Fintech Founder to Global Nonprofit CEO: Asheesh Advani

In today's episode, Nick interviews Asheesh Advani, CEO of Junior Achievement Worldwide. We discuss his early career in management consulting, his time founding a leading fintech company, his time leading an international non-profit, and the writing of his international bestelling book, "Modern Achievement".

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome back to Rerouted, where we explore unique career paths
to give you the tools you need to create the life you want.
On today's episode, I talk with Ashish Advani, CEO of Junior
Achievement Worldwide, one of the world's largest and most
impactful youth serving nonprofits.
We discussed his early career inmanagement consulting, his time
founding a leading fintech company, his time leading an
international nonprofit, and thewriting of his international

(00:22):
best selling book, Modern Achievement.
Let's get into it, Ashish, thankyou so much for joining me
today. How are you doing?
It's a pleasure to be here. I'm doing very well.
Awesome. All right, let's start off.
I want to talk a little about your educational background.
Can you bring us through your undergraduate and then your
postgraduate? Sure.
So I'm Canadian, I grew up in, in Canada.

(00:43):
So I applied to school in the USbecause my brother, who is about
four years older than me, he'd already sort of started school
in the US, started a College in the US so that he was blazed the
trail for me, let me put it thatway.
And so I played early decision to pen to Wharton and I got in

(01:04):
and that was, you know, my, I guess my choice to study
business, which at the time seemed like a bold choice
because in those days studying business undergraduate was not
that common. So, and then after that, I went
off to Graduate School in England.

(01:25):
I went to Oxford, I applied for a bunch of scholarships.
And the reason I did apply is I went to visit a friend who like
older than me who was already studying there.
And honestly, I didn't know thatmuch about studying in England
because I hadn't done study abroad there.
So I just honestly just didn't know.
And I spent a week with him on like spring break, I think, and

(01:48):
learned so much about the benefits of studying in the UK
that I decided to pursue these scholarship applications.
And I got lucky. One of them worked out.
And so I did a master's and PhD,which at Oxford, it's called the
DFIL, which was a phenomenal experience.
All right, So after you finishedyour PhD, what was your first

(02:10):
job or your DFIL? Sorry.
So I had worked in my summers for the World Bank and prior to
undergrad I worked at Monitor Company, which is became known
as Monitor Group and then was acquired by Deloitte and now
it's Monitor Deloitte. But in those days it was a stand
alone company based officially in Cambridge, MA, founded by a

(02:34):
bunch of Harvard Business Schoolpeople.
But it expanded around the worldso I was working there during
its expansion phase. So I worked in the Toronto
office and moved to Amsterdam asthat office was quite nascent,
and then moved and worked in theCambridge office after I
finished Graduate School. So I worked at the World Bank
for my summers and then briefly after I graduated, and then I

(02:58):
went back to monitor where I'd worked after undergrad.
So you were doing working in Amsterdam?
That was just for a summer. It's actually a good story.
So I had worked at Monitor for, think of it as my junior year
summer. It was a bit more than that
because I took the semester off and worked there for longer.
But I'd already in my junior year had that called early

(03:21):
consulting experience. And I love Monitor because it
was a very optimistic firm. A lot of people who worked
there, I felt were really tryingto make the world a better place
through business as opposed to work in business and by the way,
make the world a better place. And Monitor was just this

(03:42):
incredibly positive environment.So I accepted their offer to
start there after graduation. But then I also mentioned I was
going to apply to a bunch of scholarships not knowing if I'd
get them. And actually my direct
supervisor, my mentor and Monitor, who's a partner in the
Toronto office, he helped by writing recommendations for

(04:04):
these scholarships. And I, as I said, I got 1.
So I had to go back to him and said, you know, thank you for
the full time offer, but I actually can't accept now
because I got one of these. And he said, well, we're
expanding in Europe and the Amsterdam office could benefit
from you if you're open to it. So I said yes.
And so after I graduated, I I joined the Amsterdam office

(04:29):
knowing that I was going to go to Oxford after a few months.
All right, that's neat. What was it like living in
foreign? I guess you know you did your
school in the US but from being from Canada.
But what was it like living somewhere new like that for such
a short period of time? Well, I need to tell you, Nick,
given that you're on study abroad right now, the benefit

(04:50):
of, you know, seeing the world, it gives you a completely
different perspective, makes youvalue what we have, but also
opens your mind up to how uniqueand different and, and similar
as well people are around the world.
You sort of get all the benefitsof seeing a diversity in the
global sense, the word, not in the American sense, the world,

(05:12):
the word. And it's very empowering
actually. So for me as well, you know, I
was born in India and I grew up in Canada.
So British stuff had been infiltrated into my way of
thinking for a long time and Commonwealth stuff.
And my scholarship was actually the Commonwealth scholarship.

(05:33):
So it was for people from Commonwealth countries and it's
a real, it's a great scholarshipprogram.
It's attracted some great peopleover the years.
And so I felt part of a community which was really
great. But being in the UK and meeting
people from not just the Commonwealth, but all over the
world was incredible. The college I went to at Oxford,
it's called Saint Anthony's College, which is probably one
of the most international colleges as well.

(05:54):
It attracts people who want to study like international
politics, international relations, international
economics. And so the environment is just
very vibrant, like after, after hall, after eating, we'd all go
and get coffee. And we'd be reading like The
Economist, we'd be reading the International Health Tribune,
we'd be reading all these globalpapers.

(06:16):
And you know, the Germans would be reading Der Spiegel.
And we'd be talking about how different papers wrote about the
same topic very differently. And that was my first real
exposure to how media and livingin a bubble might influence the
way people think, which now, of course is how kind of we all

(06:37):
realize that we all live in our own bubble.
So it was a great early experience.
All right. So you mentioned after
finishing, after finishing your bachelor's and then also
finishing your PhD, you're working at Monitor Group.
What was that like? What did you do there?
So I, you know, strategy consulting, you're assigned to
projects. Every two to six months they

(06:57):
change. So I worked on many different
projects. I'll tell you a few at the time,
Monitor had because it was founded by Michael Porter, who's
a professor at Harvard Business School.
I don't know if you've heard of him, but in my day he was a very
big deal professor. His famous book is called
Competitive Advantage, and he had many additional books. 1 is

(07:19):
called Competitive Advantage of Nations.
The five forces model is what he's probably, I'd say one of
the things that he's most known for, but he's done a lot more
than that, of course. And the Competitive Advantage of
Nations was one of the first books to apply, I'll say,
business strategy thinking to the way that nations build a

