CALCULATE YOUR RISKS to Minimize Failure and Increase Your Chances of Success w/ Imran Dean

[00:00:00] Imran: Okay. In that period, I realized that, you know, I can’t put in the same thing because the result would be the same. My health would deteriorate and I would just get ill. It’s not like a pie chart. Right? So like, if, if one month you said that I’m going to spend three hours with my family, three hours for my health. It doesn’t work like that. Right. Life gets in the way, right? Sometimes, that’s where everything I’m doing now, is there like a mission or focus on my core? Like, does it make sense for what I’m trying to achieve in a greater way? 

[00:00:26] Amardeep: Welcome to the Mindful and Driven Podcast, where we help you to not lose sight of what’s really important whilst chasing your dreams. Today’s guest is Imran Dean. He is the founder of The Money Cog. It’s a website  that aims to break down complex financial information into easy-to-digest data. The aim is to make it easy for anybody to start investing without a huge amount of prior experience. The Money Cog aims to make everybody take on a long-term, sustainable mindset.In his day job, Imran helps manage an investment management company with clients who have over 100 million in assets across the different portfolios.This was an in-person interview and Imran had an interesting story about his journey the day before. 

I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation 

Welcome Imran. It’s great to have you here. 

[00:01:07] Imran: Nice to be here. 

[00:01:08] Amardeep: So how many of my notes are there is, if you’ve listened to one of my earlier episodes of Raj? It was actually just a pure coincidence that he happened to be in the office at the same time, then Raj made the introduction and well, Imran’s journey is very similar to mine, being in some ways. 

[00:01:21] Imran: Yeah. I know. Definitely. Yeah, it was good. I think we just clicked straight away and I didn’t realize that actually I was already reading some stuff on video and then I’d spoke [unintelligible]. and I saw it. That’s, you know, that’s quite funny. Small world. 

[00:01:31] Amardeep: Yeah. Yeah. It was funny because your shame is it. Oh, here’s like my homepage. That’s me. 

[00:01:35] Imran: Yeah. That was such a small world. I didn’t realize that. And actually one of my articles that I always go back to you cause all the business books that you want to read and make sure you’re on top of 

[00:01:43] Amardeep: One of the things I always ask people at the beginning is, what’s some advice you disagree with? So you mentioned that you liked one of my articles, but is there’s anything else you’ve read or you hear a lot that you disagree with? 

[00:01:51] Imran: So I think there’s that, there’s that cliche that, oh, money doesn’t grow on trees. So I’m of the opposite view. So I think money does grow on trees. And I think this is where, what you’re doing essentially is you’re planting those trees, right. You’re nourishing them and you’re watering them. So every time you come up with the, of your passive income, you continue to water those different businesses. Right? So if you’re a business owner or like yourself, you’re a writer, right. You might be making passive income from old medium articles, but unless you continue to write. Yeah. As long as those tend to go down, right? Cause you’re not watering that plant. You’re not looking after that, that business. Same with, if you’re a business owner, you start a business and you might take your hands off it. If you leave your employees to run and you’re not involved with it, you just go south very, very quickly. Right? So you always this concept of passive income and making money when you sleep, it doesn’t last forever. You know, you always gotta be somewhere involved in the business or even if it’s one or two hours a day, you know, you’re voted. Yes. You step aside and then you exit that business to somebody else and you sell it somebody else. But yeah, it’s about continuing to watering those businesses. Yeah. Continue to put your effort and energy into them and then you see them grow. So exactly like, like a tree, you know, you’d plant multiple trees and you’d let them grow. But then the cliche is, you know, you gotta focus on one thing until successful. So it’s very different. To do many things. Yeah. It depends on different stages of your life, where at certain stages, when you have more money could probably do more than one thing because you have the risk that you could put money into it. So you can, you can outsource, you can do different things, but it’s getting the right balance between focusing on one thing and also making sure you have maybe a diversified stream of income over, over a bit of time. 

[00:03:15] Amardeep: I think It’s interesting because people often say that money grows on trees analogy based on this idea that it’s easy, but then you flip it around because if you’re going to grow a tree, you got, you’re gonna have to nurture it. Like you said, the other thing about passive income, I completely agree. Passive income is so often the lie, unless it’s just automated investment. You’ve got to do something. Seeing with the online course I’ve created, the platforms have updated since I made these courses. So they’re slightly outdated now. So I’m going to rerecord them. 

