- 1 year ago
- #outlookmoney40after40
Entrepreneur, author and speaker Ankur Warikoo shared his insights on the ‘art of relying on yourself’ at the third edition of Outlook Money’s 40After40 Retirement Expo in Mumbai.
“While I create a lot of content around personal finance, I thought that the best thing that I can leave you with is, which is the topic of today, and that is the art of relying on yourself.
Very often in the chase of what we want to do with our life, whether it’s chasing money, whether it’s chasing fame or status or glory, we tend to lose the most important relationship that we ought to have, and that is with our own selves,” Warikoo said.
Read more: https://www.outlookmoney.com/retirement/news/outlook-money-40after40-ankur-warikooss-3-lessons-to-master-the-art-of-relying-on-yourself
#OutlookMoney40after40
“While I create a lot of content around personal finance, I thought that the best thing that I can leave you with is, which is the topic of today, and that is the art of relying on yourself.
Very often in the chase of what we want to do with our life, whether it’s chasing money, whether it’s chasing fame or status or glory, we tend to lose the most important relationship that we ought to have, and that is with our own selves,” Warikoo said.
Read more: https://www.outlookmoney.com/retirement/news/outlook-money-40after40-ankur-warikooss-3-lessons-to-master-the-art-of-relying-on-yourself
#OutlookMoney40after40
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LearningTranscript
00:00I thought that the best thing that I can do for today is to give you the list of seven
00:08mutual funds that you should invest in.
00:10No, I'm kidding.
00:12This will not be anything about personal finance.
00:14While I create a lot of content around personal finance, I thought that the best thing that
00:18I can leave you with, which is the topic of today as well, and that is the art of relying
00:25on yourself.
00:25Because very often, in the chase of what we want to do with our lives, whether it's
00:31chasing money, whether it's chasing fame or status or glory, we tend to lose the most
00:36important relationship that we ought to have, and that is with our own selves.
00:40And the way that I will do that is I'll share a deeply personal story, which is not very
00:45old.
00:45It's only about five years old.
00:47And it's something that I've never shared on stage before, so all of you get to hear
00:52it for the first time.
00:53It's something that I'm immensely proud of because it shaped us up as a family and me
00:58as an individual in many meaningful ways.
01:01And through that, I will leave you with what, in my opinion, is the art of relying on yourself
01:06because it has three components, because everything in life that is important always has three
01:10things.
01:11So I'm going to very quickly tell you about myself to set that context.
01:16I grew up in Delhi.
01:18We belong to a very middle-class family.
01:19My dad was a sales and marketing professional in the pharma industry.
01:23Mom was a primary school teacher in a local school.
01:26I have a younger sister who is six years younger to me.
01:28We grew up in, as most of us would have been, in a very middle-class 1980s, 1990s India household.
01:35And the struggle was real, as you would all know.
01:39There was some sort of financial debt almost always on our head.
01:42We always wanted to break away from the curse of middle-classness, whatever you may call
01:47that.
01:47And I had very strong ambitions for my life, which didn't pan out the way that I thought.
01:53I wanted to become a space scientist.
01:56And this is before Elon Musk made it really cool.
01:58I fell in love with sciences.
02:02How many engineers in the house?
02:04Yeah, I hated engineers.
02:06I was like, engineers sold their soul.
02:08They went on to make money.
02:09I wanted to devote myself to pure sciences.
02:12And I was like, I'll go to the US and do all of that.
02:14But I dropped out of my PhD program, came back to India.
02:17And at the age of 24, I had to reset my life all over again.
02:21And I navigated through that.
02:25I became an entrepreneur in 2009.
02:27I've been in the startup industry for nearly 16 years, seen how this country has completely
02:32transformed when it comes to entrepreneurship in general.
02:35When I started in 2009, people did not even know how to pronounce the word entrepreneur.
02:39Leave alone, spell it.
02:41Today, it's really cool.
02:42People are on Shark Tank.
02:44They are raising money.
02:45They think that it's supremely fashionable to start your own business.
02:49And frankly, it is.
02:50But it's also intensely hard.
02:52And in 2019, I was running this startup called Nearby.com.
02:57And it had been acquired by Paytm.
02:59We had become profitable.
03:01We were doing about 600 crores of sales a year.
03:03We were making money.
03:05It was generally a dream run.
03:07I devoted some eight or nine years of my life building that sector and that company.
03:13And I decided to step down as the CEO of my own startup, something which is very unnatural
03:20or unheard of in the Indian context, particularly.
03:23I was turning 40 in 2020, very apt for the theme of the event as well.
03:28And I thought that at the age of 40, I want to see what else I could do with my life.
