Chief Change Officer - Gagan Sandhu: From Grit to Xillion — A Playbook for Reinventing Careers and Financial Freedom — Part One

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

From mechanical engineering in India to leading tech roles at Square and Atlassian in Silicon Valley, Gagan Sandhu’s career is a masterclass in adaptability and growth. Now the CEO and Co-Founder of Xillion, a platform empowering financial independence, Gagan shares how embracing knowledge-driven pivots—like switching to tech in his late 20s—has fuelled his success. He unpacks the myths of financial freedom, tackles ageism in the workplace, and explains why modern careers require constant reinvention. This is part one of a two-part series, offering a roadmap for navigating change, mastering skills, and living intentionally, no matter your stage in life. Key Highlights of Our Interview: From Machines to Tech: Chasing the Future “The pace of innovation in mechanical engineering had slowed, but I was hungry for more. Transitioning into tech wasn’t straightforward—it took continents, years, and relentless effort, but it was fueled by a clear driver: knowledge.” The Xillion Leap “When my learning plateaued in corporate roles, starting Zillion became my next knowledge adventure. Building something from scratch offered an accelerated learning curve and the chance to apply everything I’d gathered.” Business School: Filling the Gaps “For me, business school wasn’t about a career leap; it was about plugging knowledge gaps. Understanding accounting, marketing, and finance became crucial to having meaningful conversations at work, even as a tech leader.” Redefining Financial Independence “It’s not about flashy buzzwords or retiring early—it’s about having the freedom to choose your path. For me, it meant leaving the corporate grind to build something meaningful, armed with a clear, numbers-driven plan.” Crunching the Numbers “My financial independence formula wasn’t guesswork. I calculated five years of living expenses, education costs, and retirement needs. It’s basic math, but staying on top of expenses and cash flow gave me the clarity to leap.”  _________________________ Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Gagan Sandhu Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. Experiential Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives Global Top 3% Podcast on Listen Notes World's #1 Career Podcast on Apple Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI, JP 2.5+ Millions Downloads 80+ Countries

Hi everyone, welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. I'll show it is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today I'm thrilled to be speaking with my Chicago Boo MBA classmate, Gargan Sandhu. Like many of my previous guests, Gargan is an immigrant who moved from India to the States about 20 years ago. With a mechanical engineering background, he began his journey as a grad student. About 2 years ago, he founded a fintech company aimed at helping Gen Y and Z achieve financial independence. Speaking of financial independence, I've always been skeptical of it, seeing it more as a myth or a marketing

buzzword. Intro Chicago Booth style. Gagan and I will be exchanging viewpoints on this topic, agreeing to disagree, while appreciating and understanding our different perspectives in a sensible manner. On top of that, Gargan would share invaluable insights on managing career paths. I really appreciate that before our interview. Despite his busy schedule, Gargan made it a point to thoroughly understand the scope of my show. He asked for examples and even took the time to write down his career insights to share with me ahead of time. So for the next 45 minutes, I guarantee you'll learn a lot from him.

Let's begin, shall we? Hey, thank you so much Vince. Thank you so much for reaching out and rekindling old memories from business school. And I'm so happy to be doing this with you and I'm a fan of you and what you're doing. So thank you so much. You're really a key part of this Begu journey you started off some time ago. It feels like just yesterday, maybe a year or two back, when we got on that call as you were beginning your venture. You had just left your corporate job to dive head first into your new endeavor. But before we dive into that, let's take a step back. I'd love to hear more about your background. What have you done before this? Let's explore some of the major milestones,

moving across borders, adapting to different cultures, and how you've embraced change throughout your life so far. Let's start there. Great. So my story is not very different from a typical immigrant to the U.S. and the U.S. is a big magnet for immigrants. So I came here in the early arts 2001, 2002 to pursue grad school at Arizona State.

And I like the way things are here. I got a job incidentally, though, even though I came here to do something related to tech. My undergrad was in mechanical engineering, but I'm like, yeah, mechanical engineering. A lot of the revisions happened in the 20th century. I should switch to something related to tech. So I went to grad school for that. By the time I graduated, nobody wanted to hire in tech because we were going through a huge recession. And what happened, I ended up again working in the mechanical engineering industry here in the US. That was my first job.