[00:03:42] Imran: Just the world we live in today. Right. Things are moving so fast. And sometimes, you know, when we’re talking about investments, something could be. Good for for now, but then after a year or two, actually it might, you know, the stock market might say that this is worth a lot more and you might want to sell and go into something else because just the way the world is, things are moving so fast at a very, very rapid pace that new things come, new opportunities come. And that’s what it’s interesting, you know, thinking about new opportunities, you know, growing up. Your career. My, you might want to do one thing in your career, right. But now I think things are moving so fast. And you interested in me created that you probably have multiple careers in one, in one lifetime. Yeah. There’s many people that I speak to as well, who academics and they’re put into entrepreneurship because they’ve discovered something in their field that they want to now commercialize. So yeah, everyone’s got a different path and journey to sort of. And I think that’s where you can’t be so fixated on one thing in today’s world, you know, you, I think you lose the bigger picture. 

[00:04:34] Amardeep: Yeah. And it’s with me, right. That if things are happening and like I said, well, through multiple trees, that’s happening because they’d been given the space to experiment and it’s not as scary as you might think. Before I quit my job. I used to think people who did that, so brilliant. It’s just the mental block that we give ourselves sometimes that we can’t do it. That’s what other people do. 

[00:04:53] Imran: I want to dig into an initial point, which is a book I read a long time ago by a guy called managed Palm bay called the Dan the investor. And when he talks about his kind of zip people take zero risk, but higher rewards. Meaning if you look at what, if you look at Richard Branson, when he started the sort of Virgin Airlines. And actually the lease payments were at the end of the month, but he could ask them at the beginning. So from a cashflow perspective, there was there another example is I listened to Bill Gates, I think a year or two back. And he said, well, actually there wasn’t any risk of starting Microsoft because Harvard would accept me again. They said that, right. If he failed, he would just go back to Harvard and complete his, his degree. So that’s where people would forget that actually it’s about calculated risks and doing things the right way. And same with you. Right? You did writing whilst you probably still in your career. Decided to branch off. Right? 

[00:05:39] Amardeep: I think it’s also how you perceive failure. People were like, this has to work out because everybody would judge me. Everything. I’m a failure. I say most people won’t care. Most people will be fine. They won’t judge you for it. They won’t say a oh they’ve failed. Whereas now it’s a bit more difficult because now I have to assess it because I’ve got the editor mindset, not a 

[00:05:56] Imran: big fan of follow your passion. Cause you don’t really know what you’re truly passionate about until you do it for a period of time. You don’t know that you’re gonna be passionate about writing until you do it. I’ve done writing in the past and I enjoy it, but doing it every single day and all that’s involved in it, like coming up with the idea, then editing it the whole, you know, the process you might find actually quite, quite painful. So, you know, you don’t know until you start doing it. And I think passion comes when you’re doing it and you enjoy the results. And then that is the results. Isn’t it like gives you the field, continue doing it. Yeah. And on that point is where the politics is that I think if you turn your hobby into a career, You should replace the hobby as well. It should still have a hobby. It changes the perception of it in your life. And it’s okay to then be like, okay, I’m going to have a new hobby, something I just do for fun completely. And that helps keep that balance to me. Like you know, I was always, you know, I love tennis. I played tennis for a long time, but the minute you take that and you become very serious with it, you can lose the fun in it. Yeah. You’re trying to then reach very structured goals. And that’s where the P you know, then that becomes very uncomfortable because you’re not hitting the hitting those goals. And then you’re like, oh, why am I not? And then you use the fun in it because you’re not just enjoying being there and not having to think too much about a set goal. So yeah, you’ve got to balance the things from a hobby to, and trying to make a career of effort or doing something definitely with that. 

[00:07:14] Amardeep: Is there any point in the past that you’ve kind of struggled with finding that balance? 

