Ep521: Ashutosh Garg – Be More Discerning About Your Investment Choices

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 risks 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, go to my worst investment ever.com today and take the risk reduction assessment I've created from the lessons I've learned from more than 500 guests fellow risk takers this is your words podcast host Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests, Ash Gog ash, are you ready to join our mission?

Ashutosh Garg 00:41
Yes, I am. Thank you for calling me.

Andrew Stotz 00:43
Yes, I'm super excited to have you here. In fact, I may ask you some questions to help me in what I'm doing in my life. So let me introduce you to the audience. Ash Garg founded garden pharmacy in India in 2003, and grew it to the second largest pharmacy chain in India with over 200 stores. Now he is a certified business and executive coach and mentors, several CEOs around the world on business matters, governance, strategic planning, succession planning, personal accountability, people and cultural issues. Also, he has written eight highly acclaimed best sellers, as in his new role as a storyteller host a very successful video and podcast title, the brand called you converse with the future, bringing stories of successful entrepreneurs, professionals and senior corporate leaders to 1000s of listeners, he has interviewed over 1000 people from around the world as take a minute and tell us a bit about the value that you bring to this world.

Ashutosh Garg 01:50
You know, that's Randall, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me to your show. You know, when I read about my worst investment ever, you know, I was wondering how one can talk of my worst when you should be my series of Western restaurants however, but having said that, you know that I have always believed that everyone has something to contribute in this world, and everyone is contributing in this world. It's like the old line, everyone has one book inside them. Similarly, there are some amazing thoughts a lot of people have about whatever they are specializing in. And after 42 years of working, you know, the first 25 years with British American Tobacco, India and with running Asia, for two large aerospace companies, I became a shopkeeper, which is my garden pharmacy days, and then I sold it five years ago when I turned 60. I'm now 65. So I do believe that over the years, I have brought different kinds of value to different kinds of areas that I have worked in. I've also served on the board of Gavi, which is the vaccine body in Geneva. And today, that's a very important area to talk about, because vaccines, is it saving the world? So I would say I've been able to contribute several things in several areas, whether it is my professional work, whether it's my entrepreneurial journey, whether it is my podcast, whether it is my role as an author, as a writer, whether it is pontificating on television, national television in India about something. So I would imagine there are lots of areas and we can talk about, yeah,

Andrew Stotz 03:35
so let's just, maybe you can be my executive coach and business coach for a moment. And talk to me about what you've learned and what you share and teach about branding. That brand called you, I mean, tell us a little bit about what you're doing there and what you've learned and how the audience can benefit from that.

Ashutosh Garg 03:56
Okay. So, you know, there are two different aspects of branding. One is branding, as we understand it, in its classical sense, which is the brand that a company owns. And all of us work for the brand. And there are millions of brands, some very big names, some not so big names, some which have survived the test of time, over 100 years, some which have started and have not yet made it, you know, to posterity if I can use that word. But over the last five or six years, people have started to recognize that Andrew Stotz is a brand. Right? Why is Andrew Stotz a brand? Because if one looks at it from a perspective of how long do I live, and what do I leave behind? The only thing that you leave behind the people Remember you for is your name. That's the only legacy. Right? Nobody will remember you for how much money you have left them or how much money you made or how many companies you built. It will always be What did Andrew Stotz Stotz or Ashutosh guard or any one of our, your listeners? What do they stand for? What are the, what was the legacy that they left behind on this earth for which they will be remembered. And let me also say, something which I'm sure a lot of your viewers and listeners will be able to appreciate most of us last three generations. So if you were to ask my children, who are millennials, the name of my grandfather, it's highly unlikely they will remember it. They will remember their grandfather, who was my father, and who they met, but they did not be my grandfather, and therefore most of us will last three generations. If we know that, then what do we do to be able to make sure that Andrew Stotz Ashutosh Guard are names that are remembered for the right things, and yet you have, you know, political leaders who can who are remembered for all the negative things that they did, you've got, you know, people who have stolen money from large corporations, and yet you've got people like, you know, Bill Gates, or the Apple founder, or you can think of somebody, but they've done some impressive, a lot of amazing things. So I think each one of us needs to recognize what is our little universe, and our little universe could be the area that you live in entirely in Bangkok, it could be Bangkok city, it could be all of Thailand, it could be all of Southeast Asia, what are the areas that you are going to be able to make an impact. And that is where you will keep on making investments. And the way you build the brand called you and I say the brand called you means you every individual who's hearing our conversation now, sit back and take stock, because there are certain realities. Your brand name has already been given to you by your parents, which is your name, the ingredients of the brand name have also been given to you because of your gene pools that you got from your parents, the value ads have already happened because of your education. Whatever good or bad deeds you have done in your life, so far, our debit and credit to and I'm using debit credit, because I know you're an accountant or a finance resource to your brand. So we have to be very conscious. And in today's very highly interconnected world, which is completely digitized. Whatever we do, positive or negative, never disappears. So if we are doing a lot of negatives, that trail will always follow us. And I'm sure you do know that there are many, many, many instances of if you apply for a visa, they want to know your social media platform details, if you're applying for a job they want to they will, you know, find out what you're doing on LinkedIn and Facebook and a whole lot of other things. So I won't keep on talking too much. But from a personal branding perspective, it's important for us to recognize who we are, what are our strengths? What can we do to be able to invest in our strengths? And what can we do to give back to ourselves and to our community? Based on what our values are?

