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Arpit Maden
April 13, 2022
This story has two parts - part two coming out next week!
I was excited. I was nervous.
I was happy to finish my MBA on March 25, 2017.
I remember Ralf Speth’s voice echoing through the auditorium. Here I was, with my fellow graduates of 2017, listening to the then-Chairman of Jaguar and Land Rover.
He told us that great companies are formed by people and processes, it didn’t make any sense back then, it makes so much sense five years down the road. We were all excited to go up on stage and shake the hand of Nasser Munjee (Chairman, GIM International) as we were handed a big black folder with our MBA degrees. This was it!
However, above all of this, I had a single thought playing over and over in my head during the entire ceremony. I could not shake it. I wondered: “When?” When would this ceremony end so that I could celebrate?!
The cocktails and the night that followed were great!
The reason I write to you today is to put forward my experiences—both good and bad. My hope is that you get a chance to leverage my adventure to your benefit. Take what you will.
I have written about my mistakes, rash decisions, and immaturity.
I have written about how I—and only I—fractured my career to a point of no return (or at least, what seemed like no return).
I have written about how I repaired the damage by making hard decisions and putting in the work.
I have written about how hard it can be to travel beyond our shores and into different worlds, and I share my experiences there.
My adventure eventually leads to an amazing learning path in a totally new environment.
I share how I have put in the work.
I share how I have both formed and burned relationships.
I share how I both seized and squandered opportunities that have come my way.
I share the risks that I took, along with the sleepless nights, uncertainties and onset of grey on my scalp and face.
I am going to share with you that success—true success—does not come overnight.
Part 1: The Formative (Rash, Immature) Years | 2017 - 2019
Exide Life Insurance - Bangalore, India, Deputy Manager – Financial Accounting and Reporting
I was amazed by the beauty of Southern India, the amazing shore line we have in Goa and was very happy that I will be working in Bangalore which is just a 10 hour drive from Goa. April 28, 2017, I packed my bags and said goodbye to my mother and our dogs (teary-eyed) and left for Bangalore, I still remember the delicious cheesecake on the flight.
A little background: I exactly knew where I would want to eat dinner that night in Bangalore as I also interned at Exide Life after the end of my first year of business school in 2016 and wanted to visit the same place that my girlfriend and I used to go every Friday night – rock music, cheap beer and chicken wings. I ate with a few buddies but it did not feel the same as before. It felt that the place was dead, and maybe a sore reminder of my now-ended relationship with that girl. Anyways, the adrenaline rush was so much that it did not bother me and I just chugged a few glasses of beer, wings and went back home singing Sweet Child O' Mine.
My role at Exide Life Insurance was about preparing financial statements, improving accounting practices, and doing variance analysis. It was mundane, boring, and just not challenging. A week into the role, I knew that I will not be here for long.
Exide Life was a great place, it wasn’t the best fit for me. My eyes were set on the financial markets and I started reading a lot about them, examining spreadsheets, charts and long-term investing.
My first investment in Bangalore was a study table and a chair that I had rented to start Heisenberg Investments (I was watching a lot of Breaking Bad at that time). The company never took off but we learned that if you are not satisfied in a role, find what you would want to do and just start doing it. That study table and chair became my office and I started spending hours sitting on that chair and reading about markets, products, and about portfolio management.
All this while, I was also having fun outside work, regularly showing up at Soda Bottle Opener Waala on Fridays with people from work (I had a solid group of four friends), dancing like there was no tomorrow. Balancing fun with work—especially when you are not satisfied with the work you’re doing—is important. Having a tribe of people around you also helps.
This was also the time I started listening to podcasts, primarily Joe Rogan, who introduced me to UFC. If anything has stuck with me over the years, it's Rogan and UFC. Both helped me bring discipline in my life. I also leaned into Conor McGregor's mentality. Not the parts about talking trash, but the concept of steel-proofing your mind: Not letting anyone affect you on a mental level. Whoever/whatever you’re competing with/for, will fall short if you have steel-proofed your mind. Remember the great phrase from the movie V for Vendetta: "Ideas are bulletproof." Similarly, keeping a strong mind is a powerful defence too.
