The Keys to Building Wealth with Gautam Baid

Most of us stop learning, you know, once we are out of college, but the real learning, in my view, actually starts after you've graduated from college because, you know, most of the education techniques, you know, used in schools are very outdated, as you all know. You know, many, many, most of it is focused on rote learning or learning by memory. But a truly educated person is one who can be multidisciplinary in his thinking and combine, you know, the learning, the big ideas from various disciplines. to arrive at a better decision than most others. So I think this is why you have to be a learning machine and always have this great curiosity and enthusiasm for learning. It can be any subject matter, but never stop learning because you have to be a lifelong learner to navigate this complex world that we live in.

Welcome back to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. Last time you were on, you covered a lot of your background with Nick. So today I'd like to talk about newest book, and I'd love to get into some maybe details about investments, what they are, what some terms mean, and break down this seemingly complex world of investing. But first, let's talk about your newest book, The Making of a Value Investor. What was the primary motivation for writing another book?

So the actual inspiration from this— for this book came from a tweet on Twitter on 26th August 2022. So one of my followers, he actually recommended to me, why don't I publish my thoughts into a book? Because I always used to talk about the benefits of an investment journal in various tweets and posts on LinkedIn, and people used to say, why don't you post your or publish your private journal into a book? So I just thought of the idea to be very interesting, and shortly thereafter, I started work on the book. It took me around 12 months to finish writing it and just cleaning up cleaning up all the journal entries and making it readable. And the book was released in October 2023. So that was the basic genesis of the book. And it is my personal belief that journaling as a practice, be it an investor or non-investor, it has got many, many great benefits. If I speak about myself, I've gotten to learn a lot about myself and improve both as an investor and an individual. I receive a lot of valuable feedback from my journal, and I use it to correct my personal biases. And I think this is a practice which all of us should inculcate, because the moment you write something by hand, then you can, then you can get to avoid hindsight bias. You cannot look at your own writing and say that, okay, this is what I was thinking at that time, and it was something else. So basically, it helps you remain true to your process, because all the great achievers in any field are diligent followers of a rigorous process. It's all about process, process, process. And how do we improve a process? By learning from our mistakes. And that is where the journal is very, very handy because, you know, like I write in the first book, The Joys of Compounding, that all investors make mistakes, but the great investors repeat old mistakes less often. So obviously, if you have documented your mistakes in a journal, then you cannot repeat your old mistakes again, right? So that is Again, one more benefit. So the benefits are many, but these are just a few of them which I've just shared right now with you.

Oh, I love that. My question— my next question is, how do you look at these journal entries from almost a logical standpoint? Because we can— those things can be like super emotionally charged. So how do you look at that objectively without like judging yourself too much for maybe mistakes that you'll— that you've made?

I think all of us are human— humans at the end of the day. All of us are normal human beings trying to You know, trying our best to figure out the world as best as we can. So I think, you know, again, no need to beat ourselves up too much for making mistakes. I think the, you know, positive-minded people tend to look at mistakes as learning opportunities. They look at mistakes as stepping stones to success. They don't, you know, even the word failure does not even register in the minds of achievers. We tend to look at mistakes as stepping stones to success. I think that is again, you know, where this— in the journal, you know, which I've published into this book, I've actually shared, you know, a few of my past mistakes as well. Because, you know, if any investor tells you that he hasn't made a mistake in his entire investing career, that, you know, then you can easily catch his bluff. You know, all of the, you know, investors make mistakes. But what differentiates a great investor from an average investor is the fact that the great investors are active seekers of truth, and they're always looking out for disconfirming evidence. That is basically facts and evidence which counters their original thesis. That helps you make a timely exit from your investments because capital is finite. Here in investing, capital is your raw material, and you have to always think in terms of opportunity cost. And by cutting your mistakes early and putting your capital back to work in a better opportunity, you're continuously compounding your capital at a healthy rate. And you don't tend to incur too much opportunity cost. So I think being true to yourself, also being vulnerable, basically opening up your vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and being authentic— these are the key success attributes in any profession, especially if you're an author. I think it greatly helps you connect with your readers because, like one of my investing mentors, Ian Cassel, says, that you impress people by your successes, but you connect with people through your struggles. So basically, that is the whole idea of being very open and honest when writing journal and publishing it.