Andrew Stotz 08:51
Fantastic, I think the thing I take out of that is, ladies and gentlemen, you already have your brand, it's you. And it's a combination of your knowledge, your experiences, your genetics, and there's none other like you. So why waste a lot of time trying to create something different? How do you become more of you, for instance, you know, I really don't know how to draw . If somebody asked me to draw a painting, it's gonna look awful. And therefore I don't build my you know, my brand around my ability to draw but when it comes to numbers when it comes to communicating when it comes to strategic thinking, you know, these are things that I think I have a good when it comes to reducing risk. From what I've learned on this podcast, it helps me build experience and knowledge that helps to build that brand. So the second thing I take away from it. I'm going to call you uncle ash now Uncle ash tells us be good. Just be good. You know, do good things. Be good thing, be good, be happy because there's a footprint a digital footprint out there that just never is going to leave us. How about that for a summary? Thank you.

Ashutosh Garg 09:59
Yeah, So now when I say when I say be good, I don't mean, you become a saint. Yep, I have as much fun as you want, but make sure you do the right things. Yeah,

Andrew Stotz 10:09
exactly. You know, I was the president of CFA society for chartered financial analyst in Thailand. And, you know, we have a strong code of ethics. And one thing that I used to always say is that really the ultimate differentiator that we have is not the knowledge of finance, anybody can get that knowledge, it is the commitment to a higher level of ethics. And, you know, I've just never had an ethical issue in my life that's been of any significance. And what a great thing 30 year career and never had to deal with that. So it is possible for young people listening now, you know, part of my worst investment ever, that we've heard from people is, you know, doing the wrong thing and getting themselves in trouble. And you can build a life of being as good. So now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to then tell us your story.