(07:39):
portfolio of activities to create prosperity and growth.
And it seems so intuitive now, but in those days it was new.
And so this idea of applying a thoughtful way to do industrial
policy without calling an industrial policy was very

(08:00):
intellectually appealing to me, probably because I've been
studying that. So to go back to monitor and be
able to apply some of the thingsthat I learned about, you know,
Wharton, we called it emerging economies.
At Oxford, we called it developing economies, and
they're just nuances of the way that you think about how growth
occurs and how to ensure that growth is for everyone, not just

(08:24):
for the few. And So what Michael Porter had
done with the competitive advantage of nations, he had a
bunch of frameworks that we could apply.
So at Monitor, I worked on projects which were actually not
just for companies but also for countries.
So I worked on like the privatization strategy for a
country or the industrial policyfor a country.
And then at the same time I'd belike staffed on assignment to

(08:46):
tell you one, which is one of myfavorite ones was working for a
a Canadian company that was doing private label chocolate
chip cookies. And I learned, for example, in
that engagement that consumers make decisions, of course, not
just based on brand, but based on other factors and how you

(09:09):
could create a brand from scratch, which was associated
with the retailer, not associated with the product.
So you can bring like for example, President's Choice in
Canada, very famous brand, whichis from the retailer, not based
on the product and applies to many different products.
So I learned about how to how the economics of a consumer

(09:32):
product works based on the brand, based on the
manufacturer, based on the margin of the retailer, based on
all the other factors in the value chain.
And I'd go from back to, you know, doing a strategy for your
telecom privatization. So it was really cool.
I mean, in those days to be ableto toggle between such radically
different things. I don't know if that's as

(09:52):
possible now in consulting with larger firms specializing and
you sort of join a group and youtend to do more of the same
stuff. But at least in those days, I
found the variety was great for me.
Sure. Do you feel like there's been a
certain advantage or some benefits that you've gotten from
starting your career in that way?
I think the world has changed. Let me start by saying that.
So what was true for me 20-30 years ago was no longer true.

(10:15):
But for me, absolutely. I think working in a strategy
consulting firm helped me be a better communicator.
It helped me understand, or at least it built my confidence to
reinforce maybe my intuition forhow things are done in the
business world because I got to be in boardrooms.
One of my clients at the time, Ishould say our clients, because

(10:36):
I was a young guy, was a big Dutch beer company, which will
remain nameless. But I got to be in the
boardroom, in the boardroom for this giant Dutch beer company as
like the only native English speaker.
All the rest were Dutch speakers.
So they switched to English for me, which was just amazing to
sort of see them be that kind and, and generous in being able

(10:59):
to, to sort of toggle back and forth between Dutch and English
for me. And you know, it sort of it
gives you a sense of how business is done and it gives
you a sense of confidence that you can go and be in other
boardrooms and not feel out of place.
And to me, that's one of the bigbenefits of having a job and
consulting. All right, So you said the world

(11:19):
has changed. Do you think that there are you
spend a lot of time working withyoung people or at least leading
an organization that works with young people, which we'll talk
about later. But with this insight, do you
think that there are other careers that for somebody like
my age that kind of give you that same sort of perspective?
Well, I'd say the biggest way the world has changed is

(11:40):
credentials matter less, skills matter more.
So if you can continue to build skills that and I would say
skill set and mindset that allows you to thrive in the
world of today, that is more valuable than adding yet one
more credential to your already impressive resume.

(12:01):
I do think a lot of young peopleintuitively know that, but they
still chase credibility through brands and credibility through
credentials, probably because it's the age and you know, when
you're young, that's it. It's hard to believe that your
skills are going to be valued. I will say though, as somebody
who hires now, I really don't care that much where you went to

(12:24):
university. I care much more about what
people say about working with you, how many environments
you've worked in, how long you've stayed in those
environments, how you built mentors who then would
potentially call me or I'd call as a reference check to make
sure that you know, you are who you, who you say you are and and

(12:44):
you have been able to interact with people well.
So that was, I'd say, much less true in my day where credentials
really got you through life because it was almost a linear
path. You went to certain schools, you
got hired in certain jobs, and then the people who came before
you also went to those schools and had those jobs.
So they ended up wanting to hireyou thereafter.

(13:06):
I think that is much less true now.
Still somewhat true, but much less true now.
And so I tend to remind people of that.
One other big change, Nikki, I think I've probably talked to
you about this in the past, is you're going to have many jobs
and many careers in your life, many more than I've had and

(13:27):
certainly many more than my father and my mother had.
So my father worked for IBM for over 30 years.
He went to engineering school, got hired at IBM, stayed at IBM
for his entire career, basicallyin different geographies, India,
Canada, US. And that career path led to a
certain risk profile, a certain way to communicate, a certain

(13:48):
way to interact with people, certain way to build skills,
which I think have all fundamentally changed if you're
going to have many careers and many jobs.
And if you look at some of the data, at least at least 20
careers and at least, sorry, at least 20 jobs and at least seven
different careers. With that much change where you
went to school in your teens and20s, it's just not going to

(14:09):
matter. By job number 3, it's not going
to matter. So.
The skills you have, the networkyou build, and the mindset you
have to be able to shift will matter way more in the future
than it's mattered in the past. All right.
Thank you for that insight. So after you were working at
Monitor, you left and you founded Circle Lending.

(14:31):
Can you tell me a little bit about how and why you went about
founding? Sure.
So at the World Bank, I'd workedon projects to help understand
the informal financing market. Let's call it peer-to-peer
finances, the newer term for it.But those days it was just
called informal finance. What does that mean?
That means, you know, how do people raise money for their

(14:52):
businesses? Do they go to credit cards?
Do they go to banks Or they go to friends and family and their
social circle? So when you look at that data,
you realize the vast majority ofthe world, the vast majority of
the world borrows money from their social circle for business
or education to fund the acquisition of assets of various

(15:14):
types, even homes, homes, education and intellectual
assets you will fund through your social circle.
So the Internet was just in web one point O land and I I tried
to connect the dots between thatvery human behavior, the
problems that are created from that human behavior and how this

(15:37):
new thing called the Internet could help address that.
So it was the beginning of peer-to-peer London.
So people borrowing money from other people and effectively
using the Internet to manage that transaction Well from
everything from documentation tomoving the money, what we call
loan servicing through credit reporting for loans that go bad

(15:57):
or credit building for loans that go well through to
expanding your circle where it'snot just your parents you go to,
but a broader circle of your social network.
So my business was called CircleLending, which helped create
that market of peer-to-peer lending, which eventually became
known as social finance. We do it.