03:33So I stepped down as the CEO.
03:36And this was towards late 2019.
03:39And I decided to take a break for three to six months figuring out what I wanted to do.
03:44And in those three to six months, March 2020 happened.
03:47And I don't know how many of you remember March 2020, but it was a very wild time.
03:53Everything that we thought of ourselves, every plan that we had for our life went out of the window.
04:00We had to reimagine ourselves.
04:02We were locked up.
04:03We were suddenly with our own personality, with our own thoughts, with our own minds.
04:08And we were spending time in a close quarter with our best or perhaps worst relationships.
04:13And we had no idea what is going to hit us.
04:16And in the middle of all of that, as all of us were reimagining their lives, I had to reimagine myself as well.
04:25But there's one thing that for no fault of yours, you would not know.
04:30And it always seems like when you are the startup founder, when you are running this really large company, you will be in the money.
04:37But that wasn't the case for me.
04:39I had a lot of savings because I'd been working for nearly 15, 20 years at that point of time.
04:44But all of my savings, I had deployed back into my startup, which was nearby.com.
04:49So on paper, I was a millionaire.
04:52I owned what was the largest individual stock ownership in the startup, but I had no cash.
04:59And most of you who are financial advisors or who have been in the business of making money know that cash is the only real measurement of financial freedom or not.
05:09It's not what you own, which you may not even have access to and so on.
05:13So when the lockdown happened, I had no income stream.
05:19I had no money in the bank.
05:23And I had to reimagine myself from scratch.
05:26To give you pure context, I had five months of runway.
05:30And runway is like the startup term that we use to tell how long does the startup have before it has to wind up or shut down, because that's the money in the bank.
05:40So I had five months of money in the bank for every expense that we had to bear, which was the school fees of the kids, our home EMI, our daily living expenses, support that I was providing for my parents, all of that.
05:54Five months.
05:55And we had no asset to speak of.
05:58I was a complete doofus when it came to investing, much different from who I am today.
06:05I actually thought that people who made investments in mutual funds and real estate and gold were the biggest losers in the world.
06:13Because what they didn't do is invest in the coolest thing ever, startups.
06:18Because I was living and dreaming startups every single day.
06:21I thought that that is actually the only place where one should invest.
06:24And I was so dumb and so foolish to not realize the fallacy of this cocoon that I had built around myself.
06:33So again, as I had ownership in my startup nearby, I had ownership in other startups as well, but it didn't amount to anything.
06:41I could not draw that money when I really needed it.
06:44So all of my net worth was deployed in illiquid assets that I could not, at my own demand, draw out.
06:54So I had actually no money.
06:57And the only asset we truly had, which could be sold if we could, was our house.
07:02So I remember having a conversation with Ruchi, my wife, saying, Ruchi, we have five months of money left in the bank.
07:11And we have to figure our shit out because this could very well be the end and we could be bankrupt.
07:19We technically are already.
07:21So here's the plan that I've thought of and I want to share it with you just to see whether you think it's a good plan or not.
07:29We'll give it three months.
07:30We'll try our best to figure out what we could do.
07:33We'll hustle, we'll rediscover, re-imagine ourselves and we'll try and see if we can create another income stream that could support us as a family and we'll see where that goes.
07:44But if nothing happens in those three months, we will just have two months of money left in the bank.
07:51And at that point of time, we have no choice but to sell our house and see what happens.
07:58We'd made a down payment of about 50 lakhs for our house.
08:00So the hope was we'll at least get that money out.
08:04I wasn't expecting anything more.
08:07And what I proposed to her was if we get those 50 lakhs, we'll move to the mountains, we'll homeschool our kids, we will teach in some primary government school.
08:18And those 50 lakhs is far more money than we'll ever need to have that kind of life.
08:24And are you okay with that?
08:26And Ruchi being Ruchi, she was like, I'm really excited at that idea.
08:30Not that she was wishing that that would happen, but she was like, you know what, it's not such a bad life, but let's give it our best shot and see where it goes.
08:40At that point of time, I had started to actively be on stage.
08:49And I have loved public speaking for nearly 20 years, but I used to do it for schools and colleges mostly because that's the kind of crowd I love spending time with.
08:57No offense to all of you, but please take offense.
08:59I love spending time with young minds.
09:03They're just so fresh.
09:04They're challenging the status quo in so many ways.
09:07And I'm very hopeful that a lot of you have that same mindset as well.
09:11But I'd never seen that as something that could actually become a really big thing if it amounted to anything at all.
09:19And I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine.
