Writing Understandable Finance with Vinod Bhat, the author of The Financial Independence Marathon

@vinodnbhat · 1yr ago · 0:47

And prior to that I have done my MBA in Finance from the Waterton school USA and my BTC in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay. And I'm also a chartered financial analyst

@Binati_Sheth · 1yr ago · 1:11

@vinodnbhat 1. How did you come up with the title for your book?

Just aweinspiring the trajectory. It just keeps getting much more illustrious as it goes along. Thank you so much for joining us. We know. And I'll start with the first question

@vinodnbhat · 1yr ago · 1:25

So what I realized is that many of us still view investing as making the largest amount of money in the shortest period of time, which is the wrong way to think about it. Investing is a long term journey and one has to be patient and pace ourselves, right? And at the same time, I'm a marathon runner. I've been running for the past 13 years and I've run a number of full marathons and half marathons

@Binati_Sheth · 1yr ago · 1:19

@vinodnbhat 2. How did your chapters come about - creation, collaboration or both?

Nothing truly beats experience, does it? I think that's the best way to summarize the previous question where your professional, your educational, and your runner? Experience kind of came together and created magic. Haruki Murakami actually has a book called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which is not about running alone. It is, but it's actually about how to live a life and writing. It's just beautiful. So thank you so much for sharing that with us

@vinodnbhat · 1yr ago · 1:36

And when it came to the index, like you said, the chapter titles had to be interesting without everything. And so I put some more thought into it, and a simple guide for me was that it had to be interesting for my family members to want to read the chapters, right? And if they would read my book, then I would expect others to read it also. And that's how this entire book and the index came about

@Binati_Sheth · 1yr ago · 1:33

@vinodnbhat 3. How did you develop the tone for your book?

What is the scheme or what is the caveat? Right? And then I dissociate because I'm distracted being a cynic. I didn't have that happen with your book at all. And it genuinely is unlike most finance books I have read so far. So how did you end up developing this stone for your book, which genuinely is incredibly unique?

@vinodnbhat · 1yr ago · 1:52

That's a word I learnt from my daughter, because after every chapter she used to come and sometimes say, this is too preachy. Why are you saying this in this tone? Right? So then I had to go back and rework and that needed a lot of effort. But in the end, I'm glad, like you said, that it has come about in the form for unique tone

@Binati_Sheth · 1yr ago · 2:04

@vinodnbhat 4. How did you learn this form of storytelling (with regards to financial education)?

And it's a conversation I have heard in my house and it's totally understandable why people have these kind of anecdotal opinions about finance. And I don't really want to spoil this because it is so funny, the comparison. And I am guilty of having made a comparison of this sort as well that predictions and such. How is this any different than that?

@vinodnbhat · 1yr ago · 2:09

They are people amongst my family or amongst the investors that I have met. And I remember whenever the interactions are interesting or different, I make it a point to remember that and then those characters have appeared in my book. And of course, I have taken some creative license and not all the characters are real, but many of them are. And that's why the book is a little bit more relatable to readers, because they have seen it for themselves

@Binati_Sheth · 1yr ago · 2:09

Penguin published Vinod’s book. @vinodnbhat 5. What was your publishing experience like?

EFTs and I do now, so thank you so much for that. Onto the penultimate question, which is, how did you get published by one of the biggest publishers in the country? I vaguely suspect that quality was the deciding factor, but if you would be open to sharing behind the scenes, if you would, of how you landed the publisher and how the experience was and all of that, because I think there's a lot of misconceptions floating around with regards to working with bigger publishers

@vinodnbhat · 1yr ago · 2:35

And like I said, it took two years and multiple iterations and drafts to put it together. And after that, I was wondering how to get this published. And fortunately for me, my exboss, Mr. Shiv Shiv Kumar, who has also written the forward for my book has published three books with Penguin India, right? And all of them have been bestsellers. So I gathered my courage and requested him if he would mind reading the draft and seeing if he liked it

@Binati_Sheth · 1yr ago · 2:14

@vinodnbhat 6. What is your take/experience on social media and selling books?

Because the likes of Cal Newport, he's not on any social media platform other than, I would say YouTube. He has a YouTube channel, but other than Bhat, he doesn't have anything. And yet he sells out so many books anytime he has come up with a book. Right. So that was an outlier, obviously

@Binati_Sheth · 1yr ago · 1:22

Buy me: https://s.swell.life/STVXCcfAGw6Uc7C

One last time, the link to purchase Vinod's book, The Financial Indicator Narathan is in the description. Don't forget to follow Vinod and check his book out. Thank you so much for joining in

The Financial Independence Marathon: Unlock the Power of Your Money

@vinodnbhat · 1yr ago · 1:28

And now of course there are these other platforms that are also coming up and if somebody is already an established personality, if they are well known authors, then people already know who they are and what to expect from them. But even nowadays they are also using social media very well for promoting their views and their books. So from an author's point of view I would say that definitely social media is a very useful platform as an amplifier for our own voice