Ep705: Vishal Bhardwaj – Do Not Let Emotions Run Your Business for You

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

Vishal Bhardwaj 00:45
Absolutely ready and thrilled to have you be with you entry?

Andrew Stotz 00:49
Yeah, I'm excited to you know, you said something. When we, before we turn on the microphone that I just thought was really interesting. And maybe you could say it about how most people were contacting you about talking about your successes. And how did you feel?

Vishal Bhardwaj 01:08
So when I saw you know the name of your podcast, I was thrilled. I first thought it's just a clickbait. But then I went into it. And it's reality. So yeah, most of the people talk to me about what are the great things that I have learned? What are the great things that I have done in my career? But I think the most important thing is what are the bad things that I've done in my career? What are the mistakes that I have have done so that you don't do it when you are listening to me? It's my responsibility that you don't fall in the same trap that I have done. So it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful concept. And

Andrew Stotz 01:38
yeah, you know, I appreciate that, Michelle, because there's a lot of people that don't like coming on my podcast. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. There's plenty. I always say that my favorite response was interesting idea, not my style.

Vishal Bhardwaj 01:57
Oh, really? That's for me. It was wonderful. When I got your first email, Andrew, I think I was thrilled. So even more than being anywhere else that I have been since pinner. Last three, four years. I think your show is one of the most interesting that I've ever been to.

Andrew Stotz 02:14
Wow, that's exciting. Well, I'm flattered, and I know the audience is excited to learn more about you. So let me introduce you to the audience. Whishaw Bhardwaj is a serial entrepreneur and founder of predictions for success, engineered engineer by mistake and passionate management services. He loves to inspire students and aspiring entrepreneurs, with Shaw has spoken at many forums, including TED talks, TCS, money control backstage, and many others. So we shall please tell us what is the value that you bring to this world?

Vishal Bhardwaj 02:53
To be honest, Andrew, I am here to reengineer the spirituality, I think we have so much great things in our, you know, wisdoms that our forefathers have left for us, and we are forgetting those values. And I think it is time that we go back to those values and learn and relearn those things. So that up, you know, a lot of great humanity can be survived for a longer time in this planet. And this is my mission for this life.

Andrew Stotz 03:19
That is fascinating. You know, my father passed away about six years ago, and I brought my mother to live in Thailand. And she was on all kinds of medicines coming from the US and was in a bad state with a stroke. And I slowly was able to learn about, you know, the power of nutrition, and the power of various foods. And then from that, I was able to start to bring those into her life. And I learned something, for instance, like beet root, as an example, really can lower blood pressure. And so monitoring that and understanding that, and then you realize, of course, there's plenty of pharmaceutical drugs that actually derived from originally from plants and all that. And then you start to realize that in some ways, I feel like we have lost touch the roots and I think, you know, from my perspective in Thailand, I get a little closer to that than I would have been in America. But I suspect in India, you're even closer to the potential roots of traditional ways of thinking and living. And I'm just curious, like, tell us a little bit more about what you're doing and particularly, also about your business and you know, it's interesting, you know, predictions for success and stuff. So tell us a little bit more before we get into the question.

Vishal Bhardwaj 04:34
So great. So entry, prediction for success is company that is aim to read in their spirituality. This is the aim that I and my wife had and we are bringing a lot of subjection to it. We are working upon. I agree that we are working upon yoga we are working upon meditation, we are taking up a lot of good advices from you can say China can at this is a book and for the couple of the professionals so we are Combining astrologically linear logic was two shafts for feng shui. So we are going each and every corner of the world to find out what is worth to be here in this particular germination. So we are for this generation, we need to remodel those, the Vedic wisdoms so that they bring a value for the current generation. So this is what we are doing. And as you said and read about the IoT, the IoT, the India is the home of IoT, the and did a lot of things that can do so much of magic in terms of your body that an allopathic cannot even think of. So those are the things that need to be taken a little bit ahead, because they do not have any kind of side effects they can. This is not just for the body, but for the soul. Because right now, I think we are in such chaos world, that you know, everything's scattered around us. And we are so busy in our professional life, we want something that gives us a value that gives us an aim of life that brings a balance between professional and personal life. And that is what prediction for success right to do.

