Personal Lessons From 20 years of Trading/Broking/Working

Almost unreal that Nikhil Kamath & I could represent Zerodha on the cover of Forbes. Some personal lessons from the many highs & many lows in this 20-year journey working, trading, trying to build different types of businesses, & more.

1. Businesses can be built in multiple ways. Don’t try to cut-copy-paste what others are doing – it mostly won’t work. Do what feels right to you. Your instincts on what is right will work better when you build a business/career around what you love.

2. The odds of finding what you love is higher when you take a shot at as many new things as possible. Most of us will not be lucky to find this love amongst the books in schools and colleges.

3. Once you start building a business, prioritizing what is right for the customer over what will give you growth/revenue in today’s super-connected world can bring you network effect & organic growth.

4. Organic growth means not having to spend to grow, and hence not raise as much money. This can help you do more of what is right for the customer, which can, in turn, help you stand out amongst your competition.

5. Eventually the better product wins, everything else is noise. Your team is going to build the product and they are all you have, they are more important than the business itself.

There is no status quo in today’s world, everyone is going to get disrupted when you stop taking bets to improve your product.

“I have two basic rules about winning in trading & life: (1) If you don’t bet, you can’t win. (2) If you lose all your chips, you can’t bet”

– Larry Hite.

Valuation/Revenue/Growth numbers are just going to distract you from running your business. The chase has to be to get up every day and say how we can do something better for our customers today. The rest, if it has to, will follow.

To be like this, you need to be first content in life. To be content, you need to be happy. You can never be happy if you have material goals like Valuation/Revenue/Growth, there is no end to this.

All this doesn’t happen overnight, you have to keep at it & hope that you get lucky (took us 20 yrs). The chances of getting lucky are higher when more people want you to get lucky. Hence good karma can potentially help improve the odds of success in business & life.

So do good, if nothing else, to improve your odds of getting lucky.

Businesses can be built in multiple ways. Don’t try to cut-copy-paste what others are doing – it mostly won’t work. Do what feels right to you. Your instincts on what is right will work better when you build a business/career around what you love. The odds of finding what you love is higher when you take a shot at as many new things as possible. Most of us will not be lucky to find this love amongst the books in schools and colleges.

Once you start building a business, prioritizing what is right for the customer over what will give you growth/revenue in today’s super-connected world can bring you network effect & organic growth. Organic growth means not having to spend to grow, and hence not raise as much money. This can help you do more of what is right for the customer, which can, in turn, help you stand out amongst your competition.

Eventually, the better product wins, everything else is noise. Your team is going to build the product and they are all you have, they are more important than the business itself. There is no status quo in today’s world, everyone is going to get disrupted when you stop taking bets to improve your product. “I have two basic rules about winning in trading & life: (1) If you don’t bet, you can’t win. (2) If you lose all your chips, you can’t bet” – Larry Hite.

Valuation/Revenue/Growth numbers are just going to distract you from running your business. The chase has to be to get up every day and say how we can do something better for our customers today. The rest, if it has to, will follow.

To be like this, you need to be first content in life. To be content, you need to be happy. You can never be happy if you have material goals like Valuation/Revenue/Growth, there is no end to this.

All this doesn’t happen overnight, you have to keep at it & hope that you get lucky (took us 20 yrs). The chances of getting lucky are higher when more people want you to get lucky. Hence good karma can potentially help improve the odds of success in business & life. So do good, if nothing else, to improve your odds of getting lucky.

Bennet & Bernard Group Forays Into Retail Segment