264. Raising $1bn in Debt and 20,000 Reviews with 4.9 Rating w/ Asesh Sarkar | Salary Finance

0:00Amardeep Parmar:So across both the UK and US businesses, we reach about 20 million employees. Helpfully, both companies have just become profitable. We've raised 125 million in equity, a billion in debt. If you look at our trust pilot, we have over 20 ,000 reviews, 4.9 out of 5. But the term Lifesaver is used over a thousand times. That's Asesh Sarkar, co-founder and CEO of Salary Finance and board member of BayH2. What it's been able to build is incredible, but it's come with costs along the way. You know, kind of since we last spoke, I had alopecia because of stress, it's now gone. You just have to kind of go through those times, it's just kind of part of it.

0:38It's not about going from A to B as quickly as possible. And then when you do that, a key part of it is survival. Okay, focus on what matters, focus less on what doesn't matter. Definitely do things kind of health-wise, you can't get that back. SS sees entrepreneurship as a way to make positive societal change, as he outlines in his book, Common Good Capitalism. My aim is to create like a multi-generational business, basically a business that kind of really changes financial services for the good. So I chair a charity called Money Ready, called MyPank, Kawaniko, just rebranded. So charity focuses on financial education in everyday schools.

1:17that we reduced our homelessness to 2 % instead of 50. Yeah, kind of being relatively sanguine to it or logical around what the right structure is and there are other types of structures as well, but being very impact-focused, very research-backed.

1:35Amardeep Parmar:So, Asesh, great to have you back here again, 200 episodes later. So if anybody hasn't heard your origin story, go to episode 46. But tell us what's been happening since. So when I think you came on last time, it was quite soon after the merger. So can you tell people what happened to the merger? How's it been going? Yeah, very much. So we've got two businesses, a business in the UK, a salary finance business in the FinFit US. We both do the same thing, financial services through the workplace. I think when we last met, we had a merger in the US and then we were two years post a merger in the UK or a buyout in the UK as well.

2:14I would say at that time, you know, there's a lot of excitement about mergers and so on, acquisitions, M &A in general. The reality is the work starts after it. There were various scaling challenges. I kind of, as I was actually thinking when I met you, we were in the midst of some of those challenges. You know, I've been in entrepreneurship for now 10 years. As you learn, one of the big skills is just staying, kind of staying the course. Thankfully, I think it's been a couple of years since we were last spoke. We've had ups and downs, but thankfully, we've kind of come through the other way. And so both the UK business is profitable, US business is profitable, good clients, good kind of value.

2:55And so, yeah, thankfully, we've kind of come out of the period. It was a somewhat challenging period when I saw you last, but thankfully, persevered in a good place.

3:04Amardeep Parmar:Could you give some idea of the scale and impact that you're working at now as well? Yeah, sure. So across both the UK and US businesses, we reach about 20 million employees. And so in the UK, that includes 20 % of FTSE 100. In the US, also Fortune 500 companies. In the UK, also one in three NHS trusts, eight of the big 10 kind of supermarkets. And they collectively employ 20 million people. Those 20 million people buy companies, aside from the UK, FinFit in the US, We provide employee benefits designed to improve their financial health. We do just across both countries about$100 billion in revenue.

3:41Helpfully, both companies have just become profitable 10 years in. But we employ maybe 400 or so people across the UK, US. Then we also have teams in India and South Africa as well.

3:54Amardeep Parmar:And obviously, the impact you've had through that is massive because people who don't know is obviously you're enabling people we might not be able to get access to finance otherwise, to get much cheaper loans. And that obviously has such an impact on not only them, but their families and the people around them too. And how has your role changed over time? Because you obviously have been leading this for such a long time. And I know the last time we spoke is that because of the merger and because of the way things were going, now you had much more senior leadership team in place. That frees you up a bit.

4:21Amardeep Parmar:So what's been happening there? Yeah, absolutely. You go through different stages. I guess I was fortunate to be the founder. but actually we were just selling it to a celebrating our 10-year anniversary or a celebrating our 10-year anniversary as a company and so you know we went from helping one employee which was my children's daddy 10 years ago to now obviously helping a much kind of a much bigger community of employees but you know so raising our capital along the way the kind of businesses are now of reasonable kind of reasonable scale but at the beginning is very much about you at the end it's all really about kind of about the team actually after this you know we've had a couple of changes in the leadership team we've actually got one individual that's moved from our UK business to our US business.