[00:07:16] Imran: Yeah, so I think we talked a lot. You know, we were talking about grain growing these trees and multiple trees. So I think one point in my life where I was a volunteer with one of the organizers for a big sort of conference, and I know were very a hundred people came and parliamentarians academics, mayors, and I was one of the organizers and, you know, we all working early hours of the morning and I was looking out my health at that point. So I wasn’t eating for, I think, a number of days or I hadn’t eaten one. I had. And then the day of the event, I just collapsed in front of everyone. And, you know, must’ve thought doing in on the conference floor and then, you know, people saw me and I sort of fell on the back of my head now, thank God. I didn’t have any massive injuries or brain injuries, but it was quite a scary and surreal sort of moment for me realizing actually I’m just doing too many things and no matter how much that I always thought that’s fine. And that’s what success is because you’re young. You can do it, you can afford. Actually, no, because it would have takes is one instance of advocates change your life. You know, if I fallen on the back of my head and had brain damage, then came over, I think it was much more about doing a few things and doing them well and then branching out. And then there’s this famous saying, I think is it, it was a story about a donkey. So there’s a donkey that’s on a path on the left-hand side. There’s hay on the right hand side, there’s water and it’s thirsty and hungry at the same time. And it doesn’t make a decision. And then it dies. Now the moral of the story is, well, it could have had the water first and then the hay. And the whole point is that you didn’t have to do everything. I want to go in life. You can do something. And then do something else, right? It’s this whole idea of, oh, I want to do this and I want to do that. I want to do this because the world we live in, everything is about, you know, you want to achieve so much in such a short period of time. Now just do that one thing. And if you’re successful in that, then you can do something else because whatever you’re doing, there’s gonna be problems and issues that will need your energy and time. And if you’re not focusing on that, you’ll, you won’t fill those problems and then you’ll give up and then you’ll move into something else and you’ll be for something else. Whereas if you focus on a few, you can give those things, the energy that it deserves. And then you can move on from there. Right? Cause like I said, nothing, nothing’s sort of lost forever. Right? And you might not normally want to be associated with that. You might have a different interest and that happens all the time. You look at CEOs or the most successful people like Elon Musk left PayPal. He didn’t go and become a chairman of a business or stay in. Now he said, I want to solve, I want to solve the electric car problem. I want to now look at space, got these big ideas. So he’s focusing on that. So, you know, you’re not always tied to a certain professional. You, you can reinvent yourself constantly, but yeah, you’ve got to do one thing at a time first, like if you’d had left PayPal and just said, oh, it’s not really working, is something else. He would have never got any. Right. 

[00:09:43] Amardeep: One thing you brought up there and you kind of mentioned it, maybe without meaning to, is this idea of if then plan. So I use that quite a lot in my life where it’s saying, if I get to this goal, then I’m going to start this. So for example, with the podcast, it was like, if I get to X amount of followers on Medium, that’s what I’m going start the podcast. And with the podcast, like once they get to have many episodes, then I’m going to start a YouTube channel with more other stuff, because they don’t want to do them all at the same time. So I’m letting each kind of new goal, have a little time where it’s my focus. Once it’s embedded, once they’ve got the time down here and what’s more efficient, that’s when I add more things again. 

[00:10:19] Imran: No. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think obviously to Cooper as well as where I think if someone’s for me is when you’re reading too much or you’re getting exposed to so much information, it can you sometimes think, oh, I need to be doing that. Well, actually, I just need to focus on the next step because you can’t get there until you have a certain level of let’s say followers or engagement or a certain port. For example, we’re looking at a business now where one of the businesses that we’re working on is their premium sort of cause they stock recommendation service. Now the thing is until the product is there that they’re putting any marketing. So we were just focused. The last six, seven months was writing good content and premium content for the product too. We felt that we’ve got enough content out there to then start to market it to them, to the masses. And now we’re at that position. And now with. How do we market, and then that’s another problem, but you don’t want to be thinking about that right at the beginning, because there’s no product and without a good product, then you’re just, there’s nothing there. So it’s like one step at a time. It’s like, you know, you’re saying to yourself, like now you’ve built a reputation and a brand around your car. People combined to the podcast. Once they bind to that, then it gives you some options on YouTube. So video is a medium, which you might not be able to do as much with the writing, right. Where the video can give you more variety. But again, it’s all consistent with that. You know who you are and your brand and saying. I think that’s sometimes people that be, sometimes you think people go wrong is figuring out what’s core to you and your beliefs, and then doing things around that, that sometimes link. And I think Charlie Munger so there’s a bit of a lettuce. I think there’s a lattice framework of things where it’s like you build on top of things. You build knowledge on top of things, and that’s how you get sort of knowledge because things linked to each other and having an understanding of the world. Yeah. Having understanding of let’s say legal things as well, works. Like I’m sure you know, right. Some things you can’t write about cause you could get sued. Yeah. 

[00:11:57] Amardeep: Well, one of the things you mentioned there as well, I think a lot of people focused on the marketing first because maybe that’s most exciting. It’s like, I want to get people to move me. I want to do this, but it’s actually good to do things in quiet at the beginning. So I didn’t think I told people in my life about my writing until maybe six months or so in when they’d already had about half a million views. And what they did, it allowed me to grow without the pressure of knowing everybody watching me. And it’s a much better way to do it because if you do it in that way, as what you’re doing with your website, It’s that you, you go full of the problems. You learn. You test them over a smaller number of people. Then, once you’ve pleased this small number of people, they’re happy with it. You know, they’ve got a good product, then you can push it out. Going back to when you collapsed, what was the initial change? Did you change your mindset pretty quickly after that? Or did it take a little bit of time to, and kind of fighting yourself into, I know for example, you might want to carry on, but then people around you, like, no, you’ve got to rest. 

