Prem Sagar's blog

2011: Year of dreams

It looks like yesterday when I was woken up in the middle of the night by a nightmare!

Jobless, directionless and confused. Having given up a good job and nothing working out in life, I cursed myself left, right and center.

I quickly realized that it was just a nightmare. I still had my job. I still had a salary coming in every month. And the appraisals and a possible good hike just around the corner.

I sat at my desk at 2.30am in the night and really wondered if I should resign from my job without any idea about what next to do in life.  Should I hang on for a while? Should I take it easy? Should I wait until I figure things out?

I couldn’t come to a conclusion. I slept.

Come morning, come light.. I thought, “heck, let me just do it”. Also, my wife was very supportive about it. That really helped!

I resigned from my job. The day was January 4th.

And then, began the story! Read the rest of this entry »

Tapprs.com : Ramen profitable?

You might know already what Ramen profitable means. If not, here’s a detailed post by PG on the topic.

I’ve been thinking about the next step for Tapprs.com.

Should I expand it further? Should I wait for clear signals? Do I want to take it up higher? Should I collect more data?

And the most important of all… how profitable is Tapprs.com? And the associated set of questions.

• Will I recover equipment cost in 10 months? Or 12?
• How much should I provision for damages?
• What will happen to the business if I take it out of the run-from-home mode? Will expenses make it unviable?
• Does it make sense to expand? What do the numbers say?

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Salesmanship

A few years ago, my Dad sold a house in Ooty.

He sold it at least 40% below market price.  Primarily because the property had some issue (and was in a lawsuit).  Also because my Dad was not a salesman!

He was a retired Headmaster. Someone who had held the highest position in a school. How could he be a salesman? His self esteem forbade him from stooping to a salesman’s level.

He tried talking to a few guys, got a few quotes, got pushed hard by low ballers and bailed out cheaper. In fact, he got frustrated by delay and said ok to a 20% cut at the last minute on the initial proposed price.

Now, they say, “like father, like son”! I hate it for this particular thing! I am no salesman too!

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Books I’ve liked: Personal finance, investing & entrepreneurship

Every now and then, a friend asks me for a book recommendation, especially on personal finance, entrepreneurship and investing. Not because am an investing guru (which I am not), but because I read a ton of them!

I thought I will note it down here as well.

All these are books that I have read and liked a lot.

Few like One up on Wall street gave me the confidence that I too can be an investor in the stock market, which until then was crocodile infested space to me. Few like Intelligent Investor have been a huge huge help on almost everything finance. Few like Where are the customers yachts? changed my opinion on the stock market quite abruptly and changed my style of investing drastically.

And yet, few like Richest man in Babylon made me realize that simplicity and a principled method matters. A few like Extraordinary popular delusions helped me stay away from making costly mistakes.

Perhaps, there have been a few that have led me astray as well. Rich dad poor dad? Could be!

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Responsible consumption

Am back from attending the 3 day JLR NTP (Naturalist Training Program) at the Bannerghatta national park, conducted by JLR’s Chief Naturalist, Karthikeyan.

It is an amazing program (and Karthikeyan is a super-fantastic teacher) and I am extremely happy that I attended it. A long pending wish got done in my bucket-list.

During the program, one of the discussions was about how much effort actually goes into food production and how we trivialize it into simply idli and sambar.  We often do not realize how intricate and inter-connected things are in our lives.

We take for granted, the plate of rice and often end up wasting quite a bit. There’s so much that goes into the process to enable that plate on our table.

We pay for it. We pay in paper currency. Why bother with trivial data? Why care about some farmer’s hard work? Or about the involvement of nature in it? Or the time it takes to grow it?

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