4:59So we've got a bit of a rejig. I always like seeing talent rise. And so we've got a number of colleagues, which is also just kind of coming up to leadership team. And we've got a kind of a kickoff kind of later on today after this session. And basically the first thing I'll say is there's no I in team. And the last leadership team took us through a pretty challenging two-year period. We've got to a good place now. And so this is really like gearing up the next team. And then the first thing we'll do is look at from a first principles basis, this you know what is the purpose of the leadership team what do we do how do we work we spend a lot of time together how do we enjoy it and then equally how do we make sure the leadership team serves to kind of wider teams but yes very much is very much about team and what do you enjoy most now that you get to do it's a very good question um you know i guess as a entrepreneur you like building doing things moving fast so on and then once you get to a certain scale equally you know you have to be a bit more considered in how you kind of operate uh things which are done quickly can then lead to challenges kind of kind of late later on and so you do have this evolution from being an entrepreneur quite scrappy to just being more kind of systemized and and equally there is sometimes a question around okay well how long is an entrepreneur good for are they good for the entire journey like that's more like a zuckerberg or actually you know so there is a school of thought on okay entrepreneurs are good at the beginning but then you need a professional manager to kind of come come in and then you always kind of work and okay you know kind of which one of those are kind of are you and so for me I enjoy being part of a team to achieve kind of great kind of great things I think the edge I have as an entrepreneur is that I am you know kind of creative finding angles I'm very rooted in the mission of the company because that mission is kind of authentic to me and kind of what you know some of the challenges I kind of see in the world And so I guess, yeah, you know, part of it is recognizing the importance of the team and enabling them to succeed, but also just being able to kind of guide it, push it.

6:52And there'll be times, I would say, with the team, which is, you know, most of the time, most of my kind of colleagues know more than me in their subject areas. But there will be times where I can't necessarily explain it, but I'll make a call which is counterintuitive. And I need the team to kind of go with it. It's like a mutual respect thing, because they always want to be in a situation, as they found an entrepreneur, where if things do go wrong, that should be because of a decision I've made not because of something you know of a call that I thought was wrong but yeah sometimes you get things right sometimes you get things wrong sometimes you know there's a certain area where actually I'm going to trust that person's judgment over my own but I think it's important to be to be intentional but yeah what I enjoy most is that the kind of creative you know maneuvering part of it but that is only enabled by having a great great team as well.

7:36Amardeep Parmar:And you said there's obviously been challenges in the last couple years since you came on when you were sitting here two years ago is there anything that you wish you could tell yourself back then that would help you have helped you to have guided those years that you just had yeah it's a good question i would say to know there is going to be ups and downs to simply not expect uh i think that's the same with really kind of all all kind of entrepreneurs there is just never a journey and then the second is you know my aim is to create a um like a multi-generational business basically a business that kind of really changes financial services for the good uh it's not about going from a to b as quickly as possible and then when you do that a key part of it is survival and so even if you're having a bad day a bad week you know even if you know at the time you know i had done with my share i was questioning okay well you know is this actually good for as an entrepreneur is it good as a long-term leader like it is as long as you are there surviving day to day and moving forward and sometimes you have to go back to kind of go forward then that is kind of that is okay not not everything is just measured in the kind of the here kind of here and now and you said there about obviously running a multi-generational company and part of that's true of your philosophy as well right about what you want to achieve through your company and the work you're doing and you obviously released a book this year yeah which kind of crystallizes some of that philosophy as well can you share more about that and your ideas yeah absolutely so yeah we were talking a little bit about on the last podcast one of my superpowers it was also that you know i was born in a city first generation migrant uh family you Today I run reasonable sized businesses, but also work with a lot of institutions, a lot of high net worths and so on.

9:10And so I have a fairly unique view across the spectrum. And I would say I'm fairly well grounded. Actually, last time I came on a podcast, I remember I was really tired because I just flew into Los Angeles. This time I'm really tired because I had my mum with me this weekend. I dropped off into Leicester yesterday and came back again. And so Los Angeles and Leicester are quite different. But what I like, I just enjoy different types of people on the Sunday. And basically, and then they join economics and tech and so on. And so, yeah, I think there's a lot of issues in the UK, in the US, in the world, born by real division in thoughts, in economics, in wealth, and kind of so on.

9:50There's lots of times for like quick solutions. But I think there's kind of some more kind of fundamental, kind of fundamental issues. So I basically wrote a book called Common Good Capitalism. And I am a believer in capitalism. Like, you know, I believe in entrepreneurship and the good it can do. Like, you know, me setting up a business, like you say, I've employed hundreds of people. We're doing hundreds of people. We've helped millions of employees. We've been a real force for good. So I believe in capitalism and entrepreneurship. But equally, I believe in the system. Everyone has to rise, kind of rise together.

