u/PeterPanHadItMade

What book would you suggest to someone who knows absolutely nothing at all about Sanatan Dharma to read first? Why?

What is the most common offering you give to your Ishtadeva?

I can say that in the last 10 years I've only come to know FOR CERTAIN that I knew so little for certain. Every single day I seem to learn something knew. I wish I had not labeled myself when I first became a seeker. I'd of not said "I am _____," because I truly had no idea just how much I would come to learn.

If you were born into a religion that's not Hinduism, what made you deep dive about Hinduism in the first place? Was it an iconography of a god/goddess that drew you in or was it certain philosophy or an experience? Curious about what was the initial 'spark' for you guys.

Simply reposting this subs posts in other groups rooted in Sanatana Dharma will help us to continue to grow. I am excited to see the amount of activity we have already had in the last week. Thank you for your efforts.

Aum.

I am looking to network with any brothers out there who follow any form of Hinduism. I know there are at least a few of us! Anyone out there?

As we transition to Hinduism, we let go of the past. If that's how you see it, then what did you keep, and what did you leave?

Personally, just as an example, even after being Hindu for 50 years, I still have a rural subconscious. I enjoy open spaces, and see Siva there too. As to religion, since I was raised agnostic, I didn't have much to keep or to leave. But I know people who did make choices.

What do you eat? Did you become vegetarian? How much Indian style food do you eat? Do you have a philosophical stance on food?

In my case, I'm vegetarian now for around 50 years, ever since we converted, and we eat a huge variety of cuisines including Mexican, Italian, western vegetarian, Thai, and of course Indian. Indian is about 2 days a week. Philosophically, we try to eat mostly sattvic food, as it's supposed to support spirituality.

Do you do puja at home and how often? Every day? On waxing moon only? On sacred days, jayanties, paurnimas, festivals? If you're doing it everyday, do you go full-size (16 offerings) or less? Or just mental?

Everyone starts somewhere. Since you consider yourself Hindu, and you weren't born one, what was that first event that got you to thinking about it, or was it more a series of events?

Hello! Are you guys connected with a Hindu community in your country and if yes, how did you get in touch with them and how is it going?

I've already noticed a need for a place for Practitioners and Devotees born outside of India to meet and mingle. Join us at r/WesternBornHindu

Hey everyone! I'm u/PeterPanHadItMade, a founding moderator of r/WesternBornHindu.

This is our new home for all things related to Hinduism}. We're excited to have you join us!

What to Post
Post anything that you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring. Feel free to share your thoughts, photos, or questions about Hinduism and what your journey as a Hindu born outside of India has been.

Community Vibe
We're all about being friendly, constructive, and inclusive. Let's build a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing and connecting.

How to Get Started

1. Introduce yourself in the comments below.
2. Post something today! Even a simple question can spark a great conversation.
3. If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.
4. Interested in helping out? We're always looking for new moderators, so feel free to reach out to me to apply.

Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make r/WesternBornHindu amazing.

Does anyone happen to know where I could find a basic follow along guide that aligns with the Sunday Puja services as hosted by Laksmanjoo Academy? I would like to begin my day with these each day at home and I would like to ensure what I am doing at home best matches with what they do on Sundays. Thanks for any help you can give.

Well, I was hoping Noah's Cafe would officially return, but I just noticed there is an entirely different restaurant.

Anyone happen to know how to make their cornbread dressing since it seems I won't be getting it from there again???

This was going to be a comment on another post, but I see SO many posts on these reddits every single day about marketing and advertising, so I'll just make a big post and work through any comments that may come along. So here goes....

People do an amazing job of researching every aspect of business EXCEPT formulating an actual business plan. Here's the big thing with that... business plans should always be written, and I do mean ALWAYS be written for 2 main lines of thought. The first is that you NEED a business loan... and the second is that you WILL sell the business in 7 years. The reason we do this, whether or not either is true, is because it holds us to the grindstone on growth. Every single business, big and small, should have a formal business plan. It's like the bible for your business...