Andrew Stotz 06:03
That fascinating. You know, I've recently been working on creating a habit, a morning routine of just I have to keep it simple. Because my mind gets a little complicated, I want to make it a morning routine that I'll do. So I'm now about a month, a month or two into three sun salutation A's and two Sun Salutation bees. And I've had a yoga teacher has come each morning to help me to get the posture right. And I just try not to rush it because you know, I have had back pain and other things. So I feel like this is the thing, I do a lot of other stuff. I walk at the park and I go to the gym. But this is the one thing I feel like if I incorporate this yoga activity as a start just this and then I can expand it into standing series, which I do often with her. But then it's something that I can do for the rest of my life. Yeah,

Vishal Bhardwaj 06:58
it's a lifestyle. It's not an exercise, it's actually a lifestyle. So surya namaskar is a lifestyle. And a lot of people millions and millions of people are taking benefits from things like Surya Namaskar, there are a lot of other things and do that even small things, even small things that you know, have been written in our Vedas, that can take you to the another level of specialization. So which is way ahead of religion. So Religion is a very small part of mutuality.

Andrew Stotz 07:26
Interesting that fascinating, you know, the other thing I was thinking about when you were talking and said, somebody's listening to this for all, but wait a minute, we have all these modern inventions, and we have all this modern stuff. Like for instance, the iPhone, look at this, it's got the world in my hand. But what people often miss is the downside or the negative effects of that. And you just five years ago, if you went on a sky train ride in Bangkok, Thailand, you will be looking into the face of other people. Now you go on a sky train ride, you're gonna see two things. Everybody's got a mask on their face number one, so you no longer see the smile, gone. Number two, they are all sucked into their mobile phones 100% 100% of the people on the skytrain, and that was just five years ago, it wasn't like that. And then I think about, okay, there's some cool things about it. But there's got to be some real negative downsides to it.

Vishal Bhardwaj 08:22
Yeah, the virtualization of the world where we are connected with everybody, but we are actually very alone in ourselves. So we don't even have people to talk to we don't even have real friends right now. We even our families are the people that we usually, you know, if even if we talk about 10 years back, we were talking with them, we were always in, always in communication with them. But right now, it is very, very low, even the communication has diminished. The family values has gone to the, you know, the lowest level ever we have seen. So this, these are the side effects of being too modern, I think.

Andrew Stotz 08:57
And I just want to share a little exercise for the listeners out there that I've recently done. And I found it to be very valuable. And that is I've gone through my list of contacts that I have on my phone and in my email box. And it's a lot I mean, I have a 30 year career. So we're talking about 15,000 people that I've met and kept contact with in one way or another. And but I decided I would focus in on what I call my icy inner circle. And I thought about the people that I really do enjoy talking to and I want to get closer to and I came up with about 30 people. And I thought these are the people I really wanted, you know, I miss talking with them and that type of thing. And then I set a goal. Every week, I would reach out to them and I would try to send them a link and ask them hey, can we arrange a call, Mr. Talk? And amazingly, almost every single one of them have said absolutely. They've booked a time we've gone on a video call.

Vishal Bhardwaj 09:56
You are blessed no less than two means

Andrew Stotz 10:00
nothing. And even one of my friends that we got to know each other through a course that we took together. He's the chairman of a big business here in Thailand. And we said, Let's have lunch together on Zoom. And so we got together and I was at the kitchen table with the owner. And he was in his office eating, and we just had a great hour together. So I challenge everybody to take what we saw saying about, you know, we're losing some connection. And people are alone, and we are lonely. And so reach out. Do it today, identify one person that you miss talking to send her a message saying, I'd love to talk to you. I miss talking. Let's do a video call. Guys. My

Vishal Bhardwaj 10:40
conversations should not have an agenda always. So we are so fascinated with the word agenda that everything has an agenda right now. So let's live without agenda sometimes.

Andrew Stotz 10:52
Yeah. And then Amazing things happen from those conversations. It's like, exactly we get what are you working on? You know, tell me what you're doing, oh, maybe I can help you with that. Or I can, you know, and all of a sudden, it's a very different feel. Well, that's a great intro to you and what you're doing. And 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 it, then tell us your story.

