Vikas Shah MBE - How to Embrace Pain to Give Life Beauty and Why Success Can Be Deceiving

I met this week's guest only a week ago because he interviewed me for for his brilliant series, Thought Economics.  I just knew we'd be friends. Anyone who can nerd out over tech and business while simultaneously discussing mental health and happiness is an easy candidate for my friendship. I knew I had to have him on Slo Mo, and I'm so glad he came. Cue his unbelievable list of accolades:

Vikas Shah MBE is an entrepreneur, investor & philanthropist. He is the CEO of Swiscot Group alongside being a venture-investor in a number of businesses internationally. He is also a Non-Executive Board Member of the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and a Non-Executive Director of the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Vikas was awarded an MBE for Services to Business and the Economy in Her Majesty the Queen’s 2018 New Year’s Honours List. He is an Honorary Professor of Business at The Alliance Business School, University of Manchester and Visiting Professors at the MIT Sloan Lisbon MBA.  He is also the chair of In Place of War, a global NGO that uses arts & entrepreneurship to foster change in over 32 places impacted by conflict and is deeply involved in poverty alleviation in the UK.

Listen as we discuss:

• How I form friendships with guests in real time on Slo Mo.
• His childhood dream of being a pilot, and how he ended up with so many accolades.
• My experience trying to fly a plane, and why I'll never do it again.
• Why looking at successful people can be very deceiving.
• Why Vikas, as an investor, worries about entrepreneurs that haven't had a failure.
• The more we try to avoid pain, the more we're facing in the wrong direction.
• Depression and anxiety are a poorly tuned mammalian reflex to danger.
• The grief, death, and tragedy of life is beauty in every sense of the word.
• Deep-domain expertise is overrated, and we should read far less business books.
• Memorable moments from Thought Economics, Vikas' interview series.
• My Year of Joy, 2022.
• Anchoring your life around big, rare events is to be numb.
• It is a gamble to assume we have a "later."

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Connect with Vikas on Twitter @mrvikas, Instagram @thisismrshah, and his website, vikas.work

My latest book Scary Smart is now available and has been voted one of the top 12 business books of 2021 by The Times and Sunday Ti

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Instagram: @mo_gawdat
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Twitter: @mgawdat
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Website: mogawdat.com

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