But I kept at it. I kept working on the side and just doing things on my own, which helped me secure a job in tech, actually. That happened back in 2005. I know I'm dating myself here, but that happened in 2005. And one quick note I want to share with the audience, given that people are looking for nuggets in terms of career and how to grow. I do want to share that by the time I got into tech, I was 29 plus years old, so close to 30.

I was married and I had a child by then. So I just want people to realize and know that you can change careers and nothing's gonna stop you if you put your mind to it. I remember when my wife was pregnant with our first child and I was preparing on the side I would take printouts read all the time I would install software on my laptop and write programs and write code and all that

and sometimes when my wife would have to I would have to take her to the doctor's appointment for the wellness checks and all that. Why we were waiting for the doctor I would have to take her to the doctor's appointment for the wellness checks and all that. While we were waiting for the doctor, I would be combing through the notes and the PDFs and all those things and just studying, just reading. And all that paid off. I got into tech in 2005. I moved to Boston, worked at a tech company called Akamai Technologies.

I worked there for many years, first as an engineer, then as a manager. Then I realized that Boston is too small for market, which we will talk about in more detail. But I realized that since I was 8,000 miles away from where I was born and where a lot of my loved ones lived, moving a couple thousand miles within the U.S. wasn't going to make a big difference to me. So we moved about, this was around the time when I was still in business school, we were still at Chicago Booth and I got a job in Silicon Valley and I moved about 10 years ago to Silicon Valley and I've been here.

I've been working in many different companies and then two plus years ago I decided to launch Zim, which is the name of my company XILION and we'll discuss more in detail in a little bit. But the idea was I became financially independent and I looked around and I saw that other people, especially people who were similar to me, people who work in comfortable jobs, have decent income. And I looked around and typically immigrants, I'm like, hey, I think I'm ready to hang up my boots, so to speak, to take a leap and build something on my own. They're like, how come?

I'm like, I think I have enough to, as you said, I have enough to achieve financial independence. And then they're like, but I don't. And I'm like, okay, here's the things I did. Have you done the same things? They're like, I didn't know that. I needed to do those things. And I kept talking to different people, kept getting on similar story.

And then I realized that actually there is need for something like Zillion, which can help people make great financial decisions and become financially independent sooner. make great financial decisions and become financially independent sooner. Reflecting on my career, there are lots and lots of twists and turns, much like yours and those of many guests I've had so far on this show. I always ask this question. As we progress, often without realizing it, we uncover themes, motivations, or drivers that push us from one milestone to the next. Although these stages might not appear linked on the surface, they are often connected by underlying forces. So it's

clear our choices aren't as random as they might seem. Something is always guiding us. Have you thought about what drives you? What are your key motivators? What recurring themes have you noticed in your journey? Yeah, great question. I think if, as I said in the first question there, I started as an undergrad in mechanical engineering. And what I realized was I worked in the industry for three years after college in India. And one of the things I realized while working at it was an automotive manufacturing facility. My biggest learning there was that a lot of the innovation in manufacturing and

automotive had happened. Pages of innovation had slowed down considerably. If you go back, I'm talking about 98 and 99, 2000. All that time, if you think about it, the internal combustion engines were running really well, highly efficient, a lot of the electronics was already factored in. Relative innovation had happened. And when I looked around,

I felt that by graduating from college as a technical person, even if it's mechanical engineering, I was hungry for knowledge. So I realized very early on in my career that I am a knowledge worker. And for me to continue to be successful as a knowledge worker, I had to consistently update my knowledge.

And that actually has been the theme of my career all along. What I mean by that is that once you realize that something is critical, like in my case, I figured it is knowledge. So after about a year of working in the mechanical engineering industry, I decided that I needed to upgrade my skills and get into this new industry. Back in the late 90s, tech was brand new. Internet had just started to become popular and a lot of things were happening, exciting things. So I decided that I was gonna get into tech so I decided to come to the US

so I took the GRE exam for grad school and started my journey. That journey took if you think about it, 98 I graduated from college and 2005 is when I actually entered the knowledge industry, the tech industry. The journey wasn't simple, it wasn't straightforward, it wasn't even a straight line journey. It took many different turns, many different jobs, two different continents, many different cities, but I was able to make that journey. But one thing that was consistent and constant in that journey was knowledge. And this is something I would like to share with all your listeners is we actually are in the