A business plan should be written with a minimum 15% gross reinvestment into your marketing funnel. Anything less and we will NOT hit our growth and anything less will also cause a bank to quickly reject our loan application. Because 15% is the industry standard on securing a loan, it's the standard plan for growth as well. With that said.... let's get into this.

First and foremost, I am a Glass Company owner NOW.... but that wasn't always the case. I spent almost 30 years in the marketing and advertising industry. I worked in radio, television, billboards, and ended up with a massive digital marketing agency in Atlanta where I finally got entirely burned out after spending most of my life behind a desk. I've worked with small businesses all the way up to National accounts such as Chic-Fil-A and the Atlanta Braves. Kinda felt like I had nowhere else to go, so I started something else entirely. Liked the growth opportunities in the glass cleaning/replacement industry, so here I am. Needless to say my marketing resume is WAY deeper than my glass resume. However, my marketing resume ALSO helped me grow a Glass business from the ground to a 7-figure business in under 3 years. I specialize in multiple areas of glass, with my cleaning revenue being about 20% of my total gross revenue. I expect it to clear about 400k in 2026 just on the cleaning side.

Now... let's get into a few aspects of marketing. First... you mentioned Meta ads, so let's attack that first and go from there.

The average FB user currently scrolls through roughly 30 posts per minute on FB. That same person will spend an average of 1 hr and 4 minutes per day scrolling. So, they will see on average 1,920 posts per day.

Currently - FB has a 33% advert generation percentage. Meaning 1 of every 3 posts has ad dollars behind it. So of those 1,920 posts... 640 of those are adverts. Here's what I want ya to do.... Ask 10 people to name 5 ads they saw yesterday on FB. Not 20... not 30. Just ask them to name 5. Very, very few people will be able to do it, because there is zero memory retention on Social media advertising. What there IS though, is call to action recall. So ticket sales, upcoming concerts, events in the city, all work well on social. There is also retargeting drivers... such as seeing the same shoes that you just checked out on Amazon in an Amazon ad that's now placed in your newsfeed. For basic branding, unless you have a massive budget and social is just one tier to your overall plan, Social media marketing is a waste of money. If it's part of a mix, and I'll cover this more later, it CAN help.

Let's have a lil crash course on Marketing 101, shall we?

First - Branding vs Call to Action.

Every single business on the planet should ALWAYS be branding. Meaning a low-end ad campaign that is directly done to cause people to think of you long before you are needed. Here's what I can tell you... you are NOT going to compete with my (in my area) or Fish's SEM budget. So if someone is googling "Window cleaners near me," I can assure you... I am popping up first. I spend a LOT of money to make that happen. So YOUR goal should always be to have that same person google "Mike's Window Cleaning" (or whatever your business name may be). This is the only way to get around my SEM budget. I'm still going to pop up, but because they are searching for you directly, even if you are number 7 on this list, they want YOU. You achieve this, with branding. Your branding campaign can include a ton of areas... the absolute best? Radio. Include digital streaming radio into that. Demo specific digital display ads supplement this buy.

Call to action... "ACT NOW!!!!" Frankly, our industry is terrible for Call to action. It's a low enough cost of entry that people aren't really going to act. Nobody cares about a free quote... they don't give a crap about your 10% off. These aren't big enough reasons to act now.... 100 tickets left! Valentines day is TOMORROW! Product A is ONLY Available at my store... THESE are call to actions. Call to action marketing takes a BIG budget UNLESS you can narrow the focus. I'll get to how to do that later.