09:22This is April 2020, and I was telling her that, you know what, the potential income stream of corporate talks is now zero because nobody in their right mind is having any corporate talk in the middle of a lockdown.
09:36And she was like, you know what, corporates were paying you money, but what if people could pay you money to actually hear you speak?
09:44And I was like, I don't think that's a good idea.
09:45I don't think that would happen.
09:47And she's like, well, you know what, there's only one way to find out.
09:49Why don't you find out?
09:50So I started to create these webinars.
09:56And I don't know if how many of you remember back in March, April, May, June, July of 2020, there was a webinar for anything that you wanted in life.
10:06People had so much of time on both sides, creation as well as consumption, that people are like joining these webinars, and they were completely free.
10:15And there was a webinar on financial planning, a webinar on retirement planning, a webinar on content creation, a webinar on this, a webinar on that.
10:23It was just insanely exploding.
10:26And I was like, you know what, let me just throw myself out into the universe as well and see what happens.
10:31So for the next three months, I conducted 17 webinars.
10:36And those 17 webinars were on themes that I knew best, how to hire a team, how to raise money, how to speak effectively, how to manage your time, things that I had done for my life, I was in complete control of.
10:49And I knew that people would benefit from that.
10:52But what I didn't know was whether people were willing to pay for it or not.
10:56So I had this novel idea.
10:59Why don't I let them decide if they want to pay or not?
11:03Why do I have to decide what should be the price of this?
11:06So I ran these 17 webinars on what I call pay-what-you-want pricing model, which was you join that webinar, and the only thing you have to do is pay at least one rupee.
11:18But beyond that, it's your choice what you want to pay.
11:22Completely free.
11:23Or freedom in that sense.
11:26And as you would imagine in India, 50% just paid one rupee.
11:32It's like, that's the best deal ever.
11:33But there were 50% who were surprisingly willing to pay more than one rupee.
11:38And the average came out to about 197 rupees per person.
11:42Which frankly was more money than I thought somebody was willing to pay for a virtual delivery that they had no idea the content of beforehand.
11:50Because they had to pay this to reserve their fee.
11:53This wasn't after the webinar was over.
11:56And that gave me a lot of confidence because I realized that one, people were actually willing to pay for good quality.
12:03Content.
12:04Two, I was not doing half bad a job of delivering that content virtually.
12:09And three, there was enough market, if it was priced in the right way, for people to consume good quality curated content.
12:16And that then became the genesis of what became WebVeda.com, which is a startup that I run right now.
12:23This is not a promotion.
12:24It's more of a discovery that I did for nearly five, six months before I figured that there was a business case and a model for content creation in an affordable manner that could be dealt in a way that India could consume and hopefully the world at some point of time.
12:40But here's the bigger thing that I wanted to talk about.
12:44And that is, in those five months, I, at all points of time, knew that I was just one month away from selling the house that we had.
12:56The only asset that we had.
12:58And what gave me confidence was, of course, the alignment that I had with my partner that if that were to happen, it's okay.
13:07But more importantly, upon reflection, I realized that the biggest thing that helped me was just this insane confidence that I had in me that everything is going to be okay.
13:21Everything is going to be okay.
13:24And that doesn't mean that everything is going to be okay in the sense that I will be one day at the Outlook money 40 after 40 stage in front of all of you.
13:32No, that's far, far away from the okay that I had in mind.
13:36My okay was that we're going to have a life where we will have our closest relationships together, where we will have enough financial money to take care of our daily needs.
13:46And if I know that I am not the one fighting anymore for the fanciest car and the biggest house and the biggest net worth and to be on any social status game, we're going to be absolutely okay.
14:00We're going to absolutely have a wonderful life if we wish to or not.
14:06And that brings me to a really interesting story that you may have heard of.
14:10There is this famous classic novel called Catch-22, and you may or may not have heard of it, but if you haven't, that doesn't take away anything from the story.
14:21The author of Catch-22 and his friend are one day invited to a really fancy party, which is hosted by a gentleman who is the friend of the Catch-22 author.
14:35And they are at this massive gathering, imagine a set-up like this, but on a private beach island, and it's fine liquor, it's the fanciest of food, it's the beautiful music and whatnot.
14:49And Catch-22 author's friend remarks, you know what, this guy who's invited us for this party, he earns in a day what your entire book has made through selling in its entire lifetime.
15:07He earns in a lifetime what you have earned in a lifetime selling this best-selling book that you have.
15:17And the author replies, but I have something that he doesn't have.
15:24And the friend's like, what could possibly be that you have that this really cool, successful dude doesn't have?
15:32And the author replies, I have enough.
15:37And I love that.
