Meet Chirag Sagar of Money Matters Top Tips in Beverly Hills

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chirag Sagar.

Chirag Sagar is the Co-founder of Money Matters Top Tips, a media, entertainment, and book-publishing company dedicated to the needs of business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives. They have published over 70 authors in over 20 books and have launched a podcast that reaches over 250,000 every month and coordinated over 25 book-related events. In his role, Sagar oversees the marketing and branding efforts of Money Matters and leads community affairs and partnerships. Sagar is also the Co-Founder of Digital Luxury Agency, a global Internet marketing and branding agency where the team has collectively worked with over 3000 small and large companies, Fortune 500s, governments, non-profits, and investment firms. They have a presence in the US, Caribbean, Middle East, China, India, and Australia. Their roster of clients includes Richard Branson and Virgin, the country of Panama, SBE Group, Bank of America, Cadillac, and Qatar Airways. The DLA team provides consulting, strategy, and access to their partnerships, and executes end-to-end digital marketing services to scale companies.

Prior to that, he served as the Chief Operating Officer of Destination Luxury, a luxury lifestyle media outlet that reaches over 5 million people every month through their various channels. As one of the partners of Destination Luxury, Sagar currently serves as an advisor. He spearheaded the team that built the website presence to reach 500,000 monthly unique visitors and built its social media properties to reach millions from scratch. He automated all of their workflow processes, hired, and managed their staff of over 50 writers and editors. Sagar started his own boutique social media agency before merging it with Destination Luxury. Prior to that, he helped scale a White House-recognized start-up non-profit called Moneythink as its second official employee where they’ve taught their financial education program to over 15,000 high school students across the US.

He has served on over ten advisory boards, including three alumni boards from his alma mater, the University of Southern California where he graduated with his Bachelor’s of Science. He is the Founding Chairman of the Advisory Board of GetGlobal, a globalization conference that started in 2016. He is also a member of the Los Angeles Global Shapers Hub, a World Economic Forum initiative. He has published three books focused on diversity, marketing and branding in real estate, and business leadership. Sagar has been recognized for his work by President Obama, and in publications such as The Huffington Post, Inc. Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has not been a smooth transition. The journey for all intents and purposes has been treacherous, bumpy, and uneasy. There are many things I would have done differently, but hindsight is 20/20.

When I first started Moneythink as a college student at USC, I didn’t know that it would end up becoming my full-time job. Nonetheless, I was ecstatic about the experience and moved to Chicago 5 days after graduating from college. What I didn’t know was that roughly two years into the job, I would be forced to resign (https://www.elitedaily.com/money/entrepreneurship/work-wisdom-learned-startup-trailblazers/843975). Along with one of the co-founders, I jumped at the opportunity to become it’s second official employee and scale the organization. After building the organization for six years, I wasn’t able to leave on my own terms.

It led me on my next journey to launch a couple of failed companies where I even lost some friends in that process. But that lead me to get a consulting client, then eventually several more to launch Social Light Media, a social media marketing agency. One of my first few clients was a luxury publication called Destination Luxury. I eventually merged companies within a few months and became their COO.

Even while building this, we had disagreements within the company and it wasn’t an easy transition. Eventually, I met some new friends and ended up launching a side project to publish a book focused on real estate marketing.

It’s ironic that all of my failed ventures morphed into a new endeavor and lead me through a maze of opportunities. I’m still going down this path and not sure where it’s going to take me, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself is that I enjoy working with the right business partners, building something that’ll be generational and doing it with purpose.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Currently, I’m spearheading Money Matters Top Tips with my co-founders Stella Song and Adam Torres. This is a media, entertainment, and publishing company based in Los Angeles. We’ve created an innovative model to publish books by creating books that are centered around co-authors. In each book, we fill between 15-25 authors, each who contribute one chapter. The book topics have so far ranged from real estate, leadership, and diversity and inclusion. We have a thorough vetting process to make sure that we’ve established strong rapport, content, and community between the authors who are contributing their chapters. Our aim is to maintain the creative and artistic vision and voice of each author but creating a joint book to provide multiple perspectives on important topics related to business.