(16:17):
We did it in a very, very focused and sort of narrow way.
We focused on products which help people buy homes.
The product was called Mortgage master, where you could borrow
money to buy a home. And we do all the tax reporting.
And in those days and still truenow, if you don't formalize the

(16:38):
loan, you can't deduct the interest payments, which in the
US is important because it's actually, you save quite a bit
of money if you deduct your yourhome mortgage interest payments.
So if you borrow money off your parents or from somebody you
know, you can't deduct that against your taxes, the interest
you're paying unless it's a properly managed formalized
loan. So we would help people with

(17:00):
that product. And then we had a product called
Handshake Plus, which was for unsecured loans between people
who know each other. And then we had a product called
Business Builder for start up loans.
And then over time we launched an education loan product, a
reverse mortgage loan product where a retiring parent, an
elderly parent could pass their home to their kids in a very tax

(17:21):
efficient way and generate income in their retired years
without getting a third party involved.
So all the wealth was kept in the family, which is a huge
product. The Wall Street Journal called
it one of the most innovative products of the year.
We won all these awards actuallyin those days for I'll call it
financial product innovation. And we realized that this was
actually a social venture. So this was one of the first

(17:42):
ventures at the time that attracted what is now called
impact investors, but those dayswas called Double bottom line
investors and we were able to get great, great supporters
including an organization calledthe Center for Financial
Services Innovation, CFSI and they invested in US.

(18:04):
It was one of the first deals they did where they put
basically foundation money into a for profit, which is hard to
do and now is more common those days.
It was one of the first transactions.
So it was really great to be part of, I would say the
beginning of this field of double bottom line or social
investing, impact investing and learning the motivations of
different types of investors. And we got sports venture

(18:27):
capital from some great firms and then the company was
acquired in 2006. Would you mind sharing that
number? I don't want to put you on the
spot, but I'm a little curious. How much we required for?
Is that what you mean? Yeah.
But honestly, it's kind of uncool to be sharing how much
your company was acquired for. I just want to.

(18:49):
That's OK, I don't sorry the the.
Part of the zeitgeist of it was a great, it was a great outcome.
It was a great outcome. It let me put it this way, it
was several multiples ahead of arevenue and earnings and all the
investors in the first round, second round and third round of
that time made money who sold toVirgin.
So it was a big win and I may have gotten the dates wrong.

(19:12):
Now I'm I'm screwing up. It was, it might have been 2007.
I can't believe I've actually forgotten.
I think it was May 2007. And now that I think that I want
to make sure I correct, I correct the record.
But it was, you know, it was it was a very complex transaction
because a Virgin wanted to launch their brand in financial

(19:35):
services in the US And so in addition to the acquisition of
stock, they also capitalized thecompany to grow.
So they needed additional capital.
So they allowed some investors who didn't want to sell to stay.
So it was think of it this way. It was a majority kind of

(19:56):
ownership change where they bought out kind of all the early
investors who wanted to sell andthey allowed one of the venture
capital firms to stay in to to ride the upside as well.
So it was a relatively complex transaction to close because we
had to not only sell, but we also had to ensure that, you

(20:18):
know, a couple of the key investors chose to stay and it
all worked out. But it was, it wasn't, it wasn't
like a let's close in a week. It was in a, it was a, you know,
three month process of making sure that we had full
transparency to all of our stakeholders who who may have
wanted to not sell by virtue of having the chance to work with
Richard Branson and invest in his companies.

(20:40):
One thing Richard does really well, really well is he's built
a brand that people want to be associated with.
So when he comes along and buys your company, there's some
people who are like, well, if I get to stay, I want to be with
Richard. Like he just has this ability to
attract the brand. Virgin and Richard Branson have
built the ability to attract customers, employees and

(21:03):
investors. And it's amazing, amazing to
watch how the same company, literally the same people, the
same company went from being called Circle Lending to be
called Virgin Money and how it just changed our prospects for
attracting. We grew 4X in one year, 4X in
one year just by virtue of the brand changing.
Of course, all the attention we got around the acquisition

(21:24):
probably helped. We blocked off copy Square in
Boston and did a launch event and we did some cool things.
But it just shows me, it showed me, it educated me about the
power of brand, which I intuitively maybe thought about,
but I never really lived throughand living through it is, is is
very different than intellectually sort of thinking
about it. Sure.

(21:45):
I'll apologize. Did not mean to to cross the
line very. Good question.
Ask me a question. I'll just tell you if I don't
want to answer, OK. OK, then that's perfect.
All right then. So what's your Social Security
number? OK, next question.
So what do you think was the biggest lesson that you learned
through going through this wholeprocess found your company I
might be acquired all of that I.Mean there's so many lessons you

(22:05):
learn in the process of buildinganything.
I'll just pick a couple of them might be relevant for this
conversation One is people. It's all about people and how
you treat people. And there's some people I think
I treated really well and I'm really proud of that.
There's some who I realized in retrospect, man, I wish I'd done
it differently. And many of my regrets are
actually about relationships andhow you realize as you get

(22:26):
older, how important relationships are and how it's
very easy in the moment to prioritize, you know, either one
group over another group or one initiative or one goal.
And in the end, what it always comes down to is, you know,
being able to do your best to treat people really well who've

(22:47):
worked with you. And it's tough.
I'll, I'll just tell you a couple of stories in the
acquisition like, you know, whenyou're being acquired, you've
got effectively a new set of bosses.
You've gone from having, you know, your early investors and
shareholders who have a board who you feel you report to and
are accountable to to a corporate sort of group that
overseas you. And of course, a corporate

(23:08):
group's going to exercise their control and want you to make
certain decisions about who to keep, who not to keep, who to
promote, how to change things. You're going to have opinions.
And one other thing you realize in these large organizations is
those opinions aren't consistent.
So one person thinks in one group is different than what
somebody else in a different group in the same corporation

(23:30):
thinks. And I was so young and naive.
I was in my early 30s when I sold.
I just honestly didn't know whatI didn't know.
And in retrospect, I think I would probably have not not
taken the advice of so many different people from the
acquirer. It probably stuck with my own

(23:52):
views a little bit more. I think I was, I wanted to
listen. I wanted to obviously impress
them. They just bought my company.
I wanted to, I felt I was learning from them.
So I was like, you know, taking their advice on everything.
And I think some of my regrets are, geez, I should probably
have just said, here's what I believe.
Here's why I believe it. I hear you loud and clear.
And I, you know, I'm happy to have a debate with you about

(24:13):
who's right. But I think I just assumed they
were right a little bit too muchthat that.
That's all my regrets. All right.
And was that so after the company was acquired, you served
as the CEO for two years, was that a con?
Not, I don't want to say a constant fight, I don't want to
make it sound negative, but was that something that you were
kind of dealing with as you now are?