[00:12:49] Imran: I think human beings don’t like change. If you look at the prince of the book principles by Ray Dalio, because pain plus reflection equals progress. So I went through pain to progress right. And are affected as well. So in that, in that period, I realized that, you know, I can’t be doing the same thing because the result would be the same. My health would deteriorate and I would just get ill. Withdrew from that voluntary role, to an extent where I am started to delegate some of my work and then teach people what I was doing slowly, slowly, I’m sort of moved away from it just because I didn’t have that time commitment. And yeah, you have that influence from your loved ones where they say, well, you know, you can’t do that yoga. You’re getting L so you get that reality. But I think until. Go into a painful process yourself. You don’t change. That’s just the reality. Isn’t it. It’s very hard to change something. Unless you go through some sort of form of pain, even if somebody tells you something, you find it, maybe a difficult to change, but until you’ve gone through a painful experience, then you realize, okay, I need to change. So yeah, it’s very difficult. I’m not, I think it’s very few people I’ve met. I don’t know if you’ve met many people in your life where they can just change very easily. It’s it’s not easy, I think. And as you get older, To do that. You guys set in your way, and then it’s difficult, but I think it’s just being reflective. I think that’s where you can be self, not self critical, but you can always reassess yourself and be self-critical or ask people their opinions of you, which will help you make, make sense changes in your life, which you don’t quite realize, which might be beneficial. But yeah, it’s not, it’s never easy, I think, to, to make a change. 

[00:14:15] Amardeep: Yeah. I think I want to just, having that memory or reflection and being like, you can look at the different goals in different areas of life. Let’s say health, relationships, family. And you judge yourself, and you say like, where am I in this? Is my health at the level that wants to be, or not. And sometimes having to write that down, or having to say out loud to somebody, have a discussion about it, having to verbalize that kind of hits home a bit because, you’ve got to deal with that in some way. 

[00:14:40] Imran: Yeah. And you mentioned so many different things, eye health, you know, your family, your relationships it’s I think it’s not like a pie chart, right? So like, if, if one month you said that I’m going to spend three hours with my family three hours in my house, it doesn’t work like that. Right. Life gets in the way, right. Sometimes a loved one is sick. Then you gotta spend more time. Right. You have to read just a pie chart, but it’s more about always having that balance of sometimes some things need more time than others. Like sometimes one. It might be so busy with work and it requires you to get that energy and time. So you have more time to work, but as always that pie chart, as long as you’re giving some amounts to everything, when then that’s okay. And that’s why I realized that when I had that incident, I was trying to give everything equal amounts, or I’m going to spend four hours there and you become too robotic. And then you lose the human element of being. Well, you need to have that. You need to be empathetic, right? If somebody is ill, somebody is sick too. You know, especially if they’re close to you, you have that relationship. You should be there, right? If you’re spiritual, you know, you want to focus more on your spirituality fitness. Again, there might be times where you just don’t give it as much time because of work, but then you readjust and then realign yourself. But yeah, it’s just that balance, which is, it’s never like a perfect pie chart. And I think that’s what people, some of them know they’re wrong, but they tried. So you use these goals and to do lists or structures and just becomes too structured. 

[00:15:49] Amardeep: It’s having the blank space in your day, because if you’re overly structure yourself, then it goes wrong. You’ve got no leeway. Yeah, exactly. Whereas if you always got a few extra hours in between and you got half an hour before meetings, all that kind of stuff, it gives you that time to be a bit more flexible. 

[00:16:04] Imran: Exactly. Like, you know, when I’m not even just doing before this podcast, I just, you know, give my wife a call cause she’s not, well, I know how things, you know, is anything else you need, you just that just being there right in there that five minutes, it wasn’t like I’m going to spend a half an hour, according to my wife and seeing how she is. It’s about finding the right moments and being there. Right. And just thinking now’s a good time. I’ll just do it. Yeah. And just that I’ll just do it now, right. Or same with maybe. Okay for a walk, you know, you’ve said, okay, you know, it’s nice weather today. I’ll just go for a walk. It’s not necessarily thinking about being fit or fitness. It’s just, let’s go for a walk. Maybe I can think about things and ponder, right. It’s that spontaneity, which is sometimes in your, in your day-to-day life. And probably like, I mean, I’m sure with you and how you came up with writing, he probably wasn’t a structured thing. I’m going to stop medium. I’m going to talk about your media now. Right? It probably was quite spontaneous. He thought, you know, I’ve been reading a lot of interesting things and I think this is an interesting thing. And actually I quite enjoy writing. 