Other issues with your marketing: Cliche is BAD. The more cliche something is, the less memorable it is. There used to be a thing called the cliche calendar marketers leaned on when building an advert. This is where there will be some downvoting, but... this is marketing. If other businesses can say the same thing, your target audience doesn't give a crap. It becomes filler and it takes away time of saying something actually useful. Things like "Locally owned and operated," "Veteran owned," "Locally owned since 1972," "Proudly servicing Atlanta since" - this is all terrible ad copy. There are some cliche's that you have to have... your phone number, for instance is cliche, but it needs to be there. Once an ad is made up of 40% of more... meaning 40% of the copy (words) is the same mess that you'll hear in a million other ads... people immediately have forgotten you. This is the cliche calculator. Let's say your ad copy is 100 words... but 40 of those words form sentences that any business could say... Your ad is 40% cliche. Throw the whole thing away.

So let's dig even deeper....

I give you ------ The Four Keys to Advertising Success.

Make your marketing follow this plan and you'll never fail.

Frequency, Reach, Creative, Consistency.... in no particular order. You have to have all FOUR. Think of it like taking a pop quiz in school.... miss one and ya may pass, but it's ugly. Miss 2 and your mom is ticked. Miss 3 and you've failed entirely. But get all four, and you will ALWAYS succeed.

Frequency.... imagine going fishing... I pack up the cooler, load the boat... go out and cast my line out one time. Pack it back in and head home. Kind of a waste huh? We need to hit our demographic multiple times a day. Not just once. For branding, the minimum is 3.... for call to action, the minimum is 12. So when you do a lil miniscule $300 ad buy and wonder why it's not making the phone ring.... it's likely because your frequency is 1. People forgot you before they ever had a chance to know you.

Reach... There's a LOT of places to fish. A lot. Ya need structure, right? Dropoffs. Downed trees. There's a lot of places where fish are and where fish aren't. I can fish all day, cast my line out a billion times, but if there aren't any fish there... it's just not worth it. There's a lot of crap marketing too! Handles of shopping carts. Park benches. The tv in the mens room at your local strip club. The AM station that your friends cousin has ran since 1955... Sure... there may be a fish or two hanging out there, but there's no schools of fish there. You're throwing money away.

Consistency.... different fish bite at different times of the year. If I don't fish year-round, the chances of me keeping the freezer filled drastically decrease. Sure, I can go after crappie during the crappie spawn and load up... but the crappie spawn is terrible for bass. Bass are still offshore during this time of year. If I wait til AFTER the crappie spawn, though, bass are moving to the shallows to feed and for their own spawn. People react to different triggers too. Some folks want our service during spring cleaning. Others before the holidays. Others after the holidays. Just because WE think it's the busy season, doesn't mean it's the season for our customers needs.

Last... Creative. Remember all that cliche stuff? I fish a lot of tournaments, and I can tell ya, I am ALWAYS looking for a new, original bait. Fish see the same things over and over and over again. Those big tournament winners are hard to catch because they've seen it all. You throw the same thing at them that they've seen a million times, and you've given them no reason to bite.

Now... with allllllllllllllllll that said. I'm going to do something that most people who understand this stuff would charge you for. I am going to give you my exact formula. My exact branding/Marketing that lead my company to become what it is today.

1.) Website... don't go overboard, but make sure all of your metatags are filled in. When I say "don't go overboard," you actually get penalized by Google by trying to stack too many key words into a page or tagged into your photos. Prioritize key words CORRECTLY and service pages. Make sure each service page has 30% content differences. Don't just cut and paste the same thing and change the city names, change 30% of the overall content. Add your web address EVERYWHERE. Backlinks are MASSIVE. Your google listing needs to be flawless and updated every 2 weeks. Add a new photo. Make sure you are getting reviews. Your social media should NOT be geared to drive business. It should be engaging FUN content. Social = engaging. Website = sales.

2.) Low dollar spends - Join every chamber of commerce in your service area. $100 to $200 per year, per membership. This is all for backlinks. High School football sponsorships, stuff such as that... ONLY do it, if it comes with backlinks. Meaning their website will have your website somewhere on it. Backlinks are a nightmare for SEM because SEO will ALWAYS rank high. Back links are like meth for SEO. The more you have, the better.