10:19And basically, in a nutshell, the book, first of all, just describes where I think things have gone wrong. And so if you look post the kind of World War II up until the 1980s, the economy was growing and average real wages was growing together. So everyone was doing well. There's inequality. That's fundamental capitalism. That's no problem. But everyone is rising. And, you know, I was born in the early 1980s. And again, you could generally kind of see kind of people kind of people rising. 1980s to today, the economy has continued to grow. And everyone, you know, government talks about economy growing is really good and so on.

10:54But then when you look at average real wages, that stayed flat. So the question is, OK, well, if the average person is earning no more and the economy is growing, where's that going? And it's essentially going to the shareholder class. And then, you know, who is the shareholder class and how big are they? And so in the US, it's similar to the UK. The top 10 % owned 92 % of all public company shares. The bottom 50 owed 0.2%. And you just have these extreme extremes of wealth. And extremes of wealth is not an issue if everyone is rising. But when most people are staying the same and then you have the shareholder class rising, you start to have real kind of systemic issues.

11:34And so for me, there is income inequality, but the bigger thing is wealth inequality. And there's a saying which is it's easy to make money when you have money. Unless we can get everyday people into ownership of companies, whether as an entrepreneur, as a consumer, as an employee, then this is just going to get kind of worse and worse. And so the book presents an idea around companies giving shares to their customers as a reward, because that will make those customers more loyal, generate more ideas. But then those customers will also understand how shares work and gain from it as well. And so, you know, probably the best example at the moment is if you took a Revolut, for example, even if you are a very early customer in Revolut, a 70 billion valuation, you will have done quite well.

12:20and then equally conversely for the early customers that took a chance and revolute, they should do quite well as well. And so I always focus on this, trying to bring society together for everyone's prosperity. Because I also think, like I say, I have a reasonable network of high net worths and so on. No one wants to live in a world where most people are really unhappy and you have a few people unhappy. It just doesn't work kind of that way. And so the whole point of the book, Common Good Capitalism, is just A, explaining the issues in economic terms, but then just providing some quite practical ways that actually you know both society can rise as as a whole through capitalism which i still believe is the best form of you know kind of

12:58Amardeep Parmar:managing a society yeah and it's it's really interesting it said because i think now you see much more about personal finance right it's become much more in vogue and like you people are getting taught about things but the challenge i see is that a lot of the people teaching personal finance it's not necessarily good advice yeah and it's always a struggle right and i know for example you have work with charities you help in this front too to try and increase that knowledge would you want to highlight those as well yeah yeah absolutely yeah so i chair a charity called money ready they were called my bank kawalika just said they're just rebranded uh so charity focuses on financial education in everyday in everyday schools um uh jerry kind of state kind of state schools and the whole aim is trying to teach money habits early and so kind of you know people they call it you know the language of life um but you have a level of fluency in money as you can as you grow old um which is just incredibly valuable because and also i think if you if you are from a low-income family um you know like i was um you don't you haven't necessarily been kind of taught it or you don't necessarily have good kind of good role models uh and if you have limited means you have the the cost of mistakes is also much kind of much higher so it's basically trying to prevent that and just give an example of one of their programs and so you know we work with councils and you know when a child comes out of care there is generally a 50 probability of them becoming homeless and so what these council do is when they're giving them kind of essentially kind of homes for the first time you have to go on a money ready course before you get the first home that we reduce to homelessness to two percent instead of 50 and we do very basic things we're teaching you how to read the meter we're teaching you about a credit score we're teaching you about budgeting we're teaching you about saving nothing kind of rocket science but unless you have been taught the fundamentals then it's very hard kind of hard to progress and there's also just an element of which i think we live in a society which is very consumption first savings later and then i think again that just makes it kind of very very hard there's no there's no norms around how much you should save no norms around you know what a reasonable mortgage is for your earnings and so on so you know i think the more you can teach those things that the better and yeah you know i think i'm already like say when i first joined was a one million turnover charity this year we'll do five million um and a lot of reason why i joined is although it's a not-for-profit and you know my core focus is entrepreneurship i think a lot of the value of growth that you get from entrepreneurship can also be used to supercharge charities with good missions and so there's also like a personal project around okay well does that thesis hold hold true as well it's one of the journeys i think we've been on too about when we started this up like what's the best structure for it yeah because like you said going for a charity for example sometimes it does limit you because if you can make a business that's doing well sometimes that will mean that you get more revenue and you can then feed that back in and it's something we've kind of been always just toing and froing about what's the best way to do it and i think now we're looking at with the charity side is that if you're always dependent on donations that kind of always leave you at risk whereas if you can have okay we're offering value and it's obviously how you use immobilization entrepreneurship is that with what you do for salary finance is that you're really helping these people but at the same time it's a business that makes sense and because it scales you can keep increasing the impact and i think that's something which a lot of people struggle with is that they want to do something good and they're thinking no I can't make a business because that's evil and for those people in that mindset now who are stuck between okay I want to make this impact why should they do it in a business maybe rather than a charity and how do you think that is a good question this personal bugbear of mine which is I think there is a perception which is if you work in a charity or sometimes government you have a halo around you just a good person I work in a charity I'm a good person and if you work in a business you're somehow a bad person or not not not not as kind of you know righteous uh and i think you know the structure is really irrelevant and so you know i care a lot i'm very passionate about making an impact in society whether that's you know through the provision of you know helping employees save lower the cost of debt financial education whatever it might might be and the structure becomes somewhat kind of somewhat independent and so if i look at the uk you know I kind of won't name it, but there are kind of non-profits in certain sectors which have huge amounts of government funding, but achieve very, very little.

