Syama Bunten: Today I am joined by the fabulous India, Gary Martin, India. You not only are former C-T-O-C-O-O in international banking leading teams across 40 countries, wholly bananas, but you’re now an advisor to Fortune 100 CEOs and founders, and the founder of two leadership and training companies serving global entrepreneurs to say the least.

Syama Bunten: You are fucking busy. You are also the visionary behind the Act three convening. Something that I just think is so. powerful and beautiful how you’ve provided this opportunity for globally women to come together in midlife to talk about things that they’re navigating, identity, power, transition. Needless to say, I have been waiting to have this conversation with you between all of your trips and travels and all of the service work that you do.

Syama Bunten: It is such a pleasure to have you here today. Thank you for being here.

India Gary-Martin: Thank you, Syama. Thank you for having me here. I’m so excited. I was looking so forward to this. I’m just grateful that you have me here and I’m looking forward to our chat.

Syama Bunten: India, I feel like we could consume the whole conversation with like your brilliance, legacy, all this stuff that you’re up to, to, and yet we will start with the very beginning.

Syama Bunten: Take me back to a young India, someone between the ages of 10 and 12 years old. Where were you in this beautiful world and life that you were living, and what was money like around you?

India Gary-Martin: Interestingly, okay, so when I was 10, that would be like, what, fifth or sixth grade? I think that I was probably in maybe Cincinnati at that time because I we moved around a lot.

India Gary-Martin: Now I’ll, we can talk about that later, but I think I was in Cincinnati and I will say that, as a young. A woman, young girl. I wasn’t that confident. I didn’t really believe in myself so much. I wasn’t sure of myself at all. It was a really interesting time for me.

India Gary-Martin: My parents had been recently divorced and so I wasn’t quite sure of my place in the world as it stood. And when I think about money, I just knew that I wanted some and I remember and at that time actually. That’s my, I think that was around the time my mom got remarried to my stepfather, who is.

India Gary-Martin: I always tell him he saved me for a variety of reasons because he while he wasn’t my biological father, he was in the home with me all the time, and he taught me how to play basketball. He taught me how to do all the things. He also taught me how to play a mean round of blackjack, and that was my first introduction.

India Gary-Martin: He taught me how to play blackjack with quarters. And I got really good and that’s why I like to go to Vegas. But that’s a whole different path. We’ll talk about another time, but interestingly,

Syama Bunten: you were cleaning up around the school block at a young age

India Gary-Martin: around the school block. I was like, do you really wanna play blackjack with me?

India Gary-Martin: but what I will say is one thing I did get from him, and that’s, this is like my first introduction to money. For my family was its value, and that while, you could always make it, you have to be good stewards of it. That was something that he always talked about and he was like, he’s still even now, like he knows where every penny is of every single, of everything.

India Gary-Martin: He is, he’s always been that way. And so I think for me, the one thing I’ll say that around my relationship with money at that time is I remember him telling me when I learned to play blackjack that scared money doesn’t make money. So you can’t be afraid of it. Like you can’t be afraid of it and you can’t be afraid.

India Gary-Martin: And he used to always say, never spend more than you can lose. And so those couple of things early on, I think shaped me in a lot of ways around my relationship with money.

Syama Bunten: Mm. This idea of scared money.

India Gary-Martin: It’s like abundance. Talking about abundance in a different way.

Syama Bunten: It lands so much in terms of the way most of us are raised to actually grip and hold onto it and, and it’s like there’s that scarcity. But then to be told to have a relationship to it, that’s a lot more fluid.

Syama Bunten: Like how do you feel into that? So knowing you wanted money, knowing that you could. Probably take someone down in basketball. I can’t wait to hear what your favorite positions to play basketball. And knowing you could take people down in blackjack when you were in high school, were you like, all right, I’m going to get a job.

Syama Bunten: I’m gonna double down on my studies, I’m gonna take people down in blackjack. Like how did you navigate high school and what did you think? What did you know of yourself at that time?

India Gary-Martin: Blackjack came back later. I let it go after I learned to play really well as a little kid. I was an athlete, a student athlete, and I remember, this is a real, for me, that was a real, coming into what it meant to be a girl or a woman, but it meant to be a woman, almost a young woman. And as an example there wasn’t women’s track at my university and in my high school. And I loved running. That was one of my things. And so like I went to the athletic director, I’m like, I’d to run men’s.

India Gary-Martin: And he’s you can’t do that. And I was like why can’t I? He told me I couldn’t. So I went home and told my mom, he said I couldn’t. And she was like I’ll be damned if you’re not. And she came and we petitioned, and my sister, myself and another girl ran boys track. We always lost, but that wasn’t the point.

India Gary-Martin: We actually won one race. When it was, because we did, they like, it was a relay and they were all boys and one of us. So we, we won a race. But the point is, I that’s when I got to this thing around, you can really do what you wanna do. It doesn’t matter what the rules say necessarily, there’s always space, to play within the boundaries.

India Gary-Martin: Still get the job done. And that was the first thing. And then the second one was, I played basketball, but I wasn’t that good. I’m just gonna be honest, I loved it, but I wasn’t that good so much. So that one time when I scored my first basket, they couldn’t find my name on the roster because I’ve never scored before.

India Gary-Martin: And they were like, number 26 scored. Everybody else had a name except for me. but I loved sports and I think sports are a really, a great way of teaching young women resilience teaching new leadership. Just really, having to be amongst a team of people when you’re doing team sports as opposed to singular sports.

India Gary-Martin: Being amongst a team of people and building relationship and building community is something that I really learned from those days. And so I would say that, for me it was that it was learning. You know how I fit when I was talking about earlier, not knowing that, I started to find where I was and where I fit.

India Gary-Martin: When I got to high school, I, I came out a little bit more and, took a few more challenges and my mom used to always say to me like, you can do whatever you want to do. Don’t let anybody tell you can’t. And so that kind of was the message that I took and I did a lot of kind of.

India Gary-Martin: Probably maverick type things in high school, because my mom told me I could, she’s like, Just make it happen.

Syama Bunten: Oh my God. Go mom. What a wonderful like, voice in your ear. I feel like of all the voices, to have someone be like, go crush it. Whatever you wanna do, like you can do it.

Syama Bunten: And also to have her. Make the effort to make it happen. It wasn’t just, you go do it on your own. It’s that you have my full backing and support and I will open up doors for you if I can leverage being an adult to do that. And I think that’s really powerful.

