The beginning:

‍

The beginning.

‍

The beginning of the next chapter of my life.

‍

Let’s start at the top. Where did my journey begin?

‍

It started in 1995 being born to two Indian immigrants in Canada.

‍

Fast forward a few years and thanks to an amazing teacher (shoutout to Shushi), I skipped grade 1.

‍

For the rest of my public school life, I was always the youngest and the smallest kid in my class.

‍

Thanks to good genes and strict Indian parents, I did fine academically.

‍

Fast forward a few more years and I was in the pre-IB program.

‍

Pre-IB was prior to IB, or International Baccalaureate program which is a rigorous internationally recognized curriculum.

‍

I was miserable.

‍

To this day, the most miserable I’ve been in my entire life.

‍

Was doing 4-5 hours of homework a day and almost cried myself to sleep every night.

‍

I couldn’t handle it.

‍

Even though I was doing fine academically, I was finished.

‍

I felt like I was failing.

‍

I was ready to drop-out and get a normal Canadian public school education.

‍

Then my parents told me I was making a mistake.

‍

They told me I would never get into schools internationally. 

‍

That my dreams of going abroad would never happen if I left IB.

‍

Too bad. 

‍

I was done.

‍

Fast forward a few more years and after dropping out of IB, I got into multiple medical schools abroad at 16.

‍

Checkmate.

‍

Enter medical school in Scotland, the greatest time of my life.

‍

6 years flew by in an instant and was convinced the entire time I was going to become a doctor back in Canada.

‍

To get a residency job in Canada, you need to pass 2 exams, a multiple-choice test and a clinical exam.

‍

The clinical exam I had no issues.

‍

The multiple choice however, I didn’t do so well.

‍

I didn’t meet the threshold for residency applications.

‍

I wasn’t going to be a doctor back in Canada.

‍

I failed.

‍

In that moment, I felt like I failed my family, failed my friends and worst of all, I failed myself.

‍

What was I going to do now after all these years in medicine with no immediate path back to being a doctor in Canada?

‍

What I learned then was when one door shuts, another one opens.

‍

So it was time to pivot.

‍

Fast forward a few more months and after getting rejected from 50+ jobs across multiple industries, I thought I was going back to school to get a masters degree.

‍

A month before school, I get an email from a healthcare venture capital firm based in the Netherlands saying they liked my profile and wanted to chat.

‍

The email that forever changed the direction of my life.

‍

A few interviews later, I was sitting in an office in Amsterdam working at the corporate VC fund of one of the largest pharma companies in the world, a job I wasn’t prepared for in an industry I barely knew existed.

‍

A month later, I knew I found something. 

‍

The first time I ever woke up in my life excited to go to work. 

‍

Never felt that once in medicine and knew I made the right choice.

‍

Halfway through my job in Amsterdam, found out I wasn’t sticking around so after a hundred conversations with healthcare venture capitalists around the world, I landed a job with the best healthcare VC firm in Canada.

‍

Back where it all began.

‍

But wait.

‍

This is only half my story.

‍

Back in 2018 when I left medicine, I had all this time on my hands. 

‍

I wasn’t writing papers, doing research, or hanging out with friends after work.

‍

I was on my own.

‍

I decided from that year on that I would try to do 3 things every day - read, write and meditate.

‍

Had been listening to podcasts since 2012 and all these successful people, especially on the Tim Ferris show, kept talking about how implementing these 3 habits changed their lives forever.

‍

I thought why not, let’s run an experiment and see where this goes.

‍

From then on, I have been journalling almost every night, meditating for 10 minutes a day and have been reading exclusively non-fiction books.

‍

Fast forward to the beginning of 2021 and decided I would start blogging with the goal to write 100 blog posts in a year.

‍

At the end of 2021, I ended up with 500 and haven’t stopped since.

‍

That leads us to today and the reason for starting this podcast.

‍

I’ve read and taken notes on over 200 non-fiction books, written an extra 600+ blog posts and reflected on my life for more hours than you can imagine.

‍

Some of what I’ve written is decent. 

‍

Other stuff I’ve written is way off.

‍

I have made a lot of mistakes but also got a few things right.

‍

All can be found on my website, which I’ll make sure to include below.

‍

The goal is to share all of this work in a podcast, a form of media that has helped me grow immensely over the last decade.

‍

The goal is to do that for someone else. 

‍

This won’t be a traditional interview format but rather me turning everything I’ve written into audio form.

‍

It’s only me.

‍

I don’t expect this journey to be easy. 

‍

All I’m hoping to do is try.

‍

Try and teach someone what I wish my 16-year-old self knew about the world today while having fun along the way.

‍

So here’s to the beginning.

‍

Here’s to the next chapter.

‍

Hope you’ll join me and see where this goes.

‍

Oh and one last thing - can’t stop, won’t stop, Game stop ;)

‍

KGYDG

‍