[00:16:58] Amardeep: Yeah. It was just a new year’s resolution. I was like, I’m going to try out and see what happens. I didn’t think it probably lasts very long and then it just went from there. But I think I didn’t start to have a huge structured plan of I’m going to do this many articles a week. I’m going to do this long. They’re going to be this many words. Where do you think some people do and it kind of sucks the fun out of it right at the beginning. 

[00:17:17] Imran: Exactly. Exactly. And then you don’t have longevity in that. I mean, sometimes you might have to create that structure now, which is maybe once it becomes your bread and butter and you need to make sort of money out of it, then you probably have to have some structure, right. Where you say, okay, I need to have X amount of articles because I know roughly an article gives me this much in terms of revenue, et cetera. 

But yeah, that comes later ordinary, straight away. 

[00:17:40] Amardeep: Hi everyone. I hope you’re enjoying the episode so far. I want to take a quick break to ask you to check in with yourself. There’s many people struggling with balance and it’s nothing to be ashamed about. It’s tips that my guests might share can hopefully help you along the way, but if you already feel overwhelmed or burnt out, it’s probably best that you ask somebody for help too. For some, this might be a friend or family member, while others might feel like they have nobody they can talk to. If you’re one of these people, check out the link in the show notes, it’s for United for Global Mental Health. They’ve got health plans all across the world, with people willing to listen on the other side. It’s important to let somebody know how you’re feeling. Now, back to the show.   

So what’s one area you’re currently struggling with? With your balance in life? 

[00:18:18] Imran: So I got married recently, so that’s, that’s, it’s been great, but it’s just managing and balancing. Sort of that life with, you know, all the other things you’re trying to work for. Cause then, you know, quite ambitious with certain the sort of business stuff I talked about with the stock recommendation. And then, you know, my fitness has maybe suffered a bit because I’ve been, you know, going to a lot of sort of meals and stuff as a married and probably from an Asian background. Right. A lot of family members invite you and then, you know, you just eat terribly and you put on a lot of a, I think I’ve put on sort of 680 and I’ve been told, you know, you can did. They, you know, you just got to balance it all, but then again, it’s like routine. So you’ve got to recreate your routine now. Right. And that’s what I’m not struggling with. I’m enjoying it. And I’m just thinking, okay, how does this work? And okay. Actually wake up early and then do it because the evenings get taken up, you know, you wanna spend time together. So in the mornings, early mornings, that’s when I can get some of the other stuff done and reading. So just readjusting yourself, isn’t realigning, but it’s just that a reflection. We talked about earlier, which is reflect and then realign what’s important and what’s not. And certain periods that will require more time. Right. So earlier on, you know, maybe now it’s just like, it might require much less, you know, more time I’m spending time together. And then it’s less time maybe on my fitness than five minutes can be from five days a week to three days a week. You know, I’m not trying to do an enormous amount, but it’s just reducing that 

[00:19:39] Amardeep: if you can create this kind of balance where you know, this is what’s important to me and you don’t let other people step over your boundaries. Cause it could be, you want to have a snack every now and again, you want to have a treat and you go out. And so you’re better during the week, and then you have the treats when you’re out with people, and that’s the balance that you have. Whereas if you know that you spent a bad week for you and you had a bit too much and you don’t feel too great, then being able to say no is a really important social skill and also doing it a way that’s, it’s keeping people comfortable with you. Right? 

[00:20:06] Imran: And it’s, I think it’s saying no is something I struggled with. But I’ve become better at, because part of it was that incident where we talked about for when I, when I sorta fell and hit my head where it was like, if you don’t say no to things, you will eventually you’ll suffer the pains. And people don’t, everybody is, you know, not saying everybody is selfish, but everybody is obviously doing things from their own perspective. Right. And people are not reading your article because, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’ve written it because they’re gonna get something out of. Yeah, then I’m gonna spend 10 minutes of their time reading something because they want to be nice is because there’s something out there for themselves. So the same way you got to think that when you’re involving yourself in certain said, You have to sometimes not be selfish, but you have to think, is there going to, is there a, you gotta think about the bigger picture and we don’t have the time capacity, but you wanna help somebody, then you just got to sort of say, look, I can’t do it right now, but I can give you some, I can maybe point I can give you some recommendations of certain, so people that can do it, or this is how you would do it, but don’t commit to something knowing that it’s going to make you suffer in the longterm. So it’s that fine balance. Isn’t it? 