Syama Bunten: Team sports I think is one of those things that we also. Have learned so much over time just to really create for great leaders, to understand like team dynamics early, to know the alchemy of how people think and operate. And also I think even just in the fundamentals of understanding strategy, right?

Syama Bunten: It’s like, all right, this is how we play. And it’s not necessarily who you are, but it’s how you’re gonna show up in this. Scenario in order to achieve these goals makes for a really interesting upbringing for you, India. I can start to like, now see like how this young woman’s like, all right, world, I am gonna start to, to take over and do whatever I want.

India Gary-Martin: Yeah, I think I did to some extent but a lot of it, was. I’m an eldest daughter too, and I think there’s a birth position in terms of the way that you show up, and I felt when I was when I was in junior high for those three years, my mom was in law school for those three years at the same time.

India Gary-Martin: And I had a one and a half year old brother at that time too, and i’m one of six oldest girl. And I had a mom who was like working and doing all the things despite the fact that she has all these children and not, in a great way, she had kids and she’s yeah I, she had done psychology in college and then she’s I wanna go back to law school.

India Gary-Martin: Like it when my daughter’s in junior high, and I have all these kids. And she did. I remember falling asleep on the sofa and like taking my brother out from her because she was sleeping and he was sleeping. You know, I remember all those things. And so I think that a part of it is, I also learned responsibility in, in that, I had a mom, I had siblings that relied on me for things.

India Gary-Martin: And they looked up to me for things and they, when my mom wasn’t around, they’d be like, India, what do you think? I took on some of that role, of supporting her, but also of being the eldest sibling and what that means in birth order and how you show up because of it.

Syama Bunten: Yeah. There’s a lot of responsibility there, whether it was asked for or not I feel like sometimes we think of being the eldest as just on the frontier. I’m the eldest as well. But being the eldest also means that things happen to you that don’t happen to the other children.

Syama Bunten: And in your sort of first line of defense, and no one actually really, no one knows that. Like you’re there breaking the fall on things, and you’re there.

India Gary-Martin: That is exactly it. Exactly it.

Syama Bunten: And I don’t know if they ever know, like I also think that that’s like a special club of first sports and especially.

Syama Bunten: If you’re a girl because then it’s like there’s this whole other lens of what that means. Yeah. That is,

India Gary-Martin: we’re the mamas. That’s, that’s what it’s, we’re the second mamas to some extent.

Syama Bunten: So then were you just were you so ready to go away to college? Were you like, okay, I’m ready to go?

India Gary-Martin: I was, I had a really great time.

India Gary-Martin: I have a sis, one of my sisters is 11 months younger than me, so we’re really close. We’re like twins. And that was really hard for me to leave her. That was a really difficult time leaving my kind of, my twin. That was not a, that was not an easy thing to do.

India Gary-Martin: But I loved I went to Spelman College, and I went to this all women’s environment and it was, it’s actually the thing that really propelled me for sure.

Syama Bunten: How did you decide where you wanted to go? Did your sister follow suit? Were you the one who was like, and then everyone comes here?

Syama Bunten: Like, how did, no, how did all that go down? Okay.

India Gary-Martin: None of my siblings did, but my first daughter did, but that’s another story. But she’s there now. But my, no, they didn’t follow suit at all. And my sister said to me. I’m not coming there. I just need you to know I’m not coming there ’cause I need to not be in your shadow.

India Gary-Martin: And I was like okay. And now she’s like, why the heck didn’t I go there? Why did I come? I’m like, I told you, because her daughter actually went there too. So her daughter went, my daughter. And she’s like, how am I not a part of this club? I’m like, I told you. But it was, I, when I thought about schools, it was Spelman was really high on my list just because, I’d always lived in places, especially in the us, just being frank, where I’ve had challenges. With a variety of things, like being one of only, brown or black people in the space can be very difficult. And I really wanted to go to an HBCU for that reason. I was like, I just want not to have to, I wanna know what that’s not like.

India Gary-Martin: And then to do it with women who were all kind of firsts was amazing. When I say first, these women were, everybody was the president of their class or everybody was whatever, and so it was just a level of. Intellectual rigor with women who were just like me. That just took a lot of the pressure off.

India Gary-Martin: I could excel without having to think about any of the things around me and the environmental things, which was really a gift. And I, I wouldn’t, it’s really interesting ’cause there’s always debate about HBCUs and should they exist and blah, blah, blah. And, it’s not about excluding anybody else.

India Gary-Martin: It’s about feeling. For once that you’re in a space where people are Get you and understand what it’s like for you to walk in the shoes that you walk in. And so that kind of propelled me like leaving there. I. Could go anywhere in any place, space, or whatever, and feel like anchored in who I was.

Syama Bunten: That’s beautiful. What a wonderful experience to have chosen for yourself. I think that sometimes when we’re young, we don’t know, right? And we don’t know what we want or what’s gonna feel right, or there’s a lack of confidence in decision making. But to have such clarity over wanting the sense of belonging like I can breathe, I can relax, I belong.

Syama Bunten: We’re all like intellectually at the same level. We’re all wanting the same things, and we get to challenge and push each other from a place of not an external identity, but from the brilliance that we are and really get to have rigorous conversation and build in interesting ways.

Syama Bunten: Did you know you wanted to study history when you went to college? Was it, did you, I wanna be a historian. What did you think you wanted to be at that time?

India Gary-Martin: I did, but here’s the thing, I’ll I should also give be full transparency. I was like number seven in my family to get to go to Spelman too.

India Gary-Martin: So I’m like seven down. There’s more, more behind me. So, So that kind of helped that I had, that I understood what the outcomes were for people because I’d seen it they were like so tight, like this whole like sisterhood thing and I was like, oh, I want that. But history so I wanted to go to law school, like my mom and there were a couple of majors that people did, and it was mostly political science, history or English.

India Gary-Martin: And English was cool, but that wasn’t gonna be it. Political science I thought was too narrow and I love history, so I chose history. That is such a tale. That’s the truth. But that was the truth. Later, lemme take one step back. I actually entered college as a theater major.

Syama Bunten: What? Get Out. Oh my God. That’s amazing.

India Gary-Martin: Entered as a theater major. And then I, and I loved it. I did it for a year and then I was like, I’m gonna be broke. I was like, this is not gonna work for me. I’m not even kidding. I was like, I didn’t trust in my ability to be like, I was like, to be, if I’m gonna be on stage or if I’m gonna be, behind the camera.