17:30And there are also non-profits which are incredibly expensive. Like, you know, their services are way more expensive than a comparable private sector offering. Yet there's some sort of kind of halo impact here. And so actually 10 years on and actually help really scale a good charity, scale some good businesses. you know my overall overarching view is now is the importance of research-backed impact and so if I look at Money Ready kind of what really gets me motivated for me a charity should only exist for as long as it's adding adding value because it's taking it taking donations and so you know we're doing this longitude on a study with kings so we've got you know about 6 000 students from a young age where every year we're doing a program with them a number of days in their school and then we're asking various questions looking at habits and so we can see the kind of benefit it does with salary finance we've done a number of academic studies including with harvard and others where again they've taken our data you know they will conclude or they have concluded well you save about 30 percent relative if you're using the open market but also you're 28 percent more likely to stay with the employer if you use salary finance or kind of fit fit in the u.s and so a lot of it now I think is that the rigor of research and independent validation as opposed to the structure and then I think a structure should be whatever you think is whether you think is best and so you know with money ready we we know we raised five million which is significant on the salary finance of infant side you know we've raised 125 million equity a billion in debt you know it's hard to do that a non-profit structure and so I'd say yeah kind of being relatively sanguine to or logical around what the right structure is and there are other types of structures as well that the very impact focused very research backed um and i think that then kind of cuts through a lot it also kind of just helps make sure your product is you're good and kind of helping as as well whichever the structure uh the structure is i would definitely like say yeah i do believe in capitalism and so i think you can be a very righteous person and proud whether you work in the government a non-profit or profit it's really the impact of what you kind and what you do.

19:40Amardeep Parmar:Hello, hello. I hope you've enjoyed the show so far. I'm Amarit Parma, co-founder of BayHQ and the host of this show. For those of you who don't know, BayHQ is the community for high growth, Asian heritage founders and investors in the UK. Over 7 ,500 people have attended our events. 200 people have been through our impact programs. And obviously it's been over 250 episodes of this podcast. If you want to join us and take part in the program when it comes to the events, go to bayhq.com forward slash join. We also just released our first ever book called Startups for Outsiders, which you can get on Amazon now and the link is in the bio.

20:21Amardeep Parmar:Hope to see you soon at our event. Hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. You raised another interesting point earlier too about how in entrepreneurship is that people who come from wealth will have some money beforehand they get more chance to fail right yeah whereas when people are coming up if they go straight from maybe under previous backgrounds they don't have the same opportunity they can't take as many risks and obviously that limits their impact as well and something we're thinking about too is that like sometimes you want to help people at a very early stage but obviously with your career is that you first went into consulting and obviously that helped get you out of that initial zone of um maybe financial difficulty so that you could then build the company and how do you think about that when you're talking to young entrepreneurs would you say to them like maybe first of all get some financial security would you say try as hard as you can to get grants and how do you think about that because there's something which I know that I'm struggling with sometimes when I talk to people like actually maybe it's better for you to just get some money first then go into it yeah it's a very good question I have two two children as well and so I'm going to think about it from them if you have nephews and nieces and so on so So, yeah, I think it's kind of no one-size-fits-all.

21:29I think for me, it just happened naturally. You know, I finished university, always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but was not able to kind of, you know, I didn't quite have the right idea or raising funding in the UK is difficult and so on. And I was kind of fortunate, like I said, as a management consultant, I'd just become a partner. I was fortunate to raise some funding on an idea, I believed in, and everything else kind of went. And I do think in the world I operate in today, some of that experience is helpful. But equally, you know, I think there is a huge amount of value in naivety as well.

