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

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 two 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: The Trap of Asset Rich, Cash Poor “Financial independence isn’t about piling up assets like real estate without liquidity. It’s about understanding cash flow, compounding returns, and making smart investments tailored to your goals.” Two Sides of the Same Coin “Financial independence isn’t just about planning for tomorrow—it’s about defining today. The idea is to align your present choices with the freedom to pursue passions and live meaningfully.” The Role of Finfluencers “They offer quick tips and digestible content, often catering to a younger audience. But their motives can sometimes be tied to promotions—whether it’s a bank account or an investment product. Their advice might not always be impartial.” A Balanced Perspective “At Xillion, we take a different path. While we do share nuggets of wisdom on platforms like LinkedIn and TikTok, we focus on being our own voice of authority rather than relying on external influencers. This way, authenticity remains at the core of our brand.” The 10-Year Career Mindset “Careers aren’t linear 30-year paths anymore. Every decade or so, you need to rediscover yourself. I’ve done it multiple times—starting as a mechanical engineer, pivoting to programming, then management, and finally launching my own company. Reinvention is the new normal.” _________________________ 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. 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'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 this social media or I do XYZ and I make enough money, blah, blah, blah.

I'll tell you what my criteria was. It was fairly straightforward. And I would actually contextualize, right? I'm careful to use the word financial independence and not retired. 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, our 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 going to be another amount, let's say, X. And Y is going to be the amount that is going to 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'm 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 cashflow

and investing. So all of that combined, it became 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 month. 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 see, this is relevant very quickly 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 rate, 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 Babood, which is the stock market returns, right? I think you can wake up any UChicago 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 is think. 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 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 visualize financial independence. So we built tools within Zillion, and we actually call this tool financial independence tool, the FIT. So how fit you are,, 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 going to 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 at mental math, we built this tool so you can just plug that number in and say, okay, my child is going to go to some XYZ college, 200k expense coming up in five years. How will that impact my financial independence? So we actually made the thinking part super 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 gonna 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. Oh, is that 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? 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 going to 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 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 pick-up, maybe 60, 70, even 80% pick-up.

But my guess is that this person is really good 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 going to 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 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 are 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

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 do 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, there's influence 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 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 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, pursue their hobbies 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 of the 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 live 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 a 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 percent per year. Based on what you have, here's where you can expect this thing to grow. You have some cash is 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. When it comes to the customers you've worked with, I'm curious about something specific. What's the persona of your ideal customer? Who's our ideal customer? Our ideal customer is someone who is a decent amount of money.

We say $100,000 or more per household. Typically a young family and also quite often an immigrant family. They are so busy working full-time jobs, raising kids that they don't have time for pretty much anything else. And when they see Zillion they're like, okay this helps me because now I don't have to do all the research all the time. You guys do all this for me. And I am able to spend five to 10 minutes a week. And Zillion will A, tell me whether I'm on a sustainable

path to financial independence or not. B, if I'm not, Zillion will tell me, hey, we have too much cash here. Invest that into stocks. What kind of stocks? Here are the stocks you can invest in. Also, you have a 401k account that is actually you're paying too much fee there.

Change that and optimize it in such a way. We actually show step by step. So a typical customer will get a lot of value because they're pressed for time. This is the money thing is it's always like item number five or six or seven on the outlet. But then number one is don't get fired in this economy. So keep working, keep putting in long hours.

Number two is make sure kids are raised properly and the groceries are done. And other things meet with certain people. So you don't be another social zombie. So by the time you come to, OK, I also need to look at all my finances and see what I need to do. It's always number five, number six.

Number three, maybe during tax time, it bumps to number two or number three. Oh, we have to file taxes. That planning for financial independence is and I really encourage you to talk to some young parents and to just to validate this on how much do they actually are able to think about these things. And that's where we believe our opportunity is.

Young families, and also I would say some of the Gen Z, especially who are not yet married and have kids, but they are like, okay, I am finally making some money and I'm able to pay off my student loan or should I pay off my student loan or should I invest this money and pay the minimum in student loans? We have tools for those people as well.