India Gary-Martin: You really have to be pretty good. and even if you are good it, there’s no guarantees in this.

Syama Bunten: can’t get more degrees in theater and get better jobs in theater.

India Gary-Martin: Exactly. And so I was like, you know what?

India Gary-Martin: Something about this is not ringing well with me in terms of my lifestyle. So I actually decided, I’ll probably go to law school and I went to see what the courses were and I was in the liberal arts. School. So the first year didn’t matter anyway. ’cause it was everything, you were doing all the things.

India Gary-Martin: And I did a couple theater courses. But yeah, and then I changed to history. But I loved history. I do love history and always have. And so it wasn’t that farfetched.

Syama Bunten: But then to also go from like theater to then a, this like prolific career in finance, that’s

India Gary-Martin: I was gonna do law and my whole thing was I wanted to be a courtroom litigator.

India Gary-Martin: And that is theater. Truly. It is.

Syama Bunten: Yeah.

India Gary-Martin: And so I could draw that line. I was like, okay, I can go litigate. And then I feel found out that I had to do some research too, and I was like, oh no. I was like, I can’t do that. I can’t do that. Let’s go to Wall Street.

Syama Bunten: what were some, I mean, as you were graduating and figuring out how to export yourself into the world, where did the inclinations or ideas to go into finance to go into Wall Street? Like how did you start to connect those dots? Was there like a pivotal conversation with someone where it was like eye opening?

Syama Bunten: Was it like, okay, I want the money, and like this is where I need to go? How did you start to think about these next stuff?

India Gary-Martin: If you can’t tell, I’m not now, you can probably surmise that I was quite a precocious, interesting child. Yes. Yeah, a little precocious. So I had no idea what I was gonna do, frankly, when I decided, like I was like this law school thing, do I wanna do this?

India Gary-Martin: I don’t know, maybe I’ll go work for a year, then go to law school. I wasn’t sure. And and so I just. Was like, I went with my friend who was going to an interview on campus, like to get a job. And it was Morgan Stanley and I went with her. I just accompanied her. I wasn’t going to interview. I went with her and this woman is like, are you here to interview?

India Gary-Martin: And I’m like, no. And she said, Morgan Stanley, I didn’t know it. And I was like, no, I just came with my friend. And she was like, why aren’t you interviewing? I was like, why should I interview? It’s not I, what? And she was like, I like your energy. I think you should interview. And I was like Tell me more. Tell me more. And this woman, Cheryl Gil Riley hired me at Morgan Stanley and she is still my friend today. I spoke to her last week and we’ve known each other for now 35 years. It’s hilarious. But she was like, you should, she was like you. She was like, I need you to come and interview.

India Gary-Martin: Because I was like, because I was like I’m just here. I was like, I’m not here to interview. And she said, you have a resume? I was like yeah, I have a resume. And she’s can you go get it? And I was like, yeah, it’s in my room. And I went and got it and she’s just come and interview. And I was like, okay.

India Gary-Martin: And she was like, there’s some, she’s there’s something about you. I can, she’s and what they looked for was it was actually for a technology training program. And I was like, I don’t do tech. And she was like, no, we hire non-technical majors and we teach them how to code and how to be technical because we believe that it’s easier to

India Gary-Martin: to teach more creative people to to code and be, they come up with really interesting solutions to things that more technical people wouldn’t. And so I go into this tech training program okay, this is great.

India Gary-Martin: And so I interview two places, Morgan Stanley and an insurance company called Unum. And I was like, and they flew me to Tampa, Unum did. And I was like, this is fun. And then Morgan Stanley was like, come to New York. I was like, oh, this is it. This is it. I was like, I have, I found my people. And so I, and that’s how I got there.

India Gary-Martin: That’s how it started. It was complete fluke. It was completely, because I turned up with my friend at an interview and was being precocious.

Syama Bunten: I love that so much. I feel like, it’s refreshing also because today we just hear so much about young people who are like, o like really they tr they’re treating, networking like it’s a job, and they’re treating these things like so transactionally and in some cases over-engineering outcomes, right?

Syama Bunten: It’s like at the age of. Early twenties, 22, like you don’t actually know what you’re gonna become, You have ideas, you have interests like, but chips fall where they do and opportunities open up that you may not even know about. I.

India Gary-Martin: I know, but I think that, kids now have such a har It is so hard.

India Gary-Martin: It’s so much harder because like, when I graduated from school, there were like 10 things you could be like, honestly, it was like you were a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, a a accountant, a therapist. It, there were like 10 things, a nurse, whatever. There were like 10 things now there’s like a gazillion things you could be, and I think it makes it so much harder for them because like it’s so hard to narrow down anything with all the things there are.

India Gary-Martin: And then, I think there’s also this. Notion of everything being on demand, because that’s what they were born into. And everything just happens as it happens. And the thing that I would say about my life and career is that every single thing I’ve done has emerged. Like none of it has been planned.

India Gary-Martin: Like I, not that’s always the best idea, but it has all emerged because I, because I do trust the universe puts you where you need to be and that I was in the right places at the right time for me. It wasn’t, for everybody. I was in the right. Places at the right time for me.

India Gary-Martin: And even things that felt crazy and felt bad, actually, when I look back, I’m like, oh, that’s why that happened. That worked. And that’s how I got to this thing.

Syama Bunten: It’s, the word that comes to my mind is faith. Just having faith that everything’s always working out for me, and that there’s a p there’s some intuition and taking the next step and then it unfolds, and then you get to have this really creative and juicy life. So here you are, you’re working in technology. Obviously there are some twists and churns that sort of get you to this next evolution, but this was a great sort of. Space to jump in and start to understand this huge ecosystem, right?

Syama Bunten: I feel like until you work in finance or you’re, you start to learn that ecosystem, it feels like a big black box, right? So for me it feels like a big black box. I’m like, okay, all I know is that there are like a thousand different jobs you could have and there are all these niche specializations.

Syama Bunten: When did you start to think about. Where your interests were going to start to get more refined or you were gonna start to choose what some of these career paths were gonna look like?

India Gary-Martin: I never did. I’m being completely honest. Like I, every single role I took in the 25 years I was in financial services was opportunistic.

