Ep497: Puja Talesara Bhandari – Every Exit in Your Life Is an Entry Somewhere

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. To reduce risk in your life. Pause this episode right now and go to my worst investment ever.com And take the risk reduction assessment I've created from the lessons I've learned from more than 470 guests. It's time you start building wealth the easy way by reducing risks. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy and I'm here with featured guests. Pooja tele Zara Bandera Bhandari Pooja, are you ready to join the mission?

Puja Talesara Bhandari 00:56
Yay. I'm so excited. Yeah,

Andrew Stotz 00:59
I'm excited to have you on and I'm going to tell the audience a little bit about you. Pooja is an internationally Certified Life and executive coach recognized globally for her out of the box thinking and results based approach. She has also been recognized for her leadership roles, and was confirmed as one of the influential women in the millennial space. She was nominated six times as one of Lincoln's Wonder Women. That's pretty cool. Pooja, take a minute. And tell us a bit about the value that you bring to the world.

Puja Talesara Bhandari 01:37
Thank you, Andrew, for such a warm and beautiful introduction. Hello, everyone, hello, listeners in what excellence leads to outward excellence, this is the essence of my life, Andrew. So my roots have been into human resources. I started with human resources. And there on I got on to the coaching, which is my passion, my purpose. But the interesting thing, between starting from the human resources to now in the coaching has been that I am in fact, one of the first professional in my family, my family is non English speaking family. And it's a completely business driven family. So being the first professional, that's where was my first negotiation lesson, even before to convince my dad that I need to get on to the professional journey, because just imagine, you know, if you are in a HeartCode business environment, and you tell them like and that's a conservative business environment, and you tell them like I want to do human resources. And for them, it would be like, What are you talking what we understand his only investment money and talking about human resources. So that's what's the first negotiation. And now the highlight, which I'm very proud of humbly, very proud and honored of is to be mentored by John Matan and back to under scholarship basis. In fact, I'm the youngest mentee to be mentored by him. And John happens to be ex coach of Steve Jobs. And that's happened out of the podcast wherein he was my guest. And I told him, like, I want to be mentored by you. And he said, Yeah. So thank you and very excited and on your way to be on your mission today.

Andrew Stotz 03:34
So, now, it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story.

Puja Talesara Bhandari 03:48
That's quite intimate, thoughtful question, because And absolutely, you're right, you know, we really never talk about investment and activist investment. So it is a good opportunity to think through. So you're Andrew. You know, as our life progresses, our perspective changes right? And so did mine. So I'm just moving on to a hardcore cash investment today when I look back, I feel the time and energy as even a most important investment and perhaps that's why I just said that time is money. So we need to be very careful that when we are investing our time and energy, so the investment the worst investment which I'm going to talk about happened for an organization wherein you know, I had invested my six months. I was working hard for a project when I was pitching in. And in fact you know, Andrew, how it started off like, normally when you pitch in right for a project it will be like, Hey, give us a bunting price. If you I'm going to give you this project. So what's going to be the overall pricing. That's what happened. So obviously, I gave them an very lucrative price the two projects to cough. But the final project, which was a big cash, budget, prized one, you know, you can, you can understand how emotional I'm getting when I'm speaking about it as well, that just imagine three days prior. The project, I'm working on my desktop, I'm so into it, immersed into it. And that was something you know, just a few days before my birthday, we were supposed to go out, but I was like, okay, projectors very important, I'm completely into it. And I called the executive of the organization, hey, anything you need from me. And she was like, I'm gonna get back to you. I was like, but free work, and everything needs to be distributed, because, and I'm very particular about it. So she didn't answer and she kept on, you know, just moving it moving it. And just a day prior. Exactly, I still remember it, it was exactly the, you know, 1314 hours prior, and I'm still following up with her like, tomorrow, it's happening or not, and then I get to know it's been scrapped. And you know, what, it didn't stop there. Further, I invested another two months following up for it. So, I tried to follow up with the, with the high management team, because let me tell you, this particular organization, I had done already with them, four to five assignments, and it is a very reputed organization, something which is beyond your board, it's not, you know, one of those which has just come up, it's a very old stablished organization. And six months of investment in other two months, I invested to follow up. And just to feel later, I was also time and energy.

