The Short & Sweet Version
Sketchpad Ideas provides consulting, coaching and training to entrepreneurs and organisations who want to focus on doing what they love, with the greatest impact they can have on the change they want to effect, in their lives and the lives of their customers.
Over the past decade, Dev has studied, modelled and trained under some of the world’s best and most successful leaders in entrepreneurship, branding, marketing, training, and leadership. For the past several years, he’s worked with dozens of organisations across various sectors, including small businesses, creative entrepreneurs, social enterprises, and community service organisations, to create meaningful and measurable business and marketing results.
Having trained under and been mentored by some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, transformational masters and leadership trainers, Dev is known for empowering other entrepreneurs and professionals to transform their lives at deep, belief-system levels, by incorporating specialized techniques in mind science technologies into his consulting, coaching and training.
To get a better idea of what SPi is all about, have a look through the home page and the rest of the website.
To dig deeper, keep reading below…
Why I’m writing This
I think it’s important to care about this story, for both you and me. So often we can get jumping to the solutions we seek to our problems, without investing a little bit of time to make sure the solution is coming from a place that fits with our own world view and values. I’ve found this haste leads to more magic bullets (which never last in the long run) and we miss out on a great opportunity to invest in the relationships that underlie meaningful and lasting results.
This is our chance to invest in our relationship at the onset, through sharing a fairly candid insight to my personal and professional journey thus far.
How It All Started
I consider myself quite blessed and privileged to have worked with dozens of entrepreneurs, professionals and organisations across various industries, empowering them through coaching, consulting and speaking. And the most important thing for me through it all has been investing in some great relationships along the way, and reaping the rewards of doing meaningful and fulfilling work.
It wasn’t always so blessed and privileged though, and I’ve had my fair share of being lost, confused, and stumbling over the right and wrong sides of the tracks.
Just about 10 years ago, my life and world started falling apart amidst family tragedy. I fell into a dark abyss of hopelessness, when really I had my whole life ahead of me. I was confronted with the choice of giving up in the face of adversity, or learning how to overcome circumstances.
Thus began a decade long passion to study and model the world’s best leaders, entrepreneurs and coaches to understand what makes some people not only overcome adverse circumstances, but thrive in the face of them to achieve incredible success.
It’s not that studying and modelling made me invincible. I guess you could say, I stumbled forward. I somehow made it through an incredible ride through university to get a Business degree and a Medical Science degree, with plenty of bumps and bruises to show for it. I even decided I wanted to give being a doctor a shot, so I somehow stumbled my way into graduate medical school.
This lasted about six months, before I found myself in an operating room, but as a patient. Not quite what I was going for. I was dying. A few complications and a couple of surgeries later, I found myself with plenty of time to rest, recover and reflect upon my priorities and passions. And the only thing I could think of in excruciating pain was, “Is this really the journey I want to be travelling all the way to my legacy?”
The Legend Of The Sketchpad
The idea behind Sketchpad Ideas came from a little sketchpad that I would always (and still do) carry with me to lectures, conferences, meetings and coffee chats. I’d scribble down ideas and ideologies, musings and mutterings, and notes about nothings. I prefer the clean and open pages over a traditional notebook or diary. It just feels more free.
Inevitably, over time, I began sharing my scribbled ideas with friends and colleagues, and anyone who ever bothered to lean over my shoulder to take a peak. It taught me a lot about myself, as I discovered a pattern of meaning and purpose in everything I had sketched down. It also became apparent that there was a meaning and purpose behind the sharing too.
There were a few common threads that ran throughout all of the ideas: creativity, leadership, independence, and contribution. Not specifically in that order, and not necessarily using those words, but that’s pretty much what it all came down to.
Over the course of sharing my sketchpad ideas with people that I came across on my day to day adventures, I realised the ideas contained a wealth of knowledge that could help many of these people in various areas of their lives, especially in their professional and business development. More importantly, I had a gift for communicating these ideas and lessons to people in a way that resonated and hit home. Needless to say, my sketches mainly reflected the wisdom and education I was immersing myself in.
Learning From Sharing My Mistakes
Somehow, going through my own mistakes and misgivings, I had become hyper-observant and intuitive about how people were going about trying to build their businesses. I also became super empathetic towards so many of those people suffering stagnation and plateaus, and not being able to see the big picture of their false starts and missed steps. Of course I had to help where I could!
This help started off with a friend here, and an acquaintance there, until I was gradually, and almost unwittingly, looked upon more and more for professional business and marketing advice and guidance. Having started as just “a friend who could help”, I began working with more and more people who shared similar values and passions, and new kinds of audiences that gave me just as much, if not more, than what I could give them.
An increasing number of people were fighting the traditional ways and expectations of making a living, so they could truly live a meaningful and passionate life. And now I was one of them.
Many of these entrepreneurs and organisations struggle to keep a hold of their dream and passion, assuming that achieving success and wealth is mutually exclusive to having a massive impact on the world. But they love what they do and will even do it at a loss. You shouldn’t have to.
Every Voice Counts
Needless to say this isn’t the comprehensive play-by-play story on my life or Sketchpad Ideas, but I’m here now because I have a voice to contribute and a message to share. I now enjoy the freedom to contribute my voice in many creative and exciting ways. I know that every voice counts, and every message can make an incredible difference. I know you have a message and a voice too, and I hope that over some time you’ll be inspired to join me in sharing yours, and that I can help you communicate your message to your audiences in the most powerful way possible.
You can send me an email at dev@sketchpadideas.com to get started right away, connect with me on LinkedIn and Facebook, and follow me on Twitter.