Ashutosh Garg 11:07
So, you know, I think a lot of your viewers and listeners may be may have been very young, may not have been born. But when the first.com boom happened, and I'm talking about 90 99,000. That was a time when it was a very, very heady days. And for most of us who were, I would say, in senior management earning large or decent amounts of money, and I was an expatriate in Singapore, in those days, it was almost as if, you know, the get rich, quick schemes. Were being presented by many people all the time. And I even remember one individual who walked into my boardroom, with a with a proposal for an investment. And I said, Okay, when do you want, what's the presentation that you want to make? And he said, Well, I don't have to bring in a presentation. He said, Give me a notepad. So I gave him a notepad, he held the notepad up, scribble something on top of it. Mindset, that's my investment. And I'm what I want to raise so many million dollars on this investment. So I said, you know, I may be dumb, but I'm not so dumb that I, you know, just hand out money based on some scribbling that you've done on a piece of yellow paper or not on a legal pad. But it was also a time when my friends were people of my vintage, were investing all over the world. And I would get messages from some friend in Silicon Valley, or someone in New York, saying, you know, they put in $100,000. And in a period of one month, they made it a million dollars. So I guess at that stage, I was, you know, I was 3738 years old. And, you know, I guess the greed was, was running way ahead of my logic. Yep. So I decided, let me put some money into two or three different investments. One of the investments actually made it to the Forbes list of best investments ever. And I was feeling very, very good about it. And six months later, it went bust. So it was those get rich, heady days where everything seemed to be going in the right direction. And when things turned that the.com Boom, turned, everything went haywire. I had money in a company, which was a retail company in the US, I had money in a software company in India, I had money in a portal, which has been developed in another part of the world. I think over a period of about, what would you say about 1718 months, I invested in four, and all four of them went under. So I would say those were? That was a period when whatever I invested in, it didn't turn into gold just sank like a stone.

Andrew Stotz 14:10
It's interesting, because at that time, if you're on one side of the market, in from 97 to 99, or 2000, you're a genius. Correct. And on the other side, you're a fool. But in fact, you're neither. Correct. It's just the market movement. And it's interesting that night now that the US market in particular is at about the same level of valuation as it was back in 2000. You know, when the.com Bubble started to burst, and people say, Yeah, but the companies are more profitable now. No, no, well, I'm talking about a PE valuation and that PE valuation takes into consideration earnings. So it is an interesting time to go through this story. So what lessons did you learn from this experience?

Ashutosh Garg 14:57
Well, I think the biggest takeaway for me was Not to be impulsive and making investments simply because there was money available for me to invest. What I did not think at that stage was that the money that I was investing was very hard earned money, from working from bonuses, etc, nothing came free or easy. So, my first learning was that I need to be a little more discerning about where I want to invest. Number two was I must not trust anybody blindly. Because someone comes and says that I have this great deal. And because I happen to know the individual I don't, I should not just open my checkbook and write out a check for that individual. And number three, is that if I'm making an investment, then I must make sure that I am involved, somehow or the other in that business, not run the business. But at least make sure that I get weekly, fortnightly, monthly reports to keep me abreast of what is going on in that business. I did not do that.

Andrew Stotz 16:09
That's a great lesson. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that maybe I'll share a couple things that I'm thinking about. First thing is I was just tapping on my computer, because I was looking for a song that I remember, by a band, you may recall this band, blood, sweat and tears. Yeah. And what a great name. Now, when you look back at it, I just was a name back then. But now you think about how hard things are. But district, what goes up, must come down, spinning wheels got to go round. The point is, you know, everything that goes on trees do not go to the sky, ladies and gentlemen, everything falls. And you may think, oh, not Facebook, not Amazon, yes, they will have their day, and nothing goes on forever. And that goes kind of back to what you said at the beginning, you know, we only have a certain number of generations, we only have a certain impact. So that's the first thing I was thinking about. The second thing that I was thinking about is the thing that people neglect so much is risk management. And that's what this show is all about how to reduce risk. I think the first way we have to reduce risk is understand the mistakes that we made. And I'm just going to review the six common mistakes that I have learned by listening to 500 people, including yourself, and I heard some of them here. So the first one is they say that people fail to do their research, this is number one. And the second one is that they fail to properly assess and manage risk. And number three is that they were driven by emotion or flawed thinking. And number four is one you just mentioned they misplaced trust. And number five importantly, that you mentioned is that they failed to monitor their investment. You said just even just getting some basic information. No, most people just don't do it. And number six, they invested in a startup company. And the problem with startup companies is that if it goes well, you do really well. But otherwise, you're probably gonna lose all your money. Anything you would add to my thoughts about your experience?

Ashutosh Garg 18:15
No, I mean, I wouldn't add anything to the six points. I think they're all fantastic. But I would certainly add one other thought, and that is that once you've made the mistake, don't beat yourself up completely. You know, mistakes are made. learn from those mistakes and carry on. Don't stop being a risk taker, don't stop trusting people don't stop investing in businesses, if you have the money and you have the inclination to invest. So don't make a U turn. Because you've had a mistake.