I did not see myself copying and pasting data from one spreadsheet to another and hence left Exide Life Insurance on July 28, 2017, as I got an opportunity to work in the financial markets in Mumbai. I packed my bags and took the overnight bus to Goa from Bangalore, back to campus for a few days and enjoyed the student life again for a week. My immediate juniors hosted me on campus and I did attend a few classes.
I learned:
If you are not satisfied with your role, make your own role. Everything begins with your mindset.
Make friends, make memories, and form a tribe.
When you look back in time all the little gestures, favours, and other little things contribute to where you will be five years down the road
Steel-proof your mind. It's your greatest asset. It's not your looks, your strength, or your degree. It’s your mind.
Follow a routine. Have habits that go beyond instant results (move beyond instant gratification). When the pressure is high, you'll see the ways you've evolved thanks to this change.
Darashaw and Company – Mumbai, India, Management Trainee to Senior Associate
Financial markets brought me to Mumbai, the home of the stock markets, but I was going to be on the move again. I'd applied for a role back in Bangalore. After multiple rounds of interviews I finally got the offer. It was a dream role that I know a lot of finance majors would have applied for, but they only took one person from my graduating year.
For people who are from Mumbai or have visited Mumbai, you know the city is sticky. There are too many people, constant rush hour madness, and we all hate the local train system. That all said, there is something about the city that I did not realize then. I was excited to be in Mumbai and work in investment management (years of obsession with stocks, Wall Street and being in the big game). I also discussed stocks with the cab driver who dropped me at a friend’s place from the airport and to my shock, the guy knew more than me. Mumbai smelled of money, sweat and opportunities and I was wiring my brain accordingly, at least that is what I thought I was doing.
I used to take the train, dodging between people to reach South Bombay and then hopped on a taxi to work every day. I hated the mad rush and the trains in the beginning, but it all felt normal in a few weeks. I believe it is the process of forming a routine and habits around that routine that makes difficult things seem mundane. I realize this now but did not then. Darashaw felt like The Wolf of Wall Street. Working along with cut-throat bankers and brokers had its own rush. You get absorbed by such infectious culture without even realizing it.
A shot of the Mumbai Local at 1:40 AM, the only time it is not packed. Late nights at work!
I used to take the train, dodging between people to reach South Bombay and then hopped on a taxi to work every day. I hated the mad rush and the trains in the beginning, but it all felt normal in a few weeks. I believe it is the process of forming a routine and habits around that routine that makes difficult things seem mundane. I realize this now but did not then. Darashaw felt like The Wolf of Wall Street. Working along with cut-throat bankers and brokers had its own rush. You get absorbed by such infectious culture without even realizing it.
South Bombay is the land of extremely expensive everything, more expensive than New York and my position made me feel like the king of the world. I remember I used to gaze at the vast Arabian Sea from work and dream imaginary scenarios in my head of being rich, flashy, and driving around in an expensive car. Dreams don’t come true if you don’t dream big and go after them with all you have. Do everything you can do to achieve your dream, but don’t do something that you will be uncomfortable explaining to yourself in the future.
I valued hard work ethic because I had no choice. The guy right next to me used to work more than me, after all. We all were trained to be like machines and I knew that I have to compromise on the work life balance aspect. My girlfriend at that time used to live in Mumbai as well. We broke up after two years of being together because she thought I was too ambitious and had only moved to Mumbai for the job. I moved to the Delhi office in November 2017 to be around my family. Family comforts you when everyone abandons you, but this can be poison. It's running away from reality. This is something I realized late in my career.