3.) Thumbtack, yelp, Angies list, etc etc etc... These are OVERLY expensive. The Customer Acquisition cost using these platforms is seriously the highest of all forms of marketing. Use them ONLY for backlinks. Don't give them a dime. These companies have made a fortune by taking advantage of service driven businesses who don't understand marketing. I personally hate them with a burning passion.

4.) My Branding: I spend $1,000 per month split between a generational hits station (target demo is women 35+) and conservative news talk (target demo is men 42+) I supplement this with a $1,500 spend on display ads where my target demo becomes M/W 35+, $100,000+ HH income, Homeowners, Average home value is $250,000+ - I seek a 3 to 8% click thru rate. Meaning I want no less than 3% of my ads to get clicked on. Anything less than this, and I alter my ad copy. CTV is another fantastic option here. This is advertising on Hulu, Amazon Prime, Paramount... the problem is the CPM (Cost per thousand ads) is super high on these platforms. Ridiculously high. If you have $5,000 per month... roll it. If not.... stick with the cheaper alternatives (radio.) You can buy much cheaper ctv, but it's going to place on free streaming apps such as Tubi. If ya don't mind that, go with the cheaper version of CTV.

5.) My Call to Action: Geo-Fencing - I begin a neighborhood geo-fencing campaign (This can be purchased through several avenues.... Cumulus, Clear Channel, iHeart, Nexstar, Sinclair, and Gray Media are all decent resources to purchase this through) 7 to 20 days before I am in the actual neighborhood. This puts my advertisement on every single device in that neighborhood before I am even there. My ad copy specifically says "I'm bringing your neighbors Windows back to life! Let's do yours too!" I ensure that I have enough impressions so every single device will see my ad no less than 200 times in the weeks I market. If there are 100 houses, I buy 20,000 impressions - This typically only costs me about $500. Usually, your cost will be $25 per 1,000 impressions. DO NOT spend more than $35 per 1,000. While we are in the neighborhood, we then do a door-to-door knocker route to put our brand on their front porch. We may start with plans to clean 1 house.... using this exact formula, I average a 20 to 1 return on ad dollars. Meaning we make about 10k in profit off that $500 spend. As we have added some services in the last year and a half, that average is skewing further north. Upselling for multiple services has been a key growth driver.

6.) SEM - This one is a tough one. Ya gotta weigh your personal cost per click as the cost can be so dramatically different where you are. A click costs WAY more in Chicago, Detroit, LA, and Atlanta than it does in say... Montgomery, Alabama. If your cost per click is low, dump money into SEM. I will state that SEM is drastically changing due to AI. It no longer has the value it once held. My personal SEM budget is massive. I spend 8k per month. I mentioned ya wouldn't compete with it, and I've entirely designed my SEM to shut down every single competitor I have... and I've done exactly that. Including the national guys. I absolutely don't expect anyone else to spend at this level. You truly don't have to. One of my business goals was to literally shut down my competition. I drown them out with marketing and then buy their company just to take them off google. I've been actively doing exactly this and THIS is why my SEM budget is currently so high.

7.) Retargeting. Remember wayyyy back at the beginning I mentioned retargeting on social? I have a cookie set up on my website for retargeting. Anyone who visits my website will have retargeting social ads served to them for the next 30 days. Those media entities I mentioned can also set you up with this. I spend about $600 a month on this.

My total ad spend yearly - $146k
My total gross company income in 2025 - $1.8M

Yes.. I spend a ton and I am NOW a large company. My first year, I made $280k. I made $800k in my second year. 2025 was my third. I also rolled almost 70% of my gross sales into ad spend my first year, 40% my second. Marketing is ENTIRELY what drove me to be where I am today.

This is truly it. The reality is, you have to spend money to make money, and money spent on advertising is meant to make you MORE money. If you spent money before and it went nowhere, it's because you were NOT following the four keys. If you don't have it in the budget, find it. Make the budget. You have to spend those dollars to grow. When things slow down... spend MORE.

Henry Ford said it best - "Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time."

Feel free to comment any questions.