to say something and then it doesn't happen. So I don'twant to set myself up for failure. Yeah. I think I'm just going to talk aboutit every month as we go along.

Amardeep Parmar: Okay. So for this month then whathave you got exciting?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So this month we worked on foodbanks. So this was really exciting actually. I'm working with Sufra this month.So I don't know if I told you my money that I make from YouTube ads goes tocharity. So over the winter months, it was, is pretty hard in the UK.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And so I focused on food banks.And I went there yesterday just to see how it all worked. You know, usually yougo and you just donate food or you donate money, but you don't actually see howit works. And you know, there's this real peace there where people are just,[00:32:00] I don't know, it's this energy and just so much love.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: You can feel it in the air. It'salmost palpable. I was telling my daughter about this and she really wants togo and I was telling all my friends and everyone wants to go and help. And it'sjust, I think a lot of us want to help. I think a lot of us, it's inside usthat we want to do something and it makes us feel good.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And so this is what I would try todo is to try and shine a light on Sufra to show like, this is what you wouldexpect to do. You know, this is what you would do when you go, you know, it'snot a scary place. This is what is going to happen. It's a safe place for kidsto come and help too. And, That, that was my goal for this month.

Amardeep Parmar: Okay, so it's going to be time forthe quickfire questions. 

Dr. Vanita Rattan:  Oh, no. Can we not? 

Amardeep Parmar:So the first one is, who are threeBritish Asians that you'd love to shout out that people listening right nowshould be getting in contact with or following? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Okay,  so I'd say Shivani,uh, my niece actually is my first one. She's the one that got me on TikTok.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And I think it's really importantfor us to listen to people younger in our families, they often know more thanwe do, especially when it [00:33:00] comes to social media. So she really gotme onto the Tik Tok. So big shout out to her. The second one, I would say Omerand Sachin, both of them have been my photographers and videographers for allmy events, all my

Dr. Vanita Rattan: campaigns, shoots, everything. Irely on them so heavily. I think they're incredible, just such amazing peopleto work with. So shout out to them. And of course, Anisha, who does all myevents, she is, you know, you find some people in life who have the same energylevels as you, and they just work at the same level as you.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And they just, you know, just. Youjust make magic happen together. And every time we sit down, I feel like magichappens. So for me, Anisha's a big one, but there's so many as well. And youjust like limited me to three. I think my mom would be really angry if I don'tsay her as well. My mom is amazing.

Amardeep Parmar: So next one is if people listenright now, who wants to reach out to you and they're looking for help orguidance. What should they reach out to you about? 

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So  for me, [00:34:00]skincare is my whole thing. Skincare for skin of color. There's a lot ofproducts in the market that aren't great for skin of color. And as everyoneknows, I'm non sponsored and I will tell you the best and the worst in the market.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: So I think people do reach out tome with that, but actually even better is if you tell me what the problem is,and then I will make a video on that problem. And so instead of just helpingone, I can help, you know, hundreds of thousands. And that's always going to bemy goal is how, if your problem is oily acne prone skin, let me make a video onthat and I can help lots of people.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: That makes more sense in my mind.So tell me what videos you want me to make that works out better for me thanany other way of freezing it. 

Amardeep Parmar: And on the other side, is thereanything that you're looking for right now that you could, that you need helpwith?

Dr. Vanita Rattan: Do you know what? I'm reallyblessed.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: I'm not going to lie. I think the,the, the love I get from our following and from our family is something else.It's something else. They, they steer me in everything from products I need tomake, mistakes I'm making. If I've done a faux pas or I have made a mistake orI've offended somebody, they will call it out so quickly.

Dr. Vanita Rattan: And I can [00:35:00] apologizereally quickly. You know, it's. Who else has that? I don't even like, I'm solucky that I feel like I don't even need to ask anyone for help because they'realready helping me on a daily basis. I couldn't be more blessed truly. 

Amardeep Parmar: And then finally, have you any finalwords for the audience?

Dr. Vanita Rattan:  I think I just gratitude. Ithink I'm just so grateful and I will never take any of you for granted and Ithoroughly love what I do and I'll continue to do it for as long as you want meto. So thank you so much for all your support.

Amardeep Parmar: Hello, hello everyone. Thank you somuch for listening. It means a huge amount to us and we don't think you realizehow important you are because if you subscribe to our YouTube channel, if youleave us a five star review, it makes a world of difference. And if you believein what we're trying to do here,

Amardeep Parmar: to inspire, connect and guide thenext generation British Asians. If you do those things, you can help us achievethat mission and you can help us make a bigger impact. And by doing [00:36:00]that, it means we can get bigger guests. We can host more events. We can domore for the community. So you can play a huge part.

Amardeep Parmar: So thank you so much for supportingus.

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