How This MBA Turned Entrepreneur Built A 6-Figure Business Teaching Marketing

Shruti Pangtey, Founder & CEO at Digital Empires, is an MBA turned 6-figure digital entrepreneur, Shruti Pangtey left her former career in India leading multi-million dollar tech startups, to start over in Germany.

She has helped 500+ entrepreneurs in the last 2 years grow their business with Pinterest and start profitable blogging businesses.

Her vision is to help aspiring entrepreneurs achieve time, location, and financial freedom by effectively using social media and content marketing.

For more details, visit their website here.

Here we sit down with Shruti, to know a bit more about her journey as an online educator.

Q. What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?

Shruti: I’ve always been fascinated by entrepreneurship even though growing up no one in my family was an entrepreneur. After I learned what it was like to be in the corporate rat race after my MBA, I no longer wanted my time and finances to be controlled by someone else.

Q. How did you get started?

Shruti: I wanted to be able to make my own schedule and have no cap on my ceiling and that is what got me to dabble in starting my own blog back in 2017. One thing led to another and I realised there were so many people who had no idea about what digital marketing was all about and what it could do for their businesses. This made me finally jump full-time into entrepreneurship in 2020. Prior to launching my business, I had taken up a job since I thought that was the best option for me to live abroad as a migrant woman. I was wrong! I got fired in 2019 and that was the fire I needed to finally give my own business a shot. I realised that I no longer needed people to validate my skill set or talents and set an arbitrary number on what I was “worth”. I wanted to have the freedom to do so myself and I wanted to help others do the same.

Q. What was your biggest startup challenge? What steps did you take to overcome it? What did you learn?

Shruti: My biggest startup challenge was bureaucracy. Thanks to the pandemic and the fact that I was a migrant 28-year-old woman in Germany with no investment network, no one really took me seriously. I had to prove myself every step of the way and it was very emotionally challenging to go through that process. I believed in my vision and my goals, but having to deal with a truckload of paperwork that dragged out for a very long time was no fun. I was scared that I would fail and disappoint myself. However, I did end up successfully establishing my business in Germany and now things are pretty smooth. This process taught me to believe in myself over everyone else. There will be so many moments when you’ll feel like you don’t have it or you can’t make it, but you have to keep the faith and keep going because no one else can do what you do. In the two years that I’ve been a full-time entrepreneur, I’ve learned that success doesn’t just come down to your past jobs, the degrees you have or how much money you can raise as capital, or how cool you look on social media. A major part of success comes from the mindset you have and what you are doing to overcome your limiting beliefs because we all have them. I’ve had to overcome my own limiting beliefs and I still have a long way to go, but I am much more willing to face them head-on now than I was at the beginning.

Q. What is the Most Memorable Thing You’ve Done Since you Started your Business?

Shruti: The most memorable thing for me has been crossing $100K in revenue last year. As a woman entrepreneur, crossing the 6-figure revenue mark, which statistically only 12% of women-based businesses ever do was a huge milestone — not just for me but for everyone who identifies as a woman. Having been able to serve hundreds of entrepreneurs in their journey towards financial freedom through our digital courses, even if I had a tiny fraction to play in it, gives me immense satisfaction.

Q. What is one book you recommend, and why?

Shruti: Oooh, this is a tough one. As a beginner, I’d love to recommend the 4-hour workweek by Tim Ferriss because it forces you to think of life in different ways than you always have. For more established entrepreneurs, I’d recommend $100M offers by Alex Hormozi. Just going through that book was an energetic and mindset up-level for me and I love books that can do that.

Q. What are your top 3 favourite online apps, tools, or resources and what do you love about them?

Shruti: I couldn’t run my business without Canva, Stripe & ConvertKit. Canva is for making graphic design easy AF, Stripe is for processing payments online (without which you cannot really run an eCommerce business) and ConvertKit is my email marketing hub where I stay in touch with the community that I love for its ease of use.

Q. In terms of legacy, what is the mark you’d like to leave on the world?

Shruti: I’d like to have helped 10,000 people become digital entrepreneurs and achieve freedom of time.

Q. In one sentence, what’s the best advice you’d give to someone just starting out on their entrepreneurial journey?

Shruti: Don’t overthink it and just start already.

To keep up to date with Shruti and her journey, follow her on Instagram and subscribe to her channel on Youtube.