[00:21:10] Amardeep: Yeah. I think a bit sometimes being too nice where being too nice to too many people could mean that you’re then sacrificing your sleep or your sacrificing on the inside, which then in the long run, it’s like a negative consequences because then you’ll burn out and then you can’t do anything to help them. So if it’s helped them a little bit or something that’s in control then to overdeliver is unsustainable and then not be able to be there in the consistent longterm. 

[00:21:36] Imran: Exactly, exactly. And I think that’s what I think that’s what happens as you sort of not get older, but you have life experiences, right? Well, we’ll show you how you react to certain situations. Like you might not realize that you’re someone who says yes to everything, but you will realize it sooner or later when you start to get busy. And, you know, as you get older, you get less time rates from, from maybe, you know, from university or even from college where you had a lot of free time to when you were. Then you don’t have the same time. So your time is more precious. And then probably when you get kids married, time becomes more and more precious. So everything you get involved in has to have some return, whether it’s even a return of, oh, this is what I’m giving back to the world, that’s fine. Or this is what I’m doing to help others. That’s fine. And this is what I’m doing for myself and my family to help them to help better our lives. You know, there’s so many different things you gotta to think about is it’s just, you know, balancing everything, which is, I think we talked about with. Yeah, I think that’s for me anyway. That’s what I’m starting to see as the key to success. It’s not success in one area at the cost of something else. It’s trying to balance everything to live a fulfilled life. 

[00:22:35] Amardeep: What would a fulfilled life look like to you? So say in like five years time, how would you want to kind of design your life if you could with the balance between work life, social life, et cetera? 

[00:22:44] Imran: I think for me, it’s always trying to be the best what your field you’ve chosen is. So, you know, being at the top of my game at my field would be, it would be. That would be sort of one area of success, but then you’d also have a great relationship with my wife and have your kids at that point. That would be great. And then spiritual goals as well, making sure that spiritually I’ve achieved what I wanted to. So, and then fitness as well, being able to. I set an objective in terms of fitness, but being fit and healthy that, you know, I can go and go for runs or have long sort of period of walk, but don’t feel tired or exhausted. Right. And being at a good sort of weight. So all of that together, you know, balancing the old for me to be a successful life. And if I was, if I did something, if being the most successful or the best at my field was at the cost of everything else. For me in five years, I’d look, well, I haven’t really achieved success because I’ve done something at a very extreme level, but I’ve sacrificed so much. And that’s the thing where they say, well, if you want to be really accessible, you’ve got to sacrifice things. Well, if that’s your definition of access and you want, if you want to be outliers or extreme stories, then that’s fine. And that’s, you know, that’s what you’ve chosen, but you’ve got to realize that that will come at a cost, right? If you want to be extremely successful in a specific field, then obviously you. Making sacrifices and cost of everything else. And if that’s what your ultimate goal is, then that’s fine for yourself. You know, I’m not here to judge, but for me, that’s not what success is. I think for me, discusses being an all rounder of a person, but that probably comes from my personality of being a sort of Plymouth. I have interest in many subjects. Don’t know, I don’t like one thing. And that’s what I want to do. I like to do many different things. And then I think that’s kind of me being more of a rounded person. 

[00:24:25] Amardeep: Yes. With The Money Cog, let’s say five years time, would you just want that to be almost your main thing or is it with something you want to be on the side so you do other things too? 