15:39I love the fact that you at some point of time, irrespective of where you are in life, realize that you have enough.
15:49Enough to lead a certain life that you want to, enough for the way that you want to live that life.
15:55And the art of relying on yourself is this discovery of realizing that you have enough.
16:02And it has these three components that I wanted to live you with, because those are frankly the things that helped me in my journey, and I'm sure will help you in yours as well.
16:12Number one, and perhaps the biggest thing when you acquire a certain age and a certain mindset and certainly a certain experience.
16:19And that is, go back to the day when you joined your current organization.
16:25Or for those who are, how many of you here are students?
16:28Anyone here who's a student?
16:29Some of you.
16:30Okay.
16:30How many of you are working professionals?
16:33All right.
16:34How many of you are running your own business or startup?
16:37Awesome.
16:38Perfect.
16:39Cool.
16:40Well, actually, yeah, one more interesting.
16:41How many of you in your 20s?
16:43In your 20s?
16:45All right.
16:4630s?
16:47Okay.
16:49And 40 plus?
16:52All right.
16:52Yeah.
16:53Good job with the target audience.
16:55Yeah.
16:56Bang on.
16:58I don't know what you're doing.
16:59People in your 20s?
17:00No.
17:00You're also invited.
17:01Of course you are.
17:04Go back to the first day of college for those in your 20s.
17:08Go back to the first day of your current work for those who are working.
17:11Go back to the first day when you were in your college, if you remember that day as well.
17:15And I'm sure it was an auditorium like this.
17:18You were surrounded by different sort of people, all from very different backgrounds.
17:22They look differently from you.
17:24They dress differently from you.
17:25They speak differently from you.
17:27They have very different mental makeup from you.
17:29They have had very different experience from you, a very different upbringing from you.
17:33And I don't know anyone of you personally, but I guarantee that within the first few hours of you spending time with these very different people,
17:42you began to look for people who were like you.
17:46You began to look for people who are from the same city as you.
17:50You began to look for people who are looking like you, speaking like you, dress like you, feel like you're the same one,
17:57came from the same city or college, from the same department.
18:01We love hanging out with people who are like us.
18:04We love building this lovely cocoon, this lovely oasis of yours where we're surrounded by people who are like us.
18:15And I remember doing that or feeling that when I was at business school.
18:20First week of my business school and there were 3.30 of us on that batch and everyone had formed these groups.
18:28Everyone was just hanging out with each other.
18:30Engineers with engineers, chemical with chemical, mechanical with mechanical,
18:35IITNs with IITNs, NIT with NIT, the others with the others,
18:40Delhi with Delhi, Sarojni Nagar with Sarojni Nagar, Bombay with Bombay, South Bombay with South Bombay.
18:45This beautiful groups, communities that we love to hang out with.
18:52And in my head I was like, isn't this the exact opposite of what you should be doing?
18:58Like somebody has painstakingly got 330 very different individuals from across the world on a single campus for the next one year
19:08and you're going to spend time with the five people who are like you?
19:13How does that make sense?
19:14And the older slash wiser you grow, you love these communities even more.
19:22Because in your head, there isn't anything outside of this that you want to learn from.
19:29Go back to the first day of college or your work.
19:33And I assure you that there were, when you were scanning the room,
19:36some two or three people that you looked at and you were like,
19:39I won't be able to be friends with them.
19:49You were so judgmental that you refused to believe that there is anything new that you can learn from them.
19:55And surprisingly, the best way to discover yourself or to actually rely on yourself is to spend time with people who are nothing like you.
20:04Nothing like you.
20:06Because that's when you truly find out what exists in the world that you had no idea about.
20:12Which brings me to one of my favorite questions.
20:15How many of you here are middle class?
20:17Yeah, I knew it.
20:20I love the fact that everyone in India is middle class.
20:23I love that fact.
20:25Irrespective of how big or small the forum is, this is one of my favorite questions in all times.
20:30But because this is also a financial inclined exposition, let's ask something which is more specific.
20:41What is the definition of middle class in India?
20:43What is the definition of middle class in India?
20:46Anyone?
20:47Throw out an up.
20:47Or let me be very specific.
20:49What's the monthly salary of middle class Indians?
20:52What's the monthly salary of middle class Indians?
20:54Sir?
20:56Sorry?
20:57Less than?
21:0020 lakhs a month?
21:02A year.
21:03Yeah.
21:04I was like, sir, it's middle class at a completely different level.
21:09Yeah, I was like, the ground floor on Nepentese Road is middle class.
21:13Yes, sir.
21:153 lakhs to 12 lakhs is middle class, which is per year.
