Blending two passions – My journey with Wealth Management and Public Speaking
I did my GMBA (Marketing- Retail Management) in the Dec 2007 batch with SP Jain. I was fearful of public speaking in school and college. During the initial days at SP Jain, I used to have sleepless nights whenever I had to make a presentation. I used to avoid it since I was extremely fearful of it. But during this one year, I overcame this fear and emerged victorious.
Since school, I’ve always dreamt of being an entrepreneur and a public speaker, and it was a dream to do an MBA from a premier college. After completing my MBA, I started my own pharmacy chain with the aim to spread base across Calcutta. It worked out perfectly – I liked pharma as an industry and retail management was my super specialisation. As luck would have it, that was the time a lot of pharmacy stores started to deep discount, resulting in me shutting shop.
It was a major setback in life. I was absolutely dejected and took up a job with a broking house, since I had built up an interest in stock markets since college (2003 onwards). I did not take up finance at SP Jain since I wanted to learn how to be good at marketing. While on my job, I happened to watch the masterpiece, ‘3 Idiots’ (a Bollywood movie starring Aamir Khan), which really inspired me to take up my passion as a career. I quit my job the very next day.
I was a topper in Mathematics throughout my school life and I had fallen in love with stock markets in 2003. Hence, I decided to combine the two and get into wealth management, managing people’s portfolios. Although I started with 0 clients, I used innovative marketing techniques to connect with my school friends, who started investing with me. I then started handling Health and Life insurance in 2012, followed by Mutual Funds in 2014.
In the last 8 years of my professional career, I have seen the highs and lows. I started from scratch. However, the best part about being an entrepreneur is that once your struggling period is over, you can take some time out for everything that fascinates and excites you.
After the demonetisation drive by the government, Mutual Funds are becoming more successful by the day. I can now work from anywhere in the country. I have always been passionate about Wealth Management and I wished to spread this passion among others as well. I do so by conducting guest lectures at IMT Nagpur. I also hold workshops for women on Financial Planning / How to Attain Financial Freedom – a pursuit of my initial passion of Public Speaking combined with my interest in Wealth Management.
Today, my sessions usually deal with engaging student managers with their ideas of becoming rich and explaining the concept of the Cash flow quadrant. I also help the audience learn more about recession proof investments and passive income, giving them a few tips about investment. Finance and Marketing walk in the parallel planes in any business – one can become a master of their own destiny just by following some simple steps.
You can read more about Wealth Management and my sessions on my blog.
About the Author
Vivek Shah is a GMBA 2007 alumnus from SP Jain School of Global Management. An avid reader with a passion for public speaking, Vivek fancies reading self-help books and fiction. He has built his career in Wealth Management, and conducts numerous sessions to help people with the same. Vivek aims to be one of the best public speakers the country has ever produced, and has been working towards achieving that dream for the past 6 months. With an inherent interest in travel, Zumba, meditation, and music, Vivek loves listening to motivational speeches by Robert Kiyosaki, Sandeep Maheshwari, Vivek Bindra.
You can get in touch with Vivek Shah on his Business Page or on LinkedIn.