I would say in the beginning, but definitely our generation, Gen X and Gen Y and Gen Z, we are firmly in the knowledge economy. Unless you are doing something with your hands, let's say you are a construction worker, or you are a gardener, or you are a farmer. That's different. But if you're not, if you're working in any other kind of job, whether it's a research associate, or a professor,

or tech person, data scientist, we are part of the knowledge economy. And you always have to seek to increase your knowledge, to improve that skill. And that doesn't come automatically. You have to always go for it and find new avenues to improve your knowledge. It could mean find new avenues to improve your knowledge. It could mean going deep and becoming a super specialist in your area, or it could mean going broad and finding more about certain areas, or it could mean leaving one area

and picking totally different area and learn more about it because you might have learned most of the things that had to be learned in your previous role in your previous avatar. To answer your question succinctly I would say seeking knowledge has proven for me to be the ultimate success criteria and every time I've increased knowledge the dividends have been tremendous. And I should add here,

since you and I share that background, for me going to business school was purely a knowledge decision. I didn't go there to change careers. I was working in tech. I continued to work in tech. I didn't expect a huge jump. I was working as a senior manager.

Then I became a director after that. It was a pretty linear path. But I went there to learn about things that, as a person working in tech, certain things like economics and marketing and finance and accounting, those things were my blind spots. And as I was growing in my career,

I realized that I needed that knowledge in my toolbox to be able to have a coherent conversation with some of my business partners at work. Even if I'm the tech person, I'm still expected to know a little bit more about how accounting works, how the basic unit economics of certain product work, how the cost accounting work. And for that, I went to business school.

So that has been my constant journey and even starting Zillion. One of the reasons was, I learned a ton while working at different companies and I'm like, my learning has slowed down and plateaued. One of the best ways to learn more is to start something from scratch. And so I would argue that even starting Zillian was a step in that direction, which is to actually increase knowledge at a rapid pace.

You've become financially independent and then decided to start this company to help others achieve the same. This makes me wonder, what does financial independence mean to you? I'm very eager to hear about your personal wealth philosophy. The term financial independence is heavily used online. In fact, often misused or reduced to just a buzzword. But I'm interested in your genuine perspective and practices. How do you interpret and apply this concept in your life?

Yeah, absolutely. And I agree with you that there is a lot of noise around this term. Financial freedom, financial independence, financially independent, retired early. There's a whole fire movement. And also especially ever since the social media became a dominant force in the society. There are just too many people out there

trying to almost, some of them, sound like snake oil salesmen. They're like, oh yeah, I'm financially independent. I just have the social media or I do XYZ and I make enough money, blah, blah, blah. So I'll tell you what my criteria was. It was fairly straightforward.

And I was actually contextualized, right? I am careful to use the word financial independence and not retirement because those two are different terms, very different context, and very different overall outcomes. For me, financial independence meant I could leave my corporate job and go work on my own and build something from scratch. When I was able to do that, I said, I am financially independent because I can do what I want with my time. So I earned that independence and I don't have to be beholden to a paycheck to do that or to something else. Right. In this case, it was paycheck. And for me, it actually, I'm an engineer after all,

and I actually did a very mathematical thing. I figured out how much money I would need to sustain for at least five years so that I can build something on the side while not starving my family. And I did some math and not super rigorous. We are all pretty good at doing basic math. And I did that, I'm like, okay, five years

of yearly spend is about this much. My kids, one of my kids is gonna go to college in this much amount of time, so here's that. And also while I build, I will not have an income, so my retirement account has to be in a certain shape or form so that I'm not insecure about that. So that's gonna be another amount, let's say X, and Y is gonna be the amount that is gonna be needed

for just maintaining and sustaining for five years while I build something. And Z is the amount that is needed to send, let's say one or two kids to college during that time. So X plus Y plus Z, I felt that once I reached that number, that would be my financial independence. And what I realized was that plus one number, right?

I think the specifics are not super important. I think everybody's circumstances are different. And what I realized was that it was easy for me to do this almost like a mental math, but for a lot of people, it was a much hard calculation. Not because the math is hard, but because I think the reason it's easy for me is because I am able to keep track of things much, much better than an average person.