(24:33):
It was a crazy time, Nick. It was, it was the the roller.
You know, I've gone through a lot of trials and tribulations
in my life. But those two years, the first
year was incredible. OK, the US had not hit the 2008
recession yet, so companies bought, say, 2007.
We're growing, growing, growing.1st 12 months even.

(24:54):
I would say we're just gangbusters.
Amazing. OK, hitting every target.
Making plans to launch a studentloan, a Virgin branded student
loan. So any young person in America
could finance your education with a Virgin branded student
loan. Launching an entrepreneur loan,
right, America's first business loan for entrepreneurs obviously

(25:15):
scored properly with some bells and whistles about friends and
family money hearing the loan had some kind of unique flavors
to it. Launching a mortgage for first
time home buyers where you couldget money from friends and
family and you could get money from us and be able to get a
more affordable mortgage with more flexible terms than any
other lender in the US. So really innovative products.

(25:37):
OK, All three journals writing great articles about us, the
cover of American Banker, like you can imagine, it was just, it
was amazing. Then the recession hit.
Then we're in the middle of a credit crunch and Virgin is a
brand, right? We have no real bank behind us
in those days that gives us depositor money to lend.

(25:59):
So we're a brand, we lend other people's money, and we have a
website that intermediates between people to create
economic value. And so when you're in a credit
crunch, in a recession, I'm not sure if you've lived through a
recession, Nick, but if you've lived through a recession that
is a credit crunch, it means that people stop lending.

(26:20):
So if you're a brand that attracts leads, and we were very
good at attracting leads, we were very, very good at
marketing. So we had thousands, thousands,
hundreds of thousands of leads and we couldn't now have a
warehouse line, as they're called to fund those loans.
And we were planning to launch, as I said, a student loan, a
business loan and a mortgage. So a week before, we'd already

(26:44):
taken out the ads in the Wall Street Journal.
In fact, I remember one of the ads.
It was, it was, you know, virgin, tongue in cheek, very
suggestive, looking for a threesome.
Was the ad OK? Because it was fun to say that
the, you know, the bank, you as a borrower and your friends and
family, which would create a better economic value for
everyone buying a home. So clever ads and we, we had to

(27:09):
pull the plug a week before and because Bear Stearns went under
and this is before Lehman Brothers.
So, and then Lehman Brothers, you know, a few months later
went under and the US was entering a period of giant
uncertainty. And giant uncertainty,

(27:32):
particularly during a credit crunch period, means a marketer
who attracts leads cannot fund those leads.
So in other words, you can't actually make money anymore
because you make money based on the margin of what people pay
and what you're borrowing at. And so it was a very difficult

(27:53):
time, partly because Virgin alsowanted to grow.
Virgin wanted us to launch theseproducts.
Richard even called me and said we've got to launch these
products. So it was, it was a crazy time.
I learned a lot from the process.
We ended up buying a bank. We meaning Virgin Corporate

(28:16):
bought a bank. But I got to be part of the, I
would say, early stage conversations to reformulate
Virgin Money into a bank. And Jane Ann Gaudia, who's a
really prominent businesswoman in the UK, came on board as a
chair of Virgin Money globally. And she became chair of our
board. And she, you know, really wanted

(28:40):
to transform the organization, which in retrospect was a, you
know, a smart decision for Virgin, not as smart a decision
obviously for the US operation, which wasn't a bank.
And we decided not to buy a bankin the US.
We decided to buy a bank in the UK for a number of potentially
very obvious reasons, given where Virgin's brand is strong.
So Virgin bought Northern Rock and the whole company, of

(29:03):
course, changed overnight to becoming a regulated bank.
So, so that's why I said it was a very tumultuous time.
Year 1 was great. Year 2 was complex and, and for
me, it was a chance for me to frankly learn the real meat, the

(29:24):
real meat of financial, you know, like how, how, how banks
make money, how marketers make money, how warehouse lines make
money, how, how each element of the value chain is able to
generate a margin and how consumers sometimes win and
sometimes don't win. So for me, incredible education
and what I ended up doing next. I can Fast forward a little bit

(29:45):
if you'd like into what I did next, but it allowed me to sort
of see the consumer balance sheet of the consumer balance
sheet. Think of it this way, there's
assets and liabilities, right? So liabilities are, you know
when you're in debt and assets are the money you have in the

(30:07):
bank, the money you have in yourinvestments.
And I actually, one day I did a slide where just for my own
edification, I looked at all theproducts that people buy,
financial products, whether they're loans like mortgages or
credit card debt or, you know, investments they make and, you
know, money they have in the bank.

(30:28):
And I figured out how much moneyeach supplier of those products
was making, how much margin theymade, because I, I was
intellectually interested in it.And I also thought at the time
when I was running Virgin, we could play in both sides of the
balance sheet if we thought carefully about it.
And I think what it revealed forme is on the lending side, on

(30:55):
the liability side of the balance sheet where consumers
are borrowing money, the companies that provide those
products make so much because the margins are so high.
But on the other side of the balance sheet where consumers
are giving you money to hold in a bank account or for
investments, the margins are slower.

(31:20):
But the disruption hadn't happened yet.
The disruption because of the Internet had already happened on
the lending side of the balance sheet because their margins were
bigger. So there's more money basically
to save the consumer by a third party like Virgin Money coming
in and saying we're going to do this for less margin.
Does that make sense? So my next business, which I'll

(31:43):
Fast forward to is Covester was on the investment side, the
asset side of the consumer balance sheet where there's
lower margin, but nobody had been disrupting these products
before. So I can tell you what we did if
you'd like, but it was just a sort of, you know, frame in my
own mind. I came to realize that I could

(32:08):
add value on both sides of the consumer balance sheet after
thinking about it that way all. Right before we talk about what
exactly you were doing, I do want to ask, was there a
definitive moment that led you to leave Virgin Money or was
there something that what what happened?
Yeah, sure. So I've been there two years and

(32:32):
you know, Virgin was becoming a bank so it made sense.
It was around my 2 year anniversary almost exactly that,
you know, I was not going to be able to move to the UK and
basically want to join corporate.
And what we were doing in the USwas clearly not going to be part
of their going forward strategy.So it really made sense for the

(32:53):
founder of the organization, theCEO, to step aside and the
company, a year and a half laterwhen the bank deal went through,
they decided to to sell the original loans, the person to
person loans to Greystone, whichis another company, and they
decided to not be in the mortgage business anymore.
We'd enter the mortgage businessby acquiring the assets of a