India Gary-Martin: Seriously. So I wasn’t like, okay, so lemme take a step back. I did know, I was like, I need to, I wanna make managing director. I knew that that was very clear. Like I knew that I had ambitions of. Running something of running a big group or doing a big I had those ambitions but I wasn’t sure what that was gonna look like or how, and I think a part of it was, I started in tech, but then as a technologist in financial services, you get to know the business better than the businesses do because you have to code for them.

India Gary-Martin: So you have to know exactly what you’re building. Like you can’t just be like, oh, let’s just build a thing. You get to really understand the mechanics of a business. And I was working for commodities, marketing commodities at the time, and then I moved into commodities marketing and on the trading floor and sales and trading.

India Gary-Martin: So I moved into commodities marketing from tech, having supported that, that organization. And so my point in all of this is I, I started. I moved into it because I had done something else. I planned to be in tech, I thought, and then I moved into commodities marketing, which is completely different.

India Gary-Martin: And I think over the course of my career, I was in the front, middle and back office operations, in the front office doing things and technology, I did whatever kind of came in that moment. And the other thing was that I knew that I, early, my dad is a diplomat and he was diplomat before he retired.

India Gary-Martin: My biological dad. And, because of that, I spent a lot of my time as a child outside of the US and so I also knew that I wanted a job that would let me be work, be around the world and be international. I knew that had to be a thing for me, and so like when I was looking at the banks, which I found really interesting is they were all international and so I was, that made it exciting for me because I could get an opportunity maybe to transfer to somewhere else or do that thing, which is actually exactly what I did.

India Gary-Martin: It ends up that I think. Maybe 19 of the 25 years, or 18 of the 25 years I was outside of the us. And so that, that was one of my other things. So as long as it met the criteria of I’m gonna be finding my path to managing director and I get to do things internationally with international experience, then I was flexible about the rest of it.

Syama Bunten: And did that include also, as you’re thinking about these next steps in career progression. Was the salary, in terms of salary compensation, negotiation, did you have this faith that you know everything’s gonna unfold in the right direction? Did you take action at every sort of interview and job, role that you wanted, promotion or new experience you had?

Syama Bunten: How did you parallel your career progression with also like personal cash creation and like starting to think about the development of what your foundation would look like financially?

India Gary-Martin: As I became more senior. Okay. Lemme here’s the thing. There’s a person who was pivotal in that for me, and I won’t say his name.

India Gary-Martin: I’ll, I’m gonna send him the interview after. It’s, send him this after it’s over the podcast or discussion so he can hear it. But I remember that I was working at a particular organization and I was going to be and this is, I don’t know, in the nineties and. They, I got assigned to London to go on this project and it was gonna be two years that I would go, and I, as a part of that, I was gonna be reporting to a new person in London.

India Gary-Martin: So I go there and, compensation time comes and he calls me and he’s oh, you need your compensation. You’ll, everything will come through. I was like, okay. And then I look at my bank account and I’m like. He’s overpaid me. So I go back to him like, you’ve overpaid me. I tell my boss, you’ve overpaid me because I hadn’t ever seen cash like that.

India Gary-Martin: And I, and he was like, actually no, I’m normalizing you with the people who are here, who are doing what you do. He was like, I didn’t overpay you. He was like, it’s fine. ’cause I was like, how do I wire the money back because I think that you overpaid me. That was what I thought, because I was shocked because, this was like.

India Gary-Martin: And I don’t have I can, I’ll give directionally, it was high five figures, and I wasn’t expecting that at all. It was more than my base salary. So I thought something’s wrong, and he’s no, I’m bringing you equal. Because they had this thing called total compensation, which was like, your base plus your bonus equals your total comp.

India Gary-Martin: So I was so low on bonus that he, solo on base, that he made my bonus, like really high. To make sure that it balanced out. And I thought that, I was like, I thought he’d made a mistake, and but what he, when he told me that and explained, no, this is total comp. This is how it works. Nobody had ever said that to me before.

India Gary-Martin: And then he promoted me for three successive years. And with corporate titles. And he was like, you should have had this already. And so it was because somebody caught me up and pulled me that and this is the other thing. Just being completely honest, and this is a, it’s a part of it is because these are the people in power, but the men.

India Gary-Martin: But it’s always been men who’ve pulled me along. Always, and I’m not, that is not, I love women, so this is not anti-women, but I’m just saying that what I had to figure out was that in the space I was in, there weren’t women. There weren’t a lot of women and there weren’t women in positions of power or positions of influence to make decisions.

India Gary-Martin: And so I had to figure out like, what is it? Who are, who of these men share my values because that’s where I need to connect with them on. ’cause that then I can find somebody that I could, who could mentor me. But I can’t, it can’t be about gender ’cause there’s none of that. And it certainly can’t be about race ’cause there’s none of that either.

India Gary-Martin: So I was kinda like, what? What is it? And I thought and it was actually such a wonderful, in hindsight, sometimes it felt really lonely as one of the only women and only people of color. But actually in hindsight, what it helped me to do was figure out how to connect people in their humanity without having to think about those things because I didn’t have the option.

India Gary-Martin: I would’ve if I had the option, but I didn’t.

Syama Bunten: Wow. Wow. I’m like letting it all sink India. it’s powerful to think about how values alignment and mentorship and looking for people who really. See the world or feel similar things or have similar ways of wanting to see the world can support and uplift you, and looking for mentorship I think is also such a critical.

Syama Bunten: Component of that and not needing it to look a certain way also, I think is a big part of that. I feel like there can be a desire for, I want this kind of mentor who’s like me, who does this, and, and this idea that mentorship is really about the values, the integrity and is there an opportunity for me to really connect with someone who I believe can help me.

Syama Bunten: Congratulations on that sort of foresight into that and being able to find these champions.

India Gary-Martin: No hindsight, hindsight, it was not foresight. It was, it really was because I didn’t have a choice. But in hindsight, looking back, I’m like, that actually was such a good thing for me because it helped me navigate places and spaces very well that I wouldn’t have been able to navigate probably.

India Gary-Martin: And I wanted, that’s not to say that I didn’t want women mentors and I didn’t want one of them. I really did. But there were very few, there were a couple that I had actually. Then I’ll shout them out. Carla Harris, who was at Morgan Stanley, was one of them. And at the time there’s a woman called Edith Cooper who retired from Goldman Sachs, but who was also at Morgan Stanley.