Andrew Stotz 18:52
That's great advice, because I think a lot of people get burnt in the stock market and they say I'm never going to touch it again. But we need that growth in the stock market to grow our wealth over time. Yeah. Excellent, excellent advice. 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?

Ashutosh Garg 19:15
Well, I think you said it in your first point, before you decide to press the green light. Make sure you research where you want to make the investment. Number two, make sure you talk to the startup founder and understand whether she or he has understood what the customer wants. A lot of startup founders assume they know what the customer wants. And that is a big, big failing where they start to stumble. And number three, keep a close eye on performance and funding of that organization. Because very often, it systems fail or governance standards fail. But that's one part. The other one, which is very common for startups, is that they run out of money. So therefore, I would urge people to look at all these things before they decide to make any further investments,

Andrew Stotz 20:16
fantastic advice. And I think that one about running out of money is one that people forget about. And they don't realize how important it is until they're in the middle of it. And all of a sudden, they're the ones that have to provide the money. So now, you've got so many different things that you've done between podcasts, between books and all that, what's one resource that you would recommend for our listeners?

Ashutosh Garg 20:39
You know, there are a lot of resources that one can go to, I mean, I would urge your listeners to go and visit my website, the brand called you it's www.tc Y dot i n, you will get that conversations with world leaders from 25 different countries, on multiple subjects, talking about their experiences and their learnings and their lessons. So that's one thing that I would certainly recommend to people, because there's just so much knowledge available in the world, and it is meant for young people. I mean, you know, we get to 10,000 views and listens per day. But what's more interesting is that 74% of our viewers and listeners are under 34. Wow. So I wouldn't be able to visit, visit my website and listen to many of those interviews.

Andrew Stotz 21:41
Fantastic. And we'll have a link to the show notes link to that in the show notes. Last question. What's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Ashutosh Garg 21:49
Okay, that's, that's an easy one. Because I'm working on my new book. And since you're in Thailand, I will talk about the book a little bit. My book is titled management lessons from Hindu scriptures. And as I've been reading a lot of these scriptures, I know how much of these scriptures whether it's the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata, or some of the other Hindu scriptures, the impact they have already in Thailand, and other parts of Southeast Asia. So we're, you know, we have a very, very long, and a strong shared heritage between Thailand and India. So I'm writing this book, I'm hoping to complete finish half of it. It's about a 65 70,000 word book, I finished 30,000 words I've got. So I want to finish it by May, June, and give it in for public publication. So that's what I would say is my first objective. And second is to keep building my podcast platform, which is the brand called you.

Andrew Stotz 22:52
That's exciting. I've got a friend to introduce you to because he is fluent in, in Sanskrit, Hindi in Hindi, and very fluent, also in Chinese and in Thai and Indonesian, and in Vietnamese, and in Burmese, when he sees the connection between many Sanskrit words, but also the Hindi influences and all that. And definitely Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, and Cambodia, you're both heavily influenced from In fact, we have a shrine downtown right near Central World that called the Erawan shrine, which I've been there. Yeah, it is. Yeah. So we got a lot

Ashutosh Garg 23:30
if you if you vote, if you go to the royal palace, you see the entire Roman? Yep. And if you look at any of the dances in Thailand, they all have their bass in character, the remind. So Ramayana, as it's called in my era

Andrew Stotz 23:48
here, yeah, fantastic. Well, I'm looking forward to that. And I can't wait. Sounds like you've, you're on your way. And I have no doubt you're going to complete it because Darnit you've already written so many. That's impressive. 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 ash, I want to thank you again for joining our mission. 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?

Ashutosh Garg 24:30
No, thank you very much. Be careful of your investments. And I sincerely hope your dollars and your bots multiply many, many, many times.

Andrew Stotz 24:38
Amen. And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. This is a brand called you Andrew Stotz, I call myself the worst podcast host saying thank you for joining our mission. And I'll see you on the upside.