Vishal Bhardwaj 11:19
Great. So I started predicting for success in 2014. And after that, we started doing our, you know, audience, we got around, say 100,000 followers and different types of social media. And we were just trying to leverage everything we were thinking like, whatever we will touch will turn into gold because we now have an audience. People are loving what we're doing. So why don't we sell something? And I talked with one of my partners, and we were very excited. So we were just playing Xbox in the night. It was midnight. And we were talking and he said to me that okay, so Diwali, Diwali is a very famous festival here in India. And it was coming, it was just I think, 15 days after the Diwali was there. So I thought, like, let's do something for the valley. So why don't we do some corporate gifting for the value. And we talked and everything clicked. So well, everything was looking so easy at that particular moment, we thought it would be very easy take for us to sell anything, because we already have an audience, people love us, I think if we will offer them anything, it would be an easy sell. And then the next day, we went to shop things, we were having no idea we didn't do any kind of research on what kind of people you know what kind of thing people want, what kind of carpet they use, like portraits they have. So we simply thought like, having something in the range of say, $10 would be easy to crack, and we went to the market, we purchased a couple of samples. So this was the first moment then I when I thought like, you know, rather than purchasing everything at a wholesale rate, let's purchase something a little pricey, but as a sample so that in case it didn't get sold, we don't have a lot of inventory to be sitting at our heads. So although my parents, my business partner was very against it, he said that why we are purchasing these on a higher price when we can purchase in a lower price if we get an quantity. And I said to him that no, no, no, let's not talk about let's forget about profits, let's try to learn something first. And we took, you know, maybe you can say we invested 100,000 rupees there, and we purchased all those products, and we came to home and it was already three to four days, then we had the professional shoot for it, we paid for the professional shoot, it was exciting till then. But then came the blender, we talked to the companies and we asked them would you be interested to purchase and they told us the price is that even we were not getting. So we thought like how you are getting those prices for these, these products. And they told us that, you know, we have some vendors already set and they have purchased in such a bulk quantity, that even if we you know, half the prices that we are already offering, it will still be a loss for them. And my God, my God, that was something that hit us so hard. And to be honest. And it took us three years to we could not even sell one single product, we have to give those products as a gift to our customers for the next three years. And I still have a couple of them lying around in my backyard and I still give them as a gift for birthdays and parties and festivals. And the most important thing that I lost in it was you know, the field because see, it was my family never had any kind of entrepreneur in their family so we never had any kind of a person who do business specially who sell things. So if I was the first one and when I failed and I failed so badly it really you know deserted me. It was a heartbreak, to be honest, and I thought like I think selling isn't My point, I think I won't be able to sell anything. And to be honest, till now till date, I haven't been into any kind of corporate, you think whenever I hear the word corporate gifting, I run away, I simply run away. For me, I can do anything, I can go to moon and sell the land there, but I cannot do corporate. I think this is something that I learned from my mistake. We lost a lot of money in there. But yeah, I think it was the worst investment that I have ever been to. And it was not just the money, but I think I lost that kind of confidence in me to sell something as something tangible. So we are now into service industry. And I always fear when I go to the product.

Andrew Stotz 15:45
And was there a particular day that you can remember where you kind of realize this isn't gonna work?

Vishal Bhardwaj 15:52
Yeah, so after the photoshoot and augmented website was ready, it was three days before Diwali, and I started calling up every friend that I know in the corporate world, I caught started calling up at chars, CFOs, the CEOs, and I told them, you know, you know me, and you should take something from me, and they said that we already purchased one month ago, I think you are already laid by one month. Oh, my God, and I, you can trust me, I called at least save 202 50 People that day. I called and my partner called around the same numbers, and we couldn't even sell one single product.

Andrew Stotz 16:32
And that's when you started realizing

Vishal Bhardwaj 16:35
that's when we took part of what we will do with these products now.

Andrew Stotz 16:38
Exactly. It's going to become furniture. Yeah, let me ask you what lessons, how would you summarize the lessons that you learned from this?

Vishal Bhardwaj 16:46
So yeah, I think I can summarize in three points. So one is that never start in party and do proper research before you know jumping into anything, emotions can overwhelm you, but do not let the emotions advance the business for you. The second thing is having an audience and you know, having a customer who will purchase are two very different stages. So these are not equal. So you may have a lot of good audience, but those may not the people who will, you know, purchase anything that you brought to the table. And the third thing I think is, you know, timing of launch is as important as pricing of your product. So we were also having a very competitive pricing. But our timing was so wrong, it was so wrong, that we couldn't even compete with our competitors.

Andrew Stotz 17:32
Wow. So emotion and the understanding your audience and timing, maybe I'll share what I took away from it. I mean, one of the things is, I remember, somebody told me this, and I learned it myself also, because I thought in the beginning of business, you hire PR people to get your name out there. And somebody said it and it is smacked me in the face, it's a PR doesn't need equal revenue. And it's a little bit like an audience doesn't equal revenue. They're not there to buy from you. If they're not there. For that, then if you go offering to that, you know, you're kind of hurting the relationship in some way. And I think, you know, it also makes me think about this podcast. Sometimes I feel a little bit down, that I didn't make a podcast like I think I think a good example of a great podcast is Amy Porterfield, digital course Academy, and digital courses Made Easy. She's talking all about digital courses. And she has a digital course Academy. It's a complete alignment. My worst investment ever, I came up with this idea, it was so far out that I didn't have a product related to it. And therefore I've tried to like align products with it. But I kind of come to the conclusion that there's just some things that you do you do for building an audience. But that audience isn't necessarily there to buy. They're there for the experience. And so when I think about my audience, and that's you to the listeners and the viewers out there, I think about someone that I'm sharing a conversation with that you're joining into this conversation. So that's kind of something that I've come to some conclusion on that just enjoy that relationship that will. So that's the first thing. The second thing is you remind me of Episode 28, a long, long time ago, and the guy that spoke was the guy named Brandon Gailey and Brandon Gailey is a great, he's the blog Millionaire is what he's called. But he had a similar situation and he said that he says even to this day, and I had still have some of these boxes left that I bought in my garage, you know, so, for everyone out there, start slow. Think carefully test the market, you know, test the response before you act so many times. We get into kind of an excitement and then we act before we test. So my final thing I take away is test before you act so we shall see Anything else you would add to that?