(33:16):
company called Lendia. And they sold that company back
to the founder a year and a halfafter I left.
So I could just kind of see the writing on the wall that this
was going to change. So it made sense for me to be
fun. Sure.
What's that like having a like this thing that you built, now
you have somebody? It was crazy.
I mean, so because we've gone through this period of a

(33:42):
recession for a year and becausea year before that we've added
all these new products, the original business of Circle
lending was a relatively small share of the entire portfolio of
things that we were doing or planning to do.
So in my mind, the Circle endingpiece, which obviously I've
founded and I had a lot of emotional attachment to was part

(34:05):
of in my mind, the the thing I was most nervous or I guess
protective of leaving behind as I left.
But I honestly by then it's likehaving multiple children, right?
You sort of. I had many other things that I

(34:25):
also cared about. And I also cared about the new
products we launched. And but, you know, when you're
in a corporation and you're alsonegotiating to buy a bank and
you're, you know, meeting with investment bankers about this,
this is like a massive deal. It's over a billion dollars.
It was a massive deal. And you start to get excited is
one word, also anticipatory and you start thinking about what

(34:48):
can be right. And for me, I sort of, I'd say I
moved past the emotional attachment to the company I
founded about a year into my jobthere.
But clearly, I mean a year and ahalf afterwards when they, when
it sold to another company, which I anticipated would
happen, you know, it was obviously very disappointing

(35:09):
from a legacy standpoint. You build something you wanted,
right? And that was the first
experience I had and I've had many, many since by the way, of
seeing a product that's working get shut down or get transferred
or moved because of corporate strategy.
And it's actually very challenging, particularly for

(35:31):
young people, I will say, who work on things who get, you
know, I, I, I, I have the benefit of my job now of working
a lot of young people. And one of the things that
really motivates young people isthe creative energy of building
something. And it is very challenging and
disappointing when the thing you've spent months, weeks,

(35:53):
maybe even years building gets either transformed, renamed or
transferred or shut down. And it happens all the time.
In fact, it will happen even more given AI and given all the
trends of the rapid change we'reall living through.
The idea of something you've worked on having permanence

(36:15):
beyond even five years is rare. Rare and.
Will be increasingly rare. So I think that's one of the
complexities of certainly running a technology company,
but running any type of company where you spend your heart and
soul building something that is going to get transformed or
morphed into something else by other people.

(36:38):
We have to become better as leaders at helping have a sense
of closure so people can move onor even starting to celebrate
when things move on to their next life.
So it is great that Virgin Moneycontinued to thrive and bought a
bank and then got acquired againyears later with another exit.

(36:59):
I mean, literally it is a good thing, not a bad thing.
But people who worked on a period of time during that
journey will of course reflect on it and look at like their own
contribution on that journey. And I think one job of great
leaders is to help people make sense and feel appreciated and

(37:20):
feel grateful and maybe even feel happy for their role in
these journeys. And it's very, very hard, I
think, for younger people who don't have the benefit of the
perspective of sitting, you know, at 10,000 feet and looking
down upon themselves in their roles, to look at it that way

(37:41):
'cause they're so focused on their contribution.
And of course, we all have ego, right?
I, of course have the ego of being a founder and wanting to
see the thing I created last. But then you start to realize
that that's really not what it'sabout, right?
It's like, is what you're doing either way you spend your time
helping people or not? That's a nicer framing in your
mind. As you get more into a

(38:04):
leadership role, you start to care more about not just the
products you build, but the people whose careers you help.
And you get so much satisfaction.
So much. At least I get so much more
satisfaction now about mentoringgreat leaders and making sure
they have successful careers. Then I get out of building
another good product all. Right.

(38:26):
When do you think that transition was for you?
Oh, I think I've had a few sort of different leadership roles
and for each leadership role I think there's a bit of a
transition for me. So when I was running server
lending and I was a founder, theway decisions get made in that
circumstance are very much around what the founder wants
just by virtue of you're the majority owner in those days and

(38:46):
you know, you have the vision. So people are like waiting for
you to decide. Then in my next company, which I
haven't talked a bit about, where I was CEO of Covester, I
was hired by the venture capitalfirms to run the business.
So I wasn't the founder. I had extremely smart colleagues

(39:09):
who had different roles in the company.
Even though I was CEOI felt thatmy job as leader was to get the
best idea out of the group. So let's all listen to each
other's points of view. Let's sit and debate it.
You know, red team, blue team will do what we have to do and
figure out the best way forward.In my current role at Junior
Achievement, where I've been forover a decade now, it's a very

(39:29):
big global organization and my role as leader is not
necessarily to have the right idea.
It's not necessarily to even letpeople talk amongst themselves
and figure out which is the bestidea.
It's to empower all the nationalleaders and regional leaders and
other staff to really be able toaccomplish their goals and to

(39:51):
remove obstacles in their way and to provide meaning and a
vision and a set of values that we all want to be associated
with. Like, like in many ways, like
Richard did for Virgin. Having a brand that people want
to be associated with the J Worldwide.
The part of the organization that I'm leading, it owns the
brand of Junior Achievement. So we're trying to build a brand
that people want to be associated with, whether they're

(40:13):
young people or whether they're board members.
We have over 6000 board members in our organization.
A corporate volunteer. We have 250,000 corporate
volunteers and about the same number of teachers around the
world. So it's a very, very big global
community. And I see my job is very much
creating a set of brand values and a set of business practices

(40:35):
and projects and strategies thatpeople want to be associated
with. And that's a very different way
to think about leadership than trying to have the best idea or
get the best idea from a group of people.
So I'm not sure if I answered your question, Nick, but that's
sort of the arc of the journey that where I've realized, you
know, my role is different basedon what kind of organization I'm

(40:56):
leading. Yeah, that did answer my
question. So let's talk about Covester
then. What's it like now you're being
brought in by that venture capital firm to be the new
person in charge versus the contrast of where you're at with
circle lending of being the founder.
How is that transition for you? So it was very different.

(41:17):
I had this amazing situation where I was at Thomson Reuters
before. I skipped that part a little
bit, but I'll, I'll Fast forwarda little bit.
I was leading new media for Thomson Reuters and realizing
that the media landscape is completely changing, the way
people interact with news is changing.
And Thomson Reuters had assets such as Lipper, which competes
with Morningstar. Just to give you an example of

(41:38):
one of the many assets, Thomson big Financial company merged
with Reuters big media company, bring them together, lots of
opportunity. That's the big version of the
story. And I had a chance to look at
ways to modernize the organization based on the great
technology teams that we had andthe product lines that we had

(42:00):
and how consumer behavior is changing.
So all these things are happening at the same time after
a big merger and this small company called Covester enters
my radar and this company was doing really creative things.
It'll add, first of all, full democratization of money
management. This is now the where I talked
about the consumer balance sheet.