India Gary-Martin: And they were like, they didn’t even know it, but they were like guiding lights for so many of us because them just being there meant something. But when it came for like my people who were directly aligned to my roles and my careers, it was they, I had some amazing men who were just like, come on girl, let’s go through this process.

Syama Bunten: And it also feels like along the way, people really see you. There, that’s that’s a really and you allow yourself to be seen. And I think that there’s something really beautiful about that. So here you are, you get this bonus check, you’re like, holy bananas, I have this cash and I can do something with it.

Syama Bunten: What did you do with it? Was it like, alright,

India Gary-Martin: I was not smart? Let’s be, let me be honest, I spent it. I was not smart. It was the first big thing I’d ever seen. However, Cheryl, that woman I told you about, who hired me at Morgan Stanley. She was like, okay, here’s what I’m gonna need you to do. I need you to defer 50% of your bonuses to your 401k.

India Gary-Martin: I need you to max out your 401k every year. And I didn’t understand what that meant, and I didn’t understand the matching thing. And again, somebody pulled me aside and said, do not like, okay, this is cute this year. Go ahead and do that. Cute little bags. Whatever you’re doing, this foolishness that you’re doing, go on your little vacations.

India Gary-Martin: You can still do that, but I need you to. To defer 50% of your bonus into your 401k every year and that, and so that kind of started me on a path to doing that too. Thanks Cheryl. That’s a great, yeah, that’s a, it

India Gary-Martin: was great because it was pre-tax, right? Yeah. Because the money that goes in, if when I deferred 50%, it was 50% pre-tax, whereas the taxable amount is 50.

India Gary-Martin: It is 50%. So I was like, if you get a bonus, let’s say for $50,000, it is 20, you get 25. In your pocket. But what that meant was that I got to take, actually take, let’s say if it was 50, I, and I took 25, the 25 went fully in. That, so that’s, and it is, it’s deferred until you know you retire.

India Gary-Martin: But who cares? I’m like, that’s great.

Syama Bunten: Wow. How was it, your career took on this international purview and obviously building a life and obviously building your wealth and finding home and community in different markets. Like it’s a really, that’s not. It’s very different than like I’m gonna set up shop in San Francisco and New York.

Syama Bunten: It’s like I’m gonna set up shop and have to learn all the new rules. I often hear from people who’ve immigrated to the US and they’re like, I had no idea about credit scores and like all this stuff that we have that sort of defines our systems of like value when it comes to money. What was it like to start to understand the systems?

Syama Bunten: All these other places you were living in, when you were in the uk, how was it to build in that capacity?

India Gary-Martin: The good thing about going as an expat is that corporations help you do it. So I didn’t have to figure it out to be honest. Like they told me what I needed to do and so immediately I went and they set an offshore account for tax purposes and they did that stuff for me or told me like, here’s what you do and they give you an advisor.

India Gary-Martin: So to be honest, I was really lucky in that I had somebody to do that for me and help me do that and set up my accounts and, think about the most tax efficient ways of doing things or whatever it was. And when I first got to the UK, credit score wasn’t even a thing like it is now. It’s the same, but it wasn’t back then.

India Gary-Martin: There wasn’t that. But what they would do is they would check to see if you were registered to vote, that would impact your score. Like even the uk even now, if you don’t, if you’re not registered to vote, it impacts your credit score. And I was like, that is novel. ’cause people are like, let me go and register and, and people and let me go and vote because I’m registered now on the electoral role.

India Gary-Martin: But they look for the electoral role to see if you’re registered and it will, it adversely impacts your your credit score, if not. And the other thing is that bad credit was tied to an address. So if you moved into an address where somebody had bad credits, you had to go clean it up for them like they left.

India Gary-Martin: And it, there it is on your address. It wasn’t on your name. It was on your name, but it was also on the address. So the address would be seen as a risky address and you had to fix it. It was wild. That’s insane. I know now it’s not. Now that they have like credit, like we do credit scores like we do and all the three credit bureaus are there now too.

India Gary-Martin: It’s different. But before that’s what it was. And you’d be like somebody who was really ratchet, lived here before and they messed up the credit at this address. And I’m like, that’s not me. It wasn’t me who didn’t do that. So yeah, that was an interesting one.

Syama Bunten: Oh, I love that. That is so crazy to think about.

Syama Bunten: Just, understanding and how to navigate that. your career, I feel like I could have you for hours here, but your career was you had such a great ascension and. Had spent so much time internationally, what was it like to start to think about family, right?

Syama Bunten: And starting to like, think about where you wanted to be or what, how did place start to take hold of you as your life started to progress?

India Gary-Martin: I married a British person, so that helped because I was in the UK for a lot of that time. And I thought I was gonna stay there.

India Gary-Martin: I went to the UK and I thought I was gonna be there forever. I didn’t think I’d come back, once I determined that I was gonna be there, then I could start with the family stuff. I have three kids. And so that was a, that helped a lot, and I did go to, I think I might have mentioned, I went to Japan and Hong Kong for a couple of years to, I think almost three actually.

India Gary-Martin: And stayed there. And I was in Frankfurt for a year, which was cool too. But most of it was in the uk. And so once I’d married somebody from the UK and we decided we were gonna settle there, it was a much easier thing. It was like having, deciding your family anywhere else you were gonna be in the world.

India Gary-Martin: Like as long as you were stable. So they didn’t try, they didn’t go all the places with me. But it was good that, I had a nice sound home in the UK that I had planned forever home. This is not,

Syama Bunten: yeah. And how was it like setting up, I feel navigating. School systems are obviously, the value systems I think are so different when we think about creating family.

Syama Bunten: I even know just anecdotally when I visit my family in other parts of the world, I’m like, wow, like we really see things differently. And your background obviously growing up here, now you’re raising children that are culturally adopting a different way of thinking about things.

Syama Bunten: How did you see that coming together in terms of. Not a parenting podcast, in terms of just reconciling like how you were raised and how you were starting to see your children affected by the communities around them.

India Gary-Martin: The thing is, I think I mentioned, my dad was out of the country most of my life, and so was I.

India Gary-Martin: So I had spent so much time in other places that it didn’t feel unusual to me or un, my dad and my stepmother live in Sweden, so I don’t really have, and my sister lives in Australia. I don’t really have, I didn’t have a fix abode mindset anyway, and I actually didn’t think that I needed to be in a place to have kids either.