22:06You know, I run a lender which has lent billions of pounds a day. I'd never worked in a lender before. And so that naivety was good. Ten years on, I wouldn't recommend my company hires a CEO that's ever worked in a lender because I've kind of learned as we go. but sometimes that naivety makes you kind of think there's I think you work in different ways I would say what I would say also is not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur and I think entrepreneurs need to be incredibly motivated high conviction willing to work hard self-motivators if 99 doors close you're going to find a hundredth optimist like there's just a certain thing and you know So, you know, my wife, for example, is better than me in almost most ways.

22:48She's a surgeon. But entrepreneurship wouldn't be for her because, you know, she just values the kind of structure. She's operating and so on. And actually, a lot of my friends are the same, actually. They work in corporates. That life suits them and so on. And so I'd say, you know, one is, you know, I think there were just certain characteristics of being an entrepreneur. and you have to, you know, you have to, you know, I think kind of possess those, you know, kind of since we last spoke, I had alopecia, a piece of stress, it's now gone. And so you just have to kind of go through those ties as just part, kind of part of it.

23:23But equally, even if you don't believe that is how you're naturally geared, you know, being part of entrepreneurial organisations or missions, I think is also important. And so, you know, we've hired hundreds of people you know we've had people that are entrepreneurial wouldn't don't necessarily want to be an entrepreneur or don't want to say risk profile but i still think there's kind of value value there and yeah sometimes i think you're 10 years on when i've been better off as a matter of consultant what i'm doing now and you know i always feel like you know the impact i've made in the world is kind of far greater and so i'm so happy with that kind of happy with that choice however it might kind of you know kind of might go um but yeah but i think i think a lot of it's personally.

24:06Amardeep Parmar:I think the other thing I would say is the world is fundamentally changing with AI. And I think it is really hard to predict which jobs exist today that will exist in the future. It's hard to understand what subjects it is. And so, you know, I would say just being with an open mind, being open to all opportunities. So look at entrepreneurial things, look at kind of more traditional things, learning every day, things are changing so quickly. You know, something you I've studied, you know, eight years for can now be taught in a month. Like, so I think, and yeah, actually, you know, it's what I'm trying to teach my children is, you know, being a first principles thinker rather than wedding, wedding in a single route.

24:47And I think in this next phase, it's just going to be just as important. So in my book, I'm going to capitalism. I talk about wealth inequality with AI. That is just going to 10x basically. And you want to be on the right side of that. And that is about, you know, being really, really open minded, looking and learning from everyone around you. And then, you know, take a conviction or whatever you think is kind of think is right. But ultimately, there are no non-risk moves anymore. It's the reality. There's no like traditional paying jobs, government jobs that you just stay in, cover by people all the time.

25:24So, yeah, I think there's an element of which, you know, the more you're exposed to things, the more you can pave your own your own path.