(42:20):
This is the assets of the consumer of the consumer balance
sheet. People make investments, they
own assets, right? So now people are making
investments and they're no longer going to the Wall Street
Journal and looking at the the mutual fund rating that Lipper
or Morningstar has and making a decision like that.
They're going on the Internet and they're searching for either

(42:41):
stocks or money managers. They're looking for reviews.
They're looking for sort of wisdom and knowledge news which
helps them guide their decisions.
OK? Covester had built a online
community where anyone in the world could become a top money
manager by showcasing what they were buying and their portfolio

(43:03):
and why they were buying it. OK, so you don't have to only go
to the top top person at Fidelity and say this person
knows more than anyone else about what stocks to buy or what
investments to make here. You can go online and basically
search for the best talent, which could be, you know, in
your bedroom in, in, in Slovakia, or it could be

(43:26):
anywhere. So, and as you know, I'm sure
you know, this talent is everywhere and opportunity is
not. Yeah.
So this is true democratization of investment talent.
And so I felt this was an asset that had a lot of untapped value
and I was looking for ways to grow the business.

(43:51):
And I was brought in by the venture capital firm to run it,
the venture capital firms to runit.
And it was acquired four years later by Interactive Brokers.
And the reason Interactive Brokers bought us is Interactive
Brokers was our transaction engine, our broker that did the
transactions, we built technology to replicate in real
time the trades that these investors were making.

(44:11):
So if you're sitting somewhere in the world and you're making
trades, our technology replicated in real time what
those trades are. So anyone could basically follow
your portfolio. But one insight we had is, you
know, people like you, Nick, maynot want to follow the portfolio
of some random person in some part of the world.
So we needed to create an interface that made you get the

(44:31):
benefit of their wisdom, but also protect your assets.
So we were licensed as a registered investment advisor.
That's one of the things which when I joined, we did in the US
and we built what's called a separately management, a
separately managed accounts marketplace, SMA marketplace,
which is fancy way to stay. The money could stay in your
account, Nick. So it was your brokerage

(44:51):
account, your money, but you would give the right effectively
to an advisor us be able to execute trades with your money.
So you don't have to send us themoney.
You could sort of keep the moneyin your own Interactive Brokers
account that you controlled, butyou gave us the right to execute
a strategy that somebody else around the world was doing.
This was a very radical concept because it could disintermediate

(45:17):
the financial advisor completely.
You wouldn't have to go to your financial advisor, Fidelity
anymore to go look for the strategies.
You could on your own, pick themon our marketplace, pick this
one, that one and that one. And then a month later change
your mind and say, you know, I don't like those ones.
I like these ones instead. And you can see very
transparently what people are buying, what their educational
background is, what their fees are.
We split the fee 5050 in the marketplace, which is very

(45:40):
transparent. So you also knew how how much we
were getting paid. We just brought, like, radical
transparency to a very opaque part of the consumer balance
sheet, which is investments. And, you know, there's a reason
why companies like Fidelity havegiant offices in Boston and in
Rhode Island because they actually generate a lot of

(46:01):
margin. You may not know that because,
of course, you're just, you know, choosing to give them your
money and saying please manage it for me.
But there is a lot of margin built into those businesses.
So we were looking for ways to make the consumer win through
more transparency. All right, that's awesome.
OK, I almost don't want to, but I think we're gonna have to.

(46:24):
So after spending most of your career really radical, like
radically changing the way that people deal with money and
democratizing it in really fascinating ways, you join
Junior Achievement Worldwide, which is a non profit one.
Could you talk a little bit about what they do?
IA lot of people know Junior Achievement just cover our
bases. And then how you why you made

(46:47):
the decision to pivot to this nonprofit organization?
Yeah, no, it's a great question when I've had to answer many
times, as you can imagine. So I I got connected to Junior
Achievement by one of the largest funders of the
organization where I'd served ona board with her and she runs a

(47:08):
large foundation and she when when Co Foster was being
acquired by Interactive Brokers,she said to me, why don't you
look at this opportunity? I think you're perfect for it.
And so I looked into it and I met some of the members of the
board and I was so impressed with the organization.
To be honest. I knew Junior Achievement like a
student would. I went through JA when I was 14

(47:30):
years old, my first experience with entrepreneurship.
I looked at it from that angle. I didn't look at it from the
angle of, you know, management and leadership of this
organization. So when I switched, I guess the
the side of the prism I was looking through, I got to see
the organization in a different light, just to keep with the

(47:52):
metaphor, almost like a rainbow,right?
So I saw the incredible diversity of this global
organization. I got more and more curious, and
then I would say enamored and then passionate about the
organization. And let me explain what we do.

(48:14):
So we deliver programs, learningexperiences to young people all
over the world, over 100 countries.
We deliver these learning experiences typically in schools
and typically to youth from elementary school through to
College in that wide range depending on the country.
We're probably most known for our high school programs, but we

(48:37):
have programs starting in elementary school all the way
through to mid 20s. And those educational programs,
as educational experiences, havea number of things in common.
One thing they have in common isthey're all about learning by
doing. So we're not an organization
that's about sort of didactic teaching.
We're an organization that's about really experiential

(48:59):
learning. And this organization was one
of, if not the first organization founded in 1919 to
bring, for example, experientialentrepreneurship learning to
schools. So we're like a pioneering
organization as well, which has some benefits and also has some
complexity because when you're trying to make some change, it's
obviously hard when you've got all this resident history.

(49:21):
Having said that, this organization has different
brands as well around the world.So Junior Achievement is our
global brand JA and we license that brand to different national
offices around the world. And we've grown through
acquisition over the years and we've expanded to new, new
markets and we've translated theword achievement in different
languages. So we've got a bunch of

(49:42):
different brands in the Middle East.
We're known as in Jazz, which isachievement in Arabic.
So you right now are in UAE, right.
So our brand there is in Jazz UAE, mainly in Dubai, but I
think in the other Emirates as well.
And our brand in the UK for those of your listeners who are

(50:04):
in the UK, our brand is Young Enterprise, which has been in
the UK for over 60 years and is a, you know, well known
institution. So we reach more young people
than any other youth serving organization on the planet in
schools, delivering programs in entrepreneurship, financial
literacy and work readiness. So these are three big areas.