India Gary-Martin: They could be wherever I was. I was like, I’d have ’em strap on the back and go. I love that.

India Gary-Martin: Like I did. That’s how I felt about it. It helped that I had a British husband who then we settled in the uk. When I think about how I raised my, or what I thought about around the kids, and they know that they’re part American.

India Gary-Martin: They know that they’re part British. They know that, their grandparents once said their grandparents lives in Sweden. they’ve traveled. So my kids are. Close, not quite, but probably close to as well. Traveled as we are. My husband had a similar kind of job where he was all over the world too.

India Gary-Martin: And so our kids don’t, they, I mean they obviously live in the US but they only came here when they were already, like my son has never lived in the US and my eldest and my daughters came when they were like in junior high and a little bit younger and they just see the world differently.

India Gary-Martin: Like they see the US as home for now, but I don’t know that we’ll always be home for them. And I don’t give them those boundaries. I’m like, live where you wanna live, go to wherever in the world you wanna go. And they understand that they can, and anybody can, to be honest, if that’s what you decide you want to do.

India Gary-Martin: And it’s not necessarily only an economic thing that I have to be really clear about that. People are like, oh, you have the money to do it. That’s not really what it’s about because when I moved to the US I came with nothing really. And that’s a whole business story, you know?I liked to be a citizen of the world and I wanna teach my kids to do that and to find home wherever their family is, not necessarily.

India Gary-Martin: A place.

Syama Bunten: It sounds like they are true global citizens. This ability to feel comfortable anywhere. This ability to feel like you can plop down, get on a plane take the fear out of people who are like, I don’t know, but you’re like, actually. End of the day. I think when you’re a global citizen, you understand the humanity that binds us together of people or people, and it really doesn’t matter where you go.

Syama Bunten: Everyone’s really motivated by the same triggers, the same thing. I mean, It’s like we’re all the same in this way. That’s like painfully similar.

India Gary-Martin: We really are. We really are.

Syama Bunten: As well. Okay, so you got the managing director role, you got the thing you wanted, which was. So incredible.

Syama Bunten: Here you are, you’re like, I’ve made it like this is what I wanted. I’m achieving the thing that I want. And then things start to unfold for you differently, right? Like new ideas, new emergence, right? To, to your point earlier about unfolding, right? These things keep coming up and then all of a sudden it’s like the next.

Syama Bunten: Volume Right comes out and it’s here’s what this is gonna look like. How did things start to unfold with you once you hit this like apex of I am where I wanna be, what happened next? There were two things. One is I’ve always been an entrepreneur on the side, like I’ve always had some side gig going, that is just who I am.

Syama Bunten: Okay. Double click on that. What have been some of the side gigs you’ve done and what does India the like earlier entrepreneur look like?

India Gary-Martin: I’m always trying to sell something or make something. I mean that when I was like, oh, I’m gonna be a wholesaler, so I’m gonna buy blah, blah, blah, and I’m gonna sell them all on Amazon or Amazon early days.

India Gary-Martin: It was all that kind of stuff. And then I was doing like, I’m gonna be a trainer and I’m gonna do training services outside. I’m gonna do job training. For people. And I started this little job training company, just, I was all on the radio talking about job training. It was wild.

India Gary-Martin: I’ve always done like little bits and pieces all while I’m doing my like, day job

India Gary-Martin: But then one of the things that, that caught me was I was doing some research at work about industries that were growing through recession.

India Gary-Martin: We were having some conversations. I was like, what industries grow through recession? And and I found that beauty was like number one. Because what they were saying is that these were, I was working with some research analysts and they were saying, women will buy small things in recession when they won’t buy big ones.

India Gary-Martin: So like during a recession, they might buy lipstick or lip gloss or a mascara to feel nice, but they might not buy the shoes or the bag or the, or like expensive clothes or clothes at all. And I was like, oh, that’s interesting. So I went to go look at it and I was like. This is interesting. Color cosmetics was like in Europe, the smallest category.

India Gary-Martin: And in the US like nail polish and color cosmetics was really high. And if you look at the trends, without getting too technical the UK particularly when Europe trailed the US by a few years in terms, but back then they trailed by a few years in terms of picking up on some of the things that would happen.

India Gary-Martin: And so I was like, I’m gonna just go and try to manufacture some color cosmetics and see what happens. Yeah, that was, it was crazy. So I go off to France. And find this nail polish manufacturer to manufacture nail polish for me. And I was like here’s my criteria. It can’t be like, it has to be chemical free.

India Gary-Martin: I can’t have it too high in chemical, all these things because I had allergies, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I go off and develop these 84 colors. Don’t ask me. And then I’m thinking like, how am I gonna now sell them? I was testing it to see what it would be like.

Syama Bunten: Totally. That’s so cool.

India Gary-Martin: And I came back and then I was like, you.

India Gary-Martin: There are no real luxury nail salons. I think I opened one or two. So I did. And I was like I’ll put my own product in these salons. I wasn’t working in them. I hired people, but I was like, I’ll put my own product in the salons. And so I did. And then somebody came in from a big UK retailer and was like, what is this product?

India Gary-Martin: What I mean, what’s this nail polish? And we told them and they invited me in to pitch for it. And it was Harvey Nichols, which is a big UK retailer. And they picked us up in all of their stores. Excuse me, and asked me if I’d open a nail bar in one of their stores.

Syama Bunten: Oh my gosh, India, this is so wild. Also to think about capitalizing

India Gary-Martin: while I have a job. So I said to my husband, we’re gonna have to I’m gonna have to hire an MD for this company. I can’t be at, JP Morgan and do this. And he was like, you’re gonna be the md. Oh, he was like this. He was like, this is, he’s this is our money. He’s he’s you’re not handing this to anybody.

India Gary-Martin: You need to do it. I was like, he’s you’ve been saying you’re tired. You said you wanted to do something else. Our 3-year-old doesn’t know who you are. Why don’t you just do it? Because she didn’t, she was like, she would go to the nanny before me. And I was getting really frustrated

Syama Bunten: Yeah.

India Gary-Martin: Traveling so much, in my day job. And so I was like, okay. And so I quit and.

India Gary-Martin: We were in the uk, Europe, and in the Emirate. We were in about 200 doors across all of those. And it was really great. But then we outpaced ourselves in terms of our ability to be able to, ’cause we were product, we were manufacturing ourselves and like the gap in retail, we were too small to get like big retail lines of credit yet ’cause we were babies still.