One of the books that I read right before yours was Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth by Nick Murray. And one of the things that that book taught me, and your book teaches me as I get, as I get to read your personal journal entries, is that successful investors operate from a place of logic. And like you said, an achieving mindset, not a reactionary place of emotion. So I'm curious, outside of just Studying investing-related material? Like, what practices do you have, or do you participate in? What routines do you have that center you and keep you operating from a place of logic and less emotion?

I think one of the best ways to manage one's behavior and be as rational as possible in today's digital age, where there is so much information overload, is to cut off yourself from social media as much as you can, from all the noise around you, because increasingly it is becoming difficult separate the signal from the noise. So how do you do that? Basically, deep focus, long attention span, reading long-form articles, reading books, and thinking for yourself. I think these are the habits to inculcate. And basically, you— how do you do that? Basically, you know, you, you have to shut off this electronic media all around you because it is so stimulative. No, it's all, you know, the way social media works, they want to consume and capture most of our personal time and attention. So we have to be really disciplined to basically cut ourselves off. Basically, for example, switch off the mobile internet on your phone. Basically, you know, keep your phone in a different room when you're working in your office room, you know, in your office room. Then basically just try to cut out as much digital noise as possible. It's not easy because, you know, we get so much dopamine kicks You know, when anyone likes our post on LinkedIn or Twitter or retweets or reposts our content, we get— social media is deliberately designed to give us a lot of dopamine kicks, and that keeps us engaged and hooked on to the platform for a lot of time. That's so that advertisers can actually push their advertisements to us and sell their products and services. But, you know, people who know how this game is being played, they are much more rational. So the first step to actually Improving your routine is to be aware of what's actually happening around you. I think, you know, all— I think I highly recommend a documentary on Netflix called The Social Dilemma. Everyone should read, should see that documentary to see that just how addictive social media has become. And anyways, cord cutting is in place, so cable TV is not that much of a distraction. But just by these simple practices, you can greatly improve your attention span. In addition to this, I think practicing mindfulness and practicing, you know, light meditation every day by just focusing on your breath and also just, you know, getting your, you know, basic thoughts in place and becoming self-aware. This is also a very good way to, you know, focus on what matters every— on a daily basis. And over time, all these good practices compound. So basically, you know, in The Joy of Compounding, also I've talked about compounding good habits, in which I talked about meditation as a very good practice to practice on a daily basis. So these are just a few of the things I would recommend just to get your house in order and focus, because focus is the key to success in any profession.

Do you think that it's important to get your mind right before you start any kind of investment? Is that an important step in the process to investing? Like, get your mind stuff right, get the distractions out of the way, and then you can focus on this thing that we call investing?

That is the most important step. In fact, it's not, you know, it's not an insignificant thing. It's the most significant step in any profession. Get your mind clear. Clarity of thought, clarity of purpose, clarity of thinking is all important in any profession, more so in investing, because in investing, basically all the work is being done inside our minds, right? And in this profession, Information edge is no longer available. Everyone has got access to the same information because of the internet. What differentiates a great investor from an average investor? It is the analytical edge and how better you are able to process the current information better than the others. So you can only do that when you have clarity of mind, and that is why training your mind— now the mind can be trained to function much better. If you can train your mind to be more rational, to be more logical, to be more objective, then you can have a definite edge over most other investors. Yeah.

There's a quote from the beginning of your book that I had highlighted, which said, and this is an entry from your journal. It said, I am noticing that the frustration index has shot up everywhere and people are becoming very aggressive on social media. We need to stay calm and keep progressing in this journey. And social media is not helping many, as I can see. And so it sounds like when there is a bear market, people just get aggressive on social media. And so it's important, like you said, to keep the rational mind. I'm curious, like, what are your social media consumption habits? It sounds like X or Twitter is probably your primary focus, or is it LinkedIn? How do you navigate social media?