(50:26):
So it's this incredible distribution network to
communicate messages and to helpbuild the right skill set and
mindset for young people to thrive in the workforce of the
future, which I have just realized is one of the most
valuable assets in the world. Like to be able to reach young
people at scale is an incredible, incredible thing.

(50:47):
So we partnered with 70% of the Fortune 200, many of the largest
companies on earth and organizations on earth to build
deep partnerships to build educational programs to help
basically get young people readyfor the workforce of the future.
It's in everyone's interest to do this.
It's an organization that appeals to people across the
political divide. It's an organization that
appeals to people in, in different types of regimes

(51:10):
around the world. So we operate in India and
Pakistan and China and the US in, in Ukraine.
And we, we have been in the in Russia in the past for many
years. So we do our best to deliver
programs that are helping youth be ready for the future and we

(51:33):
do it in partnership with schoolsystems.
So it's a really amazing, energizing organization.
That's awesome. Part of I have to imagine that
being the leader of an organization like that,
fundraising is a large part of what you do as just by the
nature of the organization, I'm assuming.

(51:53):
How would were there skills thatyou brought in from your
founding days to kind of help out with the the money side of
things? Yeah, I mean, certainly one
reason I felt I could add value in this job is I'd had a lot of
experience with fundraising fromdifferent groups of people in my
first business. It was from Angel investors,
people like Jeff Bezos, and then, you know, overtime from

(52:17):
venture capital firms and familyoffices and then over time from
banks. As I said, we we went into
lending business. And so I sort of had enough set
sets of experiences with raisingmoney from different personality
types and parts of the world that I felt I could add value in
that way. The one thing I realized, Nick,
is that is a much smaller part of my job than I thought I

(52:41):
assumed. Bit like you do.
You run a nonprofit, you've got to raise money.
That's a big part of your job. The great thing is in our
organization, I have many, many colleagues, many leaders around
the world who are very, very good at that.
So it is part of my job. And certainly at the global
level with the global funders that is, I certainly collaborate
with with people on my team to do that.

(53:02):
But it's not the whole job by any stretch of the imagination.
And I would say it's a decliningpart of my job as I've gotten
great people and the brand becomes more and more appealing
for funders. It's the part of my job that I
think is perhaps even sort of more top of mind for me now is

(53:23):
empowering other people to succeed and to removing
obstacles in their way. So like almost everyone has a
project they're working on that they're passionate about.
And how do you navigate a big global, complex organization?
To make sure that project succeeds requires everyone
getting along, supporting each other, building a culture where
we're supportive, not just blocking each other for, you

(53:45):
know, the usual reason sometimespeople might block each other.
That to me is a bigger part of my job all.
Right, Very nice. What are some of the highs and
lows of leading a nonprofit? Highs and lows, Nick, My
goodness. I mean, the highs are you get to

(54:09):
interact with young people. We're achievement oriented,
which is incredibly empowering. I mean, you get to they bring me
energy when I go and meet, for example, I was just a judge for
a student competition of of young entrepreneurs in high
school. You get to see these amazing
pictures and you know, you're like this, this kid's going to
go so far. Like almost like, how can I
support him now, you know, or support her now or and I get to

(54:31):
see young people going through transformations where before
they go through our programs, you know, I tell the story of
these, these girls were 14 yearsold and they like the daughters
of like rickshaw drivers. And I got to see them meet this
female executive of GE and she talked about what she does for a

(54:54):
living. And every girl wanted to be her.
And just seeing them go from sort of not knowing this thing
existed to knowing this thing existed and now aspiring to be
like this person. Because of course, you know,
your, your dad's a rickshaw driver, your mom's a rickshaw
driver. Your friends are going to be or
your parents friends are going to be the only role models you
have for what's possible. That and maybe social media.

(55:14):
So now seeing somebody who kind of went to your school and now
works for GE is like transformational for these young
girls. They're like, oh, I could be
that. I had no idea.
I could be that. And seeing part of these moments
is some of the highs or the goodparts of the job, the lows of
the job. You know, I think like any job,

(55:35):
you're going to have to deal with obstacles and challenges.
Those challenges usually fall into one or two categories.
It's people, stuff. People don't get along.
They need somebody to intervene.They need somebody to build
cohesion around. Whatever is a source of
disagreement and I get pulled into it, or there's something
geopolitical or something institutional needs to be fixed.

(55:55):
And right now we're living through this very complex set of
a changing world. And the good news is I think JA
will thrive in this changing world, but it requires, you
know, adjustment and thinking and, and communicating with
people who a year ago might havethought something else and now
have changed their point of view.
So you have to just always be listening and navigating.

(56:16):
All right, I want to pivot kind of hard right now.
I want to talk about your book. So about a year ago your book
Modern Achievement was published.
Could you talk a little bit about that and what some of your
motivation was for writing and publishing a book?
So it's just been an incredibly fun experience and I like to

(56:38):
start my comments by the book bysaying, Nick, you too could
write a book. A lot of people think book
writing is this like hard to do,very difficult and daunting
task. Tell you, that's what I thought
too, and it's much easier than you think.
So let me start by saying that. OK, ChatGPT helps.

(56:59):
I'm assuming I'm joking, sorry. Continue.
No, I imagine that I'm really glad you said that because my
book was written right before ChatGPT came out.
OK, OK. Clearly, if ChatGPT had existed,
there's no doubt, no doubt that at the very least I would have
used it to enhance what we wrote.
But because it came out right before, I think we didn't have

(57:21):
that either crutch or luxury, depending on your point of view.
So the book is organized into 30lessons, 30 lessons for aspiring
leaders. And the reason we did that is I
I say we because it's co-authored with Marshall
Goldsmith. Marshall is this incredibly
amazing, generous and famous sort of business pioneer, I'll

(57:45):
call him, which is he's an author of over 30 bestsellers,
including some New York Times bestsellers, and he is #1 ranked
in the Thinkers 50 group of leading management thinkers in
the world, was a former Dartmouth professor, amongst
other accomplishments. He's the father of executive
coaching. He's probably most known for

(58:06):
bringing this new field called executive coaching in the world
and being the biggest proponent of the benefits of executive
coaching. So I've gone to know him over
the years and we decided to do abook together.
And I can tell you the circumstance of that if you're,
if you're interested, But the, the purpose of the book really
was to help next generation aspiring leaders have the

(58:28):
clarity of these lessons to navigate a world where you're
going to have multiple jobs and multiple careers where the even
the idea of achievement, which in the old days most books about
achievement were about long termgoal setting, writing down your
long term goal, visualizing it and the world would help it
happen, right? That's the classic achievement
book of the past. If you're going to have multiple

(58:49):
goals and multiple careers, thatlong term goal setting approach
isn't the best way to both define achievement and also to
gain satisfaction and, and to achieve the things you want in
life. So we, we basically have created
a framework for how to do that and we've gotten great
contributors to the book to telltheir stories, to bring some of

(59:11):
these lessons to life all. Right.
So the framework that you just mentioned is fixed flexible
freestyle, correct? It is.
You've read the book like well done.
Well, I'm gonna be completely honest with you, I have not, but
I got some key points from it. Oh, OK.
Unfortunately. To hear something online.
To get a book summary. No, yeah, there are reviews.
There are reviews. So I was able to use look at

(59:32):
some reviews and such, but I do own a copy but I have not read
it unfortunately. Sorry to share, but I am curious
how you've used this framework that you described in this book,
Fixed flexible freestyle in yourown career and how has that
changed for you and how have yougrown into that and kind of
seeing it this way? Yeah.
So what's nice about this framework is really simple.