21:19Because it's easier to say per year.
21:20So 3 to 12 lakhs, wide range.
21:23Almost all of our income tax budget is in that range.
21:2810 lakhs per annum is middle class, sir?
21:30Hello?
21:3330,000 per month is middle class.
21:35Anyone else?
21:36Let me ask from that crowd.
21:38Go ahead.
21:39Give me a number.
21:40Shout out.
21:4110,000 a month.
21:4310,000 a month?
21:44Okay.
21:45Is that a wild guess or what?
21:46How do you know?
21:49Sorry?
21:51Oh.
21:51He's saying I've attended my session before, so...
21:57Hello?
21:58Yeah, Ankur.
21:59Yes?
21:59Roti kapra makan.
22:00Yes.
22:01Yes.
22:02Roti kapra makan.
22:03Actually for middle class, it's 25,000 I guess, sir.
22:0625,000?
22:0725,000.
22:07And for definition of middle class, I guess, sir, balancing the personal and professional life.
22:12Okay, so 35,000 a month, sir.
22:1425,000.
22:15Ankur, Ankur, one of the similar people like you, he's got a word called F money.
22:21Yes, exactly.
22:22Anybody who doesn't have an F money, is middle class.
22:26Is middle class.
22:27The actual description, sir, is FU money.
22:29Yeah, F money.
22:30Because F money could be very different.
22:33It could be like dismissing money.
22:35So anyone who doesn't have that is middle class.
22:37Perfect.
22:37I get that.
22:38Awesome.
22:38What else?
22:4112,000 a month?
22:42Okay.
22:43How do you know that?
22:46We follow you.
22:47Oh, we follow you.
22:49Okay.
22:49Now, it is official 12 lakhs in a month.
22:53So, because tax benefit is zero.
22:54Ha, because we don't have income tax.
22:55Exactly.
22:56Like, it's officially now, ma'am has ensured that 12 lakhs per year is now middle class.
23:02Okay.
23:02Great.
23:03All answers.
23:03Wonderful.
23:04Sir.
23:05Yes, sir.
23:05According to me, 2 lakhs per month.
23:09He's a middle class person, but he doesn't have a flat.
23:11He's staying on rent.
23:13All right.
23:13Perfect.
23:14I love the nuance of it as well.
23:16Yes, final one.
23:17And we don't need more answers.
23:19Yes.
23:25No, see, middle.
23:27So, middle means beach.
23:30Okay.
23:30We don't do two roads.
23:32So, it won't be like that we're upper middle class.
23:34This is our whole shrinkage that we've made for ourselves.
23:38This is to show that we're actually middle class.
23:41But middle means middle.
23:42Average.
23:43What is the average of India?
23:45Simple.
23:45So, the average of India, if this was an economic discussion where you had to actually give an accurate number,
23:53is between the ones who have actually attended, it's between 8,000 to 12,000 rupees a month.
23:58It's between 8,000 to 12,000 rupees a month.
24:01Which means about 600 to 700 million people in this country are earning more than 8,000 to 12,000 rupees a month.
24:07And 600 to 700 million people, this is per person, by the way.
24:10So, if you add, of course, a household income would be very different.
24:13But that would be about 8,000 to 12,000.
24:15Now, the reason I state that is because if you were to say, hey, I am middle class, but I'm earning 2 lakhs a month and I'm on rent,
24:25you would have a very different impression of what middle class is from somebody who's perhaps sitting here and saying,
24:30I'm actually earning 12,000 rupees a month and I'm middle class.
24:33The middle class in India is the Uber and the Ola driver.
24:37Not you.
24:37You're all rich.
24:39You just don't know it.
24:41Just because you see Ambani's wedding at Jamnagar doesn't make you poor.
24:44You have to recognize this is no comparison.
24:49It's an absolute.
24:50All of you are rich.
24:51The fact that you came to this place makes you rich.
24:54The fact that you can even think of retirement as a concept makes you rich.
24:58Because that's a point of privilege that most people don't even have.
25:01What is retirement?
25:02I have to pay for my money and my food.
25:05So, there is no concept of retirement.
25:07But here is like fire, FU money or F money or whatever money.
25:10The truth is, this is not middle class India.
25:13The point that I'm making is, please step out of your cocoon.
25:18Step out of the world that you're living in.
25:20Step out of the corners that you engulf yourself with.
25:23Step out of the social media content that you're consuming.
25:26Because that is never going to tell you anything that challenges your point of view.
25:30When you open up Instagram or LinkedIn or Twitter, it doesn't tell you, oh, you're wrong.
25:34No.
25:35It tells you, you're right, bro.