For instance, I know pretty well what my monthly expenses are. I've known it since I was in college and I have always maintained spreadsheets. I can tell you what my monthly expenses were in 2005, for instance, right? I'll maintain spreadsheets. So it's very easy for me to do that. It's just a habit. The second is I'm pretty decent at also managing cash flow and investing. So all of that combined, it became a pretty, I would say, attainable and achievable goal

for me personally, and me and my wife as a family, as a unit. But what I realized is for a lot of people, it's much harder because A, a lot of people don't know how much they actually spend in a car. B, a lot of people do not really start investing early enough to actually gain the compounding effect, the magical compounding effect to actually see their savings grow and that actually also stops them. Or C, this is relevant very much to the question you specifically asked. A lot of people actually go in directions that they are told that will lead them to financial independence, but it's not. For instance, a lot of people are like, hey, I only buy real estate because somebody told me that's what I should do.

If you're going to own only real estate doesn't yield cash returns, which means you'll be cash poor, but asset-rich. That's not financial independence. So understanding those things helped me build my viewpoint. And now my goal is to help others see that viewpoint and build financial independence in a way that works for them. And actually, in that respect, another thing that, you know, because you and I went to a really good school, and some of the things were hammered into us completely

while we were at Booth, which is the stock market returns, right? I think you can wake up any U Chicago booth alum in the middle of the night and say, hey, what are long-term S&P 500 returns? And I think before they even gain a little bit of sense of the world, they'll be like 10%. Right? That's what I'll do with things. And I think what I realized is that very few people actually know this very fundamental thing that you can get these kind of returns. And also if you diversify very fundamental thing, that you can get these kinds of returns.

And also if you diversify a little bit better, you can probably get a little bit more, or if you're conservative, you can get a little bit less. But what we did at Zillion was we helped people revitalize financial independence. So we built tools within Zillion, and we actually call this tool, Financial Independence Tool, the FIT call this tool financial independence tool,

the FIT. So how fit you are or how, when are you likely to hit financial independence? As soon as you tell us what you own and where your money is and how much you earn and how much you spend, we can actually tell you exactly, hey, you're gonna reach financial independence in 2034, for instance, or 2037.

And you can change things. You're like, oh, what if my income increases by 20,000 per year? How will that impact? We will show you how will that impact. You're like, oh, what if I have to pay 100% of my child's college education? How will that impact my financial independence?

For those of us who are not very good in mental math, we built this tool so you can just plug that number in, say, OK, my child is going to go to some extra-high school, college, 200k expense coming up in five years. How will that impact my financial independence? So we actually made the thinking part too easy and we took the assumptions out. Also, how will inflation impact my financial independence?

Like I can say, oh, I need a million dollars to retire because that's the number thrown around. Or these days it's I think 2.2 million, that's the number that's thrown around. But hey, if I'm gonna live for another 40 years is it going to be enough? How will inflation impact that? You can actually adjust for that. So the overall thing we have done is what I realized is some people are very good at this math, but a lot of people are not. And what we did is we made the math so easy and so virtual and so easy to understand and actually play with

that now financial independence should seem like a tangible thing. So much so that a customer of ours, I was meeting with them and it was in a social setting and I was explaining what we do and I was talking to somebody asked a question, hey, how do I know how much money I need? I'm like, we built a calculator exactly.

We built a product just for this and a customer of ours, he was also in that, he was also right next to me. He's, oh, that's the number I see on the top right corner. I'm like, yeah. So the idea, the thing is that we made it this whole complex thing and we simplified it and we made it visually so appealing and so easy to use that people are able to now see what financial independence would mean for them and whether and when they are likely to reach that. And also once they reach, are they at the risk of running out of money or not?

Right, if somebody decides I want to send two kids to college and retire at 42, and I want to travel the world, and I'm gonna have no income, our product will show them if they are likely to run out of money, maybe by the age of 65 or 70, or they're not going to run out of money, maybe by the age of 65 or 70, or they're not going to run out of money

and they can comfortably even retire. For them, financial independence might mean retire. For some, it might mean they go from full-time to part-time, or it might mean they, rather than just working for money, they can now pursue a passion where they will have a lower income, let's say. Some people want to, one of my coworkers at Square, he quit his corporate job and became a teacher.