And they are also a big part of our audience. They're like, hey, should I buy a house with this cash I have or should I invest somewhere else? So what we do is, our pitch is if you are a professional and I could go back to this, if you're a knowledge worker and today we are in the knowledge economy, the best use of your time is to increase your knowledge and increase your earnings to improve knowledge. We help you by taking care of a lot of your financial mid-igreedies.

We help you to stay focused on increasing your knowledge so that you can accelerate your career more and accelerate your earnings more. And that's where we are seeing the success. How do you position your company? Is it mainly a software development company, a money management firm, or something else? So, who is that software company? You pay us a small fee and it's $19 a month.

And with that, you get access to all our tools so that you can manage money like a professional Wall Street person. You'll have the same tools as those available to the Wall Street big egos. And you pay us a small fee. But if you're like, hey listen, I also need to talk to someone

because for money, I don't just trust. Some numbers blinking on the screen, I also need to talk to someone because for money I don't just trust some numbers blinking on the screen, I also need to talk to someone. We offer you that service as well. You can talk to a certified financial expert and you pay us $79 or something. And it's paid forward simple. They're not an education platform.

Everything happens through osmosis, but that's not our goal, that's not our desire. We believe that there is enough content available just on YouTube itself and overall on the internet that anyone who really wants to learn, there are plenty of avenues available, plenty of resources available for you to learn. We are not here to teach you, we are here to help you, and that's how we position ourselves. In your industry, there's a new type of stakeholder known as Fin-Fulensos, financial influencers. The younger generation often turns to them for money management advice via social media is easily accessible and they seem to craze all kinds

of information. But there are growing concerns about potential conflicts of interest and the credibility of these influencers, especially since they may lack formal financial education. Given this backdrop, and considering your goal to help people become more knowledgeable about managing their money, which also positively impacts their lives, what's your take on this trend? How do you engage with these influencers, perhaps promoting a product? And how do you assist your clients in becoming better decision makers and effectively multiplying the money as your tagline on LinkedIn suggests? The term is new, but the concept is not.

If you go back, there are a couple of people who come to mind. Dave Ramsey, I think he's in the late 60s or maybe early 70s. He's been an influencer for finance since like the 80s. Suze Orman and there are many others, right? So influencers have always been there. The memory keeps changing. Before that, there were newspaper columnists. I mean, they're always there.

You have people who would write letters, hey, what should I do this? How should I do that? So there were, there have always been influencers. They started with newspapers and magazines, then to TV, then to cable, and then to internet, and some user groups and discussion boards, and now to social media.

It hasn't changed so much, but it has fragmented. There's one Bill Ramsey, one Sue Jerman, and there were probably like a dozen of them, say 30 years ago, and there is probably thousands of them, if not millions now. I think there is a place for them. They provide bite-sized wisdom. I am in my own very small right. I'm also a fin influencer. I post my videos on LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, everywhere.

You can easily find me easily in our Gagan Asundari if you search for it. So I post nuggets as well. But I believe that influencers, they do have a motive. Typically, they're typically tied with someone they're either selling, hey, this JP Morgan bank account is really good, you should get it and they get some money. I think that model has a place. We are not doing that. We don't tie up with influencers or influencers. We believe that it's less authentic.

I would rather be selling our own product and not just using an influencer. We want to be an influencer ourselves rather than use other influencers. rather than use other influencers. As we near the end of our interview, I think is the perfect time to ask this question. You made a conscious decision to leave a tech company in your 40s and dive into entrepreneurship. Yet today, many people in their 30s, 40s, or even 50s are facing layoffs and feel compelled

to change their career paths. They're also concerned about ageism in the workplace. Could you share some practical advice for these folks? I think some of the things that I'm gonna say are probably gonna be controversial, but I'm just gonna say it anyway. practical advice for these folks? As compared to say 20, 30 years ago, today, in this economy, especially in the US and maybe in other places as well, a career is not, it doesn't span 30, 40, 50 years anymore. A typical career, this is my reading, is about 10 years. Every 10 years or so, you need to rediscover your career. I have done it.

