I am struggling with money.
This is probably one of the most embarrassing truths about my life.
Not because I don’t understand the importance of money. I do.
My problem is stranger.
For most of my life, I never developed a strong desire to make money.
And I am beginning to think that this is precisely why money remains a problem for me.
Money Is a Scoreboard
I used to play cricket. I was never a great batsman, but I loved batting.
Think about a professional batsman like Virat Kohli. His professional life revolves around runs.
He trains to score more runs. He studies bowlers to score more runs. He improves his fitness and technique to score more runs. A century becomes a milestone.
But what does a century really achieve?
Nothing beyond the game.
Yet nobody questions the batsman’s obsession with runs.
Because runs are the scoreboard of cricket.
Perhaps I have spent my life playing the economic game while refusing to look at its scoreboard.
I Thought Wanting Money Was Bad
Somewhere early in life, I absorbed a strange idea.
Wanting knowledge was good. Working hard was good. Helping people was good.
Sacrifice was golden.
But wanting a lot of money?
That felt greedy and materialistic.
I remember refusing a scholarship when I was young because I thought:
I don’t need the money.
Today, I find that embarrassing.
I had dramatically overestimated our wealth. My parents worked extremely hard to give me a comfortable life. Somebody else was doing the difficult work of earning money while I enjoyed the luxury of believing that money wasn’t important.
Perhaps there was even pride hidden inside it.
I don’t care about money. I am above it.
The idea initially felt good.
I no longer find it noble.
I Want to Become Obsessed With the Score
Forget developing the skills required to make money. I have struggled even to feel a strong need to make it.
Money has remained like an alien language—something I hear and understand superficially while assuming that I will never really speak it.
I want to change that.
I want to treat money like a batsman treats runs.
If I create something and somebody pays ₹10,000 for it, that’s data.
If nobody buys it, that’s data.
If an idea makes ₹0, the zero isn’t an insult. It is feedback.
Why zero?
Was the product wrong? Was my marketing weak? Could I not sell? Did I misunderstand the customer? Was my pricing wrong?
Then I go back to the nets.
Because obsession with runs eventually creates obsession with everything that produces runs.
For me, that means sales, marketing, negotiation, products, customers, pricing, investing and capital allocation.
Money can organise my learning.
Health First. Now Wealth.
Perhaps this realization has arrived at exactly the right time.
Through the Six Pack Project, I am already confronting one uncomfortable reality: my health.
I am no longer satisfied with knowing what I should do. I am measuring what I actually do.
Workout completed or missed.
Weight gained or lost.
Frequency achieved or not achieved.
Reality doesn’t care about my intentions.
Now I want to bring the same approach to wealth.
Money made.
Money retained.
Money invested.
Independent revenue created.
Businesses built.
Value created.
The scoreboard will tell me whether I am improving.
For years, I may have confused financial indifference with virtue.
That experiment has produced its results.
I don’t like them.
So I am changing the experiment.
My Declaration
I am done whispering about money.
I want to make a lot of money.
Ethically.
Meaningfully.
By creating genuine value for other people.
And my ambition is not small.
I want to become one of the wealthiest people in India.
There. I said it.
It feels uncomfortable to write. That is precisely why I need to write it.
I don’t possess all the skills. I don’t have the business. I don’t have the capital. The scoreboard certainly doesn’t support the ambition yet.
Good.
That is the gap.
I am already using Behaviour Change Architecture to confront the gap between the body I have and the body I want.
Now I want to apply the same approach to the gap between my current economic reality and the wealth I want to create.
Observe the resistance.
Run experiments.
Measure the results.
Build the required behaviours.
Acquire the skills.
Study the scoreboard.
Iterate.
Repeat.
I am going to apply BAF to money fearlessly and unapologetically.
Not to become wealthy by exploiting people, but by becoming exceptionally good at creating value for them.
I must become one of the wealthiest person in India.