Now following that passion, I'm sure he took a huge pay cut, maybe 60, 70, even 80% pay cut. But my guess is that this person is really good at at doing the math and they can say, yeah, I can do this. One of our customers, they both work and one of them decided after using Zillian, they're like, hey, listen, one of us is gonna quit

and focus on family and just take some time off because we know our financial independence is not at stake. Our tools help people do that. Let me share my take on financial independence, if you will allow me. Interestingly, I don't actually believe in it. And my reasoning isn't about the math. It's about human nature and psychology. We humans have desires at every stage of our lives, whether it's craving the latest iPhone when we're younger,

or simply needing a functional phone as we grow older. Our desires shape our financial behavior. I believe as long as we have desires, we can never be truly financially independent because our decisions are influenced by our pursuit of these desires and the financial means to fulfill them. Personally, I'm not just about numbers. I consider myself a philosopher at heart, despite studying finance and accounting and spending a decade in financial institutions helping people manage money. I'm fundamentally a humanist. Life is not only short, it is unpredictable. We might plan to achieve certain things by a certain age, but there's no guarantee we'll have the time. So for me, it's about focusing on the present,

like building a good show here. Yes, I need to make and spend money to sustain it, but I don't stress over really long-term financial plans because the future is, after all, uncertain. To me, managing personal wealth is less about math and more about one's life philosophy, psychology, and the ability to tune out the noise and adapt to changes around us. That's my perspective on financial independence. I think we are talking about the same thing. Maybe we are talking about the two different sides of the same coin.

What you are saying is living in present. One fact I think we both have to agree on. In the modern world, the concept of money and wealth is enmeshed with our daily lives. We just can't separate, right? How we live our lives, it is influenced by money, whether we like it or not, but that's how the world is structured today. To your point, living in the present,

I agree with you, 100%. Knowing about independence does is it helps you define that present and it helps you be very conscious about that. So one example that I gave you was my coworker who left a very comfortable corporate job to become a teacher. Now that person, they actually walked away from a lot of future wealth.

But they pursued passion. Now the idea is that financial independence will let them pursue a passion and shape their today and their tomorrow. They are living in the present so they didn't wait until, a lot of people wait until they retire to pursue their hobbies and their passions. This person, probably in their late 40s, walked away from a corporate job and is now working with the kids. Another couple that I mentioned for them living in the present is that their kids are young and they actually until now they

were thinking they need to keep earning a lot of money because they just need to have a lot of money because they have two kids and they're living in a very expensive area here in Silicon Valley and they just can't keep up. And knowing for them, financial independence was something they couldn't wrap their heads around because of the way their thought processes worked. But by knowing what was needed, they were able to sift the signal from the noise, and they were like, oh, okay, we can actually spend more time raising our kids and building the family and building the foundations of the family and not just keep earning more. Because we have reached a point where financial independence is within reach. So my point is, even if you want to live in the present,

I think being aware of the pitfalls and also the possible rewards of financial independence, I think knowing those two is of extreme utility, is of extreme usefulness. So let me finish your thought what you started on the financial independence part. I would say yes, we provide assurance, but more than that, we also actually infuse knowledge in the product that is otherwise not very well known. For instance, a lot of people are like, hey, I have three or four properties, so that should do it. What we provide is, and people generally it's not, as I said, like people, most people don't know S&P 500 long-term returns, believe it or not.

Even though to us, it's always at the tip of our tongue and it's always at our fingertips, we know it. And people don't know what the returns are for real estate in the long term. I'm talking about American markets. Asian markets are different, but American markets. So we bake the data. We also bake hard data. If somebody has XYZ amount of funds in their 401k, which is the retirement account in the US,

and they have some stocks in their brokerage account, and they have some real estate, and they have some treasury bonds, and they have some cash. We are able to put all that together and say, we know real estate grows about 3 to 3.5% per year. Based on what you have, here's where you can expect this thing to grow. You have some cash that's not gonna grow, it's actually gonna lose value. You have some bonds, you have some here's where you can expect this thing to grow. You have some cash that's not gonna grow,

it's actually gonna lose value. You have some bonds, you have some this thing. So we are able to build that more. So there is the math there, even though I said it's easy for people like you and me, but for most people, it becomes very complicated very quickly, and that's where we come in and we help. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget, and we hope. I'm Vizhchen, your ambitious human host.

Until next time, take care.