25:31Amardeep Parmar:I think it's a really important point as well about the hiring people right because there are many people who are entrepreneur in some ways but the actual being the top of the tree and the founder the amount of stress and like you said with the conditionally abusive operative like I put on loads of weight my first couple of years because I wasn't working out properly stress eating still stress eat sometimes probably too much but those elements sometimes nobody really talks about or they try to hide it because one of the challenges when you first become an entrepreneur is for many people they're trying to show that they made the right move in life which means that they hide the bits that aren't going so well but then for the people coming up it's not a realistic view of that right and you mentioned there about how obviously you struggled with like stress-related illnesses how did you manage to get that back into play again and make yourself hopefully somewhat yeah healthy today absolutely so um yeah when I was last on here we were kind of eight years in and I say for those kind of eight years everything went up no only one kind of one direction and when everything goes up everyone's on your side like you know that that is just the kind of way kind of way it works everything's kind of good and so on and as kind of mentioned as we were then scaling we're scaling our company we're scaling multiple countries scale platform you you just go through scaling issues yeah and then at that time what you realize is um and and not not in a bad way but everyone starts to question everyone starts to question okay well you know it is the founder good for a longer period was it his fault did they make it correct so you suddenly start to be in there you sort of start to question yourself you have other people question you uh everything is always easier outside in um and in reality there as you know as i've analyzed some of the challenges we kind of went through which thankfully now we're through it's value so much it's just natural you know if you're growing at a certain speed there is a there is a certain time where you know something you built not knowing the scale you're going to have now has a billion pounds sitting on it is you're going to need to do a bit of work on the way but equally you wouldn't have that level of investment this early in so this kind of thing this kind of thing so for me the point hit where um i've always you know i've always operated in high stress environments even kind of practice i'm always busy i'm kind of naturally geared uh kind of geared that way so it's always very normal for me and the only time i realized okay maybe this is abnormal is when i started getting bald patches everywhere um and i didn't really care kind of ask kind of aesthetically but it was like okay well maybe my body's telling me something that is not and it wasn't i felt worse or whatever i'm always stressed it's just in the nature of two young children and kind of so on and so forth you know elderly mother all that type of stuff and so um you know so so being you know stress is normal but that kind of made you realize okay maybe this is a bit too far um and it's not like and then thankfully things started to go better and in a good space but but you do also make changes i exercise more you know i'm kind of um i'm much more clearer about you know ethics on the term uses i'm much less about people pleasing now like you know uh you know my aim isn't to be my shareholders pals or whatever my aim is to kind of deliver kind of good outcomes for as long as i'm the best person to kind of do that and so and then equally you start to realize people aren't here for a long time a lot of people are here for a good time and that's not a that's not a bad thing if you put loads of money into a company you accept spare the things you have certain questions you can ask those that can ask those things and so a lot of it then became very much around okay focus on what matters focus less on what doesn't matter definitely do things kind of health health wise you can't get that back and then also just taking things day by day don't worry about you know you want to make sure you go right even today i feel incredibly fortunate knock on wood really in a good position with the businesses but i don't know what the next month two months year 10 years 30 years is going to look like but what i feel is well equipped to deal with it i feel the business has good fundamentals and i think we can work it out whereas before it was much like unless everything quite everything was kind of mapped kind of mapped out and so yeah i would say you know for me it was really the physical manifestation you know also i'm now 43 44 44 um and uh as i also have two children so i also think more about you know just kind of how many years you have left health all of those things i think is an important thing and then a good you know age becomes a good thing you know you'll bet so you mentioned you injured yourself you know you become a bit slower you know you know it just makes you kind of think more so which i think is a good is a good thing as well yeah so i guess people watching the youtube notes that i'm in my job yesterday and it's because on saturday i managed to get in the way of a collision during playing football so i spent most of yesterday in a and e just going from one doctor to the next and then waiting for my scan all those different things and one thing about being in a hospital i think it does always put things in perspective because you're sitting there saying like i don't want to be here and if i don't want to be here then i need to make changes in my life because i was there for a freak accident yeah but the reality is like you said was like with the stress i'm under on a daily basis there's going to be stuff that goes wrong in my health if i'm not looking after myself and i think it's really hard for founders to get their perspective and you don't want to wait for something to go wrong before you do it and you mentioned there about you made a few health changes and obviously managing kids managing elderly parents too and like as you're going forwards now like how are you structuring your life to try and obviously maximize your impact while also not sacrificing your health and not sacrificing the other things that are important to you like your family.

31:00Yeah, you're always sacrificing something. So, you know, entrepreneurship is not a free option. Equally, there's no, there's no, you're always kind of making, kind of making trade-offs. So I'd say the trade-offs I've made, which I think kind of change in life as well. Early entrepreneurship, the trade-off I've made was friends, spending time with friends and a little, you know, kind of my extended kind of family. but I kind of prioritized my kind of kids and kind of so on so very much I'm always on at work and also I enjoy work as well so it doesn't go if you're always on from a business perspective um you know always prioritize my kids I feel as a father if you choose to bring kids into the world they deserve a kind of priority I try to be as good a husband as I can but equally there is you know yeah there is a kind of attention there and doesn't know how much time you can you can kind of spend and hopefully you know if we you know work hard now then that kind of sets as a role for the future.

31:58But they're kind of really friendships. And I'm fortunate to have good friends where you don't need to see them every week. But equally, it's fun. It's nice. And I think social interaction is important. So early years, that was the kind of trade-off. But I would be reasonably good at exercise and so on just because I feel a lot better. It's quite tough without it. Now I'm a bit kind of 10 years on. And so actually, my oldest son has just started at boarding school, quite random. We went to a number of schools who really liked it. And so actually he comes home on a Wednesday if he wants. He doesn't always want to anymore, but comes home on a weekend.

32:33And so that's kind of my concentrated time with him. And then my youngest son, nine or 10, is also kind of quite self-sufficient. So that gives me a bit of time. It's actually they both like playing golf. And so that's kind of really good. You know, golf is really good because we can just be out. It's physical. We spend time together and so on as well. You know, prioritise kind of holidays. You know, actually just exercise wise, you know, even this morning, you know, I got back late last night. And so I did calisthenics every day now. So I did that at six to six early. And then I left at seven to kind of drive here.