It's both of X and LinkedIn. But basically, I've curated my list of people whom I follow very, very carefully because You know, on social media, you'll get both 2 sets of people. One is the positive set of people and one is the negative set of people. So cut out negativity from your life as much as possible. Focus on people who are much more positive-minded and who are actually adding value to your audience instead of, you know, those people who are just posting clickbait articles, you know, to gain more followers. So I think people who post good content, just try to follow them. as much as you can. And that is basically how you, how you will always consume very good value-add information. So that is the basic practice on both X and LinkedIn, which I follow.

Yeah, I tell you what, that is one of the best strategies for social media is trying to get your feed full of valuable things because it's there and positive people instead of all the clickbait. And there's a lot of negativity on social media and you have to do a really good job at like curating yourself and curating that stuff. I'd love to ask you, maybe you can describe a little bit about what a bear market is, maybe versus a bull market, because those are things that we hear and I feel like a lot of our audience might not understand those terms that well. So maybe you can describe those a little bit and then we can talk about what bear markets have taught you about investing.

Well, in the finance world, a bear market is termed as, you know, basically a situation when the primary indices For example, in the US, we have the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ. If any of those indices fall more than 20%, technically that is known as a bear market. But there is one more important condition for a true bear market to exist: the bear market has to be very long. So for example, in March 2020, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, and the Dow fell 30-35% each in a single month, but the recovery just happened in the next 3 months. So before you could even realize what a bear market feels like, you are already back to all-time highs again. So a bear market both has to be deep in its magnitude in terms of the stock price falls, and it also has to be very lengthy, at least, you know, a couple of years. So this bear market which I've talked about in this book took place in India from January 2018 to March 2020. It was 27 months long. So it was excruciatingly painful. And bear markets generally come to an end when the last bull or the last bullish voice on the street has given up and there seems to be no hope in sight. But as we always, you know, hear the saying that it is always the darkest before dawn, basically that is when the seeds for a new bull market are sown, the foundation for a new bull market is laid, and that is, you know, how investors make the really big money because you get great buying prices only during a crisis. Good news and good prices in stocks never come together. So you have to have the faith that this too shall pass. And how do you develop that faith and conviction? By being an ardent student of history, especially financial market history. For example, even though the pandemic took place in 2020, if you were an ardent student of history, you would have known that even there was a big Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, which basically passed off, you know, passed away in a year's time. That time also, all hope seemed lost. But just by studying history, you can get a big advantage and big edge over many other investors because in the world of finance, there is nothing new but the history that we haven't read. So just be aware of history as much as you can.

Such great advice. I was curious, this is kind of like an off-the-cuff kind of question, but I was just thinking about this as you were talking. If you were starting out, And you only had, let's say, $100 to your name, $100 to your name, none of the connections, but all the knowledge. Where would you start? Where would you begin?

Talking about investing in stocks or buying books with that $100?

Oh, I mean, let's—

maybe both.

Which is better? I mean, if you only had $100 to name, would buying the books be better than trying to invest in stocks?

Anytime books, because like the first chapter of The Joys of Compounding title goes, The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself. Invest in yourself first. So in this Making of the Value Investor also, I've talked about this, that in the initial phases of your life, focus on your career, focus on building your cash flows, and then save to invest. Most people do the opposite. They focus on portfolio building and their careers later. No, focus on your career first. Focus on your business first or job first. Have the cash, build the cash flows first, then invest. But you know, people, what happens, they see stock prices going up very fast in a bull market, then they start ignoring their careers and they start becoming full-time investors. And once the bear market resumes, then they regret their decision. So first, achieve— try to achieve financial independence by saving and investing, build up a large corpus. After that, you get— once you gain control over your time, That is when you can focus 24/7 on investing. But never neglect your career or your job. You know, first invest in yourself. Self, you know, like there's a saying by Zig Ziglar that formal education will get you a job, but self-education will earn you a fortune. And that is so, so true. Most of us stop learning, you know, once we are out of college. But the real learning, in my view, actually starts after you've graduated from college because, you know, most of the education techniques used in schools are very outdated, as you all know. Most of it is focused on rote learning or learning by memory. But a truly educated person is one who can be multidisciplinary in his thinking and combine the learning, the big ideas from various disciplines to arrive at a better decision than most others. So I think this is why you have to be a learning machine and always have this great curiosity and enthusiasm for learning. Can be any subject matter, but, you know, never stop learning because, you know, you have to be a lifelong learner to complex this, you know, to navigate this complex world that we live in.