[00:24:33] Imran: So that was where, you know, I’ve been thinking about it a lot actually, which was, you know, do I want to continue doing this as a, as a side thing? Was it good? And I think ultimately what it is is why am I doing it? What’s the mission or the mission there is to really help retail investors or people who don’t know much about investing, be more confident in the stocks they’re looking at. I’ve been more confident on how to analyze companies from the basis of how they make money. Right? So that’s the mission. Means that we have to, you know, I would spend more time doing it and growing it and then maybe raising money. So that part of my thing has been well, do I want to raise more money? Put a lot more into it in terms of resources, then that’s fine. Then we’ll get there. It’s be like the next step. I’m not trying to think too far ahead of what it needs to be. I’m trying to think more mission focused. That’s the mission. And then if that’s the mission, then actually this makes sense not to do. And that makes sense. I think that’s a better way of thinking of it. Isn’t it? What’s your ultimate mission. And then that’s probably similar with you about the YouTube. Like you’re not doing YouTube because if you want to use it, because everyone’s saying it’s great and they want a position you’re like, is that better service? Servicing the mission. I’m trying to do all my purpose and if it’s not, then don’t do it just being consistent with your mission and then branching out. And that’s what that’s, where everything I’m doing now is like mission or focus on my core. Like, does it make sense for what I’m trying to achieve? You know, you know, even when it’s working with other people on other projects is they’re servicing my, what I’m trying to think. Yeah, in a greater way, then, then I’ll get involved. Otherwise I won’t because it’s too conflicting with what I’m trying to do. And then, because it’s conflicting, I’m not going to have success in it because it’s taking me there and I’m trying to go here and something else it’s just never gonna work is it. 

[00:26:04] Amardeep: I think what I’m doing at the moment is a bit of experimentation where, because what I found in the writing, I didn’t plan for that to be my mission, but then, because it’s worked out that way, I want to get other things experiments as well and see if that’s the thing that really kind of lights me up, for example, the YouTube. I might do a few videos. I’m fine, but I hate it and I don’t want to do it. And it’s not really helping me. It’s not cheap, helping me further the message I want to get out there, but it’s, for me, it’s like something which I want to experiment with, and it’s the whole thing where fail fast and fail often. I don’t want to build up something, cause this is going to be my savior in life. And if it isn’t then I’ve, I don’t know what to do with myself. Whereas if we can just keep trying different things and seeing like, does this help? No. Yes. Okay. And then, like I said, reflecting on that and going from there. 

[00:26:48] Imran: That’s an interesting point you mentioned is this. I think I’m more focused on a and then you put too much energy into that. And then you realize that actually it’s not going anywhere. And that’s where you got to fail past, you know, the concert, even with the money coughers we started it off, actually we just premium. And then I said, well, actually we should be giving blogs and building relationships with our audience. They can see content. And then those who, who want to know a bit more, they can have the premium. And that was the way it started and was like, now that we’re thinking, okay, how do we sort of branch out and do things? And we’re looking at YouTube as well, but it’s it’s for me. Okay, we’re doing YouTube, but what’s how do we do YouTube videos? There’s so much to, is it just talking about stocks or is it, is it going to be talking about companies in a, in a way where you’re giving them the history, but there’s so many other where you can take it, that you’ve got to think about it a bit more and then go full out immensely. Like you say, see how it goes and it might not work out and you might feel actually it doesn’t really work, but you shooting itself as providing us. And then as long as it’s servicing that mission, then, you know, you can figure out where you want to go. 

[00:27:47] Amardeep: It’s also, it’s about the identity side of things as well, where it’s, I know what my kind of overall ideas are and how I give those ideas to the world, isn’t as important necessarily as the ideas themselves. I think that’s the mistake people make is that they focus on the platform rather than one of my ideas and the platform was just a way to get out there. 

[00:28:10] Imran: Exactly. This it’s like you suddenly vice or I’m busy talking about FinTech or PayPal, then I’d be like, okay, that’s interesting because that doesn’t seem consistent. He was, you know, you’ve got to be consistent, right. Is said right. With your identity and what you’re trying to do. And then people quickly work on, okay, this person is just trying to do things for clickbait or something that week he’s not showing any consistency or. So I’ve read a lot of productivity books and mindset books. But what I found was that what people forget is you’ve got to be human first. There’s nothing wrong with doing lots and lots of different things and having different interests because eventually the two things connect. Great. It’s not about, you know, you might have one interest in, I dunno, let’s say something completely different to what you’re doing. But eventually those two will connect, right? Like, you know, Musk, for example, was he loved, he loved fantasy books. I think it was when he was a kid. And then suddenly he did PayPal. There wasn’t a connection, but now using space X and you know, you can see the connection and you can see, he thinks with big audacious ideas and that’s, that comes from his, probably as youth and thinking big. So there’s nothing wrong with having too many different interests and as long as it’s and I just got addicted to what I said earlier, but it’s more about as long as you’re balancing everything, right. As long as you’re giving everything time, right. You can have multiple different interests. You just don’t let it override each other or, or say, let it conflict with your time. You’re giving each thing a bit of your time. 

[00:29:24] Amardeep: And when you said there about being contradictory, it’s part of being human, right? It’s that you can have ideas that don’t necessarily fit together perfectly because the overall idea and how you balance that competing interests, that can still make sense. So you can think, okay. Yeah. Things are gonna be related to my mission, but it doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to break that rule sometimes in order to have exceptions. 