India Gary-Martin: And so I had to fund it all, my fund it essentially for my profits and myself. I was my own investor and I couldn’t find investors ’cause we were unproven and blah, blah blah. So I basically bootstrapped the whole thing. And then we got to, never took investors ever. And then we got to a point where we just couldn’t do it like we were.

India Gary-Martin: We had to pay too much. We were getting these bigger and bigger orders. And the gap, like sometimes in retail, it would take them four to six months to pay. You pay the invoice seriously. And I just couldn’t hold, I couldn’t keep filling without getting the cash in. And so I was like, and then we started talking to investors and then Brexit happened.

India Gary-Martin: And I couldn’t get invested in the uk. So then I came, that’s when I came to the US and I was like, I’ll go. I was like, so my husband I have an American passport. I can just run over there really quickly and let’s see what happens. And I came and I’m still here, but that’s, so I came.

India Gary-Martin: I found a couple of people, but they wanted too much of my company, like 65%, and I’d done too much and put in too much money. The best offer was 65% of my company, and it was not a passion. It was something that I saw as a really great business idea and I had to make a call to, to let it go. And so I sold off all the stock to, in the uk it’s called TK Maxx, not TJ Maxx.

India Gary-Martin: I sold off all the stock to TJ Maxx, TK Maxx, which is called in the uk and then folded it.

Syama Bunten: What a saga.

India Gary-Martin: That was my first thing out of corporate.

Syama Bunten: talk about also like positive trauma.

India Gary-Martin: It made me broke, I’ll tell you that.

India Gary-Martin: All that. A lot of that money I saved, I’d invested. I invested a lot of my own money and that was such a mistake in the way that I did that. Like in hindsight, it was such a really. Not great decision and I bet on me. So it wasn’t a bad decision ’cause I was betting on me and I really had a great company, but it folded very quickly and it took me down with it to some extent.

Syama Bunten: And it sounds like it also, it went fast, this sounds like it was like it

India Gary-Martin: went up fast and down fast. Yeah.

Syama Bunten: Like it was a real I

India Gary-Martin: wasn’t educated from anything. I didn’t understand the installation that I would require and how much risk I was actually taking. Yeah. When, if the market turned and it did when Brexit happened too.

Syama Bunten: it’s so interesting ’cause everyone really glamorizes entrepreneurship, but few people really talk about what it really looks like when everything you have is on the line in that capacity, especially in retail, where you’re dealing with these like products and hard goods and tariffs now and, you know, all these different components

India Gary-Martin: it can take you out quick.

India Gary-Martin: It can take you out so quickly. Yeah. And I, and it took me out and I, I’m not, I have, I didn’t go bankrupt, but I wasn’t far off it. And I’m very open with people about that. I’m like, make sure that if you’re an entrepreneur, make sure it’s not just a hobby. ’cause you have to be prepared to hang off the edge of a cliff sometime, and if you’re not prepared to hang off an edge of a cliff and you can’t, and you’re gonna be worried about what it means not to pay yourself for a month sometimes, ’cause it happens. Then you might need to think about something else. ’cause you have to prepare to take the risk. Totally. And then obviously, with things shattering comes an opportunity not only for sitting in the pain of what it is that you’re experiencing. Obviously beyond just, a business that has collapsed, you’re still also a mom, right? And you’re still also holding it together for family. And that’s a lot to hold internally.

Syama Bunten: It’s like how do you protect. Your children, but also, your emotions and your mindset is suffering. How did you think about and what were the steps that helped you start to rebuild in many ways? What did that process look like to find new product market fit with new ideas or, new ways in which she would express herself?

Syama Bunten: Because while this venture. It didn’t hit the marks for what you consider to be successful. It did open up something for you from who you are and what you’re capable of in a way that hadn’t yet happened for you. So it almost, it’s like it, it really blew open the doors to you as creator and like what those expressions would look like.

Syama Bunten: How did you start to navigate those next on-ramps into creating this future that you have now?

India Gary-Martin: I, to be honest, I didn’t think about it. I unfortunately I ran headlong because I just, I was like, you know what? I have to figure it out. I have three kids. I have one who’s going to college.

India Gary-Martin: I have two that I have to think about college. It was all those things. And my husband was very similar. Like my husband, bless him, has come along with me on these journeys and he’s let, he’s been like, I believe in you. Do it. He’s never put the brake brakes on me ever because he fully believes in me.

India Gary-Martin: And to some extent that’s great, but to other in another way, I’m like, oh my God, I’m so sorry. It was that whole thing. But what I will say is that, I’d always been a coach. I’ve always done this kind of work. Like I really just took on some of the work that I did in my corporate life and I was like I can very easily work in in.

India Gary-Martin: In advisory capacity. I have a lot of experience in the corporate space and I have a lot of global experience, which means that I can help people around globalization, strategic advisory. I could help, I can do coaching, executive coaching. There’s a lot of things I can do. And I started doing that, and then I started working.

India Gary-Martin: On the executive master’s and leadership program at Georgetown as a coach, as one of the, one of the kind of coaches to help the folks who were in the programs and started developing my coaching practice. And so that’s how it evolved. Again, it’s an emergence, it was an emergence for me. And I’m now coming into nine years in that business.

India Gary-Martin: And it’s, it’s done. It’s had its ups and downs, but it’s great. And, I love doing the work of advisory with people and helping them to think through really hard stuff. I’ve been through some hard stuff and very, I’ve been able to leverage the fact that I have done all of it.

India Gary-Martin: And like I have done from being in a big corporate to, globalization, to being an entrepreneur, to understanding what retail looks like across multiple sectors and countries and everything else. I’ve done a lot of that. I know what it is to be up. I know what it is to be down.

India Gary-Martin: I know what the mistakes are. And I’ve been able to leverage that really well in this business that’s now coming on 10 years old, which helps people be better leaders.

Syama Bunten: Oh, that’s so powerful. India, you’ve, you um, have turned your experiences into such a great service for others. It’s like how do you impart that knowledge?

Syama Bunten: You are now also you’ve embarked on an incredible other service based initiative or with act three, and I think it’s really incredible what you’ve built with that, what the future of that looks like. Can you share with me a little bit about how. That began to unfold. What was the emergence around creating a third space for women to be able to come together to re-envision, what their lives would look like in this third act.

India Gary-Martin: It happened because a lot of my, a lot of my clients, my executive and coaching clients who were senior women, like whenever I meet with them, they were never talking about like work. They’re always talking about the extra, the things around it that were making it hard, which were all related to things that midlife, like it might have been caretaking or, like I have to worry about.

India Gary-Martin: I’m working all the time, but I have to worry about my kids and my dad has dementia or my mom’s ill, or whatever it was. And then it was like this whole menopause thing. What is this? What’s happening to my body? I can’t sleep at night. I’m hot, I’m, it was all the things. And I was like very rarely am I talking to these women about their careers.

India Gary-Martin: I feel like I’m talking to them more about the things around them that are challenging them to do their work because they have so many other things that happen in midlife. And then I started thinking, women can’t, we can’t opt out of it either. We don’t get to be like, I’m not gonna do this menopause thing.

India Gary-Martin: It’s not optional thing. I’m not gonna I think I’ll pass on that. Some of us might wanna, but it doesn’t often happen that way. And then I started doing research and found that there are like 300 symptoms of menopause for women. I thought. I really wanna have a convening where women can come together and talk about it.

India Gary-Martin: ’cause there’s lots of stuff happening. But I didn’t want it to be about menopause. I wanted it to be about the manifestations of menopause. I felt like there were so many conversations happening about menopause and hormones and all. That’s great. But I was like, but what about when you get to midlife and you’re like, okay, this might be my last job.

India Gary-Martin: What am I gonna do? Or, I’m now on empty nester. Where am I gonna live? Do I keep this big? I’ll let it go, or, I have to figure out caring for my elder parents or I marry this person and it’s not the same person I married. Do I still want to be here in the same way?

India Gary-Martin: Is this, does this serve me still? It was all those really difficult conversations that you get to midlife and I wanted to create a space to do that, and so I pulled together the Act three convening and. Unfortunately, fortunately, so what ends up being a fortune, which was unfortunate to start we had a number of corporate sponsors who were really into it.

India Gary-Martin: And then post administration, DEI stuff all pulled out. And so we then had nobody to fund it. And so we had to go virtual a month before we decided to go virtual. But we got people from 14 countries.

Syama Bunten: Wow. It’s so amazing. And of course, because you, I

India Gary-Martin: wanted it global all

Syama Bunten: over the world.

India Gary-Martin: I wanted it global.

India Gary-Martin: And we got people, we got 500 people from 14 countries which ended up being actually more than I could have ever imagined.

Syama Bunten: and then we decided that we were gonna do, we’re gonna do one off, live sessions.

Syama Bunten: Yeah.

India Gary-Martin: And various around the world.

India Gary-Martin: And we just finished India, in September. Oh.

Syama Bunten: Oh my God. That’s incredible. India, that’s wonderful. I know I’ve kept you past time. I just have two, two short questions. So first is we’ve talked a lot about, a lot about money in terms of what we did do with it, what we didn’t do with it, certainly losing money when it came to this business and what some of those feelings and what it can look like to rebuild. But I’d love to ask you, in the most recent past, what have been some of your most favorite ways to spend your money?

Syama Bunten: What has been the most fabulous things, experiences? What has brought you joy with your capital?

India Gary-Martin: Ooh, that’s such a good question. A couple of things. The first one is, the house that I’m in now, I bought it big enough for my parents to be able to move in with me. And for me that is like as they age and as they don’t live with me now, but they’re here quite often. But as they age, they have a space of their own in my house. And that is a gift. They have their own little suite and it’s so cute. And I got to, I did it for them and I got to help my mom. We decorated it with her and it was just, it.

India Gary-Martin: It is that. So I think that’s one big thing. The other one for me is that like I’m putting my daughter through school debt free the fact that she’ll come out and have a start, it’s been hard, it is hard to do this.

India Gary-Martin: It’s very difficult. It’s, it is not without its sacrifices, but if I’m gonna put it there, it’s let’s invest it in people that, the people like the future for my family. So I think there’s that. And then I’m going on my amazing cruise at Christmas. I dunno, Honduras and Belize and all these cool places.

India Gary-Martin: So that’s my other one. I’m a travel junkie and that is one thing I do a lot of. I travel all the time. And personally as much as I do business, I do personally as well, and I like to go everywhere in the world. So I tend to go for experiences rather than.

Syama Bunten: Wow. How wonderful. And then my last question is India, you clearly are supporting others standing in service.

Syama Bunten: When you sign up to help people solve some of the biggest problems and challenges in their companies and help them strategize on the future, you’re giving so much of yourself. This last question is more about what are you calling in right now? What can we do as a community who listened to this podcast?

Syama Bunten: How can we champion you? What? What can we do for you? Personal, professional? What are you calling in?

India Gary-Martin: I love this question because I, I am a recovering, don’t ask anything from anybody, person who just gets on with it. I love this question and it really is just send me people send me folks that you know who need this kind of work.

India Gary-Martin: Send me people who, need strategic advisors. I am. A whisperer. I really am. And so like I have a couple of CEOs who call me now. I’m a whisperer, like I solve things. I’m a great sounding board and I found that, find that the more senior you become, and it doesn’t just have to be CEOs by the way, but the more senior you are, the.

India Gary-Martin: More lonely it can be. And so having somebody you can test things with who’s been there and done it. I also sit on boards too, corporate boards. So I have the perspective not just of being an executive, but actually sitting on boards and knowing what boards want from executives. Both. I’ve been on a public one, private and non-for-profit, so I’ve seen that all too.

India Gary-Martin: And so it really is about just. Being a sounding board for folks and being an advisor to people. And if folks who are, you’re like, you know what? This is somebody you should probably talk to who might give you a space to be able to work some things through. That is me.

Syama Bunten: I love that.

India Gary-Martin: I’d love that.

India Gary-Martin: And if anybody wants to help me get scholarships for my next child, so I don’t have to come out of my pocket for her college, because she’s in the 11th grade and she wants to be a psychologist and she wants to study psychology and her list of schools are all very expensive. If anybody wants to gimme a scholarship for her, I’d be happy she works for anything.

Syama Bunten: oh my God, I love that everyone, you heard the asks. This is, these are very good asks. India, thank you for sharing your wisdom, your spirit. Thank you for your vulnerability, your kindness. I’m grateful to know you and this has been a fantastic episode. Thank you.

India Gary-Martin: Thank you so much for having me.