Meet Saye Sathiyakumar, raised in Scarborough, a small suburb in Toronto, Ontario.
How would I describe myself? I am loud, ignorant, annoying, with a touch of motivation, inspiration, and passion. Throughout my childhood years, I always had an itch to be the center of attention. I'm not sure if this was always a good thing. I am known as a “guys guy” and a spokesman because I don't need a megaphone. In my early days during school, I would frequently get into trouble for distracting my colleagues. I was often compared to the energizer bunny in the Duracell commercials. I guess my batteries never died, which is quite unfortunate for others.
One thing is for sure; I always loved motivating the people around me. I am referring to my entire generation - Generation Y, also known as Millennials. I am inspired by others, and I feed off the success of my family and friends. My story really starts when I entered the real world after my undergraduate program. This is when I realized where I belong. This meant working with people in the Staffing and Access industry and connecting A and B, in a business spectrum. I dived into the world of sales, and my product was “people”. It just made sense, and I love it. Through my career, things became a lot clearer. I enjoyed the thrill of working with companies across Canada and strategizing to find the right people for their organizations. Understanding the needs of my clients and the personalities of individuals is a puzzle that I enjoy constructing. Now after working for 4 years in the industry, I am currently the Director of Business Relations for Arrow Group of Companies and I now see a wider range of possibilities. Building relationships, witnessing success, and contributing to growth became my fuel to start Saye Speaking.
It was time to put my chatterbox mouth to good use. I wanted to build a platform for myself to promote the millennial hustle. Millennials are categorized as those born in the 1980-2000’s. Some like to say “This is the era of the Millennials”. Everyone wants us, is intrigued by us and are curious to see what we will do next. But on our side, it’s what we do, when we do it, and how we do it.
The issue is that it is fairly easy to sit around and ride the wave. We, as millennials, have received a lot of backlash from baby boomers for many years. Apparently to them, we are spoiled, ungrateful, lazy, and spoon fed. We also cannot stick to the lifestyle that our parents lived by, and they feel that this makes us disrespectful. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of useful things that our parents have taught us, and we love them for that. But this is a different time - a time of unnatural thinking. A time of endless possibilities. There are no limits.
My goal for the upcoming year is to grow a social network platform large enough to reach out not only to millennials, but to everyone. The purpose of this is to engage young professionals and expose them to the endless opportunities that are out there. I strive to collaborate with people that have pursued their passion and are currently in the stage of “DOING”.
I also want to start keynote speaking at high schools, networking events, community centers, and eventually corporate settings. My target audience is those that are at the edge of the cliff, looking for a little kick. On the other hand, I also want to connect with people that have creative ideas but are looking for something to fuel their fire. We must break out of the conventional theory of going to school, getting a degree, finding a high paid job, and becoming “successful”. The problem is that for most of us, we were not taught to be innovative because we were only pushed to become academically intelligent. SayeSpeaking was created to completely break through this stigma in order to explore your creative intelligence.
This is the era of change, and there is no stopping us. We are a movement. #sayespeaking