Well, we will clip that and throw that all over social media. That's perfect for our audience. You know, one of the kind of going back to your book, you know, getting to read your personal journal entries during this 20-plus-month bear market in India that you're documenting. As I'm reading your thoughts and you're referencing how companies had performed years ago and their projections get kicked down the road and all these examples that seem so intricate, you know, my gut reaction was almost like, man, this book is not for me. All it's teaching me is that I should never invest because people like you are totally obsessed with it and they understand all of these little intricacies because they've been involved for so long. So is that your take? Like, unless somebody becomes as obsessed as you are, they shouldn't self-manage their own portfolio. They should, you know, I know you're only working with accredited investors, but they should outsource to a third party. Is that your take as well?

I think there is a natural progression. That's a very good question, Nick. And there is a natural progression which all individual retail investors should actually follow. Start off with a low-cost index fund. They are very, very easy to invest in. They are very low cost. So that's the basic starting point. Then you graduate to actively managed mutual funds as you gain a bit more knowledge about the financial markets. And finally, over the course of time, once you've developed the confidence and expertise to invest on your own by reading all these great investing books and by learning from the great investors through digital media, when you're finally ready, that is when you can take a leap to start investing on your own. But just don't start investing on your own without building that basic foundation of intellectual knowledge. So I always tell people that if you want to become a good doctor, what do you need to do? Study and practice. If you want to become a good lawyer, what do you need to do? Study and practice. Similarly, if you want to be a good investor, what do you need to do? Study and practice. So study from the great books, learn from the great investors, and then start practicing on your own.

Did you see the Dumb Money Netflix movie that came out about the GameStop stock situation from a few years ago?

I didn't have to watch it. I watched that entire thing in real time as it was unfolding on Wall Street, so I'm very aware of exactly what happened there.

So all this, you know, yeah, I was just gonna say, I feel like, um, you know, that's an example of a clickbaity media portrayal of something because, you know, the average person watches a college student invest $1,000 into GameStop and then become a millionaire overnight. And what you're saying is, in the very beginning, you should invest in index funds, low-cost index funds. That's not sexy. It's not fun. It's not picking an individual lottery ticket. But it's a more sustainable education and practice-based approach to ultimately guaranteeing that you have more success rather than risking it all up front.

Correct. And like I write in The Making of a Value Investor, the best investing strategy for everyone is the one which you can stick with for the longest period of time across market cycles. And I think that is where index funds are very, very useful.

So I'm curious, you know, the title of your book is The Value Investor, is in your title. What is a value investor? What does that mean? Were you not a value investor before and now you are? Like, what's— can you maybe unpack that just a little bit?

Yeah, so all of us investors, you know, in the investing community, basically we For most of us, we start off by reading Benjamin Graham's book, The Intelligent Investor, which basically was written just after the Great Depression started. And Benjamin Graham used to focus a lot on investing in statistically cheap securities, even though the underlying business may be very bad in quality. But the problem is, when you invest in a bad business or a business in decline, then no price is cheap enough over the long run because then time is working against you. But when you're invested in a good business, in a good quality business, then time is your friend with good businesses. So the key distinction between before 2018 and after this bear market ended, as far as I'm concerned, is that for many years I used to look for statistical cheapness in terms of commodities, deep cyclical businesses, microcaps, And I was very fortunate that during the 2014 to 2017 bull market in India, these kinds of stocks of bad businesses also rose up a lot, and I was able to make a good sum of money. But it was only after I experienced this bear market of 2 years and 3 months that I realized that you may make temporary paper profit in a large sum during a raging bull market, but sustainable wealth is created over the long run only by investing in high-quality businesses. That was my biggest learning from this particular bear market. That is basically where the title comes from, The Making of a Value Investor. It basically showcases to readers in real time my evolution as an investor during that bear market, as the bear market was in place, and my reflections and learnings along the way. So basically, by the time the bear market ended, I had evolved I'd basically matured from being a highly concentrated investor focusing on statistically cheap securities of mediocre or bad quality businesses to one focused on quality and prudent diversification. So this book basically captures that entire journey. How did my thought process change and why did it change?