Work was piling up every day, I had asked for it, and I was managing some of the biggest institutional investors' funds ($5 billion USD). One thing I realized was that financial markets can be a dirty business, where money has to be exchanged under the table and expensive gifts have to be bought to win over accounts. Gradually, I was getting gamed by the system and I started buying expensive single malt bottles, expensive clothes, and other outrageous things to match my flashy job. This was also the time when I started building momentum in my career as the professional exposure enabled me to meet well-connected people at organizations. I was truly forming relationships that still help me to this day. Having a network that is solid, reliable, and well-connected is going to help you open the doors that would otherwise take more time to open.
Everything seemed fine at the time. Life was good, I was travelling for work a lot and it all started to become easy for me. It’s like that feeling you have when you are chasing something and you feel a rush. However, the rush was starting to fade.
Work was getting easy, repetitive, and boring. It stopped exciting me and I started to lose momentum. It's the little moments that push you. Build your confidence and if you start observing that process, don’t let it go. Life is about building momentum.
I started frequenting a bar every Friday after work and became a regular. People started recognizing me and there came a time when they would no longer give me a menu and would just bring the things that I liked. Having a place/activity where you can be a regular is going to give you a sense of belonging.
I became the wonder boy for my vice president in Delhi. I still don’t understand why. Maybe it was because I spoke my mind and was straightforward. My senior colleagues didn’t like me and I did not care. He told me that I was challenging the status quo at this 95-year-old institution and it was causing disruption. He told me to cause disruption because things will collapse and then you will rebuild them. I wrote this on a note and stuck it to my mirror. I thought he wanted processes and teams to be rebuilt, and he chose me to be his laboratory rat for his restructuring experiment.
Fast forward to September 2018... Once the housing market crashed in India and investors started losing money, I started getting panic attacks even though our investors weren't at risk. The only thing that they gained was trust, and I lost my time. I still remember telling the CFO of a listed tire manufacturer, for whom I was managing $125 million USD, that they invest like old dudes stuck in the 1940s and maybe that was why they are the number two in the market and will always be. We lost the account but my VP told me it was alright. What I learned that day is that in the end, people are people. We just need to understand how the human mind makes decisions and put words in a way that the message gets delivered.
We created a few processes (portfolio analysis processes) for the company, which were implemented across locations, and gave me my promotion to senior associate under two years. Again, whatever you want to do, just start. People will observe and things will change. All this added confidence and more money in my pocket. It built my corporate career and converted me into a materialistic, cold-hearted person. I had become ruthless in my ways of operating on a daily basis, I still struggle with it today. And I forgot, create processes because they will bring you freedom, apply this to personal and professional life.
I deleted my social media profiles in November 2018 to see if I would want to make friends by different means. I started talking to people a lot at the bar I used to frequent. I dated a few women and the whole me not being on Instagram and Facebook created a sense of mystery which they liked, I think it was just a different approach to the same problem. Sometimes a different approach to a complex problem is the key, it does not have to be an extraordinary approach, just has to be different.
After managing money for Darashaw for two and a half years, I left the company on January 13, 2020. It also meant leaving my bonus of $10,000 USD due in March 2020. I was done with the mundane life and wanted challenges in my corporate career. However, my terms of exit were not right and I burned a major bridge in my career. I abruptly ended my career against the normal convention of my organization, which led to multiple relationships being burnt which impacted the subsequent opportunities that followed. I believe they took a two year hiatus from hiring at my old alma mater. I really regret my rash behavior.
You win big and you lose big, but when you know that if you are not going to survive, don’t be the hero, survive today to fight tomorrow.
If you’re getting bored in your career, ask for a change, don’t leave things, if you can’t create the change, then leave but don’t leave in haste.
I learned:
Don’t allow your work to become bigger than you. It should not inflate your ego.
The real world and theory are separate concepts, don’t get disappointed when material from the classroom does not apply to real life.
Everyone knows someone else. You need to work towards establishing a network that is going to help you grow professionally and personally.
Invest time and effort in people that matter, and expect a return by being vocal about it.
Have a plan, but be ready to embrace chaos.
To be continued...
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