Once you have spent half a century on the planet you seem to be at the cross roads. Well, not exactly, but at least I have reached a stage when I can choose whether to do a) sales b) training c) writing d) investing own funds. Of course it is a nice choice to have and decide that you can do a combination of the 4. Or should you?

Fairly obvious sales is far more profitable than training. So if it is just money, the choice should be clear. Do sales, sales, and sales. The others can wait. Own money investing can be easily done on a part time basis especially if you have a good broker – like I do. I have to spend very little time doing my investments – the transactions are too few and far between anyway.

Training is a little funny – I keep wondering whether it is a business or a profession. So I meet up somebody at a function of the MF or life insurance industry – and we promise that we will do something soon. After some time both of us have forgotten about it.

However, some times this leads to a second follow up meeting. This is like girl meeting boy – where I am the girl on parade. So it goes something like this…

Client: Subra what new training can we do?

Subra: We could do something like …………..for the sales team

C: that is an old idea Subra we did it last year

S: We could do ….planning for the IFA

C: we did that too. In fact Mr. A did it for us.

S: but A does not do that topic – at least not at the IFA level

C: No Subra, Mr. A did it.

A quich wassup to A tells me “what a joker….i did nothing of that kind.

My choice is going back to the CEO and say “Chief I have tons of experience in equities, wealth, ..(blah blah i have done 100+ training sessions for Stanci, that kind of training for Hdfc bank, for Kotak, for Icici prudential…..in 55 locations….) so let me tell you what training I think you should do.

I do nothing of that kind. Even with friends. Or potential clients.

Makes no sense for me.

Sales is more fun. Hey, but I do not want to do much of sales either.

So it is back to weekend training of doctors……and that is good fun.

Doing training on financial products where the sponsor is a pharma company gives far far more freedom.

No, no, no I am not saying I will not do training. I will not chase ‘training business’. If I have to do sales, let me decide what to sell. I will not go as a training vendor and ‘vend’ training.

I like bank training also – they are realistic ……..I do IAP – not sure how useful it is at the end of the day!

oops rant of an old man…