I started as a mechanical engineer. Seven years later, I became a programmer. Another five years later, I became a manager. Another 10 years later, I became a leader in tech overall. And five years later, I started a company. So I have changed career basically three or four times in the less than three, two and a half decades that I've been working. I think this is going to be the norm and it's less about ageism, it's about discovery. For instance, right now

we are in this hype cycle which is somewhat real right now we are in this hype cycle, which is somewhat real, but definitely we are in the cycle, I shouldn't say hype cycle. We're in the cycle where some of the old guard technologies are getting replaced with new guard technologies like AI, for instance. If you are whether you're food or you're 20, if you are not exploring AI as a technology as potentially an enabler of new opportunities for you, then you're falling behind. And what happens is, I think the ageism is the name we give to the Skrill Gap. Someone coming out of college is probably well-equipped with the technologies that have come out in the last couple of years,

AI being one of them. Somebody who's been working in corporate and doing certain job is less likely to have used those tools because those tools are new and their job didn't require. So I think as an individual, I think it, I think the orus is on me to discover those things It's on me to discover those things and learn those things on my own so that ageism doesn't become a place for me to put the blame on. It should be skills, and skills are something that we unfortunately or fortunately live in a time when skills have to be updated and upgraded constantly. That's one. Second thing is, I tell anybody who I've worked with, anybody who's been on my team,

I ask them to work hard. Jeff Bezos famously has said, work hard, work smart, work long, and you can't choose between them. When anybody joins at Amazon, they're told they have to do all three things. You have to work hard, you have to work smart, and you have to work long. I think what happens is once we start working, get married, we have kids, we have more social life,

we have more obligations, I think the work long part falls off, which is natural, but I think the work long part falls off, which is natural. But I think we need to find those times in your career, in our careers, where we can work long for periods of time to build more equity, so to speak, with our employer, or to build more skills. So maybe we are not.

The work long part is we are doing somewhat long at the work, but also we are putting extra time to learn more skills. So maybe we are not. The work long part is we're doing somewhat long at the work, but also we're putting extra time to learn more skills. And that way we can actually, I think we can mitigate the side effects of ageism a decent bit. Does that make sense? Yes, it makes sense. But in recruitment, there's always a focus on cost. HR and CEOs might lean towards hiring younger individuals because they offer lower salaries. Even though the older candidates might be more experienced and competent. Sometimes, they come up with their own justification

that younger people are simply more creative or tech savvy. This happens quite often in tech ventures. Given that you run a tech venture as the CEO, would you consider hiring someone in the 40s who's been pushed out of corporate life and is looking to start a new chapter by building a tech venture with you? Will I hire someone who's older? So let me address that. So, Vince, you also asked whether I would hire someone who is, let's say, over 40 and comes to Zillion. I think the honest answer is yes, I consider everyone and one of the things I learned early on in my career is to hire the best person

for the job. So if right now, if I'm looking for, let's say, a marketing person who can come in and really take our marketing to the next level, I'll be looking for the skills that will help us get there. If those skills are in a 23-year-old, or a 35-year-old, or a 47-year-old, doesn't make as much difference as what is the specific thing I'm looking for. And sometimes experience is an asset there and I would definitely look at it.

So I don't think it's ageism as such, I would put it as its skills. If you have those skills that I'm looking for, and again we are a small company, we are a startup, our needs, our skill needs might be different from, let's say, Google, that is a 27, 26 year old company. They might, oh, probably even 30 year old company at this point. Our needs are different and our skill needs might be different as compared to some of the established. Gargan, I've really enjoyed our conversation today. I know we've gone over time, but you have so much valuable insight to share. I didn't want to cut you off. I truly appreciate your time and all that you've shared with us.

Thank you so much, Vince. This was so much fun. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.