I love that. Thank you for— thanks for unpacking. Now I'd love to ask a little bit about the future. Where do you see the market headed in 2024, maybe in 2025? I know like you might not be able to make perfect predictions or anything like that, but What is your opinion about what we're going into? Because, I mean, I hear a lot of talk about market crashes and depressions and recessions. Those things are always coming up. So what are your thoughts around that?

It's very interesting you asked me this question. Just last month, during my semiannual Zoom meeting with my investors in my India fund here, I was talking to them about— there was a slide titled The Biggest Risk in 2024, and that entire slide, I kept it blank. Why is that so? Because a black swan is basically an unexpected event of very large magnitude which has a profound impact on society, nation, and individuals. And by definition, it cannot be predicted in advance. Then I showed my fund investors the COVID story from The Economist magazine in December 2019, which listed out a long list of items of risks for 2020, like Trump, Brexit, artificial intelligence, etc. None of them included COVID-19. So COVID-19 in 2020 turned out to be the biggest risk, which no one was talking about in December 2019, just a few months ago. So I've come to the realization that basically the world, the future by definition is unknown. And how do you deal with this situation of unknown unknowns? The only way to deal with that is by having a policy of prudent diversification, basically a portfolio of 20 to 25 stocks diversified across industries and risk factors. This practice ensures you against a catastrophic outcome for the portfolio as a whole, and it also opens you up to optionality. So basically, you want to make your portfolio very, very robust, you know, be able to handle a wide range of outcomes. Because, you know, investing is never deterministic, it is always probabilistic, right? And in a probabilistic world, you have to, you know, basically, you know, think about a wide range of scenarios rather than, you know, just thinking in terms of black or white. So I think that is the right way to go. And again, I'm telling you in advance right now, the biggest risk which will play out in 2024 Is the risk which you, all 3 of us on this podcast are not even thinking about today, which is remotely possible. For example, let's think about something like China attacking Taiwan, for example, or suppose if US enters into a direct war with Iran because of the Middle East crisis, which is going on right now. None of these are risks which anyone is talking about right now, that these risks are possible. But if they actually crystallize, then, you know, many, because many people are not prepared for them, That is what will have the biggest impact on financial markets.

The unknown unknowns. Uh, you know, it's new terminology for me to think about, but I love the COVID example. You mentioned, uh, diversifying, you know, across robust stocks in different industries. What about different countries? I mean, we're talking to somebody right now who knows more about the Indian market than 99% of people, right? So over here in the US, and you hear things like the Indian middle class is larger than the entire population of the US. And, you know, there, there's a lot of industry and growth and boom happening. So I'm just curious, how does the average person diversify across multiple countries?

Right?

Because India isn't going to get into a war with Iran. At least we don't think that they are, right? So I'm just curious, like, how does that factor into your decision-making?

And should the average person be considering diversifying I think many investors and individuals suffer from what I call a home country bias. Because of our comfort with investing in our home country, we tend to ignore what is happening in countries across the world. But the best-performing stock markets in the last 12 to 18 months have been outside the US. The US has done very well, no doubt, recovering from the 2022 bear market, but Japan and India have also performed very, very handsomely. So I think you should always diversify, not put all your eggs into one basket. And in my view today, the best stock markets in the world are 3: the US, because of its entrepreneurship and creativity and the huge focus on technology, so you'll get that technology S-curve growth in the US. Japanese equities offer you deep value, cheap valuations, high dividend yields, And a country which is coming out of a decadal bear market. So you'll get a lot of delta, a lot of positive change in earnings there. And India, because of its, you know, various strong structural positive attributes, I think it's got a long growth runway for the next 20 years. And over the long run, corporate earnings in any country follow nominal GDP growth. So in India, you have got real GDP growth of 6%, you have inflation of 4.5%, 4.5% to 5%. So you're having nominal GDP growth of double digits in India. So over the next many years, you'll at least get corporate earnings growing in double digits. So I think, you know, over the long run, we all know that stock prices follow earnings growth. So I think, you know, double-digit earnings and returns from the Indian markets are a very realistic and reasonable expectation.