Vishal Bhardwaj 20:02
I think that's completely summarizer. I agree. And I will think I will further if you want, then it would be don't let emotions run your business.

Andrew Stotz 20:11
Yeah. Don't let emotions run your business. That's great. Now, that kind of leads into the next question, which is, you know, what, what one action? Would you recommend this mistake? To avoid letting emotions run your business? Give us some action, like what should we do when we're in that moment? And we're having that, as, as Michael Gerber says in the E Myth, he says, the entrepreneurial seizure, we're just so excited, this is the best idea what one action can we take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Vishal Bhardwaj 20:42
Sure, so NTUC, after my this incident, it has been a couple of years now. And I invested in two more companies after it. And I think what I did good in those was I didn't let my emotions run what I do, I get to hear a lot of great ideas. Sometimes few ideas, even treat me like, you know, these are, you know, a unicorn ideas, these could be the biggest in the world. But what I do is I wait for seven days. So if my emotions are up for the seven days as it was on the first day, I think it is good to go. And if it is decreasing day by day, I think I need more time.

Andrew Stotz 21:21
Fantastic advice there, ladies and gentlemen, it's not just with an idea. It's also I find that applying something like that, even just overnight thinking about and imagine that you're writing a blog, or you're writing something, and then you finish it at night, go to bed, before you publish it, read it, print it out, sit down and read it. And when you revisit something you're really visiting from a different emotional state, you may be able to put better put yourself into the shoes of your clients and your audience and your followers. And boy, it's amazing. Sometimes you look at something and think what was I thinking? Yeah, exactly. So that just as evidence of how excited that we can get and we overlooked so much. So let me ask you the next question, which is, what's a resource that you'd recommend for our listeners?

Vishal Bhardwaj 22:08
I think you should start you reading the Bhagavad Gita, this is the book that I read. And this is the book that I will recommend to everyone. So this is not about religion, this is something to be going inside of. So if you want to, you know learn about the world, first try to learn about the world within you. So once you learn the world within you, you will be easily able to learn the world outside of so a Bongo theta has helped me a lot in this. And if you are looking for any kind of guidance in terms of your personal or professional life, if you are strapped if you're if you don't know where to go ahead, you can connect to predictions for success.com. And we and my team would be love to help you and take you out and try to take you away from the problems that you're facing right now. And

Andrew Stotz 22:55
that's great. And that's, that's I'm going to have a link in the show notes. I'm looking at a lot of different different interpretations here on Amazon. So I'm going to just include some links in the show notes. But let me just ask about your, your website and what you're doing. What should people what's what what do they get when they go to your website? What are they going to feel or see or experience what's there for them.

Vishal Bhardwaj 23:22
So we have different kinds of services. And we have astrology services, we have member logic we have boss to we even have relationship counseling and career counseling. So if you are going through a trouble patch in terms of your relationship, we can guide you and your partner to come on the same front, we use the Vedic wisdom and combine it with psychologically to come up with a solution that is just tailor made for you. So this is a guidance that can change things for you. Very quickly, we give remedies which are written in our old Vedas, these are a Vedas that have been coming from, say 10,000 years ago. So those kinds of knowledge we have incorporated in our in our courses, so we even provide courses on that. So this, these are a lot of things if you go and I think you will see a lot of things to explore there and

Andrew Stotz 24:11
exciting. Well, I have the links to that in the show notes. So ladies and gentlemen, check it out. All right, last question. What is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Vishal Bhardwaj 24:21
I want to read into the spirituality for one minute, 1 billion people.

Andrew Stotz 24:27
Fantastic. That's exciting. Well, we're both on a mission. And I love your mission about spirituality. That's exciting. 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 we saw 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 invest than ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Vishal Bhardwaj 25:05
Thank you so much, Andrew. It was a pleasure talking to you. You are a great soul man. And I think the audience love to hear and I will be your number one fan.

Andrew Stotz 25:15
Oh, right. Well, we appreciate that. I appreciate that. And my mom and you are going to be my number one fans tied. So I appreciate it. And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz sang thank you for joining our mission. And I'll see you on the upside.