25:37You're absolutely right.
25:38Here is the video.
25:39Whatever you believe in, here it is.
25:41Everything that they believe in isn't wrong.
25:44Here is another video.
25:46It just convinces you that your point of view is the only point of view and the right point of view.
25:51So, only when you step out, do you actually begin to see what the world has to offer.
25:57And that's the first step of relying on yourself.
25:59Because until you don't do that, you're just in love with the identity that you have.
26:05And you have to break that identity.
26:09If I ask you, what do you do?
26:11And you give me a designation at a company.
26:13That's the most pitiful existence you could have.
26:17Because that's the only construct in your mind that is worth talking about.
26:22If you ask me, what do I do?
26:24I'd be like, how much time do you have?
26:26Because I could go on and on about all the things that I do and that's nothing to do with just my career.
26:31It's to do with my hobbies.
26:32It's to do with what I do as a person, as a husband, as a father, as a son, as a brother, as a friend.
26:38And that all is where you need to be.
26:43Which brings me to the second point.
26:46A lot of us, as we get experience, start to become intellectually comfortable.
26:53We love getting comfortable.
26:55We love being in that spot where we can send the email, the work's done.
26:58Pick up the phone, the work's done.
27:00Walk up to someone, the work's done.
27:02My favorite question during an interview is, how many years of experience do you have?
27:06And people are like, I have five years of experience.
27:08I'm like, great.
27:09Is that five years of experience or is that one year of experience done five times?
27:14And that's a huge difference.
27:16And a lot of us just love, oh, I've been doing the same thing, but I'm just so good with it that I can do it in my sleep.
27:22I've been doing it for 12 plus years now.
27:24I have 12 years of experience.
27:26No, bro.
27:26One year of experience multiplied by 12.
27:28Very different.
27:30What happens then is you believe that the goal of life is to make life comfortable.
27:38What we begin to believe and the world endorses outside is that comfort is the only goal we're looking for.
27:45Because think about it.
27:46Everything around the world today is designed for our comfort.
27:49You need a book?
27:50Click.
27:51Clothes?
27:51Click.
27:51Click.
27:52You need cabs?
27:53Click.
27:53Food?
27:54Click.
27:54Grocery?
27:55Click.
27:56Two minutes.
27:57Ding, ding.
27:58Blinket.
27:58Zeptoe.
27:59Just there at your dear step.
28:00So you're convinced that the purpose of life is to make life comfortable, which is great from a physical comfort perspective.
28:09Please make your life comfortable.
28:10Please get a good mattress.
28:12Please get a safe car.
28:13Please get lovely shoes.
28:15But we don't recognize when it begins to extend to our intellectual comfort, where we're just not challenging ourselves, where we're not thinking outside of what we could be doing because it scares us.
28:29It scares us because we're scared of losing.
28:32We're scared of falling and failing in front of a crowd and be embarrassed by what they would think of us.
28:38We're scared of losing the only identity that we know of because that's just so comfortable.
28:46It's wonderful to be in that identity.
28:49Don't get comfortable.
28:52Don't get comfortable.
28:53Because the day you get intellectually comfortable, you are numbing yourself to any level of growth that you could have witnessed in your life but will never experience.
29:04And then the third and the final point that makes that happen.
29:06How many of you here have kids between 10 and 20?
29:1110 and 20 years.
29:12Yeah.
29:13So some of you do.
29:15And we had a show of hands of people who are in their 20s as well.
29:19It's a very, very different era that we are raising our kids in.
29:23And every single day, I don't think there is any hour that passes by where somebody of our generation is complaining about Gen Zs.
29:32Impatient, privileged, they have everything but yet they are so confused.
29:42In our time, we went to school.
29:44We went to school.
29:44We went to school.
29:46We were walking along with the waves.
29:49And today, they are going to the bus.
29:51And what they have to do with the pacers.
29:53I don't know.
29:54What will happen?
29:56How will they live?
29:58We're living in the phone.
30:00It is insane how we think that this generation is completely doomed.
30:17What we have forgotten is how our parents used to think about us.
30:21Because our parents were convinced that we are also doomed.
30:24And here is a very important lesson.
30:29Notice why this difference is happening.
30:31So that you get to the point that I am trying to make.
30:34Most of us who are in our 30s, 40s and beyond, we grew up in an India where for everything
30:42we had to wait.
30:44For everything we had to wait.
30:46If you wanted to buy a watch, you had to wait.
30:48If you wanted to buy a phone connection, you had to wait.
30:51If you wanted to buy a scooter or a car, you had to wait.
30:53You had to stand in line to get milk.