33:05So you kind of prioritize different things. But I'm definitely now, I use AI a lot, very, very well. That kind of gives me a lot of efficiency. You know, I only say yes to things which I think are going to make a difference for me and the other person. Like, you know, there are times where there are events, whatever. and it's like you know maybe it'll be useful maybe it won't maybe it's not good enough anymore like yeah you know it can be kind of more than that and then actually even this morning I was you know I was listening to a podcast I like and they talk about the importance of sleep but I say I'm not getting enough as much sleep as I like so there are always always balances but overall you know overall yeah you know and I think as you go through different stages kind of different stages of life you go through different things but hopefully for this next stage of life for me kind of 10 years in a bit more time with friends a bit more time with family using ai to get super efficient uh in my kind of professional uh professional work and always kind of focusing

34:00Amardeep Parmar:on children children as well i think it's always reassuring people to hear when people they look up to are people much better in their journeys are figuring that out too because i think sometimes people put people on a pedestal like oh they must have it all figured out but then and then they put themselves out right when you realize actually people are just trying to make the best thing for them and it's one of the things so I've interviewed 400 plus people now right and one of the things I'm always looking at as well it's like if I'm going to look up to somebody they've got to be heading a direction of life that what's I actually want whereas we see some people might have achieved a lot but they're still in that very toxic mindset of they're just not giving themselves any break they're not looking like they're not spending time with family they're not spending time with their friends and I look at it's like do I want to be that person in 10 years time 20 years time and some of the people I've interviewed are very far along they kind of have those regrets of like I just worked all the time I neglect to my family and I get my friends like now the business is sold what do I do I grab nobody and it's it's really hard because I think people can't really like I'm lucky that I get to talk to people like you all the time but if you don't have that experience you don't see somebody like that it's very easy to go down this path where you just almost become very lonely right yeah yeah very much so very much so and you mentioned too about the people pleasing aspect about people here for a good time not a long time and he said there's nothing wrong with that but i think if you're always feeling guilty about not helping those people at the end you're just putting all that pressure on yourself and people understand and i look at it as i probably speak to about a thousand people a month right because the events stuff we do it's like i cannot be a thousand people's best friends and i don't want to be a thousand people's best friends and i think i'm just getting much more clear about that with people like I don't want to I can't have time to be your friend and it doesn't mean I don't like you it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you but it's if I don't have enough time with the people I already know and love then me just doing that with other people doesn't make sense and like how have you adjusted to that over time because obviously like there'll be people who will listen to this and like oh I'd love to go for a coffee with you right they won't say what they want they won't give you any details and then how do you deal with that today like how do you prioritize who you should talk to who you shouldn't so i think you ultimately you for yourself like you want to be clear what your mission is and the most effective way to kind of get there and it sounds like you're a really good mission you know you want to help um you know kind of democratize entrepreneurship to those that are kind of underprivileged particularly you know your kind of asian communities going one by one is probably not going to maximize your kind of route uh kind a route there um and so i think that it's completely fine i think you're you know everyone always you just have to kind of live by your choices and so i think for me just a different context is you know we have except about three four hundred people across Saudi finance Finfit US UK South Africa India and genuinely you know i really enjoy spending time with the people like i really enjoy it you know they're really nice people work in a very mission-oriented business it's high growth and so and the people are just interesting i just like it's like people kind of people in general and I have the same internally which is you know you know I'll be walking you know to the kitchen or whatever and you know I know I've only got 30 seconds to speak to someone and I feel a bit rude you know I'd much prefer to like you know have a you know you know a much more meaningful conversation and there's people think oh you know I've not spoken to them in a while and but equally if I had a half an hour one-on-one with 400 people nothing's going to get done and so I think it's really just being kind of comfortable yeah and not trying to do too much so for me at work I know you know my time is with the leadership team because I want to empower them to have great relationships kind of wider kind of wider down when it's people that kind of will approach me if I if I think they've given me something that allows me to be useful to them then that's kind of great I've kind of got no issue with that actually if it's a general thing I probably can't be that useful to them actually just looking at some of the stuff I've done or you know part of the reason why I wrote a book was to kind of tell some of that kind of story as well kind of use different vehicles but probably the one thing I don't do is feel particularly guilty about it anymore but then equally I'm also humble enough like you know in the world everyone is also chasing someone else yeah like you know if you're you know if you're a founder of a business worth a pound you know you envy the person that's worth a million if it's a million you envy the person that's 100 million it's 100 million it's a billion if it's a billion it's a trillion and you know even the trillion their founders are like you know why isn't this 10 trillion and if it's your 10 trillion then you're kind of like okay how do I get space like whatever it is like everyone is always chasing kind of something but you just need to be kind of cumbered not to say people to be you know however they feel but you know my view is as long as you're comfortable you're content and I think that's important but yeah I would definitely emphasize the point around the importance of kind of friendship saying I think that's an important important thing and certainly the entrepreneurs I see and spend time with who I have most respect for and probably think they've got more things right than wrong are never the ones that work all hours and that and they have no personality and they have nothing to give and the massive buying bags in their eyes they tend to be the ones that are pretty social have friends have the boundaries and then also i think it's the other truth as we all know is you work best when you're happy when you're you know you've had a bit of sleep when you've had a bit of exercise there is only 24 hours in a day you have to cut it somewhere does it really matter if you cut it at x hours versus y hours does it really matter if your curve goes a bit like this instead of like this like maybe you know stuff for some people it does maybe that's identity whatever but in general i think you know a lot of it has to be about you know kind of you your family your network you know your your kind of community and so on i think the hard thing with people is at the start you're told say yes to everything take every opportunity but then there comes a point where that's like the wrong thing to do and you should you probably say no way more than you say yes right and i think as you go up that ladder that's how the transition changes and it's their personality change and i know for our sake for example so when we started this off i was speaking to about 200 people a day on whatsapp because that's how we got those relationships but now that the community of 10 000 people were like way more than that i can't chat to all of them and that setting the boundary is the new interesting part and even for example this football injury right that's because every weekend i always it's my like uni friends so most of them don't even know what i do for work and i don't care because for me i just get to be me again and i don't i don't always want to be bay hq and like it's good to have that separation of personality and always say is that the people who are friends as opposed to business friends are the ones that we could have an entire to our chat and none of the business stuff comes up at all whereas if we're only friends because the business is it's still add values my life it's still great to have you but then you're not like a friend that invites my wedding for example and i think a lot of people get those lines very blurred up and like obviously now you have the different things outside of work right both inside your work and within your business what are the things you're planning in the future where is your focus going there good question um you know so i'd say 10 years into my current businesses you know um you know I wrote a book.