[00:29:47] Imran: Human being a more emotional and logical RV. We’re so logical, then everything is a predictive of what we’re going to do. It’s because we’re emotionally driven that that’s what probably creates opportunities for us and creates, you know, where you, Chris disasters as well as the same way, but because we’re emotionally driven. That’s what being human is. And you will have to let me, it’s like now it’s like, we want to have the human experience. You don’t want to have a robotic experience of your life. You want to be human and enjoy all of that. Like people say, I always want to be happy. I’m like, yeah. But what happens if a loved one dies to be happy at that moment? No. You want to have sadness. You have grief go through the experience of, you know, That person meant a lot to me. And you wouldn’t feel sad about that for that moment and that’s being human, isn’t it? Yeah. So it’s not about being happy all the time. It’s about being fulfilled and having the whole human experience. And that’s why balance is so important, right? Because you want to have the experience of, okay. I want to have that experience of, I want to climb Kilimanjaro. I want to have that experience I wanted then also go out and, you know, have a good time with my friends or I also want to, you know, go out and work very, very hard and spend long hours maybe working on something that’s meaningful. Probably Newman. 

[00:30:50] Amardeep: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s exactly a said where you can’t make life perfect. It’s about how do you find the different bits of your day and try and find joy in each of those? So it’s not about, I have to, . I think sometimes people have this idea, isn’t it? That you have to make sacrifices. There’s no pain, no gain, but why, why do you have to make sacrifices? Why can’t you choose to have a bit more balance where you maybe don’t achieve as much in certain areas of your life, but then you’ve got, like you said, where you’re trying to be the best in your field, but would it be not be better to not be the best in your field, but then have a, like a happy marriage and happy… 

[00:31:26] Imran: but I think the reason is you, like, you can sacrifice something. I can’t. Because it doesn’t mean anything to you. Right? That’s the reason people don’t understand where people who have extreme success. It’s probably cause the other areas that aren’t meeting. You know, the, the idea of having, you know, going to the gym and being healthy and fit. It’s probably not that meaningful for them for them is actually, I want to have extreme success. That’s just, that’s just the nature of their personality so they can make those sacrifices, whereas others can’t because they want to have more of a fulfilled, you know, more of a balanced approach. But you mentioned the point about being grateful essentially. Right? Having joy is I remember an incident, I think last week when I first came back from the office or to the, you know, being in the pandemic, I thought I’d come to London because the office of the. Someone dropped beer all over my cars, his and coat. And it was a long train journey. And I just thought, well, I just laughed. I thought, what a day? Right. Coming back. And this is what happens because I was so grateful for, you know, the fact that I was able to come. Right. But the pandemic, we weren’t able to go out, but yeah, because of the vaccinations, because of the programs or the lockdowns, we’re able to get back now to some sort of normality. So I just grateful for that. That incident was just funny. You know, otherwise I’d be stuck at home. Right. So he’s just got to have great gratitude and every day that you, you know, you’re alive and things are, you know, you’re at least healthy, right? To an extent because there’s always someone worse off than you in some way. 

[00:32:40] Amardeep: It’s been great to talk to you, Imran. Where can the listeners hear more from you? 

[00:32:44] Imran: So on The Money Cog as well, we mentioned where I’m writing as well, and I’m starting to write a bit more Medium as well. So I’ll be writing a bit more and committing to Medium on that and YouTube as well with The Money Cog at some point in the future. 

[00:32:54] Amardeep: My final question is normally what was one thing that brought you joy recently? But I think you’ve just kind of mentioned that with your parents at, and I think it’s one of the most important skills you can have in life is being able to laugh when things go wrong. 

[00:33:06] Imran: Yeah. 

[00:33:06] Amardeep: Especially when they’re not that catastrophic. Right? Like having something on your trousers, who cares, you can wash them the next day you’ll be fine. 

[00:33:12] Imran: Exactly. Yeah. And then these things just small things in the world of life. Right. You know, you’ve got to have the bigger picture in mind and you know, there’s greater stresses in your life. Right. You’ve just got to be grateful each day. That’s what I am. 

[00:33:24] Amardeep: If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, I’d love it If you could leave me a five star review, it really helps get the message out further. Wherever you’re listening, it would be awesome If you could subscribe and share in your social media channels. If you want to see more of my work and advice, you can find all of the links in the show notes. 

Thank you again for listening and I hope you have a lovely day.