30:56You had to stand in line to get a bus pass.
30:58You were basically standing in line for everything.
31:00You wanted to hear your favorite Hindi songs, Wednesday 7 PM Chitrahaar.
31:05That's the only time you get it.
31:07And most of you in Bombay are just pampered.
31:09But in Delhi, there was no electricity mostly on Wednesday 7 PMs.
31:13So if there was no electricity, sorry bro, the next time you get to hear your favorite
31:18Hindi movie song is next week.
31:20There was nothing on demand.
31:22And suddenly, this generation is born in a different India where everything is available
31:29at the speed of thought.
31:31As I said, you need a book, click.
31:33You need clothes, click.
31:34They have no concept that there was a time in our lives where to change the channel, we
31:42had to get up, walk to the TV and turn the knob.
31:47Like they don't understand.
31:49They don't understand that when there was white noise on the television, someone would then
31:59climb up to the roof and do some juggling which was almost acrobatic and then shout out
32:07the words, because that was our way of getting television.
32:20They have everything at their disposal right now.
32:24So for no fault of this generation, they believe that if they want something, they can get it
32:31right now.
32:33And it's not shocking then that I'm speaking to a twenty-two or a twenty-three year old,
32:38and this, by the way, is a true story, happens almost every day again.
32:42And I'll be like, how's it going?
32:45And they'll be like, I've just started this job and I'm like, why, what happened?
32:54I'm not able to create impact.
32:56I was like, how many times have they been working?
33:01I've been on this job for six months and I haven't been able to create any impact.
33:05And I was like, who has told you that impact in six months has been created?
33:10Because these people have been working for 60 years and they haven't created any impact.
33:16But in their head, if they want to create impact, it should happen.
33:19It's on demand.
33:21If they want to get promoted, it should happen.
33:23It's on demand.
33:24If they want to become successful, it's on demand.
33:28And that is why the impatience.
33:31It's not their fault.
33:32It's not ours either.
33:34But it's very important to recognize why it happens.
33:37And the only way that you will recognize why something happens, if you ask, why is this
33:43happening?
33:44Instead of dismissing it, that it happens and it's not aligned with your point of view.
33:48And the shortest way of ensuring that you ask questions of why things happen is to become
33:53a student.
33:54And unfortunately, particularly in our culture, we stop being a student after college.
34:00And we are now just a student because we are told to do something.
34:04We don't do things out of our will.
34:07We're not students by will.
34:09We're students by compulsion.
34:12So if our bosses tell us, go and discover this new thing that you have to do because that's
34:16the only way you'll get promoted, we will do that.
34:19But we will never pick up something new out of our own will.
34:23And if we do, the first thing that we do is announce it to the world.
34:30So go back to any new thing that you were learning in the last six months or something, if you
34:36have at all.
34:38And again, I'm very sure that after the first two or three classes of you learning it, you
34:43announce it to the world that I'm learning this new thing.
34:45It's so bizarre for me.
34:49Like, you have started learning now, so what are you saying that you are learning something
34:54new?
34:55When you go to school, you have to do it.
34:58We haven't even said, bro, physics, Newton's law, we have started on second law now.
35:06I'm learning now.
35:08No.
35:09We were never proud about that.
35:11But we are proud about these things because we want to show to the world that we are learning
35:16something.
35:17We are not learning something.
35:18We are not learning something.
35:19We are learning something.
35:20We are learning something.
35:21And that is not, in my opinion, true learning.
35:24True learning is when you're learning something and nobody in your world knows that you're learning
35:28something.
35:29That is when you're truly devoted to that art of learning.
35:32So when you combine these three things, spending time with people who are nothing like you so
35:37that it broadens your horizon, doing it in the manner that you are never intellectually
35:42comfortable, that you're constantly challenging yourself, and always remaining a student, you
35:48basically have the mechanism for relying on yourself forever and ever.
35:54Nothing is going to destroy your life because you will always know that I'm enough, that I
36:00have enough, that I don't need more to prove to somebody else I can make do with what I have.
36:08And this is the way that you should be convinced about it.
36:13How many of you have been to a casino?
36:16Regularly?
36:17Okay.
36:18Just checking.
36:19Okay.
36:20So I've started this new casino, and I'm happy that Outlook Money has given me the platform
36:26to talk about this.
36:28This is without paying any money.
36:30This casino, it doesn't matter where it is, it's called Variko Casino because I couldn't
36:35come up with another name.
36:36It has only one game in it.
36:38But it's a fascinating game.
36:39Here's how you play it.
36:41Irrespective of the amount you bet, you will always lose 90% of the times.