(59:53):
There's some things that are fixed that don't change.
There's some things that are flexible that change based on
time and place. You know, where you are in your
career, where you live in the world, what you do.
And then there are things which are freestyle, which are things
which are think of them as unique to you based on your

(01:00:14):
strengths. Like lessons that maybe won't be
relevant for somebody else in the world, but are relevant for
you based on your own strengths and weaknesses.
So that's the framework and we use it.
A Junior Achievement. So how I've used it, I'll give
you 1 very practical example. At Junior Achievement, when I
joined, you know, leading a large complex organization, we

(01:00:37):
needed something to be able to help people who, no matter where
they lived in the world to make sense of our strategy.
For example, So Fix Flexible Freestyle helped us create a
very simple framework with language that can be used by
anyone to figure out what is globally fixed.
For example, things like our brand, what changes based on

(01:00:58):
time and place, flexible. So for example, our programs,
our educational programs in Europe versus Africa have to be
different. In Africa we, you know, 70% of
youth are out of school. So our programs include out of
school youth programs, digital programs as well.
Well in Europe we primarily reach kids in school.
So and of course we help with with Ukrainian refugees in

(01:01:20):
Europe. So we have a program focused on
translating some of our programsto Ukrainian, no matter where
the Ukrainian refugees have moved to in Europe.
That's an example of something that's relevant for Europe, but
may not be as relevant for, for Africa, Right.
And then from style, things are completely locally developed
based on the strengths and weaknesses and capabilities of
local offices, local teams, local people.

(01:01:41):
So that was a way in which fixedflexible freestyle was applied.
Very real in a very real way in the recent past of my life,
going back to my early career, which is kind of, you know, kind
of where you are in your life, Nick.
Of course, I didn't have the benefit of thinking this
framework, but I definitely would say there were some fixed
values, fixed principles, fixed ways I had to think about my

(01:02:04):
career, things like the purpose I had, things like in my early
career, you know, I talked aboutempowering people and I talked
about understand the consumer balance sheet, like things which
are relatively fixed in the way I made decisions.
And then I would say so many things would vary based on time
and place. And when people told me a

(01:02:25):
lesson, I needed some way to figure out if this is something
that's a lesson that's going to be true for the rest of my life,
or it's something that's only relevant for this moment of my
life, kind of where I am right now.
And then Freestyle was very muchabout design thinking, right?
So how do you design the life you love?
How do you actually have enough adaptability to change based on

(01:02:48):
where the world is headed? So that's why the framework has
been popular. That's why I think the book has
done reasonably well. We've got translations now in
many different languages. The book just launched the
India. It's kind of cool to see the
book in bookstores across India because of course, I was born
there, so it gives me even more satisfaction to see the ability
to impact people there. So it's been just a really great

(01:03:10):
journey. It's writing a book,
particularly with Marshall, has been a very, very positive
experience. All right, that's incredible.
Thank you so much for sharing everything.
Do you have any pieces of advicethat you'd like to give to
anybody who's looking to take control of the career, their
career and making it what they want?
Well, Nick, I'm going to focus on advice for people your age,

(01:03:31):
OK, in your in your early 20s, is that right, 20?
Yes, correct. Yes.
OK, so one of the lessons in thebook is to make friends 5 to 10
years older than you. OK, I'm guessing most of your
friends, Nick, are your age or thereabouts.

(01:03:52):
Correct. And if you're going to have
multiple careers and multiple jobs and go through many career
transitions, you're going to have to build your network.
And while it's great to know people my age, it's even better
to know people who are 5 to 10 years older than you because
they will be your role models. They will be your mentors.

(01:04:12):
They will help introduce you to job opportunities.
They will just help you be readyfor some of the changes that are
coming before they come to you. And I think most people,
particularly your age, don't haven't thought about that
because of course, why would you?
You're sort of focused on your own social network and your own
friend groups, but it's so important.
And if I think of the people who've been most influential in

(01:04:34):
my life, it's those people who are just a little bit ahead of
me who helped me navigate choices.
Like I mentioned, even going to visit a friend when I was in
school who was at Oxford, and I didn't know you could even go to
Oxford. I didn't know you could apply to
scholarships. And I would never have known
that if I hadn't gone to meet him.
My parents might have intuitively told me that, but I
wouldn't have thought about it the same way without going and

(01:04:57):
seeing and meeting him. And then even later in my life
with, with raising money, you know, I learned so much from
people who'd gone before me bothto raise money for startups, but
then even to to raise money for from philanthropy.
So having those mentors, role models and people just a little
bit ahead of you, I think is worth prioritizing.

(01:05:19):
All right. Well, thank you so much.
I don't have any questions for you.
It's been an incredible conversation.
I'm going to be sure to share your book.
I don't think you need any of myhelp promoting it, but I'll
certainly do my. Like I need you to read the
book, you have a copy of the book.
Like literally every chapter is 5 pages long.
So you have no excuse for the I'm too busy thing.

(01:05:40):
Just open up to a random chapter, pick a lesson, tell me
your favorite one, text me afterwards and say I really like
this lesson. I hadn't thought about it or I
can't believe this lesson. I disagree completely.
I'm I'm happy for that kind of feedback.
OK all. Right.
That sounds great. All right.
Thank you so much, Ashish. It's been a true pleasure all.
Right. Thanks, Nate.
Enjoy I. Hope you enjoyed the episode.
If you have any thoughts, feedback or just want to say hi,

(01:06:02):
shoot me an e-mail at [e-mail].
If you like the show, leave a review, give us a follow and
subscribe. You can find links to our
website, socials and the link tobuy Modern Achievement in the
description below. I'm looking forward to seeing
you next week.