We’ve also launched a podcast and media outlet to share insights about the top tips for success. The podcast itself is hosted by my co-founder Adam Torres who has already interviewed over 400 top executives, entrepreneurs and business owners about their top tips for success.

We’re proud to announce that we’ve published over 70 authors in over 20 books. Majority of our authors didn’t believe that they’d become a published author. It’s an amazing feeling knowing that we’ve helped individuals achieve a lifelong dream of becoming a published author and we’re creating content that’ll inspire, motivate, and help people become successful in life and business.

What were you like growing up?
Born in Glendale, California, I had a unique childhood. I grew up with my Mom, Dad, younger brother and also my two older cousins, aunt and uncle. I’m beyond fortunate to say that I have two mothers, two fathers, and three brothers. We’re one big, happy Indian-American (from India) family.

While more Americans are raised in households with divorced parents, I was blessed with four parents. In fact, my parents, aunt, and uncle still live together in the same house I was raised in and battled through all of their differences. My father and uncle were busy building their business and making certain we had food on the table while my mother and aunt raised us. They made it work. It’s shown me what happens when you fight through trials and tribulations when you have a core goal. Their goal was to take care of the family, provide food and shelter for their four children, and ensure they went to college. And we did.

My family is very close, but we’re all very different in our own rights. Growing up in a household with six males, there was clearly an overabundance of testosterone. My eldest cousin was clearly the more vocal alpha, his younger brother was the comedian in the family, I was the shy, quiet and analytical one, and my younger brother was the joker and baby of the family. My uncle is very stubborn but very protective. My aunt is a darling and sweet as can be, and my parents were and are still the best with being open and willing to let me grow into the person I wanted and needed to be, even though I’m certain they’d be happier if I was a lawyer, doctor, or computer programmer.

I had enough guidance at home to learn from their mistakes and also acquire their great traits. Unlike many Indian-American families, my family is very liberal. It was an interesting dichotomy growing up with my close kin of Indian family friends. During my youth, my parents had a small community of several hundred Indians who lived nearby. There were 15 relatively close to my age, all somehow related through marriage.

The strange juxtaposition from growing up with a large Indian loving family was vastly unique from my encounter going to school where I was the only Indian in my class. With thousands of students in the schools I attended, there were less than 10 Indians in these schools.

My first couple of discrimination experiences occurred within the first month of entering first grade. My classmates were accustomed to seeing TV shows where Indians had thick accents like Apu from the Simpsons. When I first started school, the other kids would look at me with puzzled glances, asking, “why do you talk normal? Don’t your people talk funny?” I think I was too sheltered and young to understand I was being stereotyped. I shrugged it off and was eventually accepted.

My second encounter occurred during one of our class assignments – to take the human cardboard cutouts our teacher gave us and draw a picture of ourselves with crayons. They had different shades of color to represent our race. Out of the 20 students, I was the only brown kid in the room. I searched through the cardboards and noticed none of them matched my skin color. Three of the students picked up on it and called me out saying I didn’t belong to the rest of the group. It was my first time feeling like an outcast. The name butchering was one thing, but this was my first time where I wished I could change my skin color.

Combine my introverted nature and my Indian-cultured upbringing, it confused the hell out of me trying to adapt to American culture and “fit in” with my classmates. It only became worse in high school where I really felt out of place.

I moved to a new school district and had to make new friends. It took several years to feel comfortable, and by then, it didn’t feel right. Viewing life through my peripheral, I can say I made friends out of necessity rather than for the authenticity of meeting someone who connected with me because of our common interests.

It wasn’t until college where I met other Indian-Americans beyond my family who understood the same jokes and had a similar upbringing as me. My roommates and I loved watching the Los Angeles Lakers, going to football games, playing video games, and working our tails off. It was my first major opportunity at meeting people who looked like me and understood me. In finding my kin, we all noticed that we shared a fascination in business and entrepreneurship.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.moneymatterstoptips.com
• Phone: 818-434-4881
• Email: chirag@moneymatterstoptips.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moneymatterstoptips/
• Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/money-matters-top-tips-with-adam-torres/id1387044644

Image Credit:
This content is owned by Chirag Sagar or Money Matters Top Tips.

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