Tell you what, that's like such a— that's just a thing that even like talking to friends and everything about investments, like Very rarely do people bring up other countries, and you're right. Like we get stuck in our little comfort zone and forget that there's this whole world out there of investing and of places to invest. Now, in the book, you talk about that you also written about like fundamentals aren't exactly what decides the price of a stock. So, can you maybe explain that a little bit? Like expound upon that?

Correct. So fundamentals decide the or determine the long-term intrinsic value of a stock, but it does not determine the current stock price. That is driven by supply and demand, and supply and demand for any stock is in turn driven by the prevailing investor sentiment. And there are 2 ways basically how investors can judge prevailing investor sentiment. The first way is by looking at the IPO market, initial public offering, IPO market, There are 3 stages of IPOs. During stage 1, good companies come out with IPOs, their IPOs, at reasonable valuations. In stage 2, basically good companies come out with IPOs at very expensive valuations. And in stage 3, loss-making companies, bad quality companies, come out with IPOs at ludicrously high valuations or absurd valuations, and they are also oversubscribed in large numbers by retail investors, whose presence in the markets is a late-cycle indicator. So basically, whenever you see very high levels of margin funding and very high retail participation, you know that you are in the last stages of a raging bull market. So these 3 stages basically help you determine what is the prevailing investor sentiment. And the second way to judge prevailing investor sentiment is by looking at the quality of stocks being discussed on WhatsApp groups or X. And generally, during a— as the bull market matures, investors tend to move or shift from good quality stocks having higher returns on equity to inferior quality, inferior management and business quality stocks having higher revenue growth. Then they shift to commodity and cyclicals. Then they further shift to loss-making companies which are turning around. They're basically hope stories. And then investors further move down the quality curve to microcaps with a limited history of operations. And finally, they move to highly leveraged companies with projections of rapid revenue growth and negative operating cash flow. This is when the bull market normally tops out. And by the end of the euphoric phase, most investors' portfolios have only junk stocks left in them. So basically, avoid that mistake, you know, this, by writing this book, what has happened is now at least I'll be very disciplined not to go down the quality curve in a bull market in search of quicker returns. Because the biggest mistakes in the stock markets happen when we try to basically get all the gains and profits upfront, when we try to hurry up too much and we try to accelerate the returns process. That is basically when the biggest mistakes are made. So don't be greedy, don't fall prey to FOMO, fear of missing out. By looking at what the screenshots and all the big written numbers which people are posting on social media, all that is hogwash. Don't you know? Just because just think to you, just think why if anyone was making so much money, why would they know basically be trying to sell you a newsletter or a subscription service? They would basically you know become rich by themselves, right? No, basically if any rich if any so-called rich person is trying to sell you something, then you have to see through their actions on social media. Be very very careful.

Yeah, I can't stand all of those inbound spam DMs I get about forex trading and how they're coaching everybody. And yeah. So I haven't finished your book yet. I don't know if you talk about this at the end of your book. I guess I'll know soon. But let me ask and shortcut the process. Are you going to document your journaling in the same way moving forward? And does that exist on a blog? Is that stream of consciousness on Twitter? Are you going to continue to release more versions of this book? How can people stay on top of your thinking in real time?

Well, in terms of real time, how I'm thinking, I usually post my thoughts and views on X and LinkedIn. So that's an easy way. Right now, there is no plans of further publishing my journal entries after March 2020 into a book. But we'll see. I think for now, the response has been very heartening to this new book, and people have really appreciated the real-time format of this book. And it basically is more like a financial market thriller because there's one big thing which this book brings out to all the readers is that anything can happen at any time in the financial markets. So don't limit your minds in terms of boundaries with regards to what the markets might do. Anything can happen in the financial markets and in the world in general. So be open to all possibilities. Try to be a bit liquid. Try to have some cash buffer or some emergency fund in place. Have all the basics of personal finance in place so that you can basically withstand and endure whatever the world throws your way. Because resilience and longevity are the key to compounding. Basically, this is what this bear market ingrained in my mind. these 2 attributes, which are the key to compounding. And this is how you basically become resilient by focusing on quality and by being very prudently diversified across stocks, sectors, and risk factors. Basically, that is the best we can do as investors.