Andrew Stotz 07:11
So what lesson learned from this

Puja Talesara Bhandari 07:15
so he'll the lesson, the most important lesson, now, there are like around three to four lessons which I have learned and which I use, usually use it now as a benchmark. Now, first thing is whenever we are investing nabij in any kind of investment, we really get on to the organization reputation, your I told you, the organization was very good organization, very respectable organization. But what is important to them, too, besides the organization's even the people, the leaders driving it, we need to have an immense trust in them. And trust the something what happens is we get on to an extreme continuum. Either we trust somebody and picture someone we trust blindly, or we don't trust, to actually trust is a ladder, we need to clamp on it. And it needs to be enough phases, which is so important. And very important to have trust with the leader. The whole thing was that you need to know when to withdraw. Because till the time I kept on investing, I told me like time is money, right? And I was so overwhelmed with so many emotions, just imagine it's like oh, you know, six months you are into it, I was not doing any other project. So it is very important that while you have your priority, identify, but then they need to be in other subset as well. To always have your main goal, but don't lose sight of the other. Because you never know, right? Life is very unpredictable, future is unpredictable. And one needs to know that future, which is so I'm promising, like, as I told you that, you know, initially I give a very, very lucrative prize, just to gain that big project, right? So we need to know that how much to give it where to certain revenue need to really put down, it's very, very important that we need to know that hey, beyond that, I'm not going to compromise. So very important to be assertive trust and the leaders and when to stop, because I invested in other two months, and so much of negative energy right into it and I was not able to focus the moment is switched on my focus was able to recover that money in my assignments in future assignments. So very important.

Andrew Stotz 09:44
So maybe I'll summarize. The first thing is that I like to describe trust as the glue of business. And basically when we study business in school We very rarely talk about trust. We talk about accounting, we talk about finance, we talk about marketing. But think about every business, there's trust involved in everything. So for instance, you give credit to a customer, you receive credit from a supplier, you sign a contract, to have a trusting agreement, employees work all month long, trusting that at the end of the month, they're going to be paid their salary. And in fact, it's like this invisible glue that we never really learned about. And now I see. And I think the pandemic actually has exposed some of this is that when trust breaks down in supply chains and stuff, because of external factors, like government shutting things down, trust starts collapsing. And when trust starts collapsing, it's impossible to do business. And therefore, trust is such an important glue. And that's the thing that I really take away. Because ultimately, you were trusting, and you were giving everything you got. But when that trust started to fall apart, then it all falls apart. Anything you would add to that?

Puja Talesara Bhandari 11:13
Yes, I think they are briefly summarize and do what I really feel as the sensors is that we can very emotional, and the moment we are emotionally invested in that situation, we are not able to make a sound decision. So it's very important, like take a director's seat and look at it as a third party. Fact, what is the feeling and this, because that's the time it's very, it's a very, it's a very fine line here that you need to entangle your entanglement, you need to really move away and viewed as a third party, so trust and doing it as a third party.

Andrew Stotz 11:52
So a good word for that is objectivity, to be objective to be able to step back. So I think that's

Puja Talesara Bhandari 12:01
absolutely, absolutely. And it is okay to be feeling emotionally over them. Recognize that, and then try to slowly move on, and look at objectively

Andrew Stotz 12:16
perfect, so based upon what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn what what action, would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Puja Talesara Bhandari 12:26
So, while you were asking me about this, therefore words which come to my mind, yes, which I would recommend to everyone, and that's what I did. You need to stop, you need to scan what's working, what's not working, stop scan, then you need to switch over. And then you scale up from that action from that plan of action. So very important, first is to stop yourself, and then study and then make us read. So that's what I did. And that's what I would request everyone to do. To take a pause from that moment, study yourself, like, emotionally and then switch it over.

Andrew Stotz 13:15
Fantastic. Well, what what's one resource that you would recommend that could benefit listeners,

Puja Talesara Bhandari 13:24
I would recommend him to connect with me on LinkedIn. Because on LinkedIn, I do share the personal experiences, which has shaped me my personal and professional experiences. And then I give many powerful tips and techniques that how can one navigate through Crucial Conversations? How can one be something which can help one to be a better version of self in every space? So yeah, please connect with me on LinkedIn, which at least Robin daddy,

Andrew Stotz 13:58
fantastic. We'll have that in the show notes. Isn't it amazing that LinkedIn now has become almost like your own personal website where you can communicate your ideas. And it's a platform that then distributes those ideas. So I think you know, and obviously, being a Wonder Woman of LinkedIn, you're really taking advantage of the opportunity. And for the listeners out there, remember, only a tiny fraction of people on LinkedIn actually post and share, unlike, let's say Facebook, where everybody shares, everybody posts, but only a tiny fraction on LinkedIn, post and share. So there's an opportunity there on LinkedIn, and you're taking advantage of it. So we'll have a link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So for the listeners out there, you can go and yeah, so last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Puja Talesara Bhandari 14:52
So this is going to be my goal not only for two months, but for coming. Many more months. So I'm on a mission avid To create communities of inspiring, authentic, courageous leader across a span and geography, and that's what I'm doing through various of my initiatives catering right from Generation Z to the corporate

Andrew Stotz 15:17
excited. So we can follow that ladies and gentlemen, follow that journey on LinkedIn and I'm looking forward to learning more about it. Well listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. If you haven't yet taken the risk reduction assessment, I challenge you to go to my worst investment ever.com right now and start building wealth the easy way by reducing risk. As we conclude, Pooja, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Puja Talesara Bhandari 15:59
I just want to say two things. One is remember that every exit end your life is an entry somewhere. And second thing is that while we are always focusing to change the environment to change the things around us, but the real transformation starts with us. The one corner wherein you need to focus is the new

Andrew Stotz 16:23
beautiful and that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, this podcast is about one guest. One story, one mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.