36:48You'll always lose 90% of the times.
36:51But the beauty is, you will know the maximum that you will lose, and never be all that.
36:58There is a cap on the loss that you will have.
37:01So it's never going to be the case that you will lose an infinite amount.
37:05You will always know the amount that you will maximum lose.
37:09It will be known before you play.
37:12But you will lose 90% of the times.
37:16However, the 10% time that you win, you can win any amount.
37:22Any amount.
37:23It could be a life-changing amount.
37:25It could be an amount that you will never have to ever work in your life again.
37:29And that's the game.
37:32You play.
37:3390% of the times you lose, but your losses are capped.
37:3710% you win, and your wins are not capped.
37:41They could be infinite.
37:42And my question to you is, how many times will you play that game?
37:48And I'll give you my answer.
37:51If such a game existed, I would play it every single day of my life.
37:59I would play that every single day of my life.
38:03And the beauty is, this is exactly the game of life.
38:06This is exactly the game that all of us are in the middle of.
38:10All of you middle class people, the truth is your losses are capped.
38:16Because of your parents' hard work and your own hard work, you are never going to be ever on the streets.
38:22You're never going to die of hunger or poverty.
38:25You're never going to have a day when you don't even know where your next meal is going to come from.
38:30You're never going to have a day where you don't know whether you'll have clothes to wear or not.
38:34Your losses are capped.
38:36In fact, the only loss is notional in your head, that people will say what will say.
38:40If my car is small, then I will go down to people's eyes.
38:44The loss is completely notional in your head.
38:58It doesn't factually exist because it is no threat to your life.
39:02It's just a threat to your identity.
39:06But, if you were to win, anyone of you here could be anything you want.
39:12If you were to win, you could create a destiny for yourself that could change not just your orbit,
39:20but the orbit of the next seven generations to follow.
39:23It's just that win that you have to wake up for every day.
39:28And that will be that game of life that you should be willing to play.
39:33Because if not, then you will just be caught up in the next corpus amount,
39:39the next investment asset, the next mutual fund, the next crypto, the next real estate boom.
39:46And it's just so mindless that chase that you don't even realize it's taking away one day of your time meaninglessly
39:55without giving you anything in return.
39:57So what I would love is to bank on the only asset you truly have yourself.
40:09Irrespective of the day, the time, irrespective of the difficulty, irrespective of how you feel that you are stuck and you have nowhere to move,
40:19there's always one asset that can get you out of that.
40:23And that is your belief in your own self.
40:26And unless you don't believe that, nobody else is going to believe in you.
40:30Unless you don't believe that you are enough to make shit happen and get you out of shit,
40:36nobody will believe in you.
40:42Anupam Khair had this talk show.
40:45We used to invite celebrities, and the first one was Shah Rukh Khan.
40:50I think so, if not the first one, the one of the first few.
40:54And Anupam Khair asked Shah Rukh Khan,
40:57How is Shah Rukh Khan so successful?
41:00And Shah Rukh Khan said,
41:02Sir, I do a lot of work.
41:04And you can see the look on Anupam Khair's face because he's like,
41:08Bro, you thought I was sick and I didn't do a lot of work.
41:12Like, you do a lot of work, right?
41:14After a certain point of time, that's not something that you say.
41:17It's not like really cool.
41:19But of course, Anupam Khair Ji is a Diggaj man,
41:22so he was very respectful about it.
41:24He's like, Shah Rukh, you do a lot of work.
41:27So what is your work?
41:29And he says something which I believe is the best lesson one can have in life.
41:36He says, Sir, everybody works hard to get an opportunity.
41:45Everybody works hard to get an opportunity.
41:51Nobody can work harder once I've got the opportunity.
41:56And I love him for that.
41:59He may be the world's...
42:02And I'm sure he's listening at Mannat.
42:05He may be whatever it is.
42:08You may like him as an actor.
42:10You may not.
42:11But what I love about Shah Rukh Khan,
42:13and this isn't about him but about his ideology,
42:16is that he is convinced that he is good.
42:19And because he's convinced he is good,
42:22he automatically draws a lot of people who believe that he is good.
42:27And I think that Shah Rukh Khan exists in all of us, and should.
42:31Because if we stand in front of the mirror every day,
42:34and we are convinced that we have it within us to make things happen,
42:38then you don't need the session.
42:40You don't need me.
42:41You don't need Outlook money.
42:43You don't need any investment advice.
42:45You'll figure your way out.
42:46Because you're enough.
42:48And you know that you have everything within your capacity and agency
42:52to make things happen.
42:53And on that note,
42:55I wish 2025 for that year to be for you.