Episode Intro: Welcome to Episode 12 of the Seven Eighths. I sat down with Kaushik Mukherjee, COO of Sugar Cosmetics for a chat. Along with his partner, Vineeta, Kaushik is building the wildly successful first direct to consumer brand.  Kaushik and I went to undergrad school together. I’ve seen him rise through success from nailing the highest paying job in undergrad, through a stint at Goldman Sachs to starting Sugar Cosmetics. But behind all the glamor and the rah rah, Kaushik has struggled with his share of failures, struggles and setbacks. Kaushik gets real, raw and bares his struggles. Let’s listen in.

Kaushik Mukherjee is the Cofounder & COO of SUGAR Cosmetics - one of the fastest-growing beauty startups that is a cult favorite amongst millennials and backed by marquee venture funds. An IIM Ahmedabad/BITS Pilani alumnus, his career that included working in the world's best investment banking (Goldman Sachs) and consulting (McKinsey & Co.) firms before he gave it all up to start something of his own. Apart from work, he is an amateur endurance athlete and is one of the few Indians to complete the IRONMAN triathlon - a 4km swim + 180 km cycle + 42.2 km run event that is largely regarded as the toughest single-day endurance sporting event in the world.

Episode Conclusion: And that’s how the cookie crumbles! Kaushik recognized that the world wants to measure you with a certain yardstick, but that needn’t be the only yardstick you have to use to measure yourself. Have an internal yardstick for yourself and that will help you balance out insecurities. He also shared about how you can never be at the right place at the right time by design. Keep ploughing through and you’ll be at a place that’ll become the right place. And lastly, he shared a gem: Learn to decouple happiness from success. Until you do that, you are a slave to outcomes. Thank you for listening to this episode. Do share your thoughts! I’m on twitter @femmenectar. Until the next conversation, cheers guys!