41:11I wrote a book at a time where I was kind of thinking, well, do I want to go again? Actually, is it the right time to actually have another CEO run my businesses while I would then use all of the knowledge I've got and do something? Oh, I'm going to get a shortage of ideas. I would say where I am today is businesses are doing well. As a result, there are more people that are my fans than when things are challenging. It's the nature of how it goes. Hopefully that continues. and I think I'm not kind of fascinated by, I think there's a lot of talk in AI and stuff around, okay, the fastest to get this ARR or so.

41:49Well, I think that's good, but I think ultimately entrepreneurship is an endurance sport if you're trying to build a company which is really trying to change a fabric of society in some way and our way is to kind of change a fabric of kind of finance for everyday people. And so I really... content with current businesses i want to grow them i want to scale them i want increased impact it's still really exciting because you know i don't know which direction they're going to go you know as in we of course have a strategy a plan all those types of things but you know we've gone from where we were which was you know an idea to where we are today and so you know yes i have a plan which goes here but you know we should have a plan which kind of goes to you know there are moves we can make which gets kind of much more and so yeah so i'm very much focused on rather than trying to do loads of different things, really grounding, not kind of think, okay, 10 years and so, should we do something else?

42:41But it's actually 10 years, we've got an amazing platform. Let's now work out how we 10X this because just the bigger you get every time you 10X something, it's just a multiplier, that kind of work. And then the kind of world is kind of changing, but finance is an important part of that. So I think it's an interesting kind of place to be. But yeah, my aim is to kind of, on the work side, rather than come up with something new, we'll start again, all those types of things, is really kind of channel that into the kind of things I'm doing to build it at a big scale. And I think most companies today, which are of good size, meaningful, are not overnight successes.

43:13They take time. And so, yeah, I kind of want to really kind of see it through. And I feel very good about that. I think there have been times, you know, the past 10 years, I was thinking, okay, well, you know, what do they call it? You know, being a serial entrepreneur is good. You know, what about if I'm a CEO here and I do that there? and I'm doing this there and I've got you know this there and again for that that kind of works for some some people um that can you know be the right thing but yeah for me yeah I guess I've learned about myself I like doing things deeply I like doing it well uh and you know sometimes things be able to take a bit of time and in general I've found for me at least seeing things through kind of is when you get the most most payoff uh and sometimes that you know that that's kind of you know later on in a journey as as well and the book itself right is it's complementary