Well, I know we're getting close to the end here, so I'll just throw out there, Luke, you can leave this in, but you know that saying, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room? Well, every time I'm around you, I know I'm not the smartest person in the room. Which means that I'm attracted to the path that you're on, and I want to continue to consume your content. I'm not on X very much, but I'll make sure on on LinkedIn that I continue to engage with your content so that it continues to pop up for me, and I'll continue to study you. And you know, the joys of compounding was such an amazing book, and I've you know that whole thing is highlighted. So appreciate you, appreciate you coming on today. I know Luke probably has a couple more questions for you, but. Man, you are a smart individual, and I just can't wait to— I can't wait to see what happens with you over time as you leverage compounding as well.

Thanks a lot, Nick. I greatly enjoyed your book as well. I just wanted to personally tell you, The Rise of the Reader was a great read, and I got to know about this company Iconiq from your book, and I've just ordered a few amazing motivational frames for myself as well. You mentioned this point about play bigger triggers in your book, and I think that is so, so true that, you know, we have to train our subconscious mind to always, you know, just be focusing on the positives and just moving forward. That mindset has to be there. And I think the subconscious triggers just by placing these frames in my home and in my office, I think it'll greatly help. So thank you so much for writing that book. It was a great read.

Yeah, you're welcome. And I'm happy that you resonated with that. So far, the number one piece of feedback has been around the Play Bigger Triggers concept. So I think I'll do a little bit of research and a deeper dive and maybe some more content on that soon. But thank you for your feedback.

Thank you. Yeah.

And I just wanna, you know, echo what Nick said. I've just like blown away talking to you. You're just so smart. The last episode I got the privilege to listen to, but it's really cool just being in here and actually getting to have a conversation as well. So thank you so much for your time. Yeah, I have a few more questions, but I know we're getting a little short on time here, so I'll ask this, which is one that kind of comes from our audience, but it correlates with a question that Nick usually asks as well, which is, What are your top 3 to 5 books that you recommend to people for investing?

Sure. So I'll recommend 3 investing books and 3 non-investing books. As far as investing books go, I would highly recommend Investing for Growth by Terry Smith. That book basically teaches you how to invest in quality businesses for the long term. Then there is a book by Joel Greenblatt. It is called You Can Be a Stock Market Genius. Even though the title is a bit corny, but the book is a masterpiece on how to invest in various special situations to generate alpha for your clients. And then there's one more great book called Capital Returns. It's edited by Edward Chancellor, and it will teach you how to invest in cyclical businesses during industry down cycles and create alpha for your clients as well. So 3 great investing books. And I would also print out Buffett partnership letters and the Berkshire Hathaway annual letters separately and read them as well. As far as non-investing books go, I would highly recommend More Than You Know by Michael Mauboussin. Great book on multidisciplinary thinking. Poor Charlie's Almanac, edited by Pete Kaufman, is an all-time classic. That's also on the list. And then there are 2 books actually by Peter Bevelin. First one is called Seeking Wisdom, And the second book is called All I Want to Know Is Where I'm Going to Die, So I Will Never Go There. Again, 2 great, great books on developing your mind to be as rational as possible. So 4 non-investing books and 3 investing books, definitely for sure.

Thank you so much. There's a few that I hadn't heard of, so I'm excited. I wrote them down. I'll be ordering them and reading them for sure. All right, so before I ask my final question, where can people go to find out a little bit more about you and follow along on your journey?

So for any feedback or queries, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Now it is called X. And if you want to learn more about Stellar Wealth Partners India Fund, you can visit stellarwealthindia.com.

Amazing. Yeah, and we'll make sure we, uh, link those in the show notes. All right, so this is the final question. You pass away and all of the knowledge, the books, the courses, everything that you've put out disappears, but you can leave the world with a single piece of advice. What would it be?

Be very patient. Be very patient with the result, but be very impatient with the process. I think that is the, you know, simple advice that I would give. That, you know, that you cannot control the outcome, but you can definitely control the process which you follow, and you can control your personal behavior. So be, you know, very, you know, impatient with the process, but be very patient with the outcome.

So much wisdom in that. Well, Gautam, thank you so much for being here today. We thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Can't wait to talk to you again.

Great. Thank you so much, Luke and Nick